May is the month when the Virgin Mary is especially celebrated by Catholics. Our own celebration will involve a brief examination of two aspects of Catholic doctrine about Mary: her Immaculate Conception and her bodily assumption into heaven. Both of these claims, which have become part of Catholic dogma, rest not on scripture but on theology: on the Church’s agreement, though logic parsing and “interpretation” of scripture, that these things happened even though there’s no direct evidence for them in the Bible. Doctrines like this show, more than anything else, that essential elements of Catholic belief are not only ludicrous, but man-made and based on “evidence” that wouldn’t convince anyone not already blinded by faith.
Since atheists know more about religion than the faithful themselves, most of us probably realize that the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception does not refer, as commonly thought, to the divinity of Jesus at birth. Instead, it refers to Mary having been born, uniquely among humans after Adam and Eve, without the stain of sin.
Mary’s sinlessness, however, is not mentioned in the New Testament. It appears to have arisen about 1000 A.D., and then became a tradition among Catholics. It did not, however, become official Catholic “dogma” (a word that refers to truths that are revealed by God) until December 8, 1854, when Pope Pius IX, in his statement Ineffabilis Deus, declared Mary’s purity. Of course here the Pope was speaking ex cathedra (‘from the chair’) which means that the Pope’s statement could not be in error (in other words, as Archie Bunker used to say, “The Pope is inflammable.”) Pius declared:
Wherefore, in humility and fasting, we unceasingly offered our private prayers as well as the public prayers of the Church to God the Father through his Son, that he would deign to direct and strengthen our mind by the power of the Holy Spirit. In like manner did we implore the help of the entire heavenly host as we ardently invoked the Paraclete. Accordingly, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for the honor of the Holy and undivided Trinity, for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith, and for the furtherance of the Catholic religion, by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own: “We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.”
So Mary’s purity from birth is taken as a rock-solid spiritual “truth” by the Catholic church. What’s the evidence for it? Very little. There are three sources: scripture, tradition, and “reason”.
SCRIPTURE. On the scripture side, the the Catholic Encyclopedia admits this: “No direct or categorical and stringent proof of the dogma can be brought forward from Scripture.” Nevertheless, some Biblical verses, if examined with half-closed eyes, the ardor of faith, and perhaps a chalice of communion wine, are said to point to the Immaculate Conception. Some quotes from the Catholic Encyclopedia:
Luke: “The salutation of the angel Gabriel — chaire kecharitomene, Hail, full of grace (Luke 1:28) indicates a unique abundance of grace, a supernatural, godlike state of soul, which finds its explanation only in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. But the term kecharitomene (full of grace) serves only as an illustration, not as a proof of the dogma.”
And check out this tortuous passage, a prime specimen of theological interpretation:
Genesis: “But the first scriptural passage which contains the promise of the redemption, mentions also the Mother of the Redeemer. The sentence against the first parents was accompanied by the Earliest Gospel (Proto-evangelium), which put enmity between the serpent and the woman: “and I will put enmity between thee and the woman and her seed; she (he) shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her (his) heel” (Genesis 3:15). The translation “she” of the Vulgate is interpretative; it originated after the fourth century, and cannot be defended critically. The conqueror from the seed of the woman, who should crush the serpent’s head, is Christ; the woman at enmity with the serpent is Mary. God puts enmity between her and Satan in the same manner and measure, as there is enmity between Christ and the seed of the serpent. Mary was ever to be in that exalted state of soul which the serpent had destroyed in man, i.e. in sanctifying grace. Only the continual union of Mary with grace explains sufficiently the enmity between her and Satan. The Proto-evangelium, therefore, in the original text contains a direct promise of the Redeemer, and in conjunction therewith the manifestation of the masterpiece of His Redemption, the perfect preservation of His virginal Mother from original sin.”
Other parts of scripture have also been interpreted as supporting this doctrine, including the part of the Song of Solomon that says this: “Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.” Of course, there’s no evidence at all that the woman in this passage is the Virgin Mary. Although the song could be (as I think it is) a rather salacious love poem, theologians prefer an allegorical interpretation. But the woman could also be—and has been interpreted as being—the children of Israel, the Church itself, or even the Messiah.
