I was raised a Catholic, but the only times I attend church
services these days are weddings and funerals.  Going to church
makes me mad.
 
The thing that bothers me the most is the way the Catholics I
know pick and choose the parts of the Gospel they choose to
believe in.  For example, even though Christ said that it is
harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is
for a rich man to enter heaven, no one I know, including the
priests, have given it all up to follow Him.  In my mind, it's
clearly a matter of Catholics clearly not getting the point, or
if they do, deciding that particular teaching is just too hard to
follow.
 
Another trend I deplore is the tendency to turn services into
musicals.  Much of the music I've heard would be just as much at
home on Broadway as in a Catholic Church.  I'm not against
liturgical reform or modernization of the hymnal, but I think
that some of this music obscures the message.
 
I guess I'm mad because Catholicism never lived up to its
promise for me.  There are many powerful ideas in the Gospels.  I
took much of this teaching to heart when I was a kid and even
considered joining the priesthood.  As I grew up, however, I saw
how the Catholic Church put some of these messages into practice
and became very disappointed.
 
Catholics, and probably other religions, twist the message to
suit themselves.  Instead of taking the message to heart, they
latch on to the easy stuff and rationalize away the hard parts.
That's why going to church makes me mad.

44 responses total.

Agreed! Having been raised with "practice what you preach," and

more than a few excellant examples, a lot of "walk" don't match
the "talk." 

(Christ also said, in the same context, that with God all things are
possible!  But most people don't think of themselves as "rich", anyway)
  Churches are full of people and people are all sinners, not a perfect 
one in the bunch.  I've never been in a Catholic church myself except for
a few weddings, but I've attended a selection of Protestant churches 
(besides the one we're now members of) and they certainly have not all
been anything like your generalization.  There have been dead churches
for millenia (read the first 3 chapters of Revelation!) but they're not
all like that, and most of them are not homogeneous.  If I ever found a 
perfect church it would cease to be one the minute I joined; some of 
the imperfect ones around here are either imperfect enough or just
different enough from my taste that attending them regularly would
distract *me* from God, but there are indeed some real Christians out 
there working hard to obey the word of God as they understand it (and
not taking for granted that they have it right)   Don't tar us all with
the same brush, please.

I've never felt comfortable enough with any religion to join, but I do think
that the world would be a much much more vicious place without them, despite
their limitations. Think how many more people the Catholic church reaches by
being "compromised".  If they allowed in only strict adherents to their 
tenets, only Jesuits would be allowed in!

I dropped out of the Catholic Church for many of the same reasons
cited in #0.  The smarmy secularizing of the Bible, and the absolutely
ghastly music were what finally did it.  If I ever hear another
"folk" mass I'll puke.  

If I ever start a new denomination, it'll feature: services lasting
no longer than fifteen minutes; no church property -- all services
would be held at the residences of members; services would be held
outdoors, twelve months a year, regardless of the weather; no money
contributions would be solicted or accepted; no official or unofficial
involvement in politics, domestic policy or foreign policy -- no
"church" position on any of these things; no ritual, sacrament,
rule, etc., not specifically prescribed in the Bible; and a bunch
of other stuff I'm probably forgetting.  I think anyone's "ideal"
religion is likely to start by discarding all the things you like
least about whatever religion you were raised in.

But I'm curious.  When the discussion turn to religion or the
Emergency Room clerk asks for your religious preference, do you
still consider yourself a Catholic?  

no

I was raised Roman Catholic.  My parents and their families are very
devout.  I remember being very small and thinking tat I was sure that
as I grew up and got smarter it would all start to make sense. I
attended church regularly and prayed fervently for the gift of faith for
many years after I left home.  It never got easier to believe.

