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October 7th, 2013
12:31 PM ET
Scalia says atheism 'favors the devil's desires'By Daniel Burke, CNN Belief Blog Co-editor [twitter-follow screen_name='BurkeCNN'] (CNN) - As the Supreme Court begins its new term Monday, the devil is not on the docket - but the Evil One apparently is on the mind of Justice Antonin Scalia. New York magazine has published a fascinating new interview with Scalia in which the outspoken jurist tackled a number of topics. But none seemed to surprise Scalia's interviewer, Jennifer Senior, more than his views on Satan. The interview was conducted on September 26, the 27th anniversary of Scalia's swearing-in as a justice on the high court. He is one of a record six Catholic justices on the Supreme Court. After Scalia and Senior discussed heaven and hell (he believes in them; she doesn't), the justice said in a stage whisper, "I even believe in the devil." "You do?" Senior replied. "Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, come on, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that," Scalia said. Senior asked Scalia if he's seen evidence of Satan's work recently. "You know, it is curious," Scalia answered. "In the Gospels, the devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore. ... It’s because he’s smart." MORE FROM CNN: How to argue about religion online Senior asked if it's "frightening" to believe in the devil, which seemed to annoy Scalia. "You’re looking at me as though I’m weird," he answered. "My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the devil! Most of mankind has believed in the devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the devil." Scalia, whose son, Paul, is a Catholic priest in Arlington, Virginia, also said Pope Francis is "absolutely" right about the church needing to concentrate more on mercy and outreach than on fighting the culture wars. MORE FROM CNN: American Catholics agree with Pope Francis on ending culture wars "But he hasn’t backed off the view of the church on those issues," Scalia said. "He’s just saying, 'Don’t spend all our time talking about that stuff. Talk about Jesus Christ and evangelize.' I think there’s no indication whatever that he’s changing doctrinally." Finally, Scalia said he has not "softened" his views on homosexuality. "I still think it’s Catholic teaching that it’s wrong. OK? But I don’t hate the people that engage in it. In my legal opinions, all I’ve said is that I don’t think the Constitution requires the people to adopt one view or the other," Scalia said. MORE FROM CNN: Church and state, executive power on Supreme Court docket soundoff (3,730 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 Next »
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The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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ever seen electricity?
love?
beauty?
September 21, 2013 at 6:25 pm
our father
who art in heaven
hallowed be thy name
thy kingdom come
thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven
give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
and don't let us be drawn into temptation
because yours is the KINGDOM, POWER AND GLORY 4EVER AND EVER
AMEN
So your logic is:
Not everything can be detected by all of our senses
therefore you know which god to worship
Well, I'm so happy you were able to convert me.
Verifiable evidence can come in many forms. Do you have anything that supports the existence of your father in heaven (I guess you mean God)?
Ok.Ok.Ok.Ok.Ok.Ok.Ok.Ok. stop it, you're killing me! There are not seriously still theists and deists out there are there???
hee hee! good luck with that soul thing...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geStcOk2tmM
The greatest trick the Devil ever played was making people think he was God.
Almost got it right, but not quite.
The best trick con men ever pulled was convincing peoplw the devil exists.
Lol now that is patently false sir! The greatest trick con-men ever played was getting you to vote for them (bonus points to them if they suckered you into giving a campaign donation lol.)
I stand corrected.
God only wanted 10%,
Politicians take more than that.
Seen love?
Science prooves god is
most likely nowhere to be found
@gooey
As I have posted before – It is simple ......
An all knowing, all seeing all-powerful god created Billions and Billions of stars because he wanted a garden for one man and one woman.
In His wisdom, he put one tree in the garden Adam was not allowed to eat from, and He let a talking serpent in the garden.
(Now, you may think He would have seen trouble coming, but I guess not.)
So, when Eve convinced Adam to eat the forbidden fruit, god got SO angry that He gave everyone who hadn't been born yet a sin that would send them all to hell.
(That is the place of eternal suffering He made to show what a loving god he is.)
Anyway, So that god could judge us all the way he wanted to when we die, He had to send his son to us through a married virgin.
(He HAD to. There was NO other way to get around the rule He made.)
Then He tortured His son/alter ego to death ..... for us.
Now all we have to do is pay Him 10%, admit to being worthless and undeserving, and beg Him to forgive us for being born the way He made us to make him happy.