TRADITION: The Catholic Encyclopedia and Pius’s pronouncement cite a number of “traditional” sources for Mary’s spotlessness, including various theologians who called her “immaculate”, church fathers (e.g., Tertullian) who compared Eve (created without sin) to the Virgin Mary, and so on. These are, of course, simply glosses on or interpretations of scripture, with no basis more substantial than wishful thinking.
“REASON”: Here’s one example of why “logical” doesn’t belong in “theological”—a specimen of Catholic reasoning that supports the Immaculate conception. From the Catholic Encyclopedia again:
There is an incongruity in the supposition that the flesh, from which the flesh of the Son of God was to be formed, should ever have belonged to one who was the slave of that arch-enemy, whose power He came on earth to destroy. Hence the axiom of Pseudo-Anselmus (Eadmer) developed by Duns Scotus, Decuit, potuit, ergo fecit, it was becoming that the Mother of the Redeemer should have been free from the power of sin and from the first moment of her existence; God could give her this privilege, therefore He gave it to her.
In other words, Mary must have been born without sin because otherwise she couldn’t have whelped Jesus. I guess Jesus was born without sin, too (I don’t know my Bible well enough to say that with certainty), but is “spotlessness” transmitted through the mitochondrial DNA? And if it is, why weren’t Mary’s own parents, and other ancestors, “spotless” as well? They were all, presumably, sinful descendants of Adam and Eve.
This whole enterprise underscores the profound difference between scientific truth and religious “truth.” Catholics take the Immaculate Conception as something that in indubitably true—the Pope has told them so. And it’s not a provisional declaration, as are scientific truths, but an absolute, unchangeable truth. But the evidence behind this dogma is ludicrously thin. And almost none of it comes from the prime source of Christian “truth”: the Bible. And yet the Catholics do adduce evidence: they don’t just say that Mary’s purity is a revelation from God, but rely on scripture, tradition, and “reason.” Sadly, these are no better than revelation itself, for all three sources, interpreted differently, could equally well produce opposite conclusions.
It’s stuff like this that makes me despise the entire enterprise of theology. How can one say, after reading this nauseating exegesis, that science and faith are both equally valid ways of finding truth? In contrast, Biblical scholarship is (or should be) scientific, in that it seeks empirical verification of its claims about how the Bible came to be.
Do note that Catholicism is a “mainstream” faith, one that supposedly accepts the truth of science (including evolution). Yet its own “truths” are palpable nonsense.
It’s so hard to read that stuff without laughing. I mean…
And then you found your mind was all like totally strong, so you knew it was all True!
Hilarious.
I have to wonder: of all the times the Popes have made a proclamation ex cathedra, has any pope ever made a proclamation that he himself disagrees with?
Because, you know, the truth isn’t always what you want it to be, and if the Pope is truly making infallible statements about the truth, he would occasionally discover that he was wrong.
I’ve yet to come across any believer anywhere who thought their gods were worng in any way, shape, or form.
On the one hand, this is to be expected: by definition, their gods are perfect, so they can’t possibly be worng.
On the other hand, it is again to be expected: their gods exist nowhere outside of the heads of the believers, and — of course! — people aren’t going to disagree with themselves.
That believers fail to see their perfect agreement with the positions of their gods as overwhelming evidence that their gods are not-very-grown-up versions of imaginary friends…well, as with so much about religion, chalk that one up to cognitive dissonance as well.
Cheers,
b&
God’s opinions are always the same as the believer’s opinions because God is a sock puppet.
I’ve heard two varieties of positive responses from believers who are asked whether they think their God is ever wrong. The first is some variation of “I used to think God was wrong about X, and then I realized that no, God was right because blahblahblah.”
The second comes under the general heading of “Yes, I do think it would be easier for me if God wasn’t so hard on me.” The believer isn’t really saying God is wrong, though. They’re actually just admitting to their own “weakness.” And, of course, to their own fortitude in nevertheless sticking to the hard but just path.
But in both cases the believers do seem to think this absolves them of the charge of “making God into their own (moral) image.”
I guess that’s one way in which religion differs from schizophrenia. Schizophrenics often know that what the voices are telling them to do, is wrong, but they end up doing their bidding in an attempt to get a bit of quiet.
Well, Papal infallibility has only been invoked twice so far – retrospectively even in this case of the IC.
