Philosophy Dispelling Falsehoods about Thomism

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
This is a response to @Scottty, a particularly odd person. Scottty has commented on my philosophical beliefs, making sweeping statements about me that are, quite frankly, risible. Let's go over them, shall we?

First, there are his statements from the very beginning, on my old anti-porn thread (you know the one). Take the very first post he made, for instance:

Seeing you cite the behaviour of the secularist elite as a precedent for what you want has helped crystalize something I've long pondered: how it is that politically, on my personal radar Roman Catholics "ping" as Leftists, despite their goals being superficially different.
Looking beneath the superficialities, one finds:
  • The same sort of self-righteous authoritarianism. The mindset that everyone else should be forced at gunpoint to go along with your values.
  • The same wilful obtuseness when faced with any sort of practical criticism either of those values, or of the proposed means to attaining to the stated goals.
  • The same deification of government - evil will vanish if the king decrees a law against it.
  • The same overt rejection of the teaching of the Bible whenever it conflicts with their own man-made philosophy.
  • The same desire to treat human nature as something malleable by government coercion.
  • The same endgame economically. Whether it's "The Church" or The Party, the goal is a system where "other people work, while we sit and eat."
It's not hard to envisage what a society in which Roman Catholic ideology had unlimited sway would look like - history has sufficient examples. It would have a small ruling elite living in opulence, while lording it over a vast sea of huddled masses for whom life would be nasty, poor, brutish and short.

What can one say to these false accusations except "based on what?" But I'm getting ahead of myself. When I called him out on his bullshit, he responded with this:

Well, that escalated quickly. I think there are some Leftist traits that I left out of that list:
  • Aggressive judgementalism - dismissing anyone who argues against them as evil.
  • Double standards - demanding that others follow a standard that they don't apply to themselves. Calling me a "child of Satan"? Charity much?
  • Rejecting previous real-life examples of their sort of policies being put into practice on arbitrary grounds.
  • Assuming that every opponent is the same.
  • Treating the discussion as if it's all about themselves, personally.

So, essentially, calling him out for spouting bullshit about my beliefs - for saying false things about what I believe in public and doubling down repeatedly on these after I correct him over and over again - is somehow a moral failing on my part? The chutzpah is almost impressive.

Finally, in a recent post he wrote the following:

One of the innate problems with Thomistic philosophy, is that it seems to be ignoring the reality of the Fall. We are not in a perfect universe where everything is as it's meant to be. Sin and evil are part of current reality.
So one cannot simply look at how something is, and assume that is what is right.

Nothing is actually cited that backs up these claims. It's just stated as fact. And when I called him out on how St. Thomas actually did write extensively of the fallen nature of man, he basically doubled down.

Nevertheless, since Scottty is a founder of this website, I feel the need ruthlessly and vigorously put an end to his nonsense. If there's one thing I despise more than anything, it's lying about someone else's viewpoints. I especially get angry about people lying about my own viewpoint. But, in the spirit of debate, I will keep things civil from hereon out (provided Scottty doesn't repeat his previous errors) So here are some of the myths about my Thomism he's brought up.

Myth #1: Thomists are authoritarians that want to everyone else to be forced at gunpoint to go along with their values.

Authoritarianism is a term that I find hopelessly vague. It essentially describes any government that isn't sufficiently liberal enough to the tastes of modern western academics, which is something I find to be quite disturbing given the universally negative connotation of the word. Do something a liberal doesn't like? Bam! You're an authoritarian! And suddenly, your political career is over. Meanwhile, the very non-authoritarian United State government has a massive surveillance state and more regulations and controls over the populace than ever before. But I digress.

This charge that I am somehow evil for wanting to force people at gunpoint to go along with my values brings to mind what philosopher Edward Feser called the Anti-Conservative Fallacy. To quote Feser:

Many liberals and libertarians accused conservatives... of trying to enforce compliance with a religious ethic via the power of the state. It was also insinuated that their motivation lay in sentiment rather than reason, and sectarian fervor rather than scientific fact. Such charges reflect a rhetorical ploy frequently made use of by liberals and libertarians, to the effect that conservatives' objections to pornography, say, or to same-sex marriage, stem from their finding these things "personally offensive." They accuse conservatives of wanting to "impose" their "personal opinions" or "personal moral views" on everyone else. This sort of language conveys the idea that it is merely a set of emotional responses or idiosyncratic preferences, no more reflective of objective reality than one's taste in ice cream, that motivate conservatives to take the positions they do.

