Not So Polite Conversation – “Catholic of Honor” tries to refute a post of mine, hilarity to follow

This is a long slog, so fair warning. Not much here is that new when it comes to counter apologetics. I just was amusing myself in responding.

Always good to see a Catholic who has decided to respond to my posts. He didn’t bother reading anything else on my blog, including my introduction. So he thinks I’m called “club schadenfreude”. Really, dear? Tsk. I’m pretty sure I told him I was Vel, when I commented on the false claims on his blog, which of course he banned me from, rather than showing I was wrong. Alas, the self-proclaimed “Catholic of Honor” shows he isn’t so honorable, when he claims I wasn’t being honest or contributing to dialogue. He claims that showing that his claims, and other claims are false is “harassment”. But that is typical for most Christians. If he didn’t like to do ban people, as he claims, no one forced him. It’s always good to see a Catholic trying to blame others for their actions.

Anyway, let’s look at what this “honorable Catholic” has to say. You can also see it here. as a pdf housed here on my blog. He has preloaded his excuses here so he can pretend that no one can hold him accountable for his claims: “Why should you listen to me? I am not a priest, nor saint, nor theologian, nor angelic doctor. I am only a man with a desire to spread the gospel. A member of the laity wit a passion. A sinner trying to fight the good fight. A Catholic of Honor.” There is no reason to listen to him and his baseless opinions at all. But we can indeed counter them.

CoH (Christian of Honor) quotes a fellow Catholic, who makes the claim that a god named Moloch exists, and that abortion has something to do with it. Unfortunately, there is no evidence for Moloch, much the same that there is no evidence for CoH’s version of the Christian god. This fellow Christian, Kristor, who I’m sure some of you are familiar with, makes predictions that, surprise, never occur. “Moloch must be fed, by his slaves. Now that he’ll be denied the food of babies from so many “trigger” states, he’ll need to be fed in some other way. His vassals will try to figure out how to immolate some high profile victims, to sate his hunger and avert his wrath. I suspect they’ll offer up some from among their own company.”

Oh darn one more failed claim and a Christian who is sure other gods exist. How embarrassing! Then CoH says he agrees, but now it’s just a “metaphor “I admit this is somewhat dramatic and sensational—clearly not meant to be read by the Pro-Choice but rather to inspire Pro-Lifers. Still, I will not say he is wrong, provided we take “Moloch” in a somewhat metaphorical sense.” Surprise, Christians don’t agree, not even Catholics.

I wrote this to respond to poor Kristor: “No Moloch, dears, and no Christian god. I do love the lies of Christians, who have no problem with their god killing children at all. The hypocrisy is wonderful. And it’s always good to see an impotent imaginary god that can’t get rid of another imaginary god”

CoH doesn’t like this. “Lest there is any doubt, this is definably not how anyone should approach apologetics, whether Christian or atheist. Intellectual virtue consists of a character that promotes intellectual flourishing, critical thinking, and the pursuit of truth. Random and on-the-spot accusations of lying, coupled with random, impromptu, and impolite pieces of sarcasm is basically the opposite of that.”

CoH is upset that I point out how apologetics fail and says I shouldn’t show that they are wrong. He claims “intellectual virtue”, something he’s made up so he can whine about how dare anyone shows that his fellow Chrsitians lie, and says that bluntly, supported by evidence. Yep, one can point lies on the spot and ridicule lies on the spot too. Oh dear, I was “impolite”, aka the typical Chrsitian who has yet to realize that no one has to be polite when it comes to their harmful and baseless lies. The dear ol’ “Mother Church” hasn’t come to terms that they aren’t in power anymore.
Then, we have CoH upset that I pointed out that the only humans who are happy with human sacrifice are humans. I said “Literally, the only people left who are happy with human sacrifice are Christians. We see this in their myths (a babe born in a manger and Jephtha’s daughter for starters), in unfortunately common actions where Christians think their god will heal a child and let the child die, and now in their need to sacrifice women.”

He wrote “I wonder if she is using the term literally metaphorically. I honestly cannot tell, but if she is not, I greatly doubt that. At any rate, I do not see how she can excludes Muslim and Jews by her criteria—not to mention anyone who actually worships such demons.”

That he can’t tell simply is that he doesn’t want to admit that I am quite certainly using the term “literally” literally. Then he claims that somehow Jews and Muslims are happy with human sacrifice. They do indeed, if they accept that story about Jephtha’s daughter. I do like how CoH claims that Jews and Muslims worship demons, a lovely baseless and typically bigoted claim by a Christian. That’s quite a lovely “whataboutism” that ricocheted on CoH.

