Simple question?

Quote: Nareed

See, I can't read such horrible, awful, terrible interpretation of life and pleasure and not feel revulsion at whatever the hell it is that twists a human mind that way.

Purgatory is one of the more outlandish
inventions of the Church. Yes it's disgusting,
but so is pretending to eat human flesh and
blood.

Quote: FrGamble

Look at Mother Teresa for example. Imagine the strength it must have taken to get up every morning at the crack of dawn and walk through the sewers and alleyways to pick up the poorest of the poor and sickest of the sick to bring them back to a home, feed them, bathe them, take care of their open sores, and love them.

This sounds so noble, etc. But a question inevitably arises: did this "saint" lift one person out of poverty?

People like Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, etc. have done more to alleviate suffering by eliminating poverty, than all your precious "saints" put together and squared.

They didn't act out of "love" in the Christian (ie wrong) sense of the word, but they did more for others than all the churches in the world combined. Along the way they amassed large fortunes, and good for them. But Christian "love" is not about what one accomplishes, is it, but rather what one gives up.

If the Catholic church a portion of its vast wealth to invest in poor communities, then it might do some good. But that's not what Christian "love" is, is it?

Quote: FrGamble

the concept of this place of everlasting shame exists in the OT

So to you 'shame' = burning in
the fire of hell forever. That's
a bit of a stretch, even for you.

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You hear that the Church and its saints have used flames to represent hell and you think that it must be exactly that.

They say it's exactly that. Exactly.

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Look at Mother Teresa for example. Imagine the strength it must have taken to get up every morning at the crack of dawn and walk through the sewers and alleyways to pick up the poorest of the poor and sickest of the sick to bring them back to a home, feed them, bathe them, take care of their open sores, and love them.

Ah, the Teresa fairy tale, it brought hundreds
of millions into the Church coffers. They hope
to turn on that $ spigot yet again when she
is canonized. We'll see..

Again can I say these are really good questions.

Quote: Dalex64

That is either a contradiction or a flaw in the plan.

Or, we have to modify the statement about saints in heaven to say that they are incapable of sin because they are not presented with temptation.

If adam and eve were incapable of sin and lacked any desire to do so because of being attuned to god's will, then no amount of temptation should be able to change that.

If instead all it takes is temptation, then it is clearly a flaw in the plan to allow temptation to be present. If we can have no desire for sin and still have free will, what is the purpose of temptation if not to CAUSE us to fall?

Remember that the purpose of free will is so that we can choose opposites. We can chose to love God or hate Him and reject Him. The angels also get to make that choice once and for all at their creation. Some chose to hate God, reject Him, and strive to destroy all He created. Free will even when perfectly attuned to God's will is for us still not a guarantee that we will not fall in sin. So the real culprit is indeed temptation and evil. This was not created by God but through the choice of spiritual beings to chose against God and His plan. Again this option was necessary if the angels were to be free.

So the flaw comes back to freedom. Was it a mistake of God to allow us and the angels to be free? I think the answer is no. Not if you really want love and goodness to exist as we celebrate it today. Finally, we have to remember that the abuse of freedom did not ultimately thwart God's plan. It's not as if He threw up His arms after the fall and said, oh crap, what do I do now? In His mercy and love He never abandoned us and taught us through the prophets to hope for salvation, a salvation that came in Jesus Christ, true God and true man who paid the price for all our sin, fulfilled the justice of God and His love all in the greatest act ever conceived the passion, death, and resurrection.

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You can see from this scenario that god must have put the conditions in place to allow us to have the desire to sin and to act on that desire. As he knows all that will happen, by allowing temptation he caused our fall from grace. He has the ability and desire to provide us with an environment without temptation - and has done so with heaven - so why is the world of the living different?

It has to do with our nature of both body and soul. It also has to do with our existence in time and how our choices over time form us and make us into who we are. This is radically different than a purely spiritual being or a purely worldly being for that matter. We are growing in wisdom and knowledge and virtue and being made more perfect as we follow the Lord. Heaven is our fulfillment. The Earth is our training ground.

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Why are the devil and demons allowed to interact with us? If this world is ours, why isn't it ours without outside interference?

They were created to help us. The ultimate perversion of this in the case of demons is to hurt us.

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These, and some of the other things I brought up before, are the sort of simple questions which lead me to philosophically question the existence of god. These are inconsistencies, maybe even contradictions, and if all this is a part of the plan, the desire to keep the plan secret from us is almost, if not entirely, unfathomable.

