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Pope backtracking on condom statement

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Nov 22, 2010.

  1. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    The Pope is in favor of condoms when priests bugger young boys, not to curtail the spread of disease but to prevent the collection of evidence
     
  2. schiezainc

    schiezainc Well-Known Member

    I'm not being intolerant of other people's views, or at least that's not my intent. I'm being intolerant of organized religions as a whole and think we'd be much better as a society if people would just do their own thing and stay out of other people's business/lives.
     
  3. zagoshe

    zagoshe Well-Known Member

    Why would you believe in anything (spiritually speaking) if you don't believe it is absolute?

    If you are from a church which believes in John 3 as the way to heaven (that you must believe in Christ and accept him in your heart as your savior and become born again and repent from your sins in order to get to heaven), why would you then say "well that is only for me!"

    If you truly believe you must repent from your sins to get to heaven and that Jesus is the savior and only way to heaven - why would you not believe that is absolute and applies to all?

    I mean if you don't believe it is absolute then why bother at all?

    That makes absolutely no sense at all, which is sort of what I've come to expect from atheists/agnostics because, well, they make no sense at all.

    On one hand, they shout from the mountain tops that God doesn't exist, then on the other they spend every waking moment trying to prove he doesn't exist.

    I don't believe in Santa Claus and quite frankly, don't spend one second of any day - even Christmas - trying to discredit him, disprove he exists or angry because some people believe in him.

    If you truly believe he doesn't exist, why do you give a fuck what people believe? And if people are "weak minded" and "need a crutch" and that belief in a "fictional" God helps them function and live their life in a positive way or keeps them from using drugs or some other negative crutch - isn't that a good thing?
     
  4. zagoshe

    zagoshe Well-Known Member

    Really - the Catholic religion "condones" rampant kid touching?

    And you really want to be taken seriously on this?
     
  5. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    They sure as hell don't seem interested in doing anything about it.

    Until they do, they have no moral credibility to comment on ANYTHING.

    Sit down and shut up, old man.
     
  6. outofplace

    outofplace Well-Known Member

    There are plenty of people who believe that the Catholic Church is right. That is their faith. If you can't respect that, why should they respect your beliefs?
     
  7. Brian

    Brian Well-Known Member

    I don't believe in Santa Claus and quite frankly, don't spend one second of any day - even Christmas - trying to discredit him, disprove he exists or angry because some people believe in him.

    If people withheld fellow American citizens' constitutional rights because of the writings of Kris Kringle, I would get just as angry.


    If people wanted to teach that Santa created the earth in six days instead of basic cosmology, I'd attack Santa.

    If American politicians called on the promises of Father Time to guide our enviormental policy over the next 20 years, I'd have a bone to pick with Pere Noel.

    This isn't a fucking benign institution. People like me don't attack the Amish or the Mennonites. I grew up around Mennonites. They are of firm faith. They live their faith and don't try to take over the country, allowing each man to either come to God or to reject him.

    When someone has the pull that the Pope does, when he has the power of life and death -- and the issue of condoms in Africa is a life and death situation -- he is going beyond having a simple and meek faith and playing the role of God himself.

    And when the Catholic Church inevitably reverses its finding on condoms in the next 20 years, as it has all important social and scientific issues over the past millenia from slavery to heliocentrism to civil rights to inquisitions, what will be its answer to the millions who died of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa?

    "Oops. Looks like God changed his mind."
     
  8. outofplace

    outofplace Well-Known Member

    Just because somebody doesn't believe in your version of G-d doesn't mean they aren't going all the way with their faith. Some people accept the idea that we really don't know all of the answers that we would like to have.

    The problem is we don't really know the truth. No human being does. We gather evidence and find faith as we can, but anybody who thinks they absolutely, positively know the capital-T Truth is kidding himself or herself. Every word in every religious text that exists was written by the hands of man. G-d may be infallible, but man is not.
     
  9. schiezainc

    schiezainc Well-Known Member


    I’m genuinely confused about what you’re saying here.

    Are you saying that people who believe in religion are forced to force their beliefs on others? And as an agnostic, I don’t make sense because I’m trying to prove God doesn’t exist?

    I’m not picking on you, just genuinely want to clear up the confusion.

    I believe people should be able to believe what they want to believe, when they want to believe in, in any context that they want to believe it in AS LONG AS it does not interfere with the fundamental right other people should have to live their lives the way they want to.

    Ergo, I’m not picking on Little Miss Catholic. If she wants to believe in the 10 Commandments and believe in the Resurrection and Palm Sunday and burning bushes, fine. Great. Awesome.

    Believe what you want but, in this country, in this land that prides itself as being one where no religion rules the kingdom, don’t get up in arms because your book says it’s wrong for gays to get married and for women to choose to abort babies after they’ve been raped and for other couples to chose to have premarital sex.

    You believe what you believe in. Let everyone else live their lives. In the end, you might be right, you might be wrong. I guess we’ll see when we all perish.

    You ask why I care what people believe if I don’t believe. Well, that’s quite simple. Right now, we’ve got a dozen different laws or civil liberty issues being judged based on someone’s religious beliefs and there’s no place for it in a society that says church and state should be separate.

    As I said, believe what you believe. Let me believe what I believe and we’ll co-exist swimmingly.
     
  10. I Should Coco

    I Should Coco Well-Known Member

    I'm no theologian, but this sounds pretty good to me. Amen!
     
  11. service_gamer

    service_gamer Well-Known Member

    Which would be like saying that showing photos of grisly rape and murder scenes would be applicable in teaching your children not to steal candy from the store. You may technically be making a sound point, but you're using an extreme, manipulative example.

    My two cents (not that anyone asked): In this day and age, we are all so desensitized to sex and believe opposing pre-marital sex is silly (sometimes including yours truly, a practicing Catholic), thus we can't fathom how taking a stance against something that can make sex safe holds any water. But I think you have to put yourself in the Church's position, which teaches that denying life is a sin. Thus contraception of any sort is a sin. This seems to rile people up, but to that I say 'Ignore the Church's teaching then.' It's not like the pope is ramming his agenda down your throat, he's counseling Catholics around the world. His opinion gets wide coverage due to his position and the sheer size of the Church, so people perceive that to mean that he's lecturing every single one of us. And that "lecture" goes against their thinking, so it becomes easy for them to call the Church heartless and out-of-touch. However, the Church is very much in line with what it teaches and believes, it's just easier and cooler to put Catholics down. What amazes me is that, again, my personal belief, it seems that fundamentalist Christians seem far more overbearing and unreasonable than Catholics do about such social issues, but there is something about that big pointy hat that really boils people's blood.
     
  12. zagoshe

    zagoshe Well-Known Member

    Never even hinted at this nonsense, not even close, learn to comprehend first and stop talking out of your ass and maybe this discussion has a chance to move forward.
     
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