Re: God, the universe and everything in it (was: Blame Bush...)

Miss Elaine Eos laid this down on his screen :
In article <N56ll.89$pI1.65@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Tony <tony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

As it turns out, I'm not one to make a big stink about someone (or organization) having made a mistake, and updating their understanding, but I find it highly ridiculous that one (or a group) would do so in such a blatant way, and maintain that their "updated understanding" is *STILL* infallible, just like it was back when it said the exact opposite.

Now you're talking two different things. Ex cathedra dogma never changes. Mary was conceived without sin now and forever. But new theology builds on the old, but doesn't contradict the old (much like biology, or any other -ology).

Wait, don't scoot on to Mary, just yet. Help me with the old thing. (I know I can go look this up, but then why would I need *YOU*?! This is much more fun; I hope you agree :) (And I promise to more-research some of the bigger (to me) stuff, before shooting off my mouth TOO much!)

So, my understanding is:

* Before: if you're not a member of the catholic church, you can't be saved.

* Now: You can be saved without being a member of the Catholic church, so long as you're still "in the church" (meaning not important for this conversation.)

* Also now: Oh, and the thing we said back in "before" times -- that's still as true as it ever was. We're not contradicting it, we've just ...uh... you know -- "updated our understanding."

Ignoring the church-y aspect of it, it someone started talking some smack like that to me, I'd have to slap them!

What have I got wrong?

(Well, I'd have to slap them 7 times 70 times, of course... ;)

We are time bound. And this may stick in your logical craw, but the dogma that was pronounced in the 1500's was right in the 1500's, and the dogma that is pronounced now is right now. The dogma pronounced right now does not mean todays dogma was right in the 1500's.

Ah! The Catholic church goes in for situational ethics?! So, there are things that we may call sinful today that were, yesterday, perfectly Good and Righteous?!

And you don't see this as weasely?!?!

Nope. :)

To give a more modern example (and associated) example:

In the late 70's early 80's the psychology community was almost unianimous in its assertion that a child abuser could be cured. Some Bishops labored under that assumption, had their priests treated and "cured" and then sent the newly "cured" priest to another parish where he sometimes abused again.

Now we believe that child abusers cannot be cured, and that moving a child abusing priest from parish to parish is dangerous for any children attending there.

So child abuse was curable then, and child abuse is not curable now. If they can develop a better understanding of psychOLOGY, why can't they develop a better understanding of theOLOGY, and get a better understanding of God and what He wants?

Let's ignore that it's your faith for a moment. I know you have God-colored glasses and all, but I also know that you're not stupid! Take a step back and look at that -- how the heck does that work?!

("My guess tell me it's cool, and I'm cool with that" is a it weak -- can I get you to put a bit more Tony-thinking into it? :)

That's why we call the Catholic Church the "Barque of Peter". We are on a journey, and sometimes the journey requires slight course corrections. :)

(I should just get a weasel avatar, shouldn't I :D )

I constantly get into arguments with Protestants prooftexting our own documents and cutting little snippets out of them to "ding" us.

Sure. Same game as folks who pick some obscure bible verse, ignore pages and chapters of context, then interpret ("translate"? I can never keep those two straight ;) it to mean some wild-assed thing...

Yup. That's why the verse has to be taken in context with the whole. There have been arguments as to what it all means from the very beginning (see Acts). What I find a somewhat funny argument that the early church had was between Peter and Paul. Peter generally ministered to the Jews in Jerusalem, and Paul ministered to the Gentiles. The argument was: "Do Christians have to follow Jewish law?" IOW, do new Gentile converts to Christianity need to be circumcised?

Imagine the conversation: "This Jesus guy seems pretty cool, and I'm all into that 'love thy neighbor' thing, but I have to cut off WHAT?!?!?!?"

So the decision was Christians don't have to follow Jewish law. So we don't have to kill gays anymore, burn bulls (though we can still shoot the ***) and we can wear polyester blends :))

They came to a more refined understanding of what God wanted from His people.

Here's another "faith vs. objective science" thing -- scientists will tell you "well, to the best of our understanding -- and things are looking pretty good, so far, as we put it to the test -- it appears that FOO is The Truth." Later, when it turns out that they need to "update their understanding", the scientists will gladly tell you "oh yeah -- we were WAY wrong, about that! I mean, we had it right as far as it went, but we completely ignored [say] anything bigger than a breadbox. Heh; it's kind of comically quaint, when you look back at it..."

It is sort of. But you don't apply todays science with today's technological advances to Sir Isaac Newton and claim he was an idiot because he didn't know the things we do. That would be unfair.

True!

But that's the criteria that many hold the Church to.

Who?! I'll tell you what we DO do. We DO say "well, Gallileo was right about a few things, but still had a lot of stuff messed up. Probably the political scene of the times kept him from taking his science too far. And Newton really IS the father of modern physics -- but he's wasn't modern physics, and had a few glaring mistakes of his own. Still, without him, we wouldn't be where we are, today."

Yes!

