mererdog

That would follow only if the Bible's job is to be interpreted correctly by everyone. Can you prove that to be the case?

That is an interpretation. There are other interpretations of the passage. What makes your interpretation more trustworthy than another?

It doesn't take arrogance to hold and express an unpopular position. It takes conviction and the courage thereof. Conviction is often misguided. Perhaps his conviction that Catholicism is not Christian is misguided. Perhaps your conviction that it is Christian is misguided. I don't presume to know the correct way to understand the Bible, or even if there is one. I am not a good arbiter of the correct meaning of the word. If I had an opinion on the subject, I would like to think I could feel safe expressing it here.

I would think religious freedom means they are free to consider themselves Christians, and Dan is free to consider them not Christians. A key component of religious freedom is to allow others to disagree with us- to let others be wrong, no?

Stereotyping is a common basis for religious discrimination. Negative qualities of some members of a religious group are assumed to be shared by all members of the group. This includes tarring all members of a religious group with the guilt owned by specific members of the group. An example of this is holding all Jews accountable for Israeli government policy. A similar phenomenon happens with religious language. Words only have the meaning we bring to them, yet because we are used to relying on shared definitions this fact gets easily forgotten. So we stereotype a religious text by saying "It means X to me, therefore it means X to everyone," (often stated as "it says what it says") or even "It means X to some members of group Y, therefore it means X to all members of group Y." Now, the problem with these stereotypes isn't just that they become justifications for treating innocent people poorly. The more people use a stereotype, the more emotionally attached they become to it. Defending the stereotype becomes reflexive. Since stereotypes are oversimplifications, this means that ignoring complexity becomes reflexive. Since the truth is often complex, this means that ignoring the truth becomes reflexive.

It means that it is not a sin to lie to the Nazis about where the Jews are hiding. It means it is a bad idea to tell a recovering anorexic that you think he looked better before he put on weight. It means that if you think the violent criminal you're talking to is ugly, maybe you should keep that to yourself. Make sense?

Truth is power. Power can heal or harm. Power should be used wisely. Power should not be given out indiscriminately.

Actually, the Bible does not claim to be perfect. People make that claim about the Bible, but you see how that is different in important ways?

Partly because they don't. Partly because of a history of defining religion to exclude the unsavory. Partly because the social component of religion can only be effective within certain parameters. Most importantly, not everyone is part of a religion, so being part of all religions would not qualify something as a universally understood moral tenet, merely a widely understood moral tenet.

There are no universally understood moral concepts.

People do tend to speak with more freedom online due to the perception that it is safe to do so. But that's not so much a new phenomenon as a sort of social equalizer at work. The powerful have always felt comfortable saying what they think. Now the weak do to, is all... ;)

That would vary widely depending on my mood, I'm afraid. I swing widely between extremes of extroversion and introversion, optimism and pessimism. I am not bipolar, but I've had more than one layman diagnose me as such... As for the subject at hand, I do think that the increased ability to communicate anonymously has led to more open communication between strangers. This leads to more people being confronted with communication styles, and even concepts, that are socially unacceptable in the circles they normally travel in. It means more interactions of a decidedly negative nature, but it also leads to a lot of unintentional learning...

I think we are all exposed to a wider variety of human behavior on a regular basis. Much of what people think is new, in terms of behavior, was simply not visible to them before.

No, he means "sealed." http://www.gty.org/resources/bible-qna/BQ111412/what-does-it-mean-to-be-sealed-with-the-holy-spirit I do not know the answer to your question, OvergrownHamster.

It was also (and is still) used medically.

Sorry, but I somehow missed your response here until now. Just as an FYI, historically speaking, rape has been embraced by more societies than not. It goes hand in hand with the notions of people as property that produced things like arranged marriages. Of course, as you suggested about murder, societies that embrace rape usually have their own definitions that call their actions good. Which brings us to some of the fundamental moral questions. How can you tell the difference between subjective opinion and objective fact, if you can only view the world subjectively? Absent a way to tell the subjective from the objective, is it better to err on the side of assuming something is objective, or to err on the side of assuming it is subjective? Better to feel guilty when you do nothing wrong, or to not feel guilty when you do wrong?

If he also built the person who set the fire, giving them an inclination to set fires, yes. If he built the house poorly, making it a tinderbox that is easily burnt and hard to escape, yes. If he watched it happen and did nothing to stop it, yes.

So God did not technically create sin, but He created all the circumstances that led to its creation and allowed it to happen. That seems to only be a semantic difference. In terms of responsibility, whether you are talking blame or glory, it still looks like it would fall into His lap.

Each province has its own laws regarding who can solemnize a marriage. Status as a ULC minister will not, in and of itself, automatically qualify anyone under the laws of any of the provinces I checked. A ULC minister with an active local congregation, or who has been visible for some time being involved in local charity work, stands a decent chance of being granted the legal authority in at least some provinces.

There is a difference between an excuse and an explanation. Poor parenting is not an excuse for a child acting poorly, but it is an explanation. To be a good parent requires acknowledging both that children are responsible for their own choices and that parents are responsible for the effect their own choices have on how their children make choices. Choices are not made in a vacuum and the importance of environmental influences is hard to overstate.

A better analogy: Imagine someone Dan loves is killed by a robot that has been programmed to make its own decisions. Even if it is accepted as fact that the robot's "free will" prevents the maker from being responsible for the robots actions, the maker would still be liable, at a minimum, for negligence, since they created the potential for the killing. Now, is creating the potential for a thing the same as creating the thing, itself? I think it is, at least in moral terms. After all, if I tell someone I know to be short-tempered and violent that someone else called him a wimp, I would feel every bit as guilty as if I had beat someone up myself...

There is a belief that the world is righteous. That everything that exists is good and things that appear bad are not, really. That God has a plan, things happen for a reason, and good and evil are delusions (result of eating the forbidden fruit). This belief holds that to judge any part of creation is to judge God, and that this judgement of God is what we mistake as being judged by God. This belief holds that only by forgiving each other can we forgive God, and that this removes the separation between Us, allowing Us to live in Heaven. In terms of logic, it holds together fairly well. Which is fairly easy to do when a central plank of your argument is that any evidence suggesting you are wrong is the result of a delusion....

Nbbh

Priests often say things that contradict official church doctrine or dogma. Partly because they sometimes disagree with the church and partly because they sometime's don't know what the church's official position actually is. Because the church is so hierarchical, however, you can go over a local priest's head.

It is not as simple as the answers you have been given, but since the ULC has no set standards for how to perform baptism, the Catholic Church will likely not recognize baptisms performed by ULC minister. It is possible where there is an established local ULC church with stricter standards. A little info http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/why-does-the-church-recognize-protestant-baptism-if-protestantism-has-no-valid-priest