Fall of the Catholic Church

I think you may be misunderstanding two concepts here. The first is "burden of proof" and the second being the phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". You appear to be applying both of these things incorrectly in the above post when asking others to "prove the fairy tale".

Pedantically though the definition of fairy tale in the m-w dictionary is " a story (as for children) involving fantastic forces and beings (such as fairies, wizards, and goblins)"

I am struggling to see how the Bible does NOT fit that definition. It is a story. It involves fantastic forces. And it involves beings that are not human. Linguistically it is therefore entirely accurate to describe it as a Fairy Tale, using THAT definition. You might prefer another definition. But that way further pedantry lies.

The more interesting question in my view..... with any book not just the Bible..... is "Having read this book, and enjoyed it, is there any reason whatsoever to think the claims in it are true, or the events within it actually happened?".

With the Bible so far it would appear that the answer to that is a firm, strong, and resounding "No". No one seems to be offering any arguments, evidence, data or reasoning to think the book is "true" in that sense. Least of all your good self. But I remain open minded and "all ears" in case someone some day does it! I am agog.

Again... the distinction I make STRONGLY is between ideas... and the people who hold those ideas. I absolutely am happy to "deride and attack" bad ideas. And this is a good thing. The skill is to do so in a way that is as much an attack on the IDEA as possible and as little an attack on the PERSON as possible.

As with most language, doing this is a skill and an artform. And even the best of us are not always successful. And I am far from "the best of us". But perfection is not a requirement here. Only striving towards it.

But the problem for me over the years has certainly being that people willfully aim to play this "victim card" even when the "right spirit" as you put it is there. They will try to construe any attack on their pet ideas as being an attack on THEM. And that certainly requires derision, even of the person who is attempting it. Because it is the enemy of intellectual honest discourse.

It is a fine line for sure, but not as fine as some like to pretend. But as I said it's two different conversations. 1) SHOULD we attack and deride bad ideas and 2) HOW should we go about doing so? I was commenting on the former. You have now pushed the conversation more to the latter. Which is fine. But again I think it worth making that distinction.

Mind me asking if you work for a living, because you seem to have a lot of time to spend on long posts. Perhaps this is one reason why you like to attack and deride. A bit too much time on your hands.

I'm off out the back to paint a few fence panels. Feel free to attack and deride that terrible idea as much as you want 😁

It is comical to me that you have gone from the conversation we just had.... to making it solely about me in a rather ad hominem and dismissive move :) You are kinda making my point for me. I stick to the topic and discussion of the actual ideas. It tends to be OTHER people who then make it wholly and solely about me. You just made yourself more an example of what you were taking issue with, than I myself have actually been. Which is quite funny.

But I like talking about myself as much as the next person. So I will answer your entirely off topic question. My job involves a lot of testing the things I develop which means I do have time to do other things on my work time. I also type INCREDIBLY fast. You see a long post for me and probably assume it took a lot of time. It quite likely took a fraction of how long you think it did.

That said though I have a LOT less free time in my life these days. Actually OEJ commented on this in his first post to me today. I simply have not been around boards at all in recent months. Another boards user who has an absolutely infectious love of life and of people and of children has infected me with things like Jujitsu and Archery and a few other things. And I find my free time to post on boards has simply gone entirely.

But no, my motivation to "attack and deride" is that I value (almost worship) discourse. Bad and unsubstantiated ideas SHOULD be attacked and derided and tested and pulled apart and dragged through the fires. Because it is only through discourse with others that our individual.... and our species wide.... ideas evolve, improve or die. Think of it as memetic rather than genetic "Natural Selection".

I am all for painting though. Very meditative and makes things look prettier and brighter :) Go for it. "Kung Fu lives in everything we do, Xiao Dre! It lives in how we put on the jacket, how we take off the jacket. It lives in how we treat people! Everything... is Kung Fu." youtube.com/watch?v=G6f0w5BRasw

The cheque for all the buildings the State paid to build?

You don’t need to tell others. But just between you and me, you know it’s all about as credible as Santa?

Did you actually ask parents what they want?

Seeing as I'm not providing any kind of services for Kid's I don't ask any parents anything about their kids. But locally, where there are choices in schools ( and in some cases, schools are competing with each other to keep their pupil Nrs high enough to keep or even increase their teacher nrs.) Its the parents who ask the schools about their teaching agendas whats, on offer, exam results etc. and base their school choices on that. So of course if religious instruction is on the curriculum, then that will be discussed at the same time.

but we all know that if people had to "do religion" on their own time, take kids to church lessons on their time etc, it would quickly die out as I don't think there's enough of an appetite for it.

What’s this “we” business? 😳

I don’t think you realise just how deeply ingrained religions actually are in Irish society. Schools, hospitals, halls, clubs, organisations… these weren’t established by whole congregations, they were established by only a small number of people who organised themselves into what they are now. The only way they actually die out is when people stop attending, and I can’t imagine people not having to attend hospitals, schools, sports and whole swathes of youth clubs, any time soon.

Church attendance figures dropping off a cliff is hardly a great indication of anything. There’s many more cultural aspects to religion that have fallen off a cliff too, and no harm - the idea of the priest condemning those people who aren’t in attendance at mass for example, not really a thing any more. It appears they’ve been replaced by anti-religious clerics.

Are you seriously going down that road?

You expect me to sit down at the keyboard and keep you entertained while I actually have a life to get on with?

Posession is nine tenths of the law. Whose name is on the deeds? If it's the government, then no monies change hands. Otherwise, pay up.

And the monies owed from the various Magdalene laundry settlements, that the criminal organization known as the RCC has yet to pay. Perhaps payment via confiscation of property would work, there's billions in property out there for the grabbing.

Many allegations and not all factually correct. But let's not have that biteen of truth get in the way.

The things people do for money never ceases to amaze me... things like lying.

so youre saying that the church has not shielded and protected known child rapists and allowed them to continue raping children once their activities became known to the higher ups in said church?

if it`s pure numbers, how many rapes is ok and when does it become a problem to be concerned about?

Perfectly ok. I wore the correct PPE

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar and unto God what is God's.

Yours is the argument where you would keep hitting someone and lambast them for attempting to defend themselves.

Is it the law of the land or canon law takes precedence in matters of property in this state?