It is obvious, or ought to be, that one problem with this kind of criticism is that it is simply a question-begging and tendentious way of characterizing conservative positions on the matters in question. Suppose someone accused liberals of favoring affirmative action simply because they found inequality between the races to be "personally offensive," or accused libertarians of wanting to impose their "personal opinions" on everyone else, including socialists, by refusing to allow government to redistribute wealth so that each citizen gets the equal share to which he is (in the view of socialists) entitled. Liberals would object that it isn't merely their subjective personal disgust at inequality that motivates them; rather, it is their commitment to equality as an objective moral ideal that does so. Libertarians would say that the moral principle of upholding private property rights, on which they base their objection to redistribution, is not merely expressive of some personal preference, but reflective of an objective moral order which socialists as well as libertarians ought to respect. Both liberals and libertarians would say that their subjective emotional reactions to inequality and redistribution are not what guide them in their choice of policies. Rather, it is their commitment to rational moral principles that guides them -- and that generates the emotional reactions too, rather than the other way around.

If this is the right way to characterize the manner in which liberals and libertarians defend their policy proposals, though, it is only fair to acknowledge that conservatives can and do defend their own positions in a similar fashion. That a conservative might find pornography or same-sex marriage offensive doesn't mean that his finding them offensive is the reason he opposes them. Rather, he might oppose them on the basis of an objective and rationally defensible moral principle, and his commitment to that principle might itself be what generates the emotional reaction of disapproval, rather than the other way around. In other words, it isn't that conservatives first find that pornography and same-sex marriage generate a negative emotional reaction and then go on to hold that it is morally wrong to indulge in pornography or to advocate same-sex marriage; it is rather that they first judge these things to be morally wrong on rationally defensible grounds, and then form a negative emotional reaction to them on that basis. Liberals and libertarians are, after all, no less prone than conservatives to respond with passionate indignation at violations of their favored moral principles. If they do not regard this passion as undermining the objective validity of those principles, neither can they consistently take conservatives' passion to undermine the objective validity of conservative principles.

This common rhetorical move of characterizing conservative opposition to various liberal or libertarian policies as based on nothing more than subjective personal preference or prejudice seems to have its origin in the following fallacious inference: "Person A opposes the doing and/or legalizing of some outré behavior X and A also happens to find X personally offensive, revolting, disgusting, off-putting, etc.; therefore, A must oppose the doing and/or legalizing of X merely because he finds it personally offensive, revolting, disgusting, off-putting, etc." The reason this inference amounts to a logical fallacy is that it is just a blatant non sequitur. As we've seen, the fact that A finds X personally offensive, revolting, or whatever simply need not be the reason he opposes X. He might have perfectly objective and rational grounds for opposing it; the fact that he also happens to have a negative emotional response to it may be irrelevant. After all, most people find murder, theft, child molestation, rape, and the like to be personally offensive, revolting, off-putting, etc. But it doesn't follow that the fact that a person's emotional response to such crimes is negative must be the only reason he opposes them.

In other words, everyone's political philosophy is informed by moral principles. Liberals and libertarians who want enact their preferred policy want to impose their ideal politics onto society no less than conservatives do. The idea that non-liberal viewpoints are less rational is simply a prejudice that they have. These prejudices lead to a double standard.

The claim that "we shouldn't impose our personal moral views on other people" is in fact a very curious one. It seems to convey the idea that all moral views are merely "personal" in the sense of reflecting nothing more than individual tastes or preferences, and thus cannot justifiably be "imposed" on those who do not share those tastes or preferences. Their constant appeal to this idea in criticizing conservative policies is thus probably the main reason liberals and libertarians are often suspected of being moral relativists. But since, as we've noted already, liberals and libertarians can be quite absolutist about their own moral beliefs, and are not at all reluctant to tell others that they ought to abide by them, it is evident that their views are not genuinely relativist at all. Indeed, the idea that "we shouldn't impose our personal moral views on other people" sounds itself like an absolute moral imperative. So what exactly is going on here?

