Comments on Elizaphanian
I should suggest that the answer lies in the classic distinction between foreknowledge and intention.
Not all forseen acts are intended ones.
In the case that you are considering non-conception is foreseeable, but it is not intended.
In the case of a couple using contraception, however, non-conception is intended.
Moral culpability lies in intentions (and in negligence - arguably a special sort of intention), not in external facts per se.
OK, that makes sense. The discussion then becomes whether a couple pursuing sexual relations without the intent to conceive are pursuing something immoral.
Actually, there is another aspect - to what extent can a couple assured of their infertility be rightly described as trying to conceive? It seems plausible to suggest that aiming at conception isn't a necessary part of their decision making process.
Sam:
Goodness! 90 comments?
In any event, Welsh Jacobite has put his finger on an important point. You turn around and ask about "a couple pursuing sexual relations without the intent to conceive" and morality.
Let me, therefore, draw a distinction for you: a married couple who, in a particular instance, do not positively intend to conceive are not, in this instance doing something immoral (with some provisos I won't discuss for the moment) but one with the positive intention and action not to conceive are doing something immoral.
While I'm flattered that you characterise my position as the Traditionalist Roman Catholic position, nothing I said was necessarily from that camp -- except that traditionally Roman Catholics use common sense and reasoning and available science to explain their positions to a disbelieving world. I scrupulously avoided mentioning God or the Magisterium of His Church for the very simple reason that as soon as I did, two of your contributors would immediately accuse me of 1) asserting horse hockey (again) and 2) trying to force my outdated, patriarchal, destructive morality on everyone else.
Have you ever seen a wonderful movie called A Man for All Seasons? For that matter, have you seen or read interviews of the current shephered, Bishop Fred Henry, of Calgary? They are both a propos of our current situation.
Not to refuse your gambit, but assured (of their infertility) by whom?
Sam:
I hope you'll forgive my posting so quickly in succession, but I found my copy of Casti Conubii, Pope Pius XI's encyclical in response to the Lambeth Conference in 1930. Here are three relevant bits:
describing Lambeth:
"Since therefore, openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition some recently have judged it possible solmenly to declare another doctrine regarding this question [contraception], the Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense of the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of her divine ambassadorship and through Our mouth [Pope Pius' use of the pontifical plural] proclaims anew: any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin".
describing the purpose of marriage:
"Nor are those considered as acting against nature who in the married state use their right in the proper manner, although on account of natural reasons either of time or of certain defects, new life cannot be brought forth. For in matrimony as well as in the use of matrimonial rights there are also secondary ends, such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence which husband and wife are not forbidden to consider so long as they are subordinated to the primary end and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved."
On Margaret Sanger and eugenics:
"For there are some who over solicitous for the cause of eugenics, not only give salutary counsel for more certainly procuring the strength and health of the future child - which in deed, is not contrary to right reason -- but put eugenics before aims of a higher order, and by public authority wish to prevent from marrying all those whom, even though naturally fit for marriage, they consider, according to the norms and conjectures of their investigations, would through hereditary transmission, bring forth defective offspring. And more, they wish to legislate to deprive these of that natural faculty by medical action despite their unwillingness; and this they do not propose as an infliction of grave punishment under the authority of the State for a crime committed, nor to prevent future crimes by guilty persons, but against every right and good they wish the civil authority to arrogate to itself a power of a faculty which it never had and can never legitimately possess."
I think it was the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen who noted that there are few people who hate the Catholic Church, and a great many who hate what they think She teaches.
Chris,
I posted a response in the old thread. I think I should probably bow out of this debate at this point. It has gone from being an objective debate about contraception to be a specifically religious one. As I do not consider sex for the fun of it alone to be immoral (why would I barring religious conviction) I don't think I would have anything valuable to add in a theistic interpretation debate.
I have not read the earlier thread. You raise a very interesting question. I am a lifelong Protestant, who practiced contraception early in my marriage, but came to understand that its use is in fact sinful absent truly exigent circumstances. I have give a great deal of thought to this matter.
First, let me say that I agree with the comments of Welsh Jacobite. He put it very well.
Second, I would like to add my admitted evolving thoughts on why contraception, at least absent exigent circumstances, is a sin. The Scriptures are clear in teaching that fruitfulness is a blessing from God and that many children are a blessing. Indeed, Scripture teaches that children are His gift. There is no escaping that teaching. Contraception says to God, "No thanks." Indeed, it calls God a liar and denies the inerrancy of Scripture by asserting that children (or more children) are not a blessing. It demonstrates a profound lack of trust in God and in the veracity of His word. Thus, John Chrysostom called it "contemning the gift of God."
Christian scholars, thinkers and pastors have condemned the use of contraception since the early days of our faith. It is not merely a Catholic teaching; C.S. Lewis recognized that it was a universal and unbroken one, at least until his own time. Not only did the early fathers condemn it, but so did the early Protestants such as Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Henry and Taylor. When the debate on its acceptance took place in the first decades of the 20th century, many Protestants were as adamantly opposed to the acceptance of contraception as are many opposed to the acceptance of abortion in our own time. Read David Kennedy's Birth Control in America to learn something of the opposition among Protestants to this change in teaching. There can be no doubt that Protestants were just as opposed to contraception as were Catholics until less than a century ago and there can be no doubt that the predicted consequences of accepting contraception, made both by Protestants who opposed it and by Catholics, have come to pass.
I have to say that at first I found this conversation interesting, but now I’m realizing just how ridiculous it is.
First, I have two children and don’t plan on having any more; I’ve taken the necessary steps to avoid it. Second, I enjoy sex with my wife and we have it often. If anyone has a problem with that, if they think it’s immoral, then that problem is theirs and not everyone else’s. You cannot pass what you see as a problem onto others simply because you’re faith is such that it says so.
Romans 14 for some reason comes to mind here.
Sam:
I'm saddened by the fact that these two (Andrew and the Celtic Chimp) have insisted on bowing out. My deliberately avoiding of religious vocabulary was, as I said, a recognition that they would immediately label us nuts. I was wrong about their reaction, much to their credit. They didn't fulminate about how my "real" reasons finally came to light. So far, although Scott has to weigh in yet, they haven't used profanity or dismissive language. I really do hope that they will reconsider and join the conversation. We might all find that we can learn something from each other.
Andrew:
What will you do if, mind you IF, you should find your wife pregnant with a third child?
Chris
Chris,
It is probably worth noting that my lack of profanity might just be a matter of coincidence, lol 
Can you see how without a christian moral framework there is no reason to view sex as immorral under most circumstances invovling two consentual adults?
At this point in the discussion, that framework seems to be a given. Why is the prevention of conception a bad thing at all? I am capable of eating primarily as a means of sustaining my body. That hardly makes eating ice-cream when I am not hungry immoral. If I eat too much ice cream I might become sick of even die if I do it often enough. That does not mean that a person who eats ice-cream often is not taking responsibility for the consequences of their actions. They might well know the possible consequences and go ahead anyway. The same thing applies to many areasa of life. If a person uses contraception they might well understand and accept that a child is the possible outcome of their actions. They know that it is an unlikely outcome. Either way, they consider the action worth the risk. Your objections to constrception have moved into the realm of religious doctrine and it's interpretation. As I reject such doctrine, I simply find it's use in arguemnt to be irrelevant. Sort of how you would regard my suggestion that eating pigs is a bad thing becasue my friend Jim says they are unclean animals. If you do not recognise Jim's authority then Jim's feelings on the matter will be irrelevant to you. I do not hold to the notion that marriage is fisrt and foremost about children. I consider children to be an entirely seperate thing. I accept that this may not be the Christian/Catholic take on it but I am not working from that perspective.
If you want to try to convince me from an A-religious point of view that contraception is a bad thing, I am willing to partake in that debate. I just don't think I have anything to add to what is essentially a debate about different theistic positions on explicitly christian morality.
Chris,
then I'll have three kids instead of two.
But then this conversation is about abortion, not contraception.
1) asserting horse hockey (again) and 2) trying to force my outdated, patriarchal, destructive morality on everyone else.
Ah, well, there's a handy and not-at-all accurate way of dismissing what we were actually saying. No matter. Onward to the discussion!
I appreciate Chris’s attempt to eschew religious vocabulary, unfortunately elided by his second posting. I would like to point out that while I do not see or acknowledge any truth to argument from religious premise, I do not in any way think that it is invalid (meaning that the logic does not flow from said premise). Religious morals are merely a schema, a framework through which one orders themself, their family, and their community. Under Chris’s schema, we have two separate issues:
A) Sex for pure pleasure, without the intent of strengthening the matrimonial bond, is wrong.
B) Sex, within or without the matrimonial bond, that attempts to evade the potential natural consequence (conception of children) that can result is wrong.
The first is merely an expression of moral sentiment, a preference; since I hew to a similar preference (sex confined to committed, monogamous relationships), I’m not really inclined to throw stones at that view (or at people who hold “looser” (pardon the pun) views). Interestingly enough, my preference was obtained by experiencing sex first in committed, monogamous relationships, and then a single “one night stand” which resulted in feelings I did not care for. I hold no such similar negative feelings for sex in committed relationships prior to meeting my wife (and certainly not for having sex before we married!). Whatever those preferences are grounded in – my negative emotional experience, Chris’s religious sentiment – they are on equal footing, as preferences. Neither of us has room to criticize others for holding their views, unless we attempt to force our view by fiat onto others who are not persuaded by our reasoning from our premises. Chris has every right to his view, as Celtic Chimp and I have to our own. We may disagree, but we will not find common ground to argue the issue from in the first place – no resolution is possible unless one convinces the other of their premise.
The second issue is both far more interesting and less “religious” than the first. At issue in this latter case is the admirable Catholic tendency (one I see in much Jewish thought as well) to attempt to ground much of its dogma in reasoning not explicitly tied to religious fiat, but to “natural law.” This is what Chris is doing by eschewing religious language in his first comment, and it is to his credit. As I have framed issue B, the “infertile couple” example is moot; their infertility is an artifact of nature that is outside their control or, as a commenter above stated, intent. Intent brings Sam’s “rhythm method” example from the previous thread back into play: the couple is intending to avoid the potential biological consequence.
I view this as similar to attempts to argue about whether or not life starts at conception in discussions around abortion and choice. While not all fertilized eggs will become embryos, or fetuses, or retain viability to full term and birth, all lives do indeed begin with conception. The question, unanswered by medical science, is when does that life become separate from the mother. It’s an uncomfortable topic that many pro-choice advocates are not wont to discuss. But it links back to contraception: contraception is, through various methods, the prevention of that conception. This, however, relies upon a false equivalency between the perceived moral wrong of ending an already conceived life and preventing the possibility of that life being conceived.
This is where “intent” is valuable to those arguing from natural law. Animals who engage in sex run the hazard of pregnancy. Where this breaks down is that they must make a false distinction: That human ingenuity is not a part of nature. A human can use his or her ingenuity to evade the hazards of pregnancy by wearing condoms (both latex and sheepskin (early condoms were made of lambs’ intestines)); by taking a contraceptive (a chemically-synthesized hormone); by “pulling out” and hoping you time it right; or by having a medical procedure to prevent either ejaculation of sperm or the dropping of eggs into the fallopian tubes (vasectomy or tubal ligation). This is where natural law begins to break down. Arising from man’s use of intelligence, from tools made of the elements of nature, how are these at all distinct from nature? If man's application of its natural traits of intelligence and ingenuity are indeed to be considered separate from and potential violations of natural law, then all such applications are subject to this standard.
To be valid, a natural law theorist must follow their premises and reasoning along all valid points to their logical conclusion. This would lead to some very silly conclusions, such as that seat-belts, bullet-proof vests, and medical science itself are morally wrong as disruptions of natural law and its consequences. Driving very fast and stopping abruptly runs the very distinct risk of bodily harm and death. Seatbelts minimize or mitigate that risk. Ergo, they obviate the natural consequences and the natural law. A bullet-proof vest limits damage caused by some firearms. Medical technology defeats, mitigates, or limits the damage caused by very natural causes (disease, cancer, nature red in tooth and claw, etc.). And yet, not even the most hardened students of Aquinas would, in this modern day, object to man’s use of their god-given ingenuity in these arenas. Why the distinction, then?
It comes down to a preference for potential life over existing pleasures and, indeed, the abnegation of the search for those pleasures in the first place outside the matrimonial bed. Asceticism. And that leaves us back where we started with regards to preferences and premises.
So, Chris, we see that it’s not that you don’t have a leg to stand on; it’s that not everyone's legs look alike.
James,
(GOLF CLAP)
(FENCES WITH HIS CLUB LIKE CHI-CHI RODRIGUEZ)
"Sex is dirty" said Noel Coward, I think, "if you do it right."
Sorry - I just thought i'd lighten the thread up a bit.
James:
Do you mean to separate conception from implantation? You say, somewhat remarkably, that not all fertilized eggs will become embryos or foetuses. I presume you're advancing a very technical embryological argument that the embryo and the foetus are particular stages of the development of the human person.
Life beginning at conception has occasioned an odd argument from people who support abortion and contraception: conception means implantation, not fertilization. Accordingly, a fertilized egg, until it implants, is not an individual human person. This has always struck me as a bizarre way of exercising 'reason' and 'science'.
As to your comment about contraception being distinct from termination of a life already begun, it should be noted that chemical birth control operates as an abortifacient, and we still have the issue of the inherent evil of contraception -- if not at a moral level (for the fact that you and I appear to operate on distinct moral settings) then from the waste of resources argument and the manifest destruction of the family. Read Humanae Vitae if you get a chance. Everything Pope Paul predicted has come true in spades and has been acknowledged by science.
Chris:
I very clearly mean to separate conception from implantation, as they are separate biological processes. Indeed, the religious (primarily Catholic, but also evangelical) assertion on the sanctity of conception is a recent development; until the mid-19th century, "quickening" -- the confirmation that the baby lived (usually via movement) -- was the benchmark used as the "point of no return" for the extremely common practice of abortion. Since the blastocyst, embryo, and fetus are indeed entirely distinct stages of development (ones I am currently becoming extremely familiar with), I do indeed make "technical" distinctions between them.
Actually, a fetus is an "individual person" when it can be individualized from the mother. Indeed, it isn't even until somewhere around the end of the first trimester that many of its organs form or migrate into its body. A baby birthed at that stage would be unable to survive. Is it then an "individual person?" It is alive, that is for sure, but is it a person; and if we answer yes to that, then we must then acknowledge the personhood of animals, raising all kinds of metaphysical problems with nature red in tooth and claw and the supposed benevolence of god. To assert, as you do, is to raise further questions of damning (for your view) importance.
Chris, when you resort to lying -- chemical contraception as an abortifacient -- I know I've won. The prevention of fertilization and the prevention of implantation -- both of which are also natural processes that occur quite regularly -- are not the termination of life. If a fertilized egg fails to implant, it does not even make it to blastocyst. There's no "there" there, Chris. To be an abortifacient, it must terminate an implanted and replicating blastocyst, embryo, or fetus.
What issue of "inherent evil" exists? First, I deny that such a concept exists beyond human linguistic conception. Second, I deny that contraception, by preventing fertilization or implantation, is evil. You've offered absolutely nothing to refute my argument above but moral assertion from the dubious authority of a man in a very large hat. Your argument is, in the colloquial parlance, an epic fail.
To be clear: I find the raising of the abortion issue to be a red herring, an attempt to obscure an issue you have been totally eviscerated on. Were medical science to give us better answers about fetal consciousness and perception, or were NICU technology to improve even further to insure the viability of younger and younger fetuses, then these are issues that the pro-choice movement, if it is honest, will have to take up. Until then, I consider it a matter of weighing a possible wrong versus the known wrong of forcing a biologically dangerous and autonomy-killing decision upon women.
And it is a total and utter distraction from the issue of contraception: that Chris must resort to his second-order "environmental" impacts, as well as the utterly absurd "destruction of the family" canard simply demonstrates the vapidity of his reasoning.
James:
"I" haven't lost, James, because I haven't been lying. Do the research yourself, if you're not willing to take my word for it. A drug (chemical) which makes implantation impossible or highly unlikely by changing the endometrium does in fact cause the medical abortion of any child which exists as a result of conception.
Don't go crowing quite so quickly. Why do you insist that contraception and abortion are completely separate issues. Let me see if an analogy will help explain at least why I see them as so connected. You don't have to accept that they are, merely that a reasonable person could conclude that they are related.
I'm opposed to the mistreatment of black folk. I think they should always and everywhere be treated with respect. If, at the same time, I believe that it is perfectly acceptable, societally, to own slaves, is it unreasonable to say that I'm not really opposed to the mistreatment of black folk, since I don't mind seeing them left in slavery?
As to your comments about my 'utterly absurd "destruction of the family" canard', your declaring it silly doesn't make it so. Freely asserted, freely denied. I don't have to prove it true if all you can do is assert that it is an absurd canard. Nevertheless, what would you accept as evidence? And, for what it's worth, since I'm reading Harry Frankfurt, would you read Paul VI?
'black folk?'
really?
'black folk?'
No, you're still lying: abortion is the elimination of already-implanted fertilized eggs. This is pretty basic stuff, Chris: Prevention of implantation is accomplished by contraception. Abortion is the elimination of pregnancy. Pregnancy follows the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine wall. Ergo, contraception cannot be abortion. You are such a liar that I will now address you as Flamey McFierypants from now on.
You see, Flamey, I can't deny anything that has no components offered. All you do is assert things. I am left with no recourse but to assert back. Were you to offer reasoning, such reasoning could be evaluated. Perhaps you have too much smoke in your eyes?
I don't understand your "mistreatment/slavery" example. I think it's the multiple negatives in your second sentence.
I have no idea who Harry Frankfurt is. I'm busy reading Aquinas and Neitzsche (it's quite a fun dichotomy).
Whoops, flipped my "i" and "e" in "Nietzsche!"
Just out of curiosity - are any of the interlocutors in this discussion women?
I suspect not - this seems a very male discourse - but stand to be corrected!
If implantation is impossible because of a deliberate change in the lining of the uterus, chemically accomplished through "birth control", how is this different from abortion? Sam couldn't see the difference earlier between NFP and contraception, and now I can't see this difference. Perhaps we need the Jacobite back to help us out of this.
I['m still not lying. If I am mistaken, I'm in error, not willfully misleading. Why would you, an apparently intelligent man, insist on resorting to, of all things, name calling?
Chris,
I think you and James are disagree on a point of definition. If pregnancy literally means an implanted fertilised egg and the implantation is prevented then by defintion there was no pregnancy. As abortion refers soley to the aborting of a pregnancy, such prevention of implantation must by definition be contraception and not abortion.
Regardless of which it is, do you think that a fertilised egg which has not even implanted yet is a human being?
I think there has been a lot of equivocation on this point in previous discussion. If you say yes to the above question I would like you to tell me exactly what you mean by human.
alos, you have to admit the "Flamey mcFireypants" thing is quite funny.
This issue is one of the most prima facie counter-intuitive ones in the canon of Catholic teachings, yet one of the simplest ones to understand once one begins to wrap his mind around the comon-sense philosophy of nature found in Aristotle and, in his tradition, St. Thomas Aquinas. The basic idea is that if you want something to flourish, you treat it according to its nature. You want a car to run, you don't pour water in its tank. You want a tomato plant to grow, you don't pour gasoline on it, but water; etc. Along with the notion that things have their proper nature ('formal cause'), is the notion that things have their proper end ('final cause'). The natural purpose of an acorn is to become an oak (even though accidental purposes may be served by it, such as becoming food for squirrels). Eyes are for seeing, therefore of corrective lenses assist their natural purpose, they facilitate nature. What is a penis for? Urination and procreation, the point of interest here being procreation. Why did God make sex pleasurable? To promote procreation. The same with eating and sleeping and resting. Pleasure is a by-product of activities for which they serve as incentives, and the nature purpose of sex is procreation. Pleasure is the by-product. To make pleasure the purpose of sex and procreation the accident is to distort it, like Romans distorted the purpose of eating with thir vomitoriums. Contraception is like a vomitorium: it allows one to indulge the accidental (non-essential) purpose of sex without assuming responsibility for the natural end of the activity (procreation). Planned Parenthood thrives on an ethos that treats pregnancy as an "accident," which is an index of how far our culture has fallen into the patterns of degenerate Rome.
This doesn't address fringe situations, but those are almost always an excuse and pretext for indulging the unnatural, rather than genuine problems.
P.P.,
Kissing is not the purpose of lips. The kicking of a ball was not the purpose of being able to flex our legs at the knee. Playing musical intruments is not the purpose of our fingers/mouths/feet etc. surely. Signing is not the purpose of our voices right? These things are all accidental. So what? These things are all fun. They provide the substance of our culture. Is eating in a restaurant a nod to roman excesses. After all the purpose of eating is to fuel the body. Any embellishment of that practice of purely indulgent, right. Seasoning is an indulgence. You are qualifying this, I'd hope your agrree, absurdity by suggesting that we are removing the consuquense of the action. Jumping out of an airplane or off a building should result in death. A parachute contravenes the natural result and allows us to escape the natural result of the activity. An activity we have engaged in for purely pleasurable ends. Diving 30 to 40 meters beneath the sea for 20-30 minutes should result in death. Scuba gear allows us to gain pleasure from the experience without the natural end of death by drowning. Propelling humans at considerable speed in various vehicles can and will lead to crashes. Seat-belts are devices which at least give us a much improved chance of avoiding the natural result of humans beings being so reckless as to propel themselves very quickly in large hunks of metal travelling in opposite directions and seperated by only a few feet. We should dispence with seat belts and accept the responsilities of our reckless actions!
Low-fat desserts should be an affront to Catholic ethics, we want to engage in eating for pleasure thereby makeing the accidental pleasure gained from eating the purpose of it and by arficially removing some of the fattening agents from the desserts we are avoiding the natural end, obesity.
Sex is absolutely within the nature of humans to practice and it is far more common for humans to want to have sex for pleasure rather than procreation. That is our nature. "If you want something to flourish treat it according to its nature"
Why is pleasure for it's own sake inappropriate?
Why is the avoidence of undesireable actions inherently wrong?
More specifically, I think that (to get theological) one of the 'ends' of intercourse is the establishment and support of the bonding between the couple. That is a natural end which can, conceivably, be enhanced by the availability of contraception, and it doesn't go against the overall Aristotelean/Thomist framework.
Chris, you are lying because you are using mundane medical terminology in a way that is not indicated by its internal definition. I know Wittgenstein is the bee's knees in these parts, but you're descending into rank semantics. Your definitions of contraception and abortion are not only rejected by me, but by the common usage. You cannot be ignorant of this. Ergo, you are a man with pants of a rather combustible nature.
Celtic Chimp brings it right back to the point I made that Chris -- sorry, I mean Flamey -- completely ignored: how is the use of human ingenuity a contravention of natural law? What makes the exercise of something so natural as our own minds "unnatural?" Where is the dividing line, and how do you arrive at that line through any means other than the completely arbitrary?
The understanding of nature advanced by Chris and the Papist leads to an asceticism rivaling the Stoics or the Puritans. Here, for example, we see that false dichotomy in action:
The natural purpose of an acorn is to become an oak (even though accidental purposes may be served by it, such as becoming food for squirrels).
Is it not possible that the acorn serves more than one purpose? Can it not also be meant to serve as food for the squirrel? To get all Derrida on you for a moment: Why the arbitrary binary pairing? And why is one side of the pairing "bad" and the other "good" (or for the acorn, "natural" and "accidental"?) Why is sex "accidentally pleasurable" and not "also pleasurable?"
Sam makes a similar point with respect to "bonding."
Lying involves intent to deceive. Whether a man accepts the fact that I don't intend to deceive or not, he is nevertheless unjust in calling me a liar, for he lacks evidence on which to judge the case.
Sam:
You raise an interesting observation, but it isn't supported by the science, biological or sociological. We see that although contraceptive availability has ballooned in recent years, marriages have become less stable. Fewer people marry at all, and the divorce rate, that is , a sociological measure of "bonding", conclusively demonstrates that greater use of contraceptives has not had the result you posit should be reasonable. The divorce rate among those who practice what is called NFP (which is different from the so-called "rhythm method") is, in fact, miniscule. If anything strengthens bonding, NFP does, and contraception weakens it.
I am a male. However, interestingly enough, my wife is a woman. 
She is even more opposed to contraception than I in that she does not even accept the possibility exigent circumstances. Such circumstances might justify NFP in her view, but not artificial contraception.
The issue is whether one can defend the argument against contraception absent reliance on religion. First, let me state that one need not be a Christian to oppose contraception. Ghandi was a Hindu, for example, and he objected to contraception, though one could argue that his objections still flowed from his religious beliefs. Most Catholic arguments are based on the Natural Law, not Scripture, but, again, many would assert that Natural Law is a type of religious belief, even though certainly recognized by many who are or were not particular religious (e.g., Thomas Jefferson).
However, while I believe that the use of contraception is harmful to the individuals who use it and to society as a whole, if one denies the Christian faith, I believe he has problems much bigger than his acceptance and use of contraception. With such a person, I believe the first order of business is evangelization. If you tell me you reject Christ, then I certainly believe trying to convince you to reject contraception is a grave misuse of my time. I need to be sharing with you the Gospel instead.
As to the eating of food analogy to the sexual appetitie and the use of contraception, might I suggest that you read C.S. Lewis' The Pilgrim's Regress? He deals specifically with that analogy through one of the characters encountered in the book. However, I warn you, it is an explicitly Christian book, being the first book written by Lewis following his conversion. (Lewis had a definite antipathy toward the use of contraception, though he explicitly refused to condemn it outright.
As to a conversation being about abortion and not contraception, it is true that they are separate and distinct issues. There is, nonetheless, an undeniable connection. As the Orthodox priest, Patrict Henry Reardon has put it, we abort in the flesh because we have first aborted in the mind. That is, by accepting contraception, we have already rejected the blessing of children and have tried, to the best of our ability, to render our intercourse infertile. Once we have rejected in our mind the child who might be conceived, it is intellectually easier to move to the next step and reject him once conceived. Both are acts intended to deny life -- the first, by seeking to prevent its conception; the latter, by terminating the life once it has been conceived.
And, of course, many observers of the debates in the 1920s and 1930s over accepting contraception predicted that it being legalized and accepted by Christians would inevitably lead to an increase in abortion. Whether that cause and effect relationship exists is hard to prove, that abortions increased following the acceptance and then legalization of contraception is indisputeable.
Finally, the "right to privacy" which is the foundation for the decision to strike down laws criminalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade was first ennunciated in Griswold v. Conneticut, a case handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court just 7 1/2 years before Roe, in which the "right to privacy" was discovered by the Court and used by it to justify striking down the remaining state laws restricting the use of contraception by married couples.
To deny that abortion and contraception are related issues is, then, to deny the intellectual connection, the predicted result of accepting the latter on the increase of the former, and the undeniable connection in American law. Just a little research will reveal these connections to anyone willing to take the time.
C.S. Lewis
After demolishing Mere Christianity and The Abolition of Man, I think I can be all done with C.S. Lewis. I do encourage you to read your John Stuart Mill, though.
I think Chris does not understand that correlation is not causation. The divorce rate also increased after women's suffrage, the Emancipation Proclamation, and John F. Kennedy sticking his pee-pee in Marilyn Monroe. These things are not necessarily causative, though they are correlative.
Bah, it's like arguing with an intellectual sieve.
GL also does not accurately quote American history: abortion was not legalized until over forty years after the "conversation" about contraception. He might as well link its proliferation to the Civil Rights movement, which also predated Roe. Further, abortion was actually a not-uncommon (but always taboo) occurrence during the 19th century. It was an accepted method of limiting drains on finite familial resources.
I still haven't heard Chris's response about how "life begins at conception" is actually a relatively recent development in Church doctrine, BTW.
