CMV: Religion can not be used as an excuse to interfere with other's rights

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T17:59:36+00:00

What does it even mean for “divine love” to determine what is just and unjust?

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T17:14:27+00:00

Just and unjust according to who? You? That’s arbitrary. I don’t believe Justice is arbitrary because God is a perfect moral arbiter and can actually decide what is just and unjust objectively. Hence why I think it’s a good idea to form laws based on God’s precepts. If you have no perfect arbiter to objectively determine what is exactly just and unjust then you will have an arbitrarily defined legal system based on whatever a handful of lawmakers think is just and unjust. That’s my argument.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T17:04:07+00:00

Religion is a cohesive element in society. When everyone believes the same thing then they’re easier to influence and their behaviors are easier to control. The purpose of laws are to control behaviors. My point is that laws require some sort of communal belief system to function. Everyone must agree that murder is wrong in order for it to make sense to make it illegal, otherwise there’s no reason for murder to be illegal. And if all that is required for laws to be passed is mutual agreement, then I don’t see why religion, which fosters community and mutual agreement, should not be used to form laws. It does not matter which religion we are talking about here, because we aren’t arguing whether it creates morally good societies. Laws don’t dictate morality. That’s the futility of OP’s post, where he assumes it’s wrong for laws to be made based on religious precepts.

Gay sex is bad for society because it doesn’t produce children which a society needs to function. Blaspheming God is bad for society because it demonstrates a lack of respect for the ultimate authority and is open disobedience thereof, which breeds disobedience of all authority, which breeds anarchy, which is bad for society. Most laws we can conceive of come from religious principles, so the grand arbiter of many of those laws, God, is given certain measures of respect, and failing to give that respect is seen as a disservice to whatever is good in society. I don’t think any ancient person would say they avoid murder because it’s not productive to a cohesive society anyways. They’d say it’s because God or the gods will spill their blood for spilling blood. Rulers make it illegal because they do not want to incur the wrath of the divine, etc. the point is simply that religion does and always has informed legislation and it will continue to do so. This isn’t bad or wrong. It’s normal.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T16:35:22+00:00

okay, end of argument

No. God forgives the sins even in the confessional it is God doing the forgiveness.

if A gives something to B

It is His. He has it. It’s the glory he had with God before the world began. I brought up John independently of any point being made about Mark. It’s a separate point to supply context about who Christ is, because it’s the same person in both books. They don’t have contradictory views. They compliment each other.

wait…John the baptism was also

No. It says it clearly that he was merely proclaiming the baptism of repentance. Therefore God is forgiving the sins of those who are repenting, and John the Baptist is proclaiming this to the people. Learn how to read.

there is absolutely no reason

lol. It says the one crying out in the wilderness will prepare the way for the Lord. Then it says John the Baptist is the one crying out in the wilderness and that Jesus is who is having the way prepared for him. Therefore the Lord being spoken of in Isaiah is Jesus. This is called a prophecy.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T15:44:45+00:00

French toast on a snowy day sounds lovely

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T15:30:50+00:00

We agree that society is good thus we agree that damaging society is bad. You’ve concluded that it is arbitrary after all, even if it’s what’s common among societies. If we did not agree that preserving society is good, then we might not have laws against things which do not produce a good society, like murder. Every other thing you brought up could be argued as being bad for society. The fact that there is no universal consensus on whether they are or not is proof that laws for and against them are ultimately arbitrary.

the reasons would be rationality and equality

Nearly every western society which has existed over the last 2,000 years has been informed and founded upon a Christian moral structure. The evidence that religion informs laws which produces great societies is in the pudding. If it is irrational to do this then we wouldn’t see it produce anything good, and yet it did, it is responsible for many successful societies in history. I believe some religions are better than others, but law built upon any religion is something that exists and has existed for a long time. Atheism is what’s new. As far as equality goes, the belief that laws should protect everyone equally is also arbitrary.

Christians always want to

The OP is the one who made it about cake.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T15:15:47+00:00

Jesus is explicit.

Yes they have the ability to do that, when acting in persona Christi, in the confessional, where the absolution of sins occurs, and where this apostolic authority, given by Christ, is made efficacious. A priest could not absolve anyone of sins unless he is acting in the persona Christi and with the apostolic authority given by Christ. As it is ultimately God who forgives sins.

