Page 3 of 4
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:01 pm
by Travis B.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:05 pm
by zompist
Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Sep 03, 2026 10:03 am
I likewise feel that there is huge step between deism/theism and specific religions, and that proof of the existence of a creator (or creators? let's be accepting of all possibilities here), if such a thing was possible, wouldn't be proof of the truth of a specific religion.
You and Raphael are quite right about this. Too many apologists spend a chapter on "proofs of the existence of God"; once this is done to their satisfaction, suddenly they are talking about
their historical god.
Some (certainly not all!) theists are concerned to make their religion
compatible with reason, which is not the same thing as showing that it
derives from reason.
There's no reason they can't succeed: just lop off anything in the religion that's irrational. In a pinch you can allow a limited number of miracles— C.S. Lewis has a book on this. Miracles are like God, they offend the atheist but can't be proven or disproven.
All this worked much better circa 1274 when Thomas Aquinas synthesized Catholic doctrine, Aristotle, and ibn Rushd. Catholics have felt ever since that their faith is rational. And it was hard to prove otherwise at the time, except by making contrary metaphysical assumptions. The intellectual apparatus for challenging religion didn't yet exist. (Occam, he of the razor, hadn't even been born yet. Alternative explanations of life and the mind didn't exist yet.)
One can wonder, as with many other founders, whether if Aquinas was resurrected, he would be a Thomist. Would he stick with the synthesis that worked in 1274, or would he work at making a new one? A lot of Catholic theology depends deeply on Thomism and ultimately on Aristotle, e.g. the idea of transubstantiation.
Also, how are we sure they're Catholic miracles, as opposed to a preta from one of the lower bardos playing a prank on us?
That is in fact the position though not the words, that Evangelicals would use. They think demons can cause miracles too.
Evangelicals don't care too much about the
sort of miracles Catholics do: Saint Whateverus cures a leper in AD 1421. But their worldview is
suffused with miracles. They think Jesus is at their side, constantly interfering and clearing their way. Or, occasionally, inserting an obstacle to "test" them.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:06 pm
by Travis B.
And along the lines of what that paper comments on, many of those who reject the multiverse as 'unscientific' are partisans of theistic fine-tuning, which is no more 'scientific'.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:12 pm
by zompist
Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Sep 03, 2026 4:24 pm
To me, rejecting the multiverse means either accepting God (note that this does not mean accepting any particular religion) or positing that there must only be one universe, which requires explaining why this universe is
the universe and not some other universe.
You can't demand explanations of science, though I suppose you can for philosophy. Sometimes science says "We don't know", or even "We can't know."
The basic question is why anything exists at all. I don't think science does any better at this than religion. It's pretty remarkable that we can find things out about the first few seconds of the universe. But we still can't look "before that" (if that concept even makes sense), or know whether there are other universes.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:17 pm
by Travis B.
zompist wrote: ↑Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:05 pm
Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Sep 03, 2026 10:03 am
I likewise feel that there is huge step between deism/theism and specific religions, and that proof of the existence of a creator (or creators? let's be accepting of all possibilities here), if such a thing was possible, wouldn't be proof of the truth of a specific religion.
You and Raphael are quite right about this. Too many apologists spend a chapter on "proofs of the existence of God"; once this is done to their satisfaction, suddenly they are talking about
their historical god.
This is a big problem with apologists -- God must be their God, and proving God can't end up somehow proving someone else's God to them.
zompist wrote: ↑Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:05 pm
Some (certainly not all!) theists are concerned to make their religion
compatible with reason, which is not the same thing as showing that it
derives from reason.
There's no reason they can't succeed: just lop off anything in the religion that's irrational. In a pinch you can allow a limited number of miracles— C.S. Lewis has a book on this. Miracles are like God, they offend the atheist but can't be proven or disproven.
They are better off not trying, and instead of attempting to appeal to a reason which ultimately runs into the null hypothesis no matter what they try they would be better served by rejecting appeals to reason and rather appealing to mysticism.
zompist wrote: ↑Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:05 pm
All this worked much better circa 1274 when Thomas Aquinas synthesized Catholic doctrine, Aristotle, and ibn Rushd. Catholics have felt ever since that their faith is rational. And it was hard to prove otherwise at the time, except by making contrary metaphysical assumptions. The intellectual apparatus for challenging religion didn't yet exist. (Occam, he of the razor, hadn't even been born yet. Alternative explanations of life and the mind didn't exist yet.)
One can wonder, as with many other founders, whether if Aquinas was resurrected, he would be a Thomist. Would he stick with the synthesis that worked in 1274, or would he work at making a new one? A lot of Catholic theology depends deeply on Thomism, e.g. the idea of transubstantiation.
I suspect that Aquinas would not be a Thomist if he lived today and was exposed to modern ideas.
zompist wrote: ↑Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:05 pm
Also, how are we sure they're Catholic miracles, as opposed to a preta from one of the lower bardos playing a prank on us?
That is in fact the position though not the words, that Evangelicals would use. They think demons can cause miracles too.
Evangelicals don't care too much about the
sort of miracles Catholics do: Saint Whateverus cures a leper in AD 1421. But their worldview is
suffused with miracles. They think Jesus is at their side, constantly interfering and clearing their way. Or, occasionally, inserting an obstacle to "test" them.
The kinds of miracles people claim and whether people claim them to begin with depends much on the nature of their belief systems, hence these differences.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:19 pm
by Travis B.
zompist wrote: ↑Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:12 pm
Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Sep 03, 2026 4:24 pm
To me, rejecting the multiverse means either accepting God (note that this does not mean accepting any particular religion) or positing that there must only be one universe, which requires explaining why this universe is
the universe and not some other universe.
You can't demand explanations of science, though I suppose you can for philosophy. Sometimes science says "We don't know", or even "We can't know."
The basic question is why anything exists at all. I don't think science does any better at this than religion. It's pretty remarkable that we can find things out about the first few seconds of the universe. But we still can't look "before that" (if that concept even makes sense), or know whether there are other universes.
IIRC we still don't know why more matter than antimatter was created when the universe sprung into being, and that ignores the question of why did the universe come into being in the first place, which would still not be answered even if we knew that.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:49 pm
by zompist
Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Sep 03, 2026 5:19 pm
IIRC we still don't know why more matter than antimatter was created when the universe sprung into being [...]
Sure, and I'd just note that physicists
love a puzzle like that. You can be sure they're studying it. Coming up with a good answer is harder.
For being a very mature field, physics has a surprising number of very deep unanswered questions. E.g. what is dark matter, wtf is dark energy, why are the basic constants the values they are, why are there three and only three families of leptons, why don't we have quantum gravity yet, etc.
(To be clear, the fact that we have puzzles is good and healthy.)
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2026 11:10 am
by Mornche Geddick
"You! Yes! You!"
Had a brief look at the video. Would have thought Mr Schmidt would have realised he'd get many more views if he split his seven hour magnum opus into a series of 30 minute shorts, each with its own topic like "Miracles", "Saints", "Our Lady", etc.
Still, "you! yes! you!" will stick in my head.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2026 2:46 pm
by Torco
lmao seconded on the "you, yes you!"
the older i get, the less sense the whole apologetics / counterapologetics thing makes for me. not the contents, necessarily; indeed the various specific arguments of the apologists make more sense the more one gets to know them and the more one reads philosophy in general, which comes with age for me at least. rather, what i find nonsensical is the premise of rationally arguing about religion.
with abrahamic religions in particular, the religious person tells us that they believe what they believe not on the basis of evidence or reasoning. they tell us that their beliefs neither stem from or could be disproven by reasoning, argument, evidence or logic: they admit, freely, implicitly, that they believe on the basis of faith, and that faith brooks no argument.... and then proceeds to offer what is ostensibly reasons and evidence as to why their beliefs -which they themselves say they do not believe in on account of reasons or evidence- are true. i feel like there's something deeply weird about the whole thing. dishonest, yes, but also just... incongruous
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2026 4:32 pm
by Travis B.
Torco wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2026 2:46 pm
lmao seconded on the "you, yes you!"
the older i get, the less sense the whole apologetics / counterapologetics thing makes for me. not the contents, necessarily; indeed the various specific arguments of the apologists make more sense the more one gets to know them and the more one reads philosophy in general, which comes with age for me at least. rather, what i find nonsensical is the premise of rationally arguing about religion.
with abrahamic religions in particular, the religious person tells us that they believe what they believe not on the basis of evidence or reasoning. they tell us that their beliefs neither stem from or could be disproven by reasoning, argument, evidence or logic: they admit, freely, implicitly, that they believe on the basis of faith, and that faith brooks no argument.... and then proceeds to offer what is ostensibly reasons and evidence as to why their beliefs -which they themselves say they do not believe in on account of reasons or evidence- are true. i feel like there's something deeply weird about the whole thing. dishonest, yes, but also just... incongruous
I agree that it is self-contradictory to argue in terms of that faith does not need argument and then go on to try to rationally argue what they ostensibly believe in in terms of faith. Do they have faith or don't they?
