It's not religion I hate, but priests

[Yahzi]

Elsewhere I made a post explaining why I no longer oppose creches and nativity scenes on public ground. Man needs art to live, and public places are the place to put art. As an expression of art and poetry, all manner of religious things should be on public ground. We should have Buddhas, Mithra with his Xmas tree, Santa and his elves visting Krishina, etc.

When religion is treated as an expression of art, then suddenly all the rules make sense. Of course we shouldn't disrespect other people's art. Of course we shouldn't launch into a tirade everytime the subject comes up. Of course the dominant artistic theme on our public lands will reflect the dominate cultural views. And it makes sense when people think you are strange for not having any art - what kind of person doesn't like any kind of art at all?

Emotion is the lever by which you motivate yourself to act. Whatever floats your boat is by definition ok. Whatever you have to do, or think, inside your head, is your perogative and your problem. You are even entitled to enlist the help of other willing participants to act out your silly fantasies. If your want to get together and sing Xmas carols, then it's ok for the state to fund it - just like it's ok for the state to fund Mathelthorpe's tawdry photography. The state has a valid interest in promoting the arts, because it is in the best interest of its citizens.

Metaphysical poetry is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Everyone needs it to live, athiests and rationalists included. To the extent that I have made anyone's art less enjoyable, I apologize.

However...

There are among us certain despicable and amoral beings who have produced art that wasn't very good. Rather than throw it away and try again, or take up a different career, they have hit upon a fraudlent way to sell their inferior art. They claim it isn't just art, but that it is truth, in the scientific, empirical, baseball bat sense of the word "truth."

Having committed themselves to fraud, they now balk at nothing. Not only do they make false claims about the benefits of their art, but they make false threats. Imagine an artist trying to sell you a painting for you house. You don't think it's a very good picture, so you decline. Then the artists says, if you buy his painting, you will become rich at some unspecified point in the future. In fact, after you retire, you'll need the painting to get into a super-cool retirement home - that hasn't been built yet, so no you can't inspect it now. And if you don't have the painting, and your house mysteriously burns to the ground, don't blame him. Furthermore, after you retire, you'll probably be sent to a special prison where the conditions are truly appaling - but it hasn't been built yet, either, of course. How would you react to this so-called artist? By kicking him off your porch and calling the police, of course.

So why don't we do the same to priests?

The problem is not art, but the fraudulent sale of art as truth. The problem is not so much the fools that fall for it (we will always have innocents amongst us who cannot distinguish fact from fiction), as the dealers who perpetrate it, and the suckers who help them so as to protect their own investment in the scam. Art is good and necessary, but remarketing it as truth so you can sell more of it is even worse than selling out to Pepsi-Co. Art by definition is private, and it can only express private truths, never public ones. Art is subjective, truth is objective. The Mona Lisa affects different people different ways: gravity affects us all the same.

It is not religion - the expression of metaphysical poetry - that is my enemy, it is priests: men who traffic in dreams not theirs to sell.

[A_Feeble_Mind]

Yahzi, I disagree. Although I believe I understand your point, the underlying assumption regarding priests seems inaccurate.

The priest does not intend to "scam" anyone. His view is not that his faith is "art." Rather, he is under the delusion that his life's work is to save as many people as possible.

Imagine for a moment that you *knew* that an asteroid was going to hit the earth. Would you not feel that you had to do everything in your power to convince anyone and everyone that they had to take certain precautions to be safe from the asteroid? Now, later when the asteroid never arrives....

[Kashyapa]

I tend to agree. Truth is personal; truth is internal. There can be no mediation between a person and his search for truth; otherwise it becomes a perversion and mind control.

Your last sentence was positively poetic- I like it!

[stamenflicker]

OMG... I agreed with Yahzi twice in one day. The END is at hand!

It is not religion - the expression of metaphysical poetry - that is my enemy, it is priests: men who traffic in dreams not theirs to sell.

Although I do agree completely that most ministers think somehow they have a corner on the market, I wanted to draw an analogy...

If you read a poem obtaining a specific insight into the work, wouldn't you lobby for that idea in your poetry class? Even in the face of completely condradictory interpretations? Perhaps you wouldn't insist on having the entire class see it exactly like you do (here is where we agree on the majority of priests), but you would try and support your interpretation with the best evidence you could muster wouldn't you?

Flick

[c4ts]

The problem is not art, but the fraudulent sale of art as truth. The problem is not so much the fools that fall for it (we will always have innocents amongst us who cannot distinguish fact from fiction), as the dealers who perpetrate it, and the suckers who help them so as to protect their own investment in the scam. Art is good and necessary, but remarketing it as truth so you can sell more of it is even worse than selling out to Pepsi-Co. Art by definition is private, and it can only express private truths, never public ones. Art is subjective, truth is objective. The Mona Lisa affects different people different ways: gravity affects us all the same.

I disagree that art is subjective. I also disagree that what they are doing is really art, because it's more of a knack...

[stamenflicker]

I disagree that art is subjective.

Would you deny art any subjectivity? Surely the first several layers of art are objective... an engrained appreciation (that is socially constructed BTW) of what constitutes art/beauty/truth itself. But to deny art any subjectivity at all seems incredibly foolish to me. Perhaps you could support your idea...

Flick

Dear Mr. Yahzi,

Do you hate all priests, Unitarian, Buddhist, or Taoist for example, or just certain ones?

Faithfully yours,

S. Holmes

[Kashyapa]

Buddhists, at least speaking for Zen, does not have priests. We have masters who teach certain techniques and help direct study, but nobody saying, this is the truth and you must follow it.


Originally posted by Sherlock Holmes
Dear Mr. Yahzi,

Do you hate all priests, Unitarian, Buddhist, or Taoist for example, or just certain ones?

Faithfully yours,

S. Holmes

[ceo_esq]

This strikes me as a highly intelligent and humane post. It also helped me better understand your general outlook, I think.

Some philosophers hold that aesthetic experience comprises both an epistemological aspect (our subjective experience of beauty) and an ontological aspect (the objective existence of the beauty we encounter). I gather that you take a different view. What is your assessment of the nature of the relationship, if any, between beauty and truth? Can subjective aesthetic experience convey, or at least point us to the reality of, objective truth?

I’m reminded of an observation by the atheist British philosopher Roger Scruton in An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture:In the sentiment of beauty we feel the purposiveness and intelligibility of everything that surrounds us, while in the sentiment of the sublime we seem to see beyond the world, to something overwhelming and inexpressible in which it is somehow grounded. . . it is in our feeling for beauty that the content, and even the truth, of religious doctrine is strangely and untranslatably intimated to us.
It’s possible to draw interesting parallels between the artist’s and the priest’s respective vocations, as Stephen does in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when he fancies himself “a priest of the eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life”.

Thought-provoking post. Thanks.