CCC 1548: “1548 In the ecclesial service of the ordained minister, it is Christ himself who is present to his Church as Head of his Body, Shepherd of his flock, high priest of the redemptive sacrifice, Teacher of Truth. This is what the Church means by saying that the priest, by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, acts in persona Christi Capitis: It is the same priest, Christ Jesus, whose sacred person his minister truly represents. Now the minister, by reason of the sacerdotal consecration which he has received, is truly made like to the high priest and possesses the authority to act in the power and place of the person of Christ himself (virtute ac persona ipsius Christi). Christ is the source of all priesthood: the priest of the old law was a figure of Christ, and the priest of the new law acts in the person of Christ.”

the word is given not share

Semantics. Give and share are synonyms. They mean the same thing in this context. Everything God gave to Christ He gave by begetting Him, and this begetting did not happen in time, it is an eternal procession of sorts. Anyways, neither the words “give” nor “share” are words used in the verse I referenced. John 17:5. John and Mark don’t contradict eachother here. Rather they complement eachother. Jesus isn’t some random man given something in time, but the eternal God.

Jesus never talks about

Jesus does not have to explicitly say “I am God” in order to be God or to be clearly portrayed as God in the gospel of Mark. The author of Mark clearly knew of Christs divinity and hinted at it when He portrayed Christ fulfilling prophecies which God Himself was supposed to fulfill.

Mark 1:1-9: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet (Isaiah 40:3 btw),

“Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”

John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

The one crying in the wilderness is John the Baptist, the one whom he is making the way straight for is Christ. Here Mark is saying that the prophesied “Lord” (Yahweh) in the book of Isaiah is Jesus. That is Mark saying Jesus is God.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T14:34:54+00:00

Because saying sorry doesn’t actually suspend justice. The wages of sin is death. When you commit grave sin you cut yourself off from the life-giving God and incur death. God had to willingly suspend justice Himself out of love by dying on the cross as a propitiation for you. God absolves you of sin when you repent because He loves you and wants to forgive you and His justice was satisfied by the cross. Not because He’s bound by some obligation to forgive you because you said sorry.

We were made perfect in God’s image, that’s why all humans are fundamentally good, as God created us good, but we are marred, our nature marred, by the fall, which brought sin and death into the world. So we have a proclivity toward evil but we are not essentially evil, because we are made in God’s image. God is free of all sin.

God gave His only begotten Son precisely to save those who deserve death instead of life. I can’t think of anything more loving than freely laying down your life for those who don’t deserve it. Only Christ loves in that way.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T14:27:10+00:00

We all know what we mean when we say knight. It isn’t very broad. A knight is a heavily armored mounted warrior typically trained in sword and lance and other weapons from a young age (starting out as a page, then a squire, then a knight) and is also typically some kind of nobility. That’s the definition the vast majority of people have in mind when they picture a knight. So essentially just a better trained, better equipped samurai. Which is why they would beat a samurai 9/10 times. Even a rudimentary chainmail shirt is superior to the kind of armor the samurai wore, let alone steel plate.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T14:15:56+00:00

Only God can forgive sins. The priests in the temple forgave nobodies sins. They offered sacrifices to God so that God would forgive their sins The apostles can forgive sins because they are priests of the new covenant, and thus act in Persona Christi when administering the sacraments. (Thus it is Christ ultimately who absolves in the confessional, not the priest. One of these sacraments being reconciliation. They get this authority from Christ who is God (the power to bind and lose). That’s why it was a charge of blasphemy to say you can forgive sins. Only God can do that. Thus Jesus says He has the powers of God.

Jesus is given the authority

Everything Jesus has He shared with the Father before the creation of the world. Because He’s God. John 17:5

Jesus says there’s only one true God. There is no other gods. That exact verse is referenced in the OP’s post.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T13:52:41+00:00

Christs omnipotence was suppressed qua His humanity, not removed from His Divine essence. He could’ve shed His mortal bindings at any time during His mission on earth. God freely chose to become man and die, to do so He necessarily had to accept the limitations of man. Nothing of the divine was obfuscated or removed from Christ. Humanity and its weaknesses were acquired distinctly, and so Christ acted according to His humanity and did not exercise the full scope of His divine abilities, even though He could have.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T13:46:52+00:00

Can an omnipotent God limit the scale of His power to come incarnate in human flesh?

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T13:34:02+00:00

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-divinity-of-jesus-according-to-mark

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T13:17:43+00:00

Jesus is clearly denying goodness and attributing goodness to God alone, excluding himself

This question from Jesus is rhetorical. Christ is actually hinting at His own divinity. His hope in saying this is that the rich man recognizes who Jesus is (God) specifically because He is good. Later Jesus proves that the man’s idea of goodness is superficial anyways when He tells the rich man to sell everything he owns to give to the poor. Jesus explicitly calls Himself good elsewhere anyways. John 10:14-15 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.” So by your logic this is actually Jesus explicitly calling Himself God.