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2026 5:29 pm
by zompist
Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2026 4:32 pm
Torco wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2026 2:46 pm
with abrahamic religions in particular, the religious person tells us that they believe what they believe not on the basis of evidence or reasoning. they tell us that their beliefs neither stem from or could be disproven by reasoning, argument, evidence or logic: they admit, freely, implicitly, that they believe on the basis of faith, and that faith brooks no argument.... and then proceeds to offer what is ostensibly reasons and evidence as to why their beliefs -which they themselves say they do not believe in on account of reasons or evidence- are true. i feel like there's something deeply weird about the whole thing. dishonest, yes, but also just... incongruous
I agree that it is self-contradictory to argue in terms of that faith does not need argument and then go on to try to rationally argue what they ostensibly believe in in terms of faith. Do they have faith or don't they?
First, don't attribute to "Abrahamic religions" what you think is true of Christianity. Not all religions are obsessed with "belief"; Islam in particular is more focused on practice, and many clerics even side-eye theology (kalām) entirely.
Second, maybe entertain the idea that your own beliefs are not self-evident to everyone else, and
certainly were not self-evident 500 or 2500 years ago. The idea that faith conflicts with reason would have baffled almost anyone before 1700. The Greeks tended to separate religion and philosophy, but that was never true of Christianity, or Hinduism, or any belief system in China. It really took very little tweaking to consolidate reason and faith for Aquinas or ibn Rushd and (so far as I recall) Maimonides. It's harder today (due to things like evolution, astronomy, critical reading of religious texts, democratization) but not impossible.
Third, people can approach things with different purposes, or for different audiences, or with different values. I'd point to the whole range of experiences we call mystical or even shamanic, which atheists dismiss simply because they've never run into it. (It used to be fashionable to call shamans con men, and then mentally ill. Then westerners discovered drugs and suddenly shamans seemed far cooler.) If you're a Sufi or a bhakta or a Charismatic or an early Shaker, neither rationalism nor doctrine was of much interest or help.
Some people have a heavily rationalistic mindset. They're the ones who write and consume systematic theology. They may recognize the limits of rationality, because rationality itself says so: what you
do shows what you are far more than what you think. An example is C.S. Lewis. Atheists always imagine that believers spend their time fighting down contradictions, but this is really not true. The rationalistic believer really thinks those problems can be rationally solved. (They are also willing to discard the more outrageous parts of the religion.)
Faith is hard to understand for an atheist— but it shouldn't be, because you can see the same thing in leftist movements. There we call it commitment or solidity or hope or something. Zeal or fanaticism, if it's in a faction we disapprove of. A movement can't go far with mere doctrine; it has to have members who will show up and do things even when their cause is persecuted or mocked. (This is easiest to see with "bad" movements, but just try to effect change via your "good" movement without this firmness or will.)
"Belief" happened to to be the differentiating factor in early Christian sects; the divisions in Islam are over law (fiqh). Again, it's just strange for leftists to pretend not to understand doctrine. You've both met communists.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2026 6:03 pm
by Travis B.
zompist wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2026 5:29 pm
Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2026 4:32 pm
Torco wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2026 2:46 pm
with abrahamic religions in particular, the religious person tells us that they believe what they believe not on the basis of evidence or reasoning. they tell us that their beliefs neither stem from or could be disproven by reasoning, argument, evidence or logic: they admit, freely, implicitly, that they believe on the basis of faith, and that faith brooks no argument.... and then proceeds to offer what is ostensibly reasons and evidence as to why their beliefs -which they themselves say they do not believe in on account of reasons or evidence- are true. i feel like there's something deeply weird about the whole thing. dishonest, yes, but also just... incongruous
I agree that it is self-contradictory to argue in terms of that faith does not need argument and then go on to try to rationally argue what they ostensibly believe in in terms of faith. Do they have faith or don't they?
First, don't attribute to "Abrahamic religions" what you think is true of Christianity. Not all religions are obsessed with "belief"; Islam in particular is more focused on practice, and many clerics even side-eye theology (kalām) entirely.
Second, maybe entertain the idea that your own beliefs are not self-evident to everyone else, and
certainly were not self-evident 500 or 2500 years ago. The idea that faith conflicts with reason would have baffled almost anyone before 1700. The Greeks tended to separate religion and philosophy, but that was never true of Christianity, or Hinduism, or any belief system in China. It really took very little tweaking to consolidate reason and faith for Aquinas or ibn Rushd and (so far as I recall) Maimonides. It's harder today (due to things like evolution, astronomy, critical reading of religious texts, democratization) but not impossible.
Third, people can approach things with different purposes, or for different audiences, or with different values. I'd point to the whole range of experiences we call mystical or even shamanic, which atheists dismiss simply because they've never run into it. (It used to be fashionable to call shamans con men, and then mentally ill. Then westerners discovered drugs and suddenly shamans seemed far cooler.) If you're a Sufi or a bhakta or a Charismatic or an early Shaker, neither rationalism nor doctrine was of much interest or help.
Some people have a heavily rationalistic mindset. They're the ones who write and consume systematic theology. They may recognize the limits of rationality, because rationality itself says so: what you
do shows what you are far more than what you think. An example is C.S. Lewis. Atheists always imagine that believers spend their time fighting down contradictions, but this is really not true. The rationalistic believer really thinks those problems can be rationally solved. (They are also willing to discard the more outrageous parts of the religion.)
Faith is hard to understand for an atheist— but it shouldn't be, because you can see the same thing in leftist movements. There we call it commitment or solidity or hope or something. Zeal or fanaticism, if it's in a faction we disapprove of. A movement can't go far with mere doctrine; it has to have members who will show up and do things even when their cause is persecuted or mocked. (This is easiest to see with "bad" movements, but just try to effect change via your "good" movement without this firmness or will.)
"Belief" happened to to be the differentiating factor in early Christian sects; the divisions in Islam are over law (fiqh). Again, it's just strange for leftists to pretend not to understand doctrine. You've both met communists.
I can't speak for Torco here, but I was specifically referring to the Christian notion of 'faith' in the context of Christian apologetics; I did not mean to refer to Islam or Judaism, for instance.
About rationalism, if Christian apologists want to take a rationalistic tack, if they want to build rationalism on top of faith (cf. your example of Aquinas), due to the expansion of our rational knowledge they have to then question the basis of their faith (e.g. they have to accept things like critical analysis of religious texts) if they are to remain consistent with their rationalism.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2026 6:41 pm
by zompist
Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2026 6:03 pm
About rationalism, if Christian apologists want to take a rationalistic tack, if they want to build rationalism on top of faith (cf. your example of Aquinas), due to the expansion of our rational knowledge they have to then question the basis of their faith (e.g. they have to accept things like critical analysis of religious texts) if they are to remain consistent with their rationalism.
I agree, and someone like Lewis would agree. And to quote the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Catholic Biblical critics, while taking as postulates the plenary inspiration and the inerrancy of the sacred Writings, admit in a large measure the literary and historical conclusions reached by non-Catholic workers in this field, and maintain that these are not excluded by Catholic faith."
There are of course non-rationalist Christians, and sadly they're far more visible, though not necessarily more typical.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2026 10:58 am
by Torco
zompist wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2026 5:29 pm
Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2026 4:32 pm
Torco wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2026 2:46 pm
with abrahamic religions in particular, the religious person tells us that they believe what they believe not on the basis of evidence or reasoning. they tell us that their beliefs neither stem from or could be disproven by reasoning, argument, evidence or logic: they admit, freely, implicitly, that they believe on the basis of faith, and that faith brooks no argument.... and then proceeds to offer what is ostensibly reasons and evidence as to why their beliefs -which they themselves say they do not believe in on account of reasons or evidence- are true. i feel like there's something deeply weird about the whole thing. dishonest, yes, but also just... incongruous
I agree that it is self-contradictory to argue in terms of that faith does not need argument and then go on to try to rationally argue what they ostensibly believe in in terms of faith. Do they have faith or don't they?