Then later, when I was married and had a baby, I started attending a
Lutheran church with my husbands family at Christmas and Easter. (They
came to midnight mass with me on those holidays, too.) I thought maybe
I just needed to pretend harder.  One Christmas, my child was *very*
ill. He had a high fever and had been listless and groggy for days.
I was tired of being cooped up with him, so we went with the family to
the Lutheran Christmas service.  I went to communion (does it have
the same name with the Lutherans?  I don't remember -- i just remember
catching it for not recieving with th family the first year.  :-*  )
with the baby in my arms.  He was fast asleep and quite limp.  The
Pastor stopped in front of us and looked at the baby for a moment.
Then he made some motions over the baby and murmered what was probably 
a prayer.  By the time I got back back to my seat, the baby was squirming
and looking around like his usual wriggly self--smailing and cooing
for the first time in days.  

Was the timing of his fever-break a co-incidence?  Was it a miracle?
(OK, I admit it's not water to wine, but it's as close as I ever hope to
be to a miracle).  I puzzled over it a long time. Why in a Lutheran'
church and not a Catholic church?  What does it mean?  I still don't
know.  But I stopped attending mass soon after that.

Re #5: I don't know any lapsed Catholics who still call themselves 
Catholics, but I'll bet such do exist.  Probably more common among 
those who haven't moved on to some other denomination.  

Re #7: Interesting story.  If a child is too young to take 
communion, a Lutheran minister will trace the sign of the cross on 
the child's forehead and say something like, "May the Lord bless 
you and keep you safe."  It's all a lot of mumbo-jumbo, of 
course...until something like this happens to you.  "Was the timing 
of his fever-break a coincidence?"  No doubt it was.  Jung 
contended that such coincidences are manifestations of the will of 
God.  (Wasn't it Jung who said the problem with religions isn't 
that they make God seem unlikely, but that they don't make God seem 
unlikely enough?) 

Count me in on the "raised Catholic, have a problem with Church" club.
There isn't a whole lot that I haven't seen, from lifeless liturgy to
living saints and from judgemental heirarchists to wounded healers.

There are some real strengths in the Catholic Church, and some real
drawbacks.  My wish for the church is that it learns to teach by
example as opposed to "dropping 'shoulds.'"

For me, for now, I prefer to think of myself as a spiritual person and
let the Catholic Church speak to those who listen to it.

BTW, re #0, did you know that the "eye of the needle" was one of the 12
gates into the city of Jerusalem?  It was rather small--about 7 feet 
high and 4 feet wide.  Anybody rich enough to own a camel and baggage
would be able to coast right in through the other gates.  However, for
a rich man to pass through the eye of the needle, he'd have to unload
his possessions, have the camel crawl through, then reload it.  That's
not a process favored by anybody with something to hide!

Just learned a new word a couple of days ago that very carefully
identifies the differnces which disgust me. The first word
is "orthodoxy" and teh second is "orthopraxy."
 
Just about all the commercial religions have signficant "orthodoxy,"
which is "correct thoughts." On that front I'd give all the 
major commercial religions a grad of about 90/100. 
  
However ........  on the "orthopraxy" side of things, (correct doings,
or correct practice) I give the commercial religions about a 50/100,
if that. 
  
I guess that "practice what you preach"  means (at least it
has to me since the beginning) make damn sure the orthopraxy
matches the orthodoxy. 
  
It doesn't, therefore my objection to commercially organized
religions.

I am not an atheist, nor am I an agnostic.  My position on god is that there 
must be something that "set things going" so to speak--I don't know if that 
would be god or not.  My position on organized religion is that if I find one
belivable enough, I will join.  The main way religion works for me is to give
me something to think about when life gets hard:  praying, even if it has no
religious significance for me, gives me the illusion that I am doing something
worthwile about my problems.

It is unfair to judge a whole religion and a whole community on such
experiences.

Gee, MD, that sounds pretty close to paganism (escept the Bible part, o
of course).  If you have a problem with the services, as some of you have
voiced, but like the tenets of Christianity (or any other religions, for that
matter), why not worship at home?  This might work best for those who live in
homes, and can set up separate church rooms.  

I do believe that worship in the home would be an alternative. It would
be important to have a sacred place and some meaningful rituals which
would put ypu in touch with the depth of your soul and "the Mystery".

