Recycling subject lines saves trees (was Re: Stopeditingthedamnsubject (was Re: The End OfWesternCivilization (wasRe:RoadRunnernonsense (wasRe: fwd: RE: STFU RE))

[Luke -Jr]

On Tuesday 11 March 2008, Phil Thayer wrote:
> > If one denies a single doctrine of the Faith, they believe in a
> > different 'god', since God is Truth. That is why Muslims, as  well as
> > other heretics such as protestants, worship false gods and are on a road
> > to eternal punishment for it.
>
> And what single doctrine of the Faith do the Muslims and Protestants not
> belief that makes their gods less than your God?

I'm not overly familiar with Islam, but the most obvious heresy would be that 
they deny Our Lord's divinity. Protestants all deny a variety of different 
things, but the most common I think would be their denial of papal 
infallibility, or at least authority.

> If your God is truth and only God knows the Absolute truth, how do you know
> that your truth is the Absolute truth of God.  Who's to say that the
> Protestants are following the Absolute truth of the God that you believe in? 

Protestantism was founded by men. The Catholic Church was founded by God 
Himself, and He guaranteed it would never teach error or mandate evil.

> Or that the Muslims are following the Absolute truth of the God that you
> believe in?  Or maybe they are all following the truth that has been
> revealed to us in their own different ways and they are all right?

If you say Jesus is not God, and I say He is, both of us cannot be right.

> Do you presume to know the Absolute truth of God?  

I follow the Church He founded, protects, and guides. The teachings of the 
Catholic Church are inerrant on matters of faith and morals.

> Wouldn't that put you on his level which would make you a false prophet.

An entirely unrelated subject, but you would need to prove someone's 
statements false before they would be a false prophet. Until then, they could 
just as easily be a true prophet...

> The astronomy proved the Holy Scripture to be errant. Without the astronomy
> Galileo had committed no heresy.  The heresy had *everything* to do with the
> astronomy. 

Galileo's claims on astronomy can never be proven nor disproven by science.
He also could have claimed Scripture was merely metaphorical in regard to the 
Earth's movement, and committed no heresy. Or even not linked the two topics.

> Heresy can be undocumented, as in a claim of geocentrism "just because you
> feel like it's true", but there's every indication that Galileo wanted to
> follow all the Christian dogma up until the point where his astronomy forced
> him to break geocentrism to avoid breaking a Commandment ("thou shalt not
> lie"). 

Truth will never contradict the Church's teachings, regarding Scripture or 
otherwise.

> Our difference of opinion is that I'm saying *any* astronomy which
> contradicts a dogma is "heretical", 

Anything which denies doctrine is heretical, yes, and therefore false.

> Taking it back to Linux for a second, Luke-Jr does seem to have a rather
> dogmatic approach to Linux as well, since I seem to recall that he is always
> offended when someone mentions a device which requires a non-native-Linux
> workaround like ndiswrapper. 

No, I have never stated a position on ndiswrapper, let alone insisted on it 
for everyone. ndiswrapper is in fact legal and fine in itself, as far as I'm 
concerned, even if it has some technical inferiority to Linux internal code.

> Given his strict definition of Linux as a "free" (as in beer AND speech)
> operating system, I guess I should have tread more carefully when bringing
> up words typically associated with religion, such as "heresy."

Linux is not inherently free of charge, BTW.