Problem is in the HR department, that is where the gap is.

Who is the CEO?  Pope.
Who is on the board of directors?  Roman Curia and Pope.
Who hires Archbishops/Bishops?  Board of directors
Who hires/assigns priests to any church? Bishop

The issue is with their vetting procedure.  So if the top is like you said "jam-packed full of pedos", you can only imagine their hiring/vetting procedures.

It is a systemic problem, and for some reason, they cannot fix it?  My guess is they don't want to fix it because the guys at the top are protecting their own.

If you hire a pedophile to work with kids in the kindergarten you can expect there will be abuse.  The same goes for any other organization.

Background checks (brain scans?) need to be done for all clergy because these people work with young kids.  And we know this organization has a systemic problem.

You did not just put your own message from another thread as a reliable source did you?....I think you just tried to do that.....It's like asking why is this pen blue, and you give me a piece of paper written on it "This pen is blue because I said so". Your source of information and the building argument for it is flawed on so many levels that I am not even sure where to start... you are way into deep to be pulled out .....I wish you well  

it's (Gods) existence is accepted by you as a starting point.

I do accept the existence of the creator as a starting point.

To me, all these ancient scriptures have no value.  They were written by people who knew less than a 12-year-old knows today.
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Scientific knowledge is cumulative, scriptures are not.

Few would now dispute that C.S. Lewis is one of the greatest Christian apologists of the twentieth century. So what is his approach to apologetics, and why has it been so successful?

Many Christian apologists have assimilated Lewis to their own way of thinking, presenting him in thoroughly modernist terms as an advocate of rationalist defences of faith. Yet to get the most out of reading Lewis, we need to approach him on his own terms. Here, I want to explore Lewis's distinctive understanding of the rationality of faith, which emphasises the reasonableness of Christianity without imprisoning it within an impersonal and austere rationalism.

I came to appreciate this distinctive approach when researching my recent biography of Lewis. For reasons I do not understand, the importance of Lewis's extensive use of visual images as metaphors of truth has been largely overlooked. For Lewis, truth is about seeing things rightly, grasping their deep interconnection. Truth is something that we see, rather than something we express primarily in logical or conceptual terms.

The basic idea is found in Dante's Paradiso (XXIII, 55-6), where the great Florentine poet and theologian expresses the idea that Christianity provides a vision of things - something wonderful that can be seen, yet proves resistant to verbal expression:

From that moment onwards my power of sight exceeded

That of speech, which fails at such a vision.

Hints of such an approach are also found in the writings of G.K. Chesterton, whom Lewis admired considerably. For Chesterton, a good theory allows us to see things properly: "We put on the theory, like a magic hat, and history becomes translucent like a house of glass." Thus, for Chesterton, a good theory is to be judged by the amount of illumination it offers, and its capacity to accommodate what we see in the world around us and experience within us: "With this idea once inside our heads, a million things become transparent as if a lamp were lit behind them." In the same way, Chesterton argued, Christianity validates itself by its ability to make sense of our observations of the world: "The phenomenon does not prove religion, but religion explains the phenomenon."

For Lewis, the Christian faith offers us a means of seeing things properly - as they really are, despite their outward appearances. Christianity provides an intellectually capacious and imaginatively satisfying way of seeing things, and grasping their interconnectedness, even if we find it difficult to express this in words. Lewis's affirmation of the reasonableness of the Christian faith rests on his own quite distinct way of seeing the rationality of the created order, and its ultimate grounding in God. Using a powerful visual image, Lewis invites us to see God as both the ground of the rationality of the world, and the one who enables us to grasp that rationality: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else." Lewis invites us to see Christianity as offering us a standpoint from which we may survey things, and grasp their intrinsic coherence. We see how things connect together.

Lewis consistently uses a remarkably wide range of visual metaphors - such as sun, light, blindness and shadows - to help us understand the nature of a true understanding of things. This has two important outcomes. First, it means that Lewis sees reason and imagination as existing in a collaborative, not competitive, relationship. Second, it leads Lewis to make extensive use of analogies in his apologetics, to enable us to see things in a new way.