[Dancing David]

great post! can I steal the last line?

For those who think that there is no evil done by priests, well.. I won't say cause I can't change your mind.

'Don't judge the teaching by the morals of the teacher'-A. Crowley

Peace
dancing david

[Yahzi]

c4ts
I disagree that art is subjective.
I'm the secular humanist materialist who believes that morality is absolute and objective, so I suppose I agree with you. I didn't mean to imply that our appreciation of art is divorced from our biological structure, but only that it is uniquely distinct for each individual. I should have stuck with the word "private" and not brought in "subjective." We each are affected by the same stimulus in subtly different ways, and art is a good example of a stimulus that neatly triggers that threshold.


Sherlock Holmes
Do you hate all priests, Unitarian, Buddhist, or Taoist for example, or just certain ones?
I hate all people who sell dreams as truth. I don't mind people selling dreams, or people selling truth: but to mislabel one as the other for sale is an act of fraud.


ceo_esq
Some philosophers hold that aesthetic experience comprises both an epistemological aspect (our subjective experience of beauty) and an ontological aspect (the objective existence of the beauty we encounter). I gather that you take a different view. What is your assessment of the nature of the relationship, if any, between beauty and truth? Can subjective aesthetic experience convey, or at least point us to the reality of, objective truth?
No, I don't really have a different view. I agree that subjective experience can point us to reality - heck, all scientists have to work with is subjective data, and they can certainly figure out which way is up.

However, there is a clear difference between a scientific theory and a work of art. If you put the theory to the test, and find out it doesn't work for you, it doesn't help you uncover reality, then you take it back to the guy who made it and get your money back. Its status as a "scientific" theory implies a warranty: if it isn't actually true, in an obvious, public, and empirically verifable way, then it doesn't deserve to be labeled "scientific."

On the other hand, if a certain piece of art doesn't help you uncover truth, you don't hold the artist to blame, you just buy a different piece of art. The artist offers no warranty: if his work does not speak to your private thoughts, that just means you shouldn't buy his art. No fraud here: the art is understood by both seller and buyer to be a work of private symbology, to be interpreted as each person chooses.

Imagine an artist who paints pictures of Heaven, but they're really treacly and dull, so they don't sell very well. He's just a lousy artist. Now imagine he claims they are real pictures of Heaven, granted to him by divine visions, and the faithful flock to buy their pictures. He's a fraudlent criminal. Now imagine he paints pictures of your dead loved ones in Heaven, surrounded by harps and wings, and asserts he saw and conversed with them. He has sunk even lower, and become John Edwards. Now imagine he threatens you with torture if you don't buy his paintings. He has sunk even lower, and become a Baptist. Now imagine he has a private nation, complete with a bank, a seat on the UN, and an army, and he uses his influence at the highest levels to protect the forced sale of his art to captive populations. He has sunk even lower, and become the Pope.

Marylin Vos Savant once said that, "love is doing the right thing for someone even if they can't appreciate it." If I am to claim any love for my fellow man, then surely being outraged at this theivery must be part of the bargin, even if the majority of them seem to enjoy being robbed. Hey, I'm pissed at drug dealers who cut their stock and sell it as pure. Fraud just makes me mad.

Dancing David
great post! can I steal the last line?
Sure.




EDIT: Yes, I know the Pope's army isn't very big. But it's bigger than yours or mine.

[stamenflicker]

I'm the secular humanist materialist who believes that morality is absolute and objective, so I suppose I agree with you. I didn't mean to imply that our appreciation of art is divorced from our biological structure, but only that it is uniquely distinct for each individual. I should have stuck with the word "private" and not brought in "subjective." We each are affected by the same stimulus in subtly different ways, and art is a good example of a stimulus that neatly triggers that threshold.

Absolute and objective, sure. But let's not leave our random. It's a significant piece of universe. Beyond that, I've about re-thought my free will position due to randomness in the universe...

Flick

[plindboe]

Originally posted by Yahzi
I hate all people who sell dreams as truth. I don't mind people selling dreams, or people selling truth: but to mislabel one as the other for sale is an act of fraud.


They believe it to be the truth. By convincing us, they save us from an eternity in Hell. That is what they believe. It is not a fraud, if the person selling is convinced that he is selling the truth. I don't understand how you can hate someone who does what he think is best for you. Or maybe you believe that priests are fully aware that God and Heaven doesn't exist, and scam people just for the hell of it?

Peter ;)

Originally posted by Yahzi

I hate all people who sell dreams as truth. I don't mind people selling dreams, or people selling truth: but to mislabel one as the other for sale is an act of fraud.


Dear Mr. Yahzi,

Please make it easy on an old sleuth! :)

Does what you wrote mean you hate all priests or only some priests?

Faithfully yours,

S. Holmes

[Yahzi]

plindboe
They believe it to be the truth.
The Nazis believed their truth. They thought they were doing the world a faver by killing Jews. Are you saying it is wrong to hate the Nazis?

Timothy McViegh really beleived that he would start a race war and cleanse the country by blowing up the Arthur McMurry federal building. Are you saying it is wrong to hate McViegh?

The entire point is that it doesn't matter if you believe it to be true or not: what matters is if it is true. As someone said, you have a moral duty to not be so egregiously wrong.

And yes, the priests do know it is not true. That is why they invented and promoted the concept of faith. To assert that something should be taken on faith is to acknowledge that you cannot prove it. To expect people to take as true things you cannot prove is a violation of reason.

Just because you are stupid enough to convince yourself that stealing my money is ok and will somehow help me does not morally justify your stealing my money. It just demonstrates how much you can deceive yourself. Decieving yourself is not a license to commit crime. If we excuse priests because they sincerely believe, then we must excuse the Holocaust, the Arthur McMurry federal building, 9/11, and virtually every other act of mass evil ever committed.

You have a duty to restrict your actions to the reasonable, just like you have a duty to drink responsibly. Priests encourage people to exceed the bounds of reason, and they do this consciously and knowningly, because they think reason doesn't apply to them. That's the same song every criminal has ever sung.


Sherlock Holmes
Does what you wrote mean you hate all priests or only some priests?
I mean exactly what I wrote. It is obvious to even the stupidest person that I hate people who commit fraud, and that I think priests are class of people who routinely commit fraud. I have no idea why you insist on being dense. I realize that you are undoubtedly an idiot, but even an idiot ought to be able to comprehend what I wrote. Therefore, I must conclude that you are intentionally being difficult, which makes you both an idiot and troll. Please go back to whatever rock you rot under, and stop hijacking my thread with your rhetorical blathering.

