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A while back Jennifer Fulwiler wrote up a column entitled “Five Catholic Teachings that Make Sense to Atheists“.

To say she claimed to be a former atheist – the five teachings weren’t exactly sensible so she got a response from PZ Myers saying as much.

So now she has another post up saying how she meant internally consistent with Catholicism and thus accepting that God exists. Okay, so why did that twit say they would make sense to atheists when she meant they would made sense to Catholics?

And here is the thing – the teachings still don’t make sense. Note this is all granting that God existed for the sake of argument:

1: Purgatory

Why doesn’t this make sense? Because what it relies upon to make it “make sense” is the idea that you would want to believe in it. If all it took to “make sense” is for something to be appealing, frankly we would all be followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Purgatory fails due to the gospels.  In Matthew it is argued that if you break the least of the laws of God you will be least in heaven. Which is to say that Purgatory can’t cleanse you of your sins – because if it did you would be equivelent to someone who hasn’t broken the least of God’s laws.

James further argues that if you stumble on one point of the law you have broken all of it, and John says something fairly equivelent. The concept of purgatory requires a sense of justice that fits punishments to crimes, however this sense of justice is one of the things lacking in the New Testament, where simply thinking about sinning is the same as sinning.

And you can’t argue the absense of purgatory as being evil because then you run straight into Catholic theodicy around our ability to judge God’s moral character.

2: The communion of the saints

Her argument here boils down to the idea that because lots of cultures believe the dead know what is going on with the living, the communion of the saints makes sense.

Why would this make sense? Okay lets accept that the afterlife exists - I have a half brother who lives in New Zealand. I have very little idea of what he is up to and he is on the same plane of reality as me. How the heck would he know what I am up to if he ended up in a different one? And why would such knowledge only go one way? Recognise that an idea is popular doesn’t mean it makes sense.

3: Veneration of Mary

This doesn’t make sense, because Jesus didn’t particularly venerate his mother. Ahem: 

12:47 Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.
12:48 But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?

Mathew 12:47 and 48.

Atheists r reading ur Bible, discrediting ur Dogma /trollspeak.

4: Salvation for non-Catholics and non-Christians

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation.
 
If you can get into heaven by basically being a good person so long as you do not know the doctrines of the church – shouldn’t the church just shut down? Why make things harder for the rest of us?
And I am not exactly clear how someone is supposed to not know God even exists (And in fact probably believe in totally different gods) and still seek God.
It would be like looking for the restaurant you never knew existed, without necessarily knowing restaurants exist.
 
5: Apostolic authority
This is essentially saying that to cut through all the confusion around teachings – we are going to make some people authorities who can say it is so “because we say so.”
Imagine for a second if instead of say, performing experiments, we rested on this sort of authority with regards to medical science. We’d still be blood letting and applying leeches to cure head colds. Giving someone authority to settle arguments doesn’t actually settle the argument. You need actual arguments to do that.
****
I was a Catholic before I was an atheist. At the time what appealed to me was the Jesus who forgave the adultress, the guy who fed the hungry and cured the sick. The guy who slammed hypocrits who prayed in public to prey on the public.
The Jesus who lived – as opposed to the one who died.
There is a possible list of top five teachings that appeal to atheists. The thing is that Fuller instead aimed at five teachings that are supposed to make sense to us – which most definitely don’t.
And when called on it tried to get out of having to argue her points (such as they were) by proclaiming her opponents “imprisoned by reason.” As one of the commenters on her piece said, that sounds an awful lot like being sane.
Oh, and finally on GK Chesterton saying poets don’t go mad – frankly as an aspiring (And kinda lousy) poet I’m offended. We’re nutjobs and proud of it. Something I can say with a certain amount of scientific backing.
 

Comments

 

DKeane

July 28, 2011 at 1:03 pm

If only we could lock her up in a prison of reason.

 

Waffler

July 28, 2011 at 3:54 pm

Re #2 – Communion of the Saints – it isn’t even clear it makes sense within Catholic dogma. It was a huge controversy throughout at least the first 1000 years of the Catholic church, because of the clear discussion in the bible regarding judgement day. From the crucifixion of Jesus until judgement day, there’s supposedly only one person who was resurrected – Jesus. The rest are dead, buried, awaiting resurrection. This was, within the church, a big mark against the doctrine of communion with the saints.

Mary may be a special case, because of the belief in the assumption of Mary (the traditional, though extra-biblical, view in the Catholic church is that she was taken bodily up into heaven, and she never actually died. So communion with St. Mary makes *slightly* more sense I suppose).

I’m not sure when the controversy over the communion with the saints was ‘resolved’ — probably around the time of the Reformation.

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    Bruce Gorton helps put together the TimesLIVE, mostly specialising in science and business. He is liberal, atheist and fairly interested in nonsense and the way it is reaching critical mass. Hence the blog.

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