Pope Francis, Catholics, and Christians in the news worldwide

When it comes to belief in a creator, I see two groups: the fideists (those who believe but do not require reason:  think Pascal, Wittgenstein*, William James, and probably Kierkegaard); the other group being atheists. 

And then there is everyone else. 

* Wittgensteinian Fideism – is variously characterized as entailing one or more of the following distinct (but arguably inter-related) theses: (1) that religion is logically cut off from other aspects of life; (2) that religious discourse is essentially self-referential and does not allow us to talk about reality; (3) that religious beliefs can be understood only by religious believers; and (4) that religion cannot be criticized. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

nohero said:

- while that may "cover every possibility" that you can think of, that doesn't limit the possibilities for everyone who believes in God.

[Edited to add] Not trying to be opaque.  For example, with respect to god as "a supernatural being", see what comes up if you google "God is not a being".

regarding "being" - I first had other words there.  intelligence. force. I settled on being because at it's most general it just means something that exists. "god is not a being" refers to a different definition.

as for this:

"that doesn't limit the possibilities for everyone who believes in God."

not sure of your point here.

God is either a being or a becoming. The universe—even the Holy See—points toward the latter.

I find it interesting that when @jamie changed this thread’s title, he felt folks clicking on this thread might be upset over the Lenten Gospels being posted, since the original title subject was about “Pope Francis, Catholics and Christians worldwide”.

However, it  appears from the conversations of late that there is a rich interest in religion in MOLand and the comments have been erudite and revealing. Thank you.

dave said:

God is either a being or a becoming. The universe—even the Holy See—points toward the latter.

what is "a becoming"?

Something that evolves. As in our notion of a personal god, which didn't even exist in medieval times.  

well, since the concept of god arose out of ignorance as an attempt to explain our surroundings, I just generally tend to discount the evolving definitions. they're all based on a fundamentally unsound premise.

What was ignorant about asking for an explanation?  Not asking for explanations is where ignorance lives.

dave said:

What was ignorant about asking for an explanation?  Not asking for explanations is where ignorance lives.

the ignorance is not about the asking. it's about the answer. answering "god" never has, and never will, add to our understanding of the universe. answering "god" breeds ignorance.

So this puts you in the atheist camp, which is impervious to ignorance.  j/k

drummerboy said:

nohero said:

- while that may "cover every possibility" that you can think of, that doesn't limit the possibilities for everyone who believes in God.

[Edited to add] Not trying to be opaque.  For example, with respect to god as "a supernatural being", see what comes up if you google "God is not a being".

regarding "being" - I first had other words there.  intelligence. force. I settled on being because at it's most general it just means something that exists. "god is not a being" refers to a different definition.

as for this:

"that doesn't limit the possibilities for everyone who believes in God."

not sure of your point here.

You removed the context, those words were commenting on your post that was quoted - "Atheists can work with a very general, simple definition - a supernatural being that influences the universe and/or has created the universe. Pretty sure that covers every possibility. Every significant god I'm aware of shares those basic qualities." Also, doing the Google I suggested might have helped, because it is relevant.

nohero said:

drummerboy said:

nohero said:

- while that may "cover every possibility" that you can think of, that doesn't limit the possibilities for everyone who believes in God.

[Edited to add] Not trying to be opaque.  For example, with respect to god as "a supernatural being", see what comes up if you google "God is not a being".

regarding "being" - I first had other words there.  intelligence. force. I settled on being because at it's most general it just means something that exists. "god is not a being" refers to a different definition.

as for this:

"that doesn't limit the possibilities for everyone who believes in God."

not sure of your point here.

You removed the context, those words were commenting on your post that was quoted - "Atheists can work with a very general, simple definition - a supernatural being that influences the universe and/or has created the universe. Pretty sure that covers every possibility. Every significant god I'm aware of shares those basic qualities." Also, doing the Google I suggested might have helped, because it is relevant.

I did do the google, and I only removed the context in my repost. I understand the context.