Originally posted by Yahzi

I mean exactly what I wrote. It is obvious to even the stupidest person that I hate people who commit fraud, and that I think priests are class of people who routinely commit fraud. I have no idea why you insist on being dense. I realize that you are undoubtedly an idiot, but even an idiot ought to be able to comprehend what I wrote. Therefore, I must conclude that you are intentionally being difficult, which makes you both an idiot and troll. Please go back to whatever rock you rot under, and stop hijacking my thread with your rhetorical blathering.

Dear Mr. Yahzi,

Your not-so-sudden outburst does nothing for your case.

If you wish to communicate in a more civilized manner, please focus on that intention.

Very sincerely,

S. Holmes

[Thanz]

Well, according to Godwin's Law (http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/g/Godwin_s_Law.html) Yahzi has already ended reasonable discussion on this thread, but let's giv'r a go anyway....

Your problem is that you are assuming that what Priests are saying is not true. Well, you don't believe it to be true, but others do. Frankly, it doesn't matter one iota whether you think it is true or not. And comparing priests to Nazis is pure idiocy.

I don't want to go down the whole seatbelt road again, but suffice it to say that priests are not committing fraud, and it is important that they believe what they are saying to be true for that determination.

Let's say you buy a painting that you believe was painted by Monet. Years later, you go to sell it, and tell buyers that you bought it from an art dealer and that it was by Monet. Someone buys it, then discovers that it was not really by Monet at all, it was just a clever forgery. Have you committed fraud? No - you did not set out to decieve anyone, you just told them what you honestly believed. You were both duped by someone else.

It is the same with priests, even if one assumes that what they are saying is not true. Of course, if it is true, there is no fraud. But even if it isn't, it is not fraud to tell someone what you honestly believe to be true.

And this is why your idiotic analogies break down. NO matter what you believe, killing people and blowing buildings are bad. Fraud requires deception on the part of the fraudster, and that is absent with priests.

[plindboe]

The Nazis believed their truth. They thought they were doing the world a faver by killing Jews. Are you saying it is wrong to hate the Nazis?

Timothy McViegh really beleived that he would start a race war and cleanse the country by blowing up the Arthur McMurry federal building. Are you saying it is wrong to hate McViegh?


I find your comparison to be quite absurd. First of all, let's assume the nazis and the Oklahoma bomber, believed that they acted for the greater good. The BIG difference is that these people chose to take lifes, which in itself is an unexcusable act.

Also I find it disturbing how you keep generalizing this group. You say priests are like this, priests are like that. It's like listening to the rantings of a rascist. It's the same hate you preach, just directed at another group in society.


The entire point is that it doesn't matter if you believe it to be true or not: what matters is if it is true. As someone said, you have a moral duty to not be so egregiously wrong.

You are so confident that you hold the supreme and only truth, and want to convince everyone about it. You're beginning to act exactly like the people you hate, though sadly I never think you will come to realize that.

Peter

[stamenflicker]

I mean exactly what I wrote. It is obvious to even the stupidest person that I hate people who commit fraud, and that I think priests are class of people who routinely commit fraud. I have no idea why you insist on being dense. I realize that you are undoubtedly an idiot, but even an idiot ought to be able to comprehend what I wrote. Therefore, I must conclude that you are intentionally being difficult, which makes you both an idiot and troll. Please go back to whatever rock you rot under, and stop hijacking my thread with your rhetorical blathering.

Ah yes. The real Yahzi stands up. I should have known it wouldn't take too long... of course the discussion didn't really end, since my post remained unaddressed, as usual around here.

Flick

[ceo_esq]

Originally posted by Yahzi
Marylin Vos Savant once said that, "love is doing the right thing for someone even if they can't appreciate it."Mightn't the priests feel the same way about what they're doing?
Originally posted by Yahzi
And yes, the priests do know it is not true. That is why they invented and promoted the concept of faith. To assert that something should be taken on faith is to acknowledge that you cannot prove it. To expect people to take as true things you cannot prove is a violation of reason.
It may be a violation of reason, but it's also a very human thing. When you ask someone to trust you, you acknowledge that there is, generally speaking, no empirical basis on which such trust can really be founded. Yet people still exchange marriage vows, for example.
Originally posted by Yahzi
Priests encourage people to exceed the bounds of reason, and they do this consciously and knowningly, because they think reason doesn't apply to them. That's the same song every criminal has ever sung.
The criminals have sung that song, but then again so have the poets.

[Yahzi]

Thanz
Fraud requires deception on the part of the fraudster, and that is absent with priests
Technically, this is correct. While I submit that there a lot more priests committing fraud than you might expect, I concede that the majority of them are sincere, and thus not actually committing fraud in the legal sense. I wasn't accusing them of the legal sense of the word, but rather in the moral sense.

Priests support their delusions by denigrating, or even actively opposing, those methods known to lead to truth. They also encourage the kind of thinking designed to protect their delusions. While this behaviour is not sufficient to establish legal guilt for fraud, I do believe that it establishes moral guilt.

When priests defend their position by appealing to emotions and faith over reason and logic, they are committing acts of immorality.

Your problem is that you are assuming that what Priests are saying is not true.
I wasn't that specific. What I am railing against is fraud; if some particular religion is true, then I would be railing against atheism as a fraud. It is not that I am assuming that they are false, but rather, that I am pointing out that whether or not they are false matters.

The point is not that one particular thing is true and the others are false: the point is that being correct is in and of itself a necessary condition, and being false is in and of itself a wrongful position.

NO matter what you believe, killing people and blowing buildings are bad.
Of course it's bad. But it't not always wrong, as WWII and the liberation of the death camps showed.


plindboe
I find your comparison to be quite absurd. First of all, let's assume the nazis and the Oklahoma bomber, believed that they acted for the greater good. The BIG difference is that these people chose to take lifes, which in itself is an unexcusable act.
The Christian church, in both Catholic and Protestant versions, has chosen to take lives for many centuries. It is only in this modern period, these last 100 years, that it has not, and the reason it stopped killing people was not a change in theology or church doctrine but rather a change in social conditions and the balance of temporal power. But then, the Nazis haven't taken any lives in the last 50 years or so. Therefore, I think the comparisions are quite accurate.

Also I find it disturbing how you keep generalizing this group. You say priests are like this, priests are like that. It's like listening to the rantings of a rascist. It's the same hate you preach, just directed at another group in society.

Do you hate murderers? Isn't your hate of murderers just the same hate, directed at another group in society? Do you honestly think that hating people for what they do is the same as hating people for what they are? By your logic, we aren't allowed to hate any groups, simply because they are groups. Thus, the Association of Child-Eating Pedophiles is safe from our hatred, because after all they are group, and we wouldn't want to be prejudiced!

Preists are defined by what they choose. They are a voluntary group, unlike race, and therefore not protected by the defense of involuntary assignment. The fact that you don't understand the difference between a race and a vocation indicates that you probably have little of actual value to add to this discussion.

