Catholic Christians are likely wrong

Ha ha I bet you’re loving it at Jesuit school. When I went to Catholic school a hundred years ago, it was all hymn singing with hand actions, miming stations of the cross, liturgical dance – ooh, writing personal reflections in verse…I bet you love all that stuff. :-) I didn’t mention in previous rounds whether or not I believe in god. I didn’t think it was relevant. I was actually quite taken aback by your last post. Not only did you assume that I’m Catholic, but that assumption has driven your entire rebuttal. Your resolution is that Catholics are likely wrong. The word “wrong” implies deviation from some ideal or standard. The ideal or standard that you have used is your own understanding of reality. My argument was that, as a socially constructed system, your perception of reality is not an objective standard against which to judge others’ beliefs. To which you seem to have taken affront. You accused me of hypocrisy. But even if I were a Christian, surely I should be allowed to comment that we all derive our knowledge and beliefs from our social environment? You say not. I think that you would have reacted differently to the argument had you believed me to be an atheist. But who I am and what I believe shouldn’t matter. The argument should stand by itself. To place so much importance on which “belief team” you think I play for is just prejudice. Bertrand Russell, a famous atheist, wrote the following advice which I have always liked. He said, when you come across an intelligent person who believes something ridiculous, of course you should argue with it, but your first task is to find out what leads them to believe the ridiculous thing. Criticism should not precede understanding. When people start accusing others of being crazy, idiots, or brainwashed, it’s a sign of criticizing without understanding. It always seems pointless to me, and sometimes dangerous. Your arguments in this debate have something of this shallow quality. “Catholics believe in unusual things that will probably never be proven,” you complain, and then a bit later provide an example of your own beliefs as a contrast. “An atheist knows that there are other planets than earth because they’ve seen them with their eyes (making it “a fact”).” Yes, it’s possible to see Venus and Mars with the naked eye from Earth. But how do we know these tiny spots of light are planets? Because we’ve been told so by authorities we respect (making it “a fact”). I can’t decide if it’s adorable or disturbing that your faith in these authorities is so great that you actually define the word “fact” as what they tell you to believe. Joe, there are more than one billion Catholics in the world. You claim that they are “likely wrong”. It’s a big call to say you know better than a billion people. Such a claim really does warrant extraordinary evidence. Instead, you’ve done little more than throw adjectives at it. I have no doubt that you really do find Catholic doctrine absurd, questionable, unusual, extraordinary, unrealistic and all the rest of it. But you’ve failed to prove that your viewpoint is more objective or in any way superior to those one billion Catholics. So why should anyone believe you? God moves in mysterious ways Actually, you’re right about this. I shouldn’t have written it. It was a flippant, careless answer. I didn’t mean that there’s an actual god who is moving about in a mysterious manner. I meant it as a saying, meaning that it’s normal not to understand everything. Historical jesus You know what? There are too many topics in this debate! You could probably have put each one of your eleven points as a separate debate. It might have been better. There was recently a good debate on this very topic. http://www.debate.org... The Jesus-Joseph hypothesis and the other Jesus arguments Of course Jesus’ time is not one of the most well-documented periods in history! There was no printing press! It might be one of the most written about periods in history, but there’s no way it would be the richest period in terms of primary documents. Nobody, Catholic or atheist, is pretending that Jesus was born on the 25th of December, are they? I was always told at school that nobody knew the actual date of his birthday but it was put in December to coincide with the pagan winter solstice celebrations. Yes, I know that a lot of the themes were unoriginal including dying and rising from the dead. My understanding is that in the years before Jesus was born, a lot of people were actively expecting the Messiah. The prophecies pointed to it and a lot of false Messiahs were recognized and then rejected. Then Jesus turned up. You can interpret this in two ways. A. All the Messiah expectations lead people to see a Messiah where there was none, or B. The prophecies foretold the coming of Jesus. You’re the one with the resolution that Catholics are wrong. You say which one to pick. Honestly, Joe, I really think that Jesus-Joseph parallel is unconvincing. But I’ve written a lot tonight and I think my husband would rather I got off the computer. You should start it as a separate debate. It’s been a joy and a privilege. Thank you for the debate!