Talk:Indifferentism

message: Basically, it isn't true.  
The text seems to say that Protestantism constantly tends to move in the direction of rationalism, apparently because Protestantism is based on the authority of a Biblical text instead of an institution that promulgates doctrine.  At minimum, the recent history of Protestantism in the United States seems not to bear out its predictions, which strike me as representing a pre-World-War-I viewpoint that sees liberal rationalism on the ascendant.  From our own equally limited standpoint, this seems not to have been the case.  Of course, the Roman POV is fairly strongly in evidence here, as throughout the remaining text, but this part especially seems to be more unfocused musing and speculation about how the future looked in the early twentieth century than an explanation of the doctrine of indifferentism in any case.  I am preserving these bits in case anyone wants to try to fix them.  -- Smerdis of Tlön 15:11, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems I see with the foregoing

message: Where are the reliable sources that use the term dharmic religions in the context of this article? Dharmic religions is a now deleted obscure neologism and should not be used throughout Wikipedia. A good alternative is Indian religions. Andries 15:55, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Reliable sources for the term [[dharmic religions]]?

message: The entire passage confuses civil and ecclesiastical functions.  The doctrine against indifferentism asserts what truth is, but does not assert that Catholics should seek the intervention of secular authorities in establishing such doctrines, legally.
Whereas the contributor states, "[t]hese traditional Roman Catholic beliefs in "indifferentism" underlie the long hostility exhibited by Roman Catholicism towards the principles of freedom of religion and separation of church and state," the contributor should stick to the facts, not interpreting the motivations of other people's religion.
Whereas the contributor states, "[t]he Roman Catholic doctrine of "indifferentism" condemns by implication the idea that religious faiths other than Roman Catholicism have a right to exist and to proselytize. "  the Catholic Church's notion that it's own doctrine is correct and unique in no way implies that the force of government is a proper or effective means of establishing that doctrine.
Where the author states ,"[s]tatements such like Connell's are part of the basis for traditional American and British suspicion of the intentions of the Roman Catholic Church as a corporate body and political institution."
The contributor should not ascribe his own suspicions to the American people, for whom Catholicism is the largest religious denomination.  That there has, historically, been some suspicion of Catholics is a fact, but the contributor appears to be justifying such suspicion.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.191.226.212 (talk) 11:55, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why I struck "Indifferentism and freedom of religion" 

message: The "Inclusionism" link in the "see also" section goes to the page Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia. From context one would have expected it to link to something more relevant to religion. I would just edit the link myself to point to its real target, only in this case I don't know what the person who added the link was actually thinking of. Anyone with more knowledge able to sort this out? 80.252.125.10 (talk) 09:27, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misdirected link? 

message: The article conflates four asertions:
1. The nature of God, heaven, hell, and other supernatural entities, as well as historic events of religious significance, are real in the sense that a well-formed statement about them is either entirely true or not entirely true. Either certain people are sent after death to a place of eternal fiery torment or it never happens. Either angels of God, eternal sentient beings who were never human beings, exist in some form or they do not. Moses received carved stone tablets from God on Mount Sinai or he never did.
2. Humans are capable of understanding the nature of these things with enough depth and certainty to answer these questions accurately.
3. God has disclosed the nature of these things in a clear manner intelligible to humanity.
4. God seriously prefers that humans have an accrate understanding of these things, even if wrong understanding does not lead to wrongful acts within the secular domain.
I would assert that the first statement is probably true because it is simpler for the Creator to create a world subject to the same laws of logic as those binding the Divinity.  Of course, the biblical God exists outside of time in the sense that He knows the future even when He chooses not to interfere with human free will, but the laws of Aristotelian logic do not encompass the flow of time.
There are clearly things that are unknowable by humans because we lack the scope in time and space to see or understand the totality of creation.  We are perfectly capable of understanding the divine laws governing our own actions, though perhaps not the logic behind them.
While the bible itself gives ambiguous hints about theology, it spells out in repetitive detail how humans should treat one another another. Even many ritual rules such as keeping the Sabbath boil down to secular behavior in a Godly cause. There are also purely ritualistic commandments in the Bible (far fewer than most religions prescribe), but they are to be carried out by humans.  There is no attempt to characterize heaven, hell, angels, or God Himself except in passing remarks found in discussions of Earthly events and topics. Even the ultimate question of why God created the world is barely mentioned, while the reason God created two human genders is clearly stated because it bears on human needs.
From this I conclude the while God does not object to human speculations about divine entities, He does not care about their conclusions.  Instead, God cares about how we treat ourselves, our fellow humans, and our world.  Seen that way, using any form of coercion, whether physical or social, to enforce a particular theological viewpoint would be religiously pointless and offensive to God's law.
As for ritual compliance, check out the detail provided for building the Ark of the Covenant or seeking annual atonement for sin, and you will see how specific God gets when the details are important to Him.  When those laws are broken, God can wield summary justice, whether by allowing war and conquest or by allowing the Earth to open up and swallow the miscreants.  
Going beyond the biblical prescriptions may not be a bad thing.  Enforcing those embellishments in God's name is both presumptuous and very human.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikeg3 (talk • contribs) 16:49, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  False Dichotomy 

