Catholics are making it up.

The current pope is making changes to the rules of being a Catholic.

Last week he said that priests could forgive those who have had abortions - previously impossible; this week he says that divorced Catholics can remarry; previously impossible without a papal annulment, remember Henry VIII?

Catholics now allow married priests that have switched from other beliefs of the Christian franchise into the Catholic priesthood - though existing Catholic priests may not marry (but for how long, given the massive decline in new priest recruits?) Many years ago it stopped being a 'sin' to eat meat on friday and it became a matter of 'conscience' whether a Catholic used birth control - but only in the educated West of course.

Back in 2007, the then pope did the most extraordinary thing of abolishing limbo - the place where babies that haven't been baptised had been sent for over 800 years instead of heaven, hell or purgatory.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...-of-limbo-after-800-years.html

So, religions make stuff up and change their beliefs to suit the times they operate in. What pragmatic, flexible corporations, these religions are. One wonders just what else they might have made up......

NoNukes writes: I wonder what would be more foolish; religions that never change regardless of any reasoning or thought or mores or one that has found the need to change over time and has done so.

Personally I'm rather disappointed, the more out of touch with everyday realities the religions become the faster they disappear.

But, it's an indictment of religions that their 'truths' are abandonned when they become inconvenient. It's very clear that the Catholic church simply made up all sorts of nonsense, probably as a means of control over their customers. Why should anyone believe anything they say?

NoFaith writes: Is an abandoned doctrine really any kind of indictment?

Yes, of course. It's an indictment of the original preposterous doctrine, that's why it's abandonned.

Do we think less of Southern Baptists because they no longer claim that slavery has Biblical support? I certainly don't.

This isn't about individual believers it's about the religious leaders and their institutions who tell the individuals what to believe and what not to believe - mostly I believe for their own purposes. It's an example of a political organisation adapting its strategy in order to keep its influence and membership.

Do we think less of Southern Baptists because they no longer claim that slavery has Biblical support? I certainly don't.

The people who make up these absurdities, claim to do it on behalf of god and the members are often threatened with excommunication and everlasting damnation if the don't comply. You can't just shrug it off as though they're religious fripperies that never really mattered. The family whose baby died before the priest could baptise it was told that their baby could never get to heaven, the women who aborted a child was damned forever. There were umpteen ways of getting on the wrong side of god and almost as many of buying your way back into his favour - all done, of course, through you friendly priest.

Besides, haven't you already made your decision regarding what you believe?

I have, as they say, seen the light - religions have no clothes on and it needs to be pointed out from time to time. Like others here, I also accept evolution but that doesn't stop me - and others - continuing to discuss it.

Double post deleted

Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Faith writes: Has this ever happened? Can you name even one religion that has actually disappeared because it is out of touch with current opinion

There are hundreds of dead gods and belief systems. Religions come and go. Your brand of fundamentalism is totally out of touch with reality and has been dying since the enlightenment. Here in the UK church attendance has plumeted. Christianity in Europe is mostly now cultural with individuals picking the bits they like or abandoning it altogether.

Mr H writes: I agree. Believers can't win here: if they stick to their obsolete dogma, we accuse them of barbarism. But if they jettison any of their dogma and admit that contemporary believers aren't obliged to think that way, we accuse them of hypocrisy.

That should tell us something shouldn't it? Many things actually - the main one being that they invented the entire shebang using the power structures and mores of the time and the only way they can hang on to any semblance of credibility in modern civilisations is to dump the more obvious nonsenses as society becomes more educated and less superstitious.

It's unclear what we think religious people should be allowed to do, short of abandoning their made-up beliefs and thinking exactly the way we do.

Which is, of course, the answer.

Faith writes: Bible-based Protestant Christianity is at least consistent in sticking to what the Bible says.

When was the last time you executed an adulterer?

10If there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. 11If there is a man who lies with his father's wife, he has uncovered his father's nakedness; both of them shall surely be put to death, their bloodguiltiness is upon them.…

NoNukes writes: Yeah, but who cares? The doctrine under indictment has abandoned.

Anybody who cares about the veracity of their beliefs should care when God's representative on earth tells them that god's previous representative on earth was wrong about what god wants.

It questions the entire belief edifice.

We abandon scientific ideas that turn out to be wrong, but that's no indictment of science as a whole, and it certainly s no indictment of the state of science after abandoning an old idea that seemed to work. The failure of Newton's theory of gravitation is no indictment of science or of Newton, for that matter.

You're not comparing religious beliefs with science? Seriously?

FaithNO writes: Really? You find some surprise that people accept that the Pope is not perfect even with respect to knowing what God wants? Do you expect that people worship the Pope? Popes change but their opinions and beliefs must not?

I don't think you understand Catholicism. The pope is God's representative on earth - quite literally; passed down hand-by-hand from Peter. In some matters he is infallible, in all matters he is authoritative. If the pope can change his mind on doctrine just because times have changed and people don't believe him anymore, the core of that relationship is broken. One day you're going to hell for something, the next you're not. The whole belief system is violated.

Yes, the argument is serious. I want to know why for you the abandonment of the plumb pudding model as completely wrong headed is not worthy of the same ridicule as the abandonment of Limbo? Why is it reasonable not to question the entire scientific edifice when a strongly held idea is discarded. There is nothing inherently wrong with abandoning an idea that turns out to be wrong regardless of how long it was held or how preciously it was respected. Yes, we should question why a wrong headed belief was held for so long, but the mere fact that things have changed is alone no indictment of the current state.