It seems clear that what liberals and libertarians really mean when they criticize conservatives for "imposing their moral views on others" is not that there is anything wrong with letting moral views, even controversial ones, guide public policy. Rather, what they mean is that specifically conservative moral views shouldn't be allowed to guide policy -- either because such views are not, strictly speaking, really views about morality per se in the first place but are rather mere expressions of personal taste, or because they are views about morality, but views that happen to be false. To state their objection to conservative policies more frankly, though, would be less rhetorically effective. If a liberal or libertarian said "My views are genuinely moral ones, and conservative views are mere expressions of personal taste" or "My moral views are correct and conservative views are not," then it would be obvious that he was making what are nothing more than undefended and highly debatable assertions. Far better, then, to say something like "No one should impose his personal moral views on other people." That way, the liberal or libertarian seems to be saying something obviously true (namely that no one should impose idiosyncratic and subjective personal tastes on others) when in fact he is making an extremely controversial claim for which he has offered no justification (namely that liberal or libertarian moral views, but not conservative ones, should be allowed to guide public policy).

Rhetorically effective as this move is, though, it is intellectually dishonest. To be sure, liberals and libertarians who talk this way probably don't consciously realize that they are engaging in a kind of sleight of hand. Most of them are no doubt just muddle-headed, and don't see the inconsistencies and confusions inherent in their view. But the inconsistencies and confusions are there all the same. If you are going to take a controversial position to the effect that all discrimination or wealth redistribution is wrong (as liberals and libertarians, respectively, would say) and therefore ought to be forbidden by law, you can't consistently say that controversial moral views shouldn't be enforced via legislation. If you believe that your own favored moral principles are objectively valid and binding on everyone, you shouldn't speak in a way that conveys the misleading impression that moral judgments in general are as idiosyncratic and subjective as tastes in ice cream. And of course, whatever other objections you might have to conservative policy proposals, it is hardly legitimate to rely on fallacious reasoning in criticizing them -- as those who commit what I've called "the anti-conservative fallacy" do.

Not all moral principles ought to be enforced by the power of government, but almost everything government does is based on some moral principle or other. It is fatuous, then, to hold that "we shouldn't legislate morality," if this means that controversial moral principles shouldn't guide public policy. And almost every moral principle is controversial to a significant extent: even when people agree that murder is wrong, they often disagree about what counts as murder, as the disputes over abortion, euthanasia, and even the killing of animals attest. The question, then, is not whether controversial moral principles ought to inform our laws, but rather which controversial moral principles -- liberal, conservative, libertarian, or whatever -- ought to inform them.

I'll also point out that the specific accusation was leveled at me for desiring to ban, or at least restrict access to, pornography. America has had laws against obscene materials since the early 19th century. The first federal law against obscenity came in 1873 with the Comstock Laws, named for the anti-vice activist Anthony Comstock. These were all Protestants, nary a Catholic in sight. I'd like to know if Scottty believes that 19th century American Protestants were "authoritarian." If so, then he is "committed to saying that pretty much all human civilizations before about 20 minutes ago were authoritarian – and have, I submit, drunk very deeply indeed of the liberal individualist Kool-Aid."

Myth #2: Thomists deify the state.

This false accusation is "justified" by the idea that Thomists believe "evil will vanish if the king decrees a law against it." Do we believe this? Let's consult St. Thomas on this matter. In the Summa Theologiae, he writes:

Article 2. Whether it belongs to the human law to repress all vices?

Objection 1. It would seem that it belongs to human law to repress all vices. For Isidore says (Etym. v, 20) that "laws were made in order that, in fear thereof, man's audacity might be held in check." But it would not be held in check sufficiently, unless all evils were repressed by law. Therefore human laws should repress all evils.

Objection 2. Further, the intention of the lawgiver is to make the citizens virtuous. But a man cannot be virtuous unless he forbear from all kinds of vice. Therefore it belongs to human law to repress all vices.

Objection 3. Further, human law is derived from the natural law, as stated above. But all vices are contrary to the law of nature. Therefore human law should repress all vices.

On the contrary, We read in De Lib. Arb. i, 5: "It seems to me that the law which is written for the governing of the people rightly permits these things, and that Divine providence punishes them." But Divine providence punishes nothing but vices. Therefore human law rightly allows some vices, by not repressing them.

