As for those condescending remarks toward other Christians: Catholics are more stubborn than Protestants--not more wise or more informed. From my experience, they, more so than any other, tend to indulge in mass delusions and refuse to acknowledge any other worldview and, when challenged, tend to use misdirection to avoid considering any sort of actual facts or evidence.
I have no idea where you got that idea from but head over to CAF and you'll find the complete opposite.
Catholics, for example, continue to respect and worship a Pope that deliberately and systematically covers up the rape of young children and threatens anyone wanting to come forward with full excommunication.
We don't worship the Pope, that's basic Catechism. As for Pope deliberately covering up the rape of young children, that's a strong claim and strong claims demand hard evidence. No one disagrees with you that the Church is facing major sex abuse scandals these days but saying the Pope covered-up these incidents is a wild claim. As far as I know, the problem is Church's poor handling of these incidents. That's why the Vatican is working on a series of guidelines directed at bishops around the world, advising them how to handle such cases.
That's a holy man if I've ever seen one (no sarcasm, actually). And thanks to his stance on contraception, there will be more death on his hands by the time he dies than any mass murderer in history, and the body count will continue to rise long after he's dead. The Catholic Church could use its influence for good for once if they would stop living in the Dark Ages.
Contraception is another argument. If you're really concerned on the issue of mass murder you should start speaking out against abortion.
If the link you provided is an meant to serve as an example of how Catholics are superior to Protestants in debate... I can only submit this instance as evidence of my theory that Catholics tend to be far more convinced of their own eminence than any other religious group I've come across.
Look, I hold CAF up high for a lot of reasons. It hasn't only helped me in discovering my faith, it helped a lot of other people as well. I've been there for over a year and in my stay I'd say the place gathers hardcore believers of different groups. Another thing I noticed, in other Christian forums, atheists seem to go troll mode. This doesn't apply to CAF however, atheists do not troll, instead, they engage in intellectual debates. I'll agree that the environment of CAF is borderline hostile but I find it an amazing place for intellectual discussion. There's a reason why the forum has so many hardcore atheists, a lot of whom, even have over a thousand posts. Most notably, Spock and Bohm Banweck to name a few. CAF is open and actually encourages non-believers to criticize the faith. Watching posts during my stay there has turned me into a fanboy, I consider it my religious DCTP. Philosophy, Evolution, Historical controversies, I'll vouch for CAF's intelligibility any day.
If you want a debate, respond to every bit of my former post in detail, point by point, with no outside links.
In case you didn't see it.
if you read my post awhile back. I conceded and said I was gonna end my presence here by listing a few points I wanted to push. Unfortunately, posts kept coming and I was provoked to responding. But now, I think I should get on my first thesis paper. I was planning on starting after the Lakers game and using the next three days to do it (its only 6-8 pages). But If I continue to post here, I'll probably have to cram my paper. Which I don't want to do because for the first time this year, I'm doing below average in English. It's one of the few good subjects I'm good at and I don't want it to go down. Believe me, had I the time, I could have replied to almost every claim directed towards my stance. With the help of CAF and a good cathechism, ntohing's impossible really. But of course, Â I'm no apologist and I can't answer everything in a way that would satisfy your expectations. If you really want to debate with other Catholics, feel free to visit a Catholic forum (I know a good one too). My aim in my last few posts was to get out all the main points I wanted to share and push. After I did that, I could care less. I don't have the time to respond in a thread with majority of its posters against my stance. I said my part and I'm satisfied. If you think I'm dodging what I can't answer that's what you believe but please understand my situation as well.
If you did see it but believe I'm dorking around dodging comments then I don't have a problem with that. Everything in that post was sincere and true. Look, at the moment, time isn't really on my side. I'm a slow writer, my thesis topic is something I don't like at all - Macbeth and I definitely don't want to cram such an important paper over the last few days of break. Given the amount of response towards my comments, I conceded a while back. And while the posts were written charitably, they were provoking as well so I had to come back. But since I couldn't answer everyone, I decided to answer and push out everything I wanted to share with others to the point where my obsessive compulsiveness would be satisfied. In fact, coming back to check on the thread, I feel like posting one more thing to clarify my beliefs. I hate to break the peace, it's just something I want to be clear on, I want to set a stand for people who share my stance. I'm not satisfied with my vague paragraph answer a few pages back nor my scattered posts throughout the topic. I'll be summarizing my thoughts later in this post.
Jd, I'm also no apologist, I try to be one and stand up for my faith but I'm not as good as my fellow brother and sisters are over the net. If I were to engage into a debate with you, I'd most definitely lose, but that doesn't make you right either. I love standing out for what I believe in, and it's a trait that sparks a lot of discussion. However, I'm not the kind of person person who is willing to commit into actual debates that require a lot of time in effort. Sure, I can do it at CAF because there are people backing me up, inspiring me and lessening the load of questions in the process, but its different here. While I do have a strong urge to talk to everybody here with inquiries and whatnots about my faith, it's also degrading. I can't answer everyone, I'm the only one speaking for my cause and I have a lot of better things to do with my time - games, fantasy basketball, friends, etc. It's encouraging at first but eventually speaking here becomes tiring and tedious. Don't get me wrong, I love speaking my mind out over here. I just don't have the dedication to do that right now. Had I been free of my thesis I probably could have response to your posts. But in the long run, I would have conceded things either way. My thesis only complicates things a whole lot more.
Just my opinion.
