tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post5732888634946578714..comments2023-09-25T04:26:51.568-06:00Comments on The Barefoot Bum: The problems with CatholicismLarry Hamelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-41649320899669786552012-08-05T13:46:59.593-06:002012-08-05T13:46:59.593-06:00Aye, work away. Fixing my many grammar and spellin...Aye, work away. Fixing my many grammar and spelling mistakes is also allowed :)<br /><br />I think I first became aware of the ontology vs epistemology nature of the debates from yourself but enduring a few blog posts by Edward Feser (especially <a href="http://edwardfeser.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/philosophy-of-nature-and-philosophy-of.html" rel="nofollow"> this post</a>) brought them to mind again.theObservernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-88596374174079245692012-08-05T11:40:20.621-06:002012-08-05T11:40:20.621-06:00Excellent comments. Do you mind if I repost them, ...Excellent comments. Do you mind if I repost them, editing for format (and a teensy bit of editing for style, e.g. removing "Just to add," from the first sentence of the second post)?Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-24159069547620101382012-08-05T09:18:46.746-06:002012-08-05T09:18:46.746-06:00Just to add, most atheists are willing to accept s...Just to add, most atheists are willing to accept science is not the only form of knowledge, that film, art, literature etc have lessons to teach too. But these <br />forms of art are highly subjective - it's the meeting point of an individual mind and an external text. That is to say, I might relate to a piece of fiction and <br />learn from the thoughts and actions of a character while the same passage may be meaningless another. <br /><br />Interestingly, most atheists are happy to accept this <br />subjectivity but most of the religious people I have spoken with are not. Religious people seem to like their rules and their regulations and have a general problem<br />accepting subjectivity and pluralism of thought and experience in matters other than claiming religious experiences. It was Aquinas’ after all who produced entire volumes detailing hierarchies of thought crimes and ‘unnatural’ acts along with their appropriate punishment. Yet Catholics frequently accuse atheists of crude reductionism. <br /><br />In Europe we are heading into a 'year of faith' which is a year long, European wide saturated marketing campaign paid for by the roman church<br />and aimed at revitalizing it's brand and increasing it's political power. And that largely sums up the roman church - a glorified political party <br />asserting knowledge it simply cannot have while whoring itself through the same manipulation techniques used to sell soft drinks and cars.theobservernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-59683589973105775332012-08-05T09:15:56.203-06:002012-08-05T09:15:56.203-06:00The Roman Catholic church asserts atheists do not ...The Roman Catholic church asserts atheists do not understand Catholicism; that 'liberal' theology is responsibly for a breakdown in the indoctrination - sorry - the catechizing of children; that once we fully understand the true teaching of the Church, we will all fall on our knees before the Pope.<br /><br />The whole debate centres on the primacy of epistemology vs ontology. The thought the church pillaged from the classical philosophers was primary ontology in nature : what things exist and what is their nature. Epistemology was always secondary and usually boiled down to 'because we said so' or 'it's a mystery'. Thomas Aquinas and his Five Ways, is largely ontological and drawn from Aristotle . <br /><br />But the entire foundations of the greek-christain worldview collapsed during the scientific revolution when it became<br />apparent the sheer scale of the mistakes in the Aristotelian derived understanding of the natural universe. The switch<br />from ontology to epistemology then is best understood as an attempt to fix the mistakes of the past and we are therefore justified <br />in dismissing the ontology based arguments of Thomas Aquinas (who continues to have a greater influence on the Roman Church that biblical Jesus) <br />as invalid. Heschmeyer claims that 'no atheists has satisfactorily rebutted [Aquinas five ways] arguments' but what is there to rebutt ? Aquainas claimed knowledge about the nature of the universe that he simply could not have. Heschmeyer offers no argument why we should even take the time to read the Five Ways, let alone treat it seriously. Even if we accept logical proof for the existence of God(s), we end up with polytheism which, lets be honest, no-one really cares about because the conflict is, as you note, primary political. <br /><br />Catholics and other Christian sects have no method of epistemology whatsoever and therefore must resort to medieval ontology which we are then<br />expected to take seriously. Catholics can only settle disputes by appealing to the authority of the Pope and through coercing dissenting voices <br />into silence, a process currently underway in traditional<br />strongholds of catholic power. The entire history of the Christian church<br />is of debates settled by force, political expediency or blind chance. <br /><br />But of course, it's easier for the priests and bullshit artists to whine about logical positivism than to deal with their lack<br />of sound epistemology; that a large part of their scholastic traditional is by post-enlightenment (even post-romantic standards) nearly completely <br />worthless, deserving only a footnote in a history of science text book. Priests can sneer but the burden is on the church to explain why their ontology based scholastic traditional is worth engaging with, not least because if accepted, it leads to a huge shift in how we treat gender equality, reproduction , homosexuals, other species, free speech, artistic freedom and so on.theobservernoreply@blogger.com