Give it time …
Papal infalliblty was only confirmed and defined in 1870, so when this was said he wasn’t infalliable but there is a work around to back date the papal infalliblity due to wording and actions. Isn’t learning fun?
Catholic retcon!
This is the one doctrine of the Church that is indisputably true! None of us, including Mary, was born with original sin.
Was Mary even born?
I actually LIKE the Immaculate Conception because it reminds me of aphids! Mary had to be born sinless to PREPARE for the birth of Jesus – that is, some ‘advance work’ had to be done in the previous generation so that Jesus could be born. Conversely, aphids often need two generations to do the opposite: to go FROM summer parthenogenesis (virgin births!) TO fall sexual reproduction. Seen from this perspective, the ludicrous story of the Immaculate Conception becomes more amusing than ‘nauseating’!
BTW – it is unwise to ask if ‘spotlessness’ resides in mtDNA. If you go down that road, you have to make up stories to explain where the bearded Jesus got his Y chromosome, and how he circumvented the absence of parthenogenesis in mammals because of genomic imprinting!
Yes, I found this bit of time travel to be a bit of a stretch:
“…the most Blessed Virgin Mary, … by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin,”
But he hadn’t done it yet, to earn those merits. What if he’d chickened out in the Garden of Gethsemene? He had free will to do so, didn’t he?
Theology such as this reminds me of nothing so much as boys arguing over which comic book hero would be the last one standing in a cage fight.
Superman would win with his laser eyes!
No, Batman would whip out the Batshield and reflect the lasers back at Superman and kill him!
You’re both worng! The Hulk would smash the cage and hurl the entire planet Krypton on the ring, crushing Batman and annihilating Superman with all that Kryptonite!
Sucker! Spiderman’s web would stop the planet in its tracks!
I still haven’t figured out if it’s better to patiently observe that there isn’t a storybook that’s been more thoroughly debunked than the Bible…or to mock the believers for still thinking that animals can talk in magic gardens tended by angry giants, that talking plants give magic wand lessons to reluctant heroes, and that zombies like having their intestines fondled.
Cheers,
b&
Jeetos. Jitlins. Jeez-doodles.
The difference between the comic book debates (which I’ve been in), and religious debates: the comic book debaters know that comics are pure fiction, breaking physics left and right for the sake of a fun story. The religious debating scripture? Not so much.
Hail hoo-haw, yippity zing dang, full of zippity, ummmmm… oogedy boogedy!! Did I scare away the boogety boo-boos yet? Lol.
When I was in (Catholic) high school, we had to take a different religion class each of the four years. One year was focused on scripture and one was focused on Church doctrine. The Church doctrine course was much more difficult than the scripture course, because it required memorization of all of these ridiculous and convoluted justifications for the doctrines that were unique to Catholicism. And we were told that the purpose of the doctrine class was to prepare us to be “good Catholics” who would know how to “defend our faith” when necessary, and that pressure made the class even more stressful/difficult.
Also, as a child, I wanted so badly to be just like Mary. I would imagine that’s a pretty common feeling among girls who grow up Catholic. And I’d wager that’s one of the primary causes of the “Catholic guilt” (especially pertaining to sexuality) that many of us can never quite shake, no matter how much distance we put between ourselves and our Catholic pasts.
But don’t Catholic girls enjoy sex more than non-Catholic girls because of that guilt? Seems like a fair trade-off 🙂
You have read Marina Warner’s Alone of All Her Sex, right? If not…lose no time.
I actually hadn’t heard of it before, but I’ll definitely get a hold of it. Thanks!
And the Omnipotent sky daddy couldn’t take two of the worst of his/her/its Creation (one male and one female)and have them produce a Perfect son? Very, very strange indeed!
Ur doin it rong!
Logic is the process of starting with premises and inductively determining the set of possible consequences of those premises.
Theology is the process of starting with conclusions and determining what set of premises can be twisted into supporting those conclusions if you squint hard enough.
The Inconsiderate Contravention is an exercise in theology, not logic. And attempting to insert logic into theology is no more welcome than attempting to insert an appendage into a pre-zombificated Jesus’s intestines. (Though one never knows…what with all those male disciples who loved him most, maybe he was into that sort of thing.)