Why the scare quotes around "right to privacy?" It's a natural extension of the Bill of Rights. Do you not believe you have a right to privacy? If not, I demand all the details of your financial, personal, and institutional lives down to the most sordid and minute detail. Right now. Ridiculous, no? And yet...
I'm reasonably certain that I did not deny a relation between contraception and abortion, but asserted that they are separate. I'm afraid I really don't see any intellectual connection. Contraception leads to fewer abortions. Indeed, I find absolutely nothing in the anti-choice advocacy lobby that leads me to believe that they have any sincere appreciation of the baby's life. There is no call for affordable or free quality pre- and neo-natal care, no call for subsidized or even accessible child care, no push to make adoption affordable and less onerous, no call to allow gay couples the ability to take in those unwanted children and provide for them. No, absent all that, one can only conclude that what's really at stake for people like Chris and GL is their own outraged sense of propriety. It's sackcloth piety, and it makes me want to vomit.
James needs to put away his "barf-bag", as it is colorfully called.
Welcome, GL. It's good to have another intelligent voice hereabouts.
To say that all "anti-choice" people are unfeeling brutes engaged in sack-cloth piety is not to know those who are truly pro-life. In my parish, we have one of the smaller families, having only 5 children. Once upon a time, as GL points out, one needn't have been Catholic to be opposed to contraception. Whether one is Amish, Muslim, Hindu or whatever, - including an atheist -- there are serious and weighty reasons to stand with the helpless unborn and to favor large families.
I don't have time to answer other questions right now, but I'll come back to it when I have time.
James,
You misunderstood what I wrote. Griswold was decided in the summer of 1965. Roe was decided in the winter of 1973. Thus, only 7 1/2 years separate the striking down of the state laws against contraception and the striking down of the laws against abortion. It is true that abortion was common in the 19th century. Indeed, it was very common during the Civil War era. Your reasoning that the legal history connecting contraception and abortion together is no greater than that connecting civil rights to abortion is specious. It is an indisputable fact that the "right to privacy" used to justify the decision in Roe was first enunciated in Griswold, where it was the primary justification used to strike down the laws restricting contraception and information about them. Read Roe. It cites Griswold. It is simply a matter of fact which is indisputable.
And no, the right to privacy as enunciated in Griswold is not a natural extension of the Bill of Rights, though, of course, Justice Douglas would agree with you. But, then, this goes to how one believes the constitution should be read. I favor Justice Scalia's methods. I put the phrase in quotes because I deny that any such right exists either in the constitution or in Natural Law.
As to your other points, I believe the evidence is that the widespread use of contraception has increased rather than decreased the number of abortions. However, the point is disputable and difficult to prove one way or the other, so I won't try to do it here. I have given a great deal of money through the years to help poor women who have chosen to not kill there children and, when I was practicing law, I assisted in adoptions. I agree that they are too expensive and that we need to take steps to lower the cost and even to provide state funding to facilitate them. We may disagree on what the best way to aid in supporting babies after they are born, but many pro-lifers like myself are very willing to work to find ways to help those who decide not the kill their babies. The rest of your remarks are beneath dignifying with a reply and demonstrate an unwillingness to engage in an honest discussion. I often find this among those who are afraid to discuss the merits of an issue.
Again, however, I am far less concerned about whether you are convinced on the orthodox and catholic view of abortion and contraception as agreed by all Christians until the first half of the 20th Century than I am about your rejection of Christ. So, other that correcting your errors, I will not try to persuade you.
I cited Lewis only because he deals with the misuse of the appetite for food and the misuse of the appetite for sex in the work I cited. If you don't want to read it, don't. I am familiar with Mill.
Chris,
Thanks for the welcome.
Chris, I don't think you've given adequate support to your argument that "it isn't supported by the science".
GL - welcome to the debate.
Sam:
Consider something from a logical perspective. If I'm right that contraception causes a weakening of marriages, there should be evidence that the time of the wide availability of contraception and the collapse of the family are connected to each other, and that the rate of divorce increased significantly with the availability of contraception. I don't have to demonstrate that it is the only cause, but I think I can do that, too.
In the 1930s, Margaret Sanger began to lobby for a change in laws and attitudes about birth control. In 1967 ( I think) the US Supreme Court issued the Griswold decision to which GL refers earlier. It required that married couples could not be denied the right to purchase contraceptives -- and this in the middle of the sexual revolution . Less than 10 years later the same logic and precedent were used to establish the right to get an abortion.
To whom were contraceptives and abortion aggressively marketed? To black families. Today, something like 3 of 4 births to black women are to unmarried women. Something like half of all children conceived among blacks in this country are aborted.
This isn't an absolute demonstration, but surely the evidence should be considered.
I'm sure you could research the increase in divorce rates in England after the Lambeth Conference of 1930.
I can almost hear the objection that I'm committing the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. I'm not, any more than if I were to claim that the teaching of Nazism in Germany made thinkable the execution of the Jews during the Holocaust. It's not the only cause, but the link can't be ignored.
Well, I could do a bit of research, but my hunch would be that the change in attitudes to contraception (which you rightly point out happened in the 1930s in England) made much less difference to the divorce rate than the wider cultural changes of the 1960s - it would seem that the two things were more closely tied together in the US than in the UK, but I'd be surprised if there were great differences in the outcomes since the 1960s.
Sam:
What caused the "wider cultural changes in the 1960s"? Put another way, what more logical cause for the sexual revolution could we find than that attitudes on sex, and the purpose(s) of sex had weakened the bonds of marriage as an institution?
My point about the changes in the U.S. is that among blacks in this country, the cultural destruction has been much wider and deeper than the slow corrosion among whites for the simple reason that, being newly "liberated" in the cause of Civil Rights, they were more likely to fall prey to the "liberation" brought about by birth control.
Chris,
Sam is right. You cannot try to pick out correlations which you yourself broadly admit are based on cultural change. It is ridiculous to try to find a single characteristic of a mass changing of attitudes and attempt to connect it with something else in the mix without very specific data. I could suggest many causal relationships within the same time period. I might suggest that it was the increasing advertising drives, deliberate attempts to shape peoples thinking which lead the way to changing attitudes. I could suggest it was the nature of television shows thata were aired at the time that spark a social revolution. All of that would be pure conjecture if there is not lots of supporting evidence. I think you are viewing the events with a pre-formed conclusion in mind.
As to the black community, I seriously doubt contraception had anything to do with it or that they were especially vulnerable to the "liberation" of birth control. If you look at social demographics or have ever just lived somewhere a little lower down on the social ladder, race is not a primary factor. What do you think the statistics say about the links between wealth, education and single motherhood? The word black above could be replaced with 'poor' and I'd image the results would be very close.
Chris I have to wonder also about the notion of that larger families are better. You contend they are better in almost every way. Do you think the chinese restricted the number of children per family for no good reason? If every generation were to have 6 or so kids, the population explosion woudl lead to a humanitarian disaster. We here in the wealthy west might be able to afford to have many kids if we so choose but other nations are not so fortunate. Where would all the additional resources come from?
GL,
kill their babies
Your use of the word babies is suggestive of fully formed infants. We are discussing the aborting of feutus'. You may choose not to see any great distinction but the two are not at all the same.
You and Chris suggest an entirely unnatural mode of conduct for people. The alternative to procreative sex is abstainence by your definitions. We are not made to be abstain from sex. The other alternative is possiblely very many children. It is not financially viable to have many kids and provide decent futures for them in the modern world for most people.
Also, you mention an increase in abortion rates after it was legalised. I cannot fathom any other possible outcome. Might the increase be in known abortions? I can only guess at the difficulty in obtaining reliable statistics on illegal practices. Such statistics are educated guesses at best.
That is, by accepting contraception, we have already rejected the blessing of children and have tried, to the best of our ability, to render our intercourse infertile.
By this logic, abstinence can be seen as a rejection of the blessing of children.
If an abstaining couple were to give in and wind up with a pregnancy can we assume that they will be more open to abortion?
"The blessing of children". That as Sam might say is religious language. We are biological entities with a powerful inbuilt desire to have sex. Note that the desire is to have sex not to have children. That we might want children too is seperate from the sexual desire. It is obviously a natural mechnism for ensuring procreation. In modern life, there are many requirements for a child that it be given good oppertunities in life. We cannot seperte the two things. Bringing a child into the world is a serious commitment. One I personally don't think has been adequately weighed by many of the single mothers who did not use contraception or choose abortion. I have seen first hand the kind of devestation that unwanted children can bring, usually to the child itself in the first instance and unfortuneately in the long run to society in general. All these arguments about "the blessing of children" and the sanctity of life complete ignore the potential negatives caused by the births of these unwanted children. It seems the religious commenter is quite willing to be realistic when it suits, but when we consider the more unpleasant aspects of life, reality is shunned in favour of a more flowery view of life as a great gift bestowed. Many people do not see it as such and many people do not treat it as such. Contraception is an excellent and practical concept. Abortion should always be carefully considered but removing it from the available choice because you have a rose tinted view of life or believe yourself to be restricted by divine prohibition is neither practical nor fair. When it is your wife who is pregnant, you will both be free to make what descisions you will. The same basic freedom should be afforded everyone else.
It is an indisputable fact that the "right to privacy" used to justify the decision in Roe was first enunciated in Griswold...
There's a reason the 9th Amendment specifies that rights not otherwise enumerated in the Bill of Rights should not be construed to be nonexistent. That's the crux of what I was saying: just because it wasn't specifically enumerated before Griswold doesn't mean the right was created out of thin air (I mean, anymore so than any other right -- they were all created out of thin air)!
I favor Justice Scalia's methods.
Then I think we have very little to discuss, since Scalia's method is not at all rigorous: see his dissent in the Boumedienne case, which is not at all consistent with his "originalist" theory. Well, it might be, since his theory appears to be "I'm for originalism except when I'm not." Granted, it's better than Breyer's "paternalism of Justice Breyer's conscience," which is just a scarily inconsistent standard all around.
rejection of Christ
It's not so much Jesus I reject as his divinity. Trying to live up to Jesus's teachings is a fine -- if impossible and totally unnecessary -- goal; if the stories regarding his words are true, then he seems like one fine rabbi. But I don't think one needs to accept his divinity to be a Christian -- just a commitment to his teachings (and those teachings are not necessary, either, even if many are worthwhile). Though I guess, as worded, I do reject the Christ, since that's his title.
Today, something like 3 of 4 births to black women are to unmarried women
Actually, this number is down to 6 out of 10. If you want a good historical rundown of black marriage or lack thereof I recommend Jason DeParle's excellent (and non-partisan) American Dream about welfare reform. Short story: marriage was not at all the norm for black families, even after Emancipation.
Your correlative arguments, Chris, don't add up. For example, black families -- wed or unwed -- are more likely to be religious and church-going. States with higher rates of church-going also have higher teenage STD and pregnancy rates, as well as higher rates of teenage sodomy (by which I mean girls and boys having anal and oral sex). Celtic Chimp is correct that if you switch "black" with "poor white" the numbers remain high. Religious teens have vaginal sex less, but when they do, they're more likely to end up pregnant and unwed.
Might the increase be in known abortions?
Bingo!
And Celtic Chimp again brings us back to the conundrum of Natural Law: How is using a part of our nature -- our intelligence -- to manipulate part of nature a contravention of Natural Law? Where does the dividing line fall, and how can it be argued in a way other than drawing that line completely arbitrarily based on something not Natural but Metaphysical? That question always gets dodged, and it's the very heart of the problem for Natural Law.
Here's a further question for Chris and GL:
50-60% of all conceptions fail to advance beyond 20 weeks of gestation. Of that number, a full 75% are failure to implant. If we are to accept your argument that contraception is tantamount to abortion, then the human womb is the most efficient abortion provider in the world.
If human life truly begins at conception -- not just "viable" life, but life in all its messy glory -- then is not nature itself an abortifacient?
James:
I'll take your last point as the only subject of my response -- not because the rest isn't interesting, but because I will need to reread it properly to understand it.
DO you not see a difference between abortion and miscarriage? Both result in a dead baby, but one is the result of a natural action, while the other is the deliberate interfering with a natural process. It is the precise difference between rape and relations between husband and wife.
You, failing to see the difference, present precisely the kind of argument needed to go from a "right" to die to the obligation to do so.
Someone recently lauded the plan to reduce the population to 1 billion, until I pointed out that, at least until January 19th, George Bush would decide who lived and died. Suddenly my interlocutor wasn't so gung-ho about the idea.
How can you take such a cavalier attitude to the value of human life?
>>>There's a reason the 9th Amendment specifies that rights not otherwise enumerated in the Bill of Rights should not be construed to be nonexistent.>Scalia>Rejection of Christ's Divinity>Miscarriages as Abortion
This is a little bit of a tangent but,
50-60% of all conceptions fail to advance beyond 20 weeks of gestation
does this present any problem at all for the religious minded. Catholic dogma says that the soul is created or bestowed or whatever at the moment of conception. Is it part of God's mysterious divine plan that more than half of all people are not meant to survive long enough to experience a single thought? That would seem to me to be a belief that is bizarre beyond measure. What is the religous view on this?
Also Chris,
Why do you hold human life to be so valuable? What is about humans that makes them so much more important than say chimps
Don't take the question as imply that I don't consider human life to be valuable, I am just trying to see where you are coming from on the notion.
Celtic Chimp:
I'm pleased that you have asked this question, because perhaps if we can establish some point of commonality here, we can advance meaningfully on other fronts. I hope you can tolerate a wide-ranging answer.
Scientists put the scientific classification which contains chimps and humans as the most important -- and calls that group "Primates", from a word meaning "first" or "most important". Learned theology and the simple text of Holy Writ confirm this intuition, since the one asserts that angels and men are rational beings capable of prayer, which no other animal has the capacity to perform, and the other gives man dominion over the rest of creation.
My Baltimore Catechism affirms that man is made "in the image and likeness of God".
