does religion/God give people a voice?

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Originally Posted by SentimentalSlop

The Genesis story tells us that God first made the earth and the heavens, then there was light and darkness, land and water, the sun and the moon and the stars, then there was fish and other wildlife in the seas and birds, then there was land animals, and finally man and woman. How do we know what "days" really meant here? It could have been millions of years.

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But I thought that Roman Catholics accepted that this was just a story, and that science now gives the full picture, that's certainly what the last Pope thought. He said:

"According to the widely accepted scientific account, the universe erupted 15 billion years ago in an explosion called the 'Big Bang' and has been expanding and cooling ever since. Later there gradually emerged the conditions necessary for the formation of atoms, still later the condensation of galaxies and stars, and about 10 billion years later the formation of planets. In our own solar system and on earth (formed about 4.5 billion years ago), the conditions have been favorable to the emergence of life. While there is little consensus among scientists about how the origin of this first microscopic life is to be explained, there is general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.5–4 billion years ago. Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholi..._and_evolution

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

But I thought that Roman Catholics accepted that this was just a story, and that science now gives the full picture, that's certainly what the last Pope thought. He said:

"According to the widely accepted scientific account, the universe erupted 15 billion years ago in an explosion called the 'Big Bang' and has been expanding and cooling ever since. Later there gradually emerged the conditions necessary for the formation of atoms, still later the condensation of galaxies and stars, and about 10 billion years later the formation of planets. In our own solar system and on earth (formed about 4.5 billion years ago), the conditions have been favorable to the emergence of life. While there is little consensus among scientists about how the origin of this first microscopic life is to be explained, there is general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.5–4 billion years ago. Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholi..._and_evolution

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I believe that was Pope John Paul II, and not the last Pope, which was Pope Benedict XVI., but I could be mistaken.

Yep - John Paul II, for the International Theological Commission; 2002, published in Communion and Stewardship, 2004. Didn't sound like Benedict; no German accent.

Yes, it comes from the document Communion and Stewardship, 2004, written by several people and submitted to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the President of the International Theological Commission, who gave permission for publication, before he became Pope Benedict XVI, during the reign of Pope John Paul II.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/co...rdship_en.html

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

It comes from a document endorsed by Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, during the reign of Pope John Paul II.

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Later endorsed by, as it would have been by all the Cardinals since it was ex cathedra, but the Roman Curia was still the province of John Paul at the time.

Doesn't matter, really; that's one of the great things about Wiki - it's the product of the average person. "One deviation below the mean," was, I believe, the phrasing of the most recent HEW report, referencing the measurement of IQ against the previous report (2000). That's certainly what I want as a reference tool - an encyclopedia written by folks with an average IQ of 85.

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Originally Posted by Eman Resu

Later endorsed by, as it would have been by all the Cardinals since it was ex cathedra, but the Roman Curia was still the province of John Paul at the time.

Doesn't matter, really; that's one of the great things about Wiki - it's the product of the average person. "One deviation below the mean," was, I believe, the phrasing of the most recent HEW report, referencing the measurement of IQ against the previous report (2000). That's certainly what I want as a reference tool - an encyclopedia written by folks with an average IQ of 85.

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How could that be? They beat me by 5. I got 80.

BTW, did you know that the peace treaty between Argentina and Chile was executed in The Vatican supervised by John Paul? Argentinean constitution clearly stated that there was separation of church and state.

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Originally Posted by cafolini

How could that be? They beat me by 5. I got 80.

BTW, did you know that the peace treaty between Argentina and Chile was executed in The Vatican supervised by John Paul? Argentinean constitution clearly stated that there was separation of church and state.

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Wasn't the Vatican invited to mediate the "Beagle conflict" by both Argentina and Chile, or was it simply that Argentina bowed to the Vatican's intercession because of the predominance of Roman Catholics there?

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Originally Posted by Eman Resu

Wasn't the Vatican invited to mediate the "Beagle conflict" by both Argentina and Chile, or was it simply that Argentina bowed to the Vatican's intercession because of the predominance of Roman Catholics there?

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Yes that's what I'm talking about, the Beagle Conflict. Argentina took the initiative because of the predominance. Chile already had a good-sized Anglican element. But because the subject was peace, Chile rolled along on ethics.

However, beware that Argentina is very fascist and the Roman predominance might be a need for survival. The statistics are taken from government forms and applications for work where 98% of Argentineans will declare themselves Roman Catholics whether or not they go to church.

CIA fact books says for Argentina: nominally Roman Catholic 92% (less than 20% practicing).

The first papal visit to Britain in 1982 highlighted an infamous example of the Roman Catholic church siding with fascism. When the Vatican had agreed to the visit, they didn't foresee that war between Britain and Catholic Argentina would coincide with the papal visit. Normally the Vatican shrouds its political activities under the guise of religion and lofty pronouncements. On this occasion fast moving developments caught the Vatican off balance, and caught the pope making common cause with a sordid Latin American dictatorship.

http://www.wallsofjericho.info/index...&Itemid=68#The Argentine military junta and the Catholic Church

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Originally Posted by SentimentalSlop

Because he never once mentions marriage consisting of two men or two women. Nowhere in the Bible is it mentioned as such. He mentions it solely as a man/woman relationship.

19 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. 2 Large crowds followed him, and he cured them there.

3 Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?” 8 He said to them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery.”[a]

10 His disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” 11 But he said to them, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”

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Good grief, Jesus talks about marriage (which at that time was of course between man and woman) in answer to the Pharisees who were trying to trap him into admitting that he thought the divorce laws barbaric, and you conclude that he considered homosexuality a sin? Where on earth did that come from? This isn't even twisting Jesus's words, it's putting your own words into Jesus's mouth. No wonder the atheists are mocking us, if we substitute Jesus's gospel of love with the Gospel of Homophobia according to Sentimental Slop.

Beware of false prophets. A tree can be identified by the fruit it bears. If you are being taught anything that causes hatred, you can be sure that it came from man, and not from God. All the major religions that I know of preach preach mercy, love, compassion blah blah, and yet the believers are so ready to criminalize and find guilty large groups of people who never did them any harm - homosexuals, infidels, blasphemers, idolaters etc etc, and say God told them to do it. We have enough sin in this world without trying to find it in places where it doesn't exist.

Mal4mac, I'll answer your post #268 later. It is far more complicated than this one.

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Originally Posted by mona amon

No wonder the atheists are mocking us, if we substitute Jesus's gospel of love with the Gospel of Homophobia according to Sentimental Slop.

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We don't limit our mockery to the ideas of extremists, the ideas of moderates are just as irrational.

Why should I respect any unjustified beliefs? The tooth fairy is "all nice" but an adult belief structure that supports the actual existence of the nice little lady is, surely, open to extreme mockery. I actually see no difference between belief in the tooth fairy, Odin, and the divinity of Jesus Christ. Whether held by moderates or extremists I think belief in Yahweh is equally preposterous.

Religious faith is nothing more than a desperate marriage of hope and ignorance, even when held by moderates there is a terrible price to be paid for limiting the scope of reason in our dealings with other human beings. Religious moderation, insofar as it represents an attempt to hold on to what is still serviceable in orthodox religion, closes the door to more sophisticated approaches to spirituality and ethics.

Moderates do not want to kill or traduce anyone in the name of God, but they want us to keep using the word "God" as though we knew what it meant. They provide a soil in which extreme views can flourish, as illustrated by the heretic burning fraternity that emerged from the soil of meek and mild early Christians.

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Secu...Moderates.aspx

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Originally Posted by mona amon

Good grief, Jesus talks about marriage (which at that time was of course between man and woman)

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Interesting - then Jesus must have had some thoughts on the laws of Matrimony and divorce too - both within and without Deuteronomy 24. I wonder why His Aramaic didn't include a suitable word for "union" since the Canaanites in general, and the residents of the Five Cities of the Plain in particular, used two wholly different words for relations between a man and a woman and relations of the same gender?

Given that during His Lifetime, both "marital" (i.e. monogamous) and extramarital (and pre-marital as well) relations were widely practised in the Five Cities, with their own tradition, and that elsewhere north of the Dead Sea, both homosexual and heterosexual "unions" were perfectly within the norm, as they had been with the earlier Greek civilisations who brought them, and the Roman civilisation which continued them in Jesus' place and time, I'm surprised - no... awed, in fact, that apparently - with absolute suddenness - "marriage" which traditionally in that locale employed the two (Hebrew and Aramaic) words meaning "union between two free people" had inexplicably evolved into being, "of course between man and woman."

Okay - I'm dumber than a rusty bucket of ping pong balls, so humour me here - how was it that a tradition of same-gender relations and relationships which reached back into Greek culture more than a millennium and three-quarters, and which came down to Roman society and was almost revered by Free Romans as a birthright for near six hundred years, suddenly became taboo, with "union" in the vernacular of the land, replaced by something which was "of course between man and woman?"

I guess my question really is, do we know the day and time when Rabbinic Law suddenly superseded two millennia of practise, and caused the definition of "union" which had previously been held to mean "union" from the Iberian coast, north through Gaul, across the whole of what is now Europe and eastern Asia to the very shore of the Caspian, then southward to Babelonia, and across the whole of the northern threshold of the African continent?

Odd... Rabbinic Law ("...a man lying with another as with a woman, or a woman lying with another as with a man...) had always (well, for the four thousand years preceding Jesus, anyway) been confined to Jewish culture, and suddenly it applied across an empire so vast that a man on horseback would take an hundred days to traverse it, and that "union" came to mean "of course between man and woman."

I'm with Johnny Carson on this one - "I did not know that."

;)

Was there cable TV in "Eretz HaQodesh,"
Which broadcast the laws of the spirit and flesh?
Did millions of gay men suddenly shout
"This is now very wrong Bob - just pull that thing out?"

Did traditions of Plato and Xenophon too
Just fall by the wayside? Did it turn the Smurfs blue?
Did "erômenos" cease to mean "Loved" to the Greeks;
Did erastês declare, "we have turned enough cheeks?"

Was the Word spread by cell phones and radio waves
To the Freemen in Rome and to hermits in caves?
Not a chance - and this strange promulgation of views:
Could only have been through the BBC News.

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Originally Posted by mona amon

Good grief, Jesus talks about marriage (which at that time was of course between man and woman) in answer to the Pharisees who were trying to trap him into admitting that he thought the divorce laws barbaric, and you conclude that he considered homosexuality a sin? Where on earth did that come from? This isn't even twisting Jesus's words, it's putting your own words into Jesus's mouth. No wonder the atheists are mocking us, if we substitute Jesus's gospel of love with the Gospel of Homophobia according to Sentimental Slop.

Beware of false prophets. A tree can be identified by the fruit it bears. If you are being taught anything that causes hatred, you can be sure that it came from man, and not from God. All the major religions that I know of preach preach mercy, love, compassion blah blah, and yet the believers are so ready to criminalize and find guilty large groups of people who never did them any harm - homosexuals, infidels, blasphemers, idolaters etc etc, and say God told them to do it. We have enough sin in this world without trying to find it in places where it doesn't exist.

Mal4mac, I'll answer your post #268 later. It is far more complicated than this one.

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You need to realize that Christ isn't all about mercy and compassion. He is also justice. If Jesus wanted to redefine His Father's definition of marriage, he would have done it, but he didn't. Having two men or two men in a committed relationship by some legal contract is not marriage. Having two men or two men "married" in some liberal church doesn't make it marriage. If you have such a problem with "homophobia," then why do you even want to follow Christianity? If the Father never liked homosexual acts, He doesn't like them now, and never will. If Christ's will is His Father's, and the Father and the Son are both One, why do you insist that Christ likes active homosexuality?

I'm not scared of gay people. I don't hate them, either. I'm not a homophobe, sorry.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

We don't limit our mockery to the ideas of extremists, the ideas of moderates are just as irrational.

Why should I respect any unjustified beliefs? The tooth fairy is "all nice" but an adult belief structure that supports the actual existence of the nice little lady is, surely, open to extreme mockery. I actually see no difference between belief in the tooth fairy, Odin, and the divinity of Jesus Christ. Whether held by moderates or extremists I think belief in Yahweh is equally preposterous.

Religious faith is nothing more than a desperate marriage of hope and ignorance, even when held by moderates there is a terrible price to be paid for limiting the scope of reason in our dealings with other human beings. Religious moderation, insofar as it represents an attempt to hold on to what is still serviceable in orthodox religion, closes the door to more sophisticated approaches to spirituality and ethics.

Moderates do not want to kill or traduce anyone in the name of God, but they want us to keep using the word "God" as though we knew what it meant. They provide a soil in which extreme views can flourish, as illustrated by the heretic burning fraternity that emerged from the soil of meek and mild early Christians.

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Secu...Moderates.aspx

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Do you really want to live in a world where all there is is reason? I don't think you'd like the world for very long, if that were the case.