Cheers,
b&
I was surprised that my Catholic neighbour thought ‘Immaculate Conception’ referred to J’s virgin birth; I learned during my confirmation preparation that Article 15 ‘Of Christ alone without Sin’ of the Anglican 39 Articles of Faith was specifically to save us C of E Christians from that unbiblical belief.
I suspect a lot of Catholics think the immaculate conception refers to “no Joseph jizm in Jesus”.
hmmmmm goes nicely to a gospel beat . . . .
There’s NO Joseph JIZM in Je – sus
All this stuff about Mary was the first to go when I started losing my Catholicism for exactly the reasons Jerry gives here.
I guess Jesus was born without sin, too (I don’t know my Bible well enough to say that with certainty), but is “spotlessness” transmitted through the mitochondrial DNA? And if it is, why weren’t Mary’s own parents, and other ancestors, “spotless” as well? They were all, presumably, sinful descendants of Adam and Eve.
WELL… ::deep inhalation::
According to Aquinas in Question 81 (and several others), original sin is passed to the child through the semen. So we’re all guilty, cause our dads passed us their guilt through their sperm. Awesome.
But wait- how can someone be guilty for something they were born with? Aquinas asks the same question!
“…the fact of having a defect by the way of origin seems to exclude the notion of guilt, which is essentially something voluntary. Wherefore granted that the rational soul were transmitted, from the very fact that the stain on the child’s soul is not in its will, it would cease to be a guilty stain binding its subject to punishment; for, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. iii, 5), “no one reproaches a man born blind; one rather takes pity on him.””
Exactly! The child didn’t do anything wrong, so how can we blame them?
Fear not, theology finds a way.
It turns out that all men born of Adam are actually one man. We’re part of him, so his actions are our actions. Of course!
It’s really interesting to keep reading down the page as Aquinas comes up with completely legitimate inconsistencies in his wacky theology, and then rationalizes them away with even more ridiculous contortions of logic.
My favorite, and this answers Jerry’s question, is where Aquinas says that if Eve had sinned and not Adam, we wouldn’t have inherited original sin because it has to come through the semen! Damn, we were so close!
So I guess Jesus was born without sin (even though no one talks about it?), because there was no semen involved.
Now if we could just create more babies from ova sans sperm, we’d eventually have a population of original-sinless humans! 😀
My html failed somehow. Here is Question 81: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2081.htm
“According to Aquinas in Question 81 (and several others), original sin is passed to the child through the semen. So we’re all guilty, cause our dads passed us their guilt through their sperm. Awesome.”
Huh. Must be the first time in the history of the Church that women aren’t blamed–of course, as you know, women were originally at fault. If Eve hadn’t eaten an apple, we’d now all be standing around naked in a huge English garden, contemplating our badminton scores.
Blaming it on the sperm has less to do with not being anti-women than it has to do with bad biology.
There was an ancient belief that the baby came entirely from the sperm, and it just developed in the mother.
Well, that’s what one might call in the jargon a motivated belief. Women are just incubators, thus basically unimportant.
…& men are parasitic wasps!
Sorry!
Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious.
🙁
Not that ancient really. It only came about with the invention of the microscope and a solid case of pareidolia.
Ironically this was the scientific basis for Church’s current view that life begins at contraception. Of course, by the time they thought up that bit of dogma, science had moved on and realised that children do not arrive fully formed in the father’s sperm.
Greg wrote about it earlier in the month…
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/development-is-epigenetic/
“life begins at contraception.”
Oh, that’s a funny slip there. I assume you meant “conception”.
Not necessarily. Remember, these folks are using the “rhythm method.”
Here’s the thing though:
Eve was pregnant (or had already given birth) when she ate the fruit.
Q:At conception Adam had yet to eat from the tree. The child never ate from the tree, and had no part in the act. How does the child, and us, his descendants, carry any guilt or consequence of the sin?
For Extra Credit, answer in such a way that does not imply abortion is OK.
No. There’s was no sex until after The Fall. (The Yahweh as a boy hypothesis does a good job of suggesting why sex was The Fall.)
Cain and Abel were not born until after the Expulsion.
There was no sex until AFTER the Fall? And this is described as paradise?
No “asex” for algae or bacteria?! They do not live long so I assume god was giving them eternal life until people invented sex?!
Comical!
