9 thoughts on “Tina Beattie, Professor of being Catholic”
Chloe Zhao was quoted as saying, “There’s one that I remember so dearly, it’s called the Three Character Classics. The first phrase goes… ‘People at birth are inherently good.’ Those six [words] had such a great impact on me when I was a kid, and I still truly believe them today.”
In a Huffington Post interview she says “ I was raised an atheist so I don’t have a strict sense of religion” and goes on to explain that this is why she can empathise with the outsider.
Tina Beattie’s version of one particular religion claims that there is original sin in all of us but we can be saved and made better by the power of her IMF.
I prefer Zhoa’s humanist approach.
The story of the two young men who both died being altruistic is a terrible waste of such young lives and I grieve for their families, but shows that the humanist impulse to be good is within us all naturally and not implanted there by some supernatural entity.
And isn’t being altruistic just because you are afraid of divine retribution a bad reason. Religious preachers have gotten it all wrong. For most people helping those in need is an automatic response. No god needed as usual. In fact very often terrible things, such as genocide, are done at the ‘behest of god’.
“Good people will do the best they can. To make good people to do bad things you need religion”. Can’t remember which American scientist said that but he was spot on.
“Can’t remember which American scientist said that but he was spot on.”
Steven Weinberg. Nobel prize winner, for his part in unifying electromagnetism with the weak nuclear force. (And which you will find brilliantly explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=211cfs4fXJs ).
Spot on, PaulT. That single, irreconcilable difference between Chloe Zhao’s ‘inherently good’ and Tina’s unmentioned but well known ‘inherently sinful, with – even after baptism – the propensity to sin’ leapt out at me. I wonder why Beattie didn’t come clean from the very start, and instead of claiming that sinning came partly from fear (of the outsider and stranger), admitting instead that it was written into her religion, an integral part of her IMF’s plan for salvation.
How Beattie has the brass neck to claim people’s “inherent goodness” when it suits, and the execrable concept of “original sin” when it suits on a different day, is exasperatingly typical of apologists for the naked Emperor of “theology”.
What a sick joke. Someone telling us that we’re born inherently good when she knows right well that according to her own cosmology her vengeful ‘god’ arranged for us to be born in sin, redeemable only if we jump through bizarre hoops of ‘his’ own devising, with an eternity of hell for those who fail.
If you’ve ever had the misfortune to try to understand the writings of Thomas Aquinas, you get the same sense that we had from Tina this morning. It’s them trying to square an impossible circle, by ignoring, confusing, obfuscating, twisting, and any other trick from the sophist’s playbook.
Tina (and Thomas) knows that what their religion says is wrong, but they cannot say it. Aquinas “solved” his problem by bending language beyond its limits till not even he knew what he was saying. I am in no doubt that if pressed, this is what Tina would also do. Original Sin would become a “capacity” for sin, or maybe people would have a “capacity” for good, so that she could hold both to be true at the same time. And with the problem solved, she would just move on and forget that there was ever a fundamental contradiction in the first place.
“Original Sin would become a “capacity” for sin, or maybe people would have a “capacity” for good, so that she could hold both to be true at the same time.”
Schroedinger’s naughtiness?
Doesn’t the superposition of views and the consequent existence of a contradiction imply that no observation has been made? Wouldn’t that imply the non existence of an IMF that “sees and hears everything”?
(apologies to Rev Peter who knows and understands far more about quantum mechanics than I ever did 🙂 )
Platitude of the Day 
Chloe Zhao was quoted as saying, “There’s one that I remember so dearly, it’s called the Three Character Classics. The first phrase goes… ‘People at birth are inherently good.’ Those six [words] had such a great impact on me when I was a kid, and I still truly believe them today.”
In a Huffington Post interview she says “ I was raised an atheist so I don’t have a strict sense of religion” and goes on to explain that this is why she can empathise with the outsider.
Tina Beattie’s version of one particular religion claims that there is original sin in all of us but we can be saved and made better by the power of her IMF.
I prefer Zhoa’s humanist approach.
The story of the two young men who both died being altruistic is a terrible waste of such young lives and I grieve for their families, but shows that the humanist impulse to be good is within us all naturally and not implanted there by some supernatural entity.
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And isn’t being altruistic just because you are afraid of divine retribution a bad reason. Religious preachers have gotten it all wrong. For most people helping those in need is an automatic response. No god needed as usual. In fact very often terrible things, such as genocide, are done at the ‘behest of god’.
“Good people will do the best they can. To make good people to do bad things you need religion”. Can’t remember which American scientist said that but he was spot on.
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“Can’t remember which American scientist said that but he was spot on.”
Steven Weinberg. Nobel prize winner, for his part in unifying electromagnetism with the weak nuclear force. (And which you will find brilliantly explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=211cfs4fXJs ).
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/86758.Steven_Weinberg
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Spot on, PaulT. That single, irreconcilable difference between Chloe Zhao’s ‘inherently good’ and Tina’s unmentioned but well known ‘inherently sinful, with – even after baptism – the propensity to sin’ leapt out at me. I wonder why Beattie didn’t come clean from the very start, and instead of claiming that sinning came partly from fear (of the outsider and stranger), admitting instead that it was written into her religion, an integral part of her IMF’s plan for salvation.
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“Today, I’ll talk about the inherent goodness of human nature.
“My faith perspective will be to, er, ignore my own faith perspective.”
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Absolutely spot on comments above.
How Beattie has the brass neck to claim people’s “inherent goodness” when it suits, and the execrable concept of “original sin” when it suits on a different day, is exasperatingly typical of apologists for the naked Emperor of “theology”.
LikeLike
What a sick joke. Someone telling us that we’re born inherently good when she knows right well that according to her own cosmology her vengeful ‘god’ arranged for us to be born in sin, redeemable only if we jump through bizarre hoops of ‘his’ own devising, with an eternity of hell for those who fail.
LikeLike
If you’ve ever had the misfortune to try to understand the writings of Thomas Aquinas, you get the same sense that we had from Tina this morning. It’s them trying to square an impossible circle, by ignoring, confusing, obfuscating, twisting, and any other trick from the sophist’s playbook.
Tina (and Thomas) knows that what their religion says is wrong, but they cannot say it. Aquinas “solved” his problem by bending language beyond its limits till not even he knew what he was saying. I am in no doubt that if pressed, this is what Tina would also do. Original Sin would become a “capacity” for sin, or maybe people would have a “capacity” for good, so that she could hold both to be true at the same time. And with the problem solved, she would just move on and forget that there was ever a fundamental contradiction in the first place.
LikeLike
“Original Sin would become a “capacity” for sin, or maybe people would have a “capacity” for good, so that she could hold both to be true at the same time.”
Schroedinger’s naughtiness?
Doesn’t the superposition of views and the consequent existence of a contradiction imply that no observation has been made? Wouldn’t that imply the non existence of an IMF that “sees and hears everything”?
(apologies to Rev Peter who knows and understands far more about quantum mechanics than I ever did 🙂 )
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