Evolution's bottom line

National Center for Science Education ^ | 12 May 2006 | Staff

[donh]

Pius had no trouble, and apparently felt the need, to explicitly ex-communicate every communist.

Really? He made a list of every Communist and explicitly excommunicated each one by name? News to me.

Uh huh. Let's think about this feeble defense for a moment. Was every Nazi listed and explicitly excommunicated by name? The nazi's as a whole? Anything? I guess the church was distracted with the duty to turn over its records to the jew-hunters, and later to help spirit certain nazis out of reach of the Allied forces, but no doubt would have gotten around to it eventually.

Are you telling me the communists never beat up any nuns, or did anything else to warrant automatic ex-communication, and thereby save the Pope the trouble?

We are discussing one specific individual who personally engaged in several different actions incurring automatic excommunication. I'm certain that many, many Communists as specific individuals incurred automatic excommunication just as Hitler did, but that's irrelevant.

Indeed, highly irrelevant, as we've previously argued and been left unanswered.

Apparently Pius suffered the impression that ex-communication means something in the modern world--it's just that torturing 6000000 jews to death doesn't rise to that level of Godly concern, in the opinion of Jesus's voice on earth.

Hitler was already excommunicated by his own actions long before he committed his first murder, so your hyperbolic grandstanding is superfluous.

Was Pius supposed to invent a new brand of couble-double excommunication just for Hitler?

Balderdash--there's a big practical and moral difference between between public ex-communication and theoretical academic ex-communication.

Your burning, bigoted anti-Catholicism - a low and seedy prejudice which you try to mask by pretending that the Shoah is your main concern - is laughably contradictory.

You claim that excommunication is pointless since it carries no enforceable penalties in the carnal world while simultaneously claiming that the Church should have enforced the ban of excommunication more concretely.

Which is it? Does excommunication not matter at all, or does it matter so much that you're afraid the Church doesn't excommunicate people with enough vigor? Make up your mind.

So, you trained as a jesuit?...first a little irrelevant defamatory second guessing as to my motivation, then an attempt to turn your secret theoretical ex-communication into the genuine statement from the Pope the world hoped for, but never saw, by jawboning. You are certainly living up to the high rhetorical standards of the Church, all couched in an authoritative demeanor intended to affect an unobtained glow of dignified, earned authority. I know this is generally hard for the church's apologists to grasp, but you don't really make a strong argument by stating it in sonorous tones over and over, and holding your breath until you turn blue when that doesn't work.

[donh]

You claim that excommunication is pointless since it carries no enforceable penalties in the carnal world

I'm curious as to where I claimed this?

Which is it? Does excommunication not matter at all, or does it matter so much that you're afraid the Church doesn't excommunicate people with enough vigor? Make up your mind.

So, for the lurker--this is the sort of thing that should make you immediately think of jesuistry--substituting an irrelevant argument constructed on a false premise, the whole of which resembles in vocabulary the relevant argument. You do this enough times, and nobody with sense follows the argument, but may come away with the false impression that some sort of argument was made and not answered.

[donh]

Your burning, bigoted anti-Catholicism

Nonsense, I am an equal opportunity scholar. The lutherans have plenty of horror stories we can talk about. They were just as eager to burn down jews, not to mention anabaptists and witches, as any catholics. God's self-appointed earthly deputies, of any stripe, have generally amassed oodles of cruel, arrogant history. Demonstrating, I guess, as much of anything, the horrors of absentee landLORDism.

- a low and seedy prejudice which you try to mask

Mask??? Boy, it must take a big brick thru a window to get your attention.

by pretending that the Shoah is your main concern - is laughably contradictory.

The Shoah is not my main concern; I'm quite sure the Shoah was merely a taste of what God's acolytes will be able to accomplish in a world where technology makes lethality ever cheaper and easier. It is the subject that was brought up, in order to claim that darwinism caused it. Might I suggest that your side of this argument not bring bibles to the biological science table if you don't want it dissected in an analytical manner.