I answer that, As stated above, law is framed as a rule or measure of human acts. Now a measure should be homogeneous with that which it measures, as stated in Metaph. x, text. 3,4, since different things are measured by different measures. Wherefore laws imposed on men should also be in keeping with their condition, for, as Isidore says (Etym. v, 21), law should be "possible both according to nature, and according to the customs of the country." Now possibility or faculty of action is due to an interior habit or disposition: since the same thing is not possible to one who has not a virtuous habit, as is possible to one who has. Thus the same is not possible to a child as to a full-grown man: for which reason the law for children is not the same as for adults, since many things are permitted to children, which in an adult are punished by law or at any rate are open to blame. In like manner many things are permissible to men not perfect in virtue, which would be intolerable in a virtuous man.

Now human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue. Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained: thus human law prohibits murder, theft and such like.

Reply to Objection 1. Audacity seems to refer to the assailing of others. Consequently it belongs to those sins chiefly whereby one's neighbor is injured: and these sins are forbidden by human law, as stated.

Reply to Objection 2. The purpose of human law is to lead men to virtue, not suddenly, but gradually. Wherefore it does not lay upon the multitude of imperfect men the burdens of those who are already virtuous, viz. that they should abstain from all evil. Otherwise these imperfect ones, being unable to bear such precepts, would break out into yet greater evils: thus it is written (Proverbs 30:33): "He that violently bloweth his nose, bringeth out blood"; and (Matthew 9:17) that if "new wine," i.e. precepts of a perfect life, "is put into old bottles," i.e. into imperfect men, "the bottles break, and the wine runneth out," i.e. the precepts are despised, and those men, from contempt, break into evils worse still.

Reply to Objection 3. The natural law is a participation in us of the eternal law: while human law falls short of the eternal law. Now Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. i, 5): "The law which is framed for the government of states, allows and leaves unpunished many things that are punished by Divine providence. Nor, if this law does not attempt to do everything, is this a reason why it should be blamed for what it does." Wherefore, too, human law does not prohibit everything that is forbidden by the natural law.

Far from being some kind of authoritarian moral busybody, St. Thomas gives very practical reasons why we shouldn't suppress all evils with the power of the state. Out of context, this sounds like a call for libertarianism! Of course, the Angelic Doctor is not a libertarian; his thought is far more nuanced than what modern ideologies would allow. In the same breath where he cautions against overly restrictive moral legislation, he also states that the purpose of the law "is to lead men to virtue," not to uphold some liberal order. But this is why we should take prohibition laws on a case-by-case basis. Scottty may disagree with me that the government can restrict or ban pornography - I think it is capable of doing so, but he (supposedly) doesn't. But to say that, on the basis that I think that the government can ban this or that evil that it can ban all evils is simply ludicrous.

Edward Feser spells out the difference between fusionists (libertarian conservatives) and Thomists as such:

[A] fusionist conservative and a Thomist might agree that it is a bad idea to make adultery a criminal offense. But for the fusionist, who accepts the fundamental liberal assumptions about the purposes of government, that is because such a policy would be an unjust violation of the individual right to personal liberty, which for the liberal includes even the liberty to make grave moral mistakes. By contrast, a Thomist would argue instead that while it would not be per se unjust to make adultery illegal, such a policy is very unlikely to do much good in practice and is likely to produce unintended evils as a side effect.

Myth #3: Thomists Overtly Reject the Teaching of the Bible

Where this idea comes from, I have no idea. This is a common accusation leveled at Catholics in general, not just Thomists. We're accused of manipulating the Bible to suit our interests and adding in "pagan" traditions like Christmas or Veneration of the Saints. The problem with this, of course, is that these ideas beg the question. Whether or not the Bible actually contradicts Thomism or Catholicism depends on one's interpretation of God's Word. But who has the right interpretation? This is the debate between Thomists and non-Thomists, Catholics and Protestants, etc.

