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GLaDOS comments on Thwarting a Catholic conversion? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Catholicism is actually one of the intellectually more formidable religions. If you accept a few key axioms of Christianity (and even most atheist Westerners do) and think about their implications for a lot of time it seems remarkable how vulnerable you are to converting to it.
In Christianspace, for the intelectual who likes playing around with very abstract dry concepts Catholicism seems to be a strong attractor. While protestants have played around with reversing its stupidity traditional Western civilization is fundamentally Catholic civilization. It gets the halo effect from a whole lot of art and great thinkers and pretty Churches. Then there is also the sheer majoritarian argument in its favour since it is by far the largest denomination and has institutional continuity going back more than 1500 years. When people around the world think Christianity, they think Catholic.
Also as Moldbug says:
Adjacent to your point but:
Late Rawls abandons these pretensions. His theory of justice is more like an rational extrapolation of moral instincts in Western cultures.
(Edit: Just realized my description of Rawls could be taken to suggest it in some way resembles "coherant extrapolated volition". I mean no such comparison.)
And/or their ‘pure reasons’ were different from each other.
Yes but Moldbug obviously dosen't think they are that different and I can kind of see his point.
I guess what I mostly meant is that she jumped straight to Catholicism, rather than something more general, like deism. And while I respect that Catholicism makes more of an attempted to provide a coherent, logical framework for divine revelation, it also ends up saying awfully specific and awfully silly things about various subjects. If you start off very firmly believing that same-sex romantic relationships can be normal and healthy, and you're then trying to decide "what religious tradition should I join that makes the most sense given what I presently believe?", then Catholicism would appear to be an unlikely candidate. There's at least that one major red flag which suggests a pretty important error somewhere in the reasoning.
Fallacy of consequence.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If I already had strong reason to think that the whole of Catholicism was true, then I couldn't just say "well, but I don't want same-sex romance prohibited, so I'll decide not to believe in Catholicism." That would be fallacious reasoning. But if I start off fairly certain that there's nothing wrong with same-sex romance but am also looking for some sort of theistic tradition that makes sense given what I already know, then Catholicism's views on sexuality would seem to count against it.
Perhaps you could compare this issue to the "it all adds up to normality" sentiment. Even if I decide I have to abandon my old theory of gravity, my new theory better be one that has pencils falling down and not up when I drop them. Likewise, even if I have to abandon my general thoughts on theism, I had better not pick a religious tradition that conflicts with strongly held moral sentiments of which I am still reasonably confident. What's the fallacy there?
Depends on how strong my evidence is for this position. If it's nothing stronger than "I can't think of any reason why same-sex romance is bad", then it doesn't take much evidence for Catholicism to overcome it.
Assumes meta-ethical realism in order to be a valid inference (but then, I suppose, so does Catholicism).
Most Catholics I've met are pretty immune to this sort of red flagging. That is, they just red-flag the parts they don't like, and continue to believe in the rest.
I can understand why people raised as Catholics would be so immune. But if you're making a decision to convert to Catholicism, presumably you like the whole integrated, no-exceptions theology. Isn't the whole appeal of Catholicism that you're not supposed to partition, and isn't that the element that's supposed to make it "intellectually formidable" as religions go?
As with most, if not all, religions, one would be surrounded by people giving off signals to the effect that this or that contradiction is no big deal. Combined with a relief from whatever discomfort remains from childhood indoctrination, plus the halo of being "intellectually formidable," it seems a rather seductive package.
People like the idea of science and the scientific method due to the whole integrated, no-exceptions approach. They express their support to it even if the scientific consensus sometimes says things they think are nonsense.