Caufman posted:

Something I've also seen is that an atheist and a believer may have the same concept of what God is, and they differ only in whether that exists. At the same time, it's possible for two believer to have such different notions of God that the difference between them is bigger than the difference between an atheist and a believer. I've found this to be the case especially when thinking of mysticism's notions of God (crudely, that God is in all things, and all things are constitutive of God). So what Killingyouguy! is saying makes sense to me, because I think mysticism is a minority thought among most believers and atheists both. Both are picturing an external deity that broadcasts messages and intervenes in the world, and one believe this deity exists while the other does not. In my own life, I'd describe my early understanding of God from growing up Catholic to have been more similar to my understanding of God when I went through a period of atheism than to my understanding of God today, after having been introduced to contemplative practice.

Killingyouguy! posted:

All great questions which I do not have answers for! I kind of figured religious people have some kind of innate sense of what's the correct answer that I just lack.

Nessus posted:

But I also think most schools do not hold the obedience to God's law as the goal in and of itself, but rather as a route to salvation, and it's the salvation that's the important part. (I speak very broadly; I would consider 'salvation' to be the bodhisattva path followed by buddhahood and then nirvana; but it is still an "upward-looking" kind of goal.)

Nessus posted:

If God was real and wanted obedience, He could just make everyone obey with his superpowers.

I think that reasoning back from this premise (that God wants people to obey him) tends to lead to either a macro-goal for this obedience (for instance, to bring humans into closer relationship with him) or creates a sort of weird maltheism which we all probably saw tons of in pop media in the 90s and early 00s ('he's insecure and is trying to coax everyone through some huge psychodrama.)

But I also think most schools do not hold the obedience to God's law as the goal in and of itself, but rather as a route to salvation, and it's the salvation that's the important part. (I speak very broadly; I would consider 'salvation' to be the bodhisattva path followed by buddhahood and then nirvana; but it is still an "upward-looking" kind of goal.)

Winifred Madgers posted:

My thought on this is more that God so much wants it to be uncoerced, that he allows it to be obscure and difficult to figure out. He doesn't want just obedience, he wants people who seek him.

Killingyouguy! posted:

I am curious about this idea of atheist mysticism

e: if I am not responding to parts of this conversation it is not pride nor ignoring the posts I just assume this thread has seen enough shithead atheists that I'm treading lightly

D34THROW posted:

I want my children to listen to me when I ask them to do something - obedience - but I want it to be willing because they love me and respect me as a parent - uncoerced - and am not willing to spank or severely punish them - force.

Oddly enough...if you had gotten me into any of these discussions a year ago I would not have known how to answer.

Killingyouguy! posted:

Wait, meat robot is an option??

BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:

if i wanted that, i'd have fallen into calvinism

Gaius Marius posted:

I'm the only conscious human btw

Gaius Marius posted:

Azhais posted:

https://i.imgur.com/4XCRANM.mp4

Biblical angels

White Coke posted:

"Meat robot" makes it sound cool, but what some Gnostics thought was that the people they called Hylics weren't really people. They didn't have souls so they were more like animals or automatons. It strikes me as taking the idea common to angsty teens everywhere that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid to its ultimate end.

NikkolasKing posted:

Nothing wrong with being a meat robot, the problem is the eternal damnation that comes after.

In my more pessimistic moments I would wager suicide would be incredibly common everywhere if people could be assured that what came after life was oblivion as opposed to something even worse than life. But as Davy Jones would say "Life is cruel, why should the afterlife be any different?" That motivates a lot of people to keep living.

Going back to Calvin though, it seems to me like Christian theologians have struggled for a long time to try to balance God's Justice and God's Love and many of them chose to side more with the former than the latter. Of course, most people nowadays would say Hell is a supreme injustice, and certainly things like apostasy doesn't deserve it even as the greatest theologians said they did. Or, I know Aquinas suggested capital punishment for it, not sure if he thought they should go to Hell after.