What part of this is not obvious to you idiots?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqrj8JeBcVA&w=640&h=360]
ever seen electricity?
Yes, every time there's a lightning strike.
Duh! Try again
Check out Father Vincent Lampert. He's a real exorcist from Indy that has seen levitation.
Have you heard of Fatima? On Oct. 13, 1917 Mary appeared to 3 children; there was the miracle of the sun. Over a 100,000 people witnessed it and it made it to the secular news. Amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgXbXLJUHUA
Hilarious!
A toaster she believes has been under the control of Satan, yet she decides to keep it because it makes great toast. Very funny!
No there wasn't. It had been well advertised, there were hundreds of cameras there and yet there is not one "miraculous' picture of the sun from that event.
Extract of an article I wrote on Fátima and the "Miracle" of the sun.
As with any story that happened a long time ago, and which contains miraculous elements, it is sometimes hard to definitively sort fact from fiction in the story of Fátima. However, what follows is, I believe, largely accepted by historians, by the Catholic Church and by others who have who have looked into the issue.
On May 13, 1917, some five months before the purported miracle, three young shepherd children from devoutly Catholic families (Lúcia Santos and her younger cousins, siblings Jacinta and Francisco Marto) claimed that they saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary. They also claimed subsequent sightings in each of the following months leading up to the October incident. In these appearances, they claimed that the Virgin Mary exhorted them to pray and to serve penance for their sins, which they did by saying Rosaries, wearing tight clothing and foregoing water on hot days.
Portugal in 1917 was a largely rural and relatively uneducated part of Southern Europe. It was also devoutly Catholic and the story of the alleged apparitions spread quickly through the local community. The children had reported that the Virgin Mary appeared to them on the 13th of each month (save August, which was the 19th) and would appear again on October 13 in an event that would be so spectacular as prove to the World the truth of what the children were saying.
On that day, thousands of people, including scores of journalists armed with cameras, flocked to the location, a field called the Cova da Iria, to await the divine appearance. Contemporary estimates of the crowd range from 30,000 to 70,000. Reporters armed with cameras were all over the event.
Alas, Mary was a “no show.” Her doubt-erasing public appearance did not materialize. However it had been a rainy morning and as the clouds dissipated around noon, many people claimed that they saw the sun dance against the blue sky. The reports are largely inconsistent, with some claiming the sun changed colors, others claiming it simply danced and still others claiming it spun around or shot toward the Earth. Having inconsistent reports as to what exactly transpired is nothing unusual, however. Given a large enough number of witnesses this will always be so and should not, of itself, be taken as proof that nothing happened. Even in noncontroversial events captured on live television, witness reports will vary widely as to what actually occurred. We human beings have a surprisingly low ability to perceive and report with acuity.
Nevertheless, a few spectators here and there claimed that Mary appeared privately to them, while many saw nothing. However, it is fair to say that the core claim of the Catholic Church, that many people recorded the sun dancing in the bluing sky, is true. Many did claim this. Certainly not the “thousands” the story has subsequently grown into over the years, but a number of people. While I cannot discern an exact number from what I have read, my “best guess” is a few hundred.
Apart from the “three secrets of Fátima,” which were gradually released by Lúcia, the oldest of the children, over the decades following the incident, that is pretty much it. The appearances stopped, the Cova de Iria became a sacred site for the Catholic Church, and the local population went back to farming and herding.
So, exactly how substantial is the claim of the solar dance at Fátima?
The first point to note is that no other people anywhere in the World recorded the sun performing these maneuvers. Given that October 13 is about three weeks after the annual September Equinox, which means days and nights around the World are of roughly equal duration, and given that the sun’s dance supposedly took place at roughly noon Portugal time, the solar pirouettes would have been visible to everybody in Southern and Central Europe, Scandinavia, the British Isles, Africa, Russia, the Middle East and much of Asia. This entire hemisphere was bathed in daylight. Yet nobody in any of those locations recorded anything.
In addition, no solar or other astronomical observatory anywhere in the world recorded the alleged event. None of the thousands of ships at sea that still navigated by the sun recorded anything unusual and nobody at the Vatican itself (a seemingly more appropriate and very receptive audience) saw a thing. Finally, no Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, agnostics or atheists in Portugal itself recorded anything out of the ordinary. Clearly, whatever occurred was a purely local, Catholic affair.
More fundamentally, the sun has a diameter of a little under 1,400,000 kilometers. The speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second. That means that, for the sun to appear to the naked human eye to have danced, it would had to have moved no less than about half its diameter in a very short time. If it did so in less than about 2.33 seconds, it would have been moving faster than the speed of light, which would have broken a law of nature or two being developed around that time by a certain unknown Swiss patent clerk called Albert Einstein. Additionally, if the sun did indeed move, the orbits of the planets would have been thrown into chaos and the Earth would have experienced monster tides all over the planet. Obviously, none of this occurred.
Despite the huge number of journalists present, all toting cameras in the hopes of snapping the photograph of the millennium, not one photograph of Mary or of the sun’s dance was taken. I think it is fair to say that, like beauty, the “Miracle of Fátima” was in the eye of the beholders.
But that still leaves open the question of what did happen. We are still left with the claims of hundreds of people to have seen various “miraculous” things. Is it possible that so many people could all be wrong? A closer look at the personalities involved is warranted.
The first thing to note is the three shepherd children themselves. At the time they made the claims they were ten, nine and seven years old. That is, the eldest would have been in fifth grade and the youngest in second grade – about the age of the children on South Park. Second, they were all totally illiterate, as was much of rural Portugal at the time. Think back to how developed your mind was at that age and how easily you were given to flights of fancy and familial and social pressures. I expect you (as I) still believed in one or more of Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Monsters lurked in my bedroom at night and fairies and pixies pranced in my garden by daylight.
This was not their first claim to have seen figures from heaven. The year before, they claimed to have seen angels on three separate occasions. The children all came from very devout Catholic families, who positively reinforced their stories. It is also telling to follow what happened to the three children after matter died down.
Despite being worthy of a personal visit from Mary, when the two siblings, Francisco and Jacinta, contracted influenza shortly after, Mary was strangely absent. Mary was apparently deaf to the nightly prayers and pleadings of their families, as the health of both children degenerated and they died slow agonizing deaths. Francisco Mato died a painful death at home, while his sister’s death was even more drawn out and agonizing, including operations (without anesthetic due to her poor heart) and numerous hospital visits in a desperate effort to save her life. In short, they both suffered horrible illnesses as the months of prayers from their parents went unanswered, and were both dead within two years of the alleged miracle.
I don’t know about you, but it seems to me a strange way for the mother of Jesus to treat her chosen messengers. It reminds me a bit of a cartoon I once saw, where two Jews are standing outside of Auschwitz Concentration Camp on the day of its liberation by the Red Army. They both stand open armed, looking toward the sky and pleading, “Next time, choose someone else.”
The third child, Lúcia, had an even more telling life after Fátima. It seems she liked the taste of fame that it brought her. In addition to seeing Mary and various angels above, she reported seeing the Virgin Mary again in 1925 at a convent in Spain. She then reported being visited by Jesus at the same convent. She was transferred to another convent and, sure enough, in 1929, reported that Mary returned and appeared to her again.
Indeed, Lúcia reportedly saw Mary in private visions periodically throughout her entire life. For example, a particularly bright Aurora Borealis in 1938 provoked poor Lúcia into believing that Mary was again appearing to her. She eventually left her convent and enrolled in yet a third. She would also periodically claim that, back in 1917, Mary revealed certain “secrets” to her. The secrets themselves are long and rambling but to give you a taste, here is a representative part of one of them, revealed by Lúcia in 1941, some 24 years after Mary supposedly related it to her:
When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred….
You get the picture.
I think it is fairly safe to say that Lúcia suffered from lifelong delusional schizophrenia. She was what an impatient person might term an attention seeking nut job – a complete head case. In fact, Lúcia’s apparitions increased in frequency to the point where the Catholic Church started wishing she would shut up and go away. It pretty much locked her away, prevented anybody from seeing her and forbade her from talking about the apparitions. It is hard not to conclude that the basic idea of the Church was, “Look, they believe us. Just shut up and go away or you’ll blow the whole thing.”
-quote-extract of an article-unquote- = segment of his personal blog (and nobody read it)
ugula- yep, true on both points, I'm afraid.....
It's amazing that you have to write all that to disprove 3 little children claiming to see the Virgin Mary. Those children must have been something else.
Have you heard of the apparitions of Garabandal by the little children? A lot of youtube videos on it. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on these apparitions.
Children confirmed seeing things ... do you mean like the children of the Salem witch trials, whose delusions, hysteria, and dishonesty sent innocent people to their deaths? That kind of miracle?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgXbXLJUHUA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgXbXLJUHUA
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL83DcR56BY&w=640&h=360]
When he's able to win the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, I'll be impressed. Until then...
No fear, Colin. There are fewer nuns and priests every year. Who will staff the schools where young people can be cajoled, bullied and intimidated into believing in the faerie Trinity, mother Mary and all the saints, and the Devil and the hell that waits for everyone who fails in any serious degree to believe in it all?
Actually, just lay Catholics will and already are. My kids are in Catholic school and I don't think there are any nuns there and only 2 priests.
Hopefully it's attenuated in the laity.
u have to be a blithering idiot, like cheesecake, to deny there is a god!
Colin
Your point being....?
agreed; so
a fool
or, u could pretend 2 b an agnostic like bozo and belie the stooges could b god. as long as it ain't jesus christ. that is all that matters to dodo. she hates her god. she don't mind if santa b god or infinite, just as long as it ain't god
don't misunderstand them geniuses. there is no evidence, at all, anywhere, never, 4 none of ur gods, but cheesecake do say it could be curly. no y? evidence he lived. (loved stray doggies, 2!).
can't hep it if i'm lucky
u have to be a blithering idiot, like cheesecake, to deny there is a god!
Colin
Your point being....?
agreed; so
a fool
or, u could pretend 2 b an agnostic like bozo and belie the stooges could b god. as long as it ain't jesus christ. that is all that matters to dodo. she hates her god. she don't mind if santa b god or infinite, just as long as it ain't god
don't misunderstand them geniuses. there is no evidence, at all, anywhere, never, 4 none of ur gods, but cheesecake do say it could be curly. no y? evidence he lived. (loved stray doggies, 2!).
u have to be a blithering idiot, like cheesecake, to deny there is a god!
Colin
Your point being....?
agreed; so
a fool
or, u could pretend 2 b an agnostic like bozo and belie the stooges could b god. as long as it ain't jesus christ. that is all that matters to dodo. she hates her god. she don't mind if santa b god or infinite, just as long as it ain't god
don't misunderstand them geniuses. there is no evidence, at all, anywhere, never, 4 none of ur gods, but cheesecake do say it could be curly. no y? evidence he lived. (loved stray doggies, 2).
Please choose your favorite Catholic superst.ition from those below. For the one you choose, please say why it is any more ridiculous than the rest of the garbage Catholics swallow and give an example of a non-Catholic belief which is just as stupid.
(a) Grocery store bread and wine becomes the flesh and blood of a dead Jew from 2,000 years ago because a priest does some hocus pocus over it in church of a Sunday morning.
(b) When I pray for something like “please god help me pass my exam tomorrow,” an invisible being reads my mind and intervenes to alter what would otherwise be the course of history in small ways to meet my request.
(c) You can pray to a dead person for something. This dead person will then ask God to fulfill your wish. If this happens twice, this dead person becomes a saint; or
(d) A god impregnated a virgin with himself, so he could give birth to himself and then sacrifice himself to himself to negate an “original sin” of a couple we now know never existed.
"When I pray for something like “please god help me pass my exam tomorrow,” an invisible being reads my mind and intervenes to alter what would otherwise be the course of history in small ways to meet my request."
This is what Colin simply imagines how a believer prays. It is a false as.sumption on his part.
This kind of question would never exist in an accredited university. It is just something one would find on the internet. Treat it like the garbage it is.
That is exactly how all the Christians I know pray. And they are just as much a Christian as you are.
Doesn't seem to match up with what Jesus and His early followers said about prayer.
The pope prays for world peace every Easter. God ignores his prayers just like he ignores your prayers.
I pray for knowledge of God's will and the power to carry that out.
When Jesus returns to dispense his 1st century barbarity, do you think he is going to go door-to-door and shoot non-believers in the face, or do you think he will just hack off heads with a large knife like the Muslims like to do? More importantly, are you just going to stand by and watch, maybe enjoy a cold beer and some popcorn, or will you join in on the religious cleansing?
Why just Catholics? Obama believes that Jesus died for our sins, resurrected, ascended into heaven, and it seated at the right hand of the Father and that He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
If you believe God doesn't exist, does all your effort to convince people to believe like you really matter? After you and I die, nothing happens. Science says the sun is going to engulf the Earth in a billion years. It's all going to end for everyone one way or another. Why such passion? You may say, "it matters now." But that begs the question, does it matter tomorrow? Yet, if you believe in God, then everything really does matter, in this life and the after life!
