A game of religion and relative righteousness: Quantifying the morality of the Catholic Church

The Game Room
1

Let’s play a potentially offensive, but potentially interesting, game of moral scorekeeping. With each post, you can:
[ul]
[li]Using your own sense of contemporary morality, list one or more good deeds or misdeeds performed by the Catholic Church (or a sizable portion of its members, but only if the deed is reasonably attributable to their Catholicism)[/li][li]Rate each deed/misdeed on a -10 (Pure evil) to 10 (Pure good) scale, staying closer to 0 for situations you consider morally ambiguous[/li][li]Provide a rationale for your ratings[/li][li]Sum your scores with the current total so we keep a running score[/li][li]If you disagree with a previous poster on a specific deed, average your two scores and adjust the running total accordingly (i.e. if they rated something a 5 and you think it’s a -3, your combined average score is 1. Explain why and then add a 1 to the running total)[/li][/ul]
For example, I’ll start:

  • Child molestation
  • -8
  • It’s pretty darned evil to violate the trust, body, and spirit of those entrusted to your care, but at least you’re not slaughtering them en masse willy-nilly

Current total: -8

  • Encouraging/supporting formal charitable organizations around the world
  • 7
  • An organization that practices charity as a central tenet of its beliefs is a force for good in the world. But in terms of percentage of their time and income, it’s not very much.

Current total: -1

Etc.

2

Sorry, I made a big mistake in the averaging formula. If they rated something a 5 and you think it’s a -3, your average score is 1 (so far so good).

But instead of adding 1, you should subtract 4 from the running total.

To be clear:
Their score: 5
Yours: (5 + -3) / 2 = 1 (the average)
5 - 1 = 4 (what you need to subtract from the running total to reflect the new averaged score)

Or if you both rated something a -10:
Average: -10
-10 - -10 = 0 (and so the running total doesn’t change)

3

Here is part one of five of a great discussion on this subject.

4

Yep, I knew about that, but wanted to hear Dopers’ opinions.

5

Is this a game, or a gathering of opinions? How is this game won?

6

Both, as in a group debate? I guess we tally up the scores after a few days/weeks, depending on participation, and see which side scored higher. And yep, you can switch sides with every round.

shrug

If it needs to be moved to IMHO or MPSIMS, that’s fine too.

7

Since everyone gets to assign points using their own scale of PURE EVIL to PURE GOOD, how can you honestly add up the points to determine a “winner” in the “game”? If one person gives a “-10” for child molestation and another gives a “+10” for the same thing, does that make child molestation morally neutral?

8

A better way to determine the winner would be whose guess is closest to the final total.

9

The Catholic Church lies about condoms, saying they don’t protect from AIDS; killing an unknown but probably large number of people. -9

Priests often rape nuns in regions where younger ones are common, and coerce them into abortions if they become pregnant. -7

The enslavement of women as part of their punishment for being women. -8

Their opposition to life extension research because a longer lifespan would increase hope, and therefore decrease faith which is built on despair. Their argument, not mine. -7 (-10 for intent; -7 because they probably didn’t do as much damage as they wanted)

Support for Nazism, due to it opposing “godless Communism”; -9

Promoting Catholicism; as it is a clearly evil organization, promoting it is morally wrong. -9.
The numbers are mainly based on a guess at the number of people harmed.

10

If there were actually enough contributors, I would’ve made a spreadsheet that better averaged the scores. I didn’t want to make it too complex to start with. Anyway, I don’t know how this thread was resurrected a week later, but it’ll probably just fade away into obscurity again, so…

Thanks for the sympathy play :slight_smile: