Catholic Loon – Another daft “One Truth” claim

Not too long ago I blogged about a truly silly rant within the National Catholic Register by Catholic convert Frank Cronin. Well that was only part 1, and so today we have part 2 to laugh at and mock. Last time it was all about the “Blind Irrational Faith” of Atheism, a title that was highly ironic and laughable when you consider that this was coming from a Catholic apologist. As for actual evidence or a logically reasoned argument – none, it was just a collection of straw men arguments. So is this latest article the same? lets see. It opens with …

In the Church of the One Truth there are no ceremonies, no sacraments, no saints. There are no cathedrals, no worship, no mass. There are no sacred books, sacred music, sacred creeds. There is no morality, no accountability …

That is mostly a list of supernatural religious trappings devoted to a supernatural entity that does not exist, so no big deal, rational folks don’t need those, but did you see what he then slipped in?, “no morality”, is he truly stupid enough to actually think non-believers have no morality? Apparently so. Secular morality is in fact far superior to Catholic morality in so many ways, most decent moral individuals are capable of working out that buggering small children and then protecting the abusers is not a great idea, and (gasp) they can do this without reference to any supernatural entity. Perhaps the appalling Clerical behavior is explained by the complete silence of the ten commandments on such matters.

So, does his rant get any better? (Oh come on now, you can guess the answer) …

because everything is either matter or energy, all existence, all life forms, all human experience are simply the product of matter and energy, an effect of the material of the universe.

For us as human beings, this means all thought, all emotion, all reason, logic and common sense are not actually real. They are illusions.

Yes indeed, pure unadulterated stupidity incarnate. What goes on inside your head is no illusion, and is all quite measurable. Emotion, reason and logic an “illusion”!!! no dude, its brain chemistry. You can begin to see where he is going here, he is laying a foundation on which to rest his superstitious beliefs. His rant circles around this “illusion” claim and then we trip up over another straw man …

…Atheists believe there is no God …

Wrong, atheists do not ‘believe’ there is no God. Instead they simply make the factual observation that not one jot of evidence has been produced to verify crazy religious claims, no belief required. Oh and apparently we “fail to think things through” … and so this is why we “believe”. He then proceeds to rant about non-believers “oscillating between the materialist view of human nature and a more spiritual and moral one“. (Yes, its his exclusive claim on morality nonsense again).

You might be tempted to think that it could not get any sillier, but no, we then get …

When the Church of the One Truth appeals to reason, it appeals to an illusion.

Can I but point out the deep irony here, so deep in fact that my irony meter is now sitting in a corner weeping and completely broken. He is deploying logic and reason (silly logic and crazy reasoning),  to convince atheists that he is right, yet he claims that these are illusions. He even says, “using reason to make your case is a flagrant and fatal flaw in your argument“. Yes indeed catholic logic  is in flight, so fasten your seat belts because you can be damn sure of a crash landing.

So basically the core argument here is that for Atheists “our mind and our emotions are no longer real“, but for Catholics this is all real, so we should embrace their silly beliefs, and if we want reason or logic to explain any of those silly beliefs, he just asserts that we believe logic and reason to be an illusion.

Do you know any Atheist who actually embraces such daft claims? In fact he claims that he himself was once an Atheist, so if he actually thought like that, then no wonder he embraced Catholic lunacy.

I’d be tempted to call the author a moron, but there are morons out there who would be insulted to be associated with such stupidity, for what we have here is not just a couple of straw men, it’s an entire straw philosophy.