How ya figure? I happen to disagree with Catholic doctrine on the question of the existence of a deity, as well as on many other issues, but I’ve never seen any indication that the Church thinks that the validity of its doctrine somehow demonstrates the existence of a deity, or that the existence of a deity is in any way dependent on their ability to accurately describe the deity’s wishes.
AFAICT, the Church is uniformly consistent on the axiom “There is a God”, even if they sometimes change their position on some aspects of the follow-up “and this is what God wants you to do”. Just because they can decide they were mistaken about some parts of God’s intentions is not a logically compelling reason for their questioning God’s existence.
For those of us who don’t believe that there’s a God right from the get-go, fine. Statements of Catholic doctrine are not directed to us.
I’ve never said that the RCC thinks that, firstly, the validity of its doctrine demonstrates the existence of a deity, or, secondly, that them being “mistaken” about some aspects of their god’s intentions is a logically compelling reason for questioning their god’s existence.
The RCC has a way too finely honed schtick to ever contend for the first point: on the contrary, it is precisely my point that they leave themselves a “get out” (just like all good bullshit artists) so that when they are forced to change their position, they have an excuse.
As to your second point, the fact that the RCC is said to mistake some aspects of their god’s intentions is not a logically compelling reason for questioning their god’s existence. The fact that “psychics” always frame their predictions vaguely is also not a logically compelling reason to believe psychics are full of shit. However, in both cases, the care taken never to take a falsifiable position tends IMHO to hint at what is really going on.
You’re welcome to try to change the subject, but you’re NOT welcome to do so while pretending that what you’re saying now is relevant to the original subject.
If you’d like to start a thread that advances your current claims I will almost certainly participate in it.
You talk about “falsifiable position” as though the purpose of church doctrine were to convince unbelievers.
I seriously don’t understand the source of all of the confusion here. I am an atheist Jew and I know a lot more about the ancient church than I do about the modern one, but perhaps an outsider’s point of view might help.
There is a corpus of unchanging doctrine, the repository of the history of Catholic belief (the Scripture, the Tradition, and the Magisterium). The pope can speak about it ex cathedra. It’s part of his job description. His teachings are part of the Magisterium, and they cannot contradict anything in the Tradition or the Scripture. He gets to define what the articles of faith actually are.
Of greater concern to the flock is how to live an apostolic life. This requires drawing inferences from the sources of the Catholic faith. If you believe the articles of the faith, then priests up through the Pope are the people who have license to draw these inferences. Even if you don’t, you might believe that the people who have studied centuries of deliberation on how to live the apostolic life and have deliberated seriously on it themselves are the best positioned to have authority. They’re experts. They have expertise, but this does not guarantee that they are correct all of the time. The Pope and his subordinates can “bind and loose,” or make final judgments about the law, who is a member of the community, and how to exercise discipline. The Catholic church has permitted (and often encouraged) lots of different ways of living the apostolic life. You might want the church to have a single, monolithic, unchanging view, but questions of how to be a good Catholic are very much alive and the Church of Peter has ways of updating its practices and accommodating all sorts of views on these questions.