tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post113053081764546040..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: The sad state of Catholic anti-intellectualismRyanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1130774944450568922005-10-31T11:09:00.000-05:002005-10-31T11:09:00.000-05:00Crimson Catholic said: "Until you own up to the fa...Crimson Catholic said: "Until you own up to the fact that this is a personal problem, that you are motivated by blind, unreasoning hatred rather than reason, you're never going to get better, and eventually, you're going to be spitted and roasting in hellfire. If nothing else, then for your souls' sakes, just develop the discipline to think for once in your life. Protestantism does NOT have to make you stupid, unless you let it. The sad thing is that a *secular Jew* could see this more clearly than the self-proclaimed Christians. If that isn't enough to bring you to shame, then what is?<BR/><BR/>Rant over. God help you all"<BR/><BR/>Hey, it looks like he finally cooled off enough to post again...Oh wait, it doesn't sound like he's cooled off at all!!<BR/><BR/>Kinda sounds like Jonathan Edwards.EAhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03649331234241764065noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1130774621756387262005-10-31T11:03:00.000-05:002005-10-31T11:03:00.000-05:00Crimson Catholic said: "Whatever. I just refuse to...Crimson Catholic said: "Whatever. I just refuse to talk with people who refuse to discuss things reasonably; that's all there is too it. Hays is not reasonable, because reasonable people make intellectual efforts to understand and give meaning to what opponents say." <BR/><BR/><BR/>Oh boy. Now you've gone and done it. Jonathan's not talking to you again. Although it is hard to tell, because he keeps interrupting the silence with more talk. <BR/><BR/>By the way Steve, I wanted to thank you for giving Jonathan's arguments meaning. It's only through that kind of generosity that his arguments had any meaning at all to me.EAhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03649331234241764065noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1130651411333304552005-10-30T01:50:00.000-04:002005-10-30T01:50:00.000-04:00Bravo Jonathan! How any of your opponents are abl...Bravo Jonathan! <BR/><BR/>How any of your opponents are able to endure the withering force of your compelling arguments is beyond me (and the Enloevian ALL CAPS touch was especially nice as well - a true marker of scholastic excellence, much like multiple exclamation points)!!!!!<BR/><BR/>On another front (and I alluded to this somewhat in my earlier comment), have you ever wondered if your belief in an objective "Catholicism" is actually nothing more than an artificial construct? Is it possible that it's merely a synthetic attempt to impose epistemic stability on (what is in reality) an entity that is in constant (and chaotic) flux? In other words, by calling it "Catholicism" some would say that you’re just <I>pretending</I> that it’s a single uniform entity. <BR/><BR/>Surely you recognize this at least implicitly if not explicitly – and I suspect that you deal with the reality of the broad diversity that exists within “Catholicism” by employing dualistic qualifiers like “normative” or “true” (which describe the type of Catholicism you subscribe to no doubt). <BR/><BR/>And Hays – that is a very amusing response to the rhetorical power play which consigned you to the nether regions for refusing to assent to truly thinking assertions that lack nothing except for the small matter of warrant.Der Fürsprecherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16349234130532717148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1130645079959972492005-10-30T00:04:00.000-04:002005-10-30T00:04:00.000-04:00I just hope that all the best real estate Down Und...I just hope that all the best real estate Down Under hasn't been snapped up already. If I can't get a waterfront lot, a view property overlooking the lake of fire would do. <BR/><BR/>What's the going rate for an indulgence these days? Perhaps Jonathan can pull some strings for me with the Vatican.stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1130632768695291682005-10-29T20:39:00.000-04:002005-10-29T20:39:00.000-04:00Really, Jonathan, you're soooo Medieval. You need ...Really, Jonathan, you're soooo Medieval. You need to stop reading Dante and get with the program. Hell is doing a disappearing act in contemporary Catholic theology. Just read Rahner. Just read von Balthasar. Just read John-Paul II. Just read Benedict XVI. Hell is getting smaller and smaller by the day until there will be nothing left except for the Devil and a few Antipopes.stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1130627966063230022005-10-29T19:19:00.000-04:002005-10-29T19:19:00.000-04:00Like I said, I can't think for you. At some point...Like I said, I can't think for you. At some point, you babies are going to have to stop whining about "obscurantism" and figure out what the argument is and why people are persuaded by it. The problem is that you hate Catholicism SO MUCH that you can't even be charitable about the arguments, which is why you people continue to embarrass yourselves among the thinking human population. People blinded by antipathy cannot make good arguments, period. It's the same emotional populist nonsense that led to nativism and the KKK, and in all this time, we haven't come any farther. Until you own up to the fact that this is a personal problem, that you are motivated by blind, unreasoning hatred rather than reason, you're never going to get better, and eventually, you're going to be spitted and roasting in hellfire. If nothing else, then for your souls' sakes, just develop the discipline to think for once in your life. Protestantism does NOT have to make you stupid, unless you let it. The sad thing is that a *secular Jew* could see this more clearly than the self-proclaimed Christians. If that isn't enough to bring you to shame, then what is?<BR/><BR/>Rant over. God help you allCrimsonCatholichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08623996344637714843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1130544159990393522005-10-28T20:02:00.000-04:002005-10-28T20:02:00.000-04:00Der Fuersprecher said:"Has it ever occurred to you...Der Fuersprecher said:<BR/><BR/>"Has it ever occurred to you how ridiculously transparent these rhetorical tactics are?"<BR/><BR/>Yes, Jonathan seems to think that he's deceiving more people than he actually is deceiving. He claims that Steve and other opponents are too unreasonable to interact with, yet he repeatedly breaks his word by continuing to selectively interact with them. When he was on better terms with Steve earlier this year, he ignored large portions of what Steve wrote in their exchanges at that time as well. He's still trying to avoid addressing much of what his opponents say, but his excuse for doing it has changed. Now he claims that people like Steve are just too unreasonable to interact with. I don't know how anybody could conclude that Jonathan has been on the better side of these exchanges unless the person reaching that conclusion was predisposed to <I>want</I> Jonathan to win. And I doubt that many of <I>those</I> people have been impressed with his performance.<BR/><BR/>Steve is to be commended for persisting in documenting Jonathan's errors. I know that a lot of people appreciate his work.<BR/><BR/>Jason Engwer<BR/>http://members.aol.com/jasonte<BR/>New Testament Research Ministries<BR/>http://www.ntrmin.orgJason Engwerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17031011335190895123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1130539833646587782005-10-28T18:50:00.000-04:002005-10-28T18:50:00.000-04:00Prejean - in terms of intellectual sophistication ...Prejean - in terms of intellectual sophistication and facility with academic discourse, as one pundit has put it so well, you are a “cold fish in clown's pants” I'm afraid. <BR/><BR/>Based on my observations, you have demonstrated an unfortunate tendency to avoid making an <I>actual argument</I> for your claims and then when you are challenged on this front, you repeatedly retreat behind, "[my interlocutor] just isn't <I>reasonable</I>..." or "[my interlocutor] just isn't listening..." in order to avoid actually constructing… <I>an argument</I>.<BR/><BR/>Has it ever occurred to you how ridiculously transparent these rhetorical tactics are? <BR/><BR/>Hays has pegged you rightly as a hopeless obscurantist.<BR/><BR/>As far as the link from Macleod – apart from the gross oversimplification involved in his portrayal of the [allegedly] harmonious relationship between the Roman Catholic academy and Church (which is an entirely laughable assertion for someone who has studied the serious divisions that have erupted between clerical and lay scholars in the Catholic communion), like you, he didn’t even attempt to substantiate these assertions. <BR/><BR/>Just<BR/><BR/>More<BR/><BR/>Bald<BR/><BR/>Assertions<BR/><BR/>!<BR/><BR/>Forgive those of us in advance who are actually interested in warrant for your dogmatic claims Jonathan. <BR/><BR/>As far as your apparent aversion to Hays’ claim about the reality of divergent strains of Catholicism. May I offer a suggestion? You might want to ditch your antiquated essentialist categories of thought when referring to “Catholicism.” <BR/><BR/>There is no such entity – just millions of Catholicism(s), each one merely instantiated every time someone like yourself presumes to speak for “the one true church” and what it <I>actually</I> believes.<BR/><BR/>If you're interested in challenging the veracity of the preceding assertion - I'd be more than willing to retract it if you're willing to help me find the mythical "Catholicism" you seem to so naively believe in.<BR/><BR/>And btw, as someone who (presumably) holds to the utterly ridiculous doctrine of papal infallibility, you have demonstrated quite a bit of temerity to refer to anyone else as a “fundamentalist hick.”Der Fürsprecherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16349234130532717148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1130532332627955992005-10-28T16:45:00.000-04:002005-10-28T16:45:00.000-04:00And so you see exactly what I mean. They simply a...And so you see exactly what I mean. They simply aren't capable of getting around the anti-intellectual structure of the false dichotomy:<BR/>"The problem here is that you have two kinds of Catholics. On the one hand, there are those with a very competent command of exegesis. These are scholars like Ray Brown, Murphy-O’Connor, Joseph Fitzmyer, and L. T. Johnson, to name a few.<BR/><BR/>They’re liberal by evangelical standards, but they ask the right questions of the text and they often give the right answers.<BR/><BR/>Problem is: what they say doesn’t make a dent in Catholic theology. It doesn’t feed into Catholic theology. Catholic dogma is driven by historical theology rather than exegetical theology. Catholicism committed itself to certain positions a long time ago, and these are not subject to revision in light of better exegesis. The Catholic church only turns to Scripture to legitimate a preexisting practice or belief. It doesn’t derive its practice or belief from direct interaction with the text of Scripture. And even if it did, a dogmatic misinterpretation is irreformable."<BR/><BR/>Of course, even Protestants recognize that what Hays says here about the "two kinds" of Catholicism is ridiculous:<BR/>http://www.communiosanctorum.com/?p=93#comments<BR/><BR/>But this is the guy who supposedly "critiques [my] reasons, on [my] own grounds." Think maybe my critic not only doesn't understand what I'm saying but also doesn't even try to do so, preferring to make argument from a position of studied ignorance? Yeah, me too. But I'm supposed to make time constructing an argument for people who obstinately refuse to listen. Whatever. I just refuse to talk with people who refuse to discuss things reasonably; that's all there is too it. Hays is not reasonable, because reasonable people make intellectual efforts to understand and give meaning to what opponents say.CrimsonCatholichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08623996344637714843noreply@blogger.com