A Fellow Atheist Blogger Has Converted to Catholicism

“I’m still confused about the Church’s teachings on homosexuality”. Odd that someone wholeheartedly converts to a religion while even now still attempting to ignore its direct teachings. I mean, good luck and all.

P.

Yeah, sometimes atheists convert to religion, even Christianity. But Catholicism? Really? This isn’t a joke? Moral Law? Catholicism?

We can say that “once a Catholic, always a Catholic”, so that those who don’t believe in Transubstantiation can still be Catholics, if we want to. But how can a reasoning person actually look at Catholic doctrine, Catholic policy in the world, and choose to say that they believe that?

Catholics believe in the virgin birth of Jesus.
They believe in the immaculate conception of Mary.
They believe that crackers ACTUALLY become the flesh of Jesus (and wine blood).
They believe that the Pope utters infallible doctrine straight from God.

They teach that birth control is a sin and should not be available, let alone use.
They teach that women cannot be priests.
They teach, in Africa where AIDS is widespread and treatment hard to find, that condoms don’t prevent AIDS or even contribute to its spread.
They teach that homosexuality is a sin and gay people should not be able to marry.

And she finds this religion to be the embodiment of moral law?

This is another Turing Test, isn’t it?

I suspect some sort of cranial event, such as a stroke. I hope she seeks medical attention soon. I’m not being facetious! 

Condolences

I’ve heard some explanations that try to bake morality into the natural world by reaching for evolutionary psychology.  They argue that moral dispositions are evolutionarily triumphant over selfishness, or they talk about group selection, or something else.  Usually, these proposed solutions radically misunderstand a) evolution b) moral philosophy or c) both.  I didn’t think the answer was there.

and

I’m stillconfused about the Church’s teachings on homosexuality

Is this where we say that she was obviously never a true atheist?
I kid, of course.

Exactly…that’s the most confusing part. I could easily understand someone going from atheist to thinking that maybe there is a god. But it seems strange to convert to a specific denomination, and especially one that believes so many specific, stupid things.
Seriously, why the fuck Catholicism??

Guys, following this trackback from Leah’s blog, and as a fellow atheist, I’d just like to say… Don’t be assholes. Seriously. I have my own profound problems with Catholicism, and I’m sad to lose Leah’s offbeat perspective on atheism, but she’s a fundamentally insightful and sincere thinker. This is our chance to show ourselves to be gracious in a sort of defeat. Let’s not blow it, okay?

I will never understand some people. I wish it was possible to see life from her perspective and understand why she is doing this. Religion is still a powerful force in the minds of some. 

Another one bites the dust.

Good luck, my dear.

Sounds like she gave evolution half a chance to explain human cultural mores and then, unenchanted, *poof!* she chose magic!  I’m with you, good luck with that, but take it from a former catholic – it won’t hold water.
Our “morality” stems from our struggle to survive as a member of a group.  Mistreat a member in the group and you risked being shunned and being shunned meant death.  If you want an ultimate source for fairness, that’s a manifestation of existence but I don’t know how you make the leap to “It turns out I actually believed it was some kind of Person”.   A person? 
So she decided to anthropomorphize – well, it’s been done and, like I said, it doesn’t hold water but good luck with that.

I’ve never seen so many half-hearted attempts at second-guessing a person’s stated position as on this post. I guess it’s harder to do that a person we used to like as to opposed to one we’re predisposed to disliking from the get-go.

Some people have an attachment to rituals, I guess.

Nope. She clarified this pretty squarely in the comments.

You can’t be out there making a case for why you’ve turned to religion and expect not to get an argument in return. And when your argument is that Catholicism reflects moral law, then I’m sorry but I’m going to come out and say that no, Catholicism is morally bankrupt, it is poking around in women’s lives and vaginas, trying to enforce its religious beliefs about whether women get to choose to have sex on their own terms without getting pregnant on people who don’t even believe in their religion and telling homosexuals that they cannot have the same rights pertaining to their relationships as heterosexuals. They are condemning their own nuns for focusing on the poor and not these anti-gay and anti-woman agendas. They have a real, negative impact on lives and government policy in this country. I cannot allow an argument that such an anti-gay, anti-woman organization represents any kind of morality. And that’s not even getting into covering up for pedophile priests.

If that’s being an asshole, fine, I’m an asshole.

Well I actually agree. It is a very brave thing to come out as believing the opposite of what you’ve been debating passionately about for years. No, I don’t think atheists would do any of those things to her, but facing the disappointment is a very brave thing.

It sounds like someone was hit by lightning, overdosed or had a stroke. The only “logical” reason to convert to Catholocism from atheism is brain damage. Poor girl. She needs medical attention, not religion.

Except that it’s not at all clear that Leah believes these things. She’s starting out on a new branch of a long intellectual journey. What we know is that she thinks her moral epistemology (where we get morality from) is in correspondence with Catholicism’s. We will have to wait to see if everything else follows.

It leads to homosexuals being denied basic human rights, the cover up of child rape, telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies, things like that.

 I agree that BEING a Christian in the US does not take much bravery. But having had written much about atheism and telling everyone that you have changed your mind does take bravery, even if there is not backlash against her. Admitting to your followers that you were wrong the whole time (from her new Catholic point of view, that is) is very hard to do.

That is the Catholic Church as it exists an an institution. That’s not at all necessarily the same as a Catholic understanding of god.

The Catholic Church is a highly structured, hierarchical organization with official, encoded rules and doctrines and a single head who gets to decide what is right and wrong, and that organization is doing these things, under that leader’s direction and clearly within its official doctrine.  If you sign on to the Catholic Church from outside, then you are signing on to these things and either you are ignorant and didn’t bother to fix your ignorance before signing up, or you’re saying you’re OK with that.
I wonder how much of this they actually cover in those RCIA classes she’s taking?

I don’t think it was something “cranial”, or anything physiological. I would guess it was something very emotional. Deep, I don’t think that evidence or facts or anything “intellectual” have much to do with being religious.

It’s a little awkward to read her blog post. I mean, I’m sure she’s given more thought to this than she can put in one post. It’s just that she’s presented with the “Where do morals come from/why are they important?” type of question and she doesn’t know the answer, so she just comes to the conclusion that Morality loves her and that morality = God.

Someone in the comments points out that our desire for morality is simply our desire to live well with other people, and she responds by saying “What does it mean to live well and where did you receive this knowledge from?”
This really does seem like a “God of the gaps” sort of thing. She doesn’t know where we found out what it meant to live well, so she says it’s God…I really don’t follow. It seems pretty self-explanatory to me that if you kill someone, the other people in your group will not want you around and they’ll either kill you or shun you, making things very unpleasant. Living well is just making sure that you don’t do things to other people that would make things less pleasant for you and/or the group.
Nothing magical or unexplainable about it.
“where did you receive this knowledge from?” just sounds too much like “But what caused the Big Bang?” except that the former is even easier to figure out.

I look forward to her future posts in hopes that she explains her reasoning a bit more, as she was pretty vague so far. It seems that she was convinced by some type of moral argument, but considering that I’ve never found those the least bit convincing, I’m curious what I might have missed (if anything.)
And the leap from “Morality is a person who is God” to “Therefore, Catholicism” is a very large one that I hope she explains in more detail in the future.
I wish her a exciting journey in the future and may her mind always stay open.

The majority of the comments here  seem to be grossly offensive and really presumptuous (incidentally, I’m not a butt-hurt theist…. I’m an atheist.) Her conversion appears to be legitimate; why can’t people simply listen to what she has to say about her own experiences?

I noticed after I posted this and was going to come back and clarify here. Thanks!

In her announcement Leah wrote, “I was ready to admit that there were parts of Christianity and
Catholicism that seemed like a pretty good match for the bits of my
moral system that I was most sure of”.

I hope in future posts she expands on this, as I cannot even begin to imagine what she’s referring to here.

I am skeptical.  Perhaps this is a bit like the teenage girl pretending she was pregnant as a sociological experiment at her school.  A book in the works maybe?

First of all, because the conversion of a thoughtful, intelligent person is a manner of defeat against atheism. I suppose this is arguable, and I’m not sure to what extent I believe it, but it does feel that way, and I think we might be inclined to lash out because of that.

More importantly, though, is that she was a strong, unique voice in the atheist community. She’ll still be blogging, sure, but she won’t be working on atheism as an intellectual project. That’s a real loss, I think.

Another brain dead idiot willing to support The Roman Catholic Pedophile Protecting Church.

And no I would not apologize. Anyone supporting such church and call it moral is a brain dead idiot.

By undergoing RCIA, Leah will become a part of that institution. How is that not an explicit endorsement?

Well that’s a fair point. I guess I see what you mean. I have an atheist brother that really seems to be an atheist because he wants to do whatever he wants. This is a typical religious straw man, but in my brother, it really seems to be the case. I suppose if in the future he became a Christian again, I might have doubts about whether he was ever really an atheist.
So I guess there needs to be a clarification between atheists who are very rational about their reasoning and understand the need for evidence and the atheists who just don’t believe in a God. But if someone was raised without religion and didn’t believe in a god, you’d probably call them atheist even if they didn’t have a lot of arguments to back up what they believe. 

 I don’t think making that argument is being an asshole. Stuff like calling her names or suggesting that she’s had a head injury (which might even be warranted if this were a sudden and severe change of mind, but that isn’t the case here) is being an asshole. You’re not doing that; you’re engaging with her ideas.

Yes. She has made this clear.

I’m not surprised. I gave up reading her blog a long time ago because she wrote about Catholicism so much. I’m not interested in grappling with fine details of Catholic theory when I think they’re wrong on fundamental questions of the nature of reality and of human beings. I don’t think she’s right, but wish her well as a person.

oh another stroke hypothesis! It does look like something only a stroke sufferer would do, doesn’t it?

The thing is, the closer you examine religion, you see that it’s kind made up. (Put on your anthropologist hat, look at other cultures and proposed deities.) I like all kinds of things that are “made up”, but I realize they are fiction.

The deeper you look into atheism, you realize that not believing in gods (even simply saying I don’t know) is reasonable. If there’s some deity out there (and there really probably isn’t) — with the omniscience and telepathy and so on — I don’t think it’s quite as paternal as theists make it out to be. 

Back to the Catholic thing: not sure how she narrowed down her choice, but good luck to her all the same.

I think we atheists, not believing in theology, tend to overlook its importance in favor of the politics of religion. To some extent, this is a symptom of the Religious Right’s project, because they have made religion synonymous with politics. But there are basic theological differences (in terms of conceptions of God, humanity, the universe etc) that are actually meaningful to believers, and thus it is possible to belong to a sect while rejecting certain political teachings of its hierarchy.

A huge part of this is because she’s converting to Catholicism. If an atheist converts to some sort of theism, that’s one thing. I may not agree with the “There’s got to be something out there” mindset, but I still understand it. However, she’s converting to Catholicism, which is sexist and homophobic, and very outspoken about these things and turns a blind eye to child rape. While I’m sure she doesn’t support these things, it is horrible for her to go and support a church that does all of these things. If she said, “I believe in God. Here’s what I believe now:” then there would be a different reaction. But she’s converting to a church whose morality is so incredibly backwards. It would be like saying she’s part of the Westboro Baptist Church because that’s what her view of God is, but then saying that she is a little confused about the WBC’s teachings on homosexuality. A more extreme example, sure, but you don’t say you’re converting to a denomination that believes very specific things if you don’t support those things.

Well, hopefully during the RCIA process she will become enlightened as to everything Catholicism teaches and will renounce this direction. However, there are a lot of RCIA programs that are liberal and don’t tow the line with what the Vatican officially teaches as true and right doctrine.

Right, I’m not saying that was her specific reason for atheism. I was just pointing out that while my brother is an atheist, his reasons for not believing in God is because he doesn’t want to. Those reasons are not very strong, so it would not surprise me if he goes back to Christianity someday.
I don’t often read her blog, so I don’t know what her reasons for atheism were, but they may not have been very strong. That doesn’t mean that she was never an atheist.

I believe that Francis Collins converted to Catholicism, and I believe this young lady has, but I also believe (especially after reading Michael Shermer’s “The Believing Brain”) that our human brains can compartmentalize our beliefs to accomplish goals through fear. In Leah’s case, as well as Collins’s, this conversion is not to gain something in this life but to NOT LOSE something. So I am going to assume there is someone in her life that has given her an ultimatum, and this is the result of that.

Why is it that in the cases of Atheists converting to faith, their ability to write coherent arguments takes a definitive nose-dive?

Yeah, guys, let’s be gracious about the biggest force for evil on earth!

 I think so, yeah. That’s why her blog is called ‘Unequally yoked’.

I guess she’ll have to rename it to ‘Equally yoked’ now.

 Being confused about the church direct teachings is like a prerequisitye to be a Catholic.

It’s a fella. His name is C.S. Lewis.

I feel the same way; I could never properly relate, although it was always clear she’s an intelligent person.

 Maybe it has been presented to you but you have not thoroughly analyzed it in order to make a conclusion? Maybe we should all take the time to look at why these intelligent people choose to believe?

I think it is human nature to lump people into categories. Perhaps there is this category that has been created in our society which is reserved for religious people who are not all that analytical and we assume that all religious people are the same. I don’t think we all form our beliefs based on our emotion just as I don’t think that all atheists form their beliefs based on anger (which is unfortunately the category that has been created for atheists by Christians).

I just don’t comprehend how a single philosophical argument can mitigate a myriad of other arguments.

Especially one as week as a basis of morality.

 “My friend pressed me to stop beating up on other people’s explanations and offer one of my own.”

Why?  I don’t have to have an answer to a question to point out that your answer is faulty.  I am perfectly happy to say that, “I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer.  A answer that is far more preferable than adding in additional layers of obfuscation.

 It sounds to me like you are expecting her to have developed her beliefs based upon 100% proof. Is this how science works? Do we formulate opinions and our understanding of phenomena by only first proving beyond any doubt that our understanding is complete and without flaw? Of course we do not. We take the available evidence, formulate opinions and try to fill in the gaps the best we can. We don’t stop running experiments just because we don’t completely understand something. On the contrary, we run more experiments. We immerse ourselves in it knowing full well that at every turn more questions are going to arise and more beautiful, extraordinary discoveries are going to be made. Always hungry for more. More knowledge, wisdom, understanding.

 I understood it just fine. Maybe she is communicating something beyond your knowledge or maybe both her and I are full of it. All the more reason to figure it out.

 Why make such an assumption? Why would you judge her like that? Maybe you are right but what makes you think that? Have you read something of her’s that would make you formulate such an assumption? Please share.

 There is a lot of information out there which can answer your questions. It takes an enormous amount of patience to weed through it all to make sure you are getting good information but it is worth it.

I knew which one it was going to be before I even clicked on the post. I’ve gone through Leah’s blog before, and I have to say I’m not surprised. I’ve always found her posts kind of bizarre, focusing on things that seem very, very strange to me as a lifelong atheist.

It’s puzzling how she is converting from atheism to a specific form of Christianity (which is itself a specific form of theism) without invoking the risen Christ Jesus even once.  Jesus Christ is not an incidental part of Catholicism, but an intrinsic one, no?

I don’t get her philosophic leap from “Morality = God” to the theistic belief in God as a personal, active agent in the world.

“For the world to be coherent, X thing logically needs to exist, even if I can’t poke it with a stick” seems like a decent enough argument for something’s existence as any. It’s what we do with most mathematical and scientific constants.

Yet it seems like a better response to “well, absolute moral realism doesn’t seem to work without God” is throwing out absolute moral realism rather than picking up God. This is further proof that atheism and post-structuralist epistemology are probably necessary complements. Absolute morality is *such* a worthless concept.

I was not familiar with Leah’s blog before this, so I was reviewing her “about” page. I don’t mean this as a “not a real atheist” argument, because I think that argument sucks. What I would instead say is that this is a young woman exploring ideas that were not a part of her upbringing and not just studying philosophy and Christian apologetics, but enveloping herself in them (and also somehow missing some of the key atheist philosophers and arguments in the process). I’m not saying she wasn’t an atheist, nor that she hasn’t converted. I would say that she’s still learning and exploring and that there’s no telling what conclusion she’ll come to. She may not come to any conclusion at all.

Some people would say that coming to a conclusion (one way or the other) means you’ve become closed minded or fundamentalist or “militant”. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, some of us simply find the philosophical debate tiring in the face of adequate evidence for naturalistic explanations and absolutely none for religious ones. Others find religious explanations make them feel good and that’s enough. In both cases we prefer to expend our energies in other ways and explore other kinds of ideas.

Leah may one day come to the conclusion that Catholicism (or some other religion) is good enough for her, or she may return to atheism or end up somewhere in between. And just from my brief perusal of her “about” page, I’d say there’s a good chance she’ll stay on this journey to some extent and simply not settle on any single conclusion, and that’s OK. As long as she doesn’t start tithing. Exploring the Catholic Church is one thing, funding it’s anti-woman, anti-gay agenda is quite another entirely.

It’s a valid concern. Rationality tends to be a one-way move: once a person learns to think rationally, becoming irrational again is difficult. In an old person, we should reasonably suspect some sort of dementia. In a young person, some other brain pathology, or type of mental illness should not be ruled out.

This is not intended as an insult, but as an observation that the process of going from rational to irrational really can be a symptom of disease (whether instantaneous or gradual).

 What basic human rights are being denied (and what is the “it” that leads to those denials?)

I do look forward to reading more posts about this conversion from her but nothing in her first post or replies indicates anything more than woo and god-of-the-gaps. It seems to me that her conclusion should have been “we don’t know” and instead it was “well I must pick from something that’s already out there” from what I can tell.

I do think that dealing with the specific teachings of the church and what she thinks of them would be interesting but considering her post on PZ Myers’ eucharist cracker incident I’m not sure how likely she is to actually address the subject as directly as non-Catholics would want. We’ll see. Either way, I wish her the best and just shrug my shoulders at how unconvincing her post is at showing how she got where she did (because the same conversion process could have led to any number of other religions).

Can’t say how it is now, since I grew out of  my Catholicism shortly after becoming an adult, but back in da Brooklyn of My Yout, very nearly every Catholic I knew [and I knew a lot of them, beginning with my whole family, three generations of them] was a “pick and choose” Catholic.   My Mom [Church every Sunday and holy days of obligation, confession, communion, Friday meat fasting, the whole nine yards] would just announce about some points of  Church teaching, “well, that’s just silly. I don’t think that’s so.”   

What’s the difference? She cherry picks what she likes and pretends the other shit doesn’t exist.

Scratch that other comment. It’s a different fella.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/blaghag/2012/06/weve-lost-an-atheist-blogger-to-catholicism/#comment-91285

You forgot patriarchal.

Or maybe she followed her truly open-minded pursuit of truth right into and across the Tiber?

 I’d heard once that it was an atheist blog, but when I went there to read it, I wasn’t sure I lighted upon the correct address. I thought I was reading a Christian one, and this was long before her coming out of the closet.

Now she can get back together with him! Yay! I hope his number is still in her phone…/snark

This is someone that recognizes to what the organization points and for what it longs. She has learned not to confuse people with the message.

It is easy to knock the structure used to operate such an organization. It is harder to learn how to separate what the organization points from the organization itself.

because no reasonable people have ever believed that…

Yes.

