Meaningfulness v meaninglessness; theism vs atheism;

[Shell B]

Being "fuhrer" means he could have changed it had he wished. He did not so wish. Hitler thought he was doing god's will...just like loads of other fanatics. He was far from the atheist that xtian fools try to claim he was because they find it embarrassing for him to be a member of their little club.

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I couldn't agree more. Besides, if he weren't Christian, why was he so obsessed with the Spear of Longinus, Holy Lance or whatever you want to call that useless scrap?

[Minimalist]

In the modern catholic church ignorance is not only still prevalent it seems to be a prerequisite.

That said...ignorance is preferable to the pervert priests running around loose.

[dqualk]

Most all things are partly religiously motivated. But is it enough to lay all the blame on the institution of the Catholic Church? I mean one athesit does something evil, that doesn't mean all athesits are evil, or atheism in general. The Crusades were in part a Just War, in my opinion. Much of what happened in the Crusades were very evil, done by Catholics, some of whom were truly believeing Catholics, who were misled.

The Crusades were a response to a violent Islam that had taken over Christian lands and massacred many Christians, both in the process of conquest, but also the molestation and murder of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Christendom responded by attempting to take back the Holy Lands. So the Crusades were largely about defense. With that said, Christians did a lot of evil within the Crusades, but that happens in every war, its most unfortunate, and probably not worth it. That is why the Church ended the Crusades a long time ago. They realized taht the damage being done outweighed the goal.

[thesummerqueen]

There are myriad reasons why I hate the Church as an institution. I don't hate individual people unless they give me many extreme reasons to. I lay blame at the church's door because the blame belongs on the people who committed the crimes. I don't differentiate between religions as far as this goes. Fundamentalist Islam as a religion is horrific as well. So's Scientology. So's a lot of Orthodox Judaism.

Not every Catholic has molested a child. But the CHURCH as an institution allowed it to happen, then covered it up. BLAME, and rightly so, and if you think blame shouldn't be put on the people representing your religion to the rest of the world for all the shit that happened under their command, oh well sweet pea. Tough shit for them and for you. They took a leadership position and this is what they get - it take strong shoulders to bear the burden of being a representative and leader in any sort of movement. Your job as a "shepherd" to your flock is to protect and guide them, yes? See to their well being? How is allowing the rape of innocents in any way "seeing to their well-being?" How is allowing AIDS to run RAMPANT in Africa because of some outmoded belief against the use of condoms "seeing to well-being"?

I'd respond more, but I've wasted enough time at the end of my work day on this. I have to get vendors paid.

[Minimalist]

Most all things are partly religiously motivated. But is it enough to lay all the blame on the institution of the Catholic Church? I mean one athesit does something evil, that doesn't mean all athesits are evil, or atheism in general. The Crusades were in part a Just War, in my opinion. Much of what happened in the Crusades were very evil, done by Catholics, some of whom were truly believeing Catholics, who were misled.

There are two issues here. One, covered by Voltaire, said:

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

They may have been "mis-led" but they were also willing to be misled. You overlook that part.


Second, in modern times we see your church ( used to be mine but I quit when I was 20 ) condoning pedophilia among its priests, Before your head explodes understand that I agree that not ALL priests are pedophiles but in far too many cases the power-structure that is all the church is enabled these sick bastards to continue because they were far more concerned about how badly the church would look ( and how much money it would cost them!) than they were about the children who were being institutionally sodomized.

The church has not begun to answer for its role in facilitating those bastards...and by the way, that includes Herr Von Popenfuhrer.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germ...83,00.html

New documents show how the former Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger -- now Pope Benedict XVI -- and his successor Reinhard Marx failed to properly deal with a suspected pedophile. Despite massive allegations of abuse, the archdiocese allowed the priest to continue working with children.

I get the sense that you would prefer to hide your head in the sand about all this but people are abandoning your church in droves...and I say that is a good thing.

[dqualk]

There are myriad reasons why I hate the Church as an institution. I don't hate individual people unless they give me many extreme reasons to. I lay blame at the church's door because the blame belongs on the people who committed the crimes. I don't differentiate between religions as far as this goes. Fundamentalist Islam as a religion is horrific as well. So's Scientology. So's a lot of Orthodox Judaism.

