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I get that you have very strong feelings about this, but that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
There is no meaningful difference between the tentacles of the octopus. The guys touching the trunk, the tail, the ears and the legs of the elephant are all actually touching the same thing. You can say that they are definitely not the same thing, but from over here it just looks you’re touching an elephant.
Calvinism is Christianity just like Catholicism is Christianity. In my opinion, it is weird, dumb Christianity that gets many things wrong and is just barely better than not being Christian, making me at best ambivalent to hostile towards it, but it’s still Christianity. It wants to save souls, its works are intended to save souls, and God willing, maybe it has seen some success doing that. Do I think it would be better if they were all Catholics? Sure, but they’re still part of the elephant.
Fortunately, in no church anywhere is dogma defined by the Sunday School teachers. I’m sorry that happened to you and I bet it was a little traumatizing, but I’m also willing to bet your Sunday school teacher was an untrained volunteer with a minimal grasp of theology beyond Bible stories. That’s why he/she should stick to reenacting Bible stories on a felt board.
This, incidentally, is a point for why I am Catholic. The kids stay in the service, and so a priest is available to catechize. Plus, when catechizing, they have to work out of the literal book of answers to dogma questions.
Maybe it’s a bit of a limb to be out on, but I’m going to trust the past 16-1700 years of Church teaching on what is considered blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, over the opinions of the Rational Response Squad or the knee-jerk reaction of Mr/Mrs Woebegone at Sunday School.
No, not really. I'm not sure why some people think implying "strong feelings" about a statement of fact is an effective retort. It's a gambit obviously deployed in bad faith. It's a rhetorical tactic akin to saying "You're being emotional." You should know better.
No, I don't have strong feelings about this. I just know I'm right and you're wrong because I was there. I don't have an emotional investment in rationalism.
And my Sunday school teacher did indeed scare me at the time, me being eight years old and all, but I merely relayed that anecdote by way of saying "Yes, this is a real thing actual Christians believe." Obviously, even if I still were a Christian, I would no longer be traumatized by what a dumb volunteer church lady said when I was eight.
But I would (and am) aware that for all your magesterial apologetics, there is no meaningful difference between her and your priests.
You accuse people of this…
And then you turn around in the same post and say stuff like this. I believe I grasp that you are trying to turn my own statement around on me, by implying that, metaphorically, she is the tail and Catholic priests are the trunk of Christianity. Or whatever “It’s all the same thing” metaphor you want to use.
To which I say…okay? I don’t know what big gotcha you think this is. Every Christian and Christian church at least wants to be headed the same direction, with greater or lesser success. I think she was dumb and wrong, but she’s part of the same elephant. That’s exactly the same thing I’m saying about New Atheism, Atheism+, Rationalism, The Enlightment, Liberalism, Post-Modernism, etc etc etc.
Moving on to this part. If it is your stance that one toe and another toe are meaningfully different when the elephant is charging at you, then okay, I have nothing further to say that I think will mean anything to you. I think you are contradicting yourself, but I’m sure you will disagree.
I, on the other hand, say that the purpose of the elephant is to dissolve all the pleasant and gainful things about human society in the pursuit of ever greater and greater atomization of man. So if the one toe is called “New Atheism” and another is called “Rationalism,” well, it all looks like an elephant to me.
But then you also say that your argument is a fact based on your personal experience and your self-knowledge that you’re right, to which I say, “Why should I care what you say you personally know?”
I can tell you, right now, that I have direct experiential knowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior of Mankind, coupled with a vast intellectual edifice constituting thousands of years and millions of pages supporting me in that statement of fact. Does that convince you that I’m right and you need to run immediately to the nearest church and get right with God?
C’mon man, that’s laughable. We both know that if you engaged with this, you would tell me that millions of people can say the same thing about Vishnu or the Buddha or whoever. Or some other circa-2000’s online atheism argument.
So if you are going to tell me what kind of argumentation I should be better than, then you should be better than “It’s a fact because I said so.”
Well, that would be flattering to Catholics, certainly, but yes, I see little difference in how closely they hew to reality, however much more erudite in theological matters the seminary graduates may be.
What I meant by "I was there" was not some metaphysical experience of the birth of wokeness, but that I actually witnessed the birth of both new atheism and rationalism, and I am saying they were intersecting Venn diagrams that became increasingly separated. Now if you want to argue that everything is "the toe of the same elephant" as poisonous fruits of the Enlightenment, well, okay, but you might as well say Nazis and Socialists and Libertarians and Evangelicals are all the same thing. Maybe that is what you actually believe.
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