Some might characterize her conversion as a movement in the other direction…

 I won’t begin to defend pedophilia in the Catholic Church.  It should be dealt with harshly but you expose your own bias against the Catholic Church in your post.  Using your argument anyone who supports schools and calls it “good” is a brain dead idiot.  Just look at the statistics of pedophilia in our school systems.  It is as bad or worse than it is in the Catholic Church.

Two wrongs don’t make a right and this doesn’t justify clergy molesting children but at least be consistent.  Just because someone is Catholic doesn’t make them a brain dead idiot any more that someone who supports another organization (like public schools, or law enforcement, or sports) which has to deal with pedophilia in its ranks.

Some school statistic from 1996 (I’m sure it hasn’t gotten any better since then):
-Best estimate is that 15% of students will be sexually abused by a member of the school staff during their school career.
-Most cases of sexual abuse of students by teachers are never reported.
-In nearly half of the cases, suspects were accused of abusing more than one student.
-8.1% of teachers who were accused of sexual abuse were suspended and then resumed teaching.
-Of the nearly 54% of abusers who resigned, weren’t rehired, retired or were terminated, superintendents reported that 16% were teaching in other schools and that they didn’t know what had happened to the other 84%.  All but 1% of these teachers retained their teaching license.

Sounds like our school system has a lot of pedophile protecting of its own going on.  I hope you’re not a brain dead idiot who supports schools.

“I went to bed an agnostic/atheist and woke up a Christian.”

I’m guessing you don’t mean that literally….

P.

Why?

 Hey Dan, does god move in mysterious ways too? Pffft.

I’m not knocking the structure used to operate the organization, I’m knocking what it DOES. I couldn’t care less if Catholic priests give sermons about loving your neighbor or helping the poor as long as what they practice is about restricting your neighbor’s rights, which it is.

 If by “fucking serious” you mean to ask if I want you to be specific, then yes.

What is the “it” that you say is denying basic human rights to homosexuals, and what are, specifically, the basic human rights being denied?

 Yes.

 You have guessed incorrectly.

 So, why Roman Catholicism rather than Buddhism, say? She’s being very close-minded about Buddhism I reckon. Or Hinduism. Or Mormonism. I know, why not be ‘truly open-minded’ and evaluate all religions and see their glaring weaknesses and moral turpitude and philosophical immaturity… Drowning in the Tiber more like…

 Wrong …
We do need school but it must be clean up and fix. We don’t need a organization which is base solely on lies and dilution. The two are not the same.

“which is sexist and homophobic, and very outspoken about these things and turns a blind eye to child rape.”

It’s not, it’s not, and you’re confusing the actions of sinful men who were acting against the teachings of their Church with the objective truth taught by the institution. Unless, of course, you can produce quote from the Catechism or a papal encyclical that condones and encourages child rape?

To use an analogy, bad behavior by math teachers does not mean that the truths of mathematics that they teach are therefore false. 

It might be helpful for you to find out what the Church actually teaches, and why, instead of what you think She teaches.

 Catholicism doesn’t tell gay people they’re evil. Quite the opposite, in fact.

 The Church does not hate gays. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Cross posted from Blaghag:

Wow is that condescending.I really hate when Christians read stories of other Christians converting to atheism and make all sorts of condescending statements about their conversion, but rarely have I read a Christian being as condescending as you were. Maybe try to have at least a piece of an argument.

I remember when she made her first Turing Test last year, she said her boyfriend was Catholic. Wonder if that has anything to do with it… 

Amazing how two people can read the same thing and take away something completely different. Buried in those words of compassion, the core of the message is this:

This inclination, which is objectively disordered,

And this:

Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.

Is absolutely at odds with what the Catholic Church actually does in advocating against same sex marriage or any approximation thereof, and at odd with the way many high level Catholic priests have attempted to blame the pedophilia scandals on the evils of homosexuality.

EDIT: Love is shown in what you do, not in pretty weasel words.

“Whatever reason, good riddance from the atheist ranks.”

Absolutely! In fact, some of us are hoping this is said more often in the future.

I originally wrote that without anyone in particular in mind, only that this problem with the source of morality ought to have been well covered by plenty of atheists. Specifically, unless she just hasn’t updated the bookshelf section of her blog, she has Bertrand Russell in the “To Be Read” section. She managed to read an awful lot of apologetics, but hasn’t gotten to Russell, perhaps the central atheist thinker.

But honestly, the more I think about it, I think there’s a core problem in the way she thinks about morality. She just wants it to be something that there is simply no evidence that it actually is, and that desire leads her to require a god to be the source. Her premise is flawed, so her logical conclusion is naturally wrong.

Yes, the irrational might see it that way.

“Maybe it has been presented to you but you have not thoroughly analyzed it in order to make a conclusion”

It hasn’t.  That is one reason I am not a Zoroastrian, nor an adherent of any other failed hypothesis regarding life, the universe and everything as so far provided by religious sects.

“Maybe we should all take the time to look at why these intelligent people choose to believe?”

I have, that’s what we are doing, and I presented some conclusions regarding that dynamic. 

Maybe you should take some time to read my post again.

I do not present the presupposition that all religious people are the same.

I do present the same request to you, if you have evidence for the existence of any of the God(s)ess(es) please present some or accept that these religious beliefs are merely emotional assertions as reflected in Leah’s own articulation as to what converted her to this one particular religious doctrine.

I agree. 

It is an emotional outreach of faith without evidence.  Leah is quite clear about that.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that specifically, but we should at least be honest that that is what it is.

Does the Bible count?

 RCIA is just a class.  Anyone can learn what it has to say, even without agreeing with it.

The Nicene Creed or Apostle’s Creed on the other hand, that’s an endorsement.

Did I say that I was surprised that she wrote about Catholicism? I said that the amount that she wrote about the finer points of Catholic doctrine lost my interest. I don’t know why that offends you.

And that may have been the point of her blog when it began, but when I first started reading it, she was actually writing about other topics quite a bit. Maybe I just started reading when she was in a Catholicism-lite phase, I don’t know.

“Objectively disordered” is a politer way of saying it, but the sentiment remains the same: go straight, go celibate, or go to hell. 

Leah’s conversion argument is one way of being consistent:

M: Morality is real, absolute, and immutable.
M: Without this RAI morality, the world would be incoherent.
m: I believe in RAI morality.
m: I am not comfortable believing in an incoherent world, given my belief structure.
M: The only way to have RAI morality make sense is some sort of transcendent metaphysical ground for meaning (in post-structuralist jargon, this is called the “transcendental signified,” it’s also frequently referred to as “God.”
.:. I have to believe that above-mentioned ground exists.

The argument more-or-less being that God is implied by the structure of the world, and that the world as it exists without God would be a contradiction. It’s basically the same logic that would lead one to accept quantum theory or the existence of the pi-constant: even though it’s not phenomenally observable, it’s a necessary structural implication of other phenomenally observable things.

Now, to be clear, I don’t believe in God. But I also don’t believe in absolute or objective morality, think that human nature is a myth, and that meaning and human understanding is near-endlessly fluid and manipulable. I think more people should think that, and I think atheism implies all of those things (see: http://www.martinhagglund.se/images/stories/9.1.hagglund01.pdf, though it’s an academic paper and pretty jargony). I don’t think you can believe in absolute/objective morality of the kind Leah does without belief in God.

 That is correct.

 It seems from your comment you are catholic? If so your statement “respect and open-mindedness really is a kind of embodiment of ‘moral law’.” Should make you run as fast as you can from the catholic church. I think even the pope and almost every cardinal would agree that the catholic church is not about open-mindedness. So if that is a kind of embodiment of moral law as you said. It implies the catholic church is diametrically opposed to moral law, right?

 Not easily, and not at all for anyone who sees faith as irrational woo to begin with. 

Let’s just say that it’s a secondary point of faith that follows other, more fundamental aspects.

Also, let me say that it must be the single greatest doctrine to cause ridicule, but without it the Catholic Mass is meaningless.

Funny how an atack on religion can make people so disgustingly dishonest. 

  Is there any evidence of system-wide, intentional  silencing of victims, perpetrators, and witnesses in schools, as there is with the catholic church? 

  The current pope himself authored the instructions to keep victims and witnesses silenced…how many school district superintendents have done the same?   I wonder how many school officials are guilty of silencing victims and witnesses on threat of expulsion, eternal damnation, and the social consequences that the church wields? Probably a few guilty teachers and administrators have made  threats or cover-ups, but it’s not an official country-wide policy, it’s not openly tolerated by society or the institution as a whole, and teachers don’t have  the same social clout as priests.
 
  Are school districts engaged in ACTIVELY finding new homes and hunting grounds for predators, and helping to hide their crimes?  Even if assume that lack of diligence is the same as active help(even though it’s not), there is a HUGE difference 8.1% and nearly 100%! 

 
   And hey…you were able to get statistics from 1996, including some information that must have been supplied by the schools…it sure would be nice if the catholic church were so accomodating.  

last thing…I couldn’t help but notice that just about every source I could find for your claimed statistics were absolute worst-case presumptions, that they included all cases of consensual sex in their numbers(and even tried to claim it was just as”spiritually” bad as forced rape), and that the people most concerned with these numbers were pretty much only using them to make the church look not so bad in comparison or demonize public education as a whole.  The sources were just a tiny bit biased…and by “a tiny bit”, I mean obviously, glaringly biased.  And of course, school teachers don’t claim to be the guardians of morality, the agents of god, or keepers of the path to heaven, either- which, while not absolving schools of anything, at least lessens the outright hypocrisy that the church seems to wallow in gleefully.

But hey, you go ahead and keep pretending that the situations are equal if it makes you feel better.

