Triablogue

The grass is always greener...

2012-02-16T13:22:00.000-05:00

I found myself arguing with the atheist commenters, some of whom showed no better critical thinking skills then the ignorant believers I have encountered here time and again. Atheists do not, on the whole, have much better critical thinking skills than the general populace. We don't see it until there is a disagreement, for until then it looks like we agree because we are good thinkers.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2012/02/i-do-not-like-arguing-with-atheists.html

Confessing Our Hope

2012-02-16T08:31:00.000-05:00

http://www.gpts.edu/podcast/Broadcast1_%28Pipa%29.mp3

Here is the rss feed for the podcast:
http://www.theparchment.net/rss/gpts.xml

HT: Jeff Downs

Linsanity

2012-02-16T00:09:00.011-05:00

Floyd Mayweather recently said:

Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise.

Floyd Mayweather is a good student but all the hype is because he's black. Asian students do what he does every night and don't get the same praise.

Krishna & Christ: part 9

2012-02-16T00:07:00.003-05:00

Prof. Win Corduan has been doing a series on Krishna and Christ.

We've already posted part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, and part 8.

Here is part 9.

HT: Steve.

John Loftus has drawn a line in the sand!

2012-02-15T19:55:00.001-05:00

John Loftus has been on the warpath lately attacking William Lane Craig–in a classic case of biting the hand that fed him. Loftus entitles one of his posts:

Is William Lane Craig Dishonest With the Facts? I’ve Drawn a Line in the Sand

Sounds pretty intimidating, dontcha think? What does Loftus imagine would happen to Craig if he dared to cross the line that Loftus drew in the sand? Would Craig vaporize the moment his big toe trespassed the sandy line? Would Craig go up in a puff of smoke? Somehow I doubt Craig is terrified by the prospect.

And in another post, Loftus treats us to this doozy:

I know he’s not trying to convince anyone else that he experienced it. He distinguishes between knowing Christianity is true from showing it to be true.…A private subjective experience has no more evidence for it than none at all.

By that criterion, none of John Loftus’s memories count as evidence for what he experienced. His personal memories aren’t even convincing to himself that he experienced what he remembers having experienced. He may have memories of his mother, but that’s no more evidence for her than none at all.

After all, what’s past is past. At present, he has no direct access to the past–not even his own. In many instances, all that’s left are his private, subjective recollections. That’s all he can rely on at this juncture.

"I don't get no respect, no respect at all...that's the story of my life"

2012-02-15T18:28:00.000-05:00

Poor John Loftus is dissed by his fellow infidels:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/02/15/target-audiences-and-playing-nice/

Sex-Maniac Nation

2012-02-15T11:01:00.001-05:00

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/02/15/sex-maniac-nation

Arab like me

2012-02-15T10:43:00.002-05:00

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/291094

The One True Church® behind closed doors

2012-02-15T09:38:00.000-05:00

http://news.yahoo.com/monsignors-mutiny-revealed-vatican-leaks-140524856.html

HT: TFan

Ecclesiastical priorities

2012-02-14T16:25:00.000-05:00

As doubts about the Church’s infallibility had become more and more obsessive, I had become more and more certain that I would have to leave the priesthood, and perhaps the Church, sooner or later.

Meanwhile, I continued as best I could with the routine duties of the priesthood. Was it not hypocritical to each the doctrines of a church whose mission I was internally doubting? How could I advise penitents in confession to obey the rulings of a Church whose wisdom and authority I was myself questioning?

I saw the Archbishop on the 26^th and told him that I could not continue as a priest because I no longer believed in Catholic doctrines; I did not even have faith in God, but could continue praying only in the way that someone stranded on a mountainside might cry out for help without knowing that there was anyone within earshot.

[Later] I then explained how as a student I had been dissatisfied with the accounts given in the textbooks of how we know that there is a God, and that faith began to seem to be a sacrifice of integrity rather than a virtue. I had papered over this difficulty with an existentialist type of approach, on the basis of which I had been ordained.

So the transition from priest to layman happened, in the end, very swiftly. It was within a week of receiving the official rescript from Rome that I took up my duties as a lecturer at Exeter and Trinity…

When I had been laicized, I had not been released from the Church’s law of celibacy. Hence, the date of my marriage was also the date of my–automatic-excommunication from the Church.

A. Kenny, A Path From Rome (Oxford 1986), 189,192, 196, 204,207.

This is a revealing window into the theological priorities of Rome. Losing faith in God wasn’t an automatically excommunicable offense. Although he was no longer a believer, he was still a member in good standing.

No, the truly inexcusable transgression was for him to marry a woman–even though by this time he’d formally and officially left the priesthood.

He was excommunicated on a technicality, for getting married.

Now, from my warped perspective as a Protestant, I rather think that being a Christian ought to be minimal condition for membership in a Christian church. (I’m talking about functioning adults, right now, not little kids or the mentally incompetent.)

But you can see how hopelessly skewed my priorities are. If Kenny had been an atheistic bachelor, he’d still belong to the One True Church–but for him to marry a woman, even though he was now a layman, is utterly intolerable!

One wonders what his ecclesiastical standing would be had he split the difference by having a mistress–or maybe a boyfriend.