well, if you were open about your true intentions, instead of trying to be deceitful, maybe you would of gotten more from this thread

"(edit: If God was all-powerful (apparently so) and liked people worshoping him (he certainly seems to!) you would think that he would have lightning avoid hitting churches. Or if he wanted a church to be destroyed for some reason, then a puny lightning rod wouldn't make a difference. Perhaps he's just not that all-powerful after all)."

the way i look at it, assuming God is all powerful and all Knowing, the universe is exactly how he wants it to be; there arent some people that piss him off and other people that make him glad he created the world.

and there was never a point i avoided, there might of been some minor points not  worth bothering, i think mainly they were where you would make these big assumptions over and over again, didnt feel like pointing them out every time. if there were some specific ones you though that you want me to address, no problem.

> (ii) you agree that it's a stupid thing to say, so your post is about him. <

Ding!

my response to that wasnt that is was mostly protestant, but that for the amount of priests and higher ups in the catholic church, and the length of time the reports surfacing now covers, its actually a low percentage. all humans are human, and its no surprise that there are some priests catholic or protestant that have done it.

you can look at where its the worst in the world and say thats not below average, or you can look at the whole picture, and notice it is below average. it is cheaper to ensure a catholic school, because insurance companies, greedy capitalists keep record of that type of thing and notice it happens less often there.

also, 250 schools over what period of time?

"Do you think 4% of the population has faced some kind of accusation?"

im sorry, i thought we were talking about abuse, not being accused of something?

"Do you think two-thirds of non-Catholic's have covered up sexual abusers?"

being accused of sexual abuse and committing sexual abuse are completely different things, until you can realize the difference, theres no point debating anything. if you dont think that the type of press the catholic church was getting, there wouldnt be tons of accusations of innocent priests, you're living in a dream world.

> Econ wrote:

> % of accusations is going to reflect % of guilty boy-rapers. I spent a few minutes to find something to back up what Im saying, your turn to provide some kind of research to back up your claims.

that is so false. with the negative press, not only are there going to be more accusations of innocent priests, but the juries and judges would be biased against them. if the media, which in turn means the society, is blaming an entire group for something, there are going to be tons of innocent people in that group that become victims. the lack of convictions, which is what makes their insurance cheaper, despite the bias against them, shows how many of them are innocent.

i could provide a source exemplifying 99% of the priests, and it wouldnt mean anything to you. theres no point in me doing in work, except for you to be able to stroke you're ego that you got someone of my intelligence to do work for you.

"Where are the false accusations? There may be some, but not many."

wheres the logic in that?

""Roughly two-thirds of top U.S. Catholic leaders have allowed priests accused of sexual abuse to keep working, a systematic practice that spans decades and continues today.""

i already responded to that, you however, didnt respond to my response.

yup nice way to reduce to insults when you can't back yourself up. Ignoring the 3 studies/quotes I have provided because you are unable to respond. My practise debate is over, so this time it was for fun. Too bad you ruined it

I make a statement, provide some studies to back it up, and ask for yours because I am interested in what you have used to develop your opinion - you reduce yourself to insults. Who's the idiot?

You base your beliefs on nice feelings on the inside and some twisted version of reality in which our brain's probably don't interpret the universe around us correctly..... therefore I should not be surprised that your belief that the church does -not- have more than it's fair share of rapists is also a delusion based on good feelings on the inside and self denial.

Perhaps those boys were not raped after all. If I go back to some of your earlier posts it is now obvious you are right and that their brains just got the interpretation wrong when they thought they were suffering; in reality it was only their incorrect sensory interpretations! edit: Good night.

This reply is going to address things on a small scale, it's a bit pedantic, but can't help it.

>> "Ignoring the 3 studies/quotes I have provided because you are unable to respond"

>i did not ignore them, i responded to them.

Did you respond to them with anyhing substantial? Please, show me where you proved that 250 schools (in one country of 4 million people) being rifle with molestation is in line (or as you somehow delued yourself to, lower than) with the national/international average. Show me where you illustrated that two-thirds of high-level priests covering up the molestation is in line with national/international average for, say, school head masters/deans. NO WHERE near two-thirds of head masters/deans have had to even deal with this problem, let alone cover it up.

>after so many attempts at explaining it to you, you still dont understand it, you still cant get it right, you're so pathetic.

I understand it fine.

>i am not saying odds are everything we see doesnt exist, i am saying having faith is essential in life, you dont have faith in God, but you have faith in your senses; there is no proof what your brain interprets really exists, not even alittle bit of proof; zero, zip, nada.

