A good tree cannot produce evil fruit
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Post subject: Re: A good tree cannot produce evil fruit
Nathan M. wrote:
Maybe not the best dialogue. We've both been around for centuries, just accept the fact we both have sins that run pretty deep, rather than argue over which has less/ more sexual predators.
If Vadim were to accept this claim, his argument in this thread would vanish.
EtcumSpiri22-0
Door #C:
From what I've read and heard over the years, the root of this discussion is one of the core reasons that 'third party' options are growing in leaps.
King of Cool
Religion: Anticukite Catholic
EtcumSpiri22-0 wrote:
C is a number now?
At any rate, if you ever find a church with no sinners in it stay far away, you will ruin it the moment you join it.
Last edited by Doom on Sun May 29, 2016 10:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
And if you think that Protestant groups don't have child abuse and coverup issues, think again.
theJack
Religion: Christian & Missionary Alliance
They do, but that's such a terrible response, Obi. I mean, on one hand I get it . . . you're trying to say that the argument proves too much. But it's just ridiculous. It boils down to, "Well you do it tooooooooooooooooooooo." It's just so . . . bah. Edited out what I said before. Let's put it this way. Tu quoque benefits and befits no one.
The real point is that the original argument is just stupid. It doesn't follow. It's a bad application of an important verse. Just because someone or a group of someone falls into some heinous sin has no bearing on whether or not what they are saying is true (hello, genetic fallacy). In fact, you could counter our orthodox friend and say that 1) either his argument is "official" and therefore the orthodox church itself (whatever that means -- certainly vadim thinks it means something) is making a stupid/irrational argument and therefore demonstrates its own error; or else 2) his stupid/irrational argument isn't official in any sense of the word and just further undermines his own credibility. So he can pick his poison. Either he's ridiculous or he's telling us his church is ridiculous. I, for one, don't have much of a dog in this fight to say which answer I'd push for.
I know someone would accuse me of tu quoque, but this is not a tu quoque argument.
Vadim's argument:
1) A good tree cannot bear bad fruit.
2) The Catholic Church bears bad fruit because it had the abuse scandals, including coverup.
3) The Orthodox Church does not bear bad fruit because it doesn't have abuse scandals or at least it doesn't cover them up.
4) Therefore the Orthodox Church is the One True Church.
I am refuting point (3), not engaging in a tu quoque.
ETA: And it seemed to me that EC2 was making the same argument with Catholicism and Orthodoxy grouped together and some variety of Protestantism grouped in as the alternative. Again, I am refuting the third premise.
4) Therefore, the Orthodox Church is the One True Church.
In the past, Vadim has seemed to aggressively defend the proposition that the Orthodox Churches have absolutely no moral failings, corruption, or scandal of any kind, at all, and that moral failings and scandal are a problem exclusive to the Catholic Church.
I know what you're trying to do, Obi. That's why I said that you're basically telling him that his argument proves too much. I'm telling you that you're doing it the wrong way. By challenging the third premise while accepting the first, you are forced into telling him that the Orthodox Church is bad, too. Hello, tu quoque. Again, I get it. If he were rational, he'd recognize your argument and see that by reductio, he ought to reject his own first premise. But that's where you did it wrong. Don't get into the stupid "well you're bad, too!" nonsense. Just do what you're argument is designed to do in the first place. Challenge the first premise as you should and leave the other ridiculous rhetoric where it belong: in the stupid-bin. Given his history and so credibility here, it would take a lot less work and be a lot more edifying to the Church.
Exactly. The thought that both are bad never entered my thinking process. The point I was making is that flame wars, no matter the justification, cause more schisms ...than they fix.
When I posited door ...#C I wasnt thinking of "protestants" at all in the sense that Catholics tend to categorize. Those churches are in decline as well for a myriad of reasons. I was thinking of the other alternatives that people are moving toward.
.. In 2003, there were 1,600 house churches based in the U.S. with official websites online. Those sites are estimated to have quadrupled. In fact there are online resources and Bible studies designed just for home churches.
According to the American pollster George Barna, as many as 30,000 house churches were established as of 2009, and it is estimated 6 – 12 million Americans attend them.
http://standupforthetruth.com/2013/01/c ... s-growing/
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/05 ... .html#more
You can argue the first premise with him all you want. But please don't tell me that I'm engaged in a logical fallacy when I argue against his premise that we have scandals and they don't.
... When I posited door ...#C... I was thinking of the other alternatives that people are moving toward.... For example... house churches...
But this just diffuses the problem of criminal behavior and abuse of authority.
(Besides "house churches" are not churches, but that is a tangential discussion.)
When I posited door ...#C I wasn't thinking of "protestants" at all in the sense that Catholics tend to categorize. Those churches are in decline as well for a myriad of reasons.
The 'myriad' of reasons can be reduced to one main reason, amply summarized by St. Paul in 2 Timothy 4:3
For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/05/self-defeating-claims-and-tu-quoque.html#more
I get the feeling you aren't even reading my critique of your attempted argument, Obi. That's twice now you've said something I've directly pointed out in my previous post.
Now, perhaps we can disagree on my assessment that you're committing a fallacy. But if you're going to disagree, I expect you to either mark the disagreement without argument move on or to engage in the substance of my criticism. You've none neither, and it's disheartening to see you, of all people, stoop to such. To this particular point, I've already addressed the reductio comparison Feser makes, and I did so explicitly.