None of this should be taken to assert that I have the right or the intention of, to borrow a phrase from medieval history, "rape, sack and pillage" the earth, indiscriminately wreaking havoc upon creation. That claim belongs to the mercantilist, the atheist andthe imperialist. Why do I put these three in this group? One puts merchandise and profit above all else; one claims there is no God, and thus no external authority other than brute force to restrain him; one cares nothing but for the spreading of his own country's empire -- and yes, I put George Bush in this last category.
Why put humans above all other primates? Humans have the capacity to create poetry by deliberate choice, and to appreciate beauty. No other animal can do these things. [Oh, but how do you know, and aren't you being so presumptively anthropocentric?] Short answer to parenthetical comments: I don't have to know it first hand, any more than I have to know that the first planet around our sun is Mercury; short answer to second half: doesn't every species wish to guarantee its own survival, as a part of nature?
Why put humans above all other primates? Humans have the capacity to create poetry by deliberate choice, and to appreciate beauty. No other animal can do these things.
Humans are the only creatures on earth who commit torture. No other species can rival the destruction we rain down on ourselves and other species. Humans are the only creatures capable of actions we would describe as evil.
Both poetry and torture are made possible by our relatively advanced brain architecture. Does it elevate us above other animals and make us more important? Maybe, maybe not, depends on your perspective but for every example of our positive advantage over other forms of life, there are negatives too.
So are you suggesting it the human ability to rationalize and to pray that make humanity extra valuable? It is worth noting that many prayers by humans are not to the Judeo-Christian God. The ability to pray is simply the ability to talk to a non-existent entity. Hardly laudable?
I not so sure rationality and prayer make for the most natural bedfellows.
I seems from the above that your view on this is religious in nature. Again, this is fine but hardly convincing to an atheist.
“DO you not see a difference between abortion and miscarriage?”
Not in the way you seem to. You dodged my putting the shoe on the other foot, which Celtic Chimp attempted to bring you back to: If the human womb is the most efficient killer of humans, where is this intrinsic value to human life that you attribute to your god and its Natural Law? A life that begins at conception but will be destroyed by that which conceives it is simply one more step along the line you are accusing me of dodging: You have still to answer how the act of using human intelligence and volition – both part of man’s nature and abilities and therefore equally of Natural Law – are any different. How can the use of Nature be held to be apart from Natural Law? Your only answer is to establish an arbitrary line in the sand. I am simply posing to you a point that proves how arbitrary your line is.
It would seem to me that the dividing line that Nature gives us – a bit into the second trimester – gives us a pretty keen insight into the fact that possible life is not viable life, and that therefore a distinction is made, whether man wants to acknowledge it or not. The potential life of the embryo is not necessarily separate from the mother at this point, and given the enormous health hazards of pregnancy, the destruction of a woman’s autonomy at a point where viability is basically a coin-toss is to perform an absolutely known wrong – the abrogation of a woman’s self-determination – for a potential gain that is at best a matter of chance.
“It is the precise difference between rape and relations between husband and wife. “
As someone who has worked with the survivors of sexual abuse and rape, this is deeply offensive. I know a lot of such victims who disagree with you, vehemently.
“You, failing to see the difference, present precisely the kind of argument needed to go from a "right" to die to the obligation to do so.”
That doesn’t seem to logically follow at all. You’ll have to elaborate. Because I could just as easily come back with pointing out that your failure to acknowledge the evil that is the abrogation of choice is on the same continuity that leads to slavery. The slavery your church endorsed in order to baptize the souls of slaves: their “eternal salvation” being more important than their liberty. Your church does not exactly have a history of making good choices when it comes down to choosing between right and wrong.
“How can you take such a cavalier attitude to the value of human life?”
My formulation here absolutely accepts the possibility for being wrong and for future evaluation; but given what we do know at this time, I don’t see how anyone with an actual regard for their fellow human beings can decide otherwise than against the destruction of individual freedom. That you see no such conflict at all simply reinforces my impression that your outrage is not over a concern for human life, but for your own sense of propriety. In being “pro-life,” you are deeply anti-human.
GL, you’ll have to be a tad less cryptic.
...one claims there is no God, and thus no external authority other than brute force to restrain him...
Chris, this is nonsense on stilts gussied up like a ten-dollar harlot, a “no true Christian” argument predicated on nothing but blind assertion. I’ll quote Eric Hoffer, here: “Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.” It’s true that there is naught to restrain us but brute force... and our own compassion. That you would see restraint as solely a matter of imposed inhibition speaks volumes of your deeply anti-human beliefs.
Why do you hate yourself so much?
James:
Does an atheist claim that there is no God?
Perhaps my nonsense isn't on stilts after all.
"thus no external authority other than brute force to restrain him..."
I'm not suggesting that a great many evils haven't been committed in the name of religion, organized and otherwise. I'm insisting that any concept of God worth the name is of a being external to the person who believes. "I believe in me" isn't a theistic perspective, but a narcissistic one. Yes, I posit that these aren't the same thing. How many "Civil Rights" arguments are predicated on abolishing previous taboos - the point not being that previous courses of action are right or wrong, but merely that they are old-fashioned. Slavery as practiced in this country was wrong long before we passed the 14th Amendment. The Catholic Church condemned slavery as it would later manifest itself all the way back in the 1400s. 1435, to be precise. England finally got around to it in 1832, and America in 1865. Talk about late-comers!
Let me take you on a slight excursion for the purposes of elucidating my point. [Please also note that I haven't yet insulted you or demeaned you. I merely disagree with you.] A monarchy is based on the idea that authority comes from God and thus that bad and good Kings alike answer to an authority outside of themselves. In a democracy, the people are the locus of authority, authority which they delegate to representatives, but which they retain, plenipotentiarily, because they can change the government members and system at whim. "Light and transient causes" was Jefferson's way of reassuring his hearers just as the Lambeth conference did. Can democracies sometimes do good? Perhaps. Do monarchs often do great evil? Undeniably. One is an a-moral system in the sense that it relies on its reflection in a mirror as the source of its authority.
I don't hate myself, so you discredit your abilities as a debater when you assert something which you have no way of knowing, less way of proving and no reason to assert in the first place.
Chris,
You seem to be saying here that the atheist, because he doesn't believe in God, is utterly unrestrained.
You have not addressed James' point about our compassion being a restraining influence. I would argue that in all cases, being religious or not, it is our compassion/conscience that ultimately guides us.
I am a little concerned about the implication that theistic ethical systems are always a restraining influence, that only morally wrong behavior is restrained. It seems that it is the case that morally good behavior is similarly restrained and that morally neutral issues are branded with a right or wrong where neither really apply. Homosexuality being a good example of the latter. Is homosexuality inherently wrong? It is only from a theistic point of view that one can find a moral problem with two adults of the same sex being attracted to each other. The oppression of the gay community from religious sources is a good example of morally wrong behavior being predicated by religion. It not only didn't restrain morally wrong behavior but actually instigated it.
You criticize a monarchy because it is an a-moral system in the sense that it relies on its reflection in a mirror as the source of its authority.
Religious morality is based on unchanging dogma. It is utterly stagnant and does not reflect at all. It is totalitarian in nature and actually lauds an unconsidered adherence to its arbitrary rules. It is marked out from other conceptions of morality for the very fact that it's moral principles are not based on reflection and consideration but simple obedience.
I credit most religious people with a lot more moral sense than they seem to credit the atheist. I would not assume that in the absence of their faith they would run amok committing all kinds of crimes because they are no longer restrained. Indeed an individual having to be restrained in such a way is not even dealing with the concept of morality. It is simply an issue of permission. What we find is that without the restraints of a higher authority people tend to act more or less as they would with such restraints. This is not at all surprising to the atheist.
jim, chimp, sam—
i’m getting ready to talk ethics with 13, 14, and 15 year old confirmandi. i want to tackle it this way:
1) using the ten commandments, talk about what our ‘human nature’ is in light of what th ten commandments tell us not to do. for example, one might determine that it is human nature to kill, to steal, to fornicate with any woman one can find, to rebel against being controlled, to want what others have, and the like. my intent is to ask questions to guide their conclusions enough to this type of list; the kids, however, will do the heavy lifting and the list probably won’t be quite the same (can’t wait to see how they determine what human nature is from ‘honor your father and mother,’ since half these kids come from single parent families), and side bars/conversations/arguments will lead to other notions of what human nature is. (perhaps if the crowd is frosty enough, we'll look down the road at how their understanding of human nature stacks up to aristotle, aquinas, and hobbe.)
2) once they’ve decided what human nature is, my next question is, ‘when do you think using human nature, as you’ve determined it, is a useful guide for your behavior,’ or perhaps ‘what keeps you from using human nature as your guide for your behavior,’ or something similar, which should be interesting with these kids.
3) once that’s been wrangled with, i’m intending, channeling kohlberg and fowler, to lead them to this sort of list:
- i rise above my human nature in order to avoid punishment (from human authorities; from god in this world and the next);
- i rise above my human nature in order to be rewarded (by human authorities; by god in this world and the next);
- i rise above my human nature because it is the law to do so (gods will, or god’s pathway);
- i rise above my human nature to please god (or to please human authorities);
- i rise above my human nature so that my community/society/civilization will survive;
- i rise above my human nature so that my community/society/civilization will flourish;
- i rise above my human nature on a journey of my/our salvation (something higher on the kohlberg/fowler model than reward/punishment, i hope);
- i rise above my human nature on a journey to (transcendent) enlightenment.
and let them talk about their own motivations, or lack thereof, for moral and ethical decision making. again, this list is just an example; i want the kids to do the heavy lifting while i ask questions.
for teenagers you personally know, that you’ve had experience with, in a theistic setting, to begin from theistic roots and to move toward this sort of broad range list of assessment of moral and ethical motivation—will it work? sam, would this work with your confirmandi? if not, why not? how do you open up moral and ethical motivation with your confirmandi?
peace—
scott
I feel sorry for those teenagers already.
Just read them a book on consumer marketing. It will teach them more about human nature and human desire than all your long dead philosophers and theologians combined.
Scott,
Sounds interesting if not for the theistic conclusions in the list. I trust you will allow the students to come to their own conclusions. It seems wrong to lead them anywhere.
Sadly I think the observer is right. One need only look at advertising to see human nature revealed. This is not so much because of the advertising itself but the fact that such advertising actually works. Advertising almost always displays one of two tactics. Play on the audiences fears or play on the audiences desires. In either case there is then a blatantly obvious attempt to create an association with the product, either as a means to attaining what is desired or as a salve for a fear. You say you want the kids to do the heavy lifting but you are proposing a narrow course.
If you really want them to consider their motivations honestly, leave the philosophers out of it. don't channel anyone. Let them tell you what they think, not what you are guiding them into thinking.
I think the ten commandments is a disastrous choice as to where to being discovering human nature. A set of rules that suggests that having certain thoughts or feeling certain emotions is inherently morally wrong. Feeling and thinking are not intentional. We don't decide before hand what we will feel and what we will think. The only thing we can govern is our reaction to those thoughts and feelings. It is that very reaction, ,our intent, to which morality speaks. Even Jesus condemns on the crime of thinking and feeling. Enough in its own right to discredit his teachings as moral. Equating getting angry with someone to being a murderer is simply ridiculous.
You suggest "honor thy father and mother". This is not a bad idea in theory but would often be ridiculous in practice. While the spirit of it is fine, respect you parents kind of thing, you might be unfortunate and have two complete reprobates for parents. Some people are not worthy of respect and the suggestion that authority figures (in this case parents - note also that many priest figures are given the epithet "Father") should be respected without caveat is a terrible notion to instill. There are very few of the ten commandments that are actual prohibitions against actions that are actually morally wrong. Killing and stealing, sure. Disrespect? Jealousy?, lust, idolatry? Are these moral considerations at all?
Secular laws tend to reflect a societies ideas about what is moral. Imagine a law that made sexual arousal illegal or a law that made feeling jealous a punishable offense? We would consider these kinds of laws ludicrous but for some reason when considered in a theological framework they are often lauded as the highest good. If your comfirmandi come to same conclusions, would you object?
chimp--
thanks for the feedback.
these kids are part of a theological paradigm. they've been steeped in it since they were 6 years old, and i need to start with what they think they've already learned in their indoctrination classes. hence the ten commandments.
i've no problem with the kids' conclusions, no matter where they go, even if i don't agree or find their conclusions personally im/moral or un/ethical.
what i need to do is figure out a way to move morality and ethics out of the indoctrination realm, and into the critical thinking realm. if you had a bunch of teenagers whose moral and ethical framework was rooted in a judeo-christian paradigm, how would you open things up for them?
do the kohlberg and fowler development models have any value for you?
how have you personally fascilitated change from indoctrination to critical thinking for teenagers, especially regarding moral and ethical issues?
peace--
scott
Chris,
“Does an atheist claim that there is no God? “
Way to parse into clauses and devolve into semanticism. Apropos of your charge later in your comment, the resort to semantics is generally the tactic of a losing argument.
“I'm not suggesting that a great many evils haven't been committed in the name of religion...”
While I grant that I devolved into general diatribe somewhat unnecessarily, this entire paragraph constitutes only a dodge of my main point: that “all that exists to constrain an individual is brute force” is a straw man, no more or less intrinsic to atheism than it is to your own worldview sans its otherworldly arbiter.
A monarchy is based on the idea that authority comes from God and thus that bad and good Kings alike answer to an authority outside of themselves.
This is a misunderstanding of “divine right of kings.” The “divine right” refers to a belief – later applied to all humanity in general by the Calvinists – that kings were selected by inherent virtue imbued by god; they were above all others just as god was above all else. The Catholic Church asserted their authority over kings by placing god above them. Indeed, this leads back to my point about your otherworldly arbiter: in a world of kings and bastards, is it not a comfort to “know” that everyone answers to the same authority? That this is comforting, however, lends absolutely no credence to its metaphysical truth.
I don't hate myself, so you discredit your abilities as a debater when you assert something which you have no way of knowing, less way of proving and no reason to assert in the first place.
Again, you fail to grasp the point. Your debate positions have revealed themselves to be predicated on nothing more than the abnegation of intrinsically human traits – indeed, the one trait that undeniably makes us distinguishable from our biogenetic cousins (the other primates) – that of volition. Your very moral heuristic involves the demonization of that trait – which you yourself have indicated is what distinguishes man from beast – thus making it anti-human. You are a human, and yet subscribe to an anti-human schema. Ergo, you hate yourself, whether you are conscious of it or not, happy with it or not. This is an inescapable conclusion of your arguments as you have articulated them above. I didn’t place you in this bind; I merely pointed out all the ropes.
Scott,
I've recently been relying more on our framing of religious morality as just one more schema, but I think even more virtue is found in breaking that schema down to its individual pieces and how they influence our thinking by getting down to its core heuristics. Teaching children and young adults to critically evaluate why they came to the valuations they did is important. I do this with many of my colleagues by posing hypotheticals that are terribly generic, asking them how they would decide the moral dilemma, and then walking them backwards from conclusion to reasoning to the premises that led them to choose their reasoning "paths."
I'm trying to do something similar here with Chris, but he is far less introspective than most of my interlocutors, so it's a bit like kicking a brick wall while barefoot.
Chris (how’s it goin’?),
I’ve been watching this conversation unfold, observed people exchanging justifications back and forth with neither side accepting them, and regarding that I would like to ask you a question.
Is it your position (regarding the morality you argue for), that it exists somehow in an absolute sense? Or is it more of a temporal moral truth that may or may not be consistent with the beliefs that you and your brand of Christianity hold to (a community of beliefs)?
If it’s the former,
Then how do you account for that absolute? In other words you’re essentially claiming that you have epistemological certainty – so how do you account for that without an appeal to privileged access or circular reasoning? If you can’t account for this (as your system would suggest that you should) then why, even if you have a seemingly sound argument relative to your moral stance, should we accept it?
The bottom line in this instance is that, if the former is your position, than there really isn’t any need to engage in conversation about your moral beliefs until you can demonstrate your nature of certainty regarding them.
If it’s the latter, (in which case we have a great conversation about what is best with people exchanging opinions and justifications.)
Then what necessarily makes your morality more useful and/or consistent with the held beliefs of the people at large? Or more simply put, what is the danger (to ones self) or the risk (to society) in not faithfully applying your argument as apposed to say, James’ argument? Of course in this instance, there is really no need to have felt sense of fear of God, and if that would be your argument, then I would suggest that your position is more consistent with the former.
P.S.
When I say “your brand of Christianity” I don’t mean that as a pejorative.
That is a truly insightful comment, Andrew.
James, (thanks)
I had to dig deep for that, like trying to be romantic with my wife. Sure I can do it, but as you've said in the past, I'm more of non-sequitur kind a' guy i.e. more apt to give the reach around then to light candles.
A cheerful, peaceful and blessed Feast of the Nativity of the Son of God to one and all:
Merry Christmas
as we say on this side of the pond.
Andrew:
Moral systems which modulate and vary according to the whims of the person aren't really moral systems, but excuses to justify otherwise wrong behavior. As a woman I knew in college used to say, only half tongue in cheek, "god and I have a very good arrangement: she always agrees with me."
So, any moral system worth the name allows for applications, but holds to some absolutes which guide the system.
Theologians in the Catholic Church assert the difference between mortal sin and grave sin. Grave sin describes the act itself. Mortal sin describes the level of culpability. For an educated Catholic, the two terms are synonymous because we know what consititutes grave sin and consciously avoid committing these sins.
He who claims "everything is relative" is making an absolutely certain statement -- which should be impossible within his relative system. The fact that his statement is self-referentially contradictory will bother the unbiased observer when the claimant then asserts moral authority over anything whatsoever. I do not make such a claim.
I claim that a moral system handed down through the Catholic Church is true, independent of whether I like or dislike it, accept it or refuse to accept it. This moral system, if the Catholic Church's claim about Herself is to be believed, was given by God and allowed to develop into specific applications under the guidance of His Holy Ghost. Your question should really be about whether the Catholic Church is what she says she is. This is the only way to evaluated the claim to the validity of the moral system she propagates.
So, how do we address this question. We can't argue circularly, for this is unhelpful and unconvincing -- even to convinced believers, regardless of the object of their belief -- unless perhaps we mean Democrats and Republican in American now.
Instead, we must line up the claims she makes with facts known even to outside observers.
Claim: The Church of today is the one that Christ founded.
Facts: An unbroken list of bishops can trace all the way back to the man claimed as the first pope, who was appointed by Christ.
Claim: Christ was God, the Son of God.
Facts relevant to the case: Rabbi Zoller, chief Rabbi in Rome during the Second World War became Catholic and took the name Eugenio in honor of Pope Pius XII, whose conduct had convinced him of the righteousness of this gentile. He, Zoller, examined the claims of the Church and found them worthy of acceptance.
Zoller is not an isolated example.
[These don't, by themselves, prove the case, but if Christ founded the Church (which is not in dispute) then these must be considered relevant in identifying Who Christ is.]
To identify Christ as the Son of God, part of the proof must rest in the defense of the Bible as an accurate account -- that is, as a historically reliable account. IF Christ said He was the Son of God, and this is recorded in a reliable book, then the claim is reliably reported, at the very least. If He did the things which are claimed of Him, some credence must be given to His claim to be the Son of God.
Enter the Jesusbewegung and John Dominic Crosssan. I won't rehash all of this here, but refer you to the site of a friend, pblosser.blogspot.com, who recently quoted C.S. Lewis. I'm not a fan of Lewis, mind, but where is argument is sound -- where YOUR argument is sound -- I must accept it as sound, whether I like the general tenor of his case or not.
Chris,
You stated:
“He who claims "everything is relative" is making an absolutely certain statement…”
I have yet to make a claim – I’m not sure if you meant this as an inference about myself or not?
You stated:
“I claim that a moral system handed down through the Catholic Church is true, independent of whether I like or dislike it, accept it or refuse to accept it.”
So am I to take this as a statement where I can infer that you believe the Catholic Church has absolute moral authority, (or in the very least the bible)? As you’re making a claim of truth independent of you that certainly seems the case.
You stated”
“Your question should really be about whether the Catholic Church is what she says she is. This is the only way to evaluated the claim to the validity of the moral system she propagates.”
Since I’m not actually having a conversation with the Catholic Church, but rather Chris, then this statement serves as a tactic to merely push the problem off. My question is for you – do you think the church (the bible) has absolute moral authority.
Furthermore, launching a proof that (for example) Jesus was really a man is no proof of absolute moral authority, that’s merely a proof that a man lived, it doesn’t legitimize his statements any more or less then if Plato was a real man or not would legitimize his statements. In other words, I don’t question Plato’s logic in terms of his existence, I question it in terms of its consistency and application. His name could have been Stacy and he could have been a 13 year old girl for all I know.
You seem to grant yourself moral authority over the atheist, and again you seem to do so based on an absolute; as such you can run a trail back to Christ all you want but eventually it’s going to lead to question begging and you’ll really have no proof at all.
As such one of my original questions stands:
“Given that you can’t account for your moral authority, why should I accept your claims regarding them?”
If you can’t give state for me a good reason for me to buy a hammer, there’s no reason for me to run out and spend my money on one; whether it has actual existence or not. The same goes for God, whether he exists or not is irrelevant to whether or not it does one any good to believe that he does.
P.S.
You seem to be trying to avoid impaling yourself on one of the horns I laid out?
P.P.S.
Hope you had a wonderful Christmas Chris – we’re just having fun here right, from one theist to another.
Chris,
In an effort to not sound like I’m being dishonest in identifying myself as a theist, let me run down my position for you being brief and open ended..
I tend to look at the Bible as foundational to western morality as apposed to a static moral authority by itself.
I like to make this comparison:
The Bible is and/or should be to western morality as Pythagoras and Plato are to Western science and philosophy. On the one hand our scientific and philosophical systems continually evolve (if you will) in such a way as to increase the quality of life and they owe their foundations in part to the two fore mentioned men i.e. with those two men began a conversation about said issues and without them, we have no means of beginning a discussions on such matters. In the same way, (whether one would choose to believe it or not) the bible is the foundation of western morality, without it, from where are we launching our discussion? I tend to consider that, simply calling oneself an atheist does not relinquish the fact that we’ve all, in some manner or another, been impacted by the history of Christianity as it’s been the foundation our society for 2000 years. Of course this doesn’t mean it’s true or false, but simply foundational – one can’t deny it any more then on can deny Plato.
On the other hand many take the static/literal view of Christian morality whereas I tend to take the view that, the goal of Christianity is to spread freedom, integrity and love to all humanity. As such (and just as science and philosophy does) our Christian moral sense should always be expanding to extend those rights to all humanity – it shouldn’t be used as a tool to judge others and say “you going to hell” any more then science should be used as a tool kill our fellow man; but as it stands both are used in such ways. The fact of the matter is, Christian morality (as it seems to stand) does not fit the context of the world we’re living in today any more then 1st century science does.
Having said all that, it should be our goal to continue this conversation; not with some idea of absolutes, but with some idea that our efforts will further freedom, integrity and love, with Christ as our foundation. I’m arguing, essentially, for a pragmatic stance towards Christianity and to do away with epistemic certainty and notions of absolutes as I don’t feel it gets us anywhere beyond taking blows at each other.
"The bottom line in this instance is that, if the former is your position [that the morality you argue forexists somehow in an absolute sense]
than there really isn’t any need to engage in conversation about your moral beliefs until you can demonstrate your nature of certainty regarding them."
Andrew:
You asked about my moral beliefs and why I have certainty about them. I replied that I accept a system which doesn't obtain its validity from my accepting it. I accept it because it comes from the Catholic Church, so to address the question of whether or not it is a valid moral system, we must not dither about what I believe, but ascertain whether the Church is, in fact, what She claims to be.
Rather than dodge your point, I thought I had directly addressed it. The beliefs aren't important because they are mine.
Independent of moral questions, however, I must insist that "everything is relative" -- or its concurrent claims that what is true for one person isn't necessarily true for another and that no one system works for everyone-- is a paradox. It must be held absolutely, in a system which claims that nothing may be held absolutely.
..."everything is relative"...
As usual, the theological absolutist makes a semantic statement with no allowance for the simple, self-evident relativism of real life. Moral relativism in its original – and correct – incarnation simply makes the observation that the peoples of the world have many absolute moral and ethical systems, many of which agree on some points and clash on others and when they do arrive at similar conclusions, the paths taken to get there (i.e. the premises and axioms that undergird their internal validity) will often vary – sometimes wildly so. Even more pertinent, it is rare that an absolute system does not contain its own caveats and exemptions; its own absolutes are not anchored in an inflexible moral bedrock (compare the “Ten Commandments” with the commandments within the Book of Leviticus if you think I’m wrong).
That is what moral relativism is. There is a postmodern type ascribed to by very few that states that because all morals are subjective, they cannot be right. They are in error; nothing about subjectivity precludes judgment. For an alternative view, you could read work by “mysterian” philosopher Colin McGinn, who holds that moral absolutes exist but is also an atheist.
Your question should really be about whether the Catholic Church is what she says she is.
Even were the Catholic Church the enunciator of such received wisdom, that does not make its moral system absolute, since it was received from your god. To be absolute, a moral point must exist independent of something. As the Old Testament shows us, your god could contravene its own moral absolutes and order the Israelites to perform acts directly in contravention of them, deeming them “not sins” solely by virtue of its authority: the “absolute” nature of morals, then, depended not on independent existence but on your god’s whims – indeed, their very names as “commandments” tells us this! Your moral system is completely open to re-alignment should your god deem it necessary, thus requiring the god to exist “outside” its own moral code while the morals remain “absolute” – a contradiction that must be accepted as axiomatic to avoid shattering your illusions of absolute moral values.
Your moral system is not only not-absolute, it is the cheapest, most whimsical form of relativism that you accuse others of having!
An unbroken list of bishops can trace all the way back to the man claimed as the first pope, who was appointed by Christ.
Now that is funny. Not only must we accept that Paul was selected by Christ, we must accept that the selection of popes and other ecclesiastical authorities was infallible? Have you not read any histories of the Renaissance or Holy Roman Empire? Further, the teachings of Paul are known to be in conflict with much of the teachings of the original Apostles, as the Council of Jerusalem shows us (which didn’t occur until 50 CE at the earliest, nearly two decades after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth); read your Acts, dude. The Church as you know it wasn’t even fully codified until the Council of Nicea under the Roman Emperor Constantine in 325 CE!
Indeed, the Apostolic Council is directly on point: James’s decree created exceptions to numerous commandments within Judaism for Gentiles converting to worship of the Christ. The formerly absolute rules were made non-binding in order to encourage the spread of the faith and make common cause with the radical teachings of Paul of Tarsus. Paul’s letters to the Galetians, Corinthians, Philippians, and Romans all vary, winding from condemnation of various commandments (such as circumcision) to praise of them, depending on his audience. This is further muddied by whether or not the Christians are beholden to Mosaic law or only Noahide law. Was the Apostolic Decree based on Noahide law or Leviticus? Or was it a totally pragmatic decision? Who knows? Paul, who seemed quite the advocate of Noahide while proselytizing, was a frequent, if inconsistent, observer of Mosaic law.
You have quite a few hurdles within your own “historically reliable account” to negotiate before you can go about bandying such certainty.
You asked about my moral beliefs and why I have certainty about them. I replied that I accept a system which doesn't obtain its validity from my accepting it. I accept it because it comes from the Catholic Church, so to address the question of whether or not it is a valid moral system, we must not dither about what I believe, but ascertain whether the Church is, in fact, what She claims to be.
Actually, Chris, you’re not answering a moral question at all. All you’re doing is pushing the question of responsibility further out: “Do I accept that the Catholic Church is the One True Church of Our Dear and Fluffy Lord?” You are thus relieved of the burden of having to answer any moral questions on your own. You’re asking yourself if you can justify accepting a heuristic. It’s a question moral authority, not moral absolutes.
It must be held absolutely, in a system which claims that nothing may be held absolutely.
You have demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of what moral relativism is: It is simply, as I have said many times, the acknowledgment that there are many absolutes adhered to, and that these absolutes are held relative to religion, culture, and community. It’s a statement of observation, not a statement of standard, just as, for example, distance from an object is relative to location. I hold a very conventional Western European morality – based on Christian refinements of Greek, Roman, and Hebrew foundations – because I have been raised in the Western European mold; my subjective preference is relative to the standards I have been raised in and experienced. Your own morality and ethical system is relative to your Catholic experience. “Morality is relative” is not a moral judgment but an epistemic observation. As such, there is no paradox. For example: “A banana and a cucumber share the same shape” is not paradoxical just because one is a fruit and the other a vegetable.
Chris,
this is really simple I think, you said:
"I replied that I accept a system which doesn't obtain its validity from my accepting it."
This is all well and good Chris, but what then does it obtain it's validity from, and how then do you account for that? Again, you're merely pushing the question off. You hold the belief of certainty on the matter, so you hold the burden of proof to account for it. If you don't want to speak to it, then I see no real reason (again) to have a conversation regarding your moral beliefs.
If I say, "I believe in the moral authority of Dr. Sues," but can give no reason why such should be a moral authority, then why should you accept it?
You act as though you're merely here as a proxy for the Catholic Church, and as such you don't have to be held accountable for anything you say – that’s nonsense. In effect you're saying, "Don't kill the messenger."
I seriously don’t see why anyone should continue on having a moral discussion with you – and I’m not being rude here, it’s simply that, I can walk into any Catholic Church and pick up a pamphlet; and just as I can’t argue with the pamphlet, I can’t argue with you either.
So what’s the point?
...I can walk into any Catholic Church and pick up a pamphlet; and just as I can’t argue with the pamphlet, I can’t argue with you either.
Well put.
(sorry for the double posting here you guys)
Chris,
let me spin this in another way.
I believe in democracy, not as an authority, but as a foundation that stands for freedom, liberty, and equality. Suppose them I’m in an argument with a communist, we’re going back and forth getting no place and he eventually asks me, “What gives your system of government more authority then mine?” And I will respond, “Nothing, it has no more authority then yours does.” I say that because it’s not an authority I’m arguing for, it’s a principle; if the communist doesn’t value those principles and/or I am unable to show him the value of those principles, then its end of conversation. No one is right and no one is wrong, we stand principally for different things.
You on the other hand are arguing for authority, and an authoritative system of belief is nothing more then a fascist system of belief. It’s principles lie in doing nothing more then what that system tells you to – and I find that to be complete BS.
Did not Christ himself fight against "the system", the Jewish Church? The Catholics simply created a new one in it's stead.
Did not Christ himself fight against "the system", the Jewish Church? The Catholics simply created a new one in it's stead.
As a total aside, that's exactly my point about S/Paul of Tarsus: A man doesn't go from being the enforcer of an existing authority to completely giving up on authority; Paul's genius was in re-casting the authority of his god as a piece separate from the waning Jewish priesthood.
Goodness, gentlemen!
I don't think along such abstruse lines as you clearly do. Earlier I let slide the fact that one of you defined the nature of man entirely from the savage y-chromosome perspective. In the definition, therefore, "man" came to mean selfish, promiscuous males. Now you insist on using "moral relativism" to mean something it clearly doesn't mean. I'm not going to throw around labels like "fascist" -- although it is sometimes tempting.
Why would you use the "C.E." dating mechanism? The usual answer is to avoid reference to the Christian "god". The small problem with this approach is that the Common Era" is common because of the dating of the birth of Christ. On the Jewish Calendar, the year 2008 came and went many eons ago. Likewise, on the Chinese Calendar. You use the common calendar of the western, Christian world, but wish to avoid any but the most oblique contact with that Christian world. Fortunately for you the whole of Europe and most of America, including a great many moralists who get near microphones, has utterly abandoned Christian teaching on so many issues. This perfectly explains the election of Barack Obama, for example, the Groeningen Protocol, the simultaneous support for eugenics and abortion while condemning the holocaust of WWII. Of course the Holocaust was a terrible thing, and unjust by nature, so why do many who now assert (falsely) that the Holy Father Pius XII was pro-Nazi seem to accept and even champion eugenics and abortion?
It's late, and I don't have the time tonight to correct the so many inaccurate statements in your postings.
God bless you all in the coming days,
Chris
i see we're back to bullshit.
Am I talking to Chris here, or the Catholic Church?
Scott:
Evidently you and I read Frankfurt differently from each other.
Andrew:
I'm not sure that I take the point of your question correctly. I, Chris, am answering your questions and engaging in a near-semblance of dialogue. That I wholeheartedly accept the teaching of Holy Mother Church means that I don't have to rely on my own meager thinking skills -- but also means that you're not really in a war with me. Your problem, clearly, is with the teaching of the Catholic Church, and so anyone, no matter who, who holds that position will be arguing unacceptably.
No, it's just a waste of time. And good for you, now you don't actually have to hold and defend a position, you can just spew crap.
I'll go pick up that pamphlet now.
Chris,
Let me be clear on something else; at this point I don’t necessarily have a problem with the Catholic Church, I have a problem with your stance on the Catholic Church as an authority. You yourself are giving that authority so it’s you that has to account for it. However, you do state that it has authority outside you granting it; ok then, from what/where does that authority come from? If you respond by saying “X”, then what gives “X” authority? Clearly at some point (if you choose to respond), you’ll beg the crucial question and we’ll be back to my original question; “Why should I care?”
If you don’t have an answer to that which grants the Church its authority, then why are you following it, and why should we?
What’s not to understand here?
Andrew:
I'm afraid my answer won't be any help to you, but it's the answer I need to give.
Authority is of two types: absolute or delegated.
Delegated authority comes from one who possesses that authority, so as to delegate it.
In the case of created objects, the authority comes from the creator, [note, small c, for this is not a deist observation] and not from the user. Authority doesn't come from the consent of the governed.
God created the Catholic Church, so He endowed Her with authority so that She should communicate the Gospel of salvific mercy, teach, sanctify and govern.
God didn't create Protestantism - in any form or incarnation - because the essence of Protestantism is "non serviam"; God condescended to take our human nature and be subject to His sinless Mother and His foster father. Talk about humility!
How can I possibly defend the notion that a god in whom you do not believe created a church for the salvation of men when you don't believe there is anything from which you need to be saved [except possibly pompous Catholics]?
I doubt that I'm up to the task of explaining it, but that doesn't stop it from being true. In the same way, I can't explain all sorts of things about astrophysics, but this doesn't make them any less true.
The blessings of the day to you.
Guess that's the end of that conversation...
Wow, you go away for a few days.....
I just want to make a point on the whole
Believnig there are no absolutes is an absolutist statement.
This has always struck me as a more a semantic quibble than a real objection. The moral relativist accepts all kinds of absolutes. The universal constantants by which the physical universe is undoubtedly governed. Absolute. Do things exist? Absolutely!
Should the term absolute be applied to a concept like morality. Absolutely not
There is a kind of equivocation going on. The absolute to which we are at one time talking is an absolute in an objective sense. Something that will be so regardless of whether humans ever even existed. Morality cannot exist without concious minds to conjure it. It is a concept and a brutally subjective one at that. In much the same sense that there cannot be absolutes in terms of beauty or taste, there cannot be absolutes in terms of morality. The term absolute gets obscured at this point. To mean the same as the previous meaning, it would have to be referring to an entirely indepentant moral fact that simply is and would be without even the existance of humanity. Thou shalt not commit adultery could hardly be described as an absolute in those terms. Lets lower the bar and say that it only is an absolute for humans as decreed by God. Apparently rape is not an absolutely wrong moral action. It was condoned by God in the bible. Maybe he simply changed his mind on the absolutes. It was absolutely ok in Moses time and it is absolutely not ok now? Slavery, absolutely ok?
I also, vehemently disagree with the notion that western ethics owe a debt to christianity. Every major fight for human and social rights has been fought against religous opposition, not with its support. The sothern states correctly asserted during the civil war that God was on their side in the slavery debate and they were right. The bible did support their position. Women's rights and freedoms are not exactly espoused in the bible either. Do marrige vows in the catholic church still require a wife to obey her husband? We get such sterling examples of moral contuct and restraint for the bible like how much of a beating it ok to give a slave......where would we be now if not for such solid ethical teachings. There would be dead slaves everywhere.
Most first world modern nations share similar morality and ethics regardless of their religous background or did countries like Japan secretly have a christian background? Christianity being in some way resonsible for western ethics is a verion of the post hoc fallacy. It was pervasive in the culture as it came to it's ethical views, but hardly the foundation. We haven't been stoning unruly children for a long time now. The catholic church always falls in line with secular ethical views, it is usually just late to the party. The anti-homosexual and anti-contraceptive wars being waged by it are just the latest examples. It is a pet theory of mine that the reason all religions eventually die off is becasue they fall to far out of step with the general views and moral opinions of the societies around them. What was once radical and progressive, slowly decays into obsolescence. Christianity is already experiencing this in europe. Most young europeans would find both of the positions above laughably ignorant. In much the same way that we here might all find the story of an islamic woman being flogged for the crime of being gang-raped sickening, so do most liberal europeans find the anti-gay retoric of the catholic church sickening. It is brutally ignorant and utterly unnesesary. I don't know how long it will take but I make a prediction that the catholic chruch (C.C.) will come around on the anti-gay issue. It will find some scriptures which can be mangled in such a way as to mean being gay is not evil and won't condemn you to burn in hell for ever. Maybe the C.C. just needs to add a newer testament to the bible. In much the same way then as christians disregard the O.T. as obsolete so too then might the N.T. be regarded in the same light. Perhaps the new messiah wil be a homosexual, pro choice liberal communist She will be villified just like Jesus was. :P
Whether it be helicentricity or homosexuality or gentic research, the church will slowly, kicking and screaming all the way eventually fall in line with where the culture is headed anyway. I find it frankly sickening that it has the audacity to claim it is responsible for where we are now. The only thing christianity gave the west was a framework in which to express how they felt about things. It was not always an easy task either to fit a positive ethical goal into the midden-heap of bible morality. Still, the bible has some pros. It is so vague and so often contradictory that it can and has been made to mean anything. Every wonder why there are more brands of christianity than there are follwers of some faiths. The bible. It is such a poor source of information that no-one can agree about what it is saying. You would think God would be a better author.
The C.C. will either quicken itself once more and join the secular world or it will fall futher and further into hold-out secthood and eventual dissolution. Sam is an example of this quickening. His faith is so removed for that held by the founders of his faith as to be almost unrecognisable as Christianity. Ultimately it is the fate of such...liquid faiths to be dissolved to the point of irrelevance and also eventual passage into the history books. Every faith bar none that has existed since the dawn of humanity has eventually faded and died and so too will Christianity, Islam, Hinduism etc. etc. Religions tend to have a long half-life but they all go the same way eventually. It is a little depressing to me to think that in five thousand years and atheist about some new invention of the "God" character will be having a debate with an adhereant of some future religion who is just as certain in his faith and the eveidenceless truth of his position as the most ardent christian today. Just as once there was probably a devout worshipper of Apollo. It is of interest to me how the modern man of faith views their ancient counter parts. They were as assured of their faith as you are of yours. What do you think of them? Their truths were obviously not true. Where, in light of this does the modern theist draw their certainty from? The God they know is there? How is that different from some guy in ancient times and his certainty?
Chris, you're just one hell of a dishonest debater.
"Now you insist on using "moral relativism" to mean something it clearly doesn't mean."
How so? You mean, I didn't use it how Ratzinger-cum-Benedict uses it but how many, many, many philosophers use it? Since I gained my definition from an actual, practicing, famous philosopher's introduction to philosophy course, I'll roll with that, thank you very much.
Painted into a corner, you bolt, dragging the tattered pontifical robes behind you. I hope you learn to think for yourself one day.
C.C.,
Most first world modern nations share similar morality and ethics regardless of their religous background or did countries like Japan secretly have a christian background?
I believe I've written on this elsewhere, but I will repeat myself here: Just because a good idea is encapsulated in one form elsewhere does not make it exclusive to that system. If it's a good idea -- such as individual freedom -- then it will be arrived at through a variety of systems predicated on different premises. There's nothing exclusive about our ideals or morals; just as there is no harm in acknowledging the historical systems they were framed in.
Chris is right about one thing, however: I unequivocally reject the concept of "original sin" and the idea that man's nature is anything he must be saved from.
Sorry for the multiple postings as thoughts strike me. I wanted to say that I thought Celtic Chimp's statement, "His faith is so removed for that held by the founders of his faith as to be almost unrecognisable as Christianity," to be really interesting.
James, Celtic Chimp, Andrew:
I'm sorry that you don't think much of my position -- but I suppose I should be grateful that you think I'm good at something.
Manifestly, I have failed to convince you of the rightness of the position I have here espoused. You have asserted that because I accept the Catholic Church's position, I'm not thinking for myself -- but you do this without the slightest reason for believing it so, except an existing prejudice against things Catholic, such that anyone who agrees with the Catholic Church must, by definition, not be thinking at all.
You have accused me of all manner of insincerities, of advancing ideas without the slightest evidence to support them, of failing to accept the use of words with the meanings you wish to assign to them, and a whole host of other evils. Why you utter calumnies against the Catholic Church in your attempt to destroy my argument is a mystery -- except that I would have to conclude (as you did on the other side) that an attack on the Catholic Church was your real motivation to begin with. This is sad -- that what should be a reasonable argument between two competing ideas has degenerated into the kinds of theatre of the absurd as we have all witnessed.
"Painted into a corner, you bolt, dragging the tattered pontifical robes behind you". I'm not painted into a corner. I answered your question honestly. I haven't bolted. I'm still trying to contribute to a civil discussion. The pontifical robes are not in tatters, and I have dragged them nowhere. I don't think I've mentioned the Holy Father except briefly in reference to contraception, and except that you want them in tatters, the robes are just fine, thank you.
I lost, if the goal was to convince you.
I won, if the goal was to be civil in disagreeing with you.
I won, if the goal was to be a faithful presenter of a reasonable position.
Chris,
the issue at hand (from my perspective) is that you cannot convince me of your position if you cannot tell me why I should believe in the authority of the Catholic Church. Your whole argument is bound in the validity of it’s authority and if you cannot account for it, why should I accept the then arbitrary nature of your moral position?
You seem to not understand this basic point?.?
With regards to winners; there are no winners and losers here if we consider there was never really a game being played in the first place. In other words, you were evidently just regurgitating Catholic rhetoric without giving any basis for why one should accept your position. So instead of playing a game of tennis with James, CC, Scott and myself on one side and you (and the Catholic Church) on the other; the reality was the 4 of us were just hitting a ball against a wall, in which case there was never a possibility of it not coming back.
...but you do this without the slightest reason for believing it so, except an existing prejudice against things Catholic, such that anyone who agrees with the Catholic Church must, by definition, not be thinking at all.
See, here's the thing, Chris: That's not so. We've given you ample opportunity to explicate your arguments. All you've had to fall back on is an appeal to authority that has no foundation with respect to the subject. Were you falling back on "faith as justification alone" or "original sin" then we'd be discussing the authority of your Protestant leanings. It's not Catholicism I object to; it's your inability to frame arguments for yourself.
Why you utter calumnies against the Catholic Church in your attempt to destroy my argument is a mystery -- except that I would have to conclude (as you did on the other side) that an attack on the Catholic Church was your real motivation to begin with.
Nonsense, balderdash, and pishtosh too. And you know it. We were, what, over a third into the conversation before you busted out the Catholicism?! This is a damned lie.
I won, if the goal was to be a faithful presenter of a reasonable position.
Then you lost. As demonstrated many times, you were a deeply dishonest presenter.
Andrew is quite right: You cannot present an argument from authority without being able to convince others of that authority! Nowhere was an ad hominem presented that simply because an idea was uttered by a Catholic it was wrong. You failed to argue for the tenets underpinning your position and, when that failure was made manifestly apparent, you fell back on a metaphysical authority that can neither be confirmed nor refuted, making it no authority at all.
I left you lots of openings. I can see them. Some were deliberate, many were not. And not a one required you to devolve into the blatant pit of sophistry and semantics you chose.
Chris,
If you choose your moral authority to be the catholic church does it not seem fair that we examine that authority?
James,
I believe I've written on this elsewhere, but I will repeat myself here: Just because a good idea is encapsulated in one form elsewhere does not make it exclusive to that system. If it's a good idea -- such as individual freedom -- then it will be arrived at through a variety of systems predicated on different premises.
I agree entirely.
There's nothing exclusive about our ideals or morals; just as there is no harm in acknowledging the historical systems they were framed in.
I agree also in principle. I think historically Christianity was so pervasive that it was almost the defacto language of ethics. I would not try to dispute this. Most of the values espoused by modern western nations are simply not reflected in the bible. Discarding the O.T. entirely gets you closer but if you look at the conduct of Christian nations throughout history it becomes pretty obvious that our societies have changed radically during the reign of Christianity. The bible however remained largely the same. Our ethical and moral beliefs have clearly been changing despite the static nature of the bible. I think Christianity has been largely been along for the ride. This doesn't in any way vilify Christianity or say anything bad about it at all. I just reject the notion, so often presented by the religious, that Christianity was the primary source of our ethical and moral progress. Even Islam with its brutally anti-women jurisprudence tends to look most closely at the parts of the Qur'an that support the patriarchal system in which it lives. The book is hardly a feminist manifesto but as was done with the bible, it is selectively interpreted in light of the surrounding culture. It is worth noting that the teachings ascribed to Jesus in the new testament would have been wildly radical and progressive in his time. They are not at all so now. Christianity has gone from being the authority-rejecting, progressive, radical idea to becoming the old, stagnant authority itself. It's ideas might only be described as radical now, not for their progressive qualities but for their ethical and moral backwardness. In order to attempt to stay relevant it must be continually re-interpreted. Nuance must be found to make the message more applicable to modern ethics. As is always done, the parts that match the current time are pointed out, the ones that don't are just not mentioned. Modern Christian scholarship is an exercise in bible mining. Start with a presupposition and find the scriptures that support it. We don't find too many people arguing for slavery these days and pointing to the bible for support. This is not because the bible no longer supports slavery but because the bible reader no longer does. The reader will find ways to make the clear acceptance of slavery in the bible "ok..becasue....".
Biblical literal truth simply had to go. It couldn't be sustained in light of ethical and scientific changes. The modern theist of which Sam is a good example will pretend that the bible was never intended to be taken literally. This is intellectually dishonest in my view and not at least a little bit insulting to the founders of their faith. The bible was intended to be taken as literally true and the majority did just that for a very long time. When the bible speaks of God being angry or jealous, it meant exactly that. God was clearly given attributes, which Sam will refuse to accept or at least hold as something more and unknowable. The bible would still be taken as literally true if that proposition was not now wholly ridiculous. Of course, there are no small number of people who hold to a literal interpretation still, as difficult to fathom as that may be! History to me shows a religion reacting to moral and ethical change not the other way around. I think also I should make it clear that I am not suggesting it was irreligious people who are responsible for positive ethical change, not at all. I have no doubt that many progressive ideas sourced from believers. Religion does not remove a person's ability to be ethical or to promote ethical change, I just think it is at best, barely relevant. For some it provides the language in which to explain themselves. Possibly the best thing that can be said about Christianity is that it did not stifle advances, ethical, scientific, etc. as much as some other religions, notably Islam. Almost all progress stopped in the mid-east with the introduction of Islam.
Ultimately I agree that ethical evolution of western societies was described in Christian language but I reject the notion that it was Christianity that inspired it.
AHHH PISHTOSH! ;-p
My vocabulary just became one word larger.
Sorry, gentlemen, I find your sudden earnestness and civility a bit hard to understand.
You opposed the simple position that contraception is a bad thing and that one didn't need a Catholic backdrop to see this. You accused me of (more recently) pishtosh and balderdash. You didn't advance arguments, but asserted one thing after another. My problem, for example, was that I was accepting St. Thomas Aquinas, whom to that point in the conversation I hadn't mentioned. My problem was that I accepted the wrong definition of human nature and was merely making use of any deckchairs to justify my preordained conclusion. My problem was that .... et cetera. No where have you demonstrated that this definition of human nature is wrong, nor that it is irrelevant to our discussion. Instead you simply insisted that I was being disingenuous and various other assaults on my character. I'm being an unethical teacher - though you've never been in my classroom - - and you constantly attack His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for spewing forth the same kind of rubbish of which you accuse me.
At every turn, I tried to advance a serious thought, whether it convinced you or not. When I used arguments which didn't come from religion, you accused me of disigenuity. When I assert that the position isn't right because it's mine, but rather that I accept it because it's true, you accuse me of retreating to some unreasonable "authority". You can certainly shout me down, but you haven't answered any of my criticisms on point -- you merely declared them irrelevant cant or semantics or balderdash or whatever screed you could think to use to describe these.
Celtic Chimp:
Indeed, it is fair to ask about that authority, which is why I addressed the question -- those who reject the position I advanced here don't have a problem with me, but with that authority which advanced it, namely the Catholic Church. So, indeed, you are on point when you say that we should examine that authority. Before we go any further, though, can we agree to examine arguments like historians, not polemicists? There is one part of American politics which disturbs me, even (especially) when it comes from folks with whom I'm supposed to agree: only that which is polemically useful is admitted. This argument style leads to the "you're pro-life, so you can't disagree with the war in Iraq" illogic.
Chris,
In fairness, the problem that James and Andrew have with your position is that you are not justifying it at all. It would be like my suggesting that Bob McSomebody is the moral authority. When asked why I think Bob should be given this authority I simply suggest that Bob says he is right and I agree......but why do I agree....because he is Bob and he is right. Andrew and James are not addressing the C.C. they are asking you for your personal explanation of why you think the C.C. is right. Why should it be given the authority you place in it.
Chris,
You do realize that the statements
When I assert that the position isn't right because it's mine, but rather that I accept it because it's true
is essentially no different from
When I assert that the position isn't right because it's mine, but rather that I accept it because I think it's true
This is a kind of contradiction. You are saying you don't think it is right because you hold the position, you think it is right because you believe that it is the right position to hold. You realize that you can't just proclaim something to be objectively true and leave it at that. It is ultimately an expression of opinion. You think it is true. Obviously, myself, James and Andrew don't agree that it is true and a simple proclamation that this is so is utterly unconvincing. How swayed would you be I just proclaimed that I'm right and you are wrong and that is why I believe what I do?
Celtic Chimp:
Let me see if I understand the question they are trying to raise. Does it, roughly, become the following: "Since we don't share your Catholic faith, can you give us some reason for believing that the Catholic Church has any moral authority at all?" Indeed this is an intelligent question, but one whose answerability depends on being willing to accept a common basis of that which is reasonable and logical. That is, some things must be set as axiomatic, and some rules need to be followed in any argument. As axiomatic for the rules of argument: no flame-throwing. Disagree, present evidence, challenge, but don't merely engage in ad hominem or baseless denuciation. Fair enough?
On the assumption that the answer to my last question is "yes", let me try to stake out some territory.
One of the principles of science is that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Accordingly, for science to assert that the Big Bang created the known universe is to miss an important question: where did the matter from the Big Bang come from in the first place? It's a question science can't answer, except by more-or-less grounded speculation. Every culture of which I am aware has some "mythic" explanation of the origin of the universe; here I use the term "mythic" not to denote truth or falsehood, but a story retold. Modern science, being unaccustomed to accept such ideas as anything other than the creation of minds which needed to answer this question of creation, and being rightly concerned that ideas which are untestable are not properly grounds for scientific inquiry, dismisses these stories, usually, as fanciful. The stories aren't true or untrue, merely untestable.
Here's a comparison issue. Mel Gibson's father and most of the Muslim world asserts that the Holocaust is an utter fiction: it never happened. Eli Wiesel and others assert that the Catholic Church cooperated with the Nazis and that His Holiness was a nazi-sypmathizer. The reality can be ascertained by an examination of the evidence, both direct and indirect. Both Gibson and Wiesel are selling falsehoods. This is completely demonstrable to open minds and utterly illogical, even deranged, to ideologically closed minds.
If it's not clear where I'm going with this, let me be more direct: those who refuse to admit the possibility of the conclusion will reject it regardless of any evidence, but scientists and historians have methodologies to arrive at some portion of the truth.
Is any of what I have written in this post controverted by fact?
I'm happy continuing this discussion as long as civility continues.
Having just watched Miracle on 34th Street over this Holiday, I hope you will forgive this parallel, since it is so a propos to our discussion here. Mr. Gailey has to demonstrate not merely the existence of Santa Claus but that Chris Kringle is the one and only Santa Claus, and must use competent authority to do so. What would you consider competent authority to resolve our issues?
You didn't advance arguments, but asserted one thing after another.
Pot to the Kettle: "You're black, sucker!"
My problem, for example, was that I was accepting St. Thomas Aquinas, whom to that point in the conversation I hadn't mentioned.
But you had mentioned natural law; Aquinas is the quintessential natural law theologian. Since you are also a Catholic, the odds of Aquinas not playing a role in your thinking, directly or indirectly, are precisely zero.
When I used arguments which didn't come from religion, you accused me of disigenuity.
See above: you cannot distinguish natural law from theology, as the former is predicated, in part, on the latter.
but you haven't answered any of my criticisms on point
Kindly enumerate those criticisms again, and we shall see.
Celtic Chimp is directly on point. To give a counterexample, you keep harping on whatsername, Margaret Sanger (?), who helped found Planned Parenthood. You treat her as though all others arguing against you must rely upon some sort of moral authority she has. But she occupies absolutely no privileged place in any of my, or Scott's, or Chimp's, or Andrew's, or Sam's arguments. If we did, we would have to address your criticisms of her and justify our reliance upon her despite them. And yet, when you rely on Catholic authority and we request that you justify that reliance, you accuse us of "having a problem" with the church. Horse poop.
Chris,
if the Pope and all his Bishops jumped off a bridge (with they're Nikes on), would you do it too?
Or would you evaluate it for yourself?
Is it only the Pope that can think for himself? Where is the line drawn between those who can question doctrine, and those who can't?
Andrew:
The Pope jumping off a bridge, wearing Nikes, wouldn't be a matter of faith or morals. If he said Manchester United was going to win the World Series, we would all know he was misinformed.
If you want to draw out my personal opinion, perhaps you should ask a question on which my personal opinion is relevant.
James:
Being a Catholic is not synonymous in our age with knowing the first thing about Aquinas. Sorry to burst your bubble on this one. Oh that it were true that every Catholic were well versed in the writings of the Angelic Doctor.
Celtic Chimp:
In the classroom, I have many times had "christian" students ask about Darwin's theory of evolution. Again recently I was in conversation with an adult - not a student - on the subject. He assumed that, since I was a Christian (I didn't see any point in noting that I was Catholic, not "Christian" in the modern American sense of the term) I didn't like Darwin. I replied to him that good scientists, Christian or not, could question the theory, and that my opposition to the theory was based at least partly on the holes in the theory itself, scientifically speaking. When speaking to students who have said things such as "Doesn't "evolution" contradict the Bible", I've noted that even if it did contradict the Bible, there isn't any point in beginning from that standpoint when talking to atheistic scientists -- another crackpot fundamentalist throws the Bible at me. Use evidence and argumentation which is plausible to a scientist, not a religious person, I argue. I also say to my students, following a teacher I had in high school, that even if the student is wrong, if he argues his case well, he can earn a good grade; if his position agrees with me, but he argues it poorly, he will not score well.
