I, as well as you and everyone else, has the capacity to rebuke any and all.

Conspiracy theories necessarily rquire a certain level of ignorance; you are basically involved in the act of speculating about something that you don't know about.

When you investigate the various positions of a church or institution, you come to find a certain pattern in their policy and decision-making: whatever is in their best interest is the best course of action.

When the motives are not clearly understood, that is when speculation sets in: What are they doing? Why are they doing it? What do they want? Etc.

With powerful institutions like the Catholic Church, because they are so huge, these questions take a political characterstic: do they want to take over the world??? Is there some secret document that they don't want anybody to know about???

The truth is that speculation, and conspiracy theories, being based on false assumptions, lead to false conclusions. I would say that, almost always, if not always, the claims are exaggerated.

The conservative enclaves within the Catholicism obviously have an agenda, but that agenda is not a secret: the only thing you need to find out what they want is to read the Bible. But how many people actually do that? It's much easier to make up something than do the hard work of research.

There is also a false premise/ false conclusion angle to conspiracy theories. Anti-semites love to cite the disproportionate number of Jews in banking, finance, entertainment, etc., but what they fail to acknowledge are those in the same position who are not Jewish, and the 2,000+ years of scholarship that has been part of Jewish tradition which has stressed learning and education. Any group of people, if they devote 2,000+ years to learning, can achieve success. There's no conspiracy here; it's simply a group of hard-working people being slandered, and ofen brutally mistreated for doing nothing more than being the best they can be.


Many other examples run along the same line, and they all evolve around ignorance. Knowledge in this case really is power, specifically, the power to know the truth, and the truth is that conspiracy theories are pernicious works of fancy.

Personally, I'm happy the new Pope seems to be a traditionalist.

Of course you are. As a white male, none of his beliefs and their wide spreading influence will effect you.

Personally, I'm happy the new Pope seems to be a traditionalist.

And as a black woman, how will they affect you? ;-)

Effect, affect - it's all the same. :razz:

And, you know, god forbid we care about people outside of our own race/gender.

I like your condescending toward black people. Supposing them to be too ignorant to use a condom because the Pope says its bad. Do you realize that they enter the covenent with church of their own free will?

Race and gender come into play because this particular Pope's beliefs will affect a woman or black person more than a white person. Woman because of his stance on contraception/abortion, and black people because of his stance on AIDS.

Interesting section from the Yahoo! News article about him...

"He followed it up with a fiery speech to the cardinals before they entered their conclave Monday, warning about tendencies that he considered dangers to the faith: sects, ideologies like Marxism, liberalism, atheism, agnosticism and relativism — the ideology that there are no absolute truths."

I like your manipulation of my words, too.

I was referring to the fact that the Catholic church's stance towards the AIDS virus hurts a lot of potential funding that could go into research and medical help, espically in Afria where it is sorely needed.

No, but his far reaching influence on people will hurt funding and research into both fields.

And no, those ideas aren't dangerous to the faith. Time is dangerous to the faith - or that particular style of faith. People will eventually collectively pull themselves out of the stone age.

I fail to see how. What organizations do you know of that rely on the Catholic Church's opinion in order to decide whether or not to provide the funding for AIDS research?

Marxists persecuted the Church and churchgoers, for one thing. Anywho, all those ideas go squarely against the church. I've yet to see ONE Catholic who is also an atheist or an agnostic.

He's stopping people that may want to but are easily swayed by the opinion of a high ranking religious person (see: most of america).

You know Krem, for a self described atheist, your joy in defending the catholic church is quite alarming. :razz:

I personaly think the church shouldnt change any of their stance,and its good that this guy was elected pope,as far as non catholics go,the church shoudnt give a shit about any of their opinions.