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Hated and feared by a world they are sworn to protect, the X-Men face off against sin

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  • #31
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    Perhaps the very religious themselves is the reason we need religion. Perhaps they wouldn't be able to behave themselves without it.
    Well we've certainly seen that in recent years with quite a significant number of zealous Christians in the public sphere turning out to be guilty of various illegal and immoral activities.

    So perhaps what they really mean when they say things like "without Christian moral teachings, everyone would be doing terrible things" what they really mean is "I, personally, have a strong desire to do terrible things, and currently the only thing that's holding me back is telling myself and everyone else really loudly about how Christian moral teachings stop me from doing these things I really really want to do." It's like the old "we can't have gay marriage because then everyone would get gay married" objection... it says quite a lot about the person making it, and it also involves them projecting their own state of mind onto everyone else and assuming that everyone is exactly like them.

    I recall a commentator making a similar observation about Mike Huckabee's recent comment that if transgender rights had existed at his own high-school he would have abused the system in order to get into the girls' bathroom and ogle the girls. Huckabee's implicit assumption was that everyone else is as much a lying pervert as he himself is, and that it therefore proves that transgender people's preferences shouldn't be respected. Instead, people's responses to Huckabee's comments were along the lines of "well, that tells us quite a lot about Mike Huckabee's moral character, doesn't it?"
    "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
    "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
    "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

    Comment


    • #32
      Originally posted by JimL View Post
      Another way to look at it would be that for society Christianity itself was never really the point, the strong and virile ethical code was. People no longer need christianity or any other religion to be forced down their throats in order to believe in a God, or if a non believer, to have a personal sense of morality. So what are these "painful costs" that these perceptive christian minds associate with the collapse of christianity?
      I was referring to this bit of the Ratzinger quote: "She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity."
      Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

      Comment


      • #33
        Originally posted by Starlight View Post
        I would tend to say that various Christians have been apocalpytically predicting the literal apocalypse since pretty much day one. They've been pretty much 100% wrong thus far.

        Also a lot of Christians seem to have both a martyr complex and a persecution complex - they both desperately wish that they were really being persecuted for their faith so they could prove their faith in Christ, and simultaneously tell themselves what massive victims they are any time they fall even the least bit afoul of the most minor law and convince themselves that the entire secular world is out to get them.
        none of what you say is pertinent to what you quote, since Lewis and Ratzinger have been entirely correct in their predictions thus far, and neither included persecution as an integral part of their prediction. The closest you can get is the quote from Cardinal George, but to treat it as a manifestation of a persecution complex is to miss his point entirely
        Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

        Comment


        • #34
          Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
          I was referring to this bit of the Ratzinger quote: "She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity."
          Oh I see. So the "painful costs" would be with respect to the finacial wealth of christendom. Sorry, I thought you meant to imply a moral cost to society. Well thats just what happens if your product doesn't sell.

          Comment


          • #35
            Originally posted by JimL View Post
            Oh I see. So the "painful costs" would be with respect to the finacial wealth of christendom. Sorry, I thought you meant to imply a moral cost to society. Well thats just what happens if your product doesn't sell.
            Catholic schools and charities will close if we don't have the resources to support them (incidentally, that WILL bear a social cost). Are you TRYING to miss the point, or are you just this naturally talented at it?
            Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

            Comment


            • #36
              Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
              Catholic schools and charities will close if we don't have the resources to support them (incidentally, that WILL bear a social cost). Are you TRYING to miss the point, or are you just this naturally talented at it?
              Definitely the underlined.

              Comment


              • #37
                Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
                Catholic schools and charities will close if we don't have the resources to support them (incidentally, that WILL bear a social cost). Are you TRYING to miss the point, or are you just this naturally talented at it?
                Public schools and charities will close as well if we don't have resources to fund them, which, (incidently will bear a social cost.) So whats your real issue?

                Comment


                • #38
                  Originally posted by JimL View Post
                  Public schools and charities will close as well if we don't have resources to fund them, which, (incidently will bear a social cost.) So whats your real issue?
                  your understanding of religion is so thin and cynical that I sincerely doubt you're capable of understanding.
                  Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
                    your understanding of religion is so thin and cynical that I sincerely doubt you're capable of understanding.
                    Most peoples understanding of religion is very thin, so to speak, even those who profess a belief in it. But of course this assertion of yours does not even respond to my reply to you.

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Originally posted by JimL View Post
                      Most peoples understanding of religion is very thin, so to speak, even those who profess a belief in it. But of course this assertion of yours does not even respond to my reply to you.
                      If you don't know what the church building meant when it was built, you can't imagine what it means to see it empty.
                      Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

                      Comment


                      • #41
                        Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
                        So let's consider what sort of "totally planned" society Ratzinger may have had in mind when he wrote that. I think the technocratic welfare state I discussed briefly above is a plausible explication of his meaning, though perhaps I should explain the concept further? The trouble is that the further we get into my interpretation, the further we might be getting from Ratzinger... but I'll take that risk if you will.
                        The quotation was from a book he wrote, and without reading the book, I'd rather not try to guess at what he had in mind.

                        I happen to be not too keen on the idea of social planning myself, but that's mainly just because I see no way to ensure that the planners will be wise enough to come up with a good plan. If anyone finds a way to solve that problem, I'll consider changing my mind.

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
                          Lewis and Ratzinger have been entirely correct in their predictions thus far
                          Do you mean that one vague prediction they each made has sort of been vaguely rightish? Or do you have some list of clear predictions from them that can be checked off?