For example, Lewis's famous apologetic for the doctrine of the Trinity in Mere Christianity suggests that our difficulties with this notion arise primarily because we fail to see it properly. If we see it another way - as, for instance, an inhabitant of a two-dimensional world might try to grasp and describe the structure of a three-dimensional reality - then we begin to grasp its intrinsic rationality.

Lewis's apologetics thus often takes the form of a visual imperative: "Try seeing it this way!" Lewis rightly realized that many people frame their accounts of things analogically, using a process that Hilaire Belloc called parallelism: the "illustration of some unperceived truth by its exact consonance with the reflection of a truth already known and perceived." Lewis does not try to prove the existence of God on a priori grounds. Rather, Lewis invites us to see how what we observe in the world around us and experience within us fits the Christian way of seeing things. Lewis's genius as an apologist lay in his ability to show how a Christian "viewpoint" (or, to borrow a term from Plato, a synoptikon) was able to offer a more satisfactory explanation of common human experience than its rivals - especially the atheism he himself had once espoused.

Throughout his apologetic writings, such as Mere Christianity, Lewis appeals to shared human experience and observation. How do we make sense of what we experience within us, or observe outside us? Lewis's apologetic approach is thus to demonstrate how an observation or experience fits, naturally and plausibly, within a Christian way of looking at things. Take his "argument from desire." This is not really an argument at all. It is more about observing and affirming the fit between a theory and observation. It is like trying on a hat or shirt for size, and looking at yourself in a mirror. How well does it fit? How many of our observations of the world can a theory accommodate, and how persuasively? It is basically about seeing how our experiences of desire fit a Christian framework.

Lewis thus argues that we experience desires that no experience in this world seems able to satisfy. And when we see these experiences through the lens of the Christian faith, we realize that this sort of experience is exactly what we would expect. Christianity tells us that that this is not our true home, and that we were created for heaven. How does that framework help us see these experiences? For Lewis, the answer was clear: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

Lewis's appeal here is not so much to cold rationalism, as to intuition and imagination. It is not a deductive argument, but an imaginative dynamic of discovery. Lewis invites his audience to see their experiences through a set of Christian spectacles, and to notice how these bring what might otherwise seem to be fuzzy or blurred into sharp focus. A pattern is thereby seen for the first time. For Lewis, the ability of the Christian faith to accommodate such things, naturally and easily, is an indicator of its truth.

The same approach is found in Lewis's "argument from morality." This is sometimes portrayed in ridiculously simplistic terms - for example, "experiencing a sense of moral obligation proves there is a God." Lewis did not say this, and he certainly did not think this. As with the "argument from desire," his argument is rather that the common human experience of a sense of moral obligation is easily and naturally accommodated within a Christian framework. The Christian lens brings things into focus. It enlightens the landscape of reality, allowing us to see how God, desire and morality are all held together within a greater scheme of things.

Lewis helps us to appreciate that apologetics need not take the form of deductive argument. It can be presented as an invitation to step into the Christian way of seeing things, and explore how things look when seen from its standpoint: "Try seeing things this way!" If worldviews or metanarratives can be compared to lenses, which of them brings things into sharpest focus? This is not an irrational retreat from reason. Rather, it is about grasping a deeper order of things which is more easily accessed by the imagination than by reason. Yet once seen, its intrinsic rationality can be appreciated.

Lewis's explicit appeal to reason thus involves an implicit appeal to the imagination. Perhaps this helps us understand why Lewis appeals to both modern and postmodern people. Lewis gives us a synoptikon which bridges the great divide between modernity and postmodernity, insisting that each outlook has its strengths because it is part of a greater whole. Their weaknesses arise when they pretend to offer the full picture, when they really offer only part of the whole. Once the "big picture" is seen, they are both seen in their proper light.