Ultimately I think these are indeed the type of questions we should be asking. Obviously if there were true contradictions or inconsistencies it would be evidence that this may not be of God. The physical evidence leading to an intellectual assent to the existence of God is fairly easy, human reason can show us there must have been a creator. You are asking the more important questions like, "why does it matter?" "Who is this God and what does its existence mean to me?"

Quote: Nareed

See, I can't read such horrible, awful, terrible interpretation of life and pleasure and not feel revulsion at whatever the hell it is that twists a human mind that way.

You know what I find revolting is the twisted idea that anyone would settle for some type of fleeting worldly pleasure. Sure they are good and signs to us of a loving God, but He has created us for so much more. You'll notice that I prefaced the example in purgatory as loving something more than loving others or God. This is what needs to be purified. I know you will bristle at this but we need to be purged of our selfishness to be totally free and happy.

Quote: Nareed

This sounds so noble, etc. But a question inevitably arises: did this "saint" lift one person out of poverty?

Let me ask you what is the greatest poverty in the world? Is it not having an ipad or even not having good health? I believe, along with Mother Teresa that the greatest poverty is not being loved or thinking you are not worthy of love.

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People like Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, etc. have done more to alleviate suffering by eliminating poverty, than all your precious "saints" put together and squared.

This is just plain crazy. Are you judging alleviating suffering by how much money you throw at poor people? Ironically even if you were the Church over its history and through its institutions has given more than all the philanthropists combined and squared. If you are really talking about alleviating suffering and eliminating poverty than you cannot be just talking about economics, as important as that is. You have to be also talking about treating people with dignity and helping them see their infinite worth and goodness. You can't do this from a helicopter writing checks.

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They didn't act out of "love" in the Christian (ie wrong) sense of the word, but they did more for others than all the churches in the world combined. Along the way they amassed large fortunes, and good for them. But Christian "love" is not about what one accomplishes, is it, but rather what one gives up.

If the Catholic church a portion of its vast wealth to invest in poor communities, then it might do some good. But that's not what Christian "love" is, is it?

Again you are thinking wrongly about this. First of all the Catholic Church continues to be by far the largest charitable organization in the world. Maybe you are suggesting that the Church sell some of its priceless art so that some rich collector can put it in his living room but if you think that this would really solve poverty you are sadly mistaken. The first and most important thing to do to eliminate poverty is to truly love the other as yourself.

Quote: FrGamble

You know what I find revolting is the twisted idea that anyone would settle for some type of fleeting worldly pleasure.

Fleeting? do you know the years of practice and devotion to one's craft it takes to excel at things like writing, golf, football, cooking, science, medicine, acting, etc? The talent it takes, the effort, the creative energy, the years of study?

What's fleeting about that?

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Sure they are good and signs to us of a loving God, but He has created us for so much more.

Your highest aspiration seems to be to become Jehovah's tukhus lekker.

Quote: Nareed

Fleeting? do you know the years of practice and devotion to one's craft it takes to excel at things like writing, golf, football, cooking, science, medicine, acting, etc? The talent it takes, the effort, the creative energy, the years of study?

What's fleeting about that?

It is a great accomplishment to excel at these things and it can be a great blessing to the world and a source of healthy pride but it is fleeting and elusive as anyone who truly strives to excel at these things will tell you. How long can you be at the dizzying heights of excellence or stand on the pinnacle of success in these fields?

Unfortunately, I find inconsistencies and contradictions that require a lot of work to attempt to explain away.

If heaven is a place of perfect existence where we have free will and can not sin and have no evil temptations, why don't we all just exist there in the first place?

If god is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, why did he create creatures that he knew he would want to destroy all of in the flood?

Why did he need to reveal himself to us slowly over time, in stages?

If he is designing a perfect place, like heaven, isn't it better to do it right the first time? Why bother making imperfect beings who if they behave well enough get to live (afterlife) like the perfect beings that they should have been in the first place, and in that place in the first place? It makes no difference to me if the place is "there" or here.

Surely an all-powerful god has the ability to make us in our final form, the one we are supposed to (apparently) discover and become through centuries of revelation, rather than having us go through, well, everything that we have gone through to get where we are now.

See, I can't even begin to try to ask "why are we here, what is our purpose" and assign meaning as coming from a supernatural cause if none of the possible supernatural explanations (all religions) make sense.

Time for a Captain James Tiberius Kirk logic bomb.
God's plan is illogical.
An all-powerful, all-knowing being would not make an illogical plan.
Therefore... Poof! The magic smoke pours out of the machine.

I have been reading your posts carefully and thoroughly, thank you for them.