Read it inside. Basically the first thing Adam and Eve do is get to “knowing” in the Biblical sense. They had sex alright.
On that note, a Midrash (part of a Jewish commentary on the Torah from the early first Millennium) says that Adam had sex with every animal in the garden to check if any were compatible “partners” for him (before the creation of Eve).
To be honest, it is not as clear-cut as you indicate.
What is clear that in the first version, YHWH told them to make molto bambinos, and in the rib version, Adam did say that all men shall dance the horizontal tango with his wife, but the story never mentioned whether they actually did what was advised. No-where in their does it say anything about Eve becoming pregnant.
God specifically tells Adam one thing and one thing only: Make babies. You’d think Adam, being created without sin (and being a male), would get right on that.
One might assume that Adam would have got on with the job, but that remains pure speculation. (About a pure fiction, I know!)
Adam had just a minute earlier defied YHWH’s most important instruction, so the smart money is on Adam having ignored him on this one as well!
But they were told to multiply right off the bat, more than a chapter before the story of the sin even begins. There is no indication from the text that Adam did not follow Gods commands in this matter (although, to be fair, there is no indication in the text for many religious beliefs).
This from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Original sin is described as a state of being, the imperfect nature of humans, rather than a specific act. The sinful act is still Adam’s and is not what’s transmitted.
Great stuff, Tim. Thanks!
All religion makes stuff up. Evangelicals make stuff up as much as do the Catholics. And Ken Ham is a champ at making stuff up.
But not to worry. The rapture is about to happen. So if you find any Christians around tomorrow, you will know that they were not true Christians, else they would not have been left behind.
I think you’re mistaken as to timing. As I understand it, the Apocalypse STARTS tonight at 6pm, but the rapturing process will continue through October. However, I think you should be alert for zombies immediately after 6pm (do make adjustments for your appropriate time zone.)
The rants by Camping I’ve read have been unclear on the rapturing schedule (he’s a rambler), but I thought the whole point of a rapture was to reward the faithful by letting them skip the tribulation.
Nope. Camping believes we are already in the tribulation, and have been since 1988. He’s “post-trib”: he believes the rapture comes at the end of the tribulation. Not sure how many evangelicals are pre-trib vs. post-trib, but both theologies exist. It’s another example of how religious “truths” tend to splinter and diverge.
6 pm in which time zone?
I don’t be knowing. I live in US Mountain time zone, so that’s when I’m going to be looking for zombies. I’m pretty sure there’s a few buried in my front yard.
It’s supposed to be 6 PM local time. No, seriously, that’s what Camping has been saying. No idea if that takes daylight savings time or equivalent into account.
There was no rapture in Norfolk (England) but it was a sunny day – I heard a blackbird (Turdus merula) sing at 6pm, so maybe he was announcing that it was cancelled!
Not to worry–the CDC’s on top of it:
http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp
Who does your photoshops, Dr. Coyne?
Virgin birth…
2000 years ago, in a bar in Bethleem, two jews are having a pint. Then one says to the other:
-“Well, that’s a nice story Joseph, but you’re gonna have to mary that slut!”
Growing up in a Catholic system during the early- to mid-sixties was quite an experience. My grade school clung to the pre-Vatican II conservatism while my high school was more progressive (thank the nonexistent gods for a secular university!). The noncanonical tripe we got fed was unbelievable. Two examples:
The reason tabby cats have an ‘M’-shaped mark on their foreheads is because a cat climbed into the manger with a colicky baby Jesus and purred him to sleep. His mothe was so grateful that she marked the cat’s head with her initial. (Not only does that presuppose that she was literate, but also that she would have used the alphabet of the hated conqueror – much less assume Lamarckism).
Another was that the red berries on holly branches are from baby Jesus’ blood after he pricked his finger on a leaf. I got into real trouble on this one, because I raised my hand and asked where holly plants came from before they had berries for seeds.
Thunder is angels bloling (not it’s not – everybody knows it’s Thor’s hammer), and all other kinds of nonsense were doled out to us in and out of classrooms, by teachers and parents. It’s a wonder there are any people who manage to escape Catholicism sane.
Well done for the Ilex angle!
“bloling”? LOLing?
“bowling”
Substitute Parakeet for Paraclete & it all makes sense!
