Not So Polite Conversation – one more christian insisting that everyone must agree with his nonsense

I’ve always found it most curious on how desperate Christians are to claim that, no matter what non-christians say or know, their imaginary friend simply must influence us.   No evidence for this, just the need of Christians to pretend everyone really does agree with them. 

A Catholic, Bishop Robert Barron, wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, and it was available outside the paywall for a bit thanks to microsoft’s relaying articles from some sources for a brief time (here’s the link but I don’t have any idea how long it will remain).  I have it in its entirety, its very silly entirety. 

“The Incarnation Changes Even Nonbelievers – Opinion by Robert Barron •  

G.K. Chesterton once observed that even those who don’t believe in the doctrine of the Incarnation are different for having heard it. Christians celebrate this transformative revelation from Dec. 25, Christmas Day, through Jan. 6, the feast of the Epiphany. There is something so counterintuitive about the claim that God became human that the minds of those who but entertain the notion change willy-nilly. If you have taken in the story of the baby who is God, you simply aren’t the same person you were before.”

Alas for Barron, this would apply to any new piece of information one might learn, still no evidence his imaginary friend is real.  There is nothing counterintuitive at all, it’s just one more silly claim from a religion/cult.  Gods can become animals, weather, etc, that one becomes a human is nothing special.

“First, your understanding of God will be revolutionized. The God who can become a creature without ceasing to be God and without compromising the integrity of the creature he becomes stands in a fundamentally noncompetitive relationship with the world. In most non-Christian theologies and religious philosophies, God is typically understood as set over and against the universe: a supreme being in sharp contrast with the finite beings of the created order. But the God capable of the Incarnation, though certainly distinct from the world, is noncontrastively other. He isn’t competing with creatures for dominance on the same playing field. To shift the metaphor, he isn’t so much the most impressive character in the novel as he is the author, responsible for every character in the story, yet never jostling for position among them.”

Umm, nope, it’s isn’t “revolutionized” at all.  And even all christians don’t agree on the whole jesus as god thing.  All of the rest is simply baseless claims with nothing to support them.  Curious how this god is entirely understood as set over and against the universe it supposed created, always having screwed up somehow.  And incarnation?  The Hindus have been doing it for years. 

It’s hilarious how Barron claims this god isn’t competing with creatures for dominance, since that is all this god does per the bible, competing with satan/the devil/ old nick and with other gods (Exodus 20). We are also told in the bible that this god is not the world rather strongly so claims of “nonconstrastivity” seem to be completely wrong.

To call this god an “author” would work if this god eliminates free will, and so the bible does. 

“This means that the closer God gets to a creature, the more beautiful and radiant that creature can become. A striking and beautiful anticipation of the Incarnation is found in the episode of the burning bush recounted in the book of Exodus. Though the bush is on fire with the presence of the Creator, it is transfigured, not consumed. Christian doctrine insists, in a similar vein, that nothing of the humanity of Jesus has to give way in the presence of his divinity. His humanity is lifted up, perfected and splendid: Christ is fully divine and fully human.”

Again, nothing more than baseless nonsense from a religion/cult.  It’s notable that Christians are most certainly not any beautiful or radiant than any other human, and we are told that jesus himself wasn’t much to look at *if* one accepts what the supposed prophecies say and cherry pick them.  As I noted before, the idea of what jesus christ is up for debate among Christians.  This is one version, nothing more.

“The noncompetitive transcendence of God is also correlate with the claim that God is love. To love, as St. Thomas Aquinas insisted, is to will the good of the other as other. It is to be free of the egotism that, like a black hole, draws all energy and light into itself. It is truly to want what will benefit someone else. The God who has nothing to gain from the universe he created and who competes with nothing he has made can only love the world—that is, can only will its good and not his own.”

“noncompetitive transcendence of god” a lovely meaningless bit of nonsense.  If one takes it as it is literally written, we have a god that can’t be distinguished from, well, something, and transcendent “ beyond the limits of the universe or material existence (or if you are going with Kant: “being beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge” (merriam webster),  and evidently can’t be known or shown to exist.  This has nothing to do with love. 

