Catholic church to beatify Japanese martyrs

Where did you read that? If we get into a theological debate here it’ll never end, so I’ll refrain from doing so. I’m no more or less anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish than I am anti-Christian.

I don’t consider needless suicide bravery. You and I have different definitions.

P.S. – I married my wife who is Christian, so don’t assume to know me.

If there are 100,000,000 Christians then there are a 100,000,000 interpretations of the religion. About the only thing they agree on is that Christ was God, and they are right.

You certainly can compare Japanese religious fanatics to any religious fanatics. They all went to extremes for their beliefs, secure in the certain knowledge that what they were doing was right. That’s the issue here. We like to say that martyrs are “good” and suicide bombers “bad,” but to themselves, in their own religious ideas, they’re both “good.” And this is bad.

“Independent of our opinions the truth exists. And either we’ll never find out what it was, or we’ll all find out what it was in the end.”

True for the first part, by and large, but you forgot the third option: that many of us will recognise it and many more of us will refuse to.

No, I did not misunderstand you. We *can* know there is no God. That is what I meant by the third option. We don’t need omniscience to figure it out – the Bible is perfectly adequate. The Bible says “God does such and such, or says such and such is so,” and we find out it ain’t that way at all. It was not done by God, so no God.

Anyway, let’s not let this get into a theological argument. They never go anywhere.

re: hl’s comment
your “3 options” actually leave open several other possibilities. For example–what if God loved humans so much, he wanted them to have a choice to accept him or reject him? If God simply created people who blindly follow him, or automatically reject him, he hasn’t really created a people with “choice”–he’s created automatons who do his bidding. To have true partners, he would have to create people (and a world) which on an individual basis gives a chance for revelation… but leaves enough doubt as to give each person a choice as to believe and follow God, or to reject Him. This is the world which Catholics (and christians generally) believe we inhabit.

Nice to know exactly how God would do things. Here’s what Catholics believe however:

God gives us a choice between choosing Him, or choosing anything else that’s more important to us than Him (idols–which can be money, sex, power, what have you).

If you choose God, you go where He is (Heaven)

If you don’t, you are eternally separated from God (Hell).

Ultimately, the existence of heaven and hell derive from the nature of God giving humans the choice to accept Him, or not to accept Him. To loosely paraphrase C.S. Lewis, forcing someone who has rejected God to be with God (in heaven) would be hell of an entirely different sort. To say that the existence of Hell/damnation “disproves” God only begins by assuming that Heaven (eternally joining with God) is what everyone wants.

On the contrary–i didn’t claim that hell isn’t painful. In fact, I would imagine its excruciating. Total separation from God means total separation from all that brings joy to hte world (not a world I would like to live in). Revelations describes the fire and pain of existence in Hell, but many theologians believe that many of the representations in Revelations are symbolic (much like other books in the Bible–i.e. Genesis, Job, etc; which some theologians believe not to be “literally” true, but are more like analogies to tell a certain message). How excruciating would it be to live in a place where there is no connection to God? Where all things have been corrupted and are evil?

This is hardly a “modern” theory, as its concept comes from St. Augustine. Also, rather than simpmly make an empty claim of “illogical” or “impractical”, you should actually make a knowledgable arguement.

Never said either side was evil for any specific incident. Look at the whole picture – They’re all mistaken. (Even “my people”.)

If the Crusades were merely a political venture, then surely the campaign in through Nagasaki was an economical one?

“They were strongly religious….”

But that is all the connection you need. And that they were willing to die for it. Not “some reason connected to it,” but for that precise reason.

And yes, I think they were abnormal, given that most people don’t go that far, because if they did, then martydrom wouldn’t need to be considered such an honour. The question we need to consider is, why is it considered an honour? Whose purpose does this honour serve? It’s just like the ideal of samurai honour really. Ideals to serve the master, not the servant. The church values loyalty; demands it, in fact, with the most terrible threats it can make up. Those who lay down their life for the ideals of the church are held up as saints, because it suits the purpose of the church to have such single-minded devotion.

You have completely failed to understand my point that it is not merely “the same blanket characteristic of religiosity” but the same EXTREME blanket that is the shared characteristic.

That’s because you are still looking at it in terms of how much they harmed others. It’s not the end result that I am looking at so much as the process – the state of mind that leads them to such extreme acts. It’s not relevant whether we consider those end acts “good” or “bad” – the process itself is sinister. How are people manipulated into such extremes?

“You’d think that God, in all of his power, could have made The Book a little less ambiguous.”

Hey, I tried! At least with the main points! Like this one:
Thou Shalt Not Kill

Four monosyllabic words. I really don’t know how I could have made that any clearer. It doesn’t say “Thou shalt not kill unless the other guy believes something different” or “Thou shall not kill unless the other guy looks at you funny” or anything like that. But idiots keep coming along and thinking they know some secret way around those four words…

They don’t. When I said “Don’t kill” I meant “Don’t kill”. Period. No ifs, ands or buts! So if anyone tells you “God told me to kill those guys over there” he’s lying! I said no such thing! Got it? Good!

Sheesh.

Tell me, God – Is it an eye for an eye, or turn the other cheek? And what was all that business with Noah’s Ark and killing every living creature save for one ship’s worth? Doesn’t the parent have to set an example for the rule to work?