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[redwallzyl]

do you think the Catholic will ever reconcile with the Eastern Orthodox church? its my understanding that the east will only acknowledge the pope if he renounces the primacy over the other patriarchs.

[GavJ]

I'm sure the church does intend to remain consistent as much as possible and do so more so than most institutions. But they do make mistakes / change their mind on important matters.

If the claim was just something like "The church is always correct, and when they change their mind, it's because that was the correct time to change their minds" then fine, I would still be confused about when and how the infallibility kicks in, exactly, etc., but this wouldn't necessarily be internally inconsistent. However, to claim "dogma never changes" is a more stringent claim, and that one just seems to be not true:

Modern catechism:

1258    The Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This Baptism of blood, like the desire for Baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament.

vs. the directly contradictory Pope Eugenius, 1441 AD:

...no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.

and

Pope Pius XII 1943:

Actually only those are to be numbered among the members of the Church who have received the laver of regeneration and profess the true faith, and have not, to their misfortune, separated themselves from the structure of the Body, or for very serious sins have not been excluded by lawful authority.

Pope Innocent III 1215AD, who adds extra qualifiers and very forcefully clarifies that he really is talking about EVERYONE:

Indeed, there is but one universal Church of the faithful outside of which no one at all is saved.

Pope Boniface VIII, 1302AD, who seems pretty explicit in there not being any loopholes here:

We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

St. Thomas Aquinas:

It is shown also that it is necessary for salvation to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

Bible:

He will punish those who do not know God… they will be punished with everlasting destruction…
~ 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9

Yet now, contradicting all this, in the modern catechism:

847. "This affirmation [that outside of the church, there is no salvation], is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church

If this is not clear evidence of changing dogmas, then what is it? Again, I wouldn't mind if they changed their dogmas and simply said it was the correct thing to do. But saying they haven't in the first place is something that can be checked prettye asily with evidence and doesn't seem to pan out...

[BlindKitty]

So, OK, I will chime in (again); I'm probably less versed in this stuff than Dsarker, but I might know a thing or two. I'm not native English speaker, which makes some explanations harder for me, but I will try my best nevertheless, again.

I will start editing this post to answer as much stuff as possible soon.

Just keep in mind, my dear atheists, that whatever argument you have found, somebody probably have found it before, and it was answered by smarter people than me (like, St. Thomas, for example); so even if I can't find an answer, that doesn't mean there isn't one, and just because you think you have original idea, doesn't really mean that you have.

@GavJ - regarding changing doctrine and dogmas:

The short answer is: not everything that Pope says is doctrine. Not to mention dogma. And even they can be wrong about stuff. This is especially relevant to the first quote you present, getting only one counter-example to what is stated in modern catechism, even if it was spoken by the Pope.
As for the second set of quotes:
Quote of Pope Pius XII is completely irrelevant to the canon 847, as it explicitly talks about people who have separated themselves from the structure of the Body; this means that they have heard the Gospel and chosen not to be part of the church; Bible quote is intentionally misinterpreted by you, as the full verses say:

8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might

and it is clear from the second part of the 8th verse that "do not know God" means here "actively do not know God", as in act as there is not God (and thus disobey the Gospel). In multiple places in this chapter it is noted that faithful will be rewarded, and later in the same letter it is spoken about the deceivers, and that Thessalonians should know the truth. Nothing there suggest that God is going to actively punish people who have not heard of Him; this is reinforced by the fact that Thessaloniki are in Greece, one of the places where it was easiest and fastest to spread the word of God and most people there should have heard of it, but might not have chosen to follow it.
The rest of the quotes there seems to have similar purpose, and be more about heretics, than people who never heard the Gospel; those were all spoken at times when most, if not all people in the world were considered to either know the word of God (in Europe), be heathens, nevertheless knowing the word of God (Middle East/Africa) or be non-existent (no Americas for you, and barely any knowledge of Asia; the parts of Asia that were known then also have, in general, heard about Christianity).
Also, the quotes from single people, still. Those can not be considered doctrine just because you found them, you know? The doctrine is written down and passed down the generations, and becomes important part of the Church Tradition (capital T).

I will try to continue later, but time is scarce now.

[GavJ]

This is a separate question, that came to me while I was looking into the above quotes, and is not part of the above argument.

Why are there catholic evangelists? In fact, why would you even teach your children about catholicism?

1) The catholic church apparently is saying now that people ignorant of Christ and the Church's teachings will not be punished.
2) Thus, anybody who you don't tell about Catholicism is saved by default through their ignorance which is "no fault of their own"
3) Isn't the obvious conclusion that all good catholics should go out of their way to never tell anybody about catholicism who hasn't already heard?
4) Eventually, if nobody was left alive in the world who remembered the teachings of the Church or Christ, then according to the catechism, since everybody would from there on out be ignorant "through no fault of their own", wouldn't 100% of all people for the rest of time be automatically saved?
5) Thus, it seems like this catechism should be encouraging anti-evangelism. Not only not evangelizing, but actually going around trying to stop other people from evangelizing, because they can't possibly save any additional souls (can't go higher than default 100%), but they can potentially reduce the number of saved souls by removing the protective ignorance...

For your own children, it might be safer to teach them, actually, because if you practice christianity yourself, it's too risky that they accidentally overhear / etc. and lose their ignorance, maybe without you even knowing it (if they don't mention it). But for complete strangers, it is still a decent sounding strategy. Especially strangers in faraway island nations and things that missionaries had to go way the hell out of their way to get to, yes? There was no risk of them accidentally overhearing.

Just keep in mind, my dear atheists

(I for one am not an atheist, by the way)

[Arx]

What religion do you practice? It might help people in answering your questions.

[GavJ]

Blindkitty, the reason I was focusing on that example, is because "outside of the church there is no salvation" has been one of the central doctrines for many hundreds of years. These popes' comments on it are comments about solemn doctrine, most of them above are recorded from formal ecumenical gatherings/councils, too, not just from tea time on some random Wednesday afternoon with the pope in a cafe.

There are tons of minor examples of non-doctrinal things that popes disagree about constantly, like exact rituals and who gets to eat what on which days exactly and blah blah. They aren't supposed to be infallible on those issues, nor is the church. Which is why I am not bringing them up.

But "no salvation outside the church" is a core dogma, being discussed above in official settings, which is generally defined as within the zone of infallibility for popes.


Arx: none, but just not an atheist. As a professional scientist, I have been trained (and personally agree from my own perspective anyway) that it is impossible to prove a negative. It is especially impossible to do so with simply lack of evidence alone. So I don't see how atheism can ever be justified any more so than any positive belief in a God in a context of no direct observations.

[Sheb]

Well, good point, you've exceeded the sum total of my knowledge of things, I'm curious to see what Dsarker has to say.

Also, I always find it funny that people refuse to identify as atheist because you can't prove a negative. Do you also refuse to believe that lizardmen do not control the world?

[Arx]

Can't rule it out. I never did trust Obama...

* Arx looks around shiftily.

[GavJ]

Do you also refuse to believe that lizardmen do not control the world?

As a 100% for sure conclusion? I can't say whether they do or don't.

Of course I lean toward them not controlling it. But it's a poor comparison, because at the same time, I have an avalanche of direct observations that seem to suggest that people other than lizardmen control the world. Whereas in the case of God, it's zero direct observations of God (just because I don't have any, not because they are impossible) versus zero direct observations of not-God (because those are impossible).

So the lizardmen versus state human governments = not even close to a tie in terms of evidence
but God vs. not-God = a tie in terms of evidence

[Sheb]

You're the one doing poor comparison, because you're comparing A v. non-A with A v. B.

If I say that I have plenty of evidence that physical laws, not God, control the world (like your lizardmen vs. human governance), you'll rightly point out that one does not rule out the other. Likewise, lizardmen could control the world through humans.

Anyway, my point still stand: sure you cannot prove that God doesn't exist, because from a purely logical point of view you cannot prove that anything does not exist. But then, at some point, we just accept that something for which we have no evidence does not exist (even though it's not proven), because it just makes common sense. You don't believe Russel's teapot exist for example. Yet, when it comes to God, lots of people suddenly refuse to take position. Why?

[GavJ]

Uh I didn't bring up any A v. B comparisons. I am reacting to those others brought up.
Me: "Apples."
Others: "But what about oranges?"
Me: [goes about comparing apples and oranges, since people explicitly brought it up and asked]
Others: "You can't compare apples and oranges!!!"

 

at some point, we just accept that something for which we have no evidence does not exist (even though it's not proven), because it just makes common sense

People may indeed factually tend to do what you describe, but what you describe is neither logical nor scientific. Nothing about time merely passing makes something a better conclusion. If zero evidence has been accumulated on either side of the discussion, then the issue has not changed, and there is no reason to ever update one's opinion until that situation does change.

[Sheb]

Yeah, the fact remains that you don't believe in God, you're an atheist. The fact that i's not logically possible to prove something don't exist is just a trick you use to hide behind for some reasons. Or do you also refuse to say you believe fairies and Santa don't exist?

[Arx]

It looks at this point like you're trying to shame him into abandoning his viewpoint, which is a pretty cheap and meaningless shot.

It's perfectly reasonable to say that fairies are as likely to exist as not, as there is no reason to say they couldn't be hiding in only partially explored regions of Earth.
It's reasonable to say Santa Claus doesn't exist, as he is alleged to visit every house in the world at midnight to deliver presents, which is an easily disprovable statement.

Also we're currently arguing because of/about our unclear definition of atheism. It seems kind of pointless.

[Sheb]

Okay, maybe I come out as more aggressive than I want. What about homeopathy then? Is perfectly reasonable to say it's as likely to work as not? (I mean, we might just have missed the effect in all our studies!)

The point is that although you cannot logically prove something doesn't exist, you kinda have to accept stuff doesn't exist when you don't have evidence for it. So while I can understand someone believing in God because he felt a divine presence or had some pretty unlikely thing happens to him that he accepts as evidence, I honestly cannot understand someone saying there is not a shred of evidence in favor of God's existence and still refusing to call himself an atheist.

[Arx]

I think we're somehow talking past each other.

You assert that there is no evidence in favour of the existence of a divine force. In light of this lack of evidence, it should be clear that there is no divine force.

GavJ and I assert that there is no evidence to disprove the existence of a divine force. In light of this lack of evidence, it should be clear that it is possible for a divine force to exist.

Is this correct?

Edit: homeopathy, like Santa, involves a clear base statement: diluting a medicine makes it more effective (I think. Not too up on homeopathy). This, like Santa can have evidence accrued against it easily. The vast majority (all?) of studies show homeopathy to be false.

It is impossible to make similar studies on the existence of a divine power without either side being able to handwave them.