Another vicious, inaccurate, and contradictory New York Times attack on Pope Benedict

catholicculture.org ^ | July 2, 2010 | Phil Lawler

[grey_whiskers]

In order to know who he is one would have to know what he is first, what is divinity. And since that is outside of our realm (by definition) and not subject to our sense or reason, we cannot know what divinity is and therefore never know who he is as he is or even if he is. We can, and did, however, make one up in our minds, usually in heavily anthropomorphic terms.

Is that your definition or God's?

Methinks you are committing two more elementary errors.

1) You are confusing savoir with connaître, and then assuming savoir is both necessary and sufficient;

2) You are explicitly discounting the possibility that God is "personal", i.e. has definite plans, goals, and intentions, which need not be known or measurable by us at any given time; and which may happen to affect how and when he interacts with both the physical universe, and with the human heart.

Both of which by the way are very important within Christianity, and the claims made by Christianity for how an approach to God is to be made successful.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

But you agree that it's all God's doing. How can it be what we want?!? You can't have it both ways. Either God is in charge ro we are. Either it's according to God's paln or our plan. LOL.

Relationships tend to develop organically as each member responds to the other.

You in effect are insisting that God date-rape you before you agree to get serious with Him. Ain't gonna happen.

Cheers!

[eyedigress]

These threads are crazy. GOD is a personal relationship.

[grey_whiskers]

The desire, the need to worship a higher power seems to be part of man's nature just as much as seeking out food and shelter

In other words, driven by insecurity (fear) and ignorance.

Atheists always make this mistake. I sometimes wonder if this is akin to the the line in the epistle of James about "even the demons believe--and shudder."

Haven't you ever been in a healthy relationship with someone in authority over you, who rightfully claimed your loyalty?

Or owned a dog?

Cheers!

[Dr. Eckleburg]

And by the way, if you read the same section that talks about the "fruits" it also says that people who do nasty things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. [Gal 5:21] And those are none other than Paul's own words! Imagine that—a works-based salvation form the pen of Apostle Paul himself!

People's evil fruit is just as much evidence of their condition before God than people's good fruits.

Scripture explicitly states that good works do not save anyone. And yet people still want to boast of them.

C'est la vie.

I don't mind and you don't matter to me, and my pay is the same, so if you want to spend time and bandwidth correcting my grammar and typos, knock yourself out.

And yet it was you who corrected my typo, and you're the one making smarmy remarks like "you don't matter."

Feeling defensive?

[grey_whiskers]

Faith healing is no proof. In fact it has been exposed as a scam more than once. Turning water into wine would be a joke even for David Copperfield and he is no Jesus. In other words, if Jesus tried to prove his divinity today with faith-healing or by water-wine trick no one would ever believe him!

Snerk!!!

Are we supposed to give you sexual favors here, for finally coming to the same point Jesus started at?

People didn't believe, even back then.

No "science" required -- just observation that "c'mon, that kind of thing doesn't happen."

cf (for just a few examples)

Mark 6:5

Matthew 11:21

and especially in your case

Luke 16:31.

The only thing to conclude is that no one on earth has even that much faith, or else what Matthew wrote is not true.

Especially you, apparently.

So much so that you are dismissing putative accounts of miracles out of hand -- without even going to the trouble to try to verify them.

So why are you trying to discourage the faith of others?

Cheers!

[eyedigress]

I’ll help. No Human is a dog. All Humans have the reach of God. All humans that want God must ask. God responds to Humans that are sincere. He may respond to those that are not but no promises. God provides for his believers yet the timeline is different. To create crazy scenarios about GOD is just that.

[grey_whiskers]

Resurrecting a putrefied body and moving Mt. Sinai might. That would out an end to all doubts real quick and the whole world would come to worship the God of Abraham instantly.

"Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days."

Remember that line?

And all the empiricist Pharisees do was decide to re-kill Lazarus 'cause it was getting too much publicity for Jesus.

Nice try, though.

Cheers!

[eyedigress]

Do I understand that this thread is purely based on the interpretation of his word, and has nothing to do with the interpretation of his gift? There is a better way. :^)

[grey_whiskers]

I see the lie in your argument here.

Do you maintain that YOU have free will to choose your atheism?

There's no God, according to you, so He couldn't have done it.

That leaves chance, random societal and biochemical influences, totally free will, and conditioned choice.

By conditioned choice, think of a freshman college girl being talked into giving sexual favors to an frat boy against her better judgment. (He didn't *Force* her, but without his pressure, she wouldn't have done it on her own.)

You know, not when you're swashbuckling here, but later, when you're among other atheists and ranting and raving about "those nutty Christianists."

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

With all due respect, that is a pathetic straw man, betty boop. Perhaps you need to get out of the kitchen.

Tell that to the Christians massacred in the Soviet Union and in China.

Nice try, though.

[grey_whiskers]

You mentioned Calvin.

Sorry, but I just gotta throw this in:

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

If they wanted to do what God willed then it was God's will, and not theirs, even if they believed it was.

Do we know that?

Does God always exercise his ability to move our hearts?

Or does he allow us free rein within certain boundaries, for a certain time ? (Think of fishing: it can swim whereever it likes, but it still can't get rid of the hook. But the hook doesn't actively *cause* the fish to move towards you till you reel it in.)

This analogy wouldn't have occurred to James and John (the fishermen) since they used nets.

Or, if you want physics, think of "degrees of freedom" in a dynamical problem.

Cheers!

[Dr. Eckleburg]

lol. Toss away. We’ve got all those books. 8~)

[the_conscience]

That leaves chance, random societal and biochemical influences

As a matter of fact on any but the Christian, and more specifically the Calvinist view, facts are meaningless and reason operates in a vacuum. On any but the Christian basis man, using this reason, is a product of Chance and the facts which he supposedly orders by the “law of contradiction” are also products of Chance. Why should a “law of contradiction” resting on Chance be better than a revolving door moving nothing out of nowhere into no place? Only on the presupposition that the self-contained God of Scripture controls all things, can man know himself or anything else. But on this presupposition the whole of his experience makes good sense. Thus a truly Christian philosophy is the only possible philosophy. Other philosophies are or should be called such by courtesy. Those who crucify reason while worshipping it; those who kill the facts as they gather them, ought not really to be called philosophers.

Van Til, Cornelius, The Works of Cornelius Van Til, (New York: Labels Army Co.) 1997.

[grey_whiskers]

Vot ist diss Conservative Underground of vich you speek?

Cheers!

[count-your-change]

Of course David Copperfield never claimed he was actually doing what it appeared, he's an illusionist not a performer of miracles by anyone’s definition.

Jesus compared those who would set standards for him to meet as ‘children complaining that they played the flute and he wouldn't dance, they were sad yet he wouldn't weep’.
(Luke 7:32)

[grey_whiskers]

b-b:What post-modernism is trying to do, it seems to me, is to expunge this living history from human memory

D-fendr: "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to them being disqualified by the accident of death."

- G.K. Chesterton

Recall that GKC was the arch-enemy of George Bernard Shaw, who wrote :

"History teaches us that we learn nothing from history."

Combining all of these we obtain grey_whiskers' synthesis and/or corollary of Shaw:

"History teaches us that we liberals learn nothing from history."^TM

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING!

NO more calls, please.

WE have a winner!

[grey_whiskers]

I think we need to replace the phrase

ontogeny recapitulates philogeny

with

geocentrism begets egocentrism^TM

Cheers!