The entire premise for science is that it's only what we know so far - it's always subject to change when better evidence is found. Religion on the other hand claims to be the 'truth', popes are claimed to be infallible. Well some truths appear not so true and popes are, after all just people. Game over.

Faith, you just agreed with everything I said.

Religions come and go

Faith writes: We can of course point to Europe where the original pagan religions were supplanted by Christianity over the centuries

Your kind of fundamentalist religious belief is dying

Faith writes: And even if the numbers have dwindled the true believers are genuinely true believers.

Church attendance (and religious Christianity) is declining rapidly in Europe

Faith writes: Yes, I feel sorry for the UK

But don't weep just for the UK and Europe Faith, the USA is going exactly the same way.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...ss-affiliated-with-religion

It's a developmental thing, as our societies age, we give up our childish beliefs.

MrH writes: I don't see the process as being that much different than the way Western democracies have become more inclusive of women, or the way African-Americans were enfranchised in the USA.

It's exactly the same process. This is because both systems are manmade, but religions are not supposed to be manmade, they're supposed to be immutable - Godmade. By allowing changes in their core doctrines, the religions are accepting that they are purely parochial and terestrial.

Technological and scientific progress hasn't created utopia either. Let's not trade one set of nonsenses for another.

Where did that come from? The task is to replace religious nonsense with sensible secular models - democracy, criminal justice systems, local governance, humanism - 'do as you would be done by' stuff.

It seems your issue with the religious worldview ---even one that moves away from archaic prejudices--- is that it isn't your worldview.

My problems with the religious world view are too many for this thread but, but you can include beliefs that allow people to victimise others - be it by terrorism or simple discrimination - to the detriment of society as a whole and human personal health and happiness generally.

KB writes: But the whole purpose of religion is to know and relate to a God who cannot be fully known; there is always something new to learn about God.

Nothing can be learned about God - no-one has exceptional knowledge or even *any* knowledge of god.

And the three "revealed" religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam work from Scriptures which cannot be fully known; there are always new truths hidden in their depths. Just as science progresses and improves its understanding of nature, so theology progresses and improves its understanding of Scripture.

Revealed religion is not knowledge, it's subjective opinion. The point this thread is making is that religions make stuff up to suit them - as is demonstrated when they change their minds about it. Scripture is not immune to this process, it too is manmade, made up and changed and interpreted to suit.

MrH writes: I still don't see why this isn't a good thing.

It is obviously a good thing. Religions are being tamed by secular society - they no longer stone people for blasphemy etc - or at least in those countries lucky enough to have developed advanced democracies.

Believers are taking responsibility for their faith, not just toeing the party line.

Yes, they do it by saying bugger off to those that make the rules - like married people can't use condoms without risking everlasting damnation. (True)

(I'm not really sure limbo qualifies as a core belief of a Catholic or Christian, but I'm neither.)

Well it was but is no longer. As were all the others listed by me and then Faith. The church is quietly dropping dozens of beliefs and doctrines.

Okay, but it seems like what you're objecting to is the efforts of faith communities to reexamine beliefs like these and evaluate whether they're relevant to contemporary believers.

I'm not objecting to it, I'm pointing out that the process of jetisoning beliefs exposes them to the criticism that they have made ALL of it up.

As I said, I find it more reprehensible when believers try to rationalize the Iron Age bigotry in the scripture of Abrahamic religions rather than to contextualize it as a by-product of the anachronistic attitudes of the people who initially formulated the religious ideas they otherwise find worthwhile.

Agreed.

It doesn't seem like religion is just going to go away,

But it is going away - it's in decline across the developed world.

so why wouldn't we welcome efforts to make it more inclusive and humanistic?

I do welcome it. I welcome all moves to muzzle religions from their worst excesses.

Do you really think it makes sense to tell Catholics they're not supposed to forgive women who've had abortions, because how else are we going to accuse them of being dogmatic, misogynistic and callous?

Um, no. This is not my point. My point is - I repeat - that in the process of abandoning inconvenient ideologies and 2000 year old dogma, they are actually saying that they were wrong about core truths. If they were wrong about, say the existence of purgatory, then why should they be right about any other aspects of their belief system? It's my position that the entirety of their - and, as it happens, all - belief systems is a total fabrication. These changes simply provide more evidence that this is the case.

kbertsche writes: Says you.

Yes, says me. It's an open challenge, I'm happy to examine any evidence you can provide that you or anyone has special knowledge of god.

You have no problem with science changing, and probably even consider this to be a good thing (as do I). So why do you object to change in theology?

Who says I object to religions changing?

The point I'm making is that when religions drop long held doctrines, they expose themselves to the obvious criticism that they were wrong about what they previously described as a truth. The comparison with science is not valid - science is a search for knowledge from evidence and its finding are admitted to be tentative and subject to change. Religions are dogmatic - believe this or go to hell.

Read my reply to Mr H above.

NukeFaith writes: Perhaps the humor in repeatedly mucking around with my handle will wear out in time.

It has; but only because I've run out of combinations.

I had assumed the first time was a mere error

It was, but I'm fond of a running joke.

According to you there is no legitimate way for theological doctrine to change or be reinterpreted by others.

I'm saying that if core beliefs are abandoned, the church leaves itself open to the question of what else is no longer true? Perhaps they made it ALL up? (They did. Now THAT is an assertion.)

The pope did not change his mind. A new person became pope.

How does this help you? What is says to me is that a single man can change the dogma of a world religion. Where is god in this process? Perhaps god doesn't agree, how would we know?