RETHINK ALLOWING OTHERS TO CLASSIFY YOU AS CATHOLIC
Nobody wants a religious label just for an ornament. They want others to classify them. There is nothing wrong with telling others that you won't be put in a box and for them not to do that.
The Roman Catholic faith is really self-deception - self-deception
is the most dangerous evil of them all and the fertiliser for
further lies, further errors and further evil. Faith peppered with
self-deception is the reason
suicide bombers are blowing up planes because it is based on the
notion that God is speaking to you in your heart and he knows what
is right in the circumstances even if it feels wrong to us. If you
lie to yourself to make yourself imagine that you are a believer,
you are also lying to everybody else. A faith of lies is responsible
for all the damaging activities done in its name - even if its
official teaching disapproves of these activities. Catholic
condemnations of Inquisitions and clerical paedophilia ring hollow.
Lies lead to more lies and very harmful ones.
The Church has refused to correct its teachings even when they have
been conclusively refuted. It knowingly teaches doctrines as true
that have been disproven or for which there is no evidence or for
which the evidence is inadequate.
Roman Catholicism teaches harmful doctrine. It encourages people to
put their own spiritual pleasures before those who are tormented by
its doctrines so that they will uphold the doctrines regardless of
the suffering that is caused to others.
Catholicism teaches that God whose existence cannot be proven has to
be loved with all our hearts while our family and neighbours are not
to be loved as much as God but merely as ourselves! Clearly,
doctrine comes before people and the real motive in helping others
has to be to keep God happy. It is obvious that if you love your
wife so much that you would be happy for God to just disappear into
non-existence just so that she could live that somebody telling you
to stop that and love her less than God is not much of a person.
The Church says God made the universe out of nothing. Nothing
contributed to the universe. Not even God's power. The Church says
God is his power and denies he made the universe from himself. The
universe is not God. So if the universe came from nothing that is
not making. God did not make the universe after all. Thus the
universe popped into existence whether he wanted it to or not.
Nothing becoming something means it popped because there is no real
becoming. Period. Creation is a core Catholic doctrine so if it is
wrong the whole religion is in error. The creation doctrine is even
behind the Church notion that bread and wine can be turned into the
body and blood and soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. Creation is an
evil doctrine for to worship a God who does what cannot be done is
dangerous and deranged. He would not be intrinsically good for he
can do any evil and still be good though it is impossible.
Catholicism teaches that the Church represents God on earth and has
his authority to condemn sin and discipline sinners. In fact it is
none of God's business (and therefore not the Church's either) what
we do. Rights are based on need. Sin cannot harm an almighty and
all-good God who is perfectly happy. He does not need to hate sin or
oppose it - he has no need for our obedience. Our disobedience does
him no harm. Therefore he has no right to command us. And it is evil
then to say that he commands and that we should obey.
Is good good whether God commands it or not? If it is good merely
because he says so then clearly the believer is admitting that he
will regard murdering prostitutes as holy and good if God says so.
If God has to consult a standard of right and wrong that is
independent of him and autonomous then we have the right to disagree
with his interpretation and doing good would matter not God or
religion. The standard matters above all things not him and he is
not really the only thing that matters though he says he is. God
either makes good good or he doesn't. Those who say there is a third
option are clearly lying. They say that God's goodness is his nature
and that is the solution. So God did not cause himself to be good
but he just is good which is why it really is wrong not to be good
like him. But a God who is good without being responsible for it is
even worse than one that makes good up out of thin air. And what
standard says that God's goodness is really good though he had
nothing to do with being naturally good?
They simply rephrase the notion that good is only what God wants it
to be and is not really good. They rephrase it thus as, something is
good only when God's character wants it to be. And God does not make
his own goodness so how do we know by what standard it really is
goodness. That is really rewording the two problems and pretending
that a solution has been found. This deception is what they offer
you as the third option. There is no third option.
Imagine you are forced to make a choice between doing good for
person because it makes God happy and doing it only for the person.
It has to be one or the other. A baby is sick and needs help. Do you
give it the medicine because it will help? Or because God wants you
to? Choose the first. Thus you see what matters. God is not God for
God cannot matter. Christianity commits an extreme evil as regards
principle in standing by Jesus' teaching that we must give all to
God 100%.
We do not need God's forgiveness for our sins are none of his
business. We just need to forgive ourselves and to ask forgiveness
of others. Going to God for forgiveness in the Catholic confessional
where sins are whispered to the priest is considered more important
than going to those who you hurt. A horrible teaching like that is
only appealing to people who need it to feel good about themselves.
That can only happen if they have less sorrow for hurting people
than displeasing God! The confessional is a violation of the privacy
of the conscience. And even more so when the Church warns that
telling lies to the priest in confession is a very serious sin and
needs to be repented before death or the person will rot in Hell
forever.
It urges people to imagine that their power to believe all the
Church teaches is unnatural and is actually miraculous - that is God
gives you light to show you that his gospel is true. This leads to a
disturbing arrogance - often dressed in the robes of humility - and
a detestation of anybody who says there are errors in the faith. It
is a delusion and an illness to convince yourself that the faith you
build yourself is not your work but merely looks as if it is.
It is more concerned about its religious teachings such as the
sinless life of Jesus' mother being believed than in people doing
good. Canon Law says you leave the Church if you contradict its
clear teaching on religion but those who break or disbelieve most
ethical precepts of the Church are still considered members.
It claims to be infallible. That is a dangerous example for other
religions many of which are openly vicious.