Duns Scotus? – father of the term Dunce. Theologians are indeed dunces.
Christ has two natures, one divine and one human according to catholic views since the council of Chalcedon. This is not in the bible either but was made up as all theology is, as you point out. Plenty disagreed then & much blood was spilt in the Byzantine Empire over this sort of nonsense.
You know, I think it’s important to remember that the Bible is itself an exercise in theology. It’s authoritative only in the sense that The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is “authoritative.”
Even the authors of the Gospels couldn’t keep their lines straight. Was Joseph’s father Heli or Jacob?
Using the Gospels as authoritative sources on the life and times of Jesus is as meaningful as using Peisander as an authoritative source on the life and times of Heracles…or Rowling as an authoritative source on the life and times of the Potters.
Cheers,
b&
You are right.
Well, Peisander’s (not the Spartan general, you understand) “Heracleia” did spawn a number of enjoyable 1950s films.
Mostly bioactive films, as I understand, with which I imagine Prof. Coyne is conversant. I hope that has not “reduced” your apatite [sic].
Happy Rapture, everyone!
(Is there any other kind?)
I don’t know. As an outsider in a Catholic community, I was always rather fond of Mary. I thought the reverence for her was tied to a desire for something human in relation to the Trinity. I mean, you have a genocidal Father, a suicidal Son and a psychotic Holy Spirit. That’s a bizarre realm up there. Somebody’s got to represent us. That’s Mary.
And I’m surprised that nobody’s referenced the favorite joke among Catholics. “Let any one of you who is without sin…” Whack. “You know what, Mom, sometimes you really piss me off.”
Minor quibble with what Sili stated somewhere above :
“Schizophrenics often know that what the voices are telling them to do, is wrong”
This is in fact not correct, it is one of the diagnostic features of schizophrenia that the afflicted lack any kind of insight into their delusions.
As to Mary, funnily enough, if you believe Matthew 13, she is supposed to have had 4 children(i.e.Jesus’ brothers), which one assumes would have had some kind of effect on her immaculate birth canal. The logic leading to the immaculate conception and assumption ideas btw commits the fallacy of denial of the antecedent, “if you sin you die, Mary didn’t sin, therefore Mary couldn’t have died”. It’s all very cute.
A minor quibble with:
I know at least one formally diagnosed florid schizophrenic for whom this was the case, at least for a part of the time. He was realy quite intelligent, and was able to (through the fog) gain considerable insight into his condition. He was able to “self-medicate” by blasting his ears with headphones blaring “monotonous” melodies, and thereby mask the voices in his head.
He did not “any kind of insight” into his condition in fact: the reverse.
Read:
He did not “LACK any kind of insight” into his condition
My Kingdom for an edit facility!
Catholicism is a weird form of polytheism. My parents and grandparents were Catholic, and Mary is certainly the #1 deity in Catholicism, way above God or Jesus. There were Madonnas all over my grandparents’ house. It’s odd that such a patriarchal religion would have a woman as the chief deity, but maybe that’s how they sold Catholicism best to mothers. After Mary, there are a few saints like Saint Anthony, Saint Francis, Saint Clare, Saint Joseph that are big deals. Down the list of deities to be worshipped are Jesus or God.
What I’ve never understood is why the Immaculate Conception doesn’t invalidate the entire framework of salvation. If God can simply choose to make a person sinless at birth and in perpetuity, why not do that for everyone? No blood-sacrifice or hellfire or nonsensical decisions required.
I’ve seen Christians say that such a state would make our choice to love God meaningless and robotic, but from the Catholic perspective that must not be a problem, since they revere Mary above all other mortals.
Archie Bunker also said,”Faith is something that you believe that nobody in his right mind would believe.”
It’s all made up by people who couldn’t explain much of what we take for granted; gravity, the sun – you know, stuff. And citing the document which codifies this as “proof” of a deity (and/or a non-monotheistic “trinity”) is just circular reasoning nonsense.
Further, believing in a higher being has absolutely nothing to do with religion, which depens on a combination of fear, intimidation and rote behavior to create a “believer”. Oh, and amass some pretty significant coin on the way.
Why well-educated, informed and intelligent people who would otherwise not permit anyone to tell them what to do or think, permit others to do precisely that in this circumstance called religion is truly astounding.