 Yeah, because calling her names is totally the mature thing here. Who the fuck are you to judge? You wouldn’t want people judging you for being Atheist, even though from their perspective your beliefs are evil, would you?

The mudslinging here disappoints me. I think Leah’s an amazing person who’s being true to herself by exploring an option she thinks might be right for her. Saying “she’s lost it” or accusing her of just wanting publicity is bullshit.

She says that the Catholic boyfriend has moved on to an Evangelical, so she hasn’t converted for any rational reason. None of the reasons she has stated are comprehensible to anyone commenting here. I was being nice, complimentary, in fact, when I assumed it was to save a fracturing relationship. Now she’s got me flummoxed.

If all you need is quotes from people saying they believe this or that, then the catholic church is great. But actions speak louder than words and the actions of the church result in sexism, homophobia and turning a blind eye to child rape no matter how much they say otherwise.

You assume too much.  It is not MY church.  I’m not defending it.  I’m not Catholic.  I was simply pointing out the inconsistencies in your argument.  From your reaction you act like you’ve been hurt by the Catholic church which would cloud your reason.

As for bullshit, I’ve heard plenty on both sides.  I’ve read my fill of religious AND atheist deception, lies and rhetoric.  That doesn’t mean all atheists
are all bad or completely wrong any more than the Catholic church having bad priests
makes all Catholics all bad or completely wrong.

You would then defend the right of a parochial school to exist since we need schools right?   Or should they be eliminated as well because they don’t align with your world view?

HAHA, nice.

Julie wrote:

“Meaningless? So is protestant communion (where they don’t believe in
transubstantiation) less meaningful than Catholic communion? Why is
believing in the symbol of it meaningless? Why does it have to be
literal. It seems very silly to say that mass is meaningless without the
literal transformation when there obviously is no literal
transformation.”

Respectively…

1) It would be.
2) Yes.
3) I didn’t say it was.
4) Why does anything have to be literal?
5) No, you are mistaken.  The Catholic Mass would be meaningless without actual transubstantiation because actual transubstantiation (and the partaking of it) is the sine qua non of the Catholic Mass.

Saying Catholic Mass is okay without transubstantiation would be like saying you could play Wheel of Fortune without being allowed to use vowels.

I am confused about her change of mind and her choice to go to Catholicism. I am not in the least bit confused about Catholicism, which is why I cannot understand why she would choose it.
It’s one thing for someone who was raised Catholic to stay a cultural Catholic. And I could understand why an atheist might start believing in God. But I cannot for the life of me figure out why an atheist (who knows about the horrible teachings of the Catholic church) would want to become Catholic. She believes in God; okay. The next step would be to figure out exactly what she believes and find a church that reflects those beliefs. She says herself that she’s confused about the church’s teachings on homosexuality. So why would she be willing to join a church that she knows is homophobic? The Catholic church is a really messed up institution and she should know better than to give her support to them.

It happens. And I hope she finds what she is seeking. It her right to deconvert and I appreciate her honesty. 

It’s the way she wrote about Catholicism that struck me as strange. If a blogger treated Scientology or Raelianism the same way Leah treated Catholicism, I would not be surprised to hear that they had converted to either of those beliefs.

It happens far less frequently than the other way around?  I thought we’ve already debunked ‘the world is becoming atheist’ stats.  If you count those atheists who believe in a personal god, and those who believe in a higher power, perhaps.  But take those away, and that conversion rate drops.  Plus, you have the fact that kids who leave religion as youth, oft times return to some faith as adults.  Plus, you have the fact that many atheists wrongly attribute recent studies that find a growth in the number of ‘seekers’ to a growth in the number of atheists (even those atheists who don’t believe in a personal god 🙂 ). And of course, as a former agnostic, I’m the first to remember taking some offense to atheists who seemed eager to lump me into the atheist mold.  Agnostic is agnostic, not atheist.  How many times did I have to explain that to my atheist friends!  So as nice as a quick throw out of ‘gee, everyone else is becoming atheist’ might make one feel, we need to keep to the facts, just like Joe Friday said.  Well done Leah.  And well done Mr. Mehta to an otherwise well written, honest, and respectful post.

I believe that this can happen and that she and many others can “really” believe. This is only under the condition of course that evidence was not of primary importance to their argument against the existence of a god in the first place. If you are studying philosophy and play around with the words long enough you can make some transcendental hooey sound like it supports any religion. I know of one person who converted to some brand of theism from atheism. He unfortunately became schizophrenic shortly after. I think it would take an actual brain disease for me to convert as well. Either that or Jesus coming back (any day now, right?)

 Some parents abuse their children, should we do away with parents?

If you don’t know the difference between a church and schooling, that’s your problem. Don’t reply.

 Is that what the AnalogKid was talking about?

I’m not sure any marriage is a human right.  Nor do I accept that the Catholic Church “contributed to the fight against decriminalization of homosexuality” what ever that means.

Again, specifics would really be great right about now.  But even if the Church supported laws against sodomy, that’s not the same thing as calling for the criminalization of homosexuality.  After all, homosexuality is not an action.

And like marriage, I’m far from convinced that sodomy is a human right.

“I’m far from convinced that sodomy is a human right.”

Then you have no understanding of human rights. This is a basic issue of self determination; the choice of whether to engage in ‘sodomy’ as you so charmingly put it, is the choice of the would-be sodomites alone, and no-one else’s.

How about the right to have sex without getting pregnant.  How about the right to have sex without getting AIDS.  What about the right to read a bible in the language of your choice.

Granted, these aren’t so much ‘denied’ as ‘strongly discouraged’ and I will grant that the non-Latin bible one is a bit of a cherry pick on my part since it’s historical, but I still find it pretty amusing.

 Yes, objectively disordered–not hatred at all. And you can also consider it not hatred when I say fuck you and the Jesus you rode in on. Your church disgusts me very deeply. I find it total affront on humanity There are terrific Catholic people, but the church is horrific. I have no patience at all for apologists for the organization.

“exploring an option she thinks might be right for her”

This isn’t a hairstyle.

 “But yes, as far as the non-religious and the progressive religious are
concerned, the right to be left alone to do what one wants in one’s own
bedroom when it doesn’t harm people does exist.”

Well, yes, I agree with this.  I just think that this right allows for many things that in and of themselves are not necessarily human rights per se.

I guess it depends on how you define a human right. I consider all rights to be granted by men- that is, there are no natural rights. Legally, rights are as granted by the Constitution and legislation, subject to the interpretation of courts.

In the U.S., marriage has been defined as a “basic civil right of man” by the Supreme Court (Loving v. Virginia, 1967). That decision, which did not explicitly define marriage to be between partners of opposite sexes, is likely to play heavily when the matter of same-sex marriage ultimately makes it to the Supreme Court.

what exactly is she smoking? JESUS CHRIST! “It turns out I actually believed it was some kind of Person, as well as Truth”??? So? Who gives a flying Muhammed’s ass about what anybody believes? Just because one feels like believing that X is true doesn’t make X true. This person was never a true atheist. And even if she was, her way of thinking & reasoning was clogged by religious BS
She is regurgitating the same old ‘Morality’ argument. “Without God I can’t be moral blah blah blah…so therefore God exists and now I’m a catholic”.
I sincerely hope she wouldn’t be raping kids now that she is a catholic.
p.s. If there’s a God (which I’m 100 percent sure there’s not), is there anything that stopped Moses, King David, the God of the Bible etc from raping virgins and wiping out entire nations in the Old testament? Also, if we are strictly talking about the Christian God, then what’s stopping Christians from killing and raping when according to the New Testament, any and all sin will be forgiven with the exception of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which will never be forgiven? (Source: Matthew 12:31-32)

Ah, yes, the Vatican simply labels them “intrisically disordered” and treats them like they are diseased. Yes, that’s so much better than being hated outright. Funny how both lead to the exact same thing: social stigmatization and legal discrimination.

And let’s not forget the charming words of the Vatican on same-sex parenting, that it is “gravely immoral” and “would actually mean doing violence to those children.” Guess what? I’m one of those children, and I find that kind of prejudice sickening and disgusting. They can refuse to label it hatred, but that doesn’t change the fact that being pitied and discriminated against feels exactly the same as being hated.

I honestly cannot fathom that.

P.

 No, it’s a shame that someone capable of rational thought would embrace nonsensical horseshit with despicable political affiliations. She’s free to follow that road wherever it goes, but she’s not immune to criticism for it.

 Actually, I think that when you say “literally” you mean “actually.”  There is a big difference.

In any event, the purpose of the Catholic Mass, and the role of transubstantiation in that purpose, is in no way affected by what you did or did not feel in your various experiences in life.

You know most schizophrenics have their first big break with reality in their early 20s.  She looks about that age.  Many schizophrenic (and BiPolar depression) cases involve delusions of living inanimate objects, say the moral law for example.  These delusions are very often bizarrely tied up in cultural and/or religious rituals.  The catholic church is renowned for its ritualistic nature.  Now I’m not a psychiatric professional (yet) but her sudden and extreme change in spiritual belief makes me wonder if she has just suffered her first major psychotic break….I’m just sayin’.

 LOL…

I’m reminded of a sign over my wife’s desk:

“I would agree with you but then we would both be wrong.”

 please define “atheist philosophy”

“The next step would be to figure out exactly what she believes and find a church that reflects those beliefs.”
There is an anti-church quote which is true, and which applies here in the opposite direction. Modified, it would respond: “When you choose a religion based on its overlap with you, what you are really doing is worshipping yourself.”

Yeah. Aside from some theological differences, Catholicism and Protestantism aren’t really all that different. I’ve been to Lutheran services for example. You can’t really tell much of a difference to a Catholic mass unless you pay very, very close attention. If she came to theism from a morality angle, there is really no reason to pick on sect over another. Except of course to pick a liberal one over a very conservative one.