Precedent and longevity are perfectly valid forms of creating authority: accordingly, the senior members of faculty are given greater credibility than the rookies. It's not a perfect system, but it is a valid way of establishing authority, even among fallible human beings. Granted, so far?
hey, chris:
nice rant earlier.
hey, you all:
from some other conversations i’ve been having, i think i can define bullshit a bit more directly. it’s when ones stated justification for a principle or behavior doesn’t match ones real motivations. this all began when chris stated his justification for contraception as being immoral was because it was bad for the environment. when i perceive, from chris’ arguments and statements, that his real motivation for the immorality of contraception had nothing to do with toxic substances in the environment. justification doesn’t match motivation, and so the ‘argument’ is bullshit.
chris, as a catholic, you are a member of an ‘intentional community’ that has guidelines, belief systems, traditions, authority structures, and underpinnings that are particular to it. ones membership in the intentional catholic community hinges on ones acceptance of these defining attributes. i have no problem with your voluntary participation in this intentional community. you, and any other catholic, can decide what is right and wrong behavior within the context of your intentional community—contraception is wrong, abortion is wrong, worshipping god is right, attending weekly mass is right, marriage must be between a man and a woman, and the like.
but in america, you function as an intentional community within the greater context of an open society. my motivation for arguing with your positions begins when your motivation is to make your intentional community’s mores and ethical guidelines the underpinnings for the rest of open society. let me make my motivation clear: you may say and do as you please in your intentional community, but you may not coerce open society to accept them. you may write letters to the editor about abortion, if you like. you may carry picket signs on your parish’s property about any number of social ills, if you wish. you may excommunicate with abandon, if it seems appropriate. but you may not coerce someone who intends to have an abortion, not by embarrassment, or physical restraint, or manipulating courts and rules or blackmailing her against her family, into not having one.
frankly, i think that coercing open society to change to match your intentional community’s moral and ethical standards is short sighted; any intentional community would do well for its own survival and flourishment to keep open society as open as possible. otherwise, your intentional community’s cherished traditions may be the next to go, if some other intentional community becomes influential.
you paint benedict’s writings as the ‘voice’ of the catholic church. or you paint the magisterium ‘s writings and teachings(!) as the voice of the catholic church. actually, they are but two of the voices of the church, and yours is a third. and none of you is nearly as authoritatively definitive and binding as you would like to believe.
i work in a catholic parish, and i know as friends and acquaintances at least four hundred catholics. each is a voice of the church, whether you or i like it or not. some agree with you on some positions, others disagree with you on a number of positions. i know of at least 20 catholic women who use contraception, and at least two who have had abortions. i know of at least 5 unmarried couples who are living together. and each of these people identifies themselves as ‘roman catholic,’ and are active members in the parish. so there are lots of catholic ‘voices’ out there.
you want us to believe in a ‘unified voice theory,’ and it just isn’t so. the principles of benedict and the magisterium are rooted in principle alone and are often justified by arguments that have little to do with their actual motivation, so often the official ‘voices’ are presented in bullshit. the catholic voices that i consider most authentic are those people with whom i have relationships, and the ‘catholic’ principles by which they live their lives. (just a reminder, 52% of those who consider themselves voices in the intentional catholic community voted for obama.) i give little authenticity to the presenters of principles from voices afar, too often justified in bullshit.
do you know avery dulles? a catholic theologian, recently deceased, well respected by rome and the teaching magisterium. in his book models of the church, he talks about church-as-institution as one prevalent model. chris’ unified voice theory, and binding principles from vatican castles afar, are two of the indicators of church as institution. so chris, i can’t help but believe that church as institution is the model which resonates deeply with you. but it’s not the only model of church that dulles presents as valid.
another is church-as-herald. this is one of the models where the intentional catholic community interfaces with open society. it’s about evangelism, and prosletization, of the gospel message from the jesus teachings. i personally have no problem when members of intentional communities who wish to interface with open community this way, as long as the motivations are not to change open society at large with their particular moral frameworks. i love it when the jehovah witnesses and mormons come to the door to discuss their intentional communities, as long as their motivations and justifications match.
but the model dulles presents that resonates most with me is church-as-servant, another model of intentional community interfacing with open society. it is the root of catholic social justice teaching, and as far as i am concerned, the most authentic interfacing of any religious intentional community with open society. and there are many catholic ‘voices’ who agree with me.
so my motivations for engagement are clear, i hope:
--it is my ethical calling to call bullshit what it is when justification and motivation are incongruent, especially when the intentional community hosting the bullshit wishes to change open society to mirror its own values by using the bullshit position with any authority.
--it is my ethical calling to call inappropriate in open society coercion by intentional communities on people outside its own voluntary membership, and to call unethical intentional communities' deliberate attempts to change open society by doing so.
--it is my ethical calling to present alternate views to the ‘unified voice theory’ crowd; views more diverse and collaborative.
--it is my ethical calling to encourage all members of religious intentional communities to embrace church-as-servant as their primary model of church, both within the intentional community, and in interactions with open society.
chris, if i have insulted you, i’m sorry. it is not my intent to insult; little growth or discovery comes of it. if you look at my prior comments carefully, you’ll see you’ve misunderstood what the text actually says. i’ve never called you a name, or slandered you; i’ve said your writing and thinking here has elements of bullshit, and that i hope this type of bullshit doesn’t carry over into your teaching. (ok, it was in the form of an over-the-top rant). as to your claim of rudeness on my part, sam gets to set the standard here, not you or i, and his side bar includes ‘bullshit’ in the top two inches. i don’t think i’ve ever used the ‘f’ word on sam’s site, because i think it would be perceived as rude.
peace—
scott
Scott:
Thank you, at long last, for putting these details on the board. I won't accuse you of being disingenuous, for I see your argument then as now as being entirely consistent.
For the benefit of everyone else:
What would you say if a man joined the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) but decided that slavery was a good thing, and that therefore a new voice for the organization existed, his. It would be interesting, perhaps newsworthy, but the man wouldn't sensibly belong to the NAACP for very long, except possibly in name.
On the other hand, if this same man decided that government spending on social programs would advance the cause of "Colored People", he would be free to assert such a thing just as much as his friend down the street, also an NAACP member, advocated small government and strong family. These are policy decisions not at variance with the definition of "advancement" for colored people. One might be right and the other wrong, but both are pursuing legitimate options for the advancement they straightforwardly seek.
Scott speaks eloquently for a man who has seen Catholics at the parochial level. I, too, have seen Catholics at this level. Given the state of catechesis in the last forty years, I wouldn't be in the slightest bit surprised if the situation were exactly as Scott describes his parish, perhaps even more along these lines. These are what I have called elsewhere "facts on the ground". When I pointed out, in another entry on this blog, that the news headlines didn't represent reality, invective flew. The people among whom I move aren't cheerful about the future of our country, even as they are hopeful. The election of Obama represents just about the most unimaginable catastrophe -- on par with the London and Madrid bombings. Still, we know that God can and does work miracles. [Being Catholics, we believe in God and miracles, but I digress.]
How are Scott's facts different from the ones I have cited? Simply, my facts represent opinion where opinion matters, that is, in the realm of differing from and, perhaps, correcting other opinion. Scott proposes, on the other hand, that his facts represent a legitimate teaching voice of the Church. This is all well and good, except that it doesn't correspond to the nature of the Church. That Scott doesn't know this may be the result of any number of factors, and I won't suggest that I know which is predominant.
Scott defines as nonsense disingenuously delivered any opinion which doesn't respond like a fundamentalist. Catholics, he may not know, if they are good Catholics, don't merely learn their Catechism. The fundamentalist Protestant -- the self-convinced Bible believing kind -- makes the kind of mistake I heard about when I was young: "If the Saint James version was good enough for Jesus, It's good enough for me". [Reread that; it's not typographically incorrect]. I haven't cited Biblical passages but have resorted to valid arguments not based in theology -- as Sam suggested in the original post that we should -- as well as those rooted in magisterial teaching. This doesn't make me disingenuous, but blinder-free.
Scott and his friends, whatever the crosses are that they bear -- including struggling to live the faith completely in the face of a society that insists otherwise -- don't speak magisterially for the Church, although they do tell us how much work there still is to do.
Avery Cardinal Dulles was a well respected American Jesuit. We should all pray for the repose of his soul because we do not know whether he is in Heaven or Hell. [Catholics who assert that everyone goes to Heaven don't know the faith into which they were baptised.] I have read his book, I think, many years ago. I may even have a copy of it. Theological opinion doesn't make magisterial teaching, any more than Presidential advisors make policy. If I think the speed limit should be 85 mph, this doesn't change the fact that the sign reads 65 mph.
Sam: I'm still looking forward to your response on the Virgin Birth.
God's peace, everyone.
Chris
chris, you are a poster child for church-as-institution at it's most rigorous.
please consider thirty days steeped in church-as-servant, then mix the two if you must.
scott
Chris,
dude, come on man. Your NAACP example is terrible.
You say:
"What would you say if a man joined the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) but decided that slavery was a good thing."
Your example is akin to me saying; lets suppose a guy joins the church - but thinks Christ is the devil.
How much more of a rediculous extreem could you have went to.
A more appropriate example would have been; a man joins the NAACP, but thinks affirmative action goes a little to far and isn't in the end good for black people.
PISHTOSH
PISHTOSH
PISHTOSH
Although wait, that may have been a bad example - I know nothing about the NAACP.
Chris - thanks for the reminder about the VB. I'll see what I can do over the next week of holiday.
Andrew:
According to the Magisterium
There are truths which are revealed,
truths which are not strictly revealed, but still part of the deposit of faith, and teachings which stem from those truths. Then there are theological opinions.
My example, which to your ear sounded positively over-the-top, was quite appropriate.
Sure, the people whom Scott knows haven't (in his reporting) denied the divinity of Christ or the Resurrection or something of that order, but they have denied the sinful nature of several somethings the Church has always considered sinful. All analogies have flaws, but this one seems to hold better than most.
Scott:
Thank you, if you meant it as a compliment.
The Church isn't an "institution", but the living Mystical Body of Christ. Every body has a constitution. You wouldn't want your brain where your GI system is, nor your leg where your ear is. You couldn't walk on your ear or think only with your small intestine. Accordingly, I don't want the populace, even the lay faithful usurping authority which isn't theirs in the first place. This doesn't make the laity bad or inconsequential. It means that the teaching of the Church is handed on by the Magisterium and lived by the whole of the Church. That self-discipline is lax in our own day and a knowledge of Church teaching singularly abyssmal in our day doesn't change that teaching or the right and proper need for self-discipline. The new phenomenon today is that, whereas 50 years ago [date not completely arbitrary, but any older date would also suffice] Catholics who failed to live up to the teaching of Holy Mother Church acknowledged this fact and didn't claim to be good Catholics, nowadays "facts on the ground" are assumed to be part of the "teaching church" [small c on purpose], and the Church is, apparently, out of date, not relevant, too hide-bound or some other similar -if meaningless- expression.
"the catholic voices that i consider most authentic are those people with whom i have relationships, and the ‘catholic’ principles by which they live their lives"
Perhaps you should consult Veruca Salt? Surely she's a valid nutritionist, following your theory.
Chris,
Precedent and longevity are perfectly valid forms of creating authority: accordingly, the senior members of faculty are given greater credibility than the rookies. It's not a perfect system, but it is a valid way of establishing authority, even among fallible human beings. Granted, so far?
Yes and no on this one. Slacery was thought to be morally ok for a very long time. I'm sure you would agree that no amount of precedent or longevity would make it ok. Also, it is worth noting that in the scientific community, longevity means exactly nothing. Only the truth is respected. Even Einstein in his latter years was considered by many in the scientific community to be 'past it'. He was by some quitely ignored in his twilight years. He himself has sown the seed of quantum mechanics but he rejected the theory. He rejected it, not because it did not meet the required evidential standards but becasue he didn't like the idea. He was behaving then very unscientifically. The scientific community, while honoring his incredible contribution had no choice but to move on without him. He changed the world, literally. He advanced a radical theory and had it accepted. He advanced the theory while he was in his early twenties working in a swiss patent office. It didn't matter who he was, what age he was, what his prior acedemic history was, who he was contradicting or how established the competeing theories were. None of that mattered becasue he was right. The facts supported him. Ultimately, his theory had to be accepted. The Chruch (any religious movement really) does not work that way. It is built on an aging patriarcy. Old men are always the authorities and even they have limited room to move within the rigid dogma. Change comes slowly if it comes at all. The world around the chruch has been moving on regardless and much of what it says might once have resonated with the thinking of the day but we have moved past that point. Most people in modern society know quite well that homosexuality is not an evil ir terrible thing. The catholics might not all loudly declare this feeling but the majority of catholics in my country (from what I have encountered) have no problem with homosexuality. I will grant that a lot of the catholics here though are defacto catholics in that they were born into it and don't hold to it with any conviction. I know that they never will now either. The teaching against contraception and homosexuality alone would be enough to switch them off. They have the evidence. They know, often by personal acuaitence that homosexuals are just regular people. They are just attracted to people of the same sex. That's it. They can no more help being gay than I can help being straight. It matters nothing how long the church has been around, it matters nothing how many old men in costumes say that the message is the right one. People can see for themselves that it isn't. They can see that the church is wrong on the evidence.
Imagine for a minute if the scientific community functioned in the same way. We have bronze age books that tell us that rain is water falling trough a firament. Any attempt to question this idea is met with quotes for the "science" book. Even in the face of the evidence the book is held up to be right. The Church is ethically stagnant. It's growth is prevented by an adherence to an obviously ancient ideology and an obviously flawed one. It may be my single biggest grievence with religion that obviously bad ethics or morality will continue to survive, not because people are blind to the evidence but becasue they dismiss it entirely in favor of ancient doctrine. Chirtianity (and Islam) in general contains probably the sickest single concept of all religions. This concept is not to be found in the blood soaked Old testement either. It is Jesus himself who introduces this most disgusting, perverse and outrageously evil concept. Hell. It is the stick with which the credulous have been beaten into submission. A concept so terrifying that many would take Pascals wager on account of it. Many of todays evangelicals have reverted to the O.T. style of God. He is not all forgiving and all loving. He will roast you forever if he thinks you deserve it! It is a faith motivated by fear. The concept is ridiculous of course but here we are having a discussion about what is moral and you base your convictions on the teaching of a church that promotes a concept as ridiculous and evil as Hell. I find myself occassionally finding the whole situation a little surreal. Unfortunately