“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Amen.
That’s sort of the reverse of what I’m saying, which would be more like, “the road to heaven isn’t paved with evil intentions”.
~Max
That, at least, clears up why I’m finding your contributions so confusing.
So there’s that 
It’s better to let someone starve than to give them a loaf of bread for the wrong reasons?
That’s pretty fucked up.
Do you have family, friends and acquaintances? Do you 100%, all of the time, agree with them, or else you dismiss them and don’t “like them as a person”? I’m befuddled by your stance.
I wouldn’t agree with that statement though. I’ve said running a soup kitchen for religious reasons I find reprehensible is equally wrongheaded as opposing gay rights for the same reason. That does not imply that I would let someone starve.
~Max
Yes and no, respectfully.
~Max
edited to account for ninjas
This doesn’t fully answer my question. According to your logic concerning Pope Francis, he can’t be any good and must be opposed because some of the bad things he represents, even if he says or does benevolent things. Or because atheists can’t be altruistic or some other such bullshit. I respect him for a lot of things, he’s better than most of his ilk, but loathe him for others. I can live with that discrepancy.
He can do good things without being a good person. I just don’t think you can say he is a good person when he does good things and a bad person when he does bad things, if he is consistent and straightforward with his motivation in both cases.
To flip flop is like to praise the umpire who calls fair shots when you are at bat, and criticize him for calling fair shots when your opponent is at bat. Either you had a problem with the system the umpire used throughout, or you think he is not being fair (inconsistent), or you are unreasonable.
In the case of the Pope we haven’t been arguing whether his religious beliefs are internally inconsistent. That is a valid line of attack if it was offered.
People have repeatedly denied that they had a problem with the Pope making speeches when they personally approve of the call to action (fighting poverty).
What does that leave?
~Max
Well, I don’t know how I can argue you, you seem to believe that everybody has to be a 100% virtuous person to be respected. That’s crazy, no one is. Nobody even knows or can define what 100% virtuosity is, there have been wars about that, you know.
I wouldn’t say a person has to be 100% virtuous to be respected, whatever that means. ETA: Respect has nothing to do with good or bad. You can respect the most evil of persons and you can respect the most benevolent of persons.
~Max
But that’s what you are arguing about the Pope. As he’s not always right about the questions of our time, we shall dismiss his good intentions also. At least that’s what I get from your posts. If not, set me straight.
That might be true for you, but not for most people, at least the righteous ones. I will never respect evil people.
It’s true that this is the doctrine. It’s also true that the doctrine is bullshit. The differences between humans and sentient animals is a matter of degree, not something fundamentally qualitative. In the words of the late American anthropologist Clifford Geertz, “Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.”
The dude really rocks that hat.
I think this is a bit off the mark as an analogy because it’s the same rule being applied equally to all. Feeding the poor is not the same rule as opposing gay marriage. They come from the same “rulebook” but they are not the same rule. A better analogy is an umpire who calls great balls and strikes, but also is a giant douche about the balk rule.
He doesn’t have to call balks all the time, other umpires don’t call balks all the time, so it’s completely fair to criticize his focus on balks, and also completely fair to praise his good work around balls and strikes. Far from a flip-flop, it’s an accurate representation of his umpiring.
Pope Francis is a complex person. He says things I like, and things I don’t like. Why shouldn’t I be happy when he uses the power of his position to support things I like, and unhappy when he uses that same power for things I don’t like?
Now, THIS is a pitting! LOL
I guess no one has noticed that, when “be fruitful and multiply” was written, there were only a few million people on the entire planet. So, reproducing was actually instrumental in the survival of the human race. I’m guessing that they also haven’t noticed that the earth, housing close to 8 billion people at this point, has human beings overrunning the entire planet.
Devote Catholics (and, yes, there are actually still devote Catholics) like many of our Latin X neighbors, have very large families for that reason. They were taught birth control is wrong and that their umpteenth kid is actually a “blessing”.
I also think you are overstating the clarity of motivations. People aren’t machines that weigh outcomes according to a single rule. People have a complex mesh of competing motivations, and when enough align the same way, we take that action. Is the pope motivated by the words of Jesus Christ? Of course. Is he motivated by the traditional interpretations of the Catholic Church? Of course. Do those always completely reconcile? No. Is he also motivated by his life experience? Of course. And no doubt he is also motivated in small part by whether he has a stomach ache today, and what his friend said to him last week.
The pope doesn’t just blindly push all aspects of Catholic doctrine with exactly the same energy. He picks and chooses. He has taken an interest in feeding the poor, and pushed that more than some other popes. He has pushed proselytization less than some other popes, even speaking positively of other religions. Despite being a douche regarding homosexuality, he has been a lot LESS of a douche on the topic than some recent popes. He picks and chooses what aspects of doctrine to push, and he picks and chooses his spin on a lot of them.
So of course I can approve of some of those choices, and not of others, even if I care a lot about his motivation.
Also, there’s nothing in Catholic doctrine against pet-ownership. He threw that into a discussion of “why he thinks everyone who isn’t a priest should try to have kids” ab novo, and it’s kind of weird, and it’s completely reasonable to be taken aback by it.
Max, I think this is why most people are finding your argument unconvincing:
It would be one thing to say “The Pope is consistently pro-life, so it’s hypocritical to criticize him for opposing abortion while praising him for opposing the death penalty”. That makes a certain amount of sense, even to people who disagree with it. You can see how someone might feel that one belief logically must lead to the other.
But when you’re saying “it’s hypocritical to criticize the Pope for feeding starving children while praising him for opposing gay marriage”…well, from any non-Catholic point of view, that doesn’t make sense. The two issues have nothing really to do with each other, and claiming that they are both necessary parts of some internally consistent belief system sounds ridiculous.
And Max still hasn’t explained how being an atheist means you are against altruism.