Sorry, been on the L&K forums too much lately, the tone is more rude there.

See, that is the basic problem. We will always consider a being to exist which is more advanced/developed than we are. We just would never give it the authority over ourself and dispose of our own responsibility for our actions.

We also do not try to live egoistically just for the sake of having a better afterlive/next life (considering rebirth religions), just try to make the best out of the life we have.

If you would travel back in time with our current technology and wisdom to the age of the roman occupation of judea you would be take for a deity yourself yet you would be wise not to consider yourself one.

Than you have faith but are no religious person. There is a subtle yet distinctive difference here. Real Atheists never tell you what you should do, they tell you what they think is valid for them. I don't want to enforce my world views onto anybody, but my personal experience tells me that faith and believe are private matters and will never have universal meaning. Hey, even the color red, while simple and straight forward looks slightly different to everyone. Because WE are different. Why should any of your ideas of a god have any relevance for me?

I too have had my spiritual experiences and they changed me for good or for worse, yet I do not believe in a deity because of it. I do believe more in myself and mankind as a whole. In the world we see, we touch, we hear. In everything around us. I don't need more than that. I'm satisfied with the playground we have. If I want to live another life with more meaning and deeper understanding then I go on and do something in THIS world that does the trick for ME.

I think his take on religion was to show that, by accounting all religions, neither takes prevalence and each has a right to exist. He always portrayed them as philosophical spiritual guidance, which is the same way I understand the use of religions.

Thanks.

As for your point that the bible is a distorted account of gods workings - the bible is a book. Written by men. As the only witness for the divine guidance that was given for the content of this book is that same book itself there is not much of a witness at all. So all you have is a book written by men. Corrected and distorted all over and over by other men. Where the new Testament was written hundreds of years after the death of its main character.
The real treasures of the bible are:

for the old testament that it is a very distorted historic record of the jewish people that spans an incredible amount of time.

for the new testament that it has many a wise teaching of how people should behave and be gentle and loving to each other.

Dear lulapilgrim. You never answer questions. You just postulate your own believe (well, not even your own, you just repeat others believes) as facts. Your ears are deaf to hear, your eyes are blind to see, your tongue twisted. You will never want to understand a word we tell your because your entire life seems to be based solely on your religious believes. You seem to not rest in yourself, therefore you appear vulnerable. Will you always hide yourself behind others doctrines and rules? I pity you and with that I do not mean to belittle you. I mean it in earnest. You would do well to really read the new testament and try for once to understand what a man jesus was and what he tried to teach the people around him.

He was a men of great tolerance, not without his faults (he seems to have been very uncontrolled, aggressive, impulsive and unnerved from time to time) but a man to admire.

You seem to be none of that. And thats the main problem. So I will stop to try to argue with you because arguments need open ears and an open mind, both of which you seem to lack. I do think the ongoing discussion would be enriched by your absence. Sorry for the harsh words.

Faith to me is akin to trust and it is something that either gets stronger or wanes over time. So No I don't think anyone is born a person of faith.

The rest of your post has absolutely no meaning to me. Faith is putting together ones life experiences to determine who and what to trust. You are "qualified" to think for yourself and make your own decisions and that is all. Same as most other people.

I give your "I've had the experience trust me" answer the same level of credibility I give to politicians who say pretty much the same thing. Your level started at neutral and is quickly sinking to the level of snake oil salesman.

I give it recognition also BT. Not as the "word of god" but as a story that has its purposes. It's simply another book that I have read and mostly sits on the bookshelf collecting dust. I did do Bible Study as a kid but only for a short period of time. Too many questions answered unanswered by "you simply have to have faith". Didn't sound like answers to me so I asked for science kits and dinosaur models for Christmas.

Sinperium posts:

It's true Christ never condemned the Inquisition. We know from the Bible itself that the Inquistion was based on the Mosaic Inquistiion. Deuteronomy 17: 2-5 spells it out.

[2] When there shall be found among you ... man or woman that do evil in the sight of the Lord thy God, and transgress his covenant, [3] So as to go and serve strange gods, and adore them, the sun and the moon. and all the host of heaven, which I have not commanded: [4] And this is told thee, and hearing it thou hast inquired diligently, and found it to be true, and that the abomination is committed in Israel: [5] Thou shalt bring forth the man or the woman, who have committed that most wicked thing, to the gates of thy city, and they shall be stoned.

The text says the Israelites were to "inquire diligently" whether the thing was true. A public legal proceeding...a trial...was called for. The diligent inquiry was therefore a legal inquiry--an inquisition. It's purpose was to protect the accused of practicing a false religion, (heresy in the days of the Medieval Inquistion) to make sure he really had committed the crime in question.

we know from reading the next few passages, that legal safeguards were built into the process...

[6] By the mouth of two or three witnesses he that is to dieshall he die; a person shall not be put to death when only one beareth witness against him. [7] .... [8] If thou perceive that there be among you a hard and doubtful matter in judgment .....and thou see that the words of the judges within thy gates do vary: arise, and go up to the place, which the Lord thy God shall choose. [9] And thou shalt come to the priests of the Levitical race, and to the judge, that shall be at that time: and thou shalt ask of them, and they shall shew thee the truth of the judgment. [10] And thou shalt do whatsoever they shall say, that preside in the place, which the Lord shall choose, and what they shall teach thee,

In verses  8-10, we see what authority God was pleased to give to the Jewish Church guides of the Old Testament, in deciding, without appeal, all controversies relating to the law; promising that they should not err therein; and surely He has not done less for the Divinely established Catholic Church guides of the New Testament.

The Medieval Inquisition was estabished to meet a very real need. The CC had the obligation to preserve Christ's  teachings free from corruption. When individuals took it upon themselves to commit heresy and propagate that error and destroy the Faith of others, the CC had to undertake defense of her children and prevent the adulteration of CHrist's doctrines, and she did.

We must also understand the times in which the Medieval Inquisition was established. Society then is totally different from conditions prevailing today. The propagation of heresy was an offense also against the civil welfare. The Church decided the trial while the punishment was left to the State. Same thing as what happened with the Sanhedrin and Pilate at Jesus' trial. It was a mixed tribunal with ecclesiastical officials dealing with religious matters, and civil officials dealling with crimes against the State. 

So, as constituted, this is why I said that Christ would have condoned the Inquisition.

OK, that said, were there times in the Medieval Inquisition that some in positions of authority abused their Inquisitional power? Yes, Guilty as charged. It is these abuses of power by the officials themselves that would not meet with Divine approval. That such abuses occurred I do not deny..I condemn them as heartily as you do.

OK, that said, the fact remains that there sinful conduct was not in accordance with their Catholic faith (religion), not the Church they unworthily represented.

So, yes there were/are some wicked people  in Christ's Church and Christ predicted there would be bad fish in the Net. These men were bad, in spite of the teachings of the CC, not because of them. We cannot argue from bad fish in the Net to the rottenness of the Net. Christ promised His Church would never go wrong, not individual members, whether they be the Pope, bishops to individual lay members, like me.

Smoothseas and Tobi--we are pretty much in agreement.

No one can dictate another person's decisions based on their own  experiences--all we can do is share our experiences and leave it to the ones that hear to finally decide what (if anything) they will do with them.

I try hard not to be religious Tobi--about anything.  If there is a God (and it's obvious I think there is) then the onus is on Him/It to show that He's there.  I happen to believe it's His intention that we participate in that process but the evidence and proof of existence are on Him--not us.  If I point to a God that is only knowable through my words and opinions and conclusions, then there isn't much to conclusively recommend Him.  If I thought that the God I feel I know were limited in this way, I'd be disinclined to share with others about it.

Your comments on the distortion of the bible due to being written by men and over time is--I believe--correct.  The bible is described in it's own text as a "glass seen through darkly".  If there are only old words and philosophical concepts to be found in the bible then it is no more or less valuable by anything written by Jalil Gibran, Socrates, Freud, Deepak Chopra, Lenin or Immanuel Kant.  I happen to think there is more to it but that isn't something to be addressed quickly here and I'll simply state that and not attempt to prove or defend it.

My bigger interest in the forum conversation is that the market of ideas remains open.  This is something that has always been present in conversation until the emergence of the internet.  Now both sides often resort to pre-scripted, formatted rhetoric and simply repetitiously repeat the same accusations and criticisms with no room for rebuttal and with no original and personal viewpoint.  Telling a skeptic, "Because the bible says!" is not better or worse than a skeptic refusing to listen to a person of faith "Because science says!" or, to be more accurate, "Because people quoting science on the internet say!".

We all have to make our life decisions based on our personal experiences and we all fall into recognizable patterns and circumstances on occasion.  But to out of hand dismiss all the experience of thousands or even millions of people on either side of the argument is unfair.

I'd never knock a skeptic for being skeptical--just their methodology if it's not thought out.  But I'd also never reject hearing another person's experience because there is always the chance they may have learned or encountered something I have not.  This is the wonder of life and the joy of living--to not be so sure you "know it all" that you learn nothing.  That's a big part of the ease I have with my faith--the God I know embraces that concept and isn't threatened by it.

Ya, the Books that make up the canon of the Bible were 'cherry-picked' by the Holy Ghost who guided the Churchmen at her Councils.

