Is "picking and choosing" from a dogma, religious or no, a good thing to do?

Is "picking and choosing" from a dogma, religious or no, a good thing to do?

I would argue it's just being honest. Acting on or believing things you don't really believe in doesn't make sense.

Pic unrelated.

No, because it demonstrates that your universal truths aren't universal at all.

By picking and choosing you're essentially debunking your own claim to absolute truth

What if one didn't have a problem with that and thought like many others that no major world religion has it completely right?

But that's just a bunch of snowflake nonsense, innit? After all, theres such a variety of 5 religions to choose from!

I have no respect for anyone who "chooses" a religion like they're a catalog

What if theres a worldview that claims there isn't really a universal truth and most things are subjective?

Too bad there's nobody out there that think that, right? :)

Chooses one religion out of many or picks and chooses tenants of one religion?

No, the word "heresy" literally comes from Greek meaning "to choose", and that's what it's about.

So what, the only way to join a religion is to be born into it?

You find the one that suits you best. That may be nothing at all.

>What if one didn't have a problem with that and thought like many others that no major world religion has it completely right?

That's not what the holy texts of those religions say. Most of them, at least the monotheistic ones, claim that there's only one way and that by deviating from it, not matter how slight the deviation is, you live a life in as much sin as someone who doesn't follow it at all

No universal truth means no God. Or a vengeful, hateful God.

Take your pick ;)

As is so often the case, Constantine has the right of it.

I am a Catholic, and this is a particular problem among Americans of my own faith. They believe their classically liberal bourgeois understanding of the world can be substituted for the teachings of the Church. This is incorrect. What's worse, they justify it by making a mockery of Vatican II's "primacy of conscience," totally forgetting that the only consciences that get that primacy are 'well-formed' consciences. And what is a well-formed conscience? It is a conscience firmly developed within the framework of the Church and its teachings.

If all you want to do is just do what you were going to do anyway, why are you religious? Go be an atheist or a spiritualist or whatever. To be religious is to give up one's immediate pleasures to follow a greater, more immortal cause. It is to sacrifice something of yourself in exchange for a shaft of eternal light.

Everyone who follows a religion picks and chooses from it.


The ones who say they don't are ignoring the parts of their holy texts that say lying is wrong.

Even fundamentalists pick and choose. Ignoring context and different interpretations. While moderate traditionalists, Modernists and Liberals pick and choose what to follow justifying it with context and different interpretations.

People who demonize those who pick and choose are literal garbage.

You're still picking and choosing. Well, you aren't, but you're following an institution that picks and chooses for you.

That makes you a hypocrite AND lazy as fuck.

>Religiously Observant
>Catholic

I believe that institution was literally founded by God, though, so it is uniquely qualified to do any kind of picking and choosing.

So basically it's okay when they do it?

Sooo...it's okay to pick and choose!

Some people have no problem with that. Heck, there's a story about Yama & Shiva fighting over one mortal spirit.

But only because he believes it's ok for them to pick and choose

No, you're still failing to grasp the heart of the matter.

The Church is founded by God and guided by God. Its decisions regarding the faith are watched over by the Spirit of God. It doesn't pick and choose, it interprets. And most crucially, IT chooses, WE don't. We are the laity. We most pointedly are not guided by God. The Church as an institution is, so our prerogative is to follow it.

What, is god too busy to help individuals choose?

Must be easy having someone else tell you what is right and wrong.

So basically, God wrote a book, and in that book he wrote that anyone who don't follow it by the letter are living in sin.

Then, he creates institutions, which pick all the bits that do work and ignore and sometimes even completely discard the bits that don't. Bits that he himself previously commanded you must never omit, not even slightly.

How is that not a massive contradiction and how isn't what you've posted just a collosal amount of cognitive dissonance?

Remember, in Catholicism, Tradition has equal weight with Scripture. So the Church, as the keeper of Tradition, has equal dogmatic weight with the Bible. Furthermore, the Church has unique authority to interpret Scripture; their interpretation is the definitive interpretation, and all others are heretical.

I realize this is a bit hard to grasp if you're used to classical liberalism, but it is the truth.

But their interpretation changes every pope, practically. and within the hierarchy opinions vary. A lot.

You cannot be consistent. You would have to change your views, sometimes radically, every pope. And even then you would have to "pick and choose" which approaches (which vary with the cleric) to go by.

There is absolutely, absolutely no way you can get around picking and choosing. There just isn't. It ain't possible.

>You cannot be consistent. You would have to change your views, sometimes radically, every pope.

Ehhhh things don't change quite as much as you think from pope to pope. Not nearly as much, really.

>I realize this is a bit hard to grasp if you're used to classical liberalism, but it is the truth

No it's a blatant contradiction. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You simply want the certainty of an unchangable truth, and the flexibility of subjective interpretation, despite that this is by definition impossible.

Either you subscribe to an absolute truth you must follow by the letter and can't pick and choose from, or you pick and choose from a highly subjective set of texts that can never have absolute authority. You can't state that 1 + 1 always equals 2, and then state that you're also allowed to interpret it as 3

>there are dogmatists posting IN THIS VERY THREAD

You know, I think it is now. With religion out of ruling politics, it is only practically useful as a private, personal path. And because individuals vary and don't have to conform to a big social system due to social libertarianism being the norm, it makes perfect sense to "pick and choose", ie disagree with certain parts of your religion's historically accepted doctrine and accept those that bring you to peace with yourself and spiritual realization.

People who think otherwise and try to force you into a doctrine they themselves are always struggling to make themselves beleive in are quite frankly enemies of freedom that absolutely refuse to recognize the simple, absolutely irrefutable fact that the majority of their doctrine is man made and organized.

>Is "picking and choosing" from a dogma, religious or no, a good thing to do?
It's good because it leads to secularism, pluralism, and apostasy, as opposed to 6th Century morality or an earlier one.

With religion it's dishonest but necessary to avoid being a crazy person. With secular belief systems "picking and choosing" isn't a problem because you're not obligated to accept anything.

I have a question about religion, i was reading and i found a bunch of myths about demons stealing babies and replacing them with demon children, was this just a way to justify the disposal of retarded children and the like in order to survive and attempt to justify it a religious sense? and if not what's the prevaling idea about why so many cultures have these baby replacing demon myths?

>Well, you aren't, but you're following an institution that picks and chooses for you.
I can't speak for the Catholic Church, but the Orthodox Church does not have authority to pick and choose. All dogma must have a continuous line of attestation stretching back to the early Church (Christ himself being the ultimate and only source of doctrine), if there is no such continuous line, then the dogma is inadmissible, and similarly trying to abridge something with a continuous line of teaching is inadmissible. If a council of bishops makes a decision against this,they are simply wrong

It's folklore used to justify it maybe, but there is no precedent in the Church for getting rid of babies for thinking they're "demons", such a thing is not permissible and never has been.

Most cultures did not need any such justification. If you didn't want the baby, you got rid of him, parents had that right.

> Being a hypocrite is being honest.
Have u nigga ever heard of the term paradox?