Unfortuantely for Barron, his god is the perfect model of the egotism that draws everything into itself, with its demands of obedience and ignorance.  We see nothing to show that this god wants anything that benefits someone else, in that it does nothing.  Again, this god competes repeatedly with things.  As for it having nothing to gain from the universe, that also seems untrue since it needs or simply wants, worship. 

“The unnerving doctrine of the Incarnation also tells us a great deal about ourselves. If God has stooped low to join himself to the human race, then we have a purpose and destiny infinitely beyond anything proposed by even the most extravagant humanisms of antiquity or modernity. In the light of Christmas, we see that the goal of human life isn’t simply to be ethically upright, politically powerful, aesthetically accomplished or autonomous. Rather, it is to be a sharer in the divine nature. As the Church Fathers distilled it: Deus fit homo ut homo fieret Deus. “God became man that man might become God.”

Nope, not “unnerving” at all, since it is simple nonsense invented by humans.  Since this god cannot be shown to be what Barron tries to claim, we have no reason to believe we have some “purpose and destiny infinitely beyond anything proposed by even the most extravagant humanisms of antiquity or modernity”.  IT is nothing surprising that Barron makes these lovely vague hand wavings, since he cannot show that this nonsense is even remotely true.  Claims of being a “sharer in the divine nature” are similar nonsense.  He cannot even attempt to explain what that even would mean.

And per the bible, this god seems to have no interest at all in having humans become god, since without humans, this god doesn’t get the worship it craves.  It is no more than any other bronze/iron age god in that.

“This “divinization,” within the confines of this life, looks like love, since love is what God is. When we will the good of the other even in the simplest way—from giving food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, to visiting the imprisoned and offering counsel to the doubtful—we are participating in the divine nature. And in the life to come, divinization means love at the highest pitch, in the most complete way, which lasts forever.”

No evidence this god is love at all and no evidence of this vague “divinization”.  Love isn’t being such a petty failure that you have to eternally torture people for not agreeing/worshipping you. Love also isn’t some magical vague nonsense dependent on some god.  It is doing the hard work here in reality. Plenty of humans do go, non god needed at all.

“On the feast of Epiphany, Christians remember the journey of the Magi to visit the Christ child in Bethlehem. The magoi—magicians, astrologers, astronomers—were surveyors of the night sky. They were seeking scientific knowledge of the stars and planets, but their deeper quest was for signs of the divine purpose, for like many others in the ancient world, they were convinced that God would reveal something of his will through portents in the heavens. So they found the star.”

No evidence of this either.  And unsurprisingly, magi aren’t known to have considered any need for “science” at all, which is quite like this silly bible of Christians, which claims that stars are little lights on a solid dome that can drop on the earth.  Unsurprisingly, Christians can’t agree on what this “star” even was. 

“The Magi stand for all those down through the ages and across the cultures who have hungered and thirsted for meaning, for the ultimate good, for the living God. The mysterious star led them to the most surprising place: a cave outside the unremarkable town of Bethlehem where a child lay in the animals’ manger. They found the God who had stooped down to lift us up, the God who wants nothing other than to make us fully alive.”

Curious how no evidence for this either. And stars don’t move.  As for meaning, yep, humans seem to look for it since it helps them comprehend reality.  The ignorance in the bible fails at that.  “ultimate good” is claimed by all cults/religions and funny how not a single one can show that their set of morals is any better than the next. 

The rest of this is also a lovely example of how Christians can’t agree on their nonsense.  Was it a cave?  A inn?  In Bethlehem?  And alas for Barron, we are already fully alive.  All cults claim that they are needed to make humans complete, and surprise, not one can support that claim.

“The Scriptures say that an angel warned them in a dream that they were under suspicion and that they therefore returned to their home country by another route. Of course they did, for as Archbishop Fulton Sheen observed: “No one who ever meets Christ with a good will returns the same way as he came. – Bishop Barron leads the Roman Catholic Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minn., and is founder of the ministerial organization Word on Fire.”

Never met jesus christ since the character is imaginary.  I suppose you may as well make it a metaphor since nothing shows that this nonsense ever happened. The other gospels don’t mention this nonsense at all.    

As usual, the Christian has try to blame the victim if they aren’t “changed” by this nonsense.  Non-christians are of “good will” and don’t need to accept your claims at all.