You are so confident that you hold the supreme and only truth, and want to convince everyone about it.
I reiterate: my diatribe does not require one to take a particular position on what is true, but only that one take the position that truth actually matters.

Whether I am correct about athiesm or not will not change the fact that I hate people who lie, who take actions to protect a lie, who denigrate reason and common sense in defense of the lie, particularly when the lie is false.

Truth matters more than faith. That is the gnostic position. I realize that some people disagree, and it is precisely them that I hate.


ceo_esq
Mightn't the priests feel the same way about what they're doing?
Yes, of course they do. The point I am making is that their intention to do good is insufficient. It is not enough to intend good, you must also actually do good. The fact that they are wrong (assuming they are wrong) is enough to invert all their good acts into evil ones, intention nonwithstanding. Note to the peanut gallery: this would apply equally well to athiests, if in fact we were wrong.

I take the radical empiricist view that the real world actually matters.

Finally, the fact that priests take shortcuts in defending their position makes them culpable. Just like Albert Speer wrote in his memoirs that he did not know the Holocaust was occurring did not exculpate him, because he should have known. He (along with most of Germany) was careful not to ask the wrong questions, lest he get dangerous answers. Priests do this all the time, and worse, encourage others to do the same. Thus, the charge of fraud: not that they are insincere, but they commit moral crimes to protect their sincerity.

When you ask someone to trust you, you acknowledge that there is, generally speaking, no empirical basis on which such trust can really be founded.
Nonsense. There is an empirical base, you just choose not to investigate it. For instance, you could hire a private detective to follow your wife, or hire an handsome actor to try and seduce her. Faith in an authority based on tests you don't care to apply is entirely different than faith in something that by definition cannot have empirical tests.

The criminals have sung that song, but then again so have the poets.
But the poets aren't using force, and they aren't claiming truth. I was just castigated for lambasting an entire vocation, and now you are comparing poets to criminals?

If a mugger threatens me with a heavy peice of Michelangelo's statuery, I don't find that exculpatory of the crime of robbery in the slightest. Do you?

EDIT: This is exactly my point. To some people, beauty justifies deceit. Those are the people I despise, and I despise them because of epistimological reasons and because in my expierence they get the beauty, while they make others pay for the deceit.


Sherlock Holmes
Dear Mr. Holmes,

Your not-so-subtle imitation of a troll does nothing for your reputation.

If you wish to actually communicate, please focus on that intention by reading and comprehending what you read, rather than asking stupid questions designed to allow you to employ stock rhetoric. When someone answers your request for clarification with a response that does not allow you to apply your simple-minded arguments, do not respond by simply asking the same question over and over until you get the one word response that allows you to type in the next block of text you copied from someone else.

Very sincerely sad that my ignore list is full,

Yahzi

Dear Mr. Yahzi,

We can scroll up and read your last outburst (interesting sections highlighted)

"I mean exactly what I wrote. It is obvious to even the stupidest person that I hate people who commit fraud, and that I think priests are class of people who routinely commit fraud. I have no idea why you insist on being dense. I realize that you are undoubtedly an idiot, but even an idiot ought to be able to comprehend what I wrote. Therefore, I must conclude that you are intentionally being difficult, which makes you both an idiot and troll. Please go back to whatever rock you rot under, and stop hijacking my thread with your rhetorical blathering."

It is clear that you still have not directly answered a direct question, but rather have replied with rhetoric.

In the title you said you "hate priests", yet when asked if you hate all or some subset (like one convicted of molestation), which is a perfectly reasonable question, you don't address that in any degree of specificity.

Replying that you "hate people who commit fraud" is interesting, but does not directly answer the question.

If you need assistance on how to remove an entry from your ignore list, please let someone know.

Very sincerely yours,

S. Holmes

[Yahzi]

Sh*thead Holmes
It is clear that you still have not directly answered a direct question
Because it is a question that does not need answered, except by people too stupid to actually have a conversation with.

The title says I hate priests, and the body of the post explains why I hate priests. Now, a person with even a passing acquaintance with logic could deduce for themselves that I only hate priests who conform to the description laid out in the body of the text. It is obvious that I do not hate priests that do not commit the crime I accuse priests of. It is obvious that I do not hate people for committing a crime, and then hate other people who have not committed that crime for committing that crime because they happen to share a label with the people that committed the crime. I define a crime, I state that I hate people that commit that crime, and I name a group that normally and routinely commits that crime, and the only person who is confused about whether or not I hate people who do not commit the crime is you. Only a mentally retarded person could not understand the transition between the general and the specific, and only a argumentative troll would object to it.

Yet, when you asked for clarification, I gave it to you. And then you complained that my answer was too oblique. So, for your very simple mind, here is the answer: "No." I do not hate all priests. I do not hate priests that do not propogate untruths. I do not hate priests that don't exist, or are indistinguishable from non-priests, or in no way conform to the description of priest that I provided except for someone else's arbitrary decision to label them as priests. The text of my post made this clear from the very first: my clarification I kindly posted to you made it clear: and now I am answering you directly even though anyone stupid enough not have figured this out already probably can't understand my response.

Now, having wasted everyone's time and bandwith having a perfectly obvious answer explained to you three times, do you actually have anything to say?

.
.
.

I didn't think so.

We are judged not only by the answers we give, but also by the questions we ask. And you are judged to be an idiot. Go ahead: prove me wrong: say something actually meaningful.

[Finella]

Yahzi -

I ask in all sincerity, what it the purpose of this thread? Is it a simple rant (which is fine), or is it to incite action of some kind (and what kind would that be), or is it to stimulate debate?

---,--'--{@

[arcticpenguin]

For those who do not hate priests, there is now a photo calendar: http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/19/wcal19.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/04/19/ixworld.html

Dear Mr. Yahzi,

Let us examine some more interesting word choices of yours
(some paraphrased)


sh*thead
too stupid
no logic
mentally retarded
argumentative troll
very simple mind
idiot


You have clairified your position in any case, and I thank you for graciously ;) addressing my questions.

Very sincerely,

S. Holmes

[Yahzi]

Sherlock Holmes
You have clairified your position in any case, and I thank you for graciously addressing my questions.
And notice: you have nothing to say. Having finally got your answer, you have noting to say. Just as I predicted. You have made a half-dozen posts, whose sole value was to extract a single word answer that was obvious from my very first post. What do you call someone that operates like that? Well, among stupid, idiotic, annoying, and dull, you also call them a troll.

You can whine about my language all day long, but the simple, obvious fact is you have nothing to contribute. You've been wastig our time from your very first post.


Finella
ask in all sincerity, what it the purpose of this thread?
Do you mean before or after it was hijacked by the troll?

If I wanted to incite action, it would probably be more effective if I actually mentioned some kind of action, or even suggested that action might be necessary or valuable. Since I in no way refer to, imply, or otherwise mention the concept of action, one might possibly infer that my post is not particularly intended to incite action.

