Catholics vs. Hitler

[luckyme]

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But I would be wrong to blame all Catholics now for the crimes of people they never knew or met or could have had any meaningful relationship with.

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Isn't your argument that we can't hold the church up as the cause of the inquisition? It's you that insists on transferring the churches responsibility to the individuals. Then you want to say we can't blame the individuals of today. HECK, we've been trying to convince you that a good chunk of the blame of yesterday didn't belong to individuals but to the nature of a major religious system.
You're blending the good parts of our argument with the bad parts of yours .. and then blaming us :-)))

luckyme

[bunny]

Thanks. I am clearly arguing at cross purposes in that I agree comparing Hitler to The Church is silly. I still think entities can act (following luckyme, I think the critical part of an "act" is cause, not that it must be planned by a sentient being).

I agree that comparing an individual human and an abstract entity persisting over hundreds of years doesnt make much sense. I just dont think the difference is that one can act and the other cant.

[BCPVP]

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But I would be wrong to blame all Catholics now for the crimes of people they never knew or met or could have had any meaningful relationship with.

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Isn't your argument that we can't hold the church up as the cause of the inquisition? It's you that insists on transferring the churches responsibility to the individuals.

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No, you guys are the ones committing this fallacy of personifying an abstraction as being capable of action. No one has yet provided any clear reason for why such personification is justified or helpful and I've mentioned half a dozen times why it is not helpful, particularly when trying to assign blame.

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HECK, we've been trying to convince you that a good chunk of the blame of yesterday didn't belong to individuals but to the nature of a major religious system.

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If it is the "nature" of Catholicism (which is a new charge, the OP and most of you guys have been talking about the Catholic Church specifically, not Catholicism) to cause men to form Inquisitions and go on Crusades, how come we don't see that now? And if we don't see that now because the "nature"/policies/whatever you want to call it have changed, what good is there with blaming a "new" institution?

I feel I've just run into the wall of ignorance that many of you anti-theists have erected in which anything even smacking of relgion is and always will be wrong. I don't know how much I feel like repeating myself anymore. If you are actually interested in methodological individualism, you can read the wiki I posted as well as google around. Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises (especially things like praxeology) would be good starts.

[hashi92]

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BCPVP you said that the church cannot kill but you agree with me that the cowboys can win a game.

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The football players who play for the Dallas Cowboys can win a game, with some players contributing more than others. Members or officials of the Catholic Church can and have killed. To kill is an a verb, which means action and action cannot be performed by an abstraction. Whatever references to such action being "done" by abstractions that we make in casual conversation are figures of speech and little more.

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exactly we are having casual conversation. were not splittng atoms here. im glad you finally see the light.

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Casual conversation, is it now? I thought it was supposed to be serious debate that you were trying inspire. If it's the latter, then we better start breaking out our nuclear reactors. If not, then I'd like to know what the purpose of your OP was? What do you want us to do if we agree the Church, and not individual people, is responsible for things like the Crusades? It seemed pretty clear to me that you want us to stigmatize the Church the way Hitler is stimatized, which means you believe we should be "punishing" it for actions in the past. Is that what you want?

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i just had a thought and wanted to see what other people had to say. the church does do good things but isnt it ironic that it is founded on so much violence and lies. Without this evil period in the churches life it would be a totally different organization. I didnt come to the conclusion that the reason the church gets off the hook because faith is blind until after half way through this post.

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Why do you still persist with the claim that anyone is "letting anyone off the hook" with regards to past atrocities? I'm certainly not in favor of letting anyone who was responsible for those atrocities off the hook. I just don't condemn everyone for the sins of one or two or twenty men nor do I try to condemn the current batch for the sins of those in the past.

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If you replace Catholic Church with Iraq i dont think we would be arguing about anything. Like i said before since God is involved everyone is blind. Nobody would elect hitlers great great great grandson as president because he carries the hitler name and legacy. he would not be able to escape from his past. I would never be able to forgive hitler in my lifetime no matter how much good he did.