Lewis enriches our vision of apologetics, allowing us to affirm that Christianity makes sense, without limiting it to the "glib and shallow" rationalism that he himself once knew as an atheist. Reason and imagination are woven together, using a rich concept of truth which emphasizes how we come to see things properly, and grasp their inner coherence. Truth, beauty and goodness all have their part to play in Lewis's apologetics.

Such an "imaginative apologetics" allows us to affirm the reasonableness of faith, while at the same time displaying its power to captivate the imagination. The Christian churches need to ensure that their preaching, witness and worship express this same rich vision of reality, and lead others to wonder how they can go "further up and further in" to the landscape of faith.

Alister McGrath is the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University. He is the author of two substantial studies of Lewis: C.S. Lewis - A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet and The Intellectual World of C.S. 
Theology

Finally, we can agree on something.  

Bible metaphors get you straight into metaphysics and philosophy.  There is no science in the Bible because the scientific revolution started much, much later after the Bible (or Quran) were written.  The two are mutually exclusive.  I hope you understand that much.

If you want to play with the philosophy of the scriptures, you have to give the same attention to the Quran, Talmud, Vedas, Puranas, Popol Vuh, Avesta, and many others.

As compared to what?  Your dream?  Life originated in liquid water.

You are just trolling me.  You cannot be that stupid.

If you want to discuss the origin of life and how a man was created you have to use evidence other than what the Bible says.

Bible requires faith.  Faith is not a reliable way to discover the truth.

You should not be posting something you don't understand because you cannot explain the proof you are posting as a proof of God.
I can post a mathematical proof that God does not exist, that nobody will on Earth will understand, including myself.  Do you see my point?

The difference between our books was:

Genesis 9
"for in the image of God has God made mankind."

Book of Lawrence 3:14

"and the atoms were created in the supernovae, then those atoms were used to make water, then single cell bacteria, and eventually a man.
Man is a Stardust."

Are you saying that you don't see the difference about how these two books/verses describe how the man was made?

All life on Earth may have come from clay according to new scientific research - just as the Bible, Koran and even Greek mythology have been suggesting for thousands of years.

The latest theory is that clay - which is at its most basic, a combination of minerals in the ground - acts as a breeding laboratory for tiny molecules and chemicals which it 'absorbs like a sponge'.

The process takes billions of years, during which the chemicals react to each other to form proteins, DNA and, eventually, living cells, scientists told the journal Scientific Reports.

Biological Engineers from Cornell University's department for Nanoscale Science in New York state believe clay 'might have been the birthplace of life on Earth'.

Hmm, my book of af_newbie says something else and I quote:

Book of Lawrence 3:14

"and the atoms were created in the supernovae, then those atoms were used to make water, then single cell bacteria, and eventually a man.
Man is a Stardust."

So how do we resolve the difference in what our books say?  What other evidence besides our books can we use?

BTW, why you don't want to talk about the steps you listed; you said that you agree with the proof, let's talk about the details, about the notation:


Don't give me an explanation by someone else, I want to talk to you about the above proof.  Explain the notation and explain the steps.
If you cannot, please don't post anything that you YOURSELF cannot explain.

I think there is a typo in the provided proof.  Where it says "ess" it should say "ass".

Coincube please walk us through the notation and explain each step.  Let's go let's have some fun. Lol.

I give you 5 minutes, after that your time is up, and I'll know you are just spending time looking for some esoteric, metaphysical articles to validate your delusion.

Not only that he thinks that his God created humanity in his own image.  

Religion is a manipulation tool. This is a way of getting people to act in the way that benefits those who interpret religious tenets.
Previously, when life was not a very valuable thing, religion kept people within the framework of fear. And the promise of eternal bliss.

The science and atheism religions are among the worst religions that we have. Why? Because in some ways they play on the logic that everyone uses. Then somebody turns the parts that are not logical (often science theory) into religious beliefs, like believing they (the theories) are true and real, when nobody knows that they are true and real.

