Argument from ignorance aside, one wonders where her personal moral choice to convert came from. She would have to accept that it was God inside of her interfering with her “free will.” Oops. I guess she already had to have believed in free will, which is pretty rare in an atheist. I’d argue that she must not have believed in evolution either, if she had no justification for morality.

Don’t forget “pretentious, transphobic, contemptuous, unfalsifiable shithead.”

I find it ironic that, as opposed as we are in our views, “Zinnia,”

That’s her name, you smug, self-righteous, verbose asshole. Don’t put it in scare quotes. And don’t put “marriage” in sneer quotes, either, you homophobic fuckwad.

Love your assumption, too, that “‘new’ atheists” haven’t “seriously contended” with what you deem important. I have better things to do, like masturbate or bang my fuckbuddy or volunteer for Planned Parenthood.

Shove your christer propaganda up your ass, douchebag. Fuck you and fuck your kiddie-raping, science-denying, misogynist, and homophobic church.

Yes, exactly. I have mentioned in other posts on the topic that there exist liberal congregations “in the Catholic tradition” which are not affiliated with the Vatican. To borrow a metaphor from Libby Anne, this rather seems to me like retaining a very small amount of the dirty bathwater in the hopes of finding a nonexistent baby in it — but it’s far less objectionable than actually affiliating oneself with the RCC.

My first introduction to the existence of these places is that one around here marches every year in the local Pride parade. Philosophical and epistemological problems aside, bully for them I say.

There are such people; they are called sedevacantists and they believe that the Pope is not the heir of St Peter. OTOH the reason they claim this is that ever since Vatican II, the RCC has just been too liberal for them.

But I also agree with James that there are serious ethical issues about participating in the church itself in its present form

Oh, yes, agreed. I never meant to dispute that. The part about Pope Snidely and AIDS and so on was less “counterfactual” and more “actual factual.”

Though interestingly, if you look at the history, modern popes are quite well-behaved, relatively speaking. IIRC, Dante (a Catholic himself) had a whole section of hell reserved for evil popes.

This is essentially what I was getting at when I said it should be *possible* for someone to agree with the starting points of Catholicism while electing not to participate in it as a church given how it’s played out in practice. Where someone might draw the line between Catholicism’s axioms, and where they believe the interpretation of those axioms in terms of current doctrine has gone astray, is probably an individual matter. But I also agree with James that there are serious ethical issues about participating in the church itself in its present form, as this involves affiliating oneself with the real institution, horrific warts and all, not merely some idealized notion of what it should be.