Keep pasting JoAnna, right after that paragraph:
“Homosexual persons are called to chastity.”

As in not only they can’t marry, they shouldn’t even fuck.

“By the
virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom”

Translation: Pray hard enough to avoid falling into the nastiness of teh gay.

“at times by the
support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace”

Your friends can convince you to maybe hit on that woman over there instead of that guy.

“they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian
perfection.
“

Why would anyone want to approach that… but wait, if teh gay is fine, why all these precautions? Let’s just read the paragraph right before the one you pasted:

“Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”
They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the
gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual
complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

Those degenerate gays don’t know what love is. We can’t approve them. Let’s just pray for them, and teach them to self-master and tell them how awesome chastity is and be nice to them so hopefully they’ll turn hetero.

Yeah, fuck you, Church.

Refrain from quote-mining further, JoAnna. That was not a nice try.

And let’s not forget their campaigning against every single advance in gay rights. They’re against gay-straight alliances in Catholic schools. They are against anti-discrimination laws. They are against civil unions. They are against same-sex marriage. Every time something comes up they campaign against it at the highest level of politics. Not just with words, but also with huge sums of money.

One side of my family is Lutheran. I’ve been to church with them plenty of times. It’s extremely hard to tell the difference between a Lutheran and Catholic church service.

I don’t know. There are some reasonable voices around, but I’m pretty dismayed by much of the reaction here–knee-jerk, misinformed and petty. All the awful stereotypes are in full display in this comment thread. I’m not terribly proud of being one of us today.

I do not understand the assertions of several commentators here that Ms. Libresco is not simply carrying out a larger Turing Trolling event by attempting to pass as a Catholic convert.   The explanation they give is that “she cleared that up in the comments.”

How could she possibly do that?  Anything she says would be part of the “Turing Test.”  If you were participating in an actual Turing test, would you bother asking the speaker whether it was a computer or a human?  If it assured you that it was human, would you then confidently say that it had “cleared up” the question?

Maybe I’m the confused one . . . . are you not allowed to deceive people or say untrue things in a Turing test?

I thought the same thing.  I read in the comments where she said she isn’t faking, but if she really is, that’s what she would need to say.  It will be interesting to see where this all ends up.  I don’t follow her blog, as her posts never really resonated with me, but I am a little curious to see where this ends up.  That alone makes me think this may be a bit of a publicity stunt.  If not, well, to each their own and I hope she finds happiness regardless.

So to be truly humble, you should choose a belief that overlaps very little with your own thoughts? So why are you not a Scientologist or a Jehovah’s Witness? If someone is converting from no religion to a religion, they’re obviously going for the one that fits most with their own beliefs, which is why her choice to go to Catholicism is baffling.

Lutherans are Protestants, but Protestants are not necessarily Lutherans. Catholic services are vastly different from Baptist or Evangelical services.

I would say that, properly speaking, “literal” would refer to not simply to how a thing comports to words, but more specifically to how it comports to specific texts.  As in literature, literal translation, transliteration, etc.

While “actual” refers to the state of a thing in and of itself.

Ultimately it is a distinction that is almost entirely lost these days.  Literally.

No, it’s a book. Books can’t count.

Good question.  Since many (most? all?) atheists reject a teleological view of things to begin with, they by definition reject things being ordered to specific ends.  No first cause, final cause, etc.

I’m not sure everybody who declares him/herself to be an agnostic/atheist truly understands the meaning of those terms.  Perhaps Nordog was initially a person that just had no religious inclinations — not necessarily a skeptic or rationalist, just somebody for whom religion was not a part of his life. So when he “woke up a Christian,” it wasn’t like he threw away an entire body of reasoned thought — he simply went from having no religion, to having a religion.

I personally went through an “areligious” period (after years in the Catholic Church) before I eventually considered myself an agnostic atheist.

As a recovering Catholic, this makes me incredibly sad. I struggled to break free from the shackles she now willingly dons.

I sincerely wish her the best.

Seriously? Has no one in this thread ever met a thoughtful theist in their entire lives?

That is absurdly condescending and extravagantly unfounded in evidence. What tosh.

The philosophies that commonly accompany atheism. Things like consequentialism, rights-based morality, individualistic approaches to policy, etc.

Marriage is a basic civil right. The Supremes said so in Loving v. Virginia.

If someone’s of the opinion that the sun goes around the Earth, we make fun of them, too.

It’s all well and good to be open minded, but if you’re so open minded that your brain falls out you aren’t of much use. “Skepticism” is kind of the antithesis of accepting the literal transubstantiation as a thing.

Some might characterize the moon made of cheese. Just because an opinion is held does not make it valid.

The problem is that the institutions themselves hide the information. We have no way of knowing. But it’s likely that we’re just scratching the surface, given the things that have been reported.

The problem isn’t even in the numbers, though… it’s that the church actively worked to cover it up. The school system doesn’t do that as an institutional policy.

That’s a damn good observation. The meandering, semi-incoherent arguments also seem to fit with that. Hope someone cares about her enough to encourage her to get herself checked out.

To paraphrase Moliere from The Misanthrope: Maybe it’s a tumor.

(The original statement went like: “If I become religious when my mind becomes soft, then I am not responsible for such action.”)

She seems to have fallen into the God of the gaps. She can’t explain the basis of her morality, and thinks that evolution can’t explain it, ergo — Catholicism!

I love this line, she’s “confused about the Church’s teachings on homosexuality”

Really? Is confused the word a moral person would use about the Church’s reachings on homosexuality? Because I have a load of other terms that are not appropriate to write on this blog about the church’s teachings on being gay.

Ms. Libresco,  You are doing a wise and noble thing, I give kuto’s to you. I am a catholic by birth and by practice . Just because you are Catholic does not mean you have to follow everything the catholic church preaches. I for one do not follow their moral on Gay marriage nor do I follow their stance from allowing woman to be priests.  You are entering a new chapter in  your life and good luck to you on this endeavor.

Also should have mentioned Spinoza. Since her focus is on moral law and the Catholic Church, Hitchens’ God is not Great is certainly a devastating critique. She appears to have read the God Delusion, but says nothing of The Selfish Gene, which while not a philosophical or anti-religious book, might help her to see a biological source for morality and ethics that does not involve group selection. And no one with the least skeptical word view is well read if they’ve skipped Sagan’s Demon Haunted World, not a philosophical treatise, but nevertheless and excellent guide to evidence based thinking, i.e. a laymen’s guide to materialism. Maybe she’s read that, I don’t know. She’s probably read Nietzsche, but simply not found his arguments that an unchanging, objective morality doesn’t exist compelling. People are funny about Nietzshe, there’s a tendency to see him as a promoter of nihilism and power as the ultimate end and to either completely reject his ideas because of that, or to get totally caught up it and fully embrace that world view. I tend to think that when discussing morality and power Nietzsche was more trying to tell us how things are by their nature, not how they can and should be in human societies.

There ought to be an atheist reading list somewhere, particularly one for serious philosophers, which I’m not remotely. Honestly, I’ve dabbled in philosophy but sometimes find it tedious, particularly when it is still rehashing tired arguments about dualism, or as some have told me, simply stating that materialism is dead because a lot of modern philosophers have rejected it and written convoluted rationales for why there must be a spiritual realm. They still have no damned evidence. And this whole thing has me really feeling those old feelings of an untutored youth encountering philosophy for the first time: that it is a loud of pompous, tedious claptrap wrapped around idea for which there is no evidence and no reason to believe.

I’m just wondering about this.
Isn’t is kind of rediculous to come to believing in god via metaphysics? Metaphysics by definition is dealing with the untestable, unobservable. So how is it someone can make a positive assertion for the existence of god this way?
I can understand how someone could be leaning towards believing in god, but asserting its true is making a claim, which cannot be backed by philosophy and meatphysics.
Asserting god exists has real consequence for the natural world, which just brings us back to where we started.
If there’s a god (and in her case, a personal god), it must have an effect on the natural world, there’s no evidence within the natural world, so we look to metaphysics and go round again.
By converting to Catholicism she is putting herself at 1 on the 1-7 scale. Which is as rediculous as saying you’re a 7

 So what exactly does make you a catholic then if you just get to choose the parts that you want to believe?

 And more to the point, what exactly is just discrimination, and how does one decide?

 Let’s be better than the religious people in whose midst we live. Let’s not go that route.

The fact that Leah would have anything to do with people like that is… disturbing.

So your claim is that the pope and every cardinal all agree that the CC is not about open-mindedness? I am Catholic and I’d love to see some actual evidence for that claim. The pope is a fricking brilliant former university professor – you seriously think he would make the kind of dumb, ignorant, CLOSED-MINDED ad hominem arguments that many of Leah’s critics are so obviously enamoured with?? Wherever did you get that idea? Is it that the pope disagrees with you, therefore he must be closed-minded??? That would be a really dumb argument. I would love to see you (or anyone else) try to actually make a sound argument in support of your position (FYI, a sound argument is one with true premises that actually give support to one’s conclusion). 

 The icky parts are ignored. Its easier to sleep that way. Unfortunately there are not “Hate/Love” sides to the collection plate. I hope Frank feels good about his church spending all that money to influence public policy in California, despite those ideas conflicting with his personal beliefs.

 I think you’re overlooking two things:

1. Most Catholics- including most priests- don’t buy the Vatican line 100%. Don’t get me wrong- I think it’s a bit silly to belong to a religion which you don’t fully buy into, but you’re going to be hard pressed to find any religion or sect with NO disagreement between members and official doctrine.

2. She believed in something very, very close to god(s)- I’ve always gotten the impression that she believes in virtue ethics, Platonic realism, and an objective Moral Law. Only a matter of time until you think of what WLC always says about a moral law implying a law giver.

