jondeval (u/jondeval)

jondeval commented on Catholic group spent millions on app data that tracked gay priests washingtonpost.com/dc-md-... · Posted by u/CharlesW

foldr · 3 years ago

>But it should be stressed that this is no way a consequence a specific teaching that targets people with same-sex attraction.

The Catholic Church teaches that gay sex is an act of 'grave depravity' and that same-sex attraction is 'intrinsically disordered'. How is that not a specific teaching that targets 'people with same-sex attraction'?

http://www.catholic-catechism.com/ccc_2357.htm

jondeval · 3 years ago

Of course the Church has a well-known teaching with regard to this activity. Just like the Church has a specific teaching about artificial contraception. So the Church obviously says specific things about specific things.

The point is that the identical moral reasoning process is being applied consistently to all people, namely, sexual activity is to be avoided outside of a marriage open to children. Gay people are not being targeted by some sort of religious moral carve-out.

jondeval commented on Catholic group spent millions on app data that tracked gay priests washingtonpost.com/dc-md-... · Posted by u/CharlesW

PuppyTailWags · 3 years ago

It's inconsistent in that it discriminates against a group of people with an undue burden that they can never have a loving, passionate, sexual relationship with adults they feel attraction towards. This is a bit like saying both the wealthy and the poor have equal access to homelessness, and therefore making homelessness a crime punishable with death applies fairly to all classes.

jondeval · 3 years ago

I think you are correct in emphasizing that the burden of the Church's teaching on chastity does not fall equally on all groups of people.

But it should be stressed that this is no way a consequence a specific teaching that targets people with same-sex attraction.

The root cause of the trouble is the fact that the Catholic Church has consistently taught something that is always counter-cultural, difficult, and even quite radical. Namely that the only proper place for sexual intimacy is within a life long bond between one man and one woman for the purpose of raising children.

jondeval commented on Catholic group spent millions on app data that tracked gay priests washingtonpost.com/dc-md-... · Posted by u/CharlesW

afandian · 3 years ago

"I won't condemn you for an intrinsic quality you were made with, but I will condemn you for acting on it."

I think most rational people would see through that, it's pretty flimsy.

jondeval · 3 years ago

> I think most rational people would see through that ...

Where is the inconsistency? A heterosexual man is called to chastity as well. If he acts against this by cheating on his spouse I don't think the CC would be 'condemning an intrinsic quality' he was made with.

The teachings of Jesus should piss everyone off in some way or another.

jondeval commented on Make believe sive.rs/mb... · Posted by u/kiyanwang

fasterik · 3 years ago

Physicists also teach that there is a subsistent being. It's called the physical world :)

> Its succinct expression is put forth by Thomas Aquinas and can also be found in the thinking of Aristotle.

And its succinct refutation was put forth by Hume and Kant!

jondeval · 3 years ago

Apologies. I mistook you as someone looking to engage with the substance of the argument. Take Care.

jondeval commented on Make believe sive.rs/mb... · Posted by u/kiyanwang

fasterik · 3 years ago

There are two separate issues here. One is how we choose to define God, and the other is what religious people actually believe.

OP was referring to "billions of people" with certain beliefs. Most of these people believe in God as an entity with a personality who intervenes in events on Earth. That kind of God doesn't have to exist by necessity.

On the other hand, if we define God as base reality, then God exists by definition. In that case why not just call it "reality" or "the universe"? When most people say they believe in God, I don't think they are saying they believe in the universe. I think they are making a stronger claim than that.

I don't get what the Romeo and Juliet example is supposed to show. The base reality for Romeo and Juliet is our physical world rather than the play world, and God is Shakespeare who exists contingently in base reality. Yes, it's impossible for them to prove that God (Shakespeare) doesn't exist. But what reasons could Romeo and Juliet have for believing that Shakespeare exists or that they are living in a play world rather than base reality? Unless Shakespeare explicitly writes evidence of his existence into the play, their claims are on the same footing as Russell's teapot.

jondeval · 3 years ago

Thanks for the response. Let me take your comments one at a time. Apologies in advance if it seems like I'm jumping around and cherry picking. I'm just trying to focus in on the key issues.

