He might even settle for DNA proof of transubstantiation. If the cracker and wine turn into real flesh and blood (without human chicanery)...

That's a great idea! And I think it would actually be possible to carry out the test pretty quickly and easily right there in front of the altar in order to head off any accusations of host desecration.

Damn typos.

Part of the reason I'm not Catholic. But I would be interested in seeing science prove or disprove that it actually changes.

That's what I was wondering. 

Why are you asking me to trade down?

Why are you asking me to take the brain and its faculties (which you believe God gave me) and exchange it for a faith taught to me by my fellow humans who are only interested in padding their membership rolls and picking my pocket?

Am I asking so much to want a belief system that doesn't hold that reason is a bad thing? 

Where'd I ask you to believe anything?  I simply observed that someone had a mistaken notion of a belief I happen to hold, and thought to correct their misperception of that belief. 

Again, I've not asked you, nor do I now ask you to believe anything, but I simply state what I believe.

I believe because it's not an "inferior, man-created process.  Rather, the same God who provided the intellect provides faith.  It is a virtue infused into man as a gift from God.  At the same time, faith is an assent of the human will and intellect to the will of God.  St Thomas Aquinas' definition, perhaps, does more justice than I can, "Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace."

And there you have my belief.  You can believe whatever you like.

Oh, that Catch-22 again.

God gives you faith when you believe...but you have to have faith in order to believe to get the faith. 

Really? So you're saying that you can somehow see it as really being possible to the point you would have to invoke science to proof it to you?

Not hardly.  When offered a gift, it is the reciever's option to accept or decline the gift.  I've examined religious faith, found the truths contained in it to be consistent with the world, and the question "why", and I've accepted it.  You, likewise have examnined the option for faith, somehow have managed to find it lacking and rejected it.  No worries. 

Faith in others is a different concept to faith in god.

When you have faith in others you have experience of human behaviour to go on. You can expect certain people to act certain ways in certain situations because you have seen them act like that enough times to be confident that they will do so this time. In terms of specific individuals, those are people you know, you have a good idea of their personalities and can therefore make accurate predictions of how they will behave most of the time.

Compare that to faith in god. You have no experience of god on which to base future predictions, infact you have no evidence at all.

So we have 2 completely different types of faith.

1) Expectations, based on past experience and familiarity with the individual in question

2) Belief without evidence

The first is required to function at all in society. The second is irrational.  

You really don't see the problem?

One must have faith in God in order to be convinced that God is who and what he says he is.

Only then can God give you the faith that you need to believe in him. 

 If you can't get faith from God until you believe - how do you get the faith on which to base the original belief (if not from men)?

I hope you're not asking me to argue the point. That's the circular reasoning problem that I brought up to totus_tuus. Hence the first line to him - "You really don't see the problem, do you?" 

Transubstantiation is far-fetched because it violates dozens of natural principles that are observed to be uniform everywhere else, all the time. It is far-fetched because we have a better explaination from logic of what actually happens to the wine and cracker: nothing. It is far-fetched because we can observe that the doctrine and beliefs surrounding it are man-made and not the result of any process of discovery. It is far-fetched because millions of Christians in other sects and billions of people in other religions, all with equal claim to knowledge of God's will, do not believe in it. Finally it is far-fetched because its very truth rests on faith, which makes it non-falsifiable and indistinguishable from fantasy.  

It really doesn't matter whether you like this belief or not, because it is simple observed fact. If you would like to claim that there is someone else to whom we are accountable, the burden in on you to prove his existance.

My recommendation: rather than being distressed at the idea that we are ultimately responsible for our actions and the moral consequences of them, why not take this realization as an opportunity to grow up, embrace our responsibility to ourselves and each other and get to work making the world a better place that actually makes sense? 

LOL. I, on the other hand, have a three-foot medieval longsword mounted over my desk. Though many people have noted that I shouldn't be trusted with that for many other reasons. 

Maybe. In the Middle Ages, vast pogroms were carried out to hunt down and kill people suspected of "host desecration." Needless to say, Jews were the main targets of these purges, and all manner of massacres and torture were justified by the need to cleanse society of this crime in which the victim himself was presumed to already be long dead. Thousands died, in unspeakable ways.

You share the same belief as these barbarians. This is the proud tradition of which you are an inheritor and sustainer. If the right-thinking people of the world had any reason to believe that you might act on your belief as your predecessors did, wouldn't they be justified in taking any measures possible to stop you? What if you were in a remote, hidden location with a cadre of fellow anti-host-desecrators and a stockpile of nuclear weaponry broadcasting to the world your belief that host desecrators must be annihilated? What would you say the reasonable response of reasonable people would be? I'll tell you what my response would be: I'd blast you to your reward before you could do the same to me.