Who cares about US laws? God is the ultimate moral guide, remember? If he says it's ok to kill people who work in the sabbath, it is and you should be following his guidelines.

I just followed you down your rabbit hole.  I did the same with notbatman, with the same result, apparently.

Do you agree of killing people that work on the sabbath? Yes or No

So other parts were written by a different God. I think I understand.

Talk about delusion. Truly umbelievable. You guys should be studied by neuroscientists.

I just urge you all not to go through what is written in the Bible. Otherwise we will have a bloodbath.

Let's see the next idiotic thing he says now. He wants to defend the bible but he doesn't have the guts to execute someone for working on the sabbath, what a pussy.

So the 10 commandments are contradictory today.

So you think that killing someone today because they worked on Sabbath is not murder?

Checkmate CoinCube.

Exodus 35:2  All mighty has spoken  

I would NOT agree that the ten commandments are good... since you brought it up, lets talk about them:
...
Only 2 of the ten commandments are even good rules, and both of those were illegal for centuries before the Jews came along and gave credit to god for them

And, if they are such amazing commandments, why do the Jews, Catholics, and Protestants all believe in a different set of 10?
...

Stay away from that evil Biology you hate so much.  It only stresses you, it is not good for your health.

metaphysical - I do not spend one second of my life on philosophy.  Complete waste of time, IMHO.

Hate to interrupt guys, but breaking news!

Man Made His Wife Kill Herself So He Could Use Insurance Money to Build Church
http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/11/man-made-his-wife-kill-herself-so-he-could-use-insurance-money-to-build-church/
discuss...

There is one sin that may be worse than all other sins. And it is taking place on a large scale today.

There are some religious people who maintain that one cannot declare any sin worse than any other — that a person who takes an office pen is committing as grievous a sin in God’s eyes as a murderer. But most people intuitively, as well as biblically, understand that there are gradations of sin.

Having a background in theology and a lifetime of teaching the Bible from the original Hebrew, I would like to offer evidence for demarcating one sin as worse than all others. Indeed it may be the only sin that God will not forgive:

Committing evil in the name of God.
My basis is the Ten Commandments. The Commandment widely translated as “Do not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” is imprecisely translated. The original Hebrew literally reads, “Do not carry the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

And, the Commandment continues, “for God will not hold guiltless (literally, “will not cleanse”) whoever carries His name in vain.”

As a strong believer that God (or whomever one credits with authoring the Ten Commandments) has at least as much common sense as I do, it seems inconceivable that God can “cleanse” (implying “forgive”) a murderer but not someone who said God’s name when he shouldn’t have. Therefore, the Commandment about the misuse (“misuse” is the translation of the New International Version of the Bible, my favorite translation) of God’s name must be about far more than merely using God’s name “in vain.”

I admit that I come to this conclusion as a result of my Jewish education. Every yeshiva student learns early in life that the greatest sin is khillul Hashem, public desecration of the Name (of God), and conversely, the greatest mitzvah (commandment, good deed) is kiddush Hashem, public sanctification of the Name. I well remember, for example, one of my rabbis in yeshiva telling us not to go to what were then called “dirty” movies, but if we did go, to take off our yarmulkes first — to enter a dirty movie theater announcing that we were religious Jews would desecrate God’s name.
Imagine, then, how bad committing atrocities in God’s name must be.

Let me explain this in another way.

When a secular person commits evil, it is surely evil, but it doesn’t bring God and religion in disrepute. When a person commits evil in God’s name, however, he destroys the greatest hope for goodness to prevail on earth — widespread belief in a God who demands goodness (ethical monotheism). There is nothing as evil as religious evil.
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If there is a hell, those who murder and torture the innocent while praising God are surely the first to go there.

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I think nihilism of the 19th century does not fit the humanist Atheist positions of today.

You are painting Atheists with Nietzsche's brush.  Anyone who does not subscribe to your religious worldview must be a nihilist.  That is your mistake.
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I think you are stuck in the past, both with your religious and philosophical readings.