Atheist Ireland

Colin wrote:

So God is omnipitient and omniscient, do you accept that as a 'good' (read: moral) person he should get involved in the same way that most of us are involved in some sort of charitable activity.

Hi Colin. Why do you also refer to 'God' as a male? Just curious.

And, may I ask, what 'charitable activities' are you involved in. I should add, I'm not involved in any myself, apart from loving my own family and friends, that is.

Colin wrote:I understand that we are all given free will, but if I was superman I would try to use my superpowers for good. Why does God get a 'get out of doing any work free card'?

We are all born with free will, but its not much use to us if we can't actually use it - like the way babies can't, for example. You could say our free will is limited, i.e., dependent on the environment into which we are born, or subsequently find ourselves living in. All things being relative...

Superstitious Fool wrote:
If I wanted a builder, a mechanic or an accountant that I could trust completely I would look for a member of Opus Dei; and so, at the most pragmatic level, should you. Opus Dei teaches that everyone has a vocation whether they are priests or brothers or nuns or lay people, so your Opus Dei plumber's vocation is to do good plumbing and to price it honestly. You couldn't do better. In Britain, you can get the same kind of deal from born-again Christians. At the most utilitarian level, you know it makes sense.

Everyone has their uses. I had a member of Opus Dei pick me up from the airport yesterday. He lapped up the story of the woman with the stigmata. Of course I'm telling him it's fraud and he's telling me it's manifestation of a jewish zombies precence. More importantly he was on time as usual.

Superstitious Fool wrote: Sorry I haven't replied in some other threads (assuming that anyone was waiting for my words) but it has been an exceptionally busy week in the day job and the next few days look just as bad.

Sure don't be talkin'...........I know the feeling.

Alexis wrote: Hi Colin. Why do you also refer to 'God' as a male? Just curious.

Force of habit. I was raised a catholic, but I'm not one anymore.

Alexis wrote:And, may I ask, what 'charitable activities' are you involved in. I should add, I'm not involved in any myself, apart from loving my own family and friends, that is.

Well I don't work for one or anything like that, nor do I think I'm brilliant apropos charity, but besides giving a pittance to Concern on a regular basis, I am involved in a number of volunteer activities including scouting, martial arts and FLAC - Perhaps volunteerism is a better term than charitable - and of course I love my family and friends and try to be as nice to all others as possible.

Alexis wrote:We are all born with free will, but its not much use to us if we can't actually use it - like the way babies can't, for example. You could say our free will is limited, i.e., dependent on the environment into which we are born, or subsequently find ourselves living in. All things being relative...

But I still don't get why an omnipitient being would sit on the sideline and not protect people. I know that if one of my friends was in trouble that I would get involved if I could do so in relative safely.

Alexis wrote:So, your mother didn't teach you to cook? Can I have that Chicken Stock recipe of yours, or more to the point, the ingredients for it?

My mother, may she live for many years, has never liked cooking. For chicken stock I use the carcass of a roast chicken (the best are free-range from Carlow and can be found in SuperValu but only for a day or two after they are delivered), a large onion and a large carrot, one stick of celery and a few herbs if you can get them. (God told me in a dream to grow my own so I have thyme, sage and flat parsley, and He said that I would get boils and my first-born were toast if I went for curled parsley instead.) Cover the whole thing with water, bring it to the boil and let it simmer for an hour or so. Then turn it off, and the next day bring it to the boil again and let it simmer once again for an hour. Do the same again on the third day (and I have foreseen and dismissed any reference to the Resurrection); then let it cool and strain it, with muslin if you can because you get a very clear liquid. After that, boil it until it reduces by at least a half.

Than, if you can resist drinking it at once (because it is velvety and delicious and clearly a CS Lewis-like manifestation of God), freeze it. Some time later, use it in a risotto or a coq-au-vin or to casserole a rabbit, or even in soup.

I wonder if the word muslin had something to do with the Mahommedans. Anyway, Laus Deo for the delight of chicken stock and the many ways in which He has made it possible to use it.

Hi Michael/Superstitious Fool,

Nice to see that you have time to post advice on chicken soup, shame it's not quite enough time to answer a couple of simple questions (now posed for the third time) unless of course it's just that you don't have a logically sound answer to either:

1. If (as you say you believe), homosexuality is natural, then it cannot be the place of the Catholic church to question god's wisdom in making some people homosexual and others not. True or not?

2. You say: "God knowing what I will do does not mean it is predestined," but this is a glaring logical error. If you believe in god's infallibility, then it is predestined. If god has prior knowledge of what you will do, having already laid down your choice in eternity, then you can only have the power to do something different if you are more powerful than god. Are you?

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A liking for chicken stock is easier to explain than a liking for Catholicism.

So I see they are banning the atheists from their site now and also anyone who tries to "post anti-Catholic ideas".

"Pathetic" is the NICEST word I can find for this approach. You do not see us here banning people who espouse pro religious ideas.

I wonder where this pathetic management will draw the line. WHOS idea of Catholic ideas will be he accepting? His own only? History has seen that Ilk before Herr Dictator sir.

Anything he disagrees with will now be "anti-Catholic ideas" subject to you being banned and silenced and your post removed.

Real genuine catholics will suffer under this Fascist Regime. They will have genuine concerns or ideas about Catholocism. But just by voicing them or questioning something they are now "Anti-Catholic".

Pathetic as I said before.

The website will become a little groupie list of fans who are worshiping the dear leader the moderator and sitting there spouting crap like "Oh yes moderator sir, you are sooooo right, well said".

The management of that site, old and present, are an embarrasment to themselves and their faith. This, as I said, is the NICEST thing I can think to say about them now.

Superstitious Fool you asked on your site one day where we atheists keep getting our impression of your church. I present to you this Exhibit A.

Hi All,

I registered on Catholic.ie (with the same login name - Inedifix) a while back when Michael made his invitation, but I never got around to actually posting, it seemed kind of boring really. Anyway, as a result of not ever having expressed any views on Catholic.ie I received the following e-mail this morning:

_____________________________________________________________________________

Dear Member

The following is the text of a personal message which I have sent to everyone. I am emailing it to you as well in case you are not regularly logging on to the Irish Catholics' Forum:

We have a new co-moderator, CPM, and if he allows me I hope to hand the forum over to him completely soon. He and I have agreed to remove the threads where the atheist posters were active and to bar the individuals concerned. All registered members may now start and reply to threads. New posts will be moderated carefully and members who post anti-Catholic ideas will not be allowed to remain. I think I was wrong to allow so much freedom because this forum was intended to be a place where (mainly) Traditionalist Catholics could communicate with one another. I thought it would be instructive to hear the views of non-believers but the atheist members were so vociferous and sometimes so aggressive that it changed the overall tone of the forum and may have put some Catholics off. We have got a number of new members (possibly because of the advertising in recent weeks) so there is hope for the future. May I ask all of you to give a little time to re-energising the forum under this !
new regime, in the hope that it will have a future under the management of CPM.

Many thanks

Michael G

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You are receiving this message because you are a member of the forum located at: http://irishcatholics.proboards56.com/index.cgi
Your account username at this forum is "inedifix"

_____________________________________________________________________________

Here's the real irony Michael, although I have never expressed any anti-Catholic views on Irish Catholics.ie, I bet I'll now be barred (once you've tipped the new mod off that Inedifix is an atheist), yet you have been, are still, and will almost certainly remain, free to post on any thread, on any topic, on any part of this site, without restriction.

You can be as vociferous, as aggressive, as caustic, as sarcastic and as evasive as you like. But the chances of you getting barred are slimmer than mine of getting a logically sound response from you to my last post.

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P.S. Is it possible that the reason God never gets around to warning the millions who die in the earthquakes and tsunami he sets in motion, because he's just so damn busy appearing in the dreams of people like you to advise you on herbal horticulture?

P.P.S. That was sarcasm, not aggression.

Inedifix, I'm not happy with the outcome. I would have preferred to keep it wide open. But I set up that forum in the first place for Traditionalist Catholics who are generally marginalised by the Church establishment in Ireland. I hoped it would grow into a place where different kinds of Catholics debated with each other, and with non-Catholics, non-Christians and indeed non-believers. But it just wasn't working. After a while, all the action was in the threads where your fellow-atheists posted and the other threads more or less dried up. I have to say that customer feedback to the new arrangements from Catholic members has been pretty positive and they have become active again. Anyway (as you said in your own post today) it's up to the new moderator now.

I will try and get around to answering your questions but I have been more preoccupied lately with sorting out and handing over the Irish Catholics' Forum. (I'm still co-moderator but that is with the permission of the new moderator — my job is to give technical help for the time being and I don't take policy decisions without his approval.) Also I'm on holidays and can't get to a computer with internet access every day.

Superstitious Fool wrote:Inedifix, I'm not happy with the outcome. I would have preferred to keep it wide open.

A stance rather contradicted by the contents of your e-mail above. But I get where you're coming from. Perhaps you made your invitation too early.

I wonder if it's raised any doubts in your clearly able mind though, about the business of blind faith. What does it say about the tolerance of a credo, that will not permit questions from people it invites to ask them?

To repeat a well used phrase (and I apply it not to you, but the membership of your site, and Christians in general): "What would Jesus do?" Would he invite disbelievers into his house, then when the questions get tough, kick them out and bar the door?

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