The body count for the Eucharist-defenders is much, much higher. But I have little doubt that if that explosive offense of the Young Earthers can get back on the field, they can turn this thing around fast.

My real fear has more to do with the influence that believers have over politics, acting, as they do, as unified voting blocks. IMO, we are doomed as a society if our policy is based on irrational precepts. And I have concerns about the ability of Catholics to think rationally on many issues given their everyday embrace of irrationality in this matter.

If it's not the worldly significance you worry about, then you should be happy to admit that God's existance as a natural entity is moot, and that our worldly deliberations about wordly things should not be informed by God or our beliefs concerning him. Basically what I'm saying is, if God is about the spiritual, keep him in your hearts and homes and churches, but leave the rest of us alone. As long as that is the case (and it was for many decades until the abortion debate broke out) neither I nor most other atheists will consider you a threat at all.

No.  I don't.

I think you have it sideways or backwards or something.  Man is, by his nature, a religious being, as evidenced by the presence of prayer, ritual, meditation and sacrifice found in every culture.  From the earliest animism, to eastern tanscendentalism, Greco-Roman mythology, through Judaism and Christianity man attempts to come to grips with this need to find God. 

Faith is, then, an obedient response to God, even if to an imperfect understanding of Him, acknowledging His divinity, transcendence and supreme freedom.  Then comes the assent of the will to that testimony. 

We are created with the innate ability (I would say need) to believe.  That's God's part.  It's in the assent of the will, our part, where some folks just aren't able to go on. 

Absolutely right.  The same with God.  I believe God has revealed to man his overall truthfulness, stability, divinity and reliability and I have arrived at a reasoned conclusion that He shares my values of marital fidelity and has the character to remain true to those values.  There is faith involved in both cases, and it is absolutely required.  The difference is that God could never, ever possibly prove me wrong through his actions, although it has appeared to me to be the case at several points in my life and I have attempted to discard my conclusion of belief in him for scepticism.

Without going into a full scale, fundamentalist type "testimony", let me assure you that my journey to faith has been a long and tortuous one.  My original reason for believing quite rightly would be classified as an argument from emotion, so I wouldn't even presume to share that with you.  But trust me when I say, I have examined, I have experienced, scepticism (at least going so far as agnosticism) and find it wanting.  Pascal's wager, while probably the worst reason for beliving in God, at least demonstrates that agnosticism is not a viable position, demonstrates that in the end, there are only two possibilities, that is, full atheism or full belief.  Logically, there is no room for a middle case.  At this point in the equation, insert a crisis during which I had to choose one and...poof...a theist revert is born. 

I'll concede this argument to you.  Probably not a very good example.  But I think my analogy of faith in government still holds fairly well.  Witness the current US administration, which, much to my chagrin, I once supported (YIKES).

Yeah, I'm quite the Thomist in this respect.  In any event, you'd find no challenge in a scientific discussion with me, it'd be akin to clubbing baby seals.  No challenge whatsoever.  I've spent the better part of my adult life in the profession of arms and have long considered all this book learning unbecoming a soldier.  LOL.

There ya go!

Ultimately, prayer is communion with God.  It is the way by which believers seek to be in the presence of God.  It is exactly this quality the disciples witness in the prayer of Jesus Christ.  They see that quality of perfect contemplation in the prayer of Jesus, his entry into perfect oneness with the Father, something they've never witnessed before, something they want to be able to experience themselves.   These men are all devout Jews, they know the methods of prayer common to their religion, they participate in those prayers, but they want more.  They desire the ultimate in prayer, that level of prayer Jesus attains, oneness with God. 

I probably should have addressed these points in reverse order.  Chronologically, they would have meshed much better.

Adam, into whom God breathed a living soul, became a living being.  Adam lived, physically, spiritually in perfect communion with God.  This continued until Eve, then Adam fell prey to the notion that they could be like gods themselves (sound familiar...hmmm).  By sinning against God, they placed a barrier between God and themselves.  Man's image of God became imperfect and provisional, this continued until the time of Abraham, the father of all the faithful who once again turned to the One God.  But still, religions other than those based upon the One God flourished in the interim as man sought to re-establish his bond with God, however imperfect man's concept of  deity was.

That sinfulness still stands as a barrier today.  We are still prone to the sin of wanting to be like unto gods.