The main problem I have with the major organized religions is the doctrine of
faith -- in other words, that "affirming something to be true with greater
conviction than is strictly warranted by the evidence" has moral content.
Is there intelligent life on Mars? Maybe. Should someone be judged morally
based on one's answer to that question? Of course not. Now, what about the
basic religious questions: Is there a God? Is there an afterlife? Should
someone be judged morally based on his or her answer to *those* questions?
I think not. Morality is something completely different, and does not involve
true/false knowledge questions. Morality is when you intentionally bop
your kid brother over the head, for example. And that's what true "religion"
should be about. Let's be honest: no one can be *sure* that his or her
catechism is true. Right? So why theologically reward the dishonest? Why not
instead focus on the free will choices that *do* have moral content?

(Sorry for my rambling. Hope someone can make sense of it.)

Re 16:  I think I agree with you, Tim.  Sort of.  I more or less believe
that there may be one god (oops..capital G?), and that most religions
have created their own explanation for whatever higher power exists, and
maybe they all have some truth.  I haven't seriously studied any of
them, including "my own".  I try to live my life as honestly as possible,
and try not to hurt anyone intentionally...(although my honest side often
overrules my tactful side...)  Religion is great for people who need
something to believe in, and need the security of knowing that a lot
of other people think the same way they do.  

#16:  I believe you're misunderstanding faith, or you're using a 
definition of it used by some churches for political reasons.  Faith 
is not about judging others; it's about judging yourself.  

Re 17: You say you *more or less* believe that there *may* be one god.
Doesn't sound like you're too confident.... But that's fine. How could
you be -- especially when we can't even be sure what we mean exactly by
"god/God." I think your "security of 'knowing'" theory is right on.

Re 18: Of course, as Webster's will attest, the word "faith" is used
in different ways. "To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for,"
is how one writer defined it. (Hebrews 11:1) In this sense, faith involves
an act of the will -- "I believe, I trust" -- based on less-than-certain
evidence. Nothing wrong with that, of course. We use assumptions all the
time; scientists couldn't operate without hypotheses. However, what I fail
to see is how that can be considered a *morally-significant* act. Why
should I be rewarded in the afterlife for adopting Creed X as my own?

(I know I'm being far too long-winded here. Sorry. I'll shut up now.)

I read #16 to be saying " Faith is accepting other human's beliefs
about what will happen after death and on how to behave and what 
morality."  That is not faith on any definition of the word, I don't 
think.  We determine our own faith on what others say, surely, but
faith is -- or should be -- self-determined.  We may chose to take 
another person's faith, lock, stock, and barrel, and make it our own,
but that is not the only way (or even the best way) to express faith.

You will be rewarded ion the afterlife, or you will believe so,
if Creed X is "I will be rewarded in the afterlife for believing that
such-and-such behavior will reward me, and I do such-and-such 
behavior."

And I thought *I* was difficult to de-cipher....  ^^
                                                  OO
                                                  --
Oh well. You lost me, brighn. Anyone else want to jump in here?

One more time, then I give up.
I have faith in beliefs X, Y, and Z.  I might have these beliefs because
(a) my minister told me that X, Y, and Z, and I believe everything he says,
(b) my minister told me X, a Jewish friend I had once told me Y, and I
figuerd out Z all by myself, and X, Y, and Z all seem cool to me.
(c) X, Y, and Z are hypotheses about the universe that I developed by
looking at the universe, and they jive with natural phenomena (but are 
not proven by them).
16 above seemed to define faith as only (a), when that is only fiath in a 
vicarious sense.

Part II:
Let us assume that I believe X and Y.  X is:  All those who follow Y will go
to heaven (whatever that is), and only those who follow Y will.
Y is:  A good person always eats their vegetables, whether they like them 
or not.
Then, I will go to heaven if I eat my vegetables.
That doesn't prove I will go to heaven or not, but I have faith that I
will be rewarded for having lived a certain way and believed a certain 
thing.
(BTW, I believe neither X nor Y.  Eggplant:  Ick!)

Uhhh... boy, X-Y-Z, believing X and Y, vegetables... And here all along
I've assumed I was a fairly intelligent guy. Sorry, Paul. Still lost.

I don't quite see how the source of one's beliefs has any bearing on the
point I was trying to make: that choosing one's creed is an a-moral act
and thus should have no bearing on one's moral status (Heaven, whatever).
The only scenario I can see where epistemology (knowledge; true false)
involves morality is when the evidence is *conclusive* and one refuses
to "acknowledge the truth"; in other words, a person lies. But the vast
majority of "believers" readily concede that their beliefs are not 
supported by *conclusive* evidence. If that were so, "faith" would be
rendered meaningless. Does this make sense? Anyone?

Yes, it makes sense.  It's not the choosing of the faith that makes the 

faith moral:  it's including in the faith the belief that choosing the 
faith is moral that makes it moral.  This can't be reasoned through 
logically because faith consists of beliefs outside of traditional
logic.  I don't believe my faith is any more moral than anyone else's;
therefore, for me, it isn't.

No wonder I've had such trouble deciphering brighn sentences....
Once you toss "traditional logic," it's all just a meaningless free-for-all.
I believe that triangles are round and the earth is flat and that everyone
who so believes will live in bliss forever... So there. Now, here's your
challenge: without invoking "traditional logic," prove me wrong. Good luck.

Good for you, Tim.  NOW you finally do have it.

You mean, you mean, I made it?! I'm here? Ahhhh, Kershawism at last!

Ducks burrowing their way through the rocky underground. Lizards gliding
through the clear green sky. Babies giving birth to their grandparents.
Snakes peddling their way down Main Street on their two-wheel unicycles.
Two-horned unicorns trotting their way across the oceans....

       ...meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, a serious discussion of
a few objective true-false questions carries on:
            (1) Is their a Supreme Being/God?
            (2) Do human beings continue to exist after "death"?
            (3) Are there any moral imperatives?

Sorry, Paul. If you trash reason, we have little to talk about. :(

That's because you have faith in reason.
Hey, this isn't my logic; don't attack me.  It's the foundation of faith.
How do we know that 1 + 1 = 2?  We have defined it so.  There is no objective 
reality to mathematics.  We have defined oneness and twoness and the 
principles of additivity and equation in such a way to make this formula
true.  Omit any of the definitions, and all of mathematics collapses.

Meanwhile, with your questions:
(1) This is not a true/false, but rather a scalar (fuzzy logic) question
whose answer depends on your definitions of God and supremacy.
(2) If you mean death in the sense of cessation of being, then no.  If you 
mean death in the sense of bodily functioning, then maybe.
(3) Objective moral imperatives?  No, none of these exist.  Easy question.

I'm not playing semantic games, as some have accused me of elsewhere.  I'm
using reason, but not the reason of logic.  Faith has its own system 
of reason, and until you've mastered that, it's difficult to discuss. 
Since no-one has mastered it, that's why religion is so slippery.  But
traditional logic and the scientific method are not the only ways to 
reason out the world.

Paul, semantics games it is. "Faith in reason"? That's absurd (although
in your scheme of things, I suppose "absurd" might be a good thing...).
Why, reason is one of the very few things human beings share, one of the
precious few things that can serve as a legitimate starting point and
common standard -- regardless of culture, geography, gender, race, color,
and the long list of other variables in the human experience.
     When you trash reason, you end the conversation and replace it with
arbitrariness and subjective definitions. A is B and A is not B--and it's
completely up to you whether to believe the first, the second, or even,
yes, both. Why not? Sure, it's irrational, but who cares?
     Every ideological system has a certain "logic" to it. That's true of
Christianity and Islam and Judaism and Hinduism and conservatism and 
liberalism and a host of other ideologies. Whether their assertions are
TRUE or not (must I accept a vicarious death to atone for my sins? must
I try to visit Mecca during my lieftime? must I refrain from lighting 
fires on the Sabbath?) is a completely different matter. And the only
"key" I have to test for the truth as I analyze the multitude of very
conflicting evidence in the world is, yes, Paul, reason, the mind.
     Emotion and will-power are important elements, but they are no way
to arrive at knowledge. I may feel it's true. I may want it to be true.
But that's not the same as knowing that it's true.
      One plus one is not just true in theory, as you imply. Try it in
practice. It works. There's nothing definitional about it. Also, (1)
whether Religion X's definition of "god" exists is indeed a true-false
proposition, your protestations notwithstanding. (2) Got any hard
evidence that humans cease to exist at death, or did you emote your
way to that conclusion? (3) No moral imperatives, huh, Paul? "Easy
question" even, eh, Paul? Gee, aren't we erring just a tad on the side
of intellectual arrogance? With a sweep of your hand, you'd like to
exonerate O.J., Saddam Hussein, and Hitler? An a-moral world. An
irrational world. Paul's little world. Ugh. Reality is so much better.

