SD on 9/5/2025 at 19:09

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I thought the whole point of the Pope, and religion in general, was to stop people having thoughts.

Subjective Effect on 10/5/2025 at 06:30

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Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if all that time, all that effort, all that money and all that brilliance - because you do need brilliance for it - spent on running organised religions and building all those wonderful temples and statues, had been used in the pursuit of pure knowledge about existence.

Science, philosophy, technology - where would it all be? Would we have worked out how to live in peace? Would we have learned how to shepherd the Earth better? Would we have reached other planets or other stars yet? Would we have become immortal already? Would we have discovered the meaning of life? Would be actually have found God?

Thor on 10/5/2025 at 17:12

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Yawn, zealous atheists are the most boring people.


Probably would have destroyed the concept of family, as well as morals and common decency even earlier. Now ask the same question for a world without alcohol & other drugs.

demagogue on 10/5/2025 at 18:24

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I haven't studied up on it, but the new Pope seems like a good moral leader in the line of Pope Francis.
It's interesting the first US Pope could finally come, still just short of being the first American pope.
(It's good a Latin American Pope came first.)

For my legal podcast I was gonna do a run through for the whole rule of law and democracy thing in the West, and for that, the Gregorian Reforms by Pope Gregory VII played a big role, which itself built off of the Cluny monastary Reforms a generation before.

It seems somehow important to remind people that rule of law, democracy, sovereignty and the state, and all of those things actually came from somewhere, because they're getting maligned left and right as if it's not that big of a deal to go authoritarian as long as it's just targeting those other people and not us. (Pro tip: it never stops itself at just those other people.) And when they say the Papacy is the oldest ongoing elective office and Papal law and Bishopric influence the first source of rights-related duties that held the line against those authoritarian tendencies... Well it's not 100% true on every little point, but it's still in the direction of true in the main and an important thing to remember that the Holy See was the first jurisdiction putting much of what we now think of as the modern world together. This election is a good chance to remember that anyway.

Thor on 10/5/2025 at 19:21

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You certainly can, lol. It's just much less pondered or talked about, when you take away any accountability from one's soul. If you live on the notion that you can just GTA shit and nothing matters anyway as long as you've enjoyed your ride *and you can get away with your misdoings*, then one has much less incentive to be moral, which often includes sacrificing your momentary desires in the face of long term good.

Not trying to be super pro-religion btw, I'm agnostic [winning smile and whatever]. It's just basic open-minded life observation of die-hard athetists trending towards hedonism and religious folk trending towards whatever their religion tells then, which, apart from islam ig, tends to beat hedonism.