It's not that we need to seek forgiveness for being human, it's that we don't automatically deserve to go to heaven. What, for instance, has an infant done to deserve heaven? Not much. But God is willing to give us the grace necessary.
Original sin means that, to quote Chesterton, "men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its own nature to rust or to rot." And this is obviously true, just look around you. To be good, you have to make an effort, otherwise any good person will eventually fall into sin.
Pope Benedict XVI will ultimately be considered more important that Pope John Paul II, I think. Look at the recent motu proprio, for instance, and similar things which are producing good ecumenical effects with respect to the Eastern Christian Churches.
"Despite all the good, cheery values social conservatives claim to protect, their draconian policies will always be the number one enemy of progress and enlightenment."
We're trying to protect the lives of innocent children.
Why not do medical experiments on random adults? That would advance science, wouldn't it? But we don't do that, because it would harm innocent people. It would be draconian to perform medical experiments on random adults, even though doing so would lead to more "progress and enlightenment", as you call it.
A building is on fire, and about to collapse. You have to choose which to save - door number one, your beloved spouse in a waiting room. Door number two, a liquid N2 tank with 40,000 frozen adult strangers. You can't save both. Which do you choose?
Many people would choose to save their spouse. That doesn't mean that they don't believe those strangers aren't human beings. It's just that one's emotions often influence what one does. It's like how people care about the hunting of cute baby seals, but don't care about the hunting of uglier animals of equal "value".
In your example, a baby has more emotional appeal than a tank. Similarly, if it were a choice between a baby and several adults, most people would probably save the baby. I imagine most men would save a woman rather than several men, even if it were stipulated that they never see her again. But in these cases, it doesn't imply that one group is more human than another group.
So your gedankenexperiment doesn't really prove what you think it does.
You make it sound like the statue of Zeus was destroyed Christians. According to Wikipedia:
"The circumstances of its eventual destruction are a source of debate: some scholars argue that it perished with the temple in the 5th century AD, others argue that it was carried off to Constantinople, where it was destroyed in the great fire of the Lauseion."
No, you've got it backwards. The only reason some people support the use of embryonic stem cells is because of the possibility of it affecting abortion case law. Why not use adult stem cells, which have already been shown to be medically useful? The problem is that the pro-abortion lobby wants to use the issue of possible cures to get people to reject the humanity of human embryos. That's why you never hear embryonic stem cell research supporters talk about the benefits of adult stem cells: it doesn't further their political aims.
On the other hand, the reason anti-abortion people oppose the use of embryonic stem cells is that killing human embryos, for research purposes or any other reason, is abortion. It's the killing of a young human being.
"If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?"
Well, for one thing, if Jesus wasn't God, then He didn't redeem us by His death. In which case we wouldn't be able to enter heaven (unless we eventually get a true Savior).
Also, it would mean that God performed miracles for someone who falsely claimed to be God...
Catholic teachings are the real teachings of Christianity. Christianity is like most things in life, simple at a glance, but there's a lot to study if you want to.
People who claim that Christianity is very simple, without any complexity, are ignoring much of what Jesus said.
Actually, the "Liquid Animation" series by fidos uses the Navier Stokes equations.... If anyone's interested, look for them here; the last one was posted on May 20, 2006.
"Yea, and think about the Crusades I, II, and III that destroyed the gems of middle eastern civilization at their peak."
That's like blaming the Allies for destroying Nazi culture in France. Wasn't it the Muslims who invaded the Holy Land in the first place, and who subsequently attacked the pilgrims there?
We may consider highly educated, morally-refined, sensitive individuals as the most capable members of our species, but if they fail to breed, then by Mother Nature's standards they are not
Well, the problem is that they're not morally-refined if they use contraception... Yet another example showing how bad it is to ignore Natural Law.
1753 A good intention (for example, that of helping one's neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just. The end does not justify the means. Thus the condemnation of an innocent person cannot be justified as a legitimate means of saving the nation.
Also, have a look at the following passage from the Bible:
Romans 3:8 "That would be the same as saying: 'Do evil as a means to good.' Some slanderers have accused us of teaching this, but they are justly condemned."
So both Paul and his accusers understood that the end does not justify the means.
You seem to imply that the church of Rome follows the teachings of the Bible. Then how do you explain what's said in I Timothy 3? A bishop should be married
What Paul is saying is that a bishop shouldn't be a married to more than one woman (i.e. divorced and remarried). Paul says that a bishop should be "beyond reproach", and includes being married to one woman in a list of non-reproachful characteristics. If a bishop were married to more than one woman, then he wouldn't be "beyond reproach". Paul isn't saying that a bishop has to be married, because otherwise that would mean that it's reproachful to be single, which is clearly not the case. Besides, Paul himself was unmarried, so by your logic, he shouldn't have had authority in the Church.
1 Tim 3:2-3 Now a bishop must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, dignified, hospitable, an apt teacher, no drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and no lover of money.
if he has no experience in handling a family he isn't able to handle a church.
No, Paul says that if he can't handle his own family, then he wouldn't be able to handle a church.
1 Tim 3:4-5 He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way; for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God's church?
Yet the "bishop" of Rome has always been an unmarried man
No, some of the first bishops, including the first Pope (Peter) were married.
Paul of Tarsus himself urged people to marry, because otherwise they could fall in temptation.
He says that if you can't control yourself, then you should get married. But he also says that if you want to serve God, it's better to remain celibate like Paul.
1 Corinthians 7:7-9 For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.
1 Corinthians 7:32-33 But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.
Jesus also recommends celibacy:
Matthew 19:12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
The church of Rome insists on not following Paul's teachings. A consequence of that is that the church is a haven for pederasts, as proved by several cases judged in courts of justice.
Since pederasts tend to be homosexuals, I don't think getting married would help them to avoid that particular sin. The problem is not with celibacy (there have been similar cases among Protestants, for instance), but rather with the tendency starting in the 1960s to allow unsuitable men to become priests. But things have been improving ever since John Paul II became Pope.
If they insist that artificial contraceptive methods are sinful, they cannot have artificial death prevention methods either.
One obvious difference is that the first prevents a good thing, and the other prevents a bad thing.
Anyway, contraceptives are used to explicitly reject the whole reason for having sex in the first place. Sex is for two things: producing children, and uniting the husband and wife. The use of contraceptives implies both a rejection of the children that sex would produce, and also a rejection of one's spouse. One is supposed to give oneself fully to one's spouse, but contraceptives imply that you're holding back the reproductive aspect of yourself, and rejectin
and what about adults who've never been exposed to the teachings of Christ? how are they any different than children?
The difference is that adults can make moral choices, and thus can sin. Infants don't have the intellectual capacity for that yet.
it's clear that they have no opportunity to enter heaven.
That's not necessarily so. Think about Acts 17:22-23, where Paul said that the Athenians were worshipping God without knowing it:
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you."
Someone who never heard of Christ could theoretically receive a baptism of desire, even though he doesn't know what baptism is. After all, God does give everyone the grace to come to Him, so it's possible for someone to respond to that grace even if he has never heard of Jesus. However, since such people don't have access to the sacraments or to the teachings of the Church, it would be more difficult for them to avoid sin. And if they do commit a mortal sin, it would be very unlikely that they would repent enough to be forgiven. That's why God gave us the sacraments, to make it easier for us to ultimately go to heaven.
i thought separation from God was "the punishment".
Well, technically we can't be separated from God, since He is everywhere, and keeps us in existence through His presence. But those in hell have decided to turn away from God; perhaps one might say that they close their eyes to Him. Infants haven't.
why don't babies deserve that? who says they haven't sinned? only God knows that.
Babies can't sin, since they can't make moral decisions yet.
why do people struggle with this? babies who don't get the chance are out of luck just like everyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not that we need to seek forgiveness for being human, it's that we don't automatically deserve to go to heaven. What, for instance, has an infant done to deserve heaven? Not much. But God is willing to give us the grace necessary.
Original sin means that, to quote Chesterton, "men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its own nature to rust or to rot." And this is obviously true, just look around you. To be good, you have to make an effort, otherwise any good person will eventually fall into sin.
