Reply With QuoteI thought the whole point of the Pope, and religion in general, was to stop people having thoughts.
Nobody ever guessed that the new Pope was going to be an American.
What're y'alls thoughts on the new Pope?
I thought the whole point of the Pope, and religion in general, was to stop people having thoughts.
How do you feeeeeeel about the new Pope?
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if all that time, all that effort, all that money and all that brilliance - because you do need brilliance for it - spent on running organised religions and building all those wonderful temples and statues, had been used in the pursuit of pure knowledge about existence.
Science, philosophy, technology - where would it all be? Would we have worked out how to live in peace? Would we have learned how to shepherd the Earth better? Would we have reached other planets or other stars yet? Would we have become immortal already? Would we have discovered the meaning of life? Would be actually have found God?
We have a decent bloke running the magic kingdom and an idiot criminal in charge of the real thing.
Yawn, zealous atheists are the most boring people.Originally Posted by SD
Probably would have destroyed the concept of family, as well as morals and common decency even earlier. Now ask the same question for a world without alcohol & other drugs.
You can't have morals and common decency without religion?
I haven't studied up on it, but the new Pope seems like a good moral leader in the line of Pope Francis.
It's interesting the first US Pope could finally come, still just short of being the first American pope.
(It's good a Latin American Pope came first.)
For my legal podcast I was gonna do a run through for the whole rule of law and democracy thing in the West, and for that, the Gregorian Reforms by Pope Gregory VII played a big role, which itself built off of the Cluny monastary Reforms a generation before.
It seems somehow important to remind people that rule of law, democracy, sovereignty and the state, and all of those things actually came from somewhere, because they're getting maligned left and right as if it's not that big of a deal to go authoritarian as long as it's just targeting those other people and not us. (Pro tip: it never stops itself at just those other people.) And when they say the Papacy is the oldest ongoing elective office and Papal law and Bishopric influence the first source of rights-related duties that held the line against those authoritarian tendencies... Well it's not 100% true on every little point, but it's still in the direction of true in the main and an important thing to remember that the Holy See was the first jurisdiction putting much of what we now think of as the modern world together. This election is a good chance to remember that anyway.
Yep. Humanity and decency were invented in 325 BC. Or maybe it was on Mount Sinai a few centuries earlier. In any case, there was no way it was an evolved, social adaptation for getting along, as found in every other social animal since creation, 6,000 years ago.You can't have morals and common decency without religion?
You certainly can, lol. It's just much less pondered or talked about, when you take away any accountability from one's soul. If you live on the notion that you can just GTA shit and nothing matters anyway as long as you've enjoyed your ride *and you can get away with your misdoings*, then one has much less incentive to be moral, which often includes sacrificing your momentary desires in the face of long term good.You can't have morals and common decency without religion?
Not trying to be super pro-religion btw, I'm agnostic [winning smile and whatever]. It's just basic open-minded life observation of die-hard athetists trending towards hedonism and religious folk trending towards whatever their religion tells then, which, apart from islam ig, tends to beat hedonism.
I don't think that the connection between religion(s) and morality is that straightforward. If "follow our ancient code or you'll go to Hell" is your only motivation for trying live a "good" life, then it's quite likely that your moral compass isn't functioning properly anyway. I just find it kinda odd that religions even are a thing in 2025. Yeah, life is full of mysteries and truly fascinating things that our minds cannot comprehend, so it's easier to just call them miracles or acts of God or something, but that's just lazy and surely so 1500's.
I wonder if even the Pope himself genuinely believes in God. Surely the whole jesus business has to be mostly an act for those people, and it's just the longest-running LARP in the history of mankind. Some people just take it way too seriously.
We have an assassin in Islam and growing that pest.
If your motivation for being a moral person is fear of the consequences, I find that troubling, not reassuring. Surely reason and empathy are preferable, not least because they actually exist. And if people think morality can be derived from religion, they ought to try actually reading those religious books sometime. Much of the morality in those is grotesque, as you might expect from passages authored thousands of years before the Enlightenment.
This makes no sense. It is the religious who can suddenly ask forgiveness at the end and they will be absolved. The rest of us have to live with what we actually are. We do it day to day. We correct ourselves when we see the need. We try not to hurt others because we cannot count on the forgiveness of a magical sky daddy. We have to face ourselves and what we have done. We have to be able to forgive ourselves. And as such we have to hold ourselves to standards more logical and harsh. We are not able to pass along our reasoning ability to another. WE are responsible for our behavior. Hedonist? We all are. We do what brings us pleasure. When we have no fictional character to blame it on and we have to accept it is something from ourselves and only ourselves to blame we are more circumspect. We lay blame where it belongs. Not God. Not the devil. Ourselves.
I know so many religious people who were so much worse in their younger years than atheists. They scared themselves. And they should have. But they needed forgiveness for their misdeeds. Religion came into play then. God forgave them for being assholes. For many it let them continue to be assholes. For some they corrected and are better people now. They are the people the atheists always were now. Only zealots. They repeat empty phrases in meaningless chant like "God is good" instead of actually thinking because thinking is hard. Thinking would force them to accept their behavior as coming from them and therefore a thing they need to change about themselves. God did not do it. The devil did not do it. They did. That they cannot face.
The whole "God forgives" thing is really disturbing to me. I think if you do wrong to someone, the only person who can forgive you is the victim of that wrong. The idea that a third party can grant you forgivenesss is obscene.
I'm not Catholic, so I had no interest in the conclave, but Leo appears to be from a similar mold as Francis, so I'm encouraged to see the largest Christian denomination continuing to move in a direction that better represents Jesus' values than maybe it had in the past. A lot of prominent US Catholics jumped on board the MAGA train and were critical of Francis. Perhaps some of the electors think Leo will counter-balance their influence.
The news show I was watching, I think CBS national, they interviewed some Vatican insider just as the conclave started, and his prediction was Robert Prevost, the cardinal that was elected. Then they interviewed him again after he got the gig to ask how he knew.
To him Prevost was the only one really in the running... His main reasoning were, first, he's a good manager, and people forget the first job of the Pope is to be the executive manager of the Church, he is really good with mediating between the different factions, and he's an extension of Francis's tone and face for the Church that boosts its credibility and influence. And then he walked through the other candidates that some people were talking about and mentioning how they didn't meet that kind of criteria.
But I think its his management ability that they keep mentioning as critical, keeping the Church functioning and level in chaotic times.
That sounds like there was a desire for a caretaker that will keep a steady course through the winds of change. With the US in turmoil and checking out, and the CCP unfriendly toward monotheism, I wonder if the Vatican sees itself taking on more responsibility for promoting western values.
It's been interesting to hear more of the inside game on his election.
Now I'm talking about the bishop or whomever that Stephen Colbert interviewed last night.
According to him, Leo is "the least American of any American cardinal ever", his years working in Peru and speaking fluent Spanish played well with the Latin contingent, and his English played well with the African and Asian contingents since he spoke eloquently in a language they could understand. He was arguing that you can't discount the power of being able to talk to all the different contingents directly and fluently without needing a translator. Then he also mentioned that Leo was the most experienced manager again that the others were saying.
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