I still don't understand what your "limit the possibilities" statement means.

drummerboy said:

I did do the google, and I only removed the context in my repost. I understand the context.

I still don't understand what your "limit the possibilities" statement means.

It's disagreement with your "Pretty sure that covers every possibility." I'm not sure why that was unclear.

speaking of scribes and interpretations, From Time Magazine:

“The Hidden History of Those Who Wrote the Christian Story

“The untold history of the people who helped Jesus' disciples and the Church share the Christian story.

CANDIDA MOSS

MOSS, THE EDWARD CADBURY CHAIR OF THEOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM AND REGULAR COMMENTATOR ON CBS AND OTHER NETWORKS, IS THE AUTHOR OF GOD'S GHOSTWRITERS: ENSLAVED CHRISTIANS AND THE MAKING OF THE BIBLE

“What was true of Paul—the best educated of the Apostles—is true of all early Christian writers and leaders. Most early Christians used secretaries to transcribe and copy their writings. According to an early second century tradition, the Apostle Peter dictated his Gospel to his secretary Mark, a “translator” who had travelled with him helping him communicate with Greek-speakers and navigate local customs. Later sources would elevate Mark’s pedigree to religious aristocracy, but our earliest sources picture him as low status and hints that he was enslaved.

“The legend of Peter and Mark might be apocryphal, but it captures a very real ancient dynamic: people who were illiterate, people who had visual impairments, people who suffered from arthritis or gout, and people who were elderly dictated almost everything they wrote. Those of means routinely dictated their opinions and delegated their correspondence to their enslaved workers simply because it was more comfortable. As anyone who recalls taking a handwritten exam knows, writing hurts. Florentius of Valeránica, a tenth century copyist, claimed that “the burden of writing…mists the eyes, it curves the back, it breaks the belly and ribs, [and] it fills the kidneys with pain.” It is because of this that, unlike later enslavers who had reading glasses and printing presses, elite Romans educated enslaved workers to do their paperwork.

“The work of these secretaries was not, as some might assume, mindless. The reason we suppose that it was is because ancient enslavers tell us it was. They picture their enslaved workers as mere body parts or tools. As the “hands” or “tongues” of enslavers, literate workers who wrote letters and managed whole households and estates were seen as mere mouthpieces for the will of their enslavers. Even sidestepping the ethically problematic activity of accepting this dehumanizing view of enslaved people, there is another issue: it is historically inaccurate.

“Ancient secretarial ghostwriting involved an ability to wrangle unwieldy expressions into grammatical compliance, and an adeptness at imitating both established models of elegant writing and the quirks and compositional tells of the dictator. It was imitative, but it was also creative and constructive. Ancient papyri reveal that secretaries improved upon the raw material with which they were provided. Sometimes scribes wrote private jokes into tax documents. In one ancient papyrus fragment I located in Berlin, a secretary inserted enslaved people back into a history text from which they had been erased, squeezing the name of captive engineers between the lines of the manuscript. Perhaps the secretary saw their insertion as a means of resisting power.

“Studies of secretarial and clerical work from every other period, from medieval secretaries to mid-twentieth century data processing, shows that low status writers always make powerful and important decisions that affect the final product. In All the Livelong Day her classic study of the meaning of boredom-inducing repetitious work, Barbara Garson writes that an “amazing ingenuity goes into manufacturing goals and satisfactions on jobs where measurable achievement has been all but rationalized out.” Cognitive psychologists would argue that people cannot help but crave agency. It is bad history to dismiss secretaries as unimportant.

“In the case of the Bible, even small tweaks and improvements in style have had an outsized impact. For almost two thousand years, readers of the New Testament have agonized over the interpretation of every detail of the Jesus story. Christians have excavated participles as if they were precious relics. Any modification, however small, has affected the course of Christian theology. An excellent secretary or copyist is usually undetectable, but they were always there, actively coauthoring and making decisions that affected the most important collection of books in human history.

“The influence of enslaved people on the making of Christianity did not begin and end with inscription. Once an Apostle or Christian author had written their letter, gospel, or treatise, it was trusted unfree couriers like who undertook lengthy journeys to foreign cities and sometime inhospitable audiences that spread the Gospel abroad. Surely, they are as worthy of the title of “missionary” as anyone else. They facilitated connections between the budding congregations of believers, answered questions about the meaning of the texts they had delivered, and laid the groundwork for what would later be called the universal (that is, catholic) church.

“It was the editorial eyes and cramping hands of copyists in bookstores and private homes that laboriously reproduced and corrected successive generations of Christian books. They made mistakes, to be sure, but they also made corrections, repaired damaged books, and added insecticide made from cedar oil to preserve the words of the past. Copyists have had a bad rap since the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther, whose negative view of scribes owned a great deal to his antisemitism and incipient anti-clericalism, but ancient copyists were not just corrupters of texts. They were curators and guardians of letters.

“And when a Pauline letter, a life of Jesus, or an apocalyptic story about the end of the world was read aloud, it was servile readers, whose animated gestures and intonation brought the stories to life in Christian gatherings. That some Christian bishops worried about their delivery of scripture only demonstrates the influence of these readers in the lives of illiterate Christians. In making decisions about emphasis and tone of voice these enslaved people became the first interpreters of scripture and the faces of the Gospel.

“The fact of servile collaborators is clear to students of Christian history. The prolific mid-third-century Christian theologian Origen, whose critical editions of the Hebrew Bible and theory of biblical interpretation have been foundational for Christian theology, could not have performed his work without the team of enslaved scribes and calligraphers “gifted” to him by his patron Ambrose. Though the men and women who assisted Origen are anonymous, the names of other literate workers—Fortunatus (Lucky), Onesimus (Useful), Epaphroditus (Charming), Epaphras (Lovely), and Tychicus (Fortunate), to name only a few—are preserved in early Christian texts. Though these names are typically servile, and they performed servile work, their social status is rarely discussed. They are remembered instead, and in keeping with much later apocryphal traditions that sought to elevate them, as volunteers and bishops. Thinking about their perspectives and experiences as marginalized member of society, however, would change how scholars and lay people alike read every part of the New Testament.

“The success of the Christian proclamation, therefore, was not just the work and accomplishment of a dozen hand-picked freeborn disciples, but owes as much to the enslaved, often invisible, workers whose names have been erased and whose status has been obscured. At every step in this process—from the inscription of the books of the New Testament, to their movement to other parts of the Mediterranean and beyond, to their copying, and their performance and interpretation in Christian gatherings—enslaved people were present, playing a variety of essential roles not only in the writing of the New Testament but also in the rise of Christianity. In so doing, they have shaped the world we occupy today.

“The influence of invisible coauthors and ghostwriters continues in the present. Many authors use ghostwriters, even in cases where the genre involves telling a personal story. It’s rare that, as recently happened with some evangelical pastors, there’s much controversy about the practice. Readers tend not to worry that the shape of a biography doesn’t always come from the “author” or that the convictions of a history-making speech often belonged to someone invisible. Often this is because those unseen contributors are buried under NDAs. Further down the publishing line fact checkers, editors, proof-readers, and editorial managers make critical interventions both for good and bad. They may not be authors, but they do important authorial work. The issue isn’t cooperation: whether in writing or running a business creative collaboration can be a boon to everyone. The problem is when the many hands that make light work and shape history are hidden from view.”

Holy Thursday…

nohero said:

drummerboy said:

I did do the google, and I only removed the context in my repost. I understand the context.

I still don't understand what your "limit the possibilities" statement means.

It's disagreement with your "Pretty sure that covers every possibility." I'm not sure why that was unclear.

really? your quibble with the word "being" makes you think that my definition of god is not near universal?

It’s almost 1am on Good Friday morning here. Wishing you all a blessed Easter.

drummerboy said:

really? your quibble with the word "being" makes you think that my definition of god is not near universal?

It's not a "quibble", since it's not the word but the concept.  The further explanation was in what you referred to as "a different definition". 

drummerboy said:

nohero said:

[Edited to add] Not trying to be opaque.  For example, with respect to god as "a supernatural being", see what comes up if you google "God is not a being".

regarding "being" - I first had other words there.  intelligence. force. I settled on being because at it's most general it just means something that exists. "god is not a being" refers to a different definition.

nohero said:

drummerboy said:

really? your quibble with the word "being" makes you think that my definition of god is not near universal?

It's not a "quibble", since it's not the word but the concept.  The further explanation was in what you referred to as "a different definition". 

drummerboy said:

nohero said:

[Edited to add] Not trying to be opaque.  For example, with respect to god as "a supernatural being", see what comes up if you google "God is not a being".

regarding "being" - I first had other words there.  intelligence. force. I settled on being because at it's most general it just means something that exists. "god is not a being" refers to a different definition.

the reason that it's a "quibble" is that it's all about trying to define a thing that only exists within the minds of men. arguments over whether god is a "being" or not are really besides the point, and have absolutely nothing to do with the question at hand, which is the process involved in deciding whether to be an atheist vs a theist. and certainly, I can pretty much guarantee that NO ONE is going to be influenced on deciding whether god exists based on the word "being". (can you even exist outside space and time? who knows?!)

.

drummerboy said:

the reason that it's a "quibble" is that it's all about trying to define a thing that only exists within the minds of men. arguments over whether god is a "being" or not are really besides the point, and have absolutely nothing to do with the question at hand, which is the process involved in deciding whether to be an atheist vs a theist. and certainly, I can pretty much guarantee that NO ONE is going to be influenced on deciding whether god exists based on the word "being". (can you even exist outside space and time? who knows?!)

I see that you're set in your thinking, I was just pointing out viewpoints that were other than your own.

nohero said:

drummerboy said:

the reason that it's a "quibble" is that it's all about trying to define a thing that only exists within the minds of men. arguments over whether god is a "being" or not are really besides the point, and have absolutely nothing to do with the question at hand, which is the process involved in deciding whether to be an atheist vs a theist. and certainly, I can pretty much guarantee that NO ONE is going to be influenced on deciding whether god exists based on the word "being". (can you even exist outside space and time? who knows?!)

I see that you're set in your thinking, I was just pointing out viewpoints that were other than your own.

I'm set in my thinking? What does that even mean?

And you're not? What are the odds that you choose atheism in this lifetime?

Anyway, you're mistaking having confidence in one's position to being "set". As for being set, if I were to be presented with evidence for god, or even a good argument, I could be persuaded.

And once you guys can decide on an actual definition of god, let me know.

I didn't take the argument to be over atheism vs theism, but over the claim that atheism is an inherently more thoughtful position. I think it's possible to be arrive at either atheism or theism in either a shallow or thoughtful way, that there are plenty of examples of both, and that the more thoughtful object to the preceding binary framing.

It’s all about faith, which is believing in something without any evidence. 
Thomas was a very thoughtful individual.

As the followers of this thread can affirm, I am but a Luddite here and cut and paste of lengthy scripture overwhelms me often — and the Passion on Good Friday is way difficult for me.

But I found this article from UK’s The Tablet 

PVW said:

I didn't take the argument to be over atheism vs theism, but over the claim that atheism is an inherently more thoughtful position. I think it's possible to be arrive at either atheism or theism in either a shallow or thoughtful way, that there are plenty of examples of both, and that the more thoughtful object to the preceding binary framing.

sure. anyone can arrive at their conclusion in any manner, thoughtful or not.

That observation does not shed any light on the thought process involved. Which one is "more thoughtful" is a red herring, but the differences between the two are worth examining.

