Posted on 11/05/2007 5:21:40 PM PST by Former Military Chick
“It sounds to me as though you believe that any reading of xtian texts that does not jibe with your own is childish.”
No, it doesn’t sound like that to you at all. You are merely reaching for something uncomplimentary to say.
“It is quite possible to read the texts and come to the conclusion that they are not what they purport to be, nor what xtian dogma holds them out to be.”
Now there’s a revelation: People can be mistaken. Stop the presses.
“That is not a childish conclusion, nor is it a misapprehension.”
You fail to understand the argument I made about a child’s understanding of theology. As for misapprehension, yes, it is.
“It is simply a position that is not based on credulity.”
It is a position based on a level of cynicism that is completely unjustified.
“Indeed, one could even say that it is the person deriding others as being immature who is in fact behaving childishly.”
It would be more accurate to say that a person who misunderstands an argument, then mischaracterizes it as “deriding,” who is in fact behaving childishly.
You wrote: “Nothing in transubstantiation assumes that the wafer LITERALLY becomes the flesh of Christ. In other words one could not take a DNA sample from it. The chemical composition does not change, just the spiritual significance of eating it changes. This is not a difficult concept.”
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My response: Baloney. Study the Bible. For example, read Crazy John 6:53-56, which quotes Jesus as follows:
“Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.”
Yum. Now go read the Catechism of the Catholic Church (the “official” doctrine of the Catholic Church, which adopts the conclusion of the Council of Trent that the “Real Presence” of Christ, i.e. the actual body and blood of Christ, is not to be believed as a figurative or symbolic concept, but must be understood as objective reality. If you are Catholic, you are supposed to believe you literally are eating Christ during the Eucharist. To believe otherwise is anathema, as the Council of Trent put it, and the modern-day Catholic Church continues to accept, which means you are going to hell if you refuse to believe it. Protestants, of course, think this is all ridiculous.
I rather enjoyed and I am intrigued by these portion of your nutty comments— You wrote: “Oh yes, my bitter little God-hater, He does. But you’ll never forgive Him for talking to others and not you, will you? ....It is quite possible to distinguish between hallucination and a genuine personal revelation. .... People very definitely do get clear and unambiguous messages from God. That is one key factor in evaluating their validity.”
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My response:
So tell us, will you please, are you one of those special people God talks to? When you get these “clear and unambiguous messages from God, what does he (she?) sound like? Is the voice sort of like George Burns, or Chuck Heston, or Roseanne Barr? When you hear this voice, are you alone, or are others present, and do they hear the voice too? How frequently does God speak to you? Can you make the voice go away? Do you sleep well, or does God sometimes wake you, whispering in your ear, “dsc, tomorrow you will kill the paper boy.” Finally, how do you know these voices are not, in fact, hallucinations? You said you can tell the difference. I understand, but how do you know this voice is really God’s and not Satan’s or your cat’s? Please don’t hurt me, I’m just curious.
You wrote: “It sounds to me as though you believe that any reading of xtian texts that does not jibe with your own is childish. It is quite possible to read the texts and come to the conclusion that they are not what they purport to be, nor what xtian dogma holds them out to be. That is not a childish conclusion, nor is it a misapprehension. It is simply a position that is not based on credulity. Indeed, one could even say that it is the person deriding others as being immature who is in fact behaving childishly.”
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My response:
What exactly is your point? That any interpretation of the Bible (or any other ancient writing, for that matter) is as good as another, or that it is “childish” to deride someone’s beliefs just because they cloak them with the title “religious belief”? Are all religious views beyond scrutiny, no matter how ridiculous? If I say, my belief is that the universe was created by the sugar plum fairies that dance in my backyard on Tuesday evenings, is it childish for someone to say I have no rational basis for my belief? If I say, all people who believe in a supernatural deity are credulous, is that childish? Or are the childish people the ones who believe their “souls” fly off to “heaven” when their hearts stop beating?
“My response:”
...Is puerile in the extreme. Nonetheless, I will employ your attempted mockery as an opportunity to contradict some of your more eggregious errors.
“So tell us, will you please, are you one of those special people God talks to?”
If I am special in any way, it is in the same way that the Special Olympics are special.
“When you get these “clear and unambiguous messages from God, what does he (she?) sound like?”
Wouldn’t it occur to you, just as a matter of logic, that an omnipoent God would have more convincing and less ambiguous ways of communicating than just a disembodied voice droning in a person’s ear?