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I don't think I could forgive Hitler either. Nor am I sure I could forgive Pope Urban II for starting the Crusades or Pope Innocent IV (ha!) for authorizing torture during the medieval inquistions. But I would be wrong to blame all Catholics now for the crimes of people they never knew or met or could have had any meaningful relationship with. Apparently you subscribe to some "sins of the father" belief system, which I'd say makes you worse than many of the religions you so despise.

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im not trying to slander the church now. i have said repeated times in this post that i think the church does basically good things now. my point is that most people do not forget past events. Presidential candidates are destroyed because of their past. If a presidential candidate had a history of his family belonging to the KKK what do you think his chances of being elected are. you keep on saying that the past should be forgotten but in todays world its not so easily done. The churches past is forgotten like i said for the millionth time because faith is blind. you keep on tiptoeing around my main point. your using semantics to break down my arguments but you know exactly what my point is. I have stated earlier this is just a friendly debate. Im not trying to paint a picture of anything. im just discussing ideas.

[BCPVP]

Posts like these should illustrate why I'm a bit frustrated. You will not once find in this thread anything written by me that intelligent people could construe as saying "the past should be forgotten" especially since I have several times stated the exact opposite. That one sentence proves that either you can't understand what people write and probably have no business being on a poker website (least of all the philosophy section of the site) or that you never cared about "friendly debate" and have no problem with lying about what I've said in order to bash the Catholic Church.

You are flat out wrong when you say that the atrocities committed by those in the Catholic Church are forgotten. They haven't been forgotten. You were wrong when you stipulated this in your OP, you were wrong early in the thread when it was pointed out to you and you are still wrong now. Repeating the same falsehood doesn't make it true.

Seriosly done now.

[hashi92]

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Posts like these should illustrate why I'm a bit frustrated. You will not once find in this thread anything written by me that intelligent people could construe as saying "the past should be forgotten" especially since I have several times stated the exact opposite. That one sentence proves that either you can't understand what people write and probably have no business being on a poker website (least of all the philosophy section of the site) or that you never cared about "friendly debate" and have no problem with lying about what I've said in order to bash the Catholic Church.

You are flat out wrong when you say that the atrocities committed by those in the Catholic Church are forgotten. They haven't been forgotten. You were wrong when you stipulated this in your OP, you were wrong early in the thread when it was pointed out to you and you are still wrong now. Repeating the same falsehood doesn't make it true.

Seriosly done now.

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Why is it that we do background checks on people before hiring them. It is because we do not want to hire people with criminal records. Why is this. Didnt the person serve the time for his crime. didnt the person make amends. why should it matter that he committed a crime in the past. but in our society today we are held accountable for our past. if people know you have a criminal past they will always be weary of you.

You keep on saying that Pope is the one who sould get the blame. well the Pope is the church. He calls all the shots. So if the Pope did wrong the whole church did wrong. If the people felt that the Pope was doing wrong they would have removed him.

would you feel comfortable recieving charity from me if you knew that the source of the charity was from drug money.

[hashi92]

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But I would be wrong to blame all Catholics now for the crimes of people they never knew or met or could have had any meaningful relationship with.


I never blamed the catholics of today for the crimes of the past. please show me were i stated this.

[hashi92]

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Posts like these should illustrate why I'm a bit frustrated. You will not once find in this thread anything written by me that intelligent people could construe as saying "the past should be forgotten" especially since I have several times stated the exact opposite. That one sentence proves that either you can't understand what people write and probably have no business being on a poker website (least of all the philosophy section of the site) or that you never cared about "friendly debate" and have no problem with lying about what I've said in order to bash the Catholic Church.

You are flat out wrong when you say that the atrocities committed by those in the Catholic Church are forgotten. They haven't been forgotten. You were wrong when you stipulated this in your OP, you were wrong early in the thread when it was pointed out to you and you are still wrong now. Repeating the same falsehood doesn't make it true.

Seriosly done now.

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You may not have forgotten but most of the people in the catholic church today do not even think twice about its evil past. You're not even catholic so how can you state your opinion as the opinion of all catholics. This stuff is never mentioned in sermons its basically swept under the rug.