The fact is that choosing theism is almost always an easy decision. It's hardly even fair calling it a decision - in today's world the existence of god is simply a given, and choosing to believe is clearly the path of least resistance. It's the default.

The other difference is a person's starting point. Atheists usually start out as theists. The process of even considering atheism requires a complete re-examination of one's religious worldview.

OTOH, theists usually start as believers. Selecting theism does not require a re-examination. They tend to have grown up in religious families and are indoctrinated at an early age. And in fact many atheists also start off that way. OTOH, I bet the percentage of theists that started as atheists is probably close to zero.

And so as to not get caught discussing the difference between Ayn Rand and Dorothy Day again - we're not talking about any thinking that comes after deciding on one view or the other. Two different things.

drummerboy said:

nohero said:

I see that you're set in your thinking, I was just pointing out viewpoints that were other than your own.

I'm set in my thinking? What does that even mean?

And you're not? What are the odds that you choose atheism in this lifetime?

Anyway, you're mistaking having confidence in one's position to being "set". As for being set, if I were to be presented with evidence for god, or even a good argument, I could be persuaded.

And once you guys can decide on an actual definition of god, let me know.

By "set in your thinking" I was referring to your way of thinking about the question, not to the conclusion that you reached. So it has nothing to do with "confidence in one's position", or conclusion.

As for "And once you guys can decide on an actual definition of god, let me know", that's what philosophy is for.

God and Other Ultimates (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

drummerboy said:

The other difference is a person's starting point. Atheists usually start out as theists. The process of even considering atheism requires a complete re-examination of one's religious worldview.

If you rephrase your claim as "an adult holding on to the same beliefs they had as a child requires less thought than changing those beliefs," we agree. And if you're just going by the numbers, yes, most people who fall into that category would be some version of theists -- though as the number of "nones" has risen, those numbers shift as well.

But it's the presence or absence of reflection and change that indicates thought. Anyone I've met who's thoughtful about their present beliefs, even if they are on the surface the same broad tradition they've always been a part of (say an adult Catholic who was born into a Catholic household, or an atheist whose family was never religious), will be able to say how their beliefs have actually changed quite a bit over time.

Knowing what label a person applies to their beliefs tells me little about how thoughtful they are about them. It's, as you note, that journey between starting point and present that's interesting.

drummerboy said:

sure. anyone can arrive at their conclusion in any manner, thoughtful or not.

That observation does not shed any light on the thought process involved. Which one is "more thoughtful" is a red herring, but the differences between the two are worth examining.

The fact is that choosing theism is almost always an easy decision. It's hardly even fair calling it a decision - in today's world the existence of god is simply a given, and choosing to believe is clearly the path of least resistance. It's the default.

The other difference is a person's starting point. Atheists usually start out as theists. The process of even considering atheism requires a complete re-examination of one's religious worldview.

OTOH, theists usually start as believers. Selecting theism does not require a re-examination. They tend to have grown up in religious families and are indoctrinated at an early age. And in fact many atheists also start off that way. OTOH, I bet the percentage of theists that started as atheists is probably close to zero.

And so as to not get caught discussing the difference between Ayn Rand and Dorothy Day again - we're not talking about any thinking that comes after deciding on one view or the other. Two different things.

A lot of the assumptions in the above are debatable, especially conclusions about how and why other people have their beliefs. 

Just to take one part: "The fact is that choosing theism is almost always an easy decision. It's hardly even fair calling it a decision - in today's world the existence of god is simply a given, and choosing to believe is clearly the path of least resistance. It's the default."

I don't think that's a general proposition in the United States in 2024.  It depends on where the person lives, who they person lives with, and lots of other factors.

drummerboy said:

sure. anyone can arrive at their conclusion in any manner, thoughtful or not.

That observation does not shed any light on the thought process involved.

Put aside the thought process of arrival. Once you’ve arrived at atheism, how do you think about it? In what ways does the absence of God put your mind to the test? Do you wrestle with it the way many, many religious people wrestle with their beliefs?