Why do people assume that religious leaders / clergy are trustworthy?

Why do people assume that religious leaders / clergy are trustworthy?
They can just make up whatever they want and you have no way to know if it's true.

Why do people assume that parents are trustworthy?
They can just make up whatever they want and you have no way to know if it's true.

The same reason people trust teachers in other topics.

Because most people have no critical thinking skills. Education helps, though.

You should see how retarded people in Afghanistan are.

Nobody assumes anyone in a position of leadership is trustworthy all the time. Doesn't matter if they're religious leaders, national leaders, or whatever.

The fact of the matter though is that we need leaders to bring about cohesion among peoples, so that people can collectively bargain against other peoples. Without a leader forcing people to do things against their will, you get a half-assed response in everything as people try and go with what they feel is best, oftentimes placing themselves and their own ideas before others.

The difference though is a teacher will teach a skill or subject that is real, when a priest says something usually it's about some impossible metaphysical thing that no one could ever say that they know. But the priest violates your intelligence by claiming to know something that is impossible for anyone to know. That doesn't inspire trust, in fact it makes them less trustworthy because it shows they are willing to flagrantly lie to you to trick you into thinking that they know what they are talking about when they don't.

>Why do people assume that parents are trustworthy?

Because they're too young (e.g. stupid) to realize otherwise. Is that what you meant? That people who follow organized religions are just stupid?

>The same reason people trust teachers in other topics.

Any competent reacher will not just relay facts, but demonstrate them. How does that work for a clergyman?

Because to be this stupid it has to build up over time

.. like alot of religions have been

This thread reeks of r/atheism. Fuck off back there.

Not an argument

>The difference though is a teacher will teach a skill or subject that is real

You're making your own definitions to defend you anti-theism.

Priests need a bachelor's degree on anything before they even begin doing any education to become a priest. It's generally recommended to study philosophy so to be able to assist on those matters and demonstrate and/or defend Christian metaphysics.

Also
>teachers
>generally ever competent

Can't speak for other religions, but the Catholic Church is a good example for you.

We trust our priests and religious leaders, until they go against church teachings. That is when you can tell who they truly are. If they support actions that are forbidden, they're not trustworthy. You can't trust them because A) they are uneducated in certain matters they're discussing, or B) they're heretics acting in a position of power.

The nice thing about the Catholic Church is that I can simply go to my Catechism and see if someone is wrong.

As for new dogma, you can look up the arguments made from theology and precedent in cannon law.

That's correct, it's an insult.

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul to waste

Those who are with Christ will have good fruits

Matthew 7:15-20

If your friend is giving you life advice look at the fruits of his life

what has he done? how does he treat people? is he happy? does he profess that Christ was human and died for our sins?

People need to follow the bible and forget about following people

the catholic church is not christian they pray to saints, and mary, they are the church of satan

"They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the LORD in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the LORD's people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

What's it like believing in something believing bread can magically turn into human flesh

>quotes a religious leader on the question of whether religious leaders are reliable

I think OP's question could be applied to the entire structure though. It's certainly possible that the cardinals and theologians responsible for religious doctrine over at the Vatican could use the Catholic faith for their own ends, and there is historical evidence of that happening on occasion.

That said, with more refined methods of checks and balances, like the catechism, we have a better way of detecting when something is genuine or due to man's influence. It's not perfect, but then again, if we could tell what was in the hearts of men, we could do away with a lot of things in the matters of sin, repentance, and justice.

Unlike science, there's not really empyrical evidence to confirm truth or fabrication, and even with modern methods we still have people fighting over whether our modern popes are legitimate or right in their actions or not.

How is like having to make fun of every religious person out there?

People make fun of you for the same reason people make fun of Scientologists and Heaven's Gate people.

god i wish that were me

Oh yeah, because the Catholic Church tries to take all of people's money and freedom.

Fuck off if you can't differentiate between the Catholic Church and those two you're talking about.

>Oh yeah, because the Catholic Church tries to take all of people's money and freedom.

You're seriously trying to argue the Catholic Church hasn't taken people's freedom away? There are literally hundreds of examples spanning two thousand years of history.

>Fuck off if you can't differentiate between the Catholic Church and those two you're talking about.

The only thing that makes the Jesus fable seem any more credible than Xenu is age

Oh yeah let's ignore that Jesus was a real life figure, and let's also ignore the tight and consistent theology built by Aquinas and others.

Let's ignore why the Catholic Church survived.

Yeah, they're absolutely the same. Or you're an ignorant fuckwit. Yeah, the second one is more likely.

>Oh yeah, because the Catholic Church tries to take all of people's money and freedom.

Well, yes.

>Oh yeah let's ignore that Jesus was a real life figure

There's no real evidence for this but okay

>let's also ignore the tight and consistent theology built by Aquinas and others. Let's ignore why the Catholic Church survived.

So a cult is deserving of respect if enough people believe it? If people worshiped the Coco-Pops monkey mascot in two thousand years it would be no less ridiculous of a thing to do than it is today. An idea is not given merit based on how long it's existed nor on how popular it is.

Also, Buddhism, Islam, etc. also have long histories and very tight theologies surrounding them. What makes the Catholic Church correct and those wrong?

>Or you're an ignorant fuckwit. Yeah, the second one is more likely.

Ignorant of what?

>There's no real evidence of Jesus being real
Scholars around the world accept Jesus was real because of multiple historian accounts back then. But you're extremely ignorant of both religion and philosophy. If you weren't you would know that Jesus was real.

>if enough people believe in it
You entirely missed the point of the post. That the theology built by Aquinas and others is incomparable.

>also Buddhism and Islam, etc have very tight theologies
Nope. Islam has an extremely basic theology and anyone that tried to think more about the nature of Allah was killed. Between the religions of the world, only Buddhism and Zoroastrism approach Christianism on how well built their theology is and Buddhism is fragmented into multiple schools because it's more of a philosophy than a religion.

You don't know shit about religion but you dare to talk about it with disrespect and equating 20th century phenomena with millennia old traditions and beliefs.

>because of multiple historian accounts back then.

The Josephus account is a forgery. The references in Tacitus and Pliny are too vague to be of any real value.

>That the theology built by Aquinas and others is incomparable.

How so? His arguments for the existence of God were piss-poor. Apologetics still use them even when they get debunked constantly because it's all they have.

>Between the religions of the world, only Buddhism and Zoroastrism approach Christianism on how well built their theology is and Buddhism is fragmented into multiple schools because it's more of a philosophy than a religion.

Theology as a subject is inherently worthless because it's all speculation. There's no way of verifying any of it, and for that reason alone it should be dismissed.

>You don't know shit about religion but you dare to talk about it with disrespect and equating 20th century phenomena with millennia old traditions and beliefs.

Excuse me, I "dare" disrespect your religion? Who the hell do you think you are to tell me what I can and can't say?

>They can just make up whatever they want and you have no way to know if it's true.

Same as anyone else.

At least the religious have loose guidelines written down.

You shouldn't disrespect any religion. As a religious man I understand it. Only edgy kids insult religions like you do.

>Theology is worthless because it can't be verified
So according to you any kind of inductive reasoning is worthless? You don't understand shit about philosophy. It's lovely how you scientism believers parrot that the only knowledge that matters is the one that can be obtained by science when the way we do science is the product of inductive reasoning.

>Only edgy kids insult religions like you do.

I have as much right to insult your beliefs as you have to hold them. You see, there's such a thing in life called "disagreeing". People are allowed to hold different opinions, and whether they're inflammatory when expressing them is neither here nor there.

>So according to you any kind of inductive reasoning is worthless?

Inductive reasoning without any empirical evidence, yes. The theory of evolution is based on inductive reasoning, but we have fossils which physically prove that it took place in addition to the reasoning behind it. If we had no fossils to work with, then evolution would be as baseless as creationism.

>when the way we do science is the product of inductive reasoning.
Not for all sciences, actually. Only the natural sciences.

The dogmas of Papal infallibility, Purgatory, and Immaculate Conception are all spooks.

People are lazy. And afraid of the unknown of death: so they clutch onto anyone that offers them ab-solution (not-solution) of consequences of sin.

People have something known as freedom of speech.
They can hold any opinion over shitty religions, and express them freely, if you feel uncomfortable, just leave.

>freedom of speech means I can attack your beliefs without me defending
this is you

*tips fedora*

>They can just make up whatever they want and you have no way to know if it's true
>What is "the bible"?

>Priests
Not biblical

>The Josephus account is a forgery
"It refutes me, it must be a forgery!"
Take off your tinfoil fedora, it's killing your braincells

>freedom of speech means I can attack your beliefs without me defending
Nice meme you got there.
Clearly no one has forced you unable to defend your religion, yet you felt insulted, don´t wan´t to discuss? Go circlejerk somewhere else m8

>The Josephus account is a forgery.
You fucking idiot, you absolute cretin

There's an interpolation but it isn't a forgery wholesale. This has been mainstream historiographical opinion for 30 years

Try reading a fucking book you massive gay shit

It is a proven forgery. Fact. And even if we didn't have proof it was forged we would find it strange that a fucking Jew starts suddenly praising Jesus while staying a Jew and going against Judaism of the times who clearly saw Christians as a crazy offshoot of Judaism.


That'd be like finding a Christian document that suddenly starts saying "oh hai im christian and stuff but isnt mohammad amazing? islam is the religion of peace and so much more badass than christ amirite? btw im totes like you and christian". Would you buy it?

Neither is the biblical canon.

I'm curious about your views.

Do you think that current "atheism" is more anti-theism or maltheism than anything else? Why is current society so hinged on the material and the reality they can currently feel (I'm guilty of this too)?

>user can't tell the difference between transformation and transubstantiation

The atheism people try to popularize nowadays is just metaphysical naturalism and aggressive scientism. The aggressive scientism is how it is so anti-theistic.


As for your last comment, this mainly stems the Enlightenment was mainly influenced by the Catholic/Protestant warring but that split led to philosophers trying to move away from Scholasticism because of its connections to the Catholic Church and being distant from it in the first place due to warring (an example of this would be Francis Bacon and how he became very influential upon how modern science is understood and yet misunderstood various scholastic elements because of his distance to it). Because of this, alternate philosophies came about and much work was done to dismiss Christendom and reexamine. Primary to this is the altering of how science is defined - focusing the intent on understanding and the ability to manipulate nature for the sake of progressivism - which ended up leaving out metaphysics.

These alternate views were still religious, but due to their rejection of metaphysics for the most part they were largely arguments that were largely God of the Gaps-like and so get rejected over time and classical arguments get honestly missed. An example of this would be how anti-theists attack substance dualism as a Christian belief of the nature of the soul while having no grasp of of hylomorphic dualism that Catholicism and arguably Orthodoxy support and no realization that substance dualism is a modern creation.

Our naturalism today is just those religious Enlightenment views slowly getting dismissed and many people catching on that its bullshit. Their failure is seeing Scholastic ideas and thinking they can be dismissed as easily. This has gotten so bad that academics have a history of explicitly trying to dismiss and attack metaphysics as a field.

I hope this is legible, I need to head to bed.
Good night.

I don't understand the last part as easily (namely because of my unfamiliarity with Scholastic views) but I understood it well. Thank you. May God bless you.

>This has gotten so bad that academics have a history of explicitly trying to dismiss and attack metaphysics as a field.

Hard core logical positivists are hardly the norm

>Buddhism is fragmented into multiple schools because it's more of a philosophy than a religion.
So's Christianity

Something that contradicts the Christian claims of a god who is both perfect and benevolent.