Several posters - those without narrow-minded religious agendas - have already commented on how the post was quite explanatory of my position. It does seem possible that people might debate and even, possibly, benefit from my little ephiphany, in much the same way I have come to realize that nativity displays on public land really should be acceptable.

However, it now has become a flame war between myself and a moron, so pretty much everyone else has stopped reading.

[stamenflicker]

If you need assistance on how to remove an entry from your ignore list, please let someone know.

Feel free to take me off ignore Yahzi... O wait, that means you might have to "think" as opposed to "rant." I still would like to engage Yahzi on the simple fact that if a person has an interpretation of anything-- literature, poetry, their favorite movie... they will try to propogate that interpretation by providing support for it among the masses. One walk through the public library reveals this to be true. It's not just priests, its humanity. Surely Yahzi doesn't hate humanity :)

Flick

Dear Mr. Yahzi,

I always find it interesting that people pronouncing "troll!" on others consider respones from other people as "trolling", yet fail to categorize their own posts as trolling.

You have made a half-dozen posts, whose sole value was to extract a single word answer that was obvious from my very first post.

It may not have been that many posts if you have had responded directly to the question (as you finally did).

Some more interesting rhetoric from you to add to the already-too-long list

"stupid, idiotic, annoying, dull troll"

Perhaps if you responded in a rhetoric-free manner that would help get your point across in a more constructive way.

Sincerely yours,

S. Holmes

[ceo_esq]

Originally posted by Yahzi
The Christian church, in both Catholic and Protestant versions, has chosen to take lives for many centuries. It is only in this modern period, these last 100 years, that it has not, and the reason it stopped killing people was not a change in theology or church doctrine but rather a change in social conditions and the balance of temporal power. But then, the Nazis haven't taken any lives in the last 50 years or so. Therefore, I think the comparisions are quite accurate.Regardless of the point you were making, it’s hard to believe you couldn’t offer analogy that didn’t involve Nazism. It really seems like a gratuitous vilification of Catholicism.

Let's put aside for the moment the fact that the problem with Nazism arises not just from the means the Nazis employed in the service of their goals, but that the goals themselves were uniquely odious. You’ve alleged twice recently that Church history has been characterized by mass murder, and although it’s probably not central to the discussion here, that’s not the sort of claim you should make without support. What exactly did you have in mind that even begins to approach the scale of depravity of Nazism? The Nazis killed more Jews in a week than the Spanish Inquisition did [EDITED TO ADD: people of all sorts] in three and a half centuries – and recall that the Spanish Inquisition was as severe as it was largely because it was primarily under secular rather than Church control. I just don’t see any justification to your comparison.

You say the "the reason [the Church] stopped killing people was not a change in theology or church doctrine but rather a change in social conditions and the balance of temporal power." In fact, the innovation of an enlightened criminal justice system and the renunciation of institutional killing developed principally within the Church, not outside it. Your historical conclusion is almost exactly backwards.
Originally posted by Yahzi
Truth matters more than faith. That is the gnostic position. I realize that some people disagree, and it is precisely them that I hate.
I'm not sure I understand the point of your reference to gnosticism. While it's difficult to make generalizations about gnosticism, orthodox (in the general sense) Christianity and gnosticism both posit that truth is fundamental. The gnostic position, roughly put, is that simply knowing the truth matters more than submitting oneself to it and acting on it.
Originally posted by Yahzi
Yes, of course they do. The point I am making is that their intention to do good is insufficient. It is not enough to intend good, you must also actually do good. The fact that they are wrong (assuming they are wrong) is enough to invert all their good acts into evil ones, intention nonwithstanding. Note to the peanut gallery: this would apply equally well to athiests, if in fact we were wrong.

...

Finally, the fact that priests take shortcuts in defending their position makes them culpable. Just like Albert Speer wrote in his memoirs that he did not know the Holocaust was occurring did not exculpate him, because he should have known. He (along with most of Germany) was careful not to ask the wrong questions, lest he get dangerous answers. Priests do this all the time, and worse, encourage others to do the same. Thus, the charge of fraud: not that they are insincere, but they commit moral crimes to protect their sincerity.But assigning that sort of blame for "culpable ignorance" is considerably easier in the case of Germany under the Nazis. The wrongness of the Nazis' doctrines should be manifest. The wrongness of the priests' (or the atheists') doctrines, taken as whole, isn't - even upon thousands of years of examination and reflection.
Originally posted by Yahzi
Nonsense. There is an empirical base, you just choose not to investigate it. For instance, you could hire a private detective to follow your wife, or hire an handsome actor to try and seduce her. Faith in an authority based on tests you don't care to apply is entirely different than faith in something that by definition cannot have empirical tests.Come on. It's just not possible to devise an empirical test to confirm the truth of statements like "I will always love you". If the detective tells me my wife isn't seeing anyone, does it really prove she loves me? If the handsome actor says he managed to seduce her, does it really prove she didn't love me? Of course not. Those empirical tests are designed to (dis)prove different (though arguably related) hypotheses - ones which can be empirically verified ("She's not having an affair"; "She can't be seduced"). We can choose to consider as many or as few of the relevant empirical indications as we like, but in the end we have to take the last step on faith.
Originally posted by Yahzi
But the poets aren't using force, and they aren't claiming truth. I was just castigated for lambasting an entire vocation, and now you are comparing poets to criminals?I didn't evoke the comparison; you did, tacitly, when you suggested that a characteristic in fact shared by poets (consciously encouraging people to transcend reason because it doesn't apply) is more properly a hallmark of criminality. Of course, while poets have on occasion compared themselves to criminals, perhaps they could better be compared to priests (see Joyce above) - without necessarily confusing the priests with the criminals.

Anyway, for most of the history of Western literature, the poets have been claiming truth; this is, of course, one of the principal observations of postmodern criticism. As for the use of force, the priests may be more guilty than the poets, but substantially less so than most truth-claimers.
Originally posted by Yahzi
This is exactly my point. To some people, beauty justifies deceit. Those are the people I despise, and I despise them because of epistimological reasons and because in my expierence they get the beauty, while they make others pay for the deceit.Sounds good, especially the last bit, but I don't think I grasp your meaning 100%. Perhaps it returns us somewhat to the question of the relationship between beauty and truth (http://www.englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/grecian.html), though.

[Thanz]

Originally posted by Yahzi
Thanz

Technically, this is correct. While I submit that there a lot more priests committing fraud than you might expect, I concede that the majority of them are sincere, and thus not actually committing fraud in the legal sense. I wasn't accusing them of the legal sense of the word, but rather in the moral sense.

Well, this is new. Your other posts certainly talk of fraud in the classic "legal" sense - that of decieving others into believing what you know is not true. When confronted with the fact that the priests actually do believe it is true, you essentially accuse them of being "wilfully blind" and that they ought to know what they say is false. Certainly nothing about "moral fraud". But to keep this line up, you have to admit that it hinges on what YOU say is true or false.

