You have already compared my Catholic heritage to thinking the Medal of Honor is a pretty decoration, racism, and being a Mafia Wife. Do you hear yourself?

I was actually raised Catholic, which is why I know it's a creed and not just a culture. So you can dispense with the insulting "you can't understand" nonsense.

People CAN make their own moral code....just not THE moral code.

I didn't really mean to accuse you of Catholicism - that was intended as more of the general "you."

But I think where we disagree is this: the worst part of religion is that they believe wrong things and take wrong actions, not that they advocate for what they believe. Everybody gets to take part in the conversation…

LOL! Well, it's a pity they don't all have the benefit of your three-year philosophy major to set them straight.

But that's the first option, too - goodness precedes God (otherwise in what sense is he "good".) Again - there's no "third option" to the Euthyphro Dilemma (that's why it's a "dilemma", a di-lemma, not a "trilemma".)

Because if you act like it's true, you'll, you know, act like its true. Like I said. And if you don't act like it's true, in what sense do you believe it?

I mean, you're acting like there's some way to believe in a "higher power" but draw absolutely no conclusions from that fact, but that doesn't seem reasonable. The…

I answered your question in my first reply. But the most immediate negative consequence to belief in a "higher power" is the consequence of being wrong on the question of "is there a higher power?" Winding up with less-accurate knowledge is a pretty serious negative consequence, all on its own. The truth about things…

Thinking the truth matters is pretty much the opposite of nihilistic despair. Thinking that the truth doesn't matter, and you should just believe whatever makes you feel better - that's nihilism.

It's a non-distinction. You're just trying to claim the positive benefits of being considered religious, without the possibility of being associated with any particular religion's history of cruel violence and oppression.

But why do you think you can have the culture without the creed? Catholicism isn't just a culture, it's not even just a specific set of devotional practices.

I don't see how that's a heritage you're eager to claim. It's like the people who wave the Confederate flag and say "well, it's not because I hate black people, it's because that's my heritage."

Yeah, their heritage of hating black people. You don't have to claim to be Catholic if you don't believe in Catholicism…

Going to a Catholic school everybody was talking about how you can just "Feel" something inside you that tells you that god is speaking to you. I'd never ever felt nothing like that

It doesn't take a "lifetime" of studying textile arts to see that the Emperor has no clothes. It doesn't matter what the "sources of the Pope's thinking" are if those sources are unreliable and the thinking is wrong. "Gay marriage can't be allowed because God doesn't want it" is a wrong argument every time - the…

He also believes that the code, like the multiplication table is what it is, and could not have been otherwise if humans preferred.

No, that's the first option - goodness precedes God, hence God doesn't actually determine what is good. There is no third option.

Nothing's "all bullshit." All the most convincing lies contain some amount of truth.

Clearly some people have no "rooted understanding of right and wrong" (i.e. sociopaths), and what people actually think is wrong seems to vary pretty substantially. I mean, at one time human beings throughout Europe were pretty evenly split on whether "Jews should be gassed to death and put in ovens, and we should…

You can't argue from non-existent evidence, though. I mean that's obviously the case. You can't say "well, it's true, but all the evidence for it was lost over time, you'll just have to take my word for it" and expect anyone to accept that as you having met your burden of evidence.

I mean, if I were going to make up…

I don't know about the rest of it, but no, you can't actually present an "academically sound" argument for the existence of Jesus unless you radically re-define the goalposts. I mean, the best you can say is that there was some itinerant Jewish hobo-preacher who was executed by the Roman occupiers of Judea, but that…