You claim the right to be closed-minded based on an absurd justification, therefore you are confused (or maybe, more precisely, intellectually vicious/immature).

That’s fine, but again I reiterate my original point. You seem ill-disposed to dispelling your confusion, and happy to instead self-righteously steep yourself in it. That is not a mature response to confusion.

“tenet”

“Personally I’m not big on people being able to kiss.  That’s clearly not what mouths were designed for.”

LOL!

Now that’s just crazy talk.

Sorry if you were being sarcastic, but no, Gus clearly doesn’t know what the Church teaches (if we accept what he wrote as accurately reflecting his beliefs about Church doctrines). Gus gets certain formulas right (which certainly does not indicate that he understands what those formulas mean), but his take on infallibility is way off, as is his claim about contraception (birth control should not be available? – reference please), and, as you pointed out, about the sinfulness of ‘homosexuality.’

“I don’t think it’s intrinsically unreasonable to tell a person (or a class of people) that sex is out of the picture for them. No one is guaranteed or entitled to a sexual relationship”

Yeah, and no one is entitled to eat chicken either. Doesn’t make it a less stupid and transparently authoritarian idea to say that no one in the world should eat it unless it’s blessed by your local priest.

No, the Pope would never make a closed-minded ad hominem argument:

Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny.

I mean, unless you considering falsely claiming that the Nazis wanted to eradicate God from society and comparing modern secularists and atheists to Nazis to be a closed-minded ad hominem. Which I do.

 So Gus, I take it that you always use a condom when you have sex with your HIV positive sex partners.

 You really think the statement that “the cc is not about open-mindedness” is controversial?  Lets try this ask the pope or a major catholic emissary “is the cc about being open-minded?” See if your answer is an unequivocal “of course that is what the cc is all about how well you understand it!”

Not that I disagree with Gus’s general feeling about the RC Church, but there has been a notable shift on the condoms for the prevention of the spread of AIDS
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/world/europe/24pope.html?pagewanted=all 
For me this highlights the fact that for a long time the Pope did think that people should not use condoms, even to prevent the spread of AIDS.

To me the whole anti-contraception thing is as head-in-the-sand ludicrous as the geocentric kerfufle.

Fact: Infant mortality rates have plummeted.
Fact: Population has skyrocketed.
Fact: Although the ‘backfill’ of existing birth rates means the population will grow to about 10 billion, at current birth rates it should level off.
Fact: There’s limited room on this planet for people.
Fact: without contraception, we would need need some other way to halt the population explosion.
Speculation: People are not going to just keep it in their pants, and rhythm/withdrawal aren’t going to cut it.

Thanks GOD most Catholics ignore the RC Church’s teaching on contraception, but it’s STUPID.

(of course, insisting that the earth is the center of the universe doesn’t hurt anyone else, making more babies that the planet can handle does)

Until I read the UN declaration in question I can’t form an opinion on the matter.  I do however have a low opinion of Time’s reporting in general, the UN specifically.  Regarding your other link to “evidence” I’m hard pressed to find the time to read what gay activists in the Anglican Church have to say.

I may or may not personally approve of the UN declaration.  I certainly disapprove of criminalization of homosexuality.

Though one of the oldest tricks in the book is to have a bit of legislation, or a declaration, or some such that calls for something good, but has something in the details that is not so good.  But one must take the thing as a whole.  Rejecting the whole because of a part is not the same as being against what most of the whole is about.

In other words, just because I’m against criminalization of homosexuality it does not follow that I’m for the UN resolution.

Nor does it follow that because I may be against the US resolution that in such a case I would be for criminalization of homosexuality.

To borrow a phrase, the devil is in the details.

You don’t?

 LOL

Rich wrote:

“What about the right to expose fraud?”

Not sure what the question is.  I presume you want to know what I think about the story at the link you provided.

After a quick scan I would say that I hope the man gets his day in court like he wants.  And yes, exposing fraud is good and should not be proscribed by law.  And, I love my mother.  Kittens are nice.  Peace is better than war.

I’m trying to wrap my mind around what I just read…
So it’s okay to be sexist towards women because the sexism is justified by the Bible. Okay, glad we cleared that up. Oh, I’m also betting that none of the original apostles were black or Chinese or Hispanic. Can we safely assume that they are also unfit for being priests?
“Homosexuality can be considered to be an
attempt at genocide.” This might be one of the most offensive things I have ever heard.
Genocide – the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.
Anyone with half a brain knows that there is a difference between extermination and…not having kids. 
If homosexuality is an attempt at genocide because they are not contributing to reproduction, then abstinence is also an attempt at genocide.
It’s funny that you comment and try to clear up any confusion about what we think Catholics believe, and you really just make things worse.

That’s what I find so funny about all of this. It’s one thing to cherry-pick with Christianity because really, the basis of the religion is believing in Jesus as your savior. But the whole reason there are so many different denominations is because they disagree on all the other things!
I wouldn’t say I was a fundamentalist if I disagreed about a literal Bible translation. I wouldn’t say I was Pentecostal if I disagreed about speaking in tongues.
You can say you’re an athlete no matter what sport you play. But why would you join a soccer team if you’re really a baseball player? It’s okay; you can still be an athlete, but join with the team that it makes sense for you to join.

 Dude, you are SO out of line. From what I read, neither of these 2 ever said they were confused about catholicism, or catholic doctrine, yet that’s all I get from your posts. ATTACK! You guys are confused.” Maybe you’ll attack me next, but IDGAF about your opinions. Having admitted to being catholic destroys any credibility you may have had (with me, at least). Catholic dogma is as irresponsibly homophobic as it is ludicrously hypocritical… Misanthropic wouldn’t be too far out on a limb, for me. Maybe you need to be reminded of the definition of  “closed minded”: adjective having a mind firmly unreceptive to new ideas or arguments…” How many times–how many years–have they resisted (stayed unreceptive), repeatedly stayed the (clearly incorrect) course, only to finally acknowledge, and apologize for their mistakes? Well, let’s see; The Starry Msgr was published in 1610, they lifted the ban in 1822, cleared Galileo of any “wrongdoing” in 1992, and in the year 2000(!) two fucking thousand, they apologized. THAT is what I would call ABSURD. It’s just the most famous example, but as you are well aware, there are many, many more. I rest my case. David, you are trying to defend an indefensible institution, & position. BTW: I thought the same thing as the people above. “ok. She changed her mind. Cool, I get that. But… Catholicism!?? REALLY??? Self righteously steeping in this “mature response” to your vitriolic hysteria.

Just looked at the lower comment and saw that the other poster was you, so I am with you in my lack of knowledge, then.

Well, I wonder how much she understands evolution and the arguments for evolutionary derived morality (really doubt she gets much, if anything, of it), but how can anyone who (I think) wants to claims rationality follow such tripe as neo-platonistm ?  Why not believe that homeopathy works, the doctrine of signatures is real, bigfoot exists…

I can see (well, no, not really, but I can imagine) that someone can find an emotionally satisfying answer to a question by making stuff up, but I can’t buy it myself.  Having trouble resolving a conundrum?  Here’s some made up bullshit that pretends to explain it, all the while being actually meaningless drivel.  But you can pretend to be an intellectual while believing it, so it’s all good! (done in the voice of the sham-wow guy or other informercial person of your choice)

Glad to clear that up.  I was getting the impression, albeit not said in so many words, that the RC Church could do no wrong.  All Hail Infallible High Priest Richard Dawkins, Glory Be To His Name.

Ok so you ask for evidence of catholic attempts to fight decriminalisation of homosexuality, about ten seconds of google shows an article in which CATHOLIC (and Anglican) leaders actually hire a top legal team to specifically fight decriminalisatio, and you respond you can’t be bothered to read it. I link to a Time article and you say it is not evidence because you have not read the opposed declaration with no statement saying you intend to read it because you are alarmed that the church may be fighting for such a horrific cause, leaving the reasonable assumption that like the other article you are not really concerned enough to review the evidence. How exactly are these actions consistent with sincere desire to seek the truth of the matter. Your original dismissal of the accusation implied you found the accusation to be quite serious.

As I understand it the most preferred method is being arbitrarily born into one.

 But…but…virtue ethics are incompatible with Catholicism.

I’m sorry, Stev84, but you’re wrong. There is a huge fundamental theological difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. Catholicism emphasises the individiual’s distance from God’s grace. People are lost sheep in need of intermediary spiritual leadership to guide and interpret the codified Word of God; which is beyond the ken of mere plebs and can therefore only be handled by God’s appointed earthly mouthpiece: the Church in general and the Pope especially. Protestantism, on the other hand, emphasises the individual’s closeness to God. No man (or woman) is above any other. Everyone is, ultimately, their own priest and while the Bible is thought to be the go-to manual, its correct interpretation is a personal relationship between the individual and God. You do have priests, of course, but their authority is derived not from God but by the amount of work they put into making it their business to study the Bible and the spiritual: anyone may still trust their own studies over that of the priests. The Catholic Church was right to distrust Protestantism. Protestantism, in a sense, is skepticism, which eventually peters out in atheism. This is also, historically, what has happened to most Protestant countries. Sure, in the actual content Catholicism and Protestantism are superficially similar: God, Jesus, original sin, all that jazz. But if a disagreement of humanity’s natural place in the cosmos doesn’t constitute a major theological difference, I don’t know what does.

I do hope she doesn’t not end up trying to rationalise homophobia and the repression of gay people as a result of her conversion. It’s one thing to be born into a homophobic religion/culture and absorb its values. It’s entirely worse to consciously and rationally adopt that bigotry as an adult.

P.