Of course, the main problem with these kinds of Protestants is that their argument is one big exercise in special pleading. Whether or not Thomism goes against Scripture depends on how you read the texts of Scripture. The Bible by itself is just words on a page, and one can mangle the language of the text to justify all kinds of bizarre and unnatural things. All of the different sects of Protestantism have agreed on "Scripture Alone," yet have come to widely different conclusions on important issues such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, justification, transubstantiation, contraception, divorce and remarriage, Sunday observance, infant baptism, slavery, pacifism, the consistency of scripture with scientific claims, etc., or indeed even sola scriptura itself. It seems apparent, therefore, that Scripture cannot by itself solve the problem. We must have some accurate way of interpreting Scripture.

For those who complain about St. Thomas taking ideas from pagan philosophers, I'll make an analogy to science. Science is a discipline separate from theology that can come to truth. Should theology and science come to a disagreement, we don't throw out one or the other. Instead, we try and find the truth in both and reconcile them to the best of our abilities. We don't throw out evolution because it goes against a literal interpretation of Scripture. We have to judge independently whether a) those verses in Genesis were meant to be taken literally and b) whether the empirical evidence for evolution is sound. Similarly, Thomism ought to be judged by the merits of its own arguments, not by whether it fits in with your personal interpretation of Scripture.

As an aside: the idea that Thomas Aquinas was primarily pagan in his philosophy is pretty much false. St. Thomas cited St. Augustine 3,156 times in the Summa. That’s even more than Aristotle, who garners a total of 2,095 mentions. The number of times he cites Scripture are numerous. The idea that Aquinas was trying to get away from Scripture or was overly-reliant on pagan philosophy is overblown.

Myth #4: Thomism treats human nature as something malleable by government coercion.

Um... no. It doesn't. In fact, Thomism treats human nature as something so unmalleable that some Thomists argue that evolution by natural selection is impossible! If nature itself cannot change the nature of things, how could the state could do so?

The confusion, I feel, comes from the idea that Thomism doesn't rule out the possibility of the state being used to change human behavior. But the idea that the state can influence human behavior is pretty uncontroversial. Even a libertarian will admit that if a police officer is pointing a gun to your head, you will be more inclined to do what he says. The difference is that the libertarian will say this is always unjust unless there is some violation of the non-aggression principle occurring, whereas the Thomist will appeal to thicker notions of justice and the common good. It's a vacuous argument from beginning to end.

Myth #5: Thomists want to establish a system in which some will toil while an elite class will sit and eat.

I don't see how this statement even applies to me. Contrary to libertarians, I hold that all workers should receive a just wage for their work and ought not be cheated by their employers; that usury, the means by which unscrupulous bankers are able to sit back and get rich off of interest, ought to be curbed; that a landlords forcing their tenants to pay a fee just to work on their land ought to be taxed themselves, and their earnings spent in the service of the community. My entire view of property rests on the idea that property not earned through labor is not property at all.

Contrary to Scottty's accusations, Thomism holds that the community ought to be working towards the goal of the common good. In his defense of private property, the Angelic Doctor wrote that "every man is more careful to procure what is for himself alone than that which is common to many or to all: since each one would shirk the labor and leave to another that which concerns the community, as happens where there is a great number of servants." In Thomas' view, the ownership and management of property is individual, while the use of property is social - meaning that individual workers would be morally obligated (and in some cases, legally obligated) to help the community thrive.

So where does this idea come from? Scottty justifies this nonsense by referring to the societies "in which Roman Catholic ideology had unlimited sway." In other words, the medieval period. This is more Enlightenment Whiggery. Was living as a 19th-century proletarian, paying high rent while you worked for a pittance at some factory in the name of the "Protestant Work Ethic," more liberating than serfdom? Is post-Christian man freer in the modern day, given how massive and bloated the state is? But I digress. There's nothing in Thomism or Roman Catholicism that compels them to embrace medieval feudalism, as demonstrated by the wide array of modern Thomists and Catholics with different economic opinions. While it doesn't rule out government intervention in the economy or inequalities of wealth, it doesn't call for some kind of coercive caste system consisting of producers and exploiters.

Myth #5: Thomists don't believe in the Fall

Oh, let's see... did the Angelic Doctor believe in the Fall? Let's check.

Hm...