The Canon (73 Books) recognized by the CC was first specified at the Council of Laodicea in 367 and was definitely adopted in the Council of Carthage in 397 after being sent to the Pope for confirmation. Then the 16th century Martin Luther dubbed certain Books as "apocrypha" and threw 7 Old Testament Books out because they contradicted his new invented doctrines.

A great religious stir had developed and the Council of Trent 1546 deemed it expedient to declare, ex cathedra, that is by the infallible authority of the Church that the list of Books adopted at the Council of Carthage is the authoritative, the finally determined, collection of sacred writings composed under Divine inspiration.

 How did they know which books? Christ had promised to send the guidance of the Holy Spirit and Christ keeps His promises. In Acts 15 we learn that St.Peter had the same guidance of the Holy Spirit in making infallible decisions at the Council of Jerusalem thereby establishing Sacred Tradition.

Still can't give up on this Sin? Millions of people have also believed they saw dark magic being performed by witches or any number of odd strange things I'm too tired to think of. Heck just last month a friend of mine said her mother thought I was some Mexican equivalent of a warlock using Dark magic to keep the rain away from my house. How can we sort the few cases of genuine spiritual wisdom from all the common superstition? You can't, hence why you really can't count any of it.

In other words, if one of your "experiences" happens to you, it's divine revelation. If it happens to one of your friends, it's hallucinations.

Lol--don't make me smack you.

When I win it's skill...when you win it's cheating.  What's so complicated about that?

Now bow to my skill mortal.

Egads. I answered that in the last few paragraphs of #130 about human faith. That's what Atheists have and rely on is my point.

You are making my point.....your human faith relied on the authority of the teacher to teach you to read and count. 

......................

Tobi,

I can well understand your viewpoint as it is quite common among non-Catholics. Back of it lies the notion that Catholics are credulous, mentally enslaved, and inclined to let the priests do their thinking for them instead of thinking for themselves.

I say with complete certitude that I believe in the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in all that His one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church teaches and in the Catholic Faith, instituted by Christ Himself.

Now, Catholics have a reasonable argument to warrant their certitude. To them, submission to authority, Divine authority expressed infallibly through the Church, in matters of faith and morals, is intelligence of the highest order. True freedom is only possible within the law, God's law, for God does not enslave the mind of man. As I tried to explain in my #130 about Divine and human Faith, it is not enslavement to accept upon authority of a competent teacher, that 2 plus 2 is 4, that a straight line is the shortest distance between 2 points, etc. Such certitude, despite the fact that we know not why it is so, precludes the acceptance of the assertion that 2 plus 2 is 5, no matter if the proposer of it is so incensed at the cocksureness of accepting mathematical knoweldge upon the authority of a teacher.

Catholics argue that if certitude in mathmatics is necessary in order to make proper calculations, why not certitude in religion in order to make proper religious and moral judgments?

I have and continue to do so. This is some of what I have learned from reading the New Testament.

The Catholic Church is a teacher commissioned by Christ Who is Truth, to teach what He commanded to be taught with the promise that He Himself would remain with His teaching body until the end of the world. Into that teaching body, Christ promised to send, and did send,  the Holy Spirit to bring to its mind whatsoever He desired to be taught. 

This belief, that the Catholic Church is safeguarded from doctrinal error in matters of faith and morals, accounts for the certitude you noted in me. Catholics alone have this certitude that enables us to give undoubting assent to what the CC teaches.

Certitude is what man desires. Certitude in matters of faith and morals  is what the CC gives her children...God's children.

There is nothing unfair about dismissing the experience of millions collectively because each individual set of life experiences for any individual is as unique as the next. Whether one believes or not is about their own experiences, not the experiences of millions they do not know and never will.

Actually you know what Sinperium, I'm having second thoughts. I did just have a divine experience today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nzmS24F9K0

What does Christ teach when He changed Simon name to Peter (meaning rock in Greek) and told him that He (Christ) would build His Church on this rock?

What does Christ teach in St.John 6:51-52? "I am the living Bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this Bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the wrold."

What does Christ teach when He changed the bread and wine into His body and blood and told His Church to do this in remembrance of Him?

If Christ was just a mere Man, then what does St.Luke 1:35 mean? When the ANgel Gabriel appraoched the BLessed Virgin Mary and said, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,  and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, And therefore also, the HOLY which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God"?

If Christ is just a mere Man what does St.John 10:30  mean when Christ says that "I and the Father are one"?

I think it was Tennyson who said that Jesus' personality is His greatest miracle. Try making up a character who says things that men will die for, not just in His day, or today, but hundreds of years from now.

Speaking of GOd and His sense of humor my brother sent this to me this morning....

While creating wives, God  promised men that obedient wives would be found in all the corners of the world.

And then He made the earth round....

Credit for this

I think this sums the thread up: