\
  The most prestigious law school admissions discussion board in the world.
BackRefresh Options Favorite

criticism of Augustine on the problem of evil

i liked this section from leonard peikoff's lecture on augus...
Aphrodisiac brethren
  10/07/22
...
Floppy fishy partner field
  10/07/22
you may enjoy this snippet of Rand: “It does not ma...
Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks
  10/07/22
Good passage and analysis, ty. It's too bad that Rand/Objec...
Aphrodisiac brethren
  10/07/22
glad you liked the passage. respectfully, I think positin...
Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks
  10/07/22
I appreciate your response, and to be fair, it's been decade...
Aphrodisiac brethren
  10/07/22
> If you've seen this common (wrong, in your mind) critic...
Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks
  10/07/22
Ty. I have Peikoff's book The Ominous Parallels, so perhaps...
Aphrodisiac brethren
  10/07/22
I'd recommend giving careful treatment to "The Virtue o...
Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks
  10/07/22
Never read past the 1st page of any of her books, but did sh...
Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo
  10/07/22
not specifically that I recall. but in terms of something to...
Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks
  10/07/22
Honestly I didn’t like that link, sticking to a rigid ...
Aphrodisiac brethren
  10/07/22
I think there's a big clash of perspectives here. One way to...
Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks
  10/07/22
you mean to *me*? okay, fair question. morality consists of...
Aphrodisiac brethren
  10/07/22
You seem to be focusing on who the beneficiary of your activ...
Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks
  10/07/22
Thanks, I'll give it a read.
Aphrodisiac brethren
  10/07/22
Without artificially induced "morality" we would b...
Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo
  10/07/22
the nature of man is different than that of the other animal...
Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks
  10/08/22
Ok then let's keep up the 2,000 year quest to get everyone o...
Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo
  10/08/22
Ecclesiasties is the best on this, fuck it god is an ass all...
Excitant opaque electric furnace ticket booth
  10/07/22
lol, not exactly my reading but i like your synopsis
Dun Digit Ratio
  10/07/22
It's not just deterministic, it's circular. It assumes the t...
Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo
  10/07/22
Anyone who looks on evils so great must acknowledge the trag...
Mischievous gaming laptop native
  10/07/22
This is the excuse everyone gives for not taking SSRIs.
Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo
  10/07/22
explain
Mischievous gaming laptop native
  10/07/22
They say you can't experience pleasure without pain, happine...
Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo
  10/07/22
lol wtf
Avocado Seedy Yarmulke
  10/07/22
...
Aphrodisiac brethren
  10/07/22
...
Floppy fishy partner field
  10/07/22
...
Aphrodisiac brethren
  10/08/22
...
Aphrodisiac brethren
  10/10/22
God has ultimate power. He used this power to permit free wi...
Razzmatazz carnelian parlor
  10/10/22
peikoff is criticizing catholic dogma in the OP quote which ...
Aphrodisiac brethren
  10/10/22
look, it's been well established that catholic "scholar...
Pearly Passionate Locale
  10/10/22
It's a fun intellectual exercise.
Razzmatazz carnelian parlor
  10/10/22
I suppose I dispute the claim "If man has free will to ...
Razzmatazz carnelian parlor
  10/10/22
Why didn't he do something about Russia in 1945?
Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo
  10/10/22


Poast new message in this thread



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 3:16 PM
Author: Aphrodisiac brethren

i liked this section from leonard peikoff's lecture on augustine's perspective of knowledge and reality, reproduced below

---

We now have the problem of evil in acute form: "Why did God include so much evil, so much suffering, in His play?"

The Mainchees thought the only solution was to say that God is limited, that there is a Devil and he is responsible for evil. Christianity repudiated this as heretical.

Why then does God create or allow evil?

Part of the time, Augustine takes the view that there is no evil. If you saw God's ultimate purpose, you would see that everything is really good.

But more typically, Augustine takes the Neo-Platonic solution - evil is the absence of the perfection and reality that is inherent in the creature being non-God.

All things in this world are necessarily infected with a metaphysical deficiency. God from this point of view couldn't have created a perfect world, a world without evil, because if you think of God as the source of light we're now at the region where it's dark.

It follows that all men, insofar as they're semi-real members of this semi-real world, are also inherently infected with evil.

The Church and Augustine accepted this view fully - they explicitly denied that man, on his own, has any choice about being good - he is helplessly evil by birth. And that is the doctrine of "Original Sin."

This became official with the condemnation of Pelagius, an early 5th century Christian monk. He held that each human soul enters the world sinless, that it has free will, is capable on its own of shaping its destiny by its own choices, and therefore is responsible for its actions, and properly to be judged by God. Pelagius denied any intrinsic wickedness in man. This view was formally condemned as a heresy because it made man too independent of God. The reasoning was if man could achieve virtue on his own by his own will then virtue would be his accomplishment, not God's, and it wouldn't therefore be true that everything was caused by God, and besides, the whole Christian scheme of Christ coming to earth and being crucified to redeem man would become unnecessary then.

If man has free will to achieve virtue on his own, he wouldn't need to be saved by divine intercession; and yet Christ is supposed to be the savior without which man is lost. It is essential therefore to Christianity's dogma; and therefore Pelagius was condemned and the doctrine was taken that man on his own without help from God is inherently corrupt, wicked, and helpless. He cannot take a step in the direction of virtue on his own.

Christianity in this respect is fully deterministic; free will is incompatible with man's inherent evil, and with God's rigid predestination, with the doctrine that only God has causal efficacy; that everything is part of God's play, and that man is merely a puppet pulled by the strings worked by God.

If man has free will, what happens to this view that God determines everything that occurs, to say nothing of what happens to the view that God knows, in advance, everything that will occur?

If Christianity is deterministic on many counts, it is incapable of accepting determinism consistently for other reasons.How can God hold man responsible for playing the part that God wrote him? How can God hold man responsible for an evil he couldn't have avoided? If there's no free will, isn't it hopelessly unfair for God to praise and condemn? Isn't it senseless for God to promulgate moral rules? Isn't it unfair for him to send men to Heaven or Hell?

Christianity is therefore caught in a desperate problem - there must be absolute determinism, there must be free will.

There are some devices by which Augustine tried to combine these two, to have his freewill while eating it too, however there is no possible solution on his premises, and every solution Augustine gives he contradicts elsewhere.

One view of his on this question is as follows, which he took over from Paul. At certain points, Augustine limits free will to Adam. Adam was free to choose whether to obey God or not. Adam committed the original sin, and this was inherited by all his descendants, so now we have no choice; but still God validly punishes us because our first ancestor sinned volitionally. This is the line that Milton took in Paradise Lost.

It is a hopeless solution, because it simply takes the question back to "Was Adam free?" And the same considerations as to why no man can have free will on this philosophy apply equally to Adam. Was it possible for Adam to have used his free will as such to be perfectly moral and virtuous? Well if so the neoplatonist answer to evil is wrong; that means evil is not inherent in the metaphysical setup. If this sin were really Adam's then it's not God who is responsible and so God is not the author of everything that occurs and so on.

Moreover, even supposing you solve this problem, where is the justice in condemning all men for the sin of one? No intelligible answer has ever been given to this. That is a dogma which must be accepted on faith.

On the issues of evil and freedom, therefore, the upshot is a mass of contradictions in Augustine and in Christianity. It goes like this:

1) God is the cause of everything; and yet, He is not responsible for evil.

2) This world and man are inherently evil; and yet man is responsible for his sins and properly to be condemned by God for them.

3) Man is helpless to be virtuous on his own, yet he is to bear responsibility for vices he cannot alter.

These are the foundations for which we enter Augustine's ethics...



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296150)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 3:22 PM
Author: Floppy fishy partner field



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296185)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 3:29 PM
Author: Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks

you may enjoy this snippet of Rand:

“It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable claim upon him—it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man.

“The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.

“A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.

“Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a ‘tendency’ to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.

“What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge—he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil—he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor—he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire—he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy—all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was—that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love—he was not man.

“Man’s fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he’s man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives.

“They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296220)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 3:34 PM
Author: Aphrodisiac brethren

Good passage and analysis, ty. It's too bad that Rand/Objectivism's ultimate philosophical solution is to deny collectivism entirely, and raise to their #1 objective selfish (boomer) materialism. It's a philosophy that could only ever have been developed in a half-developed, half-colonized America with bountless natural resources and endless opportunity; but it is completely contrary to man's nature as a social animal, and especially a social animal keen to being suckered by endless narrative scams for minority (especially Jewish) control. It's why Objectivism has never (and will never, imo) catch on and be taken seriously; it's understanding of human psychology is fundamentally incorrect.

(Still, though, their criticisms of existing dogma are very helpful.)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296246)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 3:46 PM
Author: Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks

glad you liked the passage.

respectfully, I think positing that short-sighted boomer "selfishness" and collectivism are the only two alternatives and fitting Objectivism into that framework reflects a very very very common misunderstanding of Objectivism I've seen a thousand times. The Objectivist believes in the pursuit of one's long term, rational self interest. This is frequently misunderstood as short-sighted "materialism" as you put it. But an Objectivist would e.g. turn down a job if it clashed with their moral principles, and that it would be *in their self interest to do so* as understood from the Objectivist perspective. Whereas the grasping mediocrities to whom the common understanding of "selfishness" might be applied typically lack moral principles to consider betraying in the first place.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296311)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 3:53 PM
Author: Aphrodisiac brethren

I appreciate your response, and to be fair, it's been decades since I read Atlas Shrugged and am working through Peikoff's lecture series on philosophy now, but still have a layman's opinion on Objectivism itself. (It does seem to me, intrinsically, that objectivity (which I am confounding with objectivism here, probably wrongly, which you may object to) is impossible except in hard math, and the best we can do is a rough approximation based off experience; and therefore I am wary of any claims to objectivity. It's the same reason why Ben Shapiro says "facts don't care about your feelings" then turns around and is a rat-faced subjectivist). If you've seen this common (wrong, in your mind) criticism of Objectivism all over the place, could it not be that instead of all the laymen being ignorant, that there's at least a problem with Objectivism's branding and messaging?

Anyway I will keep listening to Peikoff and see what he says specifically about Objectivism when I get to that part in the lectures...

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296343)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 4:12 PM
Author: Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks

> If you've seen this common (wrong, in your mind) criticism of Objectivism all over the place, could it not be that instead of all the laymen being ignorant, that there's at least a problem with Objectivism's branding and messaging?

Various expositions of the Objectivist ethics, which is the area that tends to cause the most confusion, have been offered, in different form (non-fiction, fiction, lecture). I think the main issues are that 1) Objectivism substantively disagrees in important ways with the dominant morality as accepted by *both* the "left" and the "right" and thus lacks many friendly people who might serve as somewhat accurate communicators of Objectivist ideas 2) most people, and particularly lay people, can't be bothered to read or critically think much, 3) the institution that might theoretically be best able to mediate between Objectivist ideas and the wider culture, academia, is hyper-leftist and has been exceedingly hostile to Objectivism from day one, especially due to Objectivism's challenge to the *moral* monopoly of leftism.

Given all that, it takes a person of rare initiative, open-mindnedess, and intellectual curiosity to try to read enough and grasp enough of Objectivist ideas to even have any honest, first-handed idea of what those ideas are. So that's a limiting factor.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296485)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 4:15 PM
Author: Aphrodisiac brethren

Ty. I have Peikoff's book The Ominous Parallels, so perhaps that, in addition to the lectures, will give me some additional insight into the philosophy.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296496)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 5:10 PM
Author: Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks

I'd recommend giving careful treatment to "The Virtue of Selfishness" fwiw

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296818)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 4:23 PM
Author: Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo

Never read past the 1st page of any of her books, but did she presage shitlibs conflating whiteness with original sin?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296547)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 5:12 PM
Author: Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks

not specifically that I recall. but in terms of something topical, she does talk about the phenomenon of mass "civil disobedience" (so common in the George Floyd era) and where it leads http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4742841&mc=48&forum_id=2#41779691

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296832)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 5:51 PM
Author: Aphrodisiac brethren

Honestly I didn’t like that link, sticking to a rigid morality as described in the link (a deontological morality for its own sake) is a losing proposition against any group that seeks out power amorally for the pursuit of power. seems like another example of objectivism misunderstanding human nature and mistaking ought for is.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296990)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 7:29 PM
Author: Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks

I think there's a big clash of perspectives here. One way to start to bridge it might be if you gave a short, simple summary of what you think morality consists of

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45297444)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 7:31 PM
Author: Aphrodisiac brethren

you mean to *me*? okay, fair question. morality consists of looking after the wellbeing of a concentric circle of family, friends, and people who share similar backgrounds (religious, cultural, and genetic) at the expense of those who do not. to be moral is to promote the interests of the people within the circles; to be amoral is to promote the interests of outsiders for individualistic, personal benefit at the expense of people within the circles. it is sometimes but not always zero-sum. in this way one can best promote the longterm, multi-generational survival rates of one's own offspring and their descendants.

you'll note that my definition of morality is a fluid, consequentialist one; what promotes the health, wealth and happiness of the people that *I* care about?

there are no such things as intrinsic rights, nor are there such things as intrinsic laws to be followed for their own sake; laws are created by the rulers to benefit the rulers and they can be changed by the rulers, or by the people that take power from the rulers. *everything* ultimately comes down to brute force, or fooling people to be suckered by the rulers via propaganda to relinquish their rights without putting up a fight. darwin was right; it's survival of the fittest; not fittest in terms of brute strength but in terms of cunning and guile to make one's enemies give up without even putting up a fight.

I think you can probably see how my opinion on shitlib protests (which was led by Jews using blacks as footsoldiers as a cynical, deceptive way to strip power from the ruling white, Christian leaders) would differ from the Objectivist critique.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45297459)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 7:48 PM
Author: Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks

You seem to be focusing on who the beneficiary of your activities should be and also seem to be defining morality in social terms.