First, don't attribute to "Abrahamic religions" what you think is true of Christianity. Not all religions are obsessed with "belief"; Islam in particular is more focused on practice, and many clerics even side-eye theology (kalām) entirely.
sure, and a lot of the that atharism, and more broadly suspicion about kalam, is at least adjacent to this observation of incongruity. also, i don't know that islam, where belief is explicitly a prerequisite for salvation, is a good example of "not all religions are as obsessed with belief as christianity". sure, some christians are sola fide protestants, a more belief-centric take, but others are implicit-faith catholics, a weird loophole thing in catholicism. judaism might have been a better example.
the ancients were not innocent to the idea that faith (belief despite of or independent from evidence and logical argument) and reason (belief only if there is evidence and logical argument) might conflict. in various periods and areas where religions were dominant saying so might have been socially undesirable, even dangerous, as dissent often is, but i don't buy for a second that the notion was baffling, surprising, alien or confusing: more like offensive and/or a quick way to the gallows (what was socrates formal charge again?). indeed, the fact that so many scholars from the ancient, medieval and modern "west" (whatever that means) try very hard and very often to reconcile the two suggests that they weren't unfamiliar with the basic idea that there might be something to reconcile there, even if they didn't often say it in writing.
Faith is hard to understand for an atheist— but it shouldn't be, because you can see the same thing in leftist movements. There we call it commitment or solidity or hope or something. Zeal or fanaticism, if it's in a faction we disapprove of. A movement can't go far with mere doctrine; it has to have members who will show up and do things even when their cause is persecuted or mocked. (This is easiest to see with "bad" movements, but just try to effect change via your "good" movement without this firmness or will.)
na, there's a qualitative difference between faith and zeal or commitment. commitment may well involve deferring doubt, rational reflection, second thoughts or the reevaluating of one's course of action until some time in the future, whereas faith entails abrogating such second thoughts entirely. temporary suspension of thought i can understand, there's no point in second-guessing yourself all time time, it tends to be better to just make a choice and only revise it every three weeks or something, that's just doing different tasks as different moments. while It might be the case that some people might have faith in this sense in marxism-leninism, or in anarchism, or in mutualism or whatever else, sure, even they don't do the two things that we're calling incongruous, namely, saying that
they believe X despite reasons, and that no reasons or evidence could convince them of not-X, and then proceeding to lay out the reasons why
you should believe X. not the communists i've met, anyway.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2026 1:38 pm
by /ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/
rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2026 10:33 am
So any converts? The power of Reason compels you!
I haven't watched the video yet because I don't have the time to right now, but I'm pretty decidedly christian, thanking for your offer. I'm impressed by your willingness to post about your faith openly, especially on this platform where the majority of people seem to be openly atheist and tend to violently tear apart any ideas that are outside of their own or follow a tangent before any solid point can be made. It's for those reasons that I haven't really said anything about my own faith here.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2026 3:42 pm
by zompist
Torco wrote: ↑Wed Sep 09, 2026 10:58 am
Faith is hard to understand for an atheist— but it shouldn't be, because you can see the same thing in leftist movements. There we call it commitment or solidity or hope or something. Zeal or fanaticism, if it's in a faction we disapprove of. A movement can't go far with mere doctrine; it has to have members who will show up and do things even when their cause is persecuted or mocked. (This is easiest to see with "bad" movements, but just try to effect change via your "good" movement without this firmness or will.)
na, there's a qualitative difference between faith and zeal or commitment. commitment may well involve deferring doubt, rational reflection, second thoughts or the reevaluating of one's course of action until some time in the future, whereas faith entails abrogating such second thoughts entirely. temporary suspension of thought i can understand, there's no point in second-guessing yourself all time time, it tends to be better to just make a choice and only revise it every three weeks or something, that's just doing different tasks as different moments. while It might be the case that some people might have faith in this sense in marxism-leninism, or in anarchism, or in mutualism or whatever else, sure, even they don't do the two things that we're calling incongruous, namely, saying that
they believe X despite reasons, and that no reasons or evidence could convince them of not-X, and then proceeding to lay out the reasons why
you should believe X. not the communists i've met, anyway.
This is pure projection: you approve of tamping down second thoughts when it's an ideology you like, you think it's a big problem in that big old bogeyman "religion" which is simply an irrational monster, utterly unlike anything good guys ever do.
I could provide contradictions from your own statements on the board, but let's just use history instead. I've just been reading Orwell, so try to recall the mindset of communists in the WWII period. They were anti-fascist from 1935–39. They turned on a dime and became pacifists when the USSR allied with Hitler. Then they were for war again in 1941. They had to pretend to have been always against any Soviet figure caught up in the purges. Communists reissued John Reed's book about the 1917 revolution with all the references to Trotsky edited out. During the Spanish civil war, the communists suppressed the anarchists, with the usual lie that they were "really" fascists. The truth wasn't even static, it was this month's directive from the Soviet foreign ministry.