First of all, Mr. Lack of Confusion, the Church didn’t begin a crusade against American nuns. They called to account one particular national organization of nuns who were organized by Pontifical Right–the LCWR. The LCWR is not an independent entity happily doing its thing but was created by the authority of the Vatican itself. It only exists because the Pope gave it permission to exist, and it remains under his direct authority to this day. Have you ever seen a Chief Executive of a company or a nation tolerate public dissent in his/her direct employees? Was Steve Jobs supposed to just let Apple employees badmouth the iPhone? Is Obama supposed to just let members of his Cabinet say that his policies stink?

What a load of steaming feces. You can parse this any way you want, but my statements are all fundamentally correct. I did not specify the circumstances, but the statement that the Pope supposedly issues infallible doctrine is correct, you just said so. I never said every word from his mouth was considered infallible. This is true of every argument you’ve made here. Homosexuality vs. homosexual activity – it’s a meaningless distinction.

And yes, I believe telling women what they can do with their own bodies is immoral. Making women second class citizens is immoral. Favoring fetuses over the lives of living, breathing women is immoral. Telling two consenting adults how they can express their love and what legal, civil rights they are entitled to because of beliefs they don’t share with you is immoral.

If nothing else, I’ve just proved that morality is not absolute and objective. Apparently I have a much broader notion of morality than the Church.

 Julie- your statement about “The next step would be to figure out exactly what she believes and find a church that reflects those beliefs.” is exactly the *wrong* thing to do. It’s the theological equivalent of the a priori hypothesis. The minute you do that, you prove you don’t believe in an objective truth at all, you only believe in a subjective yourself.

It’s not like converts prove the Church right on every single doctrine. The conversion happens when you come to believe that the Church is a truth-telling thing. At that point, even if you personally disagree or don’t understand, you admit maybe you don’t have all the answers and you try and learn something.

Which, I might point out, is exactly what a good scientist does in the face of a seeming contradiction.

The Church believes what it teaches is divinely revealed. Not open for negotiation. It believes that people who follow the advice of these sisters *will go to Hell*. You know what Hell is, Gus? Eternal fire and all that? Right. Well, seems to me, *whether you agree with the Church’s morality or not*, it is being entirely consistent in disciplining these people who are promoting actions that are immoral and cause damnation.

Now the LCWR. They purport to be the nice tolerant liberals that they are. They do not believe these things are immoral and will result in Hell. Fine. Well then *what the heck are they doing in the Catholic Church*??? When I couldn’t say the Creed anymore in good conscience, *I left*.

There is an objective question here. Is the Church right or wrong about Hell? If it’s wrong, then I wouldn’t want to be near it, much less in it. But if it’s right, then it’s the LCWR are actually abominably anti-gay and anti-woman, because they want to trade a tiny bit of earthly pleasure for an eternity of living death.

 Restarting this subthread to avoid the column squeeze.

Ohhh I see. The church stop these nuns from sending out a loving, tolerant message because if people follow these nuns’ teachings, they will go to hell. So the church can continue to fight against women and gays to keep them out of hell.
Where have I seen that before…?
Oh yeah, every interview with members of the Westboro Baptist Church. The reason they do what they do is to warn these sinners that they will go to hell if they continue to act this way. In fact, they believe that they are the only true Christians because they love gay people enough to warn them and try to keep them from hell. Meanwhile, all the people who accept gay people actually hate gay people because they’re allowing the gay person to stay gay and go to hell.
That is where your logic leads. As long as the church believes in hell, they can continue to oppose gay rights for teh gay’s own good.

The transubstantiation thing is very weird.  I honestly cannot fathom how the Catholic Church means that the wafer and wine “literally” become blood and body of a 2000 year old dead guy in any other way than they get to define “literally” to mean “not literally.”

Perhaps this is not the same as metaphorically or figuratively, but its not, as we rationalists, realists, materialists, etc. experience the word “literally.”  I was looking at this recently in response to a survey that touted that about 2/3 of Irish folks didn’t believe in transubstantiation.  I found it odd that 1/3 actually did.

I dug deeper and all I can see in reference to the “literal” changing into body and blood is (paraphrasing) “trust us, it does, even though its physical properties never, ever change.”

If ever there was a misuse of “literally” changing into body and blood, this would be it.

Even the Catholics don’t believe in the literal transformation.  They just say that.  To any sane person, its all metaphorical — unless you are wandering around and playing in the believer’s “its a mystery”-land.

Of course that’s where it leads! Did you hear anyone say different? Why on *earth* would the Church care about the issue unless it were putting people’s souls at risk?

So strange how adolescent logic has crept into society at large: “You won’t let me stay out late because you hate me and don’t want me to have any fun!”

Yeah, that’s it. I don’t want you to have any fun. /sarc

alconnolly wrote:

“Not seeking a rhetorical victory, just pointing out the clear decision
you made to request evidence and specifically refuse to even read evidence when
presented. You keep ignoring the article that shows specific catholic church
leaders hireing a legal team to oppose decriminalisation of homosexual
behavior. You accuse me of inferring that which is not implied, and then go off
on a rant about abortificants which was not even brought up, as though this was
somehow part of my mindset. Ok keep telling yourself you are looking for the
truth, want evidence, and then refuse to review evidence that may put your holy
church in a negative light.”

I think the problem here may be your reading comprehension, or your penchant to
infer things neither written nor implied.

First: I have not refused specifically or in any other way
to read the evidence you cite.  I just
commented on the tediousness and pointless nature of doing so.  Being “hard pressed” to do something does not
mean that the thing has not been done.  I
have read the info at the two links and made a response which you have seen fit
not to address as of yet.  Specifically,
I have not ignored the article about the hiring of a legal team, but I have
gone to some length to point out that opposition to the UN effort here is not
the same thing as opposing decriminalization.  But more to the point, the claim that sparked
this subthread was NOT that the Church opposed decriminalization, but that it leads
to denying basic human rights.  This is a
distinction lost on many free thinkers who think they are critical thinkers.  Yet, it is still an important and real
distinction, especially in terms of law, which is at the heart of the links you
cite.

Second: There is indeed a link in the type of thinking that
holds on the one hand that refusal to pay for someone eles’s sterile sex and abortion supplies
and services is equal to oppressing someone, and on the other hand the type of thinking that
holds that opposing a UN resolution to decriminalize something necessarily
equates to wanting and fighting to decriminalize that thing.  In both cases there is a fundamental inability or refusal to recognize basic distinctions.  Perhaps it is only a coincidence that each cse deals with sexuality.

In any event, I’ve seen too often charges against the Church
that are totally bogus and motivated simply by hatred of the Church and
specifically hatred of the Church’s stand on sexuality and related issues.  (Note Bene: I am not talking here about the
gay priest pederast and pedophilia crimes, but I will be shortly).

Now, regarding taking the time to read documents, have you
read the UN resolution in question?  Did
you read the version under consideration when these articles to which you link
were written?

Third: I have not refused to review evidence.  I haven’t even refused to review the
blatherskite you cited as being evidence.  And I certainly don’t refuse to review
evidence that puts my church in a negative light.

The fact is I lost a few friends in the church because I was
vocal that there were many, many priests and many bishops and at least a hand
full of Cardinals that should be in prison.  And that’s just in America.

They should be in prison specifically because of the sex
abuse of which we are all too aware.  There
are indeed many things for which those in charge of the church should be
criticized.

So, if you want to share a link to the version of the UN
resolution in question at the time the articles were published,  I would certainly review it
(despite being hard pressed to do so).

But ultimately I have little interest in becoming overly
concerned over the Church’s detractors becoming overly concerned about opposition
to a UN resolution.

Now, having said all that, if you show a case in which the
Church actively pursues the positive criminalization of homosexuality, count me
as one who will criticize that effort.  But
that has yet to be shown.

 Michael,

Let me just say that the teaching is certainly that the bread and wine literally, actually, really, physically becomes the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus.

Not all Church teachers say simply, “trust us.”  Specifically, Thomas Aquinas developed a explanations of the Eucharist based in part on Aristoteleanism.  Agree or disagree with transubstantiation, Aquinas’ explanation will not mean much without an understanding of Aristotle.

Small point of order, the Church does not mean that the bread and wine become the body of a 2000 year old dead guy.  Of course you know the Church teaches that he’s not dead, but eternally alive, and that’s the whole point.

Like you I find it odd that 1/3 actually believe.  I find it odd that anyone believes.  I find it odd that I believe.  But I do.  No explanation as to why I do will satisfy.

Mark me down as mad if you must.

Exactly. Saying that the bread literally transforms into flesh, but it appears to you as bread is…the stupidest use of the word “literally” I have ever heard. It’s funny seeing someone say that without the literal transformation, mass is meaningless, yet there is clearly no literal transformation. It is very obviously metaphorical.

Oh, but what a paradise contraception has created on earth!

What period of human history would you prefer to live in?

If only we could convince all the animals out there to get the message.

I’m not sure explaining biological cycles is worth it.  I have other things to do and you seem so willfully ignorant that I don’t really care.  Normally I try to keep in mind anyone else reading, but in this case, I’m pretty sure everyone else reading  understands how the mortality rate and birth rate balance.  I suspect most of them are shaking their heads at the idea that personally choosing to not have a baby equates to genocide.  Hey, can we charge the Catholic clergy with genocide then?

Center of the Universe- yes, science is a self correcting mechanism.  Religion is not.  That’s why religion depends on science to be corrected for all the patently wrong things it claims.

You’ve missed the single claim you could make against science.  It is science that has created the population problem by drastically lowering the mortality rate in humans.