Augustine puts this question in the Enchiridion xlvi, xlvii, and leaves it unsolved. Yet if we look into the matter carefully we shall see that it is impossible for the sins of the nearer ancestors, or even any other but the first sin of our first parent to be transmitted by way of origin. The reason is that a man begets his like in species but not in individual. Consequently those things that pertain directly to the individual, such as personal actions and matters affecting them, are not transmitted by parents to their children: for a grammarian does not transmit to his son the knowledge of grammar that he has acquired by his own studies. On the other hand, those things that concern the nature of the species, are transmitted by parents to their children, unless there be a defect of nature: thus a man with eyes begets a son having eyes, unless nature fails. And if nature be strong, even certain accidents of the individual pertaining to natural disposition, are transmitted to the children, e.g. fleetness of body, acuteness of intellect, and so forth; but nowise those that are purely personal, as stated above.

Now just as something may belong to the person as such, and also something through the gift of grace, so may something belong to the nature as such, viz. whatever is caused by the principles of nature, and something too through the gift of grace. In this way original justice, as stated in the I:100:1, was a gift of grace, conferred by God on all human nature in our first parent. This gift the first man lost by his first sin. Wherefore as that original justice together with the nature was to have been transmitted to his posterity, so also was its disorder. Other actual sins, however, whether of the first parent or of others, do not corrupt the nature as nature, but only as the nature of that person, i.e. in respect of the proneness to sin: and consequently other sins are not transmitted.

Oh my...

There are two things in original sin: one is the privation of original justice; the other is the relation of this privation to the sin of our first parent, from whom it is transmitted to man through his corrupt origin. As to the first, original sin has no degrees, since the gift of original justice is taken away entirely; and privations that remove something entirely, such as death and darkness, cannot be more or less, as stated above. In like manner, neither is this possible, as to the second: since all are related equally to the first principle of our corrupt origin, from which principle original sin takes the nature of guilt; for relations cannot be more or less. Consequently it is evident that original sin cannot be more in one than in another.

Surprise, surprise! Thomas Aquinas, a man who had grown up in the bosom of medieval Catholicism, believed in Original Sin! What a shocker!

This last myth demonstrates Scottty's complete lack of knowledge of Thomism. I know that St. Thomas' books are pretty dense, but perhaps he should refrain form presuming what I think. I do think you are an immoral man, Scottty. Not because you disagree with me, but because you are a bullshitter that spouts nonsense about other people's beliefs and refuses to apologize when corrected. It is for that reason that I judged you to be morally deficient. It seems that you haven't changed one iota. Maybe this can start here.

To all of the others here: I'll let this essay stand as an educational paper on Thomistic philosophy. I hope you're able to glean something from it.
 
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Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
@The Name of Love maybe we could discuss religion and philosophy without your needing to make it all about you yourself, personally.

The approach you are taking blurs together things that are, in reality, quite distinct. Thomism is not one and the same thing as Roman Catholicism. Not in practice.
Those observations of mine that cause you so much offense are not related to abstract, "on paper" ideas or doctrines, but to the attitudes and mindset of flesh-and-blood people. There's a huge difference.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
@The Name of Love maybe we could discuss religion and philosophy without your needing to make it all about you yourself, personally.
Only when you stop lying about my beliefs. Seriously, even an apology and an admission that you were wrong about what I believe would be enough. I'll forgive you and drop the entire thing.

The approach you are taking blurs together things that are, in reality, quite distinct. Thomism is not one and the same thing as Roman Catholicism. Not in practice.
Correct. But Thomism as a philosophy has been a major part of the Catholic Church from its inception and has been seen as the Church's official philosophy since Pope Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris in 1868. If I seemed to blur the lines between the two, that was an error on my part, but I did not mean to do so.

Those observations of mine that cause you so much offense are not related to abstract, "on paper" ideas or doctrines, but to the attitudes and mindset of flesh-and-blood people. There's a huge difference.
There are some major problems with this.

First, even if you are correct that there are a large number of Catholics who believe in the kind of nonsense you espouse, that doesn't justify your bullshitting. You don't get to misrepresent what I believe. That's immoral.

Second, if this is based on your own personal experience with "flesh-and-blood people," then why have you waited until now to mention this?

Third, just because you've met "flesh-and-blood people" that believe in these absurd positions doesn't mean that Thomism or Catholicism necessarily leads to people adopting this stance. You must make the actual logical argument. I've already done my part and demonstrated in the above essay why you'd have to badly twist Thomistic philosophy in order to get the kinds of positions you describe these "flesh-and-blood people" have.