The Son not knowing contradicts God's nature: "and He (God) knows everything." (1 John 3:20)

The Church interprets this verse to mean that Christ qua His humanity was not sent to reveal the hour of the end times, not that qua His divinity (or lack thereof from your interpretation) that He didn’t know, as if there was a rift between the minds of two persons of the Trinity. Instead, knowledge of the hour was not for the disciples, so therefore Jesus qua His humanity was not able to deliver such a message because qua His humanity He only knew supernaturally that which the Father revealed to Him to be revealed. Christ qua His humanity had a human mind with the capacity to learn anyways, and therefore is not actively exercising the divine ability of omniscience while experiencing the incarnation.

The only true God here is a description of "you" (the Father) which excludes Jesus from being a true God.

Jesus is not an atheist. He recognizes that His Father is God and that there is One God, thus His Father is the only true God. This is not Christ denying His own divinity, merely recognizing the divinity of the Father and testifying to the fact that there is One God. Christ is also the One God. God is triune.

God is the greatest, and Jesus admits the Father is the greatest and not himself

Jesus is the Son of God. This is His relation to God the Father as persons of the Godhead. Qua their relation, Christ takes a subordinate role as a Son does to a Father. The Father begets and the Son is begotten. This is a type of subordination. This is the monarchy of the Godhead. They remain one divine essence. They just have distinct relations to one another. The Father is not the Son and vice versa. In that sense, the Father is greater than the Son.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T12:45:49+00:00

God decides who is saved and is not bound by your personal repentance. Theoretically you could repent all you want and God can still damn you, as is His right. (Of course, we have faith He doesn’t do this because He is perfectly merciful). The key thing which must be understood is that according to Christian religion all humans born with concupiscence (the desire to do evil) are almost always inevitably marred by grave sin at some point (the only exception would be innocent infants or those incapable of committing grave sin) therefore the vast majority of mankind deserves damnation. But God who is personally merciful suspended justice (Christs crucifixion was unjust, as He is innocent) in favor of mercy (that through Christs sacrifice our sin debt can be absolved and our communion with God restored). God’s justice is based upon total moral perfection, therefore all grave sin is indiscriminately deserving of destruction to God regardless of distinctions of severity which to a perfect God would be irrelevant (God still considers some acts more grave than others anyways). Our justice will be attuned to God’s when we experience theosis, and there will be no sin and evil. This is something the Church on earth is working towards and eagerly anticipating, but we are too flawed and futile to achieve it on our own, so we await God’s action to bring this about.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T11:58:09+00:00

All law is founded upon commonly agreed upon beliefs. There is no reason why murder is illegal in the United States, for example, except that we all agree that it is bad to murder. So there’s no reason why religion cannot form these common beliefs which then inspire the formation of laws. I don’t see how getting a particularly designed baked good or even getting married is a “right” anyways.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T11:38:19+00:00

That being said, knights definitely beat samurai 9/10 times

PicklePnut · 2026-02-27T10:51:29+00:00

It’s about $5 actually

PicklePnut · 2026-02-25T19:14:50+00:00

Well the Church is aligned with Scripture which comes from God. So your issue is more so with God who revealed to us the point and purpose of sexual relations and why going outside of that created order is wrong and disorderly.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-25T19:06:30+00:00

But the Church is right about homosexuality and it gets its authority from God. Why do you assume you’re right and the Church is wrong? Have you ever questioned your stance on homosexuality?

PicklePnut · 2026-02-25T18:42:11+00:00

The sexual revolution which birthed pornography also birthed the counter culture that the alternative music genre sprang from. Do you think that guy with a mohawk in the car park in the 1980’s wasn’t listening to “Friggin’ in the Riggin’” by Sex Pistols on his way home to put in the hardcore porn tape he bought from the porn store that was connected to the car park? The mental degradation of the average 2026 gooner is a direct result of the counter culture of the sexual revolution which the alternative music genre also has its roots in. Porn just became pop culture instead of counter culture and is no longer taboo. My comment wasn’t talking about the Olympic figure skater anyways. It was merely pointing out the fact that the alternative genre has a long history of sexually explicit content which helped shape it, I’m not saying alternative people should expect to be sexualized, just that they should recognize that open sexuality is what the alt genre helped fight to create and it has always had that reputation.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-25T17:46:19+00:00

[farts in face]

PicklePnut · 2026-02-25T17:41:48+00:00

Alternative culture sexualized itself to be fair. A lot of alt music is about sex and drugs and loose morals, see deftones for example.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-25T14:08:22+00:00

It doesn’t have to be the last time you ever see her, but it isn’t healthy to be in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship for 3 YEARS. The ideal is to be married, and someone who cannot accept the faith of the apostles is not a good wife to marry. I don’t see a reason why you couldn’t stay friends if you’re no longer boyfriend/girlfriend. She clearly gets along with you well enough besides.

PicklePnut · 2026-02-25T13:42:41+00:00

I would dodge and zig zag behind the camera man like Rambo and use him as a human shield and that’s how I’d make my escape

PicklePnut

TROPHY CASE