Where's the church on that? Where's our "well, Pope/saint/whatever So-n-So is really the one who got us where we are, today. Of course, he had a ridiculously naive perspective on things, and was way-wrong about quite a bit -- it's really all rather comically quaint, when you see it from the 21st century! -- but he did some great stuff, and we're all thankful for that."

There were whole sections of the Church who were excommunicated as the doctrine was developed. You can read about the heresies by looking at the ecumenical councils. There were the Arians (who followed Arius, not skin-heads) who denied the divinity of Jesus. There's an interesting legend as to how Arius died.

At that point, the divinity of Jesus was documented and solidified. Was this creating brand new doctrine? No, the majority of the faithful already believed it, but the heretics were causing enough trouble that they had to rule on it publicly.

At Vatican II, the Barque took a bit of a turn to the left, but the current pope with his hand firmly on the rudder is slowly righting it.

THAT, I think, is the biggest thing that makes The Church -- ANY church -- suspect.

"Nope, sorry. God told me, and I'm right, and *** the rest of you..."

They said that to Galileo :)

Pope John Paul II wrote an encyclical, Dignitatis Humanae, on religious freedom. Hardly "*** the rest of you". If you go into history, that might not have been the case. But those were different times, with a different level of maturity both as a Church and as a society.

(This is even more true when you take into account the stuff I want to discuss in the other thread about God telling people stuff. We'll dive deeper into that over there.)

I look forward to it.

I'd have a lot more faith in the "rightness" of these councils if they'd ever say "I don't know WHO IN HELL told [some long-gone pope] that he was infallible, but MAN, did he have everything backwards! I'm pretty sure that, when God called on the red-phone, he picked up the blue one and started taking notes... whew!"

Somehow, I don't think you would. My guess would be that you would figure that if they got it wrong then, they might very well be wrong now. I'll let you speak for yourself, though.

You know how you say the little mistakes help solidify the story for you? For me, "I heard voices, so I know I'm right" is a LOT less believable than a bit of humility.

Of course it is. There's a saying that humility is the primary weapon to fight the Devil. He doesn't understand it, so has no defense against it. :)

Of course, "don't listen to me, I'm wrong about EVERYTHING" isn't reassuring, either. But there's a middle ground. Imagine how much ground Bart could gain in the other discussion were he to admit a few mistakes, grant that a few others got one or two good points in, then continued with "...but I REALLY want to take issue with your bit about...foo" (Bart: forget "foo" -- it has no meaning. I'm communicating with Tony, right now. He gets it. Trust me.) I mean, his credibility on this thead would SKYROCKET!

What would happen is that his understanding of God and the Bible would be "refined". Would you hold it against him if he came to a clearer understanding after doing some research?

One thing I've learned over this journey of mine is how much I really don't know. Also, how little Catholics (even those who attended Parochial school) understand about their faith. There's a real hole in catechesis for adults which in the future I'm hoping to fill.

I'm just saying the same thing about The Church[es].

Sure. :)

Also, the Church does admit she's wrong, it just take her a while to do it. Within the last decade she apologized for the Gallileo thing. :D

Fair enough. And there's that whole "1000s of years/blink of an eye" thing, so, really, they were right-quick about it! ;)

The Vatican II thing went unusually fast and look where it got us. Now we're starting to step back and see that haste made waste.

Sure. I'd like everyone to be in heaven. If God gave everyone a get out of hell card it'd be perfectly ok with me.

Just curious: that's way-against traditional Catholic teaching, right? What Bart calls "mamby-pamby protestants"?

Well, not really. I don't believe everyone will be in heaven. I'd like them to all be in heaven.

Ah, gotcha. I misunderstood.

What exactly is the cost? I'm curious about that. Last I knew, believing in God was free. :)

Only if you're already doing it. There's all that praying, studying, rituals, etc. Some folks say it won't work if you don't go to mass often enough. Some claim tithing is critical. It's not quite "buckle up", is all I'm getting at.

Ah, it's "the relationship thing".

Sure. If you had to go on a first date in order to avoid a car wreck, a lot fewer people would do it. That's all I'm saying... :)

Some people don't have time for a girlfriend or wife. I guess some don't have time enough for God. For Catholics the obligation is Mass once a week between sundown Saturday and sundown Sunday, holy days of obligation, receive communion once a year at Easter, and go to confession at least once a year. That's about 60 hours a year.

DO you have any idea how many levels one can make on World Of Warcraft in 60 hours...?!?! That's a SERIOUS cost!

;)

As my wife and I have gotten closer to God, we've gotten closer to each other. I'd recommend it to any other married couples. :)

I'll spare you the "God's name" joke, but reassure you that I was thinking it :)

Well, if it has something to do with sex, married couples should invite God into the bedroom. He made sex, there's nothing new there for Him.

But, again, a seemingly simple question goes complex. Of COURSE I believe that Abraham believed in the God that Abraham believed in. Do I think he believed in what The Church currently calls The God Of Abraham? I'd have to give a definite "I don't really know" to that.

Well, Jesus believed in the God of Abraham (he was his Dad after all).