It matters now because the delusional beliefs of the religious very well may get me and the ones I care about killed.
if god is omniscient, what is the point of evangelism?
Did you know that the Catholic Church still has full time exorcists. They run around the country performing exorcisms on the mentally infirm. Oddly enough, the well adjusted are strangely immune to demonic possession.
Probably for the same reason that amputees never get a miracle cure -:)
My dad listened to an exorcist speak in Indianapolis and the exorcist said the strangest thing he saw was levitation. It's a whole process the person goes through. They have a psychological exam and everything to rule out mental illness. Check out Father Vincent Lampert. He's the guy.
u have to be a blithering idiot, like cheesecake, to deny there is a god!
Colin
Your point being....?
agreed; so
a fool
I would respond, but I have no idea what your point was.
u have to be a blithering idiot, like cheesecake, to deny there is a god!
Colin
Your point being....?
agreed; so
Well since everyone knows Scalia is a catholic and is somehow surprised that someone on the Supreme Court is religious, so I guess we should explore some fun facets of the SCOTUS' personal lives. (Cause after all they are going to rule on your personal lives whether you like it or not! Lol.)
So Scalia I don't have to explain thanks to the article, he's a catholic, he believes the devil is a human, and he looks like a mobster henchman from the Godfather.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an adherent to Judaism. Widely considerred the most liberal justice and often seen by the public as Scalia's biggest opponent. Funny thing is allegedly Ginsburg and Scalia are actually very good friends and attend opera's together regularly (Lol rich people and their operas. I give Scalia a little bit of props though, gotta love the old school romantic charm!)
Clarence Thomas is a Roman Catholic. He is known for rarely giving media interviews, but is known in insider circles for being something of a class clown noted for passing notes to Breyer while in session and joking with his colleagues. Ready for the big twist? Thomas' wife is a prominent Tea Party activist whom founded one of the Tea Party's many lobbyist groups, Liberty Central.
Stephen Breyer beleives in that Old Skool Judaism. He is kind of like that Justice everyone forgets about. Interesting note on him is he served as a "special prosecutor" during Watergate to bring down that crook Nixon. He is also married to a member of the British aristocracy (daughter of some random Viscount.)
Sonia Sotomayor is a Catholic. She does not attend church regularly however, but considers herself "a very spiritual person." First latina on the Supreme Court. Fun fact about her is she was a member of the little known Belizean Grove, the all-women's counterpart to the infamous all-male Bohemian Grove. In 2009 she resigned from the Belizean Grove due to the GOP objecting to women practicing magical druidic rites as equally as men.
Samuel Alito is (surprise surprise) a Catholic. Got to Captain rank in the military. Besides that really there's not too much intrigue to dig up on him I guess he's really just a boring son of a gun.
Elena Kagan reps that Judaism. Newest member of the court. Kind of a bad girl in her day smoking as a teen, going against the social jewish norms by bucking her Rabbi and ordering her own Bat Mitzvah be held at Temple, and even teaming up with Eliot Spitzer in colllege to protest Princeton for not believing in democracy enough (uber mad props from the common man for sticking it to the Ivy League snobs Elena!) Honestly it surprises me she has never been married and has no children, she seems like a groovy chick.
Anthony Kennedy be Catholic yo! Known as the swing vote on the Court, because this dude don't play that party politics bullcrap. He is an unabashed globalist who found creative ways to interpret American law while still complying with International law without making people freak out about a New World Order (don't worry folks, this old world will never have order!) Crazy plot twist; he is actually not a member of the infamous Kennedy Dynasty. Also he is this armchair analyst's favorite Justice, but you all probably don't give a hoot.
Chief Justice Roberts is a Catholic. Roberts apparantly can speak Latin and French, played a variety of sports, and even participated in theater at school, making him that well-rounded student teachers just dream of (and people like me puke about.) Roberts has a murky medical situation having suffered at least one seizure which was kept secret for years even before his confirmation. Besides that he is married and adopted two children, made some fat money off the stock market, and is pretty much a boring dude like Alito.
All facts (or lack thereof) courtesy of Wikipedia. The less than admirable jokes and digs brought to you by an Anonymous Armchair Analyst.
Catholics are generally pretty stupid.
Using the standard of most commentators on this forum, I guess they're all just really dumb. Thanks for sharing.