Priests support their delusions by denigrating, or even actively opposing, those methods known to lead to truth. They also encourage the kind of thinking designed to protect their delusions. While this behaviour is not sufficient to establish legal guilt for fraud, I do believe that it establishes moral guilt.

How so? They tell people what they believe. They tell them that they need faith to believe what the bible says. Where is the delusion? Where is the actively opposing of methods? These arguments only apply to hard core fundies who denigrate science whenever it disagrees with the bible. The majority do not do this.

When priests defend their position by appealing to emotions and faith over reason and logic, they are committing acts of immorality.

Pure hogwash. You can't say this without pushing your own belief system that puts logic over all matters of emotion. I don't think that even you believe this: If you could save a busload of kids from going over a cliff or your wife and child(ren), which would you choose? Reason and logic say save the greater number. Emotion says save your family. Most (I think) would save their family, and I would not fault them for it.

Your problem is that you seem to think that everything needs to be based on reason and logic alone. Religion, by its nature, is based mostly on faith. I think that does not make it a bad thing in and of itself - you may disagree. But to say that you don't hate religion but you hate priests because they base things on emotion and faith makes absolutely no sense.


I wasn't that specific. What I am railing against is fraud; if some particular religion is true, then I would be railing against atheism as a fraud. It is not that I am assuming that they are false, but rather, that I am pointing out that whether or not they are false matters.

I think that priests would agree with you that the truth matters. They just disagree with you about what is true. You are assuming that religion is false - otherwise, you cannot claim that preaching it is "fraud".

The point is not that one particular thing is true and the others are false: the point is that being correct is in and of itself a necessary condition, and being false is in and of itself a wrongful position.

A necessary condition for what? What do you mean by "being false"? I would agree that if some huckster does not believe what they are saying, and they are simply playing people for their own benefit (I think many televangelists fit into this) that this is fraud, plain and simple, and should be prosecuted.

This is a far cry from your typical priest in the church on the corner, who lives a simple lifestyle, believes in what they are saying and just wants to help in the community. What I object to is you calling these peple fraudulent simply because you disagree with what they are saying.

[Yahzi]

ceo_esq
It really seems like a gratuitous vilification of Catholicism.
On the one hand, we have a historical instituition that used its power to murder everyone who dared to oppose, disagree, or even question it. On the other hand, we have a historical instituition that did exactly the same. Tell me: how is this gratuitous, or even vilification?

This is like being in the room with a serial killer who was last arrested 20 years ago (but not convicted on technicality), and having people chide you on being so rude as to even so much as remember that ugly, ancient past.

The Catholic Church is the same instituition that commited those historical crimes. It vigoursly asserts this every day. It also asserts that God's word, and therefore their doctrine, does not change. It draws its moral and legal authority from its ancient precedents, yet if anyone so much as points to a blemish on that bloody patrimony, opprobation flows unchecked.

I agree that it is easier to make the points you want to make if you simply ignore all history and empirical fact, but I don't think it's better.

The Nazis killed more Jews in a week than the Spanish Inquisition did [EDITED TO ADD: people of all sorts] in three and a half centuries
As long as you are going to quote stastics, you might want to quote them per capita. Even the Bible understands that giving all of what you have, even when it is little, is more significant than giving little of what you have, even if it is great. And then, since you are comparing all of the Nazi activities - not just a single death camp, for instance - you might want to compare it to all of the Catholic Church's activities, instead of just picking out a single instance.

Why is it that when you reach for empirical numbers, you do it so prejucidally?

In fact, the innovation of an enlightened criminal justice system and the renunciation of institutional killing developed principally within the Church, not outside it.
Speaking of providing proof, this is the kind of claim that might warrant some.

Christianity and gnosticism both posit that truth is fundamental.
"What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" - Father Tertullian
The gnostic sect of Xianity was exterminated long ago. I don't think you have the authority to rehabilitate them on behalf of Xianity. My point is that Xianity is about faith, not knowledge, and it has been for about 1700 years.

The wrongness of the priests' (or the atheists') doctrines, taken as whole, isn't - even upon thousands of years of examination and reflection.
The wrongess of the Nazi doctrines aren;t obvious either - what is bad about putting people to work, or providing medical care for the poor? Oh wait, we were talking about specific doctrines, like for instance, supporting slavery, condemning people for being born homosexual, stoning people for having sex without a license from the state, stoning people for wearing mixed fabrics, etc.

What was your point?

We can choose to consider as many or as few of the relevant empirical indications as we like, but in the end we have to take the last step on faith.
You can't see atoms - you have to take what you see through the atomic force microscope on faith. But it's not at all the same kind of faith as faith in God. Having faith based on various empirical tests that point to a conclusion is entirely different than having faith in the abscence of evidence, or even in spite of evidence. It is true that we cannot absolutely know anything, even the reports of our senses: but to suggest that therefore any amount of error is indistinguishable is absurd.

Your wife demonstrates her love in various independent ways every day. If she doesn't, you begin to suspect that maybe she doesn't really love you. Surely you can see this is entirely different than God, who responds to every challenge and test with behaviour that is indistinguishable from no God at all.

Anyway, for most of the history of Western literature, the poets have been claiming truth
When you put it that way, I hate them too. The new-age babbleheads are no less despicable than priests (and to my mind indistinguishable). However, I think that there have been many artists who did not pretend to a false legitimacy. They assert that they are painting their truth, their personal view of their particular subjective position. That's ok (unless of course they are sell-outs and aren't even painting their own truth!)

Did Dante market "The Inferno" as poetry or as a travel guide?


Thanz
When confronted with the fact that the priests actually do believe it is true,
You are dodging the question. Does the ability toi fool yourself into believing your crime is justified excuse you, particularly when you should - by any reasonable standard - have known better?

Priests don't use this kind of logic when they balance their checkbooks or buy cars - so why do they suddenly invoke it when they talk about God? Doesn't the mere fact of the exemption make it suspicious?

These arguments only apply to hard core fundies who denigrate science whenever it disagrees with the bible. The majority do not do this.
Actually, no. These arguments apply to people who actually beleive in God. Those liberal theologians you are referring to - the ones who think you can be religious and scientific - are all dead. The "God of the Gaps" theory died with Darwin, and liberal theology is an ideologically bankrupt corpse that just hasn't fallen down yet.

This is why fundamentalism - and atheism - is on the rise throughout the world.

Reason and logic say save the greater number.
No they don't. My reason and logic says, do as I would have others do. And frankly, I want to save my wife, so I'm not going to blame the guy that saves his wife over mine.

You have made the mistake of assuming that Utilitarinism is synomous with Reason. This is not the case.