“When you hear this voice, are you alone, or are others present, and do they hear the voice too?”
Setting aside your dismal miscronstrual of communications as a matter of “voice,” in history the number of people with whom God has communicated at one time has ranged from one to over 70,000.
“Do you sleep well, or does God sometimes wake you, whispering in your ear, “dsc, tomorrow you will kill the paper boy.”
Wouldn’t it occur to you, just as a matter of logic, that a voice urging you to commit an act that God forbids couldn’t be from God? Your hatred of God has rendered you totally irrational on the subject.
“Finally, how do you know these voices are not, in fact, hallucinations?”
Setting aside the matter of “voices” again, wouldn’t it occur to you, just as a matter of logic, that an omnipotent God would have ways of demonstrating that a communication could not have originated from within the person concerned?
“I understand, but how do you know this voice is really God’s and not Satan’s or your cat’s?”
People are, in fact, deceived by Satan or schizophrenic hallucinations. That is why such revelations need to be subjected to intense reality checking by third-parties. Where an experience doesn’t appear to be a Satanic deception or evidence of mental illness, the Church usually just says, “Could be, but nobody is required to believe in it.”
Another indicator is that genuine revelations are congruent with prior revelations, and do not purport to change or add to them. Anything that contradicted the Bible or appeared to be license to violate one of the Ten Commandments would, therefore, be right out.
I’m taking my 7-year-old steelhead fishing right now, so that’s all I’m going to write. You can find oceans of information on the subject if you care to look.
“Please don’t hurt me, I’m just curious.”
Any Christian will tell you, if one prays, “Lord, should I hurt this person?” The answer always comes back, “No.” If it comes back “Yes,” you got a wrong number.
Umm ... I think you misunderstood my post. I was actually taking up for you. I was saying that he was calling you childish because you disagreed with him, and that perhaps that made him the childish one.
No, it doesn’t sound like that to you at all. You are merely reaching for something uncomplimentary to say.
See, you don't get to say how something sounds to me. I understand you have this--you should pardon the expression--god complex and all, but I'm the only one who gets to say what I hear and how to interpret it. And in fact, I was trying to be non-insulting while still saying what I meant. If I had been "reaching for something uncomplimentary to say", I would have decided on something nowhere near that mild.
As for the rest of your self-important post, tell it to someone who'll be impressed. I learned a long time ago there's no debating with someone who sees himself as an Oracle of TRVTH. Have a groovy life, dude.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_not_Great:_How_Religion_Poisons_Everything
If you doubt the latter part of the title, read some of the posts on this thread.
“Does your god love you when you’re snide? :^)”
His love is much greater than my pettiness.
“See, you don’t get to say how something sounds to me.”
Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Not only that, in this case I’m right. You see, when a person who does not appear to be either stupid or insane expresses a position that one would have to be stupid or insane to espouse, it is reasonable to conclude that he’s just flinging anything that comes to hand, in the hope that something will sting.
And since I was not calling the other fellow childish, but saying that he had demonstrated a child’s understanding of theology – which is very common these days, since so many people stop studying it in their early to mid teens – one would have to be stupid or insane actually to think that I was calling him childish for disagreeing with me. So, you see, I was paying you the compliment of thinking you careless rather than stupid.
“I understand you have this—you should pardon the expression—god complex and all”
No, you don’t. You just think it’s a cutting thing to say.
“but I’m the only one who gets to say what I hear and how to interpret it.”
What, you think you’re special? Some sort of inscrutable genius?
“And in fact, I was trying to be non-insulting while still saying what I meant.”
No, you were trying to be insulting while still maintaining a façade of civility.
“I learned a long time ago there’s no debating with someone who sees himself as an Oracle of TRVTH.”
That’s just a BS excuse you use to make yourself feel okay with running away from these issues.
“Have a groovy life, dude.”
We should be much more concerned with what kind of eternity we will have.
Ben is an enigma.
That's really funny. I can't wait to see how much laughing you'll be doing when academia is exposed as the closed circe jerk that it is.
Were I you I'd hope the film gets limited exposure.
You wrote: “It sure tastes like wine, and I wouldn’t try to use it for a transfusion.”
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My response: Bingo. It is — just wine. (And it’s just a wafer too.) If you thought I was arguing the validity of the Catholic Church’s belief in transubstantiation, you completely missed my point.
I was confused by the fact that you address both dsc and me in the post. I apologize if you weren’t directing your comments at me.
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