> if we define God as base reality, then God exists by definition.

Right. You are stating the conception of God that is advanced by Judaism and Christianity. Its succinct expression is put forth by Thomas Aquinas and can also be found in the thinking of Aristotle.

To get even more concrete, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that God is ipsum esse subsistens or roughly subsistent being itself.

> In that case why not just call it "reality" or "the universe"?

I think you're touching on a good point. Let me take each case separately because I see them as slightly different:

>> ... why not just call it "reality" ...

You sort of can. As long we acknowledge that reality is made up of things that are more and less contingent. For example I'm looking at my headphones as I type. I can say 'these headphones are reality'. Even though these headphones are real, we both know that they would be a terrible candidate for base reality itself since the headphones can't explain their own existence and are clearly contingent on other things in being. (similar to the teapot)

>> ... why not just call it ..."the universe" ...

Typically when people say "the universe" they are implying the sum total of all material reality as we observe it.

The question is: is this the best or even a good candidate for base-reality. I think the answer is no for a very simple reason. The universe changes. energy changes form, objects change in an emergent phenomena we call time, they move through space, there are stars and not stars, and atoms and not atoms etc.

Everything else that we know of or can conceive of that changes as much as the universe does is coupled to a more fundamental reality that is the cause and explanation of the change.

So the universe is real, like the headphones, it just can't be the best candidate for base-reality itself.

So what is a good candidate for base reality?

* For starters there is only one base-realty. If there were 2 or more then you would need something more fundamental to distinguish them.

* Whatever this base reality is, it's utterly simple. It has no parts since parts would require distinctions and more fundamental explanations to identify them.

* Base reality needs to be outside time and space, because of the whole can't change thing I eluded to earlier.

* Finally, anything that has the potential to actually exist in reality, is in some weird way already present in base-realty. This is just a different way of saying that base-reality is the cause (directly or indirectly) of all things. cause of all possible potential things -> all possible potentials -> all-potentials -> omni-potentials -> omnipotent.

So, by necessity there must be a base-reality that is at a minimum: one, simple, eternal, immaterial, and omnipotent.

We then assign (like a reference pointer :^) ), the english word God to whatever this best candidate for base reality is, being sure to acknowledge that we are really dealing with the best candidate.

const God = (maximally full expression of base reality)

> I don't get what the Romeo and Juliet example shows.

Apologies if this is not helpful. I offered this analogy to get closer the proper definition of God that I outlined above. In the same way Romeo and Juliet can never step outside of the play, we can nonetheless see that Shakespeare is the their creator and is in a sense closer to Romeo and Juliet then they are to themselves. You and I cannot step outside of base reality but it should be obvious that we are held in existence by something that is more fundamental then ourselves.

jondeval commented on Make believe sive.rs/mb... · Posted by u/kiyanwang

fasterik · 3 years ago

That's a false equivalence between proof and disproof. If someone says they know there is a teapot in orbit around Proxima Centauri and I disagree with them, neither of us can prove or disprove the other. That doesn't mean we both have an equal claim to being right. Who is the arrogant one in this case?

jondeval · 3 years ago

Let's leave aside the arrogant/not-arrogant portion of the thread for now and key in on your main point:

> If someone says they know there is a teapot in orbit around Proxima Centauri and I disagree with them, neither of us can prove or disprove the other. That doesn't mean we both have an equal claim to being right.

I agree with you. No person is rationally justified in believing in such a teapot without evidence. However, a teapot is a contingent thing. Meaning it's very existence depends on the existence of other things (tea, water, the ceramic material that makes it up, Proxima Centauri etc.)

I suspect (I could be wrong here) that you are tacitly implying that people who assert the existence of God are making a similar move.

Please keep in mind that God is by definition base-reality and non-contingent and so exists necessarily.

To illustrate the difference here with an analogy: If we witnessed an alternative rendition of a conversation between Romeo and Juliet where they attempted to prove the existence of Shakespeare, we wouldn't be surprised if they failed to find evidence for Shakespeare from within the play and their own character existence. But at the same time we would find their conclusion absurd if they thought they had successfully proved that Shakespeare did not exist. They are Romeo and Juliet after all.

jondeval commented on Why Use Make (2013) bost.ocks.org/mike/make/... · Posted by u/beardicus

jondeval · 3 years ago

An additional reason that drives me to use make on most new projects is the polyglot nature of many code repos. There are language/ecosystem-specific build tools: grunt, rake, etc. but often real world projects are a mix if different languages and to double down on just one language-specific tool feels unnecessarily constraining.

Having a build tool like make that is more closely aligned with the system level feels more natural for orchestrating build/test/deploy tasks that by their very nature contain more cross-cutting concerns.

jondeval commented on Staring into the abyss as a core life skill benkuhn.net/abyss/... · Posted by u/troydavis

physicles · 3 years ago

I appreciate the time and effort you put into this response. I'm afraid we still don't see eye to eye, but that's ok. My goal isn't to try to influence you, I'm also writing for my own benefit -- in some ways I'm still working through my own worldview.

> The most recent pieces were written two millenia ago, and people had a very different idea of what a history was supposed to do.

Yet there were contemporary Roman historians who had a rather modern idea of what history was supposed to do.

> Gen 1-11 (Adam and Eve, the flood) should be read in the context of the mythology of the other nations.

Yet Paul treats Adam's existence as a key theological fact in Romans 5:11-21. His argument doesn't make sense if Adam didn't really exist. Do we know better than Paul? If so, what else is Paul wrong about?

I much prefer C.S. Lewis's brand of Christianity, but I remember being bothered by the fact that he doesn't seem to take the Bible that seriously, and his arguments from aesthetics never carried much weight for me. His view that an individual is either in harmony with God and is set free, or is in stubborn rebellion against God and in slavery, doesn't mirror reality: atheists aren't rebelling against God any more than a Christian is rebelling against Thor.

> I think the one of the strongest arguments is that the Bible's description of human nature is pretty accurate.

Have you looked at descriptions of human nature in other religions? Buddhism and Taoism in particular seem to have a lock on the ups and downs of being human. Yet what Christian would take that as evidence for their supernatural truth claims?

> The atheism of the twentieth century

But there isn't a single atheism of the twentieth century. Stalin and Sartre were both atheists, but their values couldn't have been more different. This is where words like "humanism" are helpful. I've certainly met plenty of atheists who are wonderful, genuine, fulfilled people.

jondeval · 3 years ago

You make some really fantastic points here.

> His argument doesn't make sense if Adam didn't really exist.

I think you are completely correct. CS Lewis provides and extensive set of thoughts about paradisal man in 'The Problem of Pain'. He does this in a way that incorporates an understanding that man evolved from lower common ancestors while attempting a faithful, albeit not literalistic view of the story of the garden. You may or may not have read those chapters, but either way do you think that a possible reconciliation along these lines can exist?

More concretely Pope Pius XII lays out just such a reconciliation in the encyclical Humane Generis that asserts two points: (1) The theory of evolution should be taken seriously and there is strong evidence that human beings evolved from a common ancestors with the apes and (2) The story of Adam and Eve is a story about a real event, although the language expressing the truth of the event should not be interpreted strictly literally.

If you're still on the thread I would be curious to get your thoughts.

jondeval commented on Staring into the abyss as a core life skill benkuhn.net/abyss/... · Posted by u/troydavis

physicles · 3 years ago

As I wrote in a sibling comment, my faith always rested on Christianity's historical truth claims. So once I reached the conclusion that they weren't true, there was no way I could continue to embrace Christianity. I had to rethink everything from the ground up.

jondeval · 3 years ago

What specific truth claim are you skeptical about?