Well, let’s look at the next bit from CoH. “But I might as well respond to this actual argument. Remember, God gave life in the first place, but He never intended it to be permanent on Earth. It is our calling to be with Him in heaven. “

Hmmm, the bible never says this. We have this god wanting the humans it chose to be on the city of heaven on earth; only 144,000 virgin Jews go to heaven.

“It is easily in God’s rights to take His children when He wills, while it is not within the rights of men who do not have authority over life and death. When you look at it that way, this reasoning could be said to be quite logical, even if it is hard for us to see in this life. Besides, if we are just talking about children here, chances are many of them will go to heaven when otherwise, for all we know, perhaps they would not.”

This is the typical morality of Christians, might equals right. We see that CoH has no problem with human sacrifice when it comes to the story of Jephtha’s daughter. Then we have the baseless claim from a Christian and Catholic, making the claim that the children this god murders “go to heaven”. If this is an excuse, abortion would be a sacrament to Catholics, evidently guaranteeing that they automatically go to heaven. This is the excuse used by various people who have killed their children, murdered to “save” them from sin. This is from “Child murder by mothers: patterns and prevention” SUSAN HATTERS FRIEDMAN1 and PHILLIP J RESNICK1
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“Resnick’s review of the world psychiatric literature on maternal filicide (11) found filicidal mothers to have frequent depression, psychosis, prior mental health treatment, and suicidal thoughts. Maternal filicide perpetrators have five major motives: a) in an altruistic filicide, a mother kills her child out of love; she believes death to be in the child’s best interest (for example, a suicidal mother may not wish to leave her motherless child to face an intolerable world; or a psychotic mother may believe that she is saving her child from a fate worse than death); b) in an acutely psychotic filicide, a psychotic or delirious mother kills her child without any comprehensible motive (for example, a mother may follow command hallucinations to kill); c) when fatal maltreatment filicide occurs, death is usually not the anticipated outcome; it results from cumulative child abuse, neglect, or Munchausen syndrome by proxy; d) in an unwanted child filicide, a mother thinks of her child as a hindrance; e) the most rare, spouse revenge filicide occurs when a mother kills her child specifically to emotionally harm that child’s father.”

We also have that “church fathers” say that unbaptized Children go to hell, not passing god, not collecting $200. “Let no one promise infants who have not been baptized a sort of middle place of happiness between damnation and Heaven, for this is what the Pelagian heresy promised them’ (The Soul and Its Origin, Patrologiae Latinae, Migne, 44:475)”

Funny how a Catholic just ignores what he wants. Then he is offended that I mentioned how the Catholic Church doesn’t treat stillborns like children. He claims I take it “out of context” but does not show how. The catholic church is indeed hypocritical if it claims that fetuses, embryos, and fertilized eggs are children and then says still borns aren’t. If fetuses, embryos, fertilized eggs are independently “alive” even if they can’t survive without the woman’s body without which they would immediately die, a stillborn fetus is just as “alive”. It is telling that CoH can only think of serial killers killing children. “As for the dead, we entrust them to the mercy of God and hope that they are saved.” Well, per Auggie above, there is no reason to trust this god at all.

Unsurprisingly, CoH tries to claim my points aren’t “entirely accurate. They are, and CoH does admit that Catholics don’t agree yet on more things. “I will say I imagine it is not done as much because few theologians think they are in Purgatory and they are probably either in Heaven or Limbo.” Aka we just make nonsense up.

Alas, per CoH’s own arguments, he and the RCC (something that poor CoH can’t evidently figure out) do need to start baptizing fertilized eggs. He doesn’t like that conclusion, and tries this excuse: “The point is that it seems quite difficult to me to baptize an embryo unless you expect a priest to have the doctor temporarily remove the baby from the uterus for a baptism, which seems very unsafe.”

Surely it would be fine with a god that demands “children” be baptized to not send them to hell. Right? Or does CoH admit that fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses aren’t children at all? Seems he is.

Science doesn’t show that fetuses are “independent organisms” at all. Again, until we do have the science to have an artificial womb, this potential human being needs another.

I do appreciate that CoH admits that Catholicism and Protestants have different, and contradictory, versions of Christianity, and not one of them can show their nonsense true. “As for us reading the same Bible, this feels like grasping at straws—either that or not really understanding the root differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. It is true that it is troubling that all Protestants follow the exact same method of learning about God but then cannot agree on anything.” He, as usual, tries the baseless claim that only his version of Chrsitianity, and indeed Catholicism, is the only right one. Alas for him, every single Christian claims that they and they alone have “teaching authority”.