You're changing the questions and applying my answers to the new 
questions.  (1)  New question, no more fuzziness.  (2) "Death" could
either mean "cessation of physical life" or "cessation of existence".
I never said those two phrases were the same; I implied the opposite.
(3) You said "objective" moral imperatives.  Morality is subjective.
((One alleged moral imperative in this country, BTW, is not holding 
a person responsible for actions until they are proved they were his
actions:  O.J.)).  
I'm finding these personal attacks distasteful.  I reiterate:  this is not my 
world.  I'm describing the world as it is for many people.  I have faith
in reason, to an extent, as well.  I've been brought up in a culture
that accepts blind faith in reason, and I have a bit of that in me.
You apparently have more.  If reason were universal, and the be-all-end-all
of philosophy and theology, there'd be a lot fewer philosophy books,
as the problems would all have been solved long ago.  AND THERE WOULD
BE NO RELIGION.  You're being intellectually arrogant as well, if we're 
going to degrade into name-calling.
I live in reality.  My reality is different from yours.
So, if we can't have a conversation without insulting each other, I'm
not going to have one at all.

Sorry about the personal attacks, Paul. So glad to hear that the mushy,
irrational world of "All religions are 100 percent true" is not actually
*your* world, but only one you were describing. When I use the term
"morality," I use it to describe only those basic moral principles known
to all humans and which should be followed by all humans. While there
are many grey areas and much disagreement about their application in a
given situation, these principles are objective, *NOT* subjective.
      And no, Paul, even though Reason is universal, it does not follow
that therefor all philosophical and theological answers should have been solved
long ago. Reason is the tool; but knowledge depends on the collection of data
as well, which is, as you know, often quite difficult.
      I understand what you mean when you say that realities differ from
one person to another. I may be having a rotten day and have a more 
phlegmatic personality and have recurring nightmares of a hellish childhood,
while life seems so much more positive to someone else. I may have absolutely
no qualms about drinking alcohol several times a week, while someone else
may recall the horrors in his alcoholic home and be offended at the mere sight
of a cold beer at the table. Human beings differ.
      That is not to say, though, that there are no objective assertions of
true-false fact in the major religions. There are--and many--and most of them
do not readily lend themselves to verification. The main point I've been
struggling to make in this conference is that no one should get moral
credit for arriving at his or her religious conclusions. That's all.

I still would like to disagree that there is any objective
morality.  Is it immoral to kill?  Superficially, all cultures
and religions say yes.  But all have exceptions.  Let's trim it
down a bit:  Is it wrong to kill humans?  Again, all cultures 
and religions that I know of say yes.  But there's the rub:  what
is a human?  Medieval Christians felt it o.k. to kill someone
who has denied the divinity of God; in many cases, there was 
little if any regret about it.  Many modern Moslems feel the same
way; Salmon Rushdie still has a death warrant against his head
(I think) levelled aginast him by a religious leader for his 
blasphemy.  I have heard many separatist feminists voice the 
opinion that rapists deserve to die, even though (historically)
our morality (i.e. Protestantism-made-American, in addition to other
views) teaches that the punishment for a crime should be 
NO WORSE than the crime itself (and, in most cases, isn't as bad).
So, we superficial claim that murder is morally wrong, but we
have plenty of exceptions (I've listed but a few...)
Objective morality, in my view, would have no exceptions.

Your cultural context determines your sense of morality.  There is,
IMHO, no one true morality.  Even "Thou Shalt Not Kill" doesn't work
universally.

It's midnight and you're walking down a dimly-lit sidewalk
when suddenly a man jumps out with a revolver pointed at your head.
"You're a dead man, Joe. At the count of three, you're history. One, two...."
        You have the option of whipping out your own revolver and
killing the assailant.  Should you? Would it be immoral to defend
one's own life? 
        Before you answer that, consider the anthropologist who
observed an Alaskan tribe that had the custom of taking their
elderly parents out to the middle of nowhere and letting them die,
and excitedly concluded that morality must be relativistic, since such
homicide would clearly be immoral in the Western world.
        More research put it all in context. This particular Alaskan
tribe believed that a human being would one day be resurrected in
the body s/he had at the point of death. Thus, if someone died in a
decrepit, 90-year-old body, they were doomed to spending eternity
trapped in an old, bent-over body. That's why parents were taken out
to the middle of the ice and left to die at the age of 60 or so.
        Given all the facts surrounding that decision, it becomes clear
that the Alaskan tribe in fact was behaving according to the
same moral guidelines as any of us would. That's my only point.
Figuring out how to articulate those minimalist, basic, absolute
moral principles is not easy, much less deciding how they apply
in different contexts. (Scientists, too, have much to debate....)
But universal moral principles do exist--as does reason.

But it's *still* homicide.  It's justified in the sense that it is for
the better of the person involved, in the same way that killing your 
assailant (assuming you can't just as easily incapicate, but not kill, 
said assailant).  Saying "there are universal mores, we just don't know them
yet" is poppycock, flat out.  Hypothesisizng that their *may* be  mores is
fine, but until you can give me one, I won't accept your  assertion that they
*necessarily* exist. Let's take the one implied by the Alaskans:  you should do
what is best  for others, if you can.  Witches, in general, don't presume this
because  they don't presume to know what is best for others without asking
them. Maybe there are conditions on this; but, I reiterate, universal mores, in
my view, must be unconditional.

        Paul, they are absolute, but you can't describe them with
broad stroke terms like "homicide." Yes, they are complex and not
susceptible to simplistic formulations like "love your neighbor as
yourself" (whatever that means) or, in your words, "do what is best for
others." But just because something isn't reducible to Sesame Street-size
comprehensibility does not mean it's ludicrous or false.
        Moral relativism, which is apparently what you've adopted, is
ludicrous. It says that I am being irrational in condemning what, say,
Hitler or Saddam Hussein did to the gypsies and Kurds, or what is
going on in Rwanda or Bosnia or what used to happen in South Africa or
the way African-Americans were treated under slavery or...well, you
get the idea. If, as moral relativists maintain, there are NO universal
standards, then it is nonsensical to say that Mother Theresa is any
"better" or more "moral" than a serial rapist/murderer. It's as simple
as that. 

O.k., you're not irrational in condemning what Hussein or Hitler did.
That's the precise sort of stuff thrown out by Natural Lawyers who 
either don't understand moral relativism or don't want to.  Mother Theresa
is, in my view, more moral than a serial rapist.  So what?  Most humans 
would agree.  So what?  
I'm miscommunicating.  I merely meant that to assume that universal mores
must exist is ludicrous.  They may certainly may exist, but it's irrational
to claim that they *must* exist without any specific examples.  You are
a rationally trained individual from the Western world, yes?  That means
you were trained to accept the scientific method, yes?  How can you conclude
something exists without any method of even describing it?  That,
friend, is irrational.

All right, enough sarcasm.  I'll grant you that, if moral universals do exist,
they would not at any rate be one sentence aphorisms.  Let me straighten
something out first, though:  are you speaking in terms of Natural Law, 
or merely in terms of "all societies accept this belief."  I'm talking 
about the former, but it sounds like you're talking about the latter.
If we're disputing two different things, maybe we should move on, eh?

        It would seem to me that to understand universal morals we would
need a better understanding of the universe.  Our perspective is so limtied 
that it seems highly unlikely that we could ever understand all of the
events leading up to a persons action.  therefore any judgement we make
we must label as to the best of human understanding, and hope that the
universe is not hastened towards its end as a result.

        TOO LATE! The end of the millenium is upon us! All is vanity.... :)

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss