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There's a difference between believing a thing and understanding it. It seems you think not doing the former is an excuse to skip the latter.

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
And if we are using such fun descriptions as "magical canibals" then we know why we can't have rational discussions about what people believe.

I don't believe in transubstantiation either, but you don't see me mocking people who do.

I did actually wonder about the legal ramifications of claiming that you eat parts of an actual person - I would be very interested in how that court case would go.

I think you'd have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that God exists, and that furthermore the Catholic Church holds the one true interpretation of Its nature (again beyond a reasonable doubt).

By that measure, the only people who could convict such a defendant of such a crime, would be a jury of misanthropic Catholics.

 Manchu wrote:
Well, in order to have that case we'd need cops and prosecutors ignorant enough to conflate the Eucharist with the actual criminal act of cannibalism.

Person: "So, you actually eat parts of a human body and drink its blood when you take the bread and wine?"

Manchu: "Yes"

However, my point was more along the lines of what arguments would be used for and against the charge of cannibalism, rather than how the case came about. Would you go for a defence of "transformation therefore not actually eating flesh", or would you attempt to prove that the bread and wine remain bread and wine and therefore endanger the premise that they actually transform upon being consumed? Would the prosecution have to wheel out the pope and put him on the stand to confirm that the bread and wine turn into Jesus? Would it have to be specified at which point the bread and wine become Jesus? On the tongue? In the throat? Only when it reaches the stomach? Therefore proving that the person eats the bread and wine, but it then, after being eaten, becomes human flesh? Could this still be classed as cannibalism given the person consuming the bread and wine "knows" it will transform into human flesh?

It is just an interesting thought that popped into my head - I don't expect anyone to bring such a charge.

 Manchu wrote:
There's a difference between believing a thing and understanding it.

Of course, what's your point?

It seems you think not doing the former is an excuse to skip the latter.

[
I told you I was an existentialist; The latter is more important than the former.
I understand that Catholics think some sort of supernatural thing occurs where bread turns into flesh, or body turns into bread, or whatever.
I see no vaguely rational evidence that such a thing occurs, so I don't believe it, and regard it equally to the Mithraic rites I linked to (both equally untrue myths about eating bread that is the literal body of a God, both of which arose at around the same point in history in the same parts of the world).


...and yeah, are all the Neanderthals in Hell?
Nobody's ever answered this question for me.

My point is that it is possible, for a reasonable person of good will, to understand a position she does not agree with.

Why would neatherthals be in hell? If your point is that Jesus saved Homo sapiens sapiens and not Homo sapiens neanderthalensis/Homo neanderthalensis then wouldn't it be simpler to ask if ants are in hell? I mean, just in terms of logic, the questions are equally ridiculous.

Anyway, even from an "existentialist" point of view, I now have enough information to rationally conclude this exchange is no longer worthwhile.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
It is just an interesting thought that popped into my head - I don't expect anyone to bring such a charge.

I think a more profitable line of thought for you to ponder is why cannibalism is criminal in the first place. Once you have come up with a few reasons, see if any of them also apply to the Eucharist.

 Manchu wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
It is just an interesting thought that popped into my head - I don't expect anyone to bring such a charge.

I think a more profitable line of thought for you to ponder is why cannibalism is criminal in the first place. Once you have come up with a few reasons, see if any of them also apply to the Eucharist.

It depends on where you live as to whether it is actually illegal, which I find quite interesting. Often it is de facto illegal as it is punished under other laws depending on how it is carried out, which also vary from place to place, making it hard to specifically answer your return question.

Anyway, I am going to bed

 SilverMK2 wrote:
making it hard to specifically answer your return question

Not at all. Consider the question in terms of your own country, where cannibalism is indeed illegal.

 Manchu wrote:
My point is that it is possible, for a reasonable person of good will, to understand a position she does not agree with.

Sure, I understand what you claim happens in the mystic ceremony of Transubstantiation - Jesus' body literally teleports apart and turns into millions of chunks of bread and millions of sips of wine every week.

Why would neatherthals be in hell? If your point is that Jesus saved Homo sapiens sapiens and not Homo sapiens neanderthalensis/Homo neanderthalensis then wouldn't it be simpler to ask if ants are in hell? I mean, just in terms of logic, the questions are equally ridiculous.

It wouldn't be simpler to ask if ants are in hell, because genetic science tells us that some western human populations have 2-5% Neanderthal DNA in them, following cross-breeding that occured ~30,000 years ago. Ants can't be part-human***

So, are all the Neanderthals in hell? (by your comparison with ants, I assume you think that Neanderthals didn't have souls at all, and so were destroyed when they died)
How about the half-Neanderthal half-Human hybrids?
And the 75% Neanderthal / 25% Human hybrids?

Since your Church can tell us with specificity what happened billions of years ago, it must have an opinion on some yugging that took place 30k years ago (and the theological implications thereof), right?

Anyway, even from an "existentialist" point of view, I now have enough information to rationally conclude this exchange is no longer worthwhile.

Don't give up, it's just getting fun. :-p


***Unless you inject human DNA into them.

 Manchu wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
making it hard to specifically answer your return question

Not at all. Consider the question in terms of your own country, where cannibalism is indeed illegal.

I will have to look up the laws in the UK as I personally am not 100% on what they actually are

Complety athiest.

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
making it hard to specifically answer your return question

Not at all. Consider the question in terms of your own country, where cannibalism is indeed illegal.

I will have to look up the laws in the UK as I personally am not 100% on what they actually are

Don't forget, Catholics believe all humans (but no Neanderthals?) are personally complicit in the murder of Jesus, due to the doctrine of original sin (we are personally responsible for the sins against God of our ancestors, right back to Eve and the Apple).

Therefore, it would probably be easier to to prosecute a case of murder against a Catholic...

The Catholic will be happy to say under oath that he's personally responsible for the death of Jesus, and will even helpfully point you at where you can find his corpse (in his stomach, because the Catholic ate him "a few years" after he killed him).

If you're just going to be a troll, then why even participate in what was a serious discussion?

I'm not trolling - as far as I understand things it is fundamental Catholic doctrine that all humans are complicit in, and are thereby responsible for, the murder of Jesus***.

Therefore a faithful Catholic charged with the murder (and consumption) of Jesus in a court of law could only plead guilty to the crime, no?

=====

Or, to put it another way, I agree with those who kicked off the whole "is the Eucharist ceremony cannibalism in the eyes of the law?" - it's fun to discuss theological claims.

And if treating them seriously looks like trolling, perhaps that's because they're just not sensible claims to make in the first place, and discussing them seriously consequently doesn't look sensible either.

Now, let's get back to discussing magic / miracles / supernatural transubstantiation?

=====

***Albeit until the 1960's the Catholic Church officially blamed "all the Jews in every era, ancient and modern" for the death of Jesus. Now they spread the blame more evenly.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
And if treating them seriously looks like trolling, perhaps that's because they're just not sensible claims to make in the first place, and discussing them seriously consequently doesn't look sensible either.

But of course you're not treating them seriously. For example, your neanderthal "question" is totally nonsensical. As I suspected and you confirmed, the question assumes that redemption by grace hinges on genetic identity. This is blatant, if rather poor, trolling and we do have a rule against that. So please reconsider your tack if you decide to continue in this thread.

I don't see it as trolling at all. He's asking poignant questions in a confrontational way but last I checked that wasn't trolling.

Off Topic: I'd be very disappointed if you dropped MODhammer over this as you are very much of an opposing opinion to Evil & Chaos.

@Lint: The questions aren't poignant at all. They aren't even questions. They're rhetorical traps. You really think challenging a Catholic to undergo a stomach pump after communion for the sake of finding literal human remains is a poignant question? That's pretty clear trolling, as is the rest of it.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
I'm not trolling - as far as I understand things it is fundamental Catholic doctrine that all humans are complicit in, and are thereby responsible for, the murder of Jesus***.

Therefore a faithful Catholic charged with the murder (and consumption) of Jesus in a court of law could only plead guilty to the crime, no?

To arrange this situation to make a catholic answer yes, you'd first have to successfully charge someone with the murder (and consumption) of Jesus.

When is that likely to happen?

Not even that. The Catholic notion of moral responsibility in a fallen world is not the same thing as criminal culpability for a particular instance of murder. He's just playing a word game.

PredaKhaine wrote:
To arrange this situation to make a catholic answer yes, you'd first have to successfully charge someone with the murder(and consumption) of Jesus.

When is that likely to happen?

I'm given to understand that Jesus was lawfully put to death, therefore was not murdered. Though as, apparently, we are all guilty of some kind of sin for everything that has ever happened, I guess it could be said that we are all "guilty" of killing him.

If the catholic in question believes that the wafer they consume is turning into flesh during the ceremony? Yes it's a brash question, but nothing that doesn't deserve an answer.


An answer I thought you provided very well btw:

 Manchu wrote:

"Transubstantiation" is a philosophical theory about the True Presence of the Eucharist, namely that the bread and wine are truly body and blood. To understand the theory, you need a little background in classical thought. Aristotle taught about the difference between appearance and substance, namely that what a thing looks like is not necessarily the same thing as what a thing is. The elements of appearance are "accidental" in the sense that they do not constitute substance; if those elements were not present the thing in question would still be itself. Regarding the Eucharist, bread and wine are said to be the accidental appearances of body and blood.

No one is claiming, outside of misguided superstition, that the actual chemical composition is being changed. That is not what is meant by "literal." In the context of modern thinking, the word "literal" perhaps tends to mislead. A better word is "actual" or, as in common parlance, "true." Everyone can see the host is bread if all they use is their eyes, up to an including all the instruments designed to enhance the modern experience of vision. But so too can everyone, in light of the ritual, understand that what is going on in the Eucharist is more than eating bread.

The biggest difference between Catholics and many Protestants on this issue is that many Protestants are, in one sense or another, content with the language of symbols. They say the bread is the symbol of Jesus's body. The Church rejects this notion, basically because it renders Jesus -- whose truly human nature is paramount to Catholic theology -- himself into a mere symbol. Belief in the True Presence is therefore a central part of the Catholic faith.

See there? An honest and educated answer. That's all information I had been curious about but never knew as my particular brand of christianity as a child was of the pentecostal/protestant variety.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I'm given to understand that Jesus was lawfully put to death, therefore was not murdered.

That's a very good point actually. I think one of the points of the story is to make us reflect on the inferior conceits of human justice.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Though as, apparently, we are all guilty of some kind of sin for everything that has ever happened, I guess it could be said that we are all "guilty" of killing him.

Rather than assigning personal blame to you or me for his death, I think the point is more like -- would we have done anything different than Pilate and the Sanhedrin? Isn't human society still rife with the same kind of injustices even today?

I have a genuine question now.

Do atheists believe they have souls?

Has the idea of a 'soul' (something that makes you more than a collection of learned responses to stimuli) transcended religion?

 Manchu wrote:
Rather than assigning personal blame to you or me for his death, I think the point is more like -- would we have done anything different than Pilate and the Sanhedrin? Isn't human society still rife with the same kind of injustices even today?

I honestly don't have an opinion on this particular aspect of religion; it is one of those things like people praying for my soul, or until it was brought up, the bread and wine into flesh but not into flesh - something that has absolutely no impact on my life so I have never even really considered it. I don't know enough about the background to say your assessment about what it is about is likely to be correct or not, yet on the other hand I am also not really interested enough to motivate myself to engage particularly in the subject.

However, one pitfall to avoid is taking modern morality and "knowledge" and applying it to situations in different times and cultures, especially when it is not always clear a) what exaclty was going on at the time or even b) that it actually took place.

@SilverMK2: I'm not sure what you are getting at. That you don't know enough to think about the question but you do know enough to say that I've misunderstood my religion? It's kind of like the cannibalism thing. You don't need to know the ins and outs of every culture the world over to consider why cannibalism might be illegal in the UK.

PredaKhaine wrote:
Do atheists believe they have souls?

I don't think anyone can speak for all atheists on any topic. When I was an atheist, I thought the concept of the soul was more or less a philosophical category. To the extent that it had any material corollary at all, I figured it must be synonymous with "mind" in the sense of firing neurons and brain chemistry. So, in the sense of a soul that survives the death of the body, no I did not think such a thing actually exists.

 Manchu wrote:
@SilverMK2: I'm not sure what you are getting at. That you don't know enough to think about the question but you do know enough to say that I've misunderstood my religion?

No, I am not driving at that - I'm certainly not attempting to say that you have misunderstood your religion.

I am more saying that there are certain aspects of religion, as with, I am sure, many other things, that I have either never come across before or indeed never even considered might exist. I know when I have been travelling in the Far East, some people have literally no concept of people not believing in some kind of god, or supernatural events; it is utterly alien to their understanding of the world.