How do you figure out anything in this life? You study it and test it. Granted, it’s kinda hard to test theological concepts. You can’t empirically test whether God is a Unity or a Trinity. But maybe you are living a certain way and realize…you know what…this is *supposed* to be making me happy but it’s not at all. And so you stop doing that thing, and you suddenly find yourself agreeing with what some church was preaching all along. Huh, you say. That’s weird. And then it happens again. And again. And you start noticing a pattern–that every bit of wisdom you acquire, the Church had before you did. At some point, you just realize, you are better off listening to the Church than yourself. You begin to see the Church as a truth-telling thing, and you begin to conform yourself to Her, rather than conform Her to you.

And religions make all kinds of historical claims as well. Why am I not a Mormon? Partly because I find the Mormon account of history singularly unconvincing. They make claims about the early Church that can be tracked back through history. Well, I read the Church Fathers, the earlier the better, and heck if they don’t sound Catholic.

And there’s not so much difference between science and religion as you think. Science has a dogma that’s not provable but must be believed. It’s the belief in an ordered universe. If the universe has no order, if it’s just random stuff that happens, then science is dead on arrival.

Also, religion is, for many of us, is a grant experiment in Life itself. I can confirm with reasonable certainty the Church’s teaching on sin because I’ve lived it and I’ve seen how it operates on me intellectually and psychologically. I don’t believe in Catholicism because I was told to. I believe it because it works and I’ve seen it work, the same way an engineer believes in mechanics because he can successfully build a bridge.

I have a degree in Biology, so go for it. I’ll try to keep up.

Biological cycles are imposed externally by nature, not the organisms themselves, who generally try to maximize their production of offspring. So nice try.

Remember, the Church has no problem with choosing not to reproduce. What it has a problem with is choosing not to reproduce yet engaging in the behavior that is expressly meant for reproduction.

You can lose weight by not eating. You can also lose weight by stuffing yourself silly and then sticking two fingers down your throat. We call the first one good common sense, the second one bulimia.

 I would say that the part of the Church comprised of what some here would call woo in fact cannot do wrong.  But that’s a metaphysical theological distinction we should let pass, and certainly one not to be appreciated around here.

Now, the men running the Church can and do commit wrongs all the time.  Pisses me off.  As I’ve said elsewhere lots o’ priests should be in prison and I’ve lost Catholic friends for having said so out loud.

“Hail Infallible High Priest Richard Dawkins, Glory Be To His Name.”

LOL, talk about creepy.

Clearly incorrect? Oh yeah, sitting in your cozy 21st century chair, sure it’s “clear.” Back then it was a different story. The Sidereus Nuntius came out, and they asked Galileo….well, if the earth moves where is the stellar parallax?

“Uhh…..uh….”

No answer. If the earth moves, there HAS to be a stellar parallax. Period. And that wasn’t discovered till 1838.

By the way, when are the atheists going to apologize to Abbe Georges Lemaitre? They were so “clearly” wrong in preferring the Steady State Hypothesis, were they not? “Big Bang” and “Cosmic Egg”…ha! Who’d believe that nonsense!?

You can leave a comment on my mostly dormant blog linked to my profile here if you want.  I’m sorta-maybe-kinda thinking of taking my son down that way this summer.  Maybe I can take in FSq and Richard Wade as well.

Gus Snark, take a chill pill. You are wilfully hung up on the minutiae of Catholicism rather than the essence of what Christ taught. Virtually nothing on your list was taught by Christ. HE taught that the most important thing was to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. That’s it. Christians who do otherwise are violating his primary tenet. The rest is fluff.

You may not believe in a God, but how about the second part? Do you have a problem with that? Do you have anything that comes close? What embodiment of moral law do you espouse that you list all the man-made beliefs and ignore the central tenet of Christianity?

BTW, do you really believe that condoms “prevent” deadly HIV/AIDS with any reliable certainty? Are you kidding me? Do you want gays in committed relationships to have legal rights that flow from such a committed relationship, or do you want to re-define the meaning of “marriage” in the English language for political expediency?

 Bingo.

 Are you saying that the following didn’t happen?

“The Nazis gutted the Christian calendar, Christmas traditions and
carols, and repopulated them with pagan and Nazi imagery. Christmas
became the Solstice, St. Nicholas became Odin, the star of Bethlehem
became a swastika. Ratzinger saw all this happen in front of his two
eyes.”

Of course he was. And what kind of Christian? Was he an obedient Catholic? A devout Protestant churchgoer?

No. He was a flaming liberal Christian. A positivist Christian who believed in Christ as a preacher, fighter, and community organizer. Who believed the original true Christianity was hopelessly corrupted by the Apostle Paul Who rejected the Old Testament.

Anyway, Hitler wasn’t the only Nazi was he? The whole movement was positively shot through with neopaganism and race occultism.

So, you allow that in fact…

The Nazis gutted the Christian calendar, Christmas traditions and carols, and repopulated them with pagan and Nazi imagery. Christmas became the Solstice, St. Nicholas became Odin, the star of Bethlehem became a swastika. Ratzinger saw all this happen in front of his two eyes.

“No. I do NOT allow that, because that claim that Hitler “gutted the Christian calendar, etc” is NOTHING MORE THAN CHRISTIAN LIES.”

Oh my, okay, take a deep breath and quit clutching the pearls.

So, BESIDES the CHRISTIAN LIES about the calendar gutting, you allow the rest of it.  Okay.

Wow, I think your bowels are gonna blow up again.

So, I can’t read worth shit, but you seem to think that I’ve made a comment about Hitler and his status as a Christian.  In fact, I’ve not made any statement about Hitler.

See, you say you deny my entire claim, but then appositvely you mention the thing about Hitler being Christian.  So, in my reportedly not-worth-shit reading comprehension I come away thinking that you’re thinking that my claim is about Hitler not being a Christian (I love the 100% part; pure genius of you on the rhetorical side of things btw).

Rather, I asked you…

Well hell, let me start all over, and please note, this is not about Hitler, it doesn’t mention Hitler, and I don’t want you to wax apoplectic about Hitler again.

Here goes…

Are you saying that the following didn’t happen?

“The Nazis gutted the Christian calendar, Christmas traditions and carols, and repopulated them with pagan and Nazi imagery. Christmas became the Solstice, St. Nicholas became Odin, the star of Bethlehem became a swastika. Ratzinger saw all this happen in front of his two eyes.”

Please note that Hitler isn’t mentioned.  And I allow that you’ve already pointed out the reportedly unassailable absolute objective never to be doubted fact of history that the Nazis NEVER gutted the Christian calendar, so let’s not get gassy over that one.

Oh, and one more thing…

Does “you fucking idiot” short for “you are a fucking idiot” or is it short for “you are fucking an idiot”?

It’s all so confusing some times.

Never underestimate the power of frothing bilious bigotry.

Oh, go fuck yourself.

You keep moving the goalposts, there — your initial claim was that Hitler was a neo-pagan.

Now, I don’t doubt that the Nazis co-opted a few neo-pagan symbols, but your argument necessarily implies that the Nazi party-line was NOT, in fact, based on Christianity, when it very clearly was. You know, it’s kinda the whole reason they targeted Jews…

“Oh go fuck yourself,” she explained!  LOL!

“You keep moving the goalposts, there — your initial claim was that Hitler was a neo-pagan.”

Maybe you should sit down, what with your overly developed sense of superior reading comprehension and all, because well, the fact is that you’re thinking of someone else.

I did not claim that Hitler was a neo pagan; that was someone else. 

You know, I even went to extreme lengths to explain to you that I had not made any claim about Hitler.  Yet, you persist in this fantasy that I made a claim about Hitler.

Well I did claim that I didn’t make a claim about Hitler, so that’s kinda a claim about Hitler, but that was after the fact, and I’m kinda sorry that I brought it up because I fear it will only confuse you more.

So, when your episode passes and you are once again lucid, go back and read what came before and you’ll see that, WOW, in fact, I did not make that claim about Hitler!

But hey, to the larger point that you obviously have a great deal of interest, emotional and otherwise, vested in the idea that Naziism was all about be a Christian, I say if you’re that far gone on the idea who am I to try to disuade you of it even if I wanted to.

And I’m not saying I want to.

It’s just, well, I think you need a rest.

When you feel better, go and look and you’ll see that you are thinking of someone else with the whole Hitler-not-Christian thing.

I have faith in you, oops!  Ha! That’s a good one.  I mean I have confidence in you.  You can do it.

I don’t know about getting around the buckles, especially since they go back to at least WW I.  The regular army wore them also in WWII.  Of course the regular army, or the Wehrmacht weren’t necessarily Nazis.  The Waffen SS (pretty much all Nazis (or, to borrow a phrase 100% Nazi)) wore a different buckle that read “Meine Ehre heißt Treue (‘My honour is loyalty’).”

I don’t think that gets around anything, but it’s interesting.

Oh, go back under your bridge, you ugly sack of troll-shit.

 http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u103/wmdkitty/Demotivators/RedForeman_dumbass-1.jpg

Bupkis, you got bupkis.

But I undertand your need to use fewer words and more pictures.  I mean, it makes sense.
Does Texas Instruments still make the Speak & Spell?

 So, you finally admit you’re a troll.

Great! Maybe now Hemant can ban your warty ass for deliberately provoking people…

No.  I admit no such thing.  I deny that having too much fun at your expense equates to being a troll.

In any event, if you feel that strongly about it, and apparently you do, perhaps you should take it up with Hemant directly.

I’m sure he will give your request all the attention it is due.

 Alconnelly, seriously, have you read the UN resolution in question?  Specifically, the draft under consideration and commented upon in the articles found at the links you provided?

What I make up for in grammar, I lack in spelling.

Can we use the Ray Comfort argument in reverse that she wasn’t a real Atheist in the first place?

(laughed out loud @ “flying monkeys”)  You sir, are a breath of fresh air in what has become a rather smelly trash heap of  a society…continue being exactly the same person please 🙂