Catholic Schizophrenia

[StregaModerator]

Johan, you are welcome to post thoughtful or original comments here. You are not welcome to proselytise (or preach or post chunks of religious texts.)

If you want to publicly share your religious insights, please don’t expect interest from an atheist membership. After all, the only reason atheists exist, is because of theistic impositions.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by  Strega.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

It’s nice that you are so well-mannered Johan.  But proselytising and preaching is against the house rules.

[JohanParticipant]

jakelafort wrote:

Johan, sorry about your psychotic break. Hopefully it is a pleasant delusion. And when you transition back to baseline may you have even greater prophetic insight.

Sure.  But it is not a “delusion” but real for all who knows me.  As you can see in the Reality of my Daughter, Jesus.  Who is in this particular case, Anna Mary. 

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by  Johan.

[Belle RoseParticipant]

@unseen

I think the Catholic church is just an institution that is always been about controlling people. It’s about control and that’s it.

[Belle RoseParticipant]

@Johan

I think you’re just trying to play a prank.

[jakelafortParticipant]

I’d give him mad props were he pranking us. Unfortunately it is not a prank. It is psychosis.

[Belle RoseParticipant]

😂 😂 😂

[DrBobParticipant]

Oh, I don’t think we’re any more schizophrenic than anyone else.

For the record, Dia de Los Muertos is not a Catholic holiday or celebration, official or otherwise, and some practices are discouraged by the Church.   It’s a cultural celebration, much like the 4th of July or Memorial Day is in the U.S.  Priests may visit cemeteries with parishioners on Memorial Day; masses with prayers for the country are held on the 4th of July, but that doesn’t make either of those holidays Catholic.   God and Catholicism often embrace people where they’re at, and at times take cultural elements and make them holy.   After all, that’s what Jesus did with the bread and wine of the Jewish seder celebration, right?

It’s not just a developing world thing by any means.  German, and German-American, and now American Catholics have Christmas trees, after all.  My church had several over the Christmas season.

Not everyone, after all, is or should be a scientist.  God has to speak to each individual in the language he/she/whatever understands, and the Church in its own imperfect, sometimes stupid, often exasperating, but very human way follows suit.  For a curmudgeonly old physicist, it may be the endless fascination of the universe and the subtle laws by which it is constructed.  Even such old physicists also still appreciate the festive hopefulness of Christmas trees or the prayerful scent of incense, though.  We humans are nothing if not complex!

As to some of the other bits:

• Every youth-serving organization, from churches to schools to universities (and scouts, and sports programs, and social service agencies, and…)  “covered up abuse”.  To tar one but not the others is a measure of your prejudice, but not of anything else.
• No, it doesn’t take me 20 hours a week to practice my religion.  Where in the world did that notion come from?
• Copernicus was a Catholic.  The suppression of Galileo was political rather than scientific, because Galileo was often a plagiarizing ass.  At the time, the actual scientific evidence was against him; it was only many decades later that instrumentation improved to the point where heliocentrism became more viable.   That work, too, was mostly done by Catholics; in fact, the Vatican still funds a reasonable astronomy / astrophysics research group.
• I can see where someone might think that the Catholic Church “represents authoritarianism”, in that we do still have a lot of trappings from when the Church was struggling with various secular kings.  “You may be a king, but Christ is the King of kings; you may have a crown, but the pope has 3 crowns!” sort of thing.   That would be a pretty ill-informed notion, however, since Catholicism has also supported union movements and democracies and even today espouses an official doctrine of exercising a preferential option for the poor.

My favorite, though, are always @Reg’s quirky absurdities.   I am amused by them (“A vegetarian cannot be a Catholic!”).  I do worry, though, about the sort of intellectual bullying that lies at the heart of such approaches.  It’s way too much like “punching down” for my tastes.   One can beat up on anyone who isn’t well-informed on any subject, whether it’s their own Catholicism or their own country’s legal structure or just basic maths and geography.  That can be humorous, but it can also be mean.

Anyways, just some random thoughts.  It is true that we Catholics have no particular problem being scientists; indeed I learned experimental method first from a nun in the 2nd grade.

Dr. Bob

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

My favorite, though, are always @Reg’s quirky absurdities.   I am amused by them (“A vegetarian cannot be a Catholic!”)