The Objectivist approach is to say that morality is "a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life." So it's starting at a very different level. It looks at why man needs values, what man's fundamental nature is, and proceeds to define how to live in accordance with that nature, emphasizing certain specific values (such as Productiveness and Pride, but above all Rationality). It does address the issue of, say, how to appropriately treat and care for your family and how to approach friendships, but that is a question of applying morality to the details of your life – it is not the fundamental *subject matter* of morality but merely an applied example.

One important concrete example to bring about the contrast in perspectives here is that Objectivism says *you would be in desperate need of morality on a desert island*. The way you've defined it above, morality would have no applicability to such a situation, since there would be no "concentric circle" of family or others to promote. So that seems like a fundamental disagreement of note. To quote Miss Rand here:

> You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today—and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.

Anyway try reading "The Objectivist Ethics" in the Virtue of Selfishness at least, and anything else in that volume that strikes your fancy, and see if you find it persuasive or have objections.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45297533)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 8:01 PM
Author: Aphrodisiac brethren

Thanks, I'll give it a read.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45297589)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 11:52 PM
Author: Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo

Without artificially induced "morality" we would be like every other animal on the planet God created. What's the point of making it a kill or be killed world for all those other animals and then demanding we behave differently?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45298545)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 8th, 2022 11:25 PM
Author: Sable well-lubricated national security agency wagecucks

the nature of man is different than that of the other animals due to the rational faculty, and thus he needs a code of values to guide his actions whereas the animals can just go by their instincts

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45302677)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 8th, 2022 11:29 PM
Author: Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo

Ok then let's keep up the 2,000 year quest to get everyone on the same page.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45302687)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 3:49 PM
Author: Excitant opaque electric furnace ticket booth

Ecclesiasties is the best on this, fuck it god is an ass all you can do is get by

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296317)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 4:14 PM
Author: Dun Digit Ratio

lol, not exactly my reading but i like your synopsis

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296491)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 4:16 PM
Author: Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo

It's not just deterministic, it's circular. It assumes the truth of the supposition that "anything made by God must be imperfect" in support of the argument that "that's why things are imperfect."

But apart from that this isn't how I remember Augustine at all. I thought "love" entered the picture here at some point, but maybe I'm thinking of some other ancient shitlib.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296504)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 4:18 PM
Author: Mischievous gaming laptop native

Anyone who looks on evils so great must acknowledge the tragedy of it all. And if anyone experiences them without anguish, his condition is even more tragic, since he remains serene by losing his humanity.

- Augustine of Hippo

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296508)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 4:20 PM
Author: Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo

This is the excuse everyone gives for not taking SSRIs.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296520)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 4:20 PM
Author: Mischievous gaming laptop native

explain

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296526)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 4:24 PM
Author: Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo

They say you can't experience pleasure without pain, happiness without sadness etc. I have no idea whether that's true btw but I'm not trusting armchair psychology by this ancient weirdo.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45296560)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 11:57 PM
Author: Avocado Seedy Yarmulke

lol wtf

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45298579)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 7:02 PM
Author: Aphrodisiac brethren



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45297340)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 7th, 2022 9:18 PM
Author: Floppy fishy partner field



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45297903)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 8th, 2022 11:32 AM
Author: Aphrodisiac brethren



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45299783)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 10th, 2022 11:20 AM
Author: Aphrodisiac brethren



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45308874)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 10th, 2022 12:23 PM
Author: Razzmatazz carnelian parlor

God has ultimate power. He used this power to permit free will, so as to accurately judge souls and deem them worthy or not. What's the inconsistency?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45309203)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 10th, 2022 12:27 PM
Author: Aphrodisiac brethren

peikoff is criticizing catholic dogma in the OP quote which denies free will

"If man has free will to achieve virtue on his own, he wouldn't need to be saved by divine intercession; and yet Christ is supposed to be the savior without which man is lost. It is essential therefore to Christianity's dogma; and therefore Pelagius was condemned and the doctrine was taken that man on his own without help from God is inherently corrupt, wicked, and helpless. He cannot take a step in the direction of virtue on his own."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45309213)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 10th, 2022 12:29 PM
Author: Pearly Passionate Locale

look, it's been well established that catholic "scholars" are complete fucking retards who spend their entire lifetimes trying to fit square pegs into round holes

just ignore them and live a moral, christian life. pretty sure that omnipotent god can figure out just fine if you deserve to go to heaven or not

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45309217)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 10th, 2022 12:35 PM
Author: Razzmatazz carnelian parlor

It's a fun intellectual exercise.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45309233)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 10th, 2022 12:31 PM
Author: Razzmatazz carnelian parlor

I suppose I dispute the claim "If man has free will to achieve virtue on his own, he wouldn't need to be saved by divine intercession" — it could be we have free will to achieve virtue yet the divine is also needed for actual salvation.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45309222)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 10th, 2022 12:36 PM
Author: Slap-happy Rambunctious Ceo

Why didn't he do something about Russia in 1945?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5207757&forum_id=2#45309234)