message: When certain people assert that all religions are equal, it's likely that they mean that all people are equal, and not necessarily that all doctrines are equal. For instance, there is a common confusion between Christianity and the Christian people, between Judaism and the Jewish people, or between Islam and the Muslim people. In this particular context, denying that all religions are equal is tantamount to asserting that not all people are equal, which is  certainly not the intent of the person who is talking about dogmas and not about people. On the other hand, there are certain strands of modern relativism that do talk of all dogmas as being equal because they feel that such a view is a pre-requisite for a correct appreciation of value pluralism, which would mean that the equal treatment of opinions is held to be foundational in a democratic society. ADM (talk) 04:55, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Nobody treats a fool as their equal. Get off your moral pedestal before you fall off, you fool. 203.129.23.146 (talk) 00:17, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Religion as dogma vs. Religion as people

message: I just changed the article to have an intro that defines the concept from a neutral perspective. Indifferentism is not strictly a catholic word so that material i moved tot he catholic section. i added a citation to support this. in the catholic section i added a papel statement that takes some of the traditionalist catholic edge off. Post vatican2 catholic dogma is less severe, we (yes im catholic) still hold that ours is the one true faith but well JP2 kinda said it better then i care to attempt "This does not lessen the sincere respect that the Church has for the various religious traditions, recognizing in them elements of truth and goodness" Smitty1337 (talk) 19:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding changes i just made. 

message: This article needs to be completely overhauled. I'm not certain that this is really a legitimate standalone concept outside of Catholic doctrine, despite its presence in LCSH. I'm going to look around and see if I can find any non-Catholic sources that refer to indifferentism - if not, I'm not sure it wouldn't belong better as part of a larger article on Roman Catholic theology. It seems like there's consensus that this deserves a standalone page, so I'm going to spend some time doing some research and come back in a few weeks and make some sourced changes - either to reflect a more balanced view or to reframe this article as part of RC perspectives on other religions and not part of philosophy of religion as a whole.
Eldamorie (talk) 13:18, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I incorporated the majority of the content from this article into Apatheism. I'm thinking that this article can probably be trashed and converted to a redirect now but I don't want to make the decision unilaterally.Eldamorie (talk) 14:01, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: "Apatheism" would appear to be a neologism, and "indifferentism" is the established term, at least in RC theology. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 15:57, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd agree that Apatheism is definitely the neologism - my issue is that Indifferentism is such a broad term in RC theology and gets thrown around all over the place to describe anything that the author doesn't consider suitably rigorous. It gets used in a very different context by philosophers (i.e. RC uses indifferentism to describe deism). It seems like neologisms seem to be the way these articles are getting filed (see the Agnostic neutralism issues). If this article is going to stay (and not become the "new" Apatheism article) then I'd suggest, as I considered above, framing it as an article of Roman Catholic theology and not how it is now.Eldamorie (talk) 16:13, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd happily agree that the RC notion of "indifferentism" seems to be rather scattershot.  In practice it seems to mean "any theological or philosophical position that does not acknowledge the one true faith".  Historically, this article was started as a long excerpt from the Catholic Encyclopedia, and the POV problems of that text were worse than usual given the source.  Most of that text has been discarded without replacement, leaving the article rather hard to follow.  At least when that text was in place, it was obvious that it was discussing a concept in RC theology.  I'm not convinced, though, that "apatheism", which seems to be rather too clever even if it was coined in 1961, is a better place for the material than here.And I have no idea why the article was tagged as an advertisement, either. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 16:43, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