It's one thing Buddhism kind of avoids by not having a God. Amida did not make the world, he's just a being who wanted to save other suffering beings in it. And so the Shin Buddhist advocates I've met have always stressed he is no judge, just a savior.

quote:

'You may forgive, but the man has sinned against God!'--Then it is not a part of the divine to be merciful, I return, and a man may be more merciful than his maker! A man may do that which would be too merciful in God! Then mercy is not a divine attribute, for it may exceed and be too much; it must not be infinite, therefore cannot be God's own.

'Mercy may be against justice.' Never--if you mean by justice what I mean by justice. If anything be against justice, it cannot be called mercy, for it is cruelty. 'To thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy, for thou renderest to every man according to his work.' There is no opposition, no strife whatever, between mercy and justice. Those who say justice means the punishing of sin, and mercy the not punishing of sin, and attribute both to God, would make a schism in the very idea of God. And this brings me to the question, What is meant by divine justice?

Human justice may be a poor distortion of justice, a mere shadow of it; but the justice of God must be perfect. We cannot frustrate it in its working; are we just to it in our idea of it? If you ask any ordinary Sunday congregation in England, what is meant by the justice of God, would not nineteen out of twenty answer, that it means his punishing of sin? Think for a moment what degree of justice it would indicate in a man--that he punished every wrong. A Roman emperor, a Turkish cadi, might do that, and be the most unjust both of men and judges. Ahab might be just on the throne of punishment, and in his garden the murderer of Naboth. In God shall we imagine a distinction of office and character? God is one; and the depth of foolishness is reached by that theology which talks of God as if he held different offices, and differed in each. It sets a contradiction in the very nature of God himself. It represents him, for instance, as having to do that as a magistrate which as a father he would not do! The love of the father makes him desire to be unjust as a magistrate! Oh the folly of any mind that would explain God before obeying him! that would map out the character of God, instead of crying, Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do? God is no magistrate; but, if he were, it would be a position to which his fatherhood alone gave him the right; his rights as a father cover every right he can be analytically supposed to possess. The justice of God is this, that--to use a boyish phrase, the best the language will now afford me because of misuse--he gives every man, woman, child, and beast, everything that has being, fair play; he renders to every man according to his work; and therein lies his perfect mercy; for nothing else could be merciful to the man, and nothing but mercy could be fair to him. God does nothing of which any just man, the thing set fairly and fully before him so that he understood, would not say, 'That is fair.' Who would, I repeat, say a man was a just man because he insisted on prosecuting every offender? A scoundrel might do that. Yet the justice of God, forsooth, is his punishment of sin! A just man is one who cares, and tries, and always tries, to give fair play to everyone in every thing. When we speak of the justice of God, let us see that we do mean justice! Punishment of the guilty may be involved in justice, but it does not constitute the justice of God one atom more than it would constitute the justice of a man.

Powered Descent posted:

It seems a Catholic priest in Arizona has been making an error in doctrinal form, and accidentally performing invalid baptisms for 20 years. It hit the news last night:



Oopsie.

Full story: https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/14/us/pastor-invalid-baptisms-resignation/index.html
FAQ by the Diocese of Phoenix about the situation: https://dphx.org/valid-baptisms/#FAQ

D34THROW posted:

...so because he used the royal "we", in theory (I didn't read the article, just theorycrafting). Because he made an error in understanding, despite the intent behind the action and the methodology, twenty years of baptisms are invalidated? What the actual gently caress

quote:

What this means for you is, if your baptism was invalid and you’ve received other sacraments, you may need to repeat some or all of those sacraments after you are validly baptized as well.

Gaius Marius posted:

Even ionic bonds?

Cyrano4747 posted:

Bolding is in the original, they really want you to know that your confirmations and marriages are also null.

Not to mention potentially 2 or 3 decades of improperly taking communion.

Cyrano4747 posted:

This pretty much sums up my reaction to it.

How in god's name (in this case in a very literal sense) the Church didn't just declare that they were good to go despite the flub, that god understood the intent, etc. is beyond me.

Oh and every other sacrament that they did post-baptism is also invalid because baptism is required for them. I can't imagine having to re-do confirmation in your 30s because of this, and you know that there are some people who are under this umbrella who were married in the Church as well.

From the Diocese of Phoenix's FAQ on the matter:

Bolding is in the original, they really want you to know that your confirmations and marriages are also null.