Again, you are wrong in your approach. Not in your conclusion, but your approach. I get the appeal, but it's fallacious.
Vadim
Bombadil wrote:
:wave
Just thought I'd say hi.
If people actually followed what the Catholic Church teaches, there would be no sinners in the Church--no "bad fruit."
However, we are human beings, struggling with temptation and sin. Sometimes we fall, and sometimes even if we don't sin, we still make mistakes or exhibit poor judgment. That happens wherever human beings are (including in the Orthodox churches, and behind "Door C").
Besides, this parable is speaking of false prophets. It doesn't seem to me to be saying that Christ's Church won't have any goats among the sheep or tares among the wheat.
Location: I have no memory of this place....
The statement that a "good tree cannot produce evil fruit" is based upon the goodness of the tree itself(or the rotten-ness) in that the rotten-ness of the fruit comes directly from the rotten-ness of the tree.
Rotten fruit that has gone rotten on its own accord is not the result of the tree.
The Church itself does not produce bad clergy. And the bad behavior of clergy and laity alike do not directly follow from the Church's teachings.
Honesty, charity, and fairness dictates that if you're going to judge any institution or system, you judge it according to it's best adherents, those who epitomize it's teachings and standards, not according to it's worst who have violated them.
Bad Christians make Christianity no less true than bad doctors or bad teachers make the fields of medicine and education less true.
It's intellectually dishonest and irrational to assert that bad Catholics, or bad EO or bad protestants for that matter, are an indicator of the apparent truth or falsehood of one body or another. It's just a cheap shot, the proverbial low-hanging fruit of an ideological ad-hominem.
Bad Catholics, just like bad EO and bad protestants, are enought of an obstacle to people outside of Christianity without Christians using(or abusing) this phrase to beat other Christians over the head with it.
We're all hypocrites and sinners, we're all rotten fruit in some respect to whatever sin we're attached to. Yet that that has little if any bearing on the objective truth of the doctrines and practices of the Church which we are called to adhere to.
So let's stop this nonsensical polemic of, "Your church has sinners and scandals and therefore it's false." It doesn't do anything good nor does it advance charity.
theJack wrote:
Now, perhaps we can disagree on my assessment that you're committing a fallacy.
That is precisely the point I am making. You may tell me, if you like, that my argument is imprudent. It is not a logical fallacy.
TreeBeard wrote:
It seems to me that the large institutions are the ones that have had a history/pattern of diffusion as described in the above discussion.
In addition, many people have experienced, in real time, that institutional churches of all stripes, too often, no longer meet the needs of the people... People looking for in depth, relationships and leadership that dont
play political games.
In the US ... about 6 to 12 million people meet in house churches, in part, in order to nurture and protect their loved ones from what is happening in the large, centrally controlled/ administered institutions.
and referring to what is/ isnt a Church...
It really depends on how one views/defines the Church ...as an institution/ centrally administered organization or as it is in China for example:
It is estimated (corroborated by Xiaowen Ye, head of the Communist Party's State Administration of Religious Affairs) that there are about 140 million people in China that are connected with Christian house churches. Each autonomous. They protect themselves from both within and without. Any situation/ damage control whether govt or spiritual ... is handled locally and does not infect (diffuse to) the whole.
That is not true of the "Official" Church in China.... or the "Official" Churches in the US.
http://www.billionbibles.org/china/how- ... china.html
Doom wrote:
The Russian Orthodox Church has always been a pawn of the Russian government, it is a pawn of Vladimir Putin today, and it was a pawn of the Soviets under Communism. Indeed, the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church collaborated with the Communists and assisted the Communists in persecuting Russian Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, and looked the other way at atrocities committed against their own fellow Russian Orthodox. If that's not 'evil fruit' I don't know what is.
The previous Patriarch Alexy II said that he is a fervent supporter of independence of Church from state (in the book of conversations with him by Roman Catholic Angelica Carpifave). This was the first question that she asked him, abut Church and state.
It is true that since tsar Peter I and until revolution of 1917 state interfered in administration of the Russian Orthodox Church.
But in 1917-1918 a Council took place which restored canonical administration of the Church.
This Council stated also that Church must be independent of state; and, without explicitly mentioning any "isms", condemned those who at that time persecuted Church (it were communists who were persecuting Church at that time).
Communism as such was not condemned, because Church does not interfere in politics. Communism was no good, but the present form of capitalism is no good too. The financial crisis of 2008 proved this.
In China, there is some mix of communism and capitalism, and it works.
At the present time, Russian Orthodox Church is fully independent of state.
Much of information that one can hear these days from mass media, is slander. Consider, for example, what was going before recent wars. The leaders of Iraq, Lybia and other countries were accused as an undemocratic dictators, but instead of them, an ISIS appered after invasion, which turned out to be much worse.
Of course, we should not concentrate our attention on bad things only. Something good, too, can be said about many believers of Roman Catholic Church:
Previous Patriarch Alexy II (from book by Angelica Carpifave): "<…> we have very much in common, what joins us and to what attention ought to be paid. I think that one ought to start not from what divides us but from what joins us."
But we must not ignore this sentence from the Gospel which I had quoted in first message of this thread: "A good tree cannot produce evil fruit, and neither can a corrupt tree produce good fruit." (Matthew 7:18).