Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt

[PastryGoddess]

Heehee...You're welcome.

I once had a bit of confusion when I first heard of Rocky Mountain Oysters.  At first I wondered how they got oysters up there, then I wondered if it was just a way of cooking the oysters shipped in.

Then I wondered why on earth anyone would eat a bull's testicles.

RMO are IMO chewy, greasy, flavorless unless doused in some kind of sauce.  However, there is the giggle factor in eating them

[ladyknight1]

^

1. Alcohol is usually involved
2. On a dare or to prove one's manhood or womanhood.

[Jocelyn]

hjaye wrote:

There will always be some who believe in the accuracy of the Old Testament in which case you have Elijah who did not die, but ascended up to heaven in a whirlwind.  This will skew the statistics of life being terminal 100% of the time to 99.99999999999999999999999%"

I recall there being one other case too....
 

That was Enoch. And, according to the Roman Catholic Church, the Virgin Mary.
Then there's the YOLT group:Jesus, Lazarus, and assorted other unnamed beneficiaries.
That's why Israel will not allow the burial of enemy combatants within their borders- they have the biggest resurrection rate in the world. 

[Jocelyn]

There could be a quite few agnostic Catholics involved with the school off course, though they would support the Catholic program as much as a gnostic Catholic.

(I think this person forgot that agnosticism says nothing about a persons theism.)

This just made my brain hurt. Agnosticism means taking a 'don't know either way' position, and Catholicism does take a definite position, so I really don't understand how a person could be both.

[Rohanna]

Maybe it means someone who is "culturally" Catholic, and raised in it, but doesn't follow the religion anymore? Perhaps it's similar to a "lapsed" Catholic (You've been baptised, but you don't practice anymore- but you haven't formally renounced the faith or converted to another). I know a lot of them- it's very common in 2nd and 3rd generation children of immigrant Italian/Portuguese families. They don't go to church, and they question or are indifferent to the faith, but they don't want to tick Grandma off- who is as strict a Catholic as the come, usually.

[Addy]

There could be a quite few agnostic Catholics involved with the school off course, though they would support the Catholic program as much as a gnostic Catholic.

(I think this person forgot that agnosticism says nothing about a persons theism.)

This just made my brain hurt. Agnosticism means taking a 'don't know either way' position, and Catholicism does take a definite position, so I really don't understand how a person could be both.

Weeeeellllllll...in its strictest sense, an agnostic believes that it is empirically impossible to have certain knowledge of the existence of God. So, in that sense, an agnostic could believe in God based solely on faith, rather than knowledge.

[BB-VA]

There could be a quite few agnostic Catholics involved with the school off course, though they would support the Catholic program as much as a gnostic Catholic.

(I think this person forgot that agnosticism says nothing about a persons theism.)

This just made my brain hurt. Agnosticism means taking a 'don't know either way' position, and Catholicism does take a definite position, so I really don't understand how a person could be both.

Weeeeellllllll...in its strictest sense, an agnostic believes that it is empirically impossible to have certain knowledge of the existence of God. So, in that sense, an agnostic could believe in God based solely on faith, rather than knowledge.

Exactly.  If I remember correctly, "agnostic" means "not knowing".  I don't KNOW if there is a God, but I have faith that there is one. 

[Diane AKA Traska]

There could be a quite few agnostic Catholics involved with the school off course, though they would support the Catholic program as much as a gnostic Catholic.

(I think this person forgot that agnosticism says nothing about a persons theism.)

This just made my brain hurt. Agnosticism means taking a 'don't know either way' position, and Catholicism does take a definite position, so I really don't understand how a person could be both.

Weeeeellllllll...in its strictest sense, an agnostic believes that it is empirically impossible to have certain knowledge of the existence of God. So, in that sense, an agnostic could believe in God based solely on faith, rather than knowledge.

Exactly.  If I remember correctly, "agnostic" means "not knowing".  I don't KNOW if there is a God, but I have faith that there is one.

The thing is, if you interpret it that way, then absolutely everyone alive is an agnostic.  Which is why it most commonly means "one who doubts but has no faith for or against".

[lady_disdain]

Not really. A lot of people see the fact that the universe exists and that rational, faithful people exist as proof of a higher power.

[MindsEye]

From a column in today's San Francisco Chronicle. It's a tale that wags the dogma

It's the first item in the column. It's a little convoluted & I had to read it a couple of times to get it. A parent has found a great private school, however, "the website seems to stress the Catholic dogma," which as the columnist notes, shouldn't be too surprising, since it's a Catholic school. The parent wonders if there will be enough agnostics involved with the school to "make us feel comfortable."

I think my brain just broke..