Not every Catholic has molested a child. But the CHURCH as an institution allowed it to happen, then covered it up. BLAME, and rightly so, and if you think blame shouldn't be put on the people representing your religion to the rest of the world for all the shit that happened under their command, oh well sweet pea. Tough shit for them and for you. They took a leadership position and this is what they get - it take strong shoulders to bear the burden of being a representative and leader in any sort of movement. Your job as a "shepherd" to your flock is to protect and guide them, yes? See to their well being? How is allowing the rape of innocents in any way "seeing to their well-being?" How is allowing AIDS to run RAMPANT in Africa because of some outmoded belief against the use of condoms "seeing to well-being"?

I'd respond more, but I've wasted enough time at the end of my work day on this. I have to get vendors paid.

Well concerning the molestation of children, the Church did not "allow it to happen." She as an institution does everything she can to stop the molestation of children. It is impractical to act like the Church should be omnipresent in stopping evil. The "cover ups" are not so bad as they sound. People cover up crimes like this for all sorts of reason, not all of which are evil. For one thing there was a belief, due to liberal social sciences, that children molesters could reform if they admitted to the crime and took steps to stop it, this was AGAINST Canon Law, which called for very tough measures against the perpetrator. So the Church had good laws in place which were ignored by bad bishops against this wishes of the Pontiff and majority of the faithful. And further this type of behavior happens every where including public schools which are wholly secular, and atheist in a sense, that God is absent from the decisions. The fact is teachers have sex with 16 year olds et al. all the time, I know there were rumors, that were probably true, in my school and what do people do? Look the other way, a lot of the time, or they put an end to it without getting the media or courts involved. This is typical human behavior, which is wrong, but is not unique to the Church. The Church has done every prafctical thing to stop the abuse. It has a Canon Law that clearly deals with this issue in a good way, and it teaches that such actions send people to an eternal hell. With that said the Bishops et al. who helped cover this stuff have done a grave evil and its a blessing and a curse that the abuse was revealed in such a way because it has led to a recognition that ignoring Canon Law for "the Gospels sake" is wrong. Like the Pope has said, it has brought back the truth that discipline is another form of love. And for this reason some times it is the loving thing to do, to punish someone.

[Shell B]

For the record, it really pisses me off when people try to downplay molestation and rape in the church by pointing out that teachers do it. Teachers are punishable by law. Most of the time, not all of the time, rapes by teachers are not covered up in the sense that the teacher gets away with it. The opposite happens with priests. That is a bullshit argument. One does not excuse the other.

[Minimalist]

She as an institution does everything she can to stop the molestation of children.

You are as wrong as it is possible to be. The church allowed it and moved pervert priests around when it had to allowing them fresh targets to abuse.

Even your pope is guilty.

[Welsh cake]

Many of you are only making yourself look worse. You demonstrate that you do not post, at least not on this thread, to learn or to open dialouge, you post to insult and in general make a fool of yourself.

Once again my only point in starting this thread was to demonstrate that atheist lack sujective value, and I believe that Theism is a well respected and intellectual position which gives subjective value, so why would one not choose a subjectively meaningful system.

Congratulations are in order for your underwhelming display of hypocrisy and demonstrating yet again you still don't know what atheism means.



Its an amazing achievement. You have the Internet with millions of web-pages of indispensable accurate information at your fingertips and yet you choose to scorn every one of them.

What you're doing here is no different than arguing with engineers what aerodynamics involves when you failed to understand what "air" actually is first. Go back and learn the basics if you want to have a proper discussion.

[thesummerqueen]

The "cover ups" are not so bad as they sound. People cover up crimes like this for all sorts of reason, not all of which are evil. For one thing there was a belief, due to liberal social sciences, that children molesters could reform if they admitted to the crime and took steps to stop it, this was AGAINST Canon Law, which called for very tough measures against the perpetrator.

Wait a minute. Wait a goddamn minute. I really hope that you meant something other than what it sounds when you said this:

People cover up crimes like this for all sorts of reason, not all of which are evil.

In what universe is it EVER acceptable to cover up a crime such as molestation? The cover ups aren't as bad as they sound?

It is up to the medical and psychological community to figure out whether or not something can be done to a perp once he's caught. But to enact those measures, he has to be caught to begin with. There is clear evidence in multiple cases of 'hush ups' to avoid scandal, and thus men who never got punished either way. No thought for the people who were repeatedly raped, sometimes over the course of decades, by these vicious men who were supposed to remain celibate because their religion said so, and then used the trappings of that same religion to enact horrible physical, emotional, and mental abuse on their victims.