Tulse, I'm sorry. My effect was not my intention. Lazy, late-night post. Your experience is yours, not mine to denigrate; please believe that's not what I'm up to. There's no True Scotsman here because there's no Scotsman here.

Come on, dude. Catholicism is bigger than your hometown. Buy whatever you want, but if all you have in you is an either/or, you're just not trying.

Hey, Catholics are largely on board. Don't hold every dingbat with a Bible against us.

I think it's time I bowed out. I doubt anyone wants to watch me swat at Atheist Beef 101 complaints ad infinitum. Billy, you disappoint; the caricature I'm fighting is the one of all religiosity at work right in this thread, typical as it is. If you're gonna talk shit and level dismissive broadsides instead of…

Maus, it bums me out that you see it like that. Certainly monstrous acts in the names of gods are frequent in history, and hard to look past; these do not, however, accurately reflect the nature of God, but of man. Many see God as the bright alternative to monstrosity, and examples of that God are frequent in history…

I don't think Wittgenstein is who you want here. I think he's who *I* want here: a profound thinker about math, language, and logic that also kicked Scientism—which is absolutely what most in this thread are up to—square in the balls for being narrow, shallow, arrogant and damagingly incomplete.

Read all you want. Atheism is a fine stance. It's usually best coupled with learning a bit about what other stances are actually up to instead of blithely rehashing some zingers from the Hitchens-Dawkins Pocket Reader, but hey.

I do wonder what the geometry and heat resistance looks like to just stick a fat-ass shield in space between the sun and Venus, big enough to throw a permanent shadow across the whole planet. Somebody with a calculator to hand care to run those numbers right quick? My guess is 'this-is-stupid big, and so close to the…

Breaking H2SO4 is difficult; best let the planet do that itself, which it does, and then cut the reproduction phase of the cycle off. The main engine driving sulfuric acid cycles isn't even general heat, but just UV. So even some sweet planetary Ray-Bans could work. Then you can go to work on the more manageable…

I find it blandly ironic, Maus and Zachary, that you want to stick your fingers in your ears, recite the mantras of empiricism at their most bumper-sticker simplicity, casually dismiss a near-bottomless body of thought and practice spanning hundreds of cultures and thousands of years with a few reductive would-be bon…

Trying to hammer every tenet of religious belief and practice into the Vienna circle isn't going to leave you with much. Once you're constraining the conversation with ideas like 'specially protected field of knowledge,' nothing will be visible to you that is not readily observable, to date, with a scientific eye. The…

I am sorry you are put off by a cheeky, obviously hyperbolic term that you nevertheless seem quite committed to embodying.

Not to get huffy about a throwaway joke, Dan, but this is a common, incorrect and lazy assumption in the ultra-secular world. Per the Ecklund study of scientists at the top US schools and research groups, about 75% recognize 'basic truths in many religions,' half personally identify with something religious, a third…

'Sadly not'? Jesus. Fascisto-atheist much?

I like the cut of your jib. I've always meant to investigate Byzantine practice. Mostly I only know Russian Orthodox dudes nearby, who are not fucking around.

That said, I appreciate your more temperate view on this, and even envy it. I don't count it as a badge of my spiritual maturity that I want to punch SSPX in its collective hatemongering balls. I just really wanna do that sometimes. They sure make it hell on those of us conservatives who, you know, aren't assholes.

Well, shit. Turns out you're right (setting aside the point that most everyone in this fight is insisting they are the ones that are 'Catholic'). It's a breakaway group from Pius X, called Pius V, that are more closely identified as sedevacantist. SSPX might as well be, though, given how wholesale their repudiation of…

Closely related. Opposite from them are the Jesuits, the Pope's private ninja army.

If you've got some awe-packed ditties in there, bro, I will take em. Please, Jesus. Hit me with a mix list and I'll owe you a Christmas card.

Could be. V-II was at least a fair success as a recruitment drive/apostasy tourniquet. It was good math: probably not as many would get irate enough over the changes to leave as would join due to the improvements. Simple songs you can sing along to in a comfortable language…the appeal isn't a mystery. (Lutheranism and…