This doesn't surprise me. The only private high school in the town I grew up in was a Catholic high school. Every year there were parents upset and writting to the local newspaper about how the Private Catholic school required classes in religion to graduate.

I went to one of the three public high schools...no religion classes required.

  The best private high school where I grew up was a Catholic school run by Ursuline Nuns.  It had an excellent fine and performing arts curriculum, so a lot of people applied for enrollment specifically for the art and theater aspects  (I went there and I loved it) and who weren't Catholic at all.

[snowflake]

This is an old brain hurt but it still makes me shake my head when I think of it.

When DH was in the Marines and we lived on base, we had some very nice next door neighbors who were very religious.   We went to church too, actually even the same services at the chapel, but our spiritual ideals didn't always match up.

For instance, when it came to Halloween, they would not do the door to door thing because they didn't agree with the whole Halloween thing.  Or so they said, because they all dressed up in costume and went to a "harvest festival" at the base chapel where the children would be walking around and getting candy in their bags from various volunteers and having parties. 

From what I've learned from people who do not celebrate Halloween for religious reasons, it's because they don't agree with the holiday's pagan origins, the dressing up to repel the evil spirits who pass between the living and the dead on that one night before All Saint's Day when that veil is lifted?

Now that's fine, to each their own, but doesn't it defeat the purpose of objecting to dressing up in costumes and going door to door for candy when you dress up in costume and go from one person to the next who will drop candy in your bags?  It's doing  basically the same thing but at a church/chapel and calling it something different. 

I didn't say anything about it to our neighbors, partly cause I was impressed by the husband's awesome MIB costume and how he'd rigged up a neuroblaster that looked like the one in the movies.   But it didn't quite make sense to me.

I have known of organizations that will do that sort of thing for children who do not live in safe neighborhoods, like a Trunk Or Treat, so that they can still participate, but this was a base neighborhood we lived in that was really safe.

Way back when I was in HS in the late 80s/early 90s where I lived there was a very paranoid fear that kids were getting into "Satan worship."  Disclaimer: I don't mean to be offensive to people who have been the victim of damaging religious practices.  But back in that time there was a paranoia that it was much more prevalent than it actually was and there was a belief that such practitioners were actively recruiting children en masse from high schools.

So some families forbade Halloween on religious grounds not because of the origins but because they were afraid that their kids would use trick or treating as a front to sneak off and do human sacrifice while summoning portals to hell or something like that.  Church parties were seen as a good way to let your kids get their pagan on for a night each year without worrying that they'd take it too seriously.  This was true of many families who weren't even religious. 

I wasn't allowed to celebrate Halloween because my parents thought corn syrup was a government conspiracy to keep us all dependent like in Brave New World.  But a few times I actually lied and told people that they were anti-devil worship too because I was too embarrassed about them.  (The truth was, my parents were actually pretty cool about letting us play role playing games or do other things that were absolute no-nos for my friends.) 

[RegionMom]

That brought back an old memory-

My parents were conservative, but would host their adult Sunday School class over for costumed Halloween parties, and the kids were sent to the basement playroom, where we would be out of the way, but safe.  (Only way out was the staircase to the kitchen, and I had a much younger brother so the toys were tame.)

I was SHOCKED to see one church kid pull out the "evil" game of Dungeons and Dragons!!! 

Meh, no evil was conjured and life went on...
but I never told my parents, because I might get in trouble, even though I did not play it! 
( I was young enough to want to play with toys, not a boring sit down game with a lot to explain)

[Elisabunny]

hjaye wrote:

There will always be some who believe in the accuracy of the Old Testament in which case you have Elijah who did not die, but ascended up to heaven in a whirlwind.  This will skew the statistics of life being terminal 100% of the time to 99.99999999999999999999999%"

I recall there being one other case too....
 

That was Enoch. And, according to the Roman Catholic Church, the Virgin Mary.
Then there's the YOLT group:Jesus, Lazarus, and assorted other unnamed beneficiaries.
That's why Israel will not allow the burial of enemy combatants within their borders- they have the biggest resurrection rate in the world. 

There's also John the Revelator, who simply didn't die, and if you're Mormon, his buddies the Three Nephites.

[pierrotlunaire0]

I once worked with someone who put her children in the local Catholic school because she felt the public school was so lax.  And then she complained because the nuns were so strict.

Isn't the opposite of lax strict?  And we were not talking corporal punishment, just getting grades marked down for making mistakes.  ("But he was trying!")

[Diane AKA Traska]

Not really. A lot of people see the fact that the universe exists and that rational, faithful people exist as proof of a higher power.

It's still impossible to know.  Faith and knowledge are opposite sides of the coin... it's impossible to have faith in something known... I don't have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, I know it will.