This is dream world stuff, and that's my point. You fail to base your arguments on reality and instead focus of philosphical crap. But for someone who beleives in a creator based upon ancient fairy tale stories (that are no different than those proposed by a million other religions) and what your family/friends have told you, I suppose I have no reason to believe that you would not get very airey-fairy. You have no proof that you or I are not God, therefore we could be. ....... I just deleted a bunch of other stuff I had written. I can't be bothered with this line of discussion. It's this line of discuassion that is what's pathetic.

> i beleive what we sense is real;

You haven't said that before.

> but i recognize there is no proof that it is real and that there is a very real possibility that it isnt real.

BS.

> you sir are the one ignoring my points. you have no response to the low number of priests convicted, despite all the media hype against the catholic church. and you ignore teh hype as a key ingredient in the accusations.

Again, two-thirds of the high-ranked priests in the study I quoted above covered up abuse. Read that story. You still haven't, have you. The church managed to silence most of the victims with pay outs. A few hundred victims refused pay outs and are working their way to court. Read the damn story before posting your BS.

>you think everyone started accusing priests at teh same time because of coincidence?

Apparently you don't know anything, or fail to be able to interpret anything for yourself. Is it a coincidence that there were no convinctions for rape in the 1600's, probably hardly any in the 1800's, very few in the 1960s-70s.... but now since the 90's people are starting to get the courage to come forward. Not just choir boys but women in society as well. Please tell me, does that seem like a plausable explanation to you?

>and i have no doubt that there was a sizable amount of young boys molested by members of the catholic church; i however, have seen sources in the past, that the amount is lower then the average for schools, according to the two largest insurance agencies in the world, who make their money accurately accessing risk.

Oh, I just remembered, that I saw a report from the 2nd - 10th largest insurance agencies in the world and they all said that catholic schools have higher molestation........<ahem>....... Even if your claim was correct, do insurance companies always get it right? Nope. Your claim is BS. 250 catholic schools in Ireland had rampant abuse, and you think that I would accept that, in order to make this lower than average, a greater proportion of Ireland's non-religious schools must therefore have also rampant with abuse? Ha ha! Funny man!

I hate to use Ireland all the time. Poor Irish. But it's a new, recent report and you have failed to provide anything at all.

hahaha nice one avo.

You have mixed the references around and crossed them over and added the word "accusation" where the reports were not discussing any accusations. Only one of the three references related to accusations. You still haven't read the link I provided. 2 of the 3 references relate to actual events, which you have failed to discuss under your own terms. i.e. You talk about comparisons with the average population. In my last post I provided those comparisons. You failed to respond and instead talk about accusations, which were only relevant to the 1 references. You fail.

You missed the point with my discussion of reported rapes & accusations in the 1600s, 1800s, 1970s etc. I don't know how you managed to miss it, it was plainfully obvious. I'm in two minds as to whether to explain it for you. All types of rapes and accusations came forward in recent times, so of course they all come up relatively at once as times and society changes and complaints are taken more seriously.You fail.

You are really bad at this. Instead of responding to my comments on your insurance company risk assessment claims, you instead talk about my comment: "you haven't said that before". It has nothing to do with the subject under discussion and nothing to do with the position that I haved adpoted. You Fail.

>you continue to dodge this point, you did earlier in the post. i say there is no proof that anything we sense exists, you say bs, and then when i ask you what proof we have, and you dont answer. what proof is there that what we see exists?

This is a stupid question. You dodged a great many questions I made throughout this thread, I don't need to copy and paste them, they are everywhere. My questions that you didn't answer are at least based in the real world, and upon reality. Of course I can't prove this. This question is as unanswerable as asking if Neptune lives somewhere under the antarctic ice and we just haven't seen him yet. If you want to use this to somehow justify the presence of God, then you are clutching at straws.

> and what proof was there of actual events.
FFS, follow the link.

> yes it does, its proof that you're an idiot.
hahaha, you draw very long conlusions based upon nothing. Once again I should not be surprised about this. Lets go through this. avo: "I think we interpret things correctly" econ: "you never said that before" avo: "you are an idiot". Unbelieveable.

>i dont give a damn how unhappy you are with the insurance company claim, i dont give a damn what you think, and am not worried about whether i "win" or not. if you want to find the truth, look it up yourself. if you want to find evidence to suport your theory that catholics are evil or something, then dont bother.

Then why bother? I'm chuckling my way through the discussion... well most of the time... sometimes I just shake my head. I have looked some stuff up. Perhaps if I went to www.ilovegodandamtotallyunbiased.com they would provide me with some really valuable information. ummm nup. I'm content with the conclusions of the rather large report resulting from the official enquiry into those catholic schools. lol.