Your problem is that you seem to think that everything needs to be based on reason and logic alone
Not everything. Just the truth. Oddly, you agree with me 99.999999999%. I'm willing to bet you never want to see a court case decided on emotion, or a medical drug adminstered on faith, or bridge built without reason or logic.

You want to live in a world made safe and comfortable by reason, a world in which rational justice triumphs over all - except when you personally don't want it to.

I think that priests would agree with you that the truth matters. They just disagree with you about what is true.
Yes, but: I have one standard of truth: the empirical, rational standard. The priests have two standards: the faith based standard, which they use for God, and the empirical rational standard, whichy they apply to everything else.

It's not just that we disagree on what is true: we disagree on how to find the truth. Except that the priests agree on the rational method of truth for everything else: they only disagree with it when it interferes with their faith.

This is a far cry from your typical priest in the church on the corner, who lives a simple lifestyle, believes in what they are saying and just wants to help in the community.
A lot of Nazis were just good plain folk trying to do their jobs. You have a moral duty to engage your mind and think: you have a moral responsiblity to examine your own beliefs and actions. The typical priest in the church on the corner is like Albert Speer, just doing their job, trying to help people, but carefully (and probably subconsciously) not asking the questions that they should be asking.

Don't you think they should be asking these questions?


Sh*thead Holmes
It may not have been that many posts if you have had responded directly to the question (as you finally did).
Yet another post - and still nothing. Now that you have earned your hard-won answer, why aren't you doing anything with it? One obvious conclusion is that you didn't have anything to do: you were simply asking random, tangential questions that serve only to distract from the focus of the conversation and draw attention to yourself. Which is exactly what you have done in every single thread I have seen you post in.

Perhaps if you responded in a rhetoric-free manner that would help get your point across in a more constructive way.
Ok, let's try less rhetoric: You have nothing to add to the conversation. You are only asking stupid questions so that people will talk to you and pay attention to you. You are either incapable of or unwilling to actually follow what other people are saying, so you engage in this shadow play of pretending to join the conversation, solely so that you can feel like part of the action, even though you have no idea what is going (or don't care). You are like the mentally retarded kid that puts on the uniform with the rest of football team because you want to be a football player, but you can't actually understand the rules. But you are like the annoying retard who keeps insisting that somebody pass the ball to him, even though he is sitting on the sidelines. That passes beyond mere retardation into simple selfishness. I don't hate you because you are stupid, but rather, because you are selfish.

You can easily prove me wrong by posting some meaningful followup to your question, now that you have the answer. But, at the risk of being psychic, I predict with 100% certainity that you won't, because you can't.

Asking pointless questions just for the sake of making spam is a time-honored form of trolling. You are a troll. A particularly dumb one, at that.

Please go find a forum more suited to your faculties, like perhaps MoronsRus or possibly TV Talk Shows. Or any of those John Edward forums.

Dear Yahzi,

You are building up quite a dictionary of interesting words here. Unfortunately these words have nothing to do with critical inquiry.

I fail to see how that was less rhetoric?

Here are more examples of your rhetoric

Sh*thead Holmes
asking stupid questions
asking questions so people will pay attention to you
like the mentally retarded kid
like the annoying retard
are a troll
a particularly dumb one
MoronsRus

I'll close with a very telling sentence

"I don't hate you because you are stupid, but rather, because you are selfish."

I wish to use this as an example of how one person can strike dead all inquiry, by using rhetoric. Remember that I started by politely asking you to clairify your stance.

Worried for your skeptical health,
Very sincerely yours,

S. Holmes

[Supercharts]

Yahzi
How do you feel about nuns?

[Yahzi]

Sh*thead Holmes
Remember that I started by politely asking you to clairify your stance.
My stance did not need clarification. It was obvious to any literate English reader. The mere fact that you required such a clarification indicated that you merely read the title of my thread, and did not read or comprehend the body of my thread. Which should disqualify you from commenting on my thread.

Having obtained your clarification, you still have not made any comment upon it. The vapidity of your original query was obvious to me from the start: and now, countless posts later, it has been rendered obvious to everyone.

You simply have nothing to say. You only talk to hear yourself speak. You are the death of discussion, because you insist on participating, and the only level you can participate on is the superficial. Not just the banally superficial, but the literally superficial. You are the reason "banning" was invented on message boards. You occupy bandwith to no value whatsoever.

Here are more examples of your rhetoric
Yo, dipsh*t, those are insults, not rhetoric. Here's a hint: if you don't know what a word means, don't use it. Of course, that pretty much silences you, but trust me, that's a good thing.

I wish to use this as an example of how one person can strike dead all inquiry, by using rhetoric.
No, you wish to use this to demonstrate how one troll can destroy all conversation, by being relentlessly irrelevant.

I can't decide if you are Muscleman or that other moron I thought was Muscleman for the 30 seconds before I put him on ignore, and I don't care. You've earned a spot in my ignore list.


Supercharts
Q: How do you get a nun laid?
A: Dress her up like an altar boy.
:D

You are the reason "banning" was invented on message boards. You occupy bandwith to no value whatsoever.


Dear Mr. Yahzi,

I still believe that my original question was perfectly sensible. You say that it is "obvious" from your post, but I disagree. Hating priests who commit crimes is very different from hating all priests, and I wanted to clarify that point.

You did clarify your stance in one response, much later, so that answered my question.

Is it possible that you can disagree with someone without making obvious insults like the above quote and things like the quote below? It doesn't create a good atmosphere for the exchange of ideas.


Yo, dipsh*t, those are insults, not rhetoric. Here's a hint: if you don't know what a word means, don't use it. Of course, that pretty much silences you, but trust me, that's a good thing.


Notice that I am responding to you and that you have responded to me the entire way through our 'conversation'. However, I am the only one being called a troll (and much worse things), which is interesting.

Amazed,
Sincerely,

S. Holmes

[BillyTK]

Originally posted by ceo_esq
Anyway, for most of the history of Western literature, the poets have been claiming truth
Originally posted by Yahzi
When you put it that way, I hate them too. The new-age babbleheads are no less despicable than priests (and to my mind indistinguishable). However, I think that there have been many artists who did not pretend to a false legitimacy. They assert that they are painting their truth, their personal view of their particular subjective position. That's ok (unless of course they are sell-outs and aren't even painting their own truth!)

Did Dante market "The Inferno" as poetry or as a travel guide?
Modern art--whether visual or verbal--is characterised by the search for truth, whether the individual truth of our essential nature or the collective truth of the human condition. I don't see how the truth it seeks is anyway in opposition to the truth of science.

For instance, science will (hopefully) reveal the mechanics of consciousness, and which will certainly contribute to our understanding of the workings of mind. But will that tell us what it's like to feel, or to see through another's eyes the way that art does? Art is more than imitation and personal preference.

Dante's "Inferno" is both poetry, a travel guide and a meditation on the state of human existence, btw. As is Voltaire's "Candide", which is also a satirical critique of religion and certain Enlightenment philosophies.

[ceo_esq]

Originally posted by Yahzi
On the one hand, we have a historical instituition that used its power to murder everyone who dared to oppose, disagree, or even question it. On the other hand, we have a historical instituition that did exactly the same. Tell me: how is this gratuitous, or even vilification?
My difficulty with your point here is this: I find no reason to believe that the Catholic Church “used its power to murder everyone who dared to oppose, disagree or even question it.” That sort of charge requires some fairly overwhelming evidence, which does not appear to be forthcoming in this thread.

(By the way, the Nazis didn’t just murder people who dared oppose them, of course - which would be pretty banal for a government, historically speaking. They vowed their existence to the extermination of entire groups of “involuntarily assigned” people.)
Originally posted by Yahzi
[As long as you are going to quote stastics, you might want to quote them per capita. Even the Bible understands that giving all of what you have, even when it is little, is more significant than giving little of what you have, even if it is great. And then, since you are comparing all of the Nazi activities - not just a single death camp, for instance - you might want to compare it to all of the Catholic Church's activities, instead of just picking out a single instance.

Why is it that when you reach for empirical numbers, you do it so prejucidally?
It would take a little more research to provide per capita statistics, but I guess I could try to do that. As for picking out a single instance, I accept your point. I was simply pitting the instance that generally garners the most criticism (rightly or wrongly) of the Church (the Spanish Inquisition) against the instance that generally garners the most criticism of the Nazis (the Final Solution). Also, I compared a time period of several centuries to one of less than a decade, which hardly seems prejudiced in favor of the Church.

But let’s step back for a moment. Why am I even doing your legwork? You’re the one claiming the Church is a Nazi-esque mass murderer, and you’ve produced a grand total of zero instances and zero empirical numbers. When you do, we’ll see how your case stacks up.
Originally posted by Yahzi
Speaking of providing proof, this is the kind of claim that might warrant some.
Fair enough. I didn’t mean to go off on a tangent here, but since you ask, I'll delve into it just a little bit. Most of the enlightened features of modern criminal justice were transferred from the Church’s legal traditions (beginning in Christianized Rome with the Codex Justinianus and continuing with the flourishing of canon law) to secular systems of justice."[J]udicial process" … was a feature of the church courts of [the Middle Ages], but not of the secular courts. With the disappearance of Roman Empire in the West, Roman criminal procedure based on rational proofs had, outside the ecclesiastical courts, given way gradually in much of western Europe. In its place, Germanic procedures based on irrational proofs - ordeals, oath, and battle - came to be used to resolve criminal accusation. The "ordeals" were important among all the Germanic peoples, including the Franks, as the means by which persons accused of a crime might be required to prove their innocence by showing that supernatural forces intervened to protect them.
…

The Church, however, disapproved of the Germanic "ordeals," to which canonical jurists referred collectively as "vulgar purgation" (purgatio vulgaris). The Church followed the trial procedure of rational proofs by witness testimony, which was fundamentally opposed to the primitive irrationality of the "ordeals." . . . Accusing witnesses had to testify in open court before a defendant asserting innocence as a prerequisite to his conviction.

(Source: Frank R. Herrmann & Brownlow M. Speer, “Facing the Accuser: Ancient and Medieval Precursors of the Confrontation Clause”, 34 Virginia Journal of International Law 481 (1994))Church law was well regarded [vis-à-vis medieval and Renaissance secular justice systems] for its more orderly and uniform doctrine and procedure, and (notwithstanding the reputation of the Inquisition) its generally more lenient punishments.

(Source: Lauren Benton, “Making Order Out of Trouble: Jurisdictional Politics in the Spanish Colonial Borderlands” 27 Law and Social Inquiry 373 (2001))
So it is with many of the most fundamental rights, privileges, guarantees and other concepts we associate with modern penal justice. For example, the notion of criminal intent (and later corollaries such as the insanity defense) originated first in ecclesiastical juridical procedure:The Church, unlike early common law, distinguished the mental state – mens rea – from the act committed – actus reus.
…
The Church had separated the actus reus from the mens rea quite early, and this distinction was integrated into the common law notion of crime over a period of several hundred years. … With the passage of time the common law began to recognize a general mens rea concept.

(Source: Henry T. Miller, “Recent Changes in Criminal Law: The Federal Insanity Defense”, 46 Louisiana Law Review 337 (1985))
Likewise the privilege against self-incrimination:The origins of the privilege against self-incrimination can be traced to the late medieval and early modern romano-canonical procedure. The Latin maxim nemo tenetur seipsum prodere ("no one is bound to inform against himself") was invoked as a defense against a variety of oaths requiring witnesses and defendants to swear to truthfully answer potentially incriminating questions. Nemo tenetur was grounded on tenets of medieval Christian theology. … [L]imitations on self-incrimination only began to appear in [secular common-law] courts of equity in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries[.]

(Source: Steven Penney, “Theories of Confession Admissibility: A Historical View” 25 American Journal of Criminal Law 309 (1998))
I could go on and on. Suffice to say that the nastiest abuses perpetrated by the Inquisition not only were surpassed by the secular courts of the era, but continued there unabated (and with fewer restrictions) long after such practices were renounced by the Church. Yet the juridical traditions developed within the Church would eventually play a great part in the modernization of secular criminal justice:
A recent study by John Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy, deals with the Roman Inquisition and the procedures it followed after its reconstitution in the mid-16th century in its struggle to preserve the faith and to eradicate heresy. The value of Tedeschi's study is that it overturns long-standing assumptions about the corruption, inhumane coercion, and injustice of the Roman Inquisition of the Renaissance, assumptions that Tedeschi admitted he harbored when he began his extensive work in the documents. What he "very gradually" began to find was that the Inquisition was not a "drumhead court, a chamber of horrors, or a judicial labyrinth from which escape was impossible". Tedeschi points out that the inquisitorial process included the provision of a defense attorney. Further, the accused was given right to counsel and even received a notarized copy of the entire trial (with the names of prosecution witnesses deleted) so that he might make a response. In contrast, in the secular courts of the time, the defense attorney was still playing only a ceremonial role, the felon was denied the right to counsel (until 1836), and evidence against the accused was only read in court, where he had to make the defense on the spot. Tedeschi concluded that the Roman Inquisition did dispense legal justice in terms of the jurisprudence of early modern Europe and even goes so far as to say, "it may not be an exaggeration to claim, in fact, that in several respects the Holy Office was a pioneer in judicial reform".

(Source (http://www.geocities.com/militantis/inquisition2.html)) [Note: the book referred to above is Professor Tedeschi’s The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Vol. 78, 1991)]