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Originally posted by Conrau KIs this coherent with the rest of your beliefs?
In regards to Saints, I suspect that the Catholic position is that God performed said miracle to affirm P as a model of grace and someone worthy of veneration.
Consider this scenario:
Q has cancer.
P is a deceased person worthy of being a model of grace and veneration.
X is a deceased person not worthy of being a model of grace or veneration.
Q petitions P for help and God performs the miracle to affirm P as indicated.
However, applying your analysis, you would have to find that in this same scenario, if Q had petitioned X instead of P, Q would not have been healed.
That is, if Q thinks that some dead pope is saint material and petitions him for intervention, but that pope is actually an X, God cannot allow the healing, lest it affirm that X was a saint. (If God did allow the healing, then X is affirmed as a saint just as P would have been, which would contradict your claim that God uses miracle healings to distinguish saints.)
Do you see the corner you paint yourself into with this analysis? God is bound to letting a guy die of cancer in order to prevent a sainthood; that is, but for Q petitioning X instead of P, Q would have been healed. Is this consistent with the nature of an OOO God?
Originally posted by bbarr
The point of prayer is the expression of humility and the recognition of the necessity of grace.
From a Catholic perspective, the point of [personal] prayer is the deepening of one's Father-child relationship with God. While this certainly entails the expression of humility and the recognition of the necessity of grace, that is not the end of prayer.
Praying for this and that is an abomination.
On the contrary, to the extent that it deepens that relationship with God and brings about the humility you mentioned, it is perfectly natural. The act of asking itself helps the relationship grow.
The problem starts when people treat God as some kind of candy-machine-in-the-sky.
I understand this is irrelevant to your question, but I heard crickets in this thread.
Busy times.
Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Let us not equivocate here. Catholics always resort to "it's not prayer" when others claim that they pray to people other than God. such as Mary or other saints.
More precisely, it's not 'worship'. The word 'prayer' is not univocal in the English language. The difference is easier to demonstrate in the Greek terms (I can look them up for you if you want).
Rather, they are about the coherence of the belief system that would lead somebody to attempt to persuade a dead person to persuade an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God to do something.
While the "persuasion" argument is commonly used in basic cathechetics, it's fairly obvious to most Catholics, upon some reflection as you did, that this isn't the complete picture.
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Originally posted by DoctorScribblesYour grasp of elementary English is pathetic. Do you know what the purpose of a paragraph is? What idea is supposed to be presented in this paragraph:
How did you ever pass the LSAT with such a poor grasp of elementary concepts in critical thinking? To affirm that an implication is true is to affirm that the truth of its consequent follows from the truth of its hypothetical. The implication is not false merely in virtue of its hypothetical being false. This is very basic stuff.
Here is a reme ...[text shortened]... being so obvious is beyond my comprehension. You had to have known you were in for a beatdown.
Is it possible to persuade God? If so, doesn't this mean either that without such persuasion, God would have done the wrong thing, or that subsequent to the persuasion God is doing the wrong thing?
It's rather basic that if you wanted to actually consider the implications that it wasn't possible to persuade God, you would have added a sentence after the second one saying "If not, X".
Whether the formal logical structure is correct or not is irrelevant to me. You have stated that the answer to every question but the third is "no" and the factual premises in three are based on two being true. Here's a remedial example for you to consider:
Can it rain on the Moon? If so, doesn't this mean that there are rain clouds hovering above the Moon or that it can rain without rain clouds?
The second statement is nonsensical once we accept that the first is answered "no". Your third question is equally meaningless once the second question is answered "no" as you state it must be.
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Originally posted by no1marauderYou are simply wrong. That second question is meaningful and its answer is Yes.
Can it rain on the Moon? If so, doesn't this mean that there are rain clouds hovering above the Moon or that it can rain without rain clouds?
The second statement is nonsensical once we accept that the first is answered "no". Your third question is equally meaningless once the second question is answered "no" as you state it must be.
Applying your analysis, one could never reason about any hypothetical situation at all.
Originally posted by DoctorScribblesOriginally posted by DoctorScribbles
From the Catholicism and Posthumous Miracles thread:
[quote]
If you are praying to P for healing you are asking P to talk to God on your behalf. You are believing that P is already in heaven and not in purgatory, and thus is able to converse with God. It is not unlike my going to ark13 and asking him to talk to his father about some matter that c ...[text shortened]... ve that such a God would not heal your cancer unless he was persuaded to by a deceased person?
Does a perfect God require persuasion to do the right thing?
per·suade
-verb (used with object), -suad·ed, -suad·ing.
1. to prevail on (a person) to do something, as by advising or urging: We could not persuade him to wait.
2. to induce to believe by appealing to reason or understanding; convince: to persuade the judge of the prisoner's innocence.
Presumably, we're using definition (1) above.
To answer your question -- no.
Is it possible to persuade God?
No.
Is it coherent to believe that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent and also to believe that petitioning God, either directly or via deceased intermediaries, will affect God's decisions?
That depends on how you define the term 'omnipotent'.
For example, is it coherent to believe that such a God would not heal your cancer unless he was persuaded to by a deceased person?
Petitioning does not equate to persuading.
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Originally posted by lucifershammerIsn't it more accurate to say that Catholics sometimes pray "through" (not to) Mary and the Saints? For example:
Yes.
Are you about to pull off some verbal gymnastics on the word 'pray' now?
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
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Originally posted by DoctorScribblesNo, just hypotheticals that cannot possibly occur in reality. And why would you want to reason about those?
You are simply wrong. That second question is meaningful and its answer is Yes.
Applying your analysis, one could never reason about any hypothetical situation at all.
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Originally posted by no1marauderMany moons ago, observers elsewhere in the universe may have correctly concluded that it could not rain on earth. Those with the foresight to realize that they could nonetheless reason about the entailments of it raining on earth would be more prepared to deal with a rainy earth if it were ever encountered.
No, just hypotheticals that cannot possibly occur in reality. And why would you want to reason about those?
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Originally posted by no1marauderIt is. The ambiguity is in the English word 'pray' itself which, in an archaic sense ("Pray thee, tell me ..." ), also simply refers to petition or asking.
Isn't it more accurate to say that Catholics sometimes pray "through" (not to) Mary and the Saints? For example:
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
So one would be praying (simply asking) Mary and the Saints to pray (petitioning God in an act of worship) for us.
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Originally posted by DoctorScribblesSo you expect that there is some possibility in the future that God might be amenable to persuasion?
Many moons ago, observers elsewhere in the universe may have correctly concluded that it could not rain on earth. Those with the foresight to realize that they could nonetheless reason about the entailments of it raining on earth would be more prepared to deal with a rainy earth if it were ever encountered.
Taking Question 3 first it's:
If GP (God Persuasion) then either X or Y
Taking the answer to Question 2 as "no" (as you said it should be):
If GP, X or Y
Not GP
???????
Fill in the blanks, Mr. Logic.
Originally posted by lucifershammerIt's still used in the archaic sense in legal documents here, most commonly in motions to a judge i.e. Whereas plaintiff prays for judgment ........................
It is. The ambiguity is in the English word 'pray' itself which, in an archaic sense ("Pray thee, tell me ..." ), also simply refers to petition or asking.
So one would be praying (simply asking) Mary and the Saints to pray (petitioning God in an act of worship) for us.