Fourth, how can I trust that you know the "flesh-and-blood people" you refer to actually hold the positions you ascribe to them? Perhaps you are misrepresenting their beliefs based on prejudice just as you did mine. Perhaps you are even lying about what they did. I have no way of knowing, and I simply don't trust you enough to take you at your word.
 
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Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
Only when you stop lying about my beliefs. Seriously, even an apology and an admission that you were wrong about what I believe would be enough. I'll forgive you and drop the entire thing.

When have I accused you, personally?

Correct. But Thomism as a philosophy has been a major part of the Catholic Church from its inception and has been seen as the Church's official philosophy since Pope Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris in 1868. If I seemed to blur the lines between the two, that was an error on my part, but I did not mean to do so.

Thomism as such dates from the 13th century. Attempts to "baptize" Aristotle no doubt go back earlier than that, but anyway...
What percentage of Roman Catholic pew-warmers are really educated in Thomistic thought?

Second, if this is based on your own personal experience with "flesh-and-blood people," then why have you waited until now to mention this?

Maybe because it's the sort of thing one takes for granted as obvious? I don't base my world-map on deduction from abstract principles (and neither do you!) but on experience and pattern-recognition.

Third, just because you've met "flesh-and-blood people" that believe in these absurd positions doesn't mean that Thomism or Catholicism necessarily leads to people adopting this stance. You must make the actual logical argument. I've already done my part and demonstrated in the above essay why you'd have to badly twist Thomistic philosophy in order to get the kinds of positions you describe these "flesh-and-blood people" have.

I don't need to make an argument for something I never claimed. When you say "necessarily leads to", I assume you mean in the sense of one thing logically following from another? But people aren't computers. To predict how humans will behave based on their beliefs is a matter of psychology, not logical deduction.
And I'm not making such predictions.

Fourth, how can I trust that you know the "flesh-and-blood people" you refer to actually hold the positions you ascribe to them? Perhaps you are misrepresenting their beliefs based on prejudice just as you did mine. Perhaps you are even lying about what they did. I have no way of knowing, and I simply don't trust you enough to take you at your word.

Because if I really had talked to a Roman Catholic who said he believed (let me give a real example) that in Buddhist countries where they have no access to Christianity, God will appear to them as Buddha in order to strengthen their "faith" (and he got quite offended when I disagreed with that absurd notion), that would prove... what? (Besides that the RCC, as an institution, often does a piss-poor job of properly instructing its followers as to its official positions.)
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
When have I accused you, personally?

I listed all of the things that you assumed I believed at the beginning.

Thomism as such dates from the 13th century. Attempts to "baptize" Aristotle no doubt go back earlier than that, but anyway...
What percentage of Roman Catholic pew-warmers are really educated in Thomistic thought?
Yes, exactly. As I said, Thomism has been a part of the Church since its [Thomism's] inception in the 13th century.

I don't think Catholics are catechized that well. That's why we're losing so many in the West. The Church Leaders seem to be apathetic to the decline of Christendom in the West. This is a serious problem in the clergy, but it's not really pertinent to our discussion.

Maybe because it's the sort of thing one takes for granted as obvious? I don't base my world-map on deduction from abstract principles (and neither do you!) but on experience and pattern-recognition.
I base my beliefs on what I believe to have experiential evidence of, hence why I believe in Thomism (it seems to have a lot of explanatory power, and the flaws it has are relatively minor and often can be supplemented by other philosophical beliefs). But you don't seem to understand. Reasoning from "most Catholics I know believe X" to "Lovely Name must believe X even if he says otherwise" is fallacious.

I don't need to make an argument for something I never claimed. When you say "necessarily leads to", I assume you mean in the sense of one thing logically following from another? But people aren't computers. To predict how humans will behave based on their beliefs is a matter of psychology, not logical deduction.
And I'm not making such predictions.

People don't think independently of logic. When they are thinking illogically, we can usually predict their behavior based on things like social rationality ("X is good because the group says it's good") or animal instinct. The former is a matter of power dynamics, which is why I often employ thinkers like Curtis Yarvin and C. A. Bond into my own thinking. The latter is a matter of biology.

Are you making reference to Maimonides' concept of necessary beliefs? That we have to promote one belief throughout society even though it may be false because it leads to a better outcome?

Because if I really had talked to a Roman Catholic who said he believed (let me give a real example) that in Buddhist countries where they have no access to Christianity, God will appear to them as Buddha in order to strengthen their "faith" (and he got quite offended when I disagreed with that absurd notion), that would prove... what? (Besides that the RCC, as an institution, often does a piss-poor job of properly instructing its followers as to its official positions.)
Well, it would prove precisely nothing besides the fact that the RCC does a piss-poor job of properly instructing its followers as to its official positions.
 
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Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
I base my beliefs on what I believe to have experiential evidence of, hence why I believe in Thomism (it seems to have a lot of explanatory power, and the flaws it has are relatively minor and often can be supplemented by other philosophical beliefs). But you don't seem to understand. Reasoning from "most Catholics I know believe X" to "Lovely Name must believe X even if he says otherwise" is fallacious.

I've never accused you of lying about your beliefs!

Are you making reference to Maimonides' concept of necessary beliefs? That we have to promote one belief throughout society even though it may be false because it leads to a better outcome?

No, no I was not.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
I've never accused you of lying about your beliefs!
No, you didn't accuse me of lying about my beliefs. You just assumed what I believed, and then, when I called you out on that, you basically called me a social justice warrior. You are more like a child that, when scolded for fibbing, stamps his foot and says, "no, I must be right! The Name of Love must be the evil leftist I asserted he is! He must! He must! He must!"

No, no I was not.
Then what were you referring to?
 

King Krávoka

An infection of Your universe.
Okay, so are you a primitivist?
I refuse to put my teenage opinions into a poor compression algorithm so you can fetch a preconstructed idea of what I think. You already know how stupid it is when people invent new words to say what kind of girl their hypothetically unique personalities make them into, but I'm saying it's the same for political belief.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
I refuse to put my teenage opinions into a poor compression algorithm so you can fetch a preconstructed idea of what I think. You already know how stupid it is when people invent new words to say what kind of girl their hypothetically unique personalities make them into, but I'm saying it's the same for political belief.
Okay. Let me ask you a different question: are you being serious right now?
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
I think Kravoka was being only half-serious, but a case could be made that much of current civilization is dystopic in various ways.
Indeed. I can several elements of 1984 and Brave New World in our reality. But of all the recent fiction, I think that Ready Player One may perhaps the best depiction of what the future will probably look like.
 

King Krávoka

An infection of Your universe.
I'm just wondering because you claimed that all of civilization was dystopic. That's kind of a weird position, don't you think?
Your point was that past civilization doesn't live up to any form of liberalism. My response is, yes, and the modern ones don't either (except neo-liberals but they're ancaps not liberals).
 

Lanmandragon

Well-known member
Love and Scotty's beef in this thead is a pretty good example of what love calls "social atomasption[sp]". In any time pre-internet thier dispute could reach physical levels. Thus both would behave in a way acknowledgeing that thier words & actions. Which would naturally temper thier words to attempt to avoid danger. The internet and disconnection inherent in such tech short-circuit this. Thus "social attomasstion".
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
Love and Scotty's beef in this thead is a pretty good example of what love calls "social atomasption[sp]". In any time pre-internet thier dispute could reach physical levels. Thus both would behave in a way acknowledgeing that thier words & actions. Which would naturally temper thier words to attempt to avoid danger. The internet and disconnection inherent in such tech short-circuit this. Thus "social attomasstion".
Excellent hypothesis, but have you accounted for my autism?
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
In any time pre-internet thier dispute could reach physical levels. Thus both would behave in a way acknowledgeing that thier words & actions. Which would naturally temper thier words to attempt to avoid danger. The internet and disconnection inherent in such tech short-circuit this. Thus "social attomasstion".

Eh. This is true to some extent, but not universally so. Plenty of people today still get into fights over words.

Yes, the internet makes people mouth off a lot more, but people have been doing so all the way back to Martin Luther, and way before.

Personally, though, if I felt that someone was likely to respond with violence to something I said, I wouldn't show up to talk to them any way... and if I did, I'd bring a shotgun.
 

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