text: As to which is the better title, this interesting Google gadget tells the tale of the tape.  "Indifferentism" is used; "apatheism" hardly at all.  And now that I've shown that to you we'll all get nothing done over the rest of the afternoon. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 17:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll admit to cutting a lot of that text in an attempt to make the article less RC -- in my defense, so much of the original Catholic Encyclopedia text had already been cut so it wasn't clear that this article was on RC theology and not a more general philosophy of religion. I had assumed that the advertising tag was because of the standard Catholic Encyclopedia POV issues, but that's just a guess as it was there when I got to this article. I've tried to make some changes that will hopefully balance this out better so the article doesn't come across like an attack on all non-RC religions (which was the form it was in when I first started editing it) but still represents the perspective. Eldamorie (talk) 17:23, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overhaul 

message: Short and sweet, it belongs under Apatheism clearly listed in the "Indifference" portion of sub-parts of the philosophical stand point, to which that portion needs a less condescending tone to become a lot more encyclopedic in nature. The current page Agnostic neutralism which is under grounds for deletion is the exact same subject and concept under a different name. DudelRok (talk) 11:58, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I incorporated the majority of the content from this article into Apatheism. I'm thinking that this article can probably be trashed and converted to a redirect now but I don't want to make the decision unilaterally.Eldamorie (talk) 14:01, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: "Apatheism" would appear to be a neologism, and "indifferentism" is the established term, at least in RC theology. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 15:57, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd agree that Apatheism is definitely the neologism - my issue is that Indifferentism is such a broad term in RC theology and gets thrown around all over the place to describe anything that the author doesn't consider suitably rigorous. It gets used in a very different context by philosophers (i.e. RC uses indifferentism to describe deism). It seems like neologisms seem to be the way these articles are getting filed (see the Agnostic neutralism issues). If this article is going to stay (and not become the "new" Apatheism article) then I'd suggest, as I considered above, framing it as an article of Roman Catholic theology and not how it is now.Eldamorie (talk) 16:13, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd happily agree that the RC notion of "indifferentism" seems to be rather scattershot.  In practice it seems to mean "any theological or philosophical position that does not acknowledge the one true faith".  Historically, this article was started as a long excerpt from the Catholic Encyclopedia, and the POV problems of that text were worse than usual given the source.  Most of that text has been discarded without replacement, leaving the article rather hard to follow.  At least when that text was in place, it was obvious that it was discussing a concept in RC theology.  I'm not convinced, though, that "apatheism", which seems to be rather too clever even if it was coined in 1961, is a better place for the material than here.And I have no idea why the article was tagged as an advertisement, either. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 16:43, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

text: As to which is the better title, this interesting Google gadget tells the tale of the tape.  "Indifferentism" is used; "apatheism" hardly at all.  And now that I've shown that to you we'll all get nothing done over the rest of the afternoon. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 17:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll admit to cutting a lot of that text in an attempt to make the article less RC -- in my defense, so much of the original Catholic Encyclopedia text had already been cut so it wasn't clear that this article was on RC theology and not a more general philosophy of religion. I had assumed that the advertising tag was because of the standard Catholic Encyclopedia POV issues, but that's just a guess as it was there when I got to this article. I've tried to make some changes that will hopefully balance this out better so the article doesn't come across like an attack on all non-RC religions (which was the form it was in when I first started editing it) but still represents the perspective. Eldamorie (talk) 17:23, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion 

message: Under the heading "Restricted indifferentism", this assertion is made: "This idea (i.e., that a god does not care which belief system we follow, so long as we are sincere) appears to be tenable only in a cultural context that takes most core ethical beliefs for granted: it runs into serious trouble as soon as the basis of ethics comes into question."  No reference is offered to support this assertion nor, I think, does it sound sensible.  I would appreciate it if someone could defend this view and provide sources to support it.  Otherwise, I think it should be stricken. Bricology (talk) 17:48, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problematical statement re. ethics and their cultural context 

message: What else could we expect on a wikipedia page about catholicism but obedience to catholic dogma? I naively expected something a little less pro-catholic than this. It seems probable a catholic is not free to debate religion, but rather to obey superiors who make decisions, and write the official line. This seems to leave few choices open to a catholic writer who has to defend the received dogma, and the one on display here seems to be 'assert superiority at all costs'. It has worked for almost two thousand years it must be right, mustn't it? Never mind truth, see how strong I am. Hilarious.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.6.185.102 (talk) 23:36, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hilarious