Monday, November 10, 2008
Bill Maher (I'm sorry to bring him up again)
I agree with Patrick M, for me personal faith is more important than dogma but here's another thing. The vast majority of us can, if we look hard enough, find various items of faith that we disagree with, that we may even find illogical if not wholely irrational. In the Catholic faith we have the doctrine of transubstantiation, that when the priest consecrates the bread and wine at Mass it literally turns into the Body and Blood of Christ. We also have the Sacrament of Confession and many question why we have to confess our sins to a priest if we are sorry in our hearts. BUT here's the larger point, just because we don't accept everything and btw I don't think we should, reason should never take a back seat to faith, they can and should co-exist, so just because we come across a particular religious item or two (or even three or four but who's counting?) that turns logic on its head we don't turn into little snarky Bill Mahers. We still retain our faith, just because of a couple of technical points we don't say the whole edifice of faith is wrong or somehow corrupt or doesn't have any value or useful purpose. Many people like to say they're spiritual but not religious, I don't know what this is supposed to mean. I'll cut this in two and reserve a philosophical point for my next blog.
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Neither spiritual nor religious, I
ReplyDeletecan agree with you that Maher is
snarky. BTW, caught him on Huckabee's new show the other night. Huck had Richard Dreyfuss and then Oliver Stone. If FoxNews keeps that up, I may become a regular. :)
I find faith to be a thing of beauty and of comfort.
ReplyDeleteI agree Beth. I once had a discussion with a parish priest, you see in the past I liked attending different masses at different parishes in my travels. I'd go on some long day trips say on a Saturday and because I was so far from home I'd pop in wherever. I found the whole experience interesting and liked eveything from the variety of homilies to the church architecture. Anyway this pastor said that's a problem, people going to different churches. He was thinking of course of people supporting one parish, tithing but the way I see it in this day and age if somebody goes to church, any church then he should be happy, just be glad people are going. It kind of bothers me when people of faith criticize each other this way, it's picayune and another problem I have with religion, my way is better than your way.
ReplyDeleteIt's what God thinks that matters of course, not what we mere mortals think.
ReplyDeleteRemember when I said I suffer from CBS or Crowded Brain Syndrome? I'll forget important stuff but the totally irrelevant will embed itself in a brain chip somewhere. Many years ago a caller called up Bob Grant and asked him if he believes in God, he said it was a good question of someone you listen to all the time and his answer was "emotionally yes, intellectually no." Yeah, it's like my brain chip also holds the entire transcript, oh did I just leave something in the oven?
ReplyDeleteYou probably remember that because it made an impression on you, like talk about a cop-out answer that was!
ReplyDeleteI'm still trying to figure it out. He's Catholic too.
ReplyDeleteThere are lots of Catholics in Name Only.
ReplyDeleteI think a talking snake and living in the body of a whale constitute more than a couple of technical points.
ReplyDeleteBut I think the Protestants are the ones who take those things too literally, Catholics are open to interpretation.
ReplyDeleteSo there's a few outright fables in the Bible, the point of this blog is why lose your whole faith over it? That imo is what Bill Maher deals in, so there's a talking snake so I shouldn't go to Church.
ReplyDelete