Wait, wait. What we TODAY call "the God of Abraham" is what we believe to be Jesus' "father" (not sure how the biology works there, but I'm stipulating in order to get to the next point.) The "I don't really know" part is...

Ahhhh... Trinity. Now you're delving into a bonafide mystery. Do you really want to go there? :)

(I have to skip away from Jesus for a bit, to avoid any omniscience, "his dad" and other confounders.)

...let's take the apostle Peter -- the God that the apostle Peter believed in, Peter was PRETTY SURE it was the same God that Abraham believed in and, heck, Jesus probably even told him as much, and we can BET that Peter "trusted his guys"... But Peter, himself (without Jesus telling him so), can't REALLY have known for sure WHAT Abraham believed.

Sure he can. That's where tradition comes in. The stories handed down in the tribes from generation to generation of priests and rabbis until it was written down in the first Torah (and one would faithfully believe was transcribed completely accurately each and every time).

Peter trusted "his guys".

Heck, you and I are contemporaries, and we communicate several times a day, and I'm only "pretty sure" that I have some idea what it is you believe. If you asked me whether or not I believe in the same God as your great-great-great grandfather, I'd be, all "how the *** should *I* know?!"

See what I mean?

Do you believe in the being that Christians, Jews and Muslims call "God", "YHWH" and "Allah" respectively? :)

I was told the literal translation of Abba is not "father", but "daddy". This is one of those little translational gems that makes for a different story.

God: "Who's your daddy? C'mon -- say it..."

;)

(I'll smoke a papayo in purgatory for THAT one... <sigh>)

They only have burmese jades in Purgatory... Nope that's hell. :)

Do you believe in Santa Clause?

Absolutely. I believe more in Saint Nicholas

I didn't ask about St. Nicholas -- quit changing the subject, Bart!

Hee, hee, hee.

Ok, No I don't believe in Santa Clause. I was told later in life by my parents that they made him up. Also, I don't see any ongoing evidence that he exists (such as toys under the tree with tags from Santa).

Actually, part of the point that I was getting to is that you may eventually evolve to believe in a Santa Clause that is "bigger" (not more volumnous, but conceptually) than the red-suited fat man with toys. At that point, you may again "believe in Santa Clause."

I forget WHY I was talking about that, but that's what I was talking about :)

Here's some knife sharpening for you: There are Gods other than The God Of Abraham. People who believe in them aren't atheists. "Zeus" is an easy-to-understand example. The FSM is a silly one.

"You're welcome." :)

I don't believe in the "other Gods" because mine said I'm not supposed to. :)

Sure. But you get that those others aren't "without theism", "without any gods", right?

Sure. They just believe in one less than me. :)

No, no -- that's atheists! I'm trying to get you to recognize that people who worship what you would call "false gods" still have gods, and still are theists. Some of them pantheists. They're different from atheists. Get it?

Yup.

No, God created you to love Him, serve Him, and ultimately be happy with Him forever in heaven.

I knew a women like that, once. She was NOT pleasant to be around!

(Hey, I'm just sayin'... ;)

I never bothered to really refine this to good words, but "the God of Misc" is more like... well he IS the creation. It's not like "he MADE the creation" -- the fact that the universe happened, and is around, and works the way it does -- that's God. (I used to say "if there was a physics book with all the laws of the universe -- even the ones we don't currently know -- that'd be God." This is a slight refinement over that, but still not quite right. Feel free to interpret (or translate!) at will. :)

That's really not a bad understanding of God.

Thanks for validating my religion. ;)

It's actually quite a GOOD understanding (but perhaps a poor articulation.) If it makes you feel better, Catholicism isn't SUCH a shabby religion... <G>

Thanks. We have lots of years of practice.

I ascribe a more "abba" demeanor to God. Since we are created in His image and likeness, I tend to think He thinks and has the same motivations as me. This is a grave error on my part. But it does help me attempt to understand Him.

Sure, I'm familiar with "daddy" God (hey, YOU started it! ;), I just no longer subscribe. It seems too limiting for God, IMO.

Sure, but it allows a slug like me to wrap my meager mind around Him. If you want to be more expansive, go for it.

Jesus is easier. He's a guy like me :)

Only not nearly as smart or good looking, right? <G>

The God of Abraham was very much a God of rules.

"Was"?

rules. He told Adam and Eve if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would die. They ate. They died. Actions have consequences. Then he took on a stinking skin-suit, lived as we did, suffered, died a horrible death on the cross for us, and I think that tended to mellow him out.

LOL! I know lots of formerly up-tight people who, once they have children... ;)

(I always attribute it to "once you've changed a dozen diapers...")

Well, I have a slightly different take on Jesus' teaching, but I suppose they both end up in the same place, so the fact that you've wrapped yours in a fairy tale shouldn't be held against you ;)

(Had to <jab> you for that "not a bad understanding" crack <G>)

No problem. I've been jabbed by the best.

But as far as fairy tales go, "on the first day..." is pretty allegorical.

And "let there be light" caused a really big "BANG". The heavens and the earth was when he was standing there making those little balls spin around each other... etc.

This is the difference between the stories of illiterate shepherds and nuclear physicists.

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