It is therefore difficult for me personally to discuss certain things in any kind of detail, and certainly with any kind of authority. My comments on cannibalism stem only from what has been said in this thread (given that until now I do not recall being consiously aware that there are those who genuinely think the bread and wine "transform" into the body and blood of Jesus)... from your first comments and replies I understood that you meant they literally transfigured, now I see that the transformation is more metaphysical, yet still "real" in a way undetectable to science. Personally I find this kind of, well, not-quite-but-could-be-considered evasion of the provision of testable evidence of some supernatural event to be quite annoying to my more evidence based way of life

My thoughts on questioning how things would go in a court of law are more to organise in my own head what kinds of supporting proof/arguments each side might put forward, especially given that those pushing for a prosecution of cannibalism would have to "prove" that the claims of catholics were literally true while the defence may have to "invalidate" their own faith to protect themselves.

It's kind of like the cannibalism thing. You don't need to know the ins and outs of every culture the world over to consider why cannibalism might be illegal in the UK.

Indeed, and I hope to look up the laws in the UK when I get home to see how they would apply in this case

PredaKhaine wrote:
I have a genuine question now.

Do atheists believe they have souls?

Has the idea of a 'soul' (something that makes you more than a collection of learned responses to stimuli) transcended religion?

Speaking for myself, no, not in the sense that I have some part of myself that is eternal, or will carry on after my body dies.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Personally I find this kind of, well, not-quite-but-could-be-considered evasion of the provision of testable evidence of some supernatural event to be quite annoying to my more evidence based way of life

I can understand that. The simplest way to address it is by sorting out what in the human experience is and is not available to testing/measurement in the material sense. If the Eucharist is the sort of thing that is outside that scope, and I think it is, then it's not very reasonable to call the application of Aristotelian philosophy in Christian theology an "evasion." Reason after all is greater than a measuring stick or a microscope.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Indeed, and I hope to look up the laws in the UK when I get home to see how they would apply in this case

Considering that the Church of England, while rejecting the specific philiosophical formula of transubstantiation, theologically adheres to the doctrine of the True Presence, it is a given that the law of the UK regarding cannibalism does not and was never meant to address the question of the Eucharist.

 Manchu wrote:
I can understand that. The simplest way to address it is by sorting out what in the human experience is and is not available to testing/measurement in the material sense. If the Eucharist is the sort of thing that is outside that scope, and I think it is, then it's not very reasonable to call the application of Aristotelian philosophy in Christian theology an "evasion."

Of course you must realize that more and more we are finding ways to actually test and prove things that were once entirely based on religious dogma.

 Manchu wrote:
Reason after all is greater than a measuring stick or a microscope.

I feel it appropriate to say here that a neat slice of Occam's Razor and a judicious use of "reason" can, does, and has, IMHO utterly smashed religious mysticism. The more we learn and explore the universe in which we live, the less room for god. Not to say there won't be any mystery, but it need no longer be attributed to a guy-in-the-sky.

I disagree. God is not a "band aid" explanation for natural phenomenon rendered superfluous by electron microscopes and particle accelerators. It seems to me that you are relying on the whiggish assumption that "science" inevitably approaches "truth." But the scientific method is merely a viewpoint, as transient as any other and like others more or less useful according to a given goal. And moreover truth itself, unless defined very narrowly so as to make the entire matter in any case tautological, is not the monolithic phenomenon often described by advocates of unified field theory.

 Manchu wrote:
@Lint: The questions aren't poignant at all. They aren't even questions. They're rhetorical traps. You really think challenging a Catholic to undergo a stomach pump after communion for the sake of finding literal human remains is a poignant question? That's pretty clear trolling, as is the rest of it.

As far as I was aware, Catholics literally believe that bread turns into chunks of flesh when they eat them
What you see as mocking, I saw as honest questions. That I was initially given "jargon" about "accidental remains" that did not seek to explain what Catholics actually believe (that being that the body of jesus turns into millions of chunks of bread each week, more or less the inverse of my initial apprehension) served to prolong my partial ignorance on the matter.

You cannot assume that a disinterested (technical term as distinct from uninterested) individual will know all the specifics of your mystical beliefs (there are a lot of different mystical traditions!). So I began with broad strokes.

Now, it is cientific fact that Neanderthals interbred with humans.
Are all the Neanderthals in Hell?

I believe it is a principle of Catholicism that atheists and adherents to other religions go to Hell - why not Neanderthals, and hybrids?