                          I think in general, I know of no one in history, religious or atheist, who has made multiple clear checkable predictions about the future that weren't trivial ones that have all turned out to be true. The future is just hard to predict.

                          The closest you can get is the quote from Cardinal George, but to treat it as a manifestation of a persecution complex is to miss his point entirely
                          I was indeed looking at your Cardinal George quote. It's an obvious pan-standard paranoid "they're all coming to get us!" persecution complex that has no basis whatsoever in reality.
                          "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                          "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                          "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                          Comment


                          • #43
                            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                            Do you mean that one vague prediction they each made has sort of been vaguely rightish? Or do you have some list of clear predictions from them that can be checked off?
                            They anticipated the scenario jaecp asked about in the OP some 50 years before he asked it; their opinions as to what may happen next- and especially why -are worthy of consideration.

                            I think in general, I know of no one in history, religious or atheist, who has made multiple clear checkable predictions about the future that weren't trivial ones that have all turned out to be true. The future is just hard to predict.

                            I was indeed looking at your Cardinal George quote. It's an obvious pan-standard paranoid "they're all coming to get us!" persecution complex that has no basis whatsoever in reality.


                            That's the reading I thought you might come up with, which is why I said that I didn't expect the actual meaning of that quote to be apparent.

                            Here's an excerpt from an interview in which he explained more fully what he meant:

                            One reason people may be tempted to see you as a culture warrior is your famous line from 2010 about expecting to die in bed, while your successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr. It came off as a fairly harsh view of where things stand. Once and for all, can you clarify what you meant?

                            First of all, I didn’t think there was any press there when I said it. I was talking to a couple of troubled priests who are worried about the secularization of our culture. I was telling them they should take the long view, step back, and renew their confidence in the providence of God. I was saying that even if the worst possible case scenario happens, we’ll be okay. It was a mental game in the Kantian sense … let’s imagine the worst thing that could happen. Instead of wringing your hands, let’s imagine the worst possible scenario and then figure out what our role might be. What’s never reported is the last bishop I mentioned, the fourth one, who will pick up the shards of a shattered culture as the Church has always done and become a former of culture. The Church forms culture.

                            This was not a straight-line prediction?

                            Of course it wasn’t. How could you predict something like that? Give me a break. You’d have to be an utter fool to say something like that as a statement about what’s going to happen next. How the heck would I know? I was just saying, ‘This is the worst possible scenario, Father, so we go through it and in the end God’s providence will prevail. You have to have trust in the mercy of God for his people, and life goes on.’ These priests were seriously troubled.

                            Was it also a wake-up call?

                            Not really. These priests were already woken up. I was trying to do the opposite, to soothe them. My point was that even if it’s worse than you think, how do we go on as priests and bishops?
                            Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

                            Comment


                            • #44
                              Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
                              They anticipated the scenario jaecp asked about in the OP some 50 years before he asked it; their opinions as to what may happen next- and especially why -are worthy of consideration.
                              People have predicted the demise of Christianity for the last couple of centuries. Two centuries ago, lots of atheists were convinced that increasing education would quickly wipe out religious belief. That took a lot longer than anyone expected. It's only really in the last 25 years that we've seen a rapid trend towards less religious belief, and most of the studies I've seen have largely attributed this to the rise of the internet - the internet has allowed people to rapidly check many religious assertions rather than simply take them on faith.

                              I find predictions from 50 years ago about what happens next and why to be generally not worth the paper they're written on. Many of them tend to involve predicting some sort of nihilistic moral apocalypse, which is an incorrect prediction resulting from the belief common ~50 years ago that the replacement for Christian ethics would be moral relativism, and that's turned out not to be the case - the majority of non-religious people today endorse the idea of moral absolutes existing, and people labeling themselves progressives tend to have extremely clear moral ideals.

                              That's the reading I thought you might come up with, which is why I said that I didn't expect the actual meaning of that quote to be apparent.
                              Cool, so you knowingly quoted it out of context with the intention and assumption that people would misunderstand it. How helpful.
                              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                                People have predicted the demise of Christianity for the last couple of centuries. Two centuries ago, lots of atheists were convinced that increasing education would quickly wipe out religious belief. That took a lot longer than anyone expected. It's only really in the last 25 years that we've seen a rapid trend towards less religious belief, and most of the studies I've seen have largely attributed this to the rise of the internet - the internet has allowed people to rapidly check many religious assertions rather than simply take them on faith.

                                I find predictions from 50 years ago about what happens next and why to be generally not worth the paper they're written on. Many of them tend to involve predicting some sort of nihilistic moral apocalypse, which is an incorrect prediction resulting from the belief common ~50 years ago that the replacement for Christian ethics would be moral relativism, and that's turned out not to be the case - the majority of non-religious people today endorse the idea of moral absolutes existing, and people labeling themselves progressives tend to have extremely clear moral ideals.
                                I'd rather discuss Ratzinger's insights (especially his thoughts on moral relativism and what he called the "dictatorship of relativism"- again, an idea not quite what it might sound like to the untrained ear). If you would rather discuss studies, find another interlocutor.

                                Cool, so you knowingly quoted it out of context with the intention and assumption that people would misunderstand it. How helpful.
                                And with fair warning, which you did not heed. Note also that I only gave small sections of a longer Ratzinger quote. My goal in that initial post was not to provide complete ideas but ideas which we might look at more closely to understand how the Church will react to the situation jaecp laid out.
                                Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

                                Comment

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