The idea that "no reasons or evidence could convince them of not-X" is common as dirt in belief systems. Eric Hoffer's
The True Believer is an excellent analysis. That attitude is also the basic method of cranks.
Humans are just like this. It doesn't mean you can't have as rational a belief system as you can manage; but that applies to the other guy, too.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2026 4:36 pm
by zompist
/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/ wrote: ↑Wed Sep 09, 2026 1:38 pm
rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2026 10:33 am
So any converts? The power of Reason compels you!
I haven't watched the video yet because I don't have the time to right now, but I'm pretty decidedly christian, thanking for your offer. I'm impressed by your willingness to post about your faith openly,
Er... just to avoid confusions, rotting bones isn't Catholic or a theist at all.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2026 5:57 pm
by Travis B.
zompist wrote: ↑Wed Sep 09, 2026 4:36 pm
/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/ wrote: ↑Wed Sep 09, 2026 1:38 pm
rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2026 10:33 am
So any converts? The power of Reason compels you!
I haven't watched the video yet because I don't have the time to right now, but I'm pretty decidedly christian, thanking for your offer. I'm impressed by your willingness to post about your faith openly,
Er... just to avoid confusions, rotting bones isn't Catholic or a theist at all.
/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/ must not spend much time in Ephemera, as anyone who has read any significant number of posts by rotting bones would surely know that he's an
evangelistic atheist. Did rb need to qualify his statement quoted above with "/s"?
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2026 5:59 pm
by zompist
Torco wrote: ↑Wed Sep 09, 2026 10:58 am
the ancients were not innocent to the idea that faith (belief despite of or independent from evidence and logical argument) and reason (belief only if there is evidence and logical argument) might conflict. in various periods and areas where religions were dominant saying so might have been socially undesirable, even dangerous, as dissent often is, but i don't buy for a second that the notion was baffling, surprising, alien or confusing: more like offensive and/or a quick way to the gallows (what was socrates formal charge again?).
Appealing to the ancient Greeks to support a claim about "Abrahamic religions" is a bit of an oblique move. Greek religion was not Christianity. It wasn't a rationalistic or theologized religion and I don't think anyone ever claimed it was. Greek philosophy was separate from Greek religion— a situation that seems natural to us but is far from universal.
Not every religious conflict is "faith vs. reason". Socrates was accused of impiety; that's an excellent reason not to put theocrats in power, but it doesn't mean that Athenians were tormented by evidence against their religion. (What evidence is that supposed to be?) The charges may have been mostly political, partly because of Socrates' views, partly because his students Critias and Alcibiades had been traitors to Athens in the war with Sparta. Note that Athens had been occupied by Sparta and forced to install a pro-Spartan oligarchy, led in fact by Critias. That oligarchy ended just four years before Socrates' trial.
indeed, the fact that so many scholars from the ancient, medieval and modern "west" (whatever that means) try very hard and very often to reconcile the two suggests that they weren't unfamiliar with the basic idea that there might be something to reconcile there, even if they didn't often say it in writing.
Again, this is projecting modern dismissals of religion to a period where they simply don't make sense. People worked hard at systematic theology because people like Theories of Everything. The rules for constructing such systems were not ours, and it's useless to evaluate them based on modern ideas... ideas which, by the way, derive directly from those same systematizers.
(To clarify: you can certainly criticize modern Catholicism based on modern ideas. What you can't do is excoriate Aquinas for not taking into account things which he did not know and could not have known.)
Religions did have doubts, anxieties, heresies, schisms, etc., but the questions were different. Religious people could, in extremis, ask things like "are the gods really benign" or "why haven't the gods helped us?" — questions going back to the Babylonians at least.
Re: Why Catholicism Is True
Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2026 8:41 pm
by /ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/
Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Sep 09, 2026 5:57 pm
zompist wrote: ↑Wed Sep 09, 2026 4:36 pm
/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/ wrote: ↑Wed Sep 09, 2026 1:38 pm
I haven't watched the video yet because I don't have the time to right now, but I'm pretty decidedly christian, thanking for your offer. I'm impressed by your willingness to post about your faith openly,
Er... just to avoid confusions, rotting bones isn't Catholic or a theist at all.
/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/ must not spend much time in Ephemera, as anyone who has read any significant number of posts by rotting bones would surely know that he's an
evangelistic atheist. Did rb need to qualify his statement quoted above with "/s"?
you're correct that I don't read any of the posts in Ephemera, like at all. I'm also not an active user on reddit, so I have no idea what "/s" means. my apologies for misunderstanding.