Archbishop Claims He Didn’t Know Sex With Children Was A Crime

[Lion IRC]

Maybe he was confused because abortion of children is legal. Forest/trees.
#double-standard

Well that's surprising. Usually when it comes to priests raping children you drag out the No True Scotsman fallacy.

...In zero way is the molestation of children comparable with abortion.

Fair point.
To compare the abortion industry to pedophila (or Nazism) really isn't fair.

The Nazis simply didn't have the resources or infrastructure needed to kill human beings in such vast numbers as the abortionists.

And 50,000 cases of child abuse (over 50 years) - plus the 300,000 PER YEAR OUTSIDE THE RCC - is hardly comparable to exterminating unborn babies in their millions. (To save money)

 

[Lion IRC]

Well there's a surprise.
An atheist who cant believe that pedophiles masquerading as clergy are anything other than 100% True Christians.

Its like you think there's absolutely no difference between a fake Christian and an actual Christian.

I'm sure this will be an exercise in futility, but here goes...

Do you think that an "actual" or "True" Christian can also be a pedophile? ...

I'll ask Jesus.

"Hey Jesus, can I rape children (without you knowing) and still hang out with you and pretend to be one of your disciples?"

 

[abaddon]

"True believer". What does that even mean?

...Why not just say "believer"?

But is my primary point incorrect? That it's not unreasonable to think that a sexual predator in the clergy might actually be an atheist?

No, not unreasonable on the surface of it. Still I think why anyone's wondering "maybe they're not 'true' god-believers" are over-simple associations like "belief = good" and "lack of belief = bad".

"How can one believe in Jesus and do that?" is, to me, a silly question. Why would a mere belief matter? People can "truly" hold any ideal and break it. An angel on the right shoulder and a devil on the left is too simple a metaphor (for not breaking the "self" into nearly enough different processes), but it's way closer than this "If I truly hold a belief it will shape me into a good human" notion of a monolithic rational self in human beings. So I wonder instead "where'd the impulse to using vulnerable people like fuck-toys come from?" and "where'd the impulse-control go away to?" regardless of whatever metaphysical stuff they do or don't believe. I figure ascetic ethics and environmental factors are primary in the explanation.

- - - Updated - - -

Well there's a surprise.
An atheist who cant believe that pedophiles masquerading as clergy are anything other than 100% True Christians.

Its like you think there's absolutely no difference between a fake Christian and an actual Christian.

I'm sure this will be an exercise in futility, but here goes...

Do you think that an "actual" or "True" Christian can also be a pedophile? ...

I'll ask Jesus.

"Hey Jesus, can I rape children (without you knowing) and still hang out with you and pretend to be one of your disciples?"

If taking psychology, and reality in general, into account then the correct answer is Yes.

But your imagination will be that it's No because you're trying to be logical about irrational beings.

 

[funinspace]

Well there's a surprise.
An atheist who cant believe that pedophiles masquerading as clergy are anything other than 100% True Christians.

Its like you think there's absolutely no difference between a fake Christian and an actual Christian.

I'm sure this will be an exercise in futility, but here goes...

Do you think that an "actual" or "True" Christian can also be a pedophile? ...

I'll ask Jesus.

"Hey Jesus, can I rape children (without you knowing) and still hang out with you and pretend to be one of your disciples?"

What's the (without you knowing) got to do with anything. Within your theological construct, of course Jesus would know.

Again, was King David a real (religiously) Jew or was he just masquerading as one?

Could there be a real Christian who also commits adultery and has people murdered to try to cover up said adultery?

Note: Of course I am not saying all RC priest pedophiles are real Christians, but I find it rather odd to suggest that none of them are. I'm sure RC some of these child rapists fell away or never were Christians

 

[Keith&Co.]

What's the (without you knowing) got to do with anything. Within your theological construct, of course Jesus would know.

Of course, that's Lion's point.
He's suggesting that a true believer would have to believe that Christ would know his every sin.
He ignores the human facility at convincing themselves that God wants what the human wants. He excludes the possibility that someone actively believes in Jesus AND believes that Jesus wants him to perform certain acts, or at the very least is pretty sure that Jesus will forgive certain acts. It's possible that he's a priest exactly because he thinks he can save enough souls that it will be worth it for Jesus to forgive his sins.
Or maybe even thinks that God actually provides victims as a reward for fidelity and piety.


But that would require a 3D approach to a question that Lion prefers a more linear answer to.

 

[bilby]

...In zero way is the molestation of children comparable with abortion.

Fair point.
To compare the abortion industry to pedophila (or Nazism) really isn't fair.

The Nazis simply didn't have the resources or infrastructure needed to kill human beings in such vast numbers as the abortionists.

And 50,000 cases of child abuse (over 50 years) - plus the 300,000 PER YEAR OUTSIDE THE RCC - is hardly comparable to exterminating unborn babies in their millions. (To save money)

Meh. If living human tissue with the potential to become a new human qualifies as an 'unborn baby', then you are personally guilty of the deaths of millions of unborn babies every single day since you reached puberty.

Personally, I think that calling a cell (or cluster of cells) with the mere potential to become a baby given ideal conditions, an 'unborn baby' is fucking stupid; But if you decide to use that fucking stupid definition, you should at least have the intellectual honesty to apply it consistently.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Lion IRC seems to use labels with a load of connotations attached. Christian means godly, good person. Atheist means godless, wicked person. They can't be descriptive in the dictionary sense, the + or - assigned value must be there too.

The no true Scotsman fallacy confuses him because it means stripping the connotations off and taking a label just for what it means. Without the + or - connotations, there's no simple black-white way to orient to the concept. A moral atheist? That's a contradiction in terms. A wicked Christian? It's a contradiction in terms.

I think "believe" plays a big role too. If you're a believer in the teachings of Christianity (the basic definition of "Christian"), then you must obey the teachings of Christianity. Conversely, if you don't obey them then you don't believe them. It'd complicate the world too much to realize humans are fully capable of acting against their beliefs and that Belief doesn't necessarily transform or guide anyone.

Lion has taught me one thing if nothing else, that I'm yet to meet a true xtian.

 

[Jobar]

Well there's a surprise.
An atheist who cant believe that pedophiles masquerading as clergy are anything other than 100% True Christians.

Its like you think there's absolutely no difference between a fake Christian and an actual Christian.

I'm sure this will be an exercise in futility, but here goes...

Do you think that an "actual" or "True" Christian can also be a pedophile? ...

I'll ask Jesus.

"Hey Jesus, can I rape children (without you knowing) and still hang out with you and pretend to be one of your disciples?"

Maybe you should ask his Father, instead. You know, the one that had him cruelly executed?

...As John the Baptist is rumored to have said upon seeing Jesus for the first time, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). For most Christians, this bizarre opinion still stands, and it remains the core of their faith. Christianity amounts to the claim that we must love and be loved by a God who approves of the scapegoating, torture, and murder of one man—his son, incidentally—in compensation for the misbehavior and thought-crimes of all others.

Let the good news go forth: we live in a cosmos, the vastness of which we can scarcely even indicate in our thoughts, on a planet teeming with creatures we have only begun to understand, but the whole project was actually brought to a glorious fulfillment over twenty centuries ago, after one species of primate (our own) climbed down out of the trees, invented agriculture and iron tools, glimpsed (as through a glass, darkly) the possibility of keeping its excrement out of its food, and then singled out one among its number to be viciously flogged and nailed to a cross.

The notion that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that his death constitutes a successful propitiation of a “loving” God is a direct and undisguised inheritance of the scapegoating barbarism that has plagued bewildered people throughout history. Viewed in a modern context, it is an idea at once so depraved and fantastical that it is hard to know where to begin to criticize it....