"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion." – Steven Weinberg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Weinberg
Catholicism is full of good people. Fortunately Catholicism has mostly lost it's grip of people in the developed world, but it still wrecks havoc in the Africa. The tried to correct the course a little bit, but not really. He should have spoken ex cathedra to make waves, but he never did so. Even the most conservative Catholics only believe what they already believe and it would have just created schism. "Catholic God" speaks only to protect the institution, not the people.
I've become quite pragmatic about all this stuff. Sure, the Catholic Church will act first and foremost for it's own survival but that still leaves open the possibility of reform towards something better for humanity as a whole and as an organization they can still make the world a better place.
Wether they do make the world better all things considered is questionable but given that the church will continue to exist regardless of what I believe, it's quite obvious to me that it's better for all of us if they reform themselves towards something more humanitarian.
> an organization they can still make the world a better place.
Not in Africa. They are holding things back.
In the West they don't matter and have no real moral authority to change behavior. People only seek support from the church for things they already believe and ignore it if it does not agree with them.
If you step back for a second, you are claiming that billions of people are insane.
Taking a singular, highly-specific (in the context of humanity and for the thousands of years that Catholicism has existed) issue and conflating it to insanity or sanity is, perhaps, insane in of itself.
Single individuals are usually sane. But when they form a superstitious groups they those groups believe and do insane things no single individual would.
It would help if you would read what I wrote. I specially wrote that individuals are usually sane.
We are all together in this as a humanity. Not everything we believe is in the same level of irrational. At least first we should quit believing in superstitions and magic.
In the long run, culture like genes is to a large degree spread by reproductive success. Religions/belief systems that discourage reproduction eventually die out to be replaced by those that encourage it. All liberal/secular cultures currently have below-replacement birthrates, and hence will eventually be replaced by less liberal ones. So by the raw logic of evolution, it's very sane for religions to discourage lifestyles that lead to less childbirth, as to prolong their lifespan they need their adherents to keep having more children than adherents of competing ideologies.
Then why is the Catholic Church opposed to IVF? Let’s not pretend that there’s some sort of grand Darwinist scheme behind its sexual mores. Like most religions, reproduction is encouraged within particular constraints, and these are not such as to maximize the total amount of kids people are having.
Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43749405.
J D, what did you do!?
He asked the pope whether he said 'thank you' even once since Jan 2025.
I can’t help but feel that JD Vance has Liz Trussed the Pope.
Interesting timing for this movie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conclave_(film)
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made a new account just for this comment?
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"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion." – Steven Weinberg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Weinberg
Catholicism is full of good people. Fortunately Catholicism has mostly lost it's grip of people in the developed world, but it still wrecks havoc in the Africa. The tried to correct the course a little bit, but not really. He should have spoken ex cathedra to make waves, but he never did so. Even the most conservative Catholics only believe what they already believe and it would have just created schism. "Catholic God" speaks only to protect the institution, not the people.
I've become quite pragmatic about all this stuff. Sure, the Catholic Church will act first and foremost for it's own survival but that still leaves open the possibility of reform towards something better for humanity as a whole and as an organization they can still make the world a better place.
Wether they do make the world better all things considered is questionable but given that the church will continue to exist regardless of what I believe, it's quite obvious to me that it's better for all of us if they reform themselves towards something more humanitarian.
> an organization they can still make the world a better place.
Not in Africa. They are holding things back.
In the West they don't matter and have no real moral authority to change behavior. People only seek support from the church for things they already believe and ignore it if it does not agree with them.
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Must have thanked him at least once.
Poison travels in many forms
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If you step back for a second, you are claiming that billions of people are insane.
Taking a singular, highly-specific (in the context of humanity and for the thousands of years that Catholicism has existed) issue and conflating it to insanity or sanity is, perhaps, insane in of itself.
Single individuals are usually sane. But when they form a superstitious groups they those groups believe and do insane things no single individual would.
Parent comment is specifically about sexual identity and so on so I'm not sure what superstitious groups has to do with that.
Also the vast majority of the world believes in superstitious things so again the argument seems to be "everyone's insane except for me"
> Also the vast majority of the world believes
Yes. That is not a good thing.
> "everyone's insane except for me"
It would help if you would read what I wrote. I specially wrote that individuals are usually sane.
We are all together in this as a humanity. Not everything we believe is in the same level of irrational. At least first we should quit believing in superstitions and magic.
In the long run, culture like genes is to a large degree spread by reproductive success. Religions/belief systems that discourage reproduction eventually die out to be replaced by those that encourage it. All liberal/secular cultures currently have below-replacement birthrates, and hence will eventually be replaced by less liberal ones. So by the raw logic of evolution, it's very sane for religions to discourage lifestyles that lead to less childbirth, as to prolong their lifespan they need their adherents to keep having more children than adherents of competing ideologies.
Then why is the Catholic Church opposed to IVF? Let’s not pretend that there’s some sort of grand Darwinist scheme behind its sexual mores. Like most religions, reproduction is encouraged within particular constraints, and these are not such as to maximize the total amount of kids people are having.
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I won't be surprised if this thread ends up locked, the way it's going.