Great to know Dr. Bob. I have several more such ecumenical delights. Can you explain why I am being illogical…or why my deduction is absurd? I accept fully that the question, upon first hearing it, may sound absurd but this was first put to me by a Hindu who knows very little about any branch of Christianity and she has been a vegetarian all her life.

The ‘Real Presence’ is official Catholic doctrine that Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist. According to the Vatican it is not merely symbolic or metaphoric but is actually true and real in a substantial way. In 1 Corinthians Paul, The First Pope is quite clear on the topic.

Do you accept this as factually correct? Am I wrong in my interpretation? There can be no equivocation by “true” Catholics here (even Scottish ones). Catholics today would in fact be arguing with the current Pope if they did not agree.

As an aside – Something my mother often said to me; ”Oh Reg, you would argue with the Pope”. “Yes mom, I would if he was up for the challenge”).

To me eating Jesus implies eating flesh. I don’t think He was made of carrots.

Most professing Catholics I ask (and I have asked hundreds of them) tell me it is symbolic. They see no problem with being a Catholic and a vegetarian. When I correct them on this point, they either get angry at me for making their cognitive dissonance hurt or become piously abusive. It is  NOT symbolic! It is at this point I tell them they are actually Protestants. This has made many of them fast to anger.

Again, if they do not accept the official Church doctrine on Transubstantiation they cannot be Catholics. It like saying “I am a Vegetarian but I eat meat at least once a week”.

One can beat up on anyone who isn’t well-informed on any subject, whether it’s their own Catholicism or their own country’s legal structure or just basic maths and geography. That can be humorous, but it can also be mean.

Transubstantiation is a core tenet of Catholic faith. It is indoctrinated into taught to children in Catholic schools  from the age of five so they can make their “First Communion”.  How can they not be well-informed on this matter? I never try to be mean to them. They come to my house or invite me as an atheist to converse with them. The vast majority of them have an astounding ignorance about their faith. I have even found that many of them don’t own a copy of the book that contains 1 Corinthians.  My debates with them have helped hundreds see the light of reason and they have become atheists. They no longer believe that they can communicate with the Creator of the Universe via telepathy or that they are to become immortals.

Wait, is that another absurdity of mine or is another Catholic absurdity?

[jakelafortParticipant]

Johan has a good excuse. He is mentally ill. Doctor Bob a scientist/apologist?

DrBob writes: God and Catholicism often embrace people where they’re at, and at times take cultural elements and make them holy. After all, that’s what Jesus did with the bread and wine of the Jewish seder celebration, right?

Which god? How do you rationally decide which one? If there is no rational basis to distinguish how is it anything but schizophrenia to adopt Catholicism? Scientific method for you in applying or understanding physics/just accept the BS without any evidence. Taking cultural elements was a way to expedite mass conversion of heathens. All forms of theism claim to be holy. What makes the Catholic claim valid? Nobody today even knows if there was a Jesus. No contemporary accounts. The fact that religions contain the cultural antecedents of the converted heathens and of the prior mythologies/religions is a natural explanation and corroboration that it is manmade as opposed to a reflection of anything real.

DrBob writes: Not everyone, after all, is or should be a scientist. God has to speak to each individual in the language he/she/whatever understands, and the Church in its own imperfect, sometimes stupid, often exasperating, but very human way follows suit.

Not anyone should be born with birth defects or develop cancer at age 3 and yet that is how things are. Not anyone should be born with no defense to the indoctrination utilized in making little Catholic robots and yet that is how things are. BTW since indoctrination has come up in the conversation between Autumn, Simon and Davis here is a quick Oxford definition. See how fitting it is to describe Catholicism by that defintion. in·doc·tri·na·tion
the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.
“prisoners are subjected to brainwashing, indoctrination, and punishment”

DrBob writes: Every youth-serving organization, from churches to schools to universities (and scouts, and sports programs, and social service agencies, and…) “covered up abuse”. To tar one but not the others is a measure of your prejudice, but not of anything else.

