Gentlemen, recent criticisms from the anti-religious community have escalated into a full-blown campaign against me. Perhaps it is their intellectual insecurity that forces them to resort to pointless, boorish trolling to respond to my dismantlement of the same behavior of one of their own.
The attacks seem to take on many diverse forms, and in a standard post, each accusation having been formulated, the next one is moved onto before substantiation is provided, the better to distract the lay reader from the lack of proper evidence contained therein. I should note the outstanding exception of got tonkaed. Aside from this single relic of the once-mighty intellectual force of the Atheist lobby, we see nothing but pale shadows of the former. The principle categories of assault are presented herein and a rebuttal posted underneath the relevant citations.
"Nappy, you seem to be regressing. Will you eventually devolve into a cockroach. That would be justice."
The very first response I ever got from mpjh on the thread on the necessity of Jesus for Heaven. Most of the thread consisted of such trollish responses from mpjh, but I will below extrapolate the rare instances of purely coincidental overlapping between actual argument and vicious and directionless petty insult and hopefully disprove their validity.
a. However, maybe if some study of some Aquinas, the Catechism and Church history would lead to the swift realization that mpjh is making simply outrageous claims motivated by his own intense hatred of religion and of Moral Society, in even the most liberal, shall we say Gladstonian, terms. This is not a flame or a provocation, but rather a simple analysis of the core of his claims about "traditional dogma" he so contemptuously derides.
b. i. The following Analysis is a refutation I hope the reader will find comprehensive enough outlining the reasons for which a series of comments surmising mpjh's positions and theses on the subject are wrong.
b. ii. "People aren't buying this traditional dogma anymore" --- mpjh.
"Hmmm. Didn't quite match your [My] worldview I take it?"
"This is a poll ... not the work of dogmatists and so-called theologians is my point" ---mpjh.
In response to my comment that "... we [the RC Church] are all firm opponents of the rare sola fidei strand of the Genevan heresy anyway.", "More bunk from Nappy" --- mpjh.
"Travesty? How can a poll be a travesty?" ---mpjh.
The Roman Catholic Church, and every single major "Liturgical" Church has always recognized that
belief in Jesus not necessary for Salvation, but rather that Jesus as understood in metaphysical terms as the Platonic-Hellenistic λογος is necessary.
Even Martin Luther's
sola fidei position, (and it's quite a stretch to claim he's "traditional"), was quickly done away with by Nordic/Anglican State Churches: only the Calvinists and to an extent Jansensists continued to postulate
sola fidei as a valid eschato-concupiscental hypothesis.
Here is the Roman Catholic position on the matter, as it appears in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC846-848).
"Outside the Church there is no salvation"
How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.
However, deceptively, mpjh masks the fact that a "positive formulation" of the statement that "Outside the Church there is no Salvation" does not exclude the possibility of non-Christians ignorant of the Truth of the Gospel through no fault of their own reaching Salvation.
c. It is a further claim of mpjh that "people are tolerant not only of other faiths, but of the legitimacy of those faiths in offering ways to eternal life for those who believe in eternal life.".
But in what way is agreeing that others can reach eternal life granting that other Faiths are legitimate in their dogma on the subject? I posed the very question to him:
Another "its either black or white" analyst comes forward. The poll shows that people don't think that way. They appear to be much more complex, tolerant, and flexible in their views on this issue. That is the truth here.
The problem is, the poll doesn't show that. Nor do I think most people who have sensibly pondered the question genuinely believe that two mutually exclusive sets of propositions about the afterlife are both true/"unfalse". They do not believe that two religions have two equally valid "perspectives", they probably do take it for granted that some religions have it wrong, but that this doesn't exclude them from heaven. This is what the poll indicated, not that I believe it was at all serious, but that's a separate issue. However I digress: for people to believe that other religions were "legitimate" in their dogma on the afterlife, it would entail an utter ejection of the concept if truth in a Nihilist sense. Not even Nietzschean existentialists or postmodernists would go that far.
The response to this was that "No doubt about it, the general populace doesn't see it your way. Glad to see that you have the black and white for yourself, but most of the rest of the world see things in bright varying shades of color.".
I hope that the
reductio of the consequences this statement entails has adequately convinced the reader to take them to be
ad absurdum.
d. i. Yet another claim by mpjh was that the NT passage John 3:16 in conjunction with the contrasting poll demonstrated that, "most people do not believe in either a rigid liturgy-based or bible-based approach to religion."
We shall ignore the assertion that Liturgy-based aspect of religion is rejected, since the Liturgy is in fact simply the order of rituals performed during non-private/devotional religious ceremonies that has very little do to with belief in who can and can't be saved. It is possible he intended his comment to refer to Churches with set-liturgies. As I have already demonstrated however, using adequate citation from religious authority, pre-Reformation councils attest to the falsity of
sola-fidei, (Councils therefore accepted then, by broadly "Liturgy-based" or State Anglican/Lutheran Churches), this claim would not be of any relevance.
ii. However, the original Koiné for John 3:16 is that "ουτως γαρ ηγαπησεν ο θεος τον κοσμον ωστε τον υιον αυτου τον μονογενη εδωκεν ινα πας ο πιστευων εις αυτον μη αποληται αλλ εχη ζωην αιωνιον" (taken from the Scrivener NT).
iii. Clearly then, the translation of πιστευω in mpjh's English version is deficient. Sadly, it is the standard in most modern Protestant Bibles, the most readily available due to the far more frequent proselytizing activities of these nauseating groupuscular heretics. The word, as anyone who has studied Koiné at any level from a reasonable Attic, Ionic or even Homeric base will attest, is better translated here (taking the dative) as
put trust in. The Attic is frequently used to refer to soldiers following generals in battle, or characters following a god's commands.
It does not mean that literal "belief" is a requisite, or indeed sufficient, condition for entry into Heaven.
Clearly then, there is strictly nothing to any of the rather rare instances of attempts at formulation of relevant hypotheses of my detractors.
My advance apologies to goasklucy, who will no find herself much consternated by the frequent occurrence of polysyllabic latinates in my dialectic.
The topic is one that demands a certain intellectual baggage. It's a big topic, with big ideas, and yes, we do need big words and big logic. Maybe you may find referring yourself to a theological primer of use if you find yourself submerged. That is, if constraints are not too high from your (obviously rather grueling) course in ah, what was it now? Ahh yes... "Social Studies".
Talking points aside, there is a lot of good that comes from the same church that you casually indict for a "reign of terror" against science (and btw seem to assume that I'm continuing regardless of my actual statements). Have there been historical abuses by some of the memebers of the Christian Churches? Sure, but I hold today's Christians accountable for the actions of those people no moreso than I do atheists for atrocities by governments on their behalf. Why should I? It's merely an attempt to smear an entire group of people for the actions of some. When you really look at this issue you'll find much more good being done by Christians than evil of this mangitude.