Actually, we should leave the science to the scientists, and ethics to the Pope.
Pope Benedict XVI will ultimately be considered more important that Pope John Paul II, I think. Look at the recent motu proprio, for instance, and similar things which are producing good ecumenical effects with respect to the Eastern Christian Churches.
No one has a right to have children. If you can have them, fine, and if not, fine.
No, that's not the problem. Cloned people have souls - look at twins, for instance.
I think his point is that human beings shouldn't be made in labs, as if they were bacteria cultures or something like that.
This appears to be the original text of the speech, in Italian:
Discorso ai partecipanti alla Sessione Plenaria della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede
"Despite all the good, cheery values social conservatives claim to protect, their draconian policies will always be the number one enemy of progress and enlightenment."
We're trying to protect the lives of innocent children.
Why not do medical experiments on random adults? That would advance science, wouldn't it? But we don't do that, because it would harm innocent people. It would be draconian to perform medical experiments on random adults, even though doing so would lead to more "progress and enlightenment", as you call it.
Another thought experiment:
A building is on fire, and about to collapse. You have to choose which to save - door number one, your beloved spouse in a waiting room. Door number two, a liquid N2 tank with 40,000 frozen adult strangers. You can't save both. Which do you choose?
Many people would choose to save their spouse. That doesn't mean that they don't believe those strangers aren't human beings. It's just that one's emotions often influence what one does. It's like how people care about the hunting of cute baby seals, but don't care about the hunting of uglier animals of equal "value".
In your example, a baby has more emotional appeal than a tank. Similarly, if it were a choice between a baby and several adults, most people would probably save the baby. I imagine most men would save a woman rather than several men, even if it were stipulated that they never see her again. But in these cases, it doesn't imply that one group is more human than another group.
So your gedankenexperiment doesn't really prove what you think it does.
You make it sound like the statue of Zeus was destroyed Christians. According to Wikipedia:
"The circumstances of its eventual destruction are a source of debate: some scholars argue that it perished with the temple in the 5th century AD, others argue that it was carried off to Constantinople, where it was destroyed in the great fire of the Lauseion."
As for the temple, mentioned above:
"The temple was destroyed by earthquake in the 5th century CE."
Won't someone think of the adults?
No, you've got it backwards. The only reason some people support the use of embryonic stem cells is because of the possibility of it affecting abortion case law. Why not use adult stem cells, which have already been shown to be medically useful? The problem is that the pro-abortion lobby wants to use the issue of possible cures to get people to reject the humanity of human embryos. That's why you never hear embryonic stem cell research supporters talk about the benefits of adult stem cells: it doesn't further their political aims.
On the other hand, the reason anti-abortion people oppose the use of embryonic stem cells is that killing human embryos, for research purposes or any other reason, is abortion. It's the killing of a young human being.
Right. For anyone interested, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about this in the Summa Theologica (Ia, q. 93).
"If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?"
Well, for one thing, if Jesus wasn't God, then He didn't redeem us by His death. In which case we wouldn't be able to enter heaven (unless we eventually get a true Savior).
Also, it would mean that God performed miracles for someone who falsely claimed to be God...
If you love God, He will let you be with Him forever. But if you don't love God, He won't force you to be with Him.
Catholic teachings are the real teachings of Christianity. Christianity is like most things in life, simple at a glance, but there's a lot to study if you want to.
People who claim that Christianity is very simple, without any complexity, are ignoring much of what Jesus said.
Have a look at the first part of the "Summa Theologica" by St. Thomas Aquinas.
I've heard that "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is considered literature.
As the article you linked to mentions, Forbidden Planet was based on The Tempest. That's what he's referring to.
Actually, the "Liquid Animation" series by fidos uses the Navier Stokes equations.... If anyone's interested, look for them here; the last one was posted on May 20, 2006.
"Yea, and think about the Crusades I, II, and III that destroyed the gems of middle eastern civilization at their peak."
That's like blaming the Allies for destroying Nazi culture in France. Wasn't it the Muslims who invaded the Holy Land in the first place, and who subsequently attacked the pilgrims there?
We may consider highly educated, morally-refined, sensitive individuals as the most capable members of our species, but if they fail to breed, then by Mother Nature's standards they are not
Well, the problem is that they're not morally-refined if they use contraception... Yet another example showing how bad it is to ignore Natural Law.
From the Catechism:
Also, have a look at the following passage from the Bible:
Romans 3:8
"That would be the same as saying: 'Do evil as a means to good.' Some slanderers have accused us of teaching this, but they are justly condemned."
So both Paul and his accusers understood that the end does not justify the means.
You seem to imply that the church of Rome follows the teachings of the Bible. Then how do you explain what's said in I Timothy 3? A bishop should be married
What Paul is saying is that a bishop shouldn't be a married to more than one woman (i.e. divorced and remarried). Paul says that a bishop should be "beyond reproach", and includes being married to one woman in a list of non-reproachful characteristics. If a bishop were married to more than one woman, then he wouldn't be "beyond reproach". Paul isn't saying that a bishop has to be married, because otherwise that would mean that it's reproachful to be single, which is clearly not the case. Besides, Paul himself was unmarried, so by your logic, he shouldn't have had authority in the Church.
1 Tim 3:2-3
Now a bishop must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, dignified, hospitable, an apt teacher, no drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and no lover of money.
if he has no experience in handling a family he isn't able to handle a church.
No, Paul says that if he can't handle his own family, then he wouldn't be able to handle a church.
1 Tim 3:4-5
He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way; for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God's church?
Yet the "bishop" of Rome has always been an unmarried man
No, some of the first bishops, including the first Pope (Peter) were married.
Paul of Tarsus himself urged people to marry, because otherwise they could fall in temptation.
He says that if you can't control yourself, then you should get married. But he also says that if you want to serve God, it's better to remain celibate like Paul.
1 Corinthians 7:7-9
For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.
1 Corinthians 7:32-33
But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.
Jesus also recommends celibacy:
Matthew 19:12
For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
The church of Rome insists on not following Paul's teachings. A consequence of that is that the church is a haven for pederasts, as proved by several cases judged in courts of justice.
Since pederasts tend to be homosexuals, I don't think getting married would help them to avoid that particular sin. The problem is not with celibacy (there have been similar cases among Protestants, for instance), but rather with the tendency starting in the 1960s to allow unsuitable men to become priests. But things have been improving ever since John Paul II became Pope.
If they insist that artificial contraceptive methods are sinful, they cannot have artificial death prevention methods either.
One obvious difference is that the first prevents a good thing, and the other prevents a bad thing.
Anyway, contraceptives are used to explicitly reject the whole reason for having sex in the first place. Sex is for two things: producing children, and uniting the husband and wife. The use of contraceptives implies both a rejection of the children that sex would produce, and also a rejection of one's spouse. One is supposed to give oneself fully to one's spouse, but contraceptives imply that you're holding back the reproductive aspect of yourself, and rejectin
The difference is that adults can make moral choices, and thus can sin. Infants don't have the intellectual capacity for that yet.
it's clear that they have no opportunity to enter heaven.
That's not necessarily so. Think about Acts 17:22-23, where Paul said that the Athenians were worshipping God without knowing it:
Someone who never heard of Christ could theoretically receive a baptism of desire, even though he doesn't know what baptism is. After all, God does give everyone the grace to come to Him, so it's possible for someone to respond to that grace even if he has never heard of Jesus. However, since such people don't have access to the sacraments or to the teachings of the Church, it would be more difficult for them to avoid sin. And if they do commit a mortal sin, it would be very unlikely that they would repent enough to be forgiven. That's why God gave us the sacraments, to make it easier for us to ultimately go to heaven.
i thought separation from God was "the punishment".
Well, technically we can't be separated from God, since He is everywhere, and keeps us in existence through His presence. But those in hell have decided to turn away from God; perhaps one might say that they close their eyes to Him. Infants haven't.
why don't babies deserve that? who says they haven't sinned? only God knows that.
Babies can't sin, since they can't make moral decisions yet.
why do people struggle with this? babies who don't get the chance are out of luck just like everyone else.
Maybe, and maybe not. We don't know for sure.