Not to mention potentially 2 or 3 decades of improperly taking communion.

It's just patently ridiculous on the face of it and I refuse to believe there isn't some way they can have someone high enough up the chain sign off on it as being fine.

quote:

Father Zachary Boazman of Oklahoma City is one such priest. He watched a video from his infancy in which a deacon from the Diocese of Dallas, during service in the Diocese of Fort Worth, had tried to baptize the infant Boazman using the wrong formula.

Father Matthew Hood of the Archdiocese of Detroit also watched a video of a different deacon, Mark Springer, performing an invalid baptism on him as an infant in Troy, Michigan.

In both cases, these would-be priests weren’t really priests, or even Christians! Both men had to be baptized, confirmed, and ordained deacons and then priests for the first time.

Mr. Wiggles posted:

Bishop Olmsted in Phoenix is a crazy reactionary who directly countermands papal orders anyway. Not surprising that he's looking for a way to be an extra rear end in a top hat just for the fun of it.

D34THROW posted:

quote:

Father Zachary Boazman of Oklahoma City is one such priest. He watched a video from his infancy in which a deacon from the Diocese of Dallas, during service in the Diocese of Fort Worth, had tried to baptize the infant Boazman using the wrong formula.

Father Matthew Hood of the Archdiocese of Detroit also watched a video of a different deacon, Mark Springer, performing an invalid baptism on him as an infant in Troy, Michigan.

In both cases, these would-be priests weren’t really priests, or even Christians! Both men had to be baptized, confirmed, and ordained deacons and then priests for the first time.

D34THROW posted:

So because I have not been baptized in the Church - rather as a Lutheran - with a sprinkle of water on my head as a baby, that because I've not taken the sacraments or whatever, that despite my belief in the Godhead and all the other things that, to me, make a Christian, does the Church then hold that I am not, in fact, a Christian?


EDIT: As an example, my church does two of these things: a believer's full-immersion baptism (which I am greatly looking forward to and my daughter is practically demanding for herself at this point) and communion at important times (I've seen Thanksgiving and Christmas).

Crazy Joe Wilson posted:

Lutheran baptisms are actually accepted as co-valid in the Catholic Church, there are only certain denominations that the Church does not hold as valid. Mormon stands as a principle example, due to the very different beliefs of Mormons vis a vis Catholics.

I can understand the frustration and dismay that comes of news like this, it's a huge mess and there's going to be a lot of hurt. There are remedies though, there have been Priests before who found out they were invalidly baptized and then had to go through baptism, confirmation, and holy orders all in one day to get things right. For people who are alive and who have been wronged, things can be rectified pretty easily probably, in 1 session most likely. For those dead, the Catholic Church has always taught that who God chooses to have mercy on and allow into Heaven is up to Him, so I don't think it's fair for posters here to decide the Catholic Church is just condemning those straight to Hell.

At the same time, words are important, and allowing slight deviations here or there in prayers and sacraments is in my honest opinion just begging for future deviations that can or will introduce contradictory theological ideas into the Sacrament. Maybe it seems like quibbling to outsiders, but to Catholics this is (eternal) life or death stuff.

For those who might want to read more: there's this article on the topic.

Liquid Communism posted:

The 'presume to be valid' bit leads to a fun question.

How many people in the world know, with certainty which words were used in their baptism? Given that the practice is to baptize a child within a few weeks of birth, I would suggest that number is quite low.

Should they, then, presume that their baptism is valid?

Killingyouguy! posted:

going to hell bc some other guy hosed up one word seems... Wrong, but what do I know

Freudian posted:

Speaking from a Jewish perspective: words are important, but they're important for people. God knows that we need routine and ritual, so He gives us words to help us out. He does not actually give the tiniest poo poo what these words are, because He is the infinite and omnipotent God of all Creation, but He knows they make us happy, so He's happy.

Tias posted:

You're going to heaven because one other guy didn't gently caress up, didn't you?

Mr. Wiggles posted:

Christ died for the sins of all, and nobody knows what goes on between a person and God. My expectation is that we'll see all the Satanists in heaven.