It keeps many worrying doctrines away from the people.
It has one doctrine contradicting the other.
It pretends that absurd doctrines are true and without error!
It condemns its critics and the faith it seeks to put in us is
intrinsically bigoted. Supernatural claims naturally require
exceptionally good evidence and the Church urges people to obey its
will without providing this evidence. It is cheating the people. If
we start making very serious religious claims on flimsy evidence
then why should we restrict ourselves to religious claims?
It claims to know what is best for people.
The religion says that some actions are objectively wrong. That
means that even if you mean well by them they are still bad - you
are still doing bad. The loving gay couple next door are still doing
bad and are possibly worse than people who deliberately do bad.
Sin by definition is doing an act against God's will that should be
punished and which deserves ill-feeling and condemnation. The Church
says we must hate and detest sins but love the doer of the sins.
This is a thinly disguised cover for hating the guts of those who
disobey the Church or who stay in other religions instead of
abjuring them and joining the Church. To hate sin is to have a
personal ill-feeling for the sinner. You can't really hate sin if
you see it as a thing. Hating it would be as much a sign of mental
illness was would wanting to murder a chandelier that fell on top of
you. It feels personal and no amount of self-deception will hide
that from you. You can only camouflage it with hypocrisy. The
teaching of the Church implies that we can be ungrateful to our
benefactor but grateful to their good deeds. It is self-deception,
delusion and hypocrisy. Believers pretend that God loves them and
hates their sins - this is impossible so it follows their whole
religion is a trick.
The Church gets away with its lie for a lot of people confuse
wanting a person to stop doing things that harm them with hating
sin. Sin means a crime against God and the Church accuses you of sin
when it is enough to accuse you of wrongdoing and when in fact
nobody has the right to be accused of sin when there is a chance
that there is no God to sin against. You have to assume a person is
innocent of a crime until proven guilty. And religion says that sin
is a grave insult to the perfect love of God. That doctrine adds
insult to injury.
It claims that its faith is not a form of belief but a form of
knowledge. It is a way of knowing. Thus they end up saying they know
Jesus was God himself and that priests turn bread into Jesus on the
altar. Again, this is fundamentalism and the arrogance is a lethal
example for other religions.
It accuses people of having the potential to be evil enough to
choose to spend all eternity cursing God and love and everybody else
there is in Hell. That is a very serious allegation and where is the
proof? Without proof their assertion that people have gone to Hell
and can go and that we need the Church and God to keep us out of
this danger is mere slander.
A miracle is a supernatural event and distinguished from a
paranormal one. Only a power outside nature can do the supernatural.
A power within nature can do the paranormal. The Church says only
God is truly outside nature. Satan may be able to do paranormal
things but he will be within nature in the sense that God made him.
The Church's miracles are hostile to science. Only God can create
(assuming creation is possible which it is not) thus you cannot be
sure a miracle is from God unless it involves creation. A miracle
such as a communion wafer bleeding cannot be verified because you
cannot show that the blood was created from nothing there and then.
What if some paranormal force did some trick and the blood was not
miraculously created? If you have to assume the blood was created
then the miracle is is not about giving evidence for God. It is no
good and it is insulting to God to say he does miracles to show off.
The advantage of limiting miracles to acts of creation is that it
weeds out a lot of fraudulent and ignorant claims. However, only God
can know if an example of a creation miracle really happened. It is
no good to us.
It is no trouble to the Church to approve of different apparitions
of Jesus and Mary though they are clearly dubious. For example, they
don't have tests done on the messages to show that it must have been
the same entity giving the messages. It doesn't bother them that
Jesus and Mary never look the same when they appear to someone
new. Every vision of Mary seems to have its own personality and
habits. Every apparition report is accompanied by a different
description. The Church may use science to show that the visionaries
are not mad but that is only a cover to make the Church look
professional. The most important science - checking that it is
really the same Jesus for example who has appeared to different
people in different places - is left out. Plus the apostles made no
effort to be verified sane or truthful after they reported the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. They all expected people just to take
their word for it. What if a visionary says Jesus told him the
resurrection was a mistake or hoax? Why not just take his word for
it?
It claims that babies are not the children of God but need to be
turned into the children of God by baptism which takes away original
sin, reduces their desire to sin when they get bigger and makes them
members of the Church and obligated to obey the Church and believe
what it believes. To say that one baby is better or even potentially
better than another just because of a splash of water is to imply
that racism isn't wrong. What's the difference? Racists could take
encouragement and consolation from the Church. Society needs to
react with revulsion towards infant baptism. And the Church needs to
be forced to change its racist teaching. And it is racism. The
whites were usually Christians and in the past treated blacks like
rubbish because the blacks usually were not baptised.
Catholicism takes unfair advantage of children to indoctrinate them
to program them to believe in Roman Catholicism and need it.
Education should be about teaching a child verified material not
religious fantasy. Children should be informed about religion in a
neutral way and be left free to decide and to choose only what is
relevant to them forming healthy relationships with others. If they
want to choose any religious teachings they like let them but don't
try to make sure it is just Catholic teachings they have. No belief
or religion can be right for everybody. Schooling has to be about
the child and her friends not God. A child needs to be motivated to
be kind to other children. Stuff like prayers to Mary and Holy
Communion only waste time that should be spent on helping a child to
use psychological techniques to become a happy child who benefits
all who he or she meets.
If people raised in religion were really free, conversions from one
religion to another would be a lot more common. That they are
not is a warning to you.