Equating the extent, prevalence and breadth of cover-up of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church with sports programs and boy scouts is pathetic. It has gone on unchecked for centuries in the Catholic church. The numbers of abused is utterly staggering. The repeat offenders who are moved and protected by the church is contemptible beyond all words. Furthermore the Catholic Church claims to have a monopoly on morality and concomitantly is a criminal and fraudulent institution. Morons everywhere put their trust in the ones who claim to know. It is the worst violation of a fiduciary duty. There is no doubt that people do bad things inside of churches, outside of churches, in all religions and by those lacking theistic attachments. But secular influences have curbed the monumental and criminal abuse of children by the Catholic church. Were it not for a diminution in its power nothing would have ever changed. Furthermore i have little doubt that pedophiles know that the priesthood is the great opportunity-maker and sanctuary.

DrBob writes: I can see where someone might think that the Catholic Church “represents authoritarianism”, in that we do still have a lot of trappings from when the Church was struggling with various secular kings. “You may be a king, but Christ is the King of kings; you may have a crown, but the pope has 3 crowns!” sort of thing. That would be a pretty ill-informed notion, however, since Catholicism has also supported union movements and democracies and even today espouses an official doctrine of exercising a preferential option for the poor.

Represents authoritarianism? YES IN THE MOST OBVIOUS AND EMETIC WAYS!

What did it do when it had the power? That is the only way to get to the essence of a human being or an institution. Oh i don’t know. Some minor faux pas or little pecadillos like inquisitions. Autos de fe. Crusades. Kindness to putative heretics. Forced conversion of indigenous peoples. Murder and torture of indigenous children. Sure there was a power struggle between kings and Popes. The wielding of authority depended on the supremacy of the Papacy. Or was the Church simply as Bob says struggling with various secular kings? Those kings and those popes were complicit in deceiving the populace that they ruled through divine right. The Catholic Church utilized its power in the most authoritarian and unjust way as long as it could. Fortunately in many circles and especially among younger folks it is a bit of an anachronism or house of charlatanism.

Church has supported union movements, democracies and even a policy favoring the poor, says Bob. Yeah not long ago there was a Concordat supporting Hitler. Two authoritarians smooching. How quaint. Churches support authoritarianism most of the time. And after the war Cardinals helped Nazi war criminals change identities and get situated in foreign nations to live out their lives without being tried for their crimes. How quaint. So if in this particular cause of empowering workers the Catholic Church was on the right side does that in any meaningful way excuse them from their authoritarianism and crimes against humanity? If so Hitler is excused for being nice to his gf and petting his shepherd.

DrBob writes: My favorite, though, are always @Reg’s quirky absurdities. I am amused by them (“A vegetarian cannot be a Catholic!”). I do worry, though, about the sort of intellectual bullying that lies at the heart of such approaches. It’s way too much like “punching down” for my tastes. One can beat up on anyone who isn’t well-informed on any subject, whether it’s their own Catholicism or their own country’s legal structure or just basic maths and geography. That can be humorous, but it can also be mean.

How disingenous of Doctor Bob. Intellectual bullying? And yet he is an apologist for the Catholic Church. That is rich. So kids who were asking priests/nuns questions and had their hands slapped hard with rulers or were tortured for questioning were not being intellectually bullied? The entire edifice of Catholicism depends on intellectually bullying. Otherwise faith would not be required. (See how the numbers are diminishing without that bullying?) Or you worry about Reg bullying when he is taking the Catholic Church at its word and applying that to life? The former is not an issue with you Bob? How utterly transparent.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

Yes, The Roman Catholic Church was and is more receptive to Aristote’s Syllogistic Reasoning, but only as “The Handmaiden of Theology,” not as an means of independently discovering truth when combined with the evidence of the senses.

The Church via St. Thomas Aquinas also cribbed Aristotle’s college try known as The Five Proofs for God, but even then, they still conceded that God was ultimately a matter of Faith.

The Church also conceded the truth of Evolution and other scientific theories. However, this was most likely precisely because of Popes and Clergy making asses of themselves over Galileo. They didn’t want to make the same mistake twice and get dragged through the mud for yet another 400 years before making a ham-handed apology.

True, Friar Gregor Mendel was the Father of Genetics and Catholic Clergyman Georges Lemaître was the first proponent of The Big Bang Theory, but it was what they did in their labs, observatories, and studies that made their work scientific, not what they did in Pews, Confession Booths, and Vespers.

It should also be added that The Roman Catholic Church also supported the pseudoscience of Phlogiston Chemistry (“Nature abhors a vacuum,”) as well as the pseudoscience of Eugenics, though they didn’t favor contraception or abortion as a means of implementing Eugenics.

In other words, any good thing The Roman Catholic Church or any other Church did for Science could be done without the Churches and with no baggage.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

DrBob,

Every youth-serving organization, from churches to schools to universities (and scouts, and sports programs, and social service agencies, and…) “covered up abuse”. To tar one but not the others is a measure of your prejudice, but not of anything else.

While all this is indeed true, (and the drive-you-to-drink-truth is that no institution with adults over children is ever 100% safe for children,) those other institutions do not claim to be a Sovereign State like Vatican City and use Sovereign Immunity and Diplomatic Immunity to cover up, excuse, and justify their crimes.

Also, scouting, sports, and social services also operate in partnership with and as an extension of Churches, so there is that.

[Belle RoseParticipant]

Reg is actually right. They would be considered a Protestant if it’s only “symbolic” 😂

[DrBobParticipant]

@Reg, it’s sometimes hard to tell whether you take yourself seriously.

I once had a European friend who would come over for American football games.  After a few beers he would delight in tormenting the rest of us with questions like “Why do all the big guys in armor take orders from the little guys who look like Zebras?  Do the zebra guys have guns?”

One can play the deconstruction game with anything… football, religion, science, politics, art.  All human endeavor is at some level silly and sometimes it’s worth making fun of the lot.  Most of us outgrow that sort of thing as teenagers or at least undergraduates.  We come to understand that it doesn’t really show that we’re smart, but rather that we’re shallow.

So yes, I believe in the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist.  But no, that doesn’t mean I’m a cannibal or can’t be a vegetarian.  St. John Chrysostom, St. Anthony, St. Catherine and a bunch of others were all vegetarians.

Just like the rules and nuances of football, one needs to have an “insider’s view” to meaningfully critique.  Though commenting as an outsider on surface features is occasionally humorous (“Why does every guy on the altar wear a dress?  I thought Catholics weren’t into that…”).

[DrBobParticipant]

Good heavens, @jakelafort!  That’s quite a Gish Gallop.   I fear I would take up 20+ pages of prose trying to address each accusation flung my way.

Suffice to say that both as a scientist and as a Catholic I’m all for the mass-education of “heathens” as you put it.  Education is a good thing.  Leaving behind indigenous health care in favor of scientific understandings and systems of public health is a good thing.  Lots less disease that way.  Subsuming tribal identities into more universal identities is a good thing.  Lots less war that way.  Yes, all of education requires a “conversion” of some sort, from one way of looking at the world to another.  That’s just what old academics like me call “learning.”  Yes, any sort of learning that someone doesn’t happen to like will be called “indoctrination” by those opposed to education.  Right now in the U.S. my university and others are being tarred with “indoctrination” by our far right wing, because we have the temerity to teach things like evolution and whatnot.  I make no apology for teaching.

One of the things that leads to a lot of evil and ill will in the world is when we thoughtlessly personify groups and institutions.  Modern atheism is quick to resist that – any effort to generalize atheist thought is met with vociferous objections and a mantra of “atheism is just not believing in god(s)!!”.  It’s curious therefore why you insist on trying to cast billions of Catholics throughout history into some monolithic, personified straw man.  Institutions and belief systems are not people.

Yes, Catholics now and throughout history have been murders and thieves and tyrants, full of greed and sexual perversions.  Church leaders in particular both now and in the past can often be arrogant, foolish, petty, and wicked.  We’ve had some popes who were just plain nuts.   We’ve never claimed otherwise.  Go read Dante’s Inferno and count up the number of bishops and popes he consigns to various circles of hell.

And yet… there have also been saints, and kind people, and leaders today and throughout history who have put their lives on the line trying to do good, and many now and in the past who have given up all they own and are.  We still run schools and hospitals in places where no one else will; we still inspire art and music and literature.

If you expect Catholics to be something better than human, then you are creating a myth that even we would not endorse.  The same, by the way, applies to science as well as any other human group or endeavor.  Science and scientists now and throughout the ages have our own cast of fools and villains and perverts, people we have killed or seriously harmed through malice and ignorance and arrogance.   None of that means that the enterprise of science is unworthy.

I suspect you have been harmed by someone religious in your past.  If that is the case, then on behalf of the rest of us, I apologize.

In kindness,

Dr. Bob

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