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<p>I’m aware of that. But the less it happens, the closer you are to the original truth. And theologians who spread interpretations of scripture are different from clergy who state that what they say IS the only true will of God.</p>
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<p>That’s only if you believe that they had any sense of the “original truth” in the first place.</p>
<p>If I believed, say, that the institution were endowed with a higher authority that was God-given, you would have what objection? That they are “farther” from the Truth because you arbitrarily dismiss their claim to moral authority and substitute your own?</p>
<p>LOL</p>
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<p>They’re getting ready to create a Black Hole over there, even though nobody knows for sure that it will dissapate as expected since nobody has ever made one before. If it doesn’t, then it will slowly consume the Earth.</p>
<p>Now, I’m sure the odds of that are small, but still…</p>
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<p>Huh? Why arbitrarily a couple? What “certain positions”? If a military possessed the ability to start armageddon, no doubt there would be checks within that organization in order to ascertain that armageddon would not ensue merely because “a couple of people went off the deep end.”</p>
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<p>Yes, very small. No, they are not trying to create black holes. Why would they do that? Also, people had similar concerns about the RHIC.</p>
<p>EDIT: Also, the LHC has been operational since Nov 2009.</p>
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<p>When I feel that a religious teacher is not in accordance with the Bible, I consider the Bible to have a higher authority.</p>
<p>I am not trying to bash Catholics by any means. A good Catholic is much better than a bad Protestant. Also, modern Catholicism is much better than what some parts of it had become at the time of the Reformation. However, I do not believe that the clergy are divinely inerrant.</p>
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So, basically, when you feel that a religious teacher is not in accordance with what another religious teacher wrote long ago, you arbitrarily select the older teaching?</p>
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<p>I agree. I’m just saying that it’s a little na</p>
<p>^Sithis is correct. And in a larger context, “older” can be omitted completely, as you are basically arbitrarily selecting a philosophy.</p>
<p>Which is fine, it’s just nice to be aware that your beliefs are, as mentioned, totally arbitrary (everyone who is not a moral nihilist makes these same arbitrary judgments). Your appeal to the Bible is only convincing to those who accept those same premises.</p>
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<p>This isn’t a discussion of Catholicism. And Catholics do not believe that the clergy are divinely inerrant.</p>
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<p>Like all Christians, I believe that Jesus was not just a religious teacher, but the Christ, God incarnate on Earth.</p>
<p>Given that, yes, I do consider his words as passed down by those who actually witnessed them to be more reliable than the opinions of men millenia after the actual events.</p>
<p>^^ Some of them have in the past, which is one of the things I was referring to when I said that “institutionalized” religion was bad. I agree, modern Catholicism is much improved (not that there weren’t good Catholics in the past, but there were also some very notable bad ones back then) and the differences with other denominations have grown small.</p>
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I agree. I’m just saying that it’s a little na</p>
<p>I do agree that, at its very base, any morality starts with assumptions that are either arbitrary or at least based on personal experiences that are not scientifically quantifiable.</p>
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<p>Huh? Jesus wrote the Bible?</p>
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<p>I haven’t read the Bible in a long time, but I didn’t realize that it was entirely a narration by Jesus, or that it was dictated by Jesus.</p>
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<p>But one who distorts the meaning of the Bible and condones stoning is not a valid argument against having the Bible at all, unless one believes it to be false in the first place (or believes suppression of truth is at times morally justified). </p>
<p>In other words, your argument has as its underlying assumption that no institutional religion is correct, yet you are not willing to extend that argument to your own beliefs.</p>
<p>^^^^ No, nobody did. I just felt like presenting the alternative argument to “full steam ahead science, nobody will abuse it!”</p>
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<p>The Bible consists of:</p>
<p>The Old Testament, which gives the history of Israel, outlines the Jewish faith, and contains various books of prophecy and wisdom.</p>
<p>The New Testament, which consists of accounts written by Jesus’s disciples of his ministry and teachings, as well as a number of letters written by different people who were close to Jesus which further explain the Christian faith as begun by Jesus. It also contains the cryptic book of Revelation, in which the apostle John describes a vision he saw of the end of this world.</p>
<p>So yes, the New Testament, which Christian doctrine comes from, is almost entirely an account of the teachings of Jesus, as taught by Him to the early disciples. The letters of the New Testament are written by Jesus’s companions, but are accounts of His teachings, with the interesting exception of one passage in 1st Corinthians, where Paul, after saying that it is better for people not to marry, specifically states that this is his opinion, not the Lord’s. This has always intrigued me. In all else he writes with the authority of Jesus, but in this one case he goes out of his way to state that it is his own opinion, rather than the will of God.</p>
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<p>I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand what you are saying here.</p>
<p>Are you saying “One person distorting the Bible does not invalidate the Bible”? If so, I heartily agree. I also agree that one person distorting Catholicism doesn’t invalidate it.</p>
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<p>I don’t believe that no institutional religion is correct, only that such religions have a tendency towards becoming corrupt.</p>
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<p>No, it’s not; a fallacy of misunderstanding does not exist. </p>
<p>You’d better brush up on your fallacies before throwing that accusation around again.</p>
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<p>I didn’t dispute that at all, and you know full well that the statement above is not the foundation for my objection.</p>
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<p>No, it’s not pointless - in fact, it shows you how you’re wrong. If you’re blind to that, I don’t have much more to say to you.</p>
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<p>I believe that your point has been answered already.</p>
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<p>I just love the rhetoric in this quote. It’s quite lulzy really.</p>
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<p>Obviously. Yet part of your argument against institutional religion is that it has a tendency to be abused. That is only relevant if you do not believe it correct in the first place. At no point is Catholicism specifically being discussed here, so I would appreciate it if you would leave this on a more general level.</p>
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<p>But that’s irrelevant to whether they are, in the deepest sense, correct. “Absolutism” can be a moral good at the same time that it is being used in a corrupt manner. Why even mention this while discussing institutional religion?</p>
<p>You claim that, in general, institutionalized religion is a bad thing because it detracts from YOUR conception of Truth, which you arbitrarily take as uncorrupted and correct.</p>
<p>One who dismisses religion altogether could make that same argument against all religion.</p>
<p>That’s why I’m not understanding what you are trying to accomplish here, other than indirectly draw out the fact that your judgments are totally arbitrary.</p>