CoH kindly lists all of the Christians who don’t agree with him and like him, can’t show that he is even a real Christian, unable to do what the bible has JC promising. He tries to claim that only he has the right “understanding” and dismisses anyone who disagrees with his version. How not new or impressive. “I will simply knock off Sedevacantists and Beneplenists from the list since I think the whole thing results from a misunderstanding of Canon Law (no offense to anyone reading this who espouses such views—I deal with them elsewhere).” Aka, don’t hold me to account for making a baseless claim and calling you liars.”

“I would argue that Catholicism best reflects the Early Church, but whatever is the case, simply stating that “You all disagree with each other and therefore you must all be wrong” is simply unsound logic.”

So, another baseless claim, and attempting to deny that if no chrsitain can show that they have some “right” answer, there is no reason to doubt them all. At best, CoH could argue that there is a right answer, but since he can’t do what the bible promises, he admits his version, and the versions of every other Christians, is wrong.

CoH also mentions the term “bulverism” a term made up by the liar C.S. Lewis, a famous apologist. Bulverism is defined as “The method of Bulverism is to “assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error.” “ Alas, CoH accuses me of this but has no evidence I have done this. What I have done is research the claims of CoH and other Christians, no presupposition, and then have presented evidence that they are wrong. From CoH’s own claims, my point ““As always, the bible and its god is no more than a Rorschach test, showing what the human wants to pretend is true, nothing more.”” Is demonstrated as true since even CoH admits that Christians make up what they want, insisting that their personal interpretation is the only right one, contradicting their fellow Christians. They make up their god and their religion in their own image, show their internal desires and hates.

Now, if we do want to see someone perform “bulverism”, Christians are great examples, since each presupposes the other Christians are wrong, and then they try to show how. CoH is quite right here “It is a rhetorical fallacy that assumes a speaker’s argument is invalid or false and then explains why the speaker came to make that mistake or to be so silly (even if the opponent’s claim is actually right) by attacking the speaker or the speaker’s motive.” And he does it repeatedly in his attacks on other versions of Christianity. Here’s an example from CoH’s typing fingers “When Luther first proposed Sola Scriptura, the idea seemed simple enough, but doctrinal controversy seemed to be sprouting all around from its very roots.” You can see the rest here.

Happily, I didn’t try psychoanalysis, I only compared the bible to a method of psychoanalysis. What I have shown is that there are many contradictions in Chrsitainty, and CoH has helped in showing how he is sure that only his version is the right one, which literally (yes, dear I mean that literally, ROFL), contradictions other Christianities.

CoH tries the excuse that I can’t point out contradictions since humans aren’t “infallible gods”. I’m not even thinking that. But gee, poor CoH claims to have a infallible god, and it fails hilariously since it can’t make itself understood, evidently. If there is some truth, an omnipotent, and omniscient, and supposedly good, infallible god must, by definition, be able to make itself clear, and not have to have its followers blame themselves for being at fault.

“we could just be much more charitable than to go around accusing people of being liars.”

No need to be charitable to people who can be demonstrated as liars. This is again the Christian begging everyone to not show that their emperor has no clothes.

So what has CoH’s post taught us?

“So what does this teach us? First of all, be mindful of intellectual vices which do not promote charity in dialogue and apologetics.”

He has nothing to support his claims and demands “charity” when none is deserved.

“Second, when you find a two-thousand-year-old system of faith and think you can refute it by an alleged simple contradiction in a few paragraphs, keep in mind that you might have to do more research before you think you have refuted this organization.”

CoH still has nothing to support his claims, and tries to lie that I haven’t done research and have shown that his “system of faith” is no different than those versions of Christianity and other religions he attacks. If he is the one TrueChristain™, he knows, from his bible how he can show this to be true. Unsurprisingly, he can’t do what it promises.

“Generally, when millions of people hold to a viewpoint, especially one as historically intellectual as Catholicism, I think it is unrealistic to suppose one can refute the idea so easily—which is why I think it is, in fact, irrational, to go around accusing us of intentional deceit.

Oh dear, an appeal to popularity logical fallacy is all he has. There is nothing historically intellectual about Catholicism, it depends on the same demonstrably baseless claims as any other version of Christianity.

“Bonum Certamen Certemus “which means “We’re sure it’s a good fight.” (translation courtesy of google.) Unfortunately, he’s wrong. And if you are a Christian who likes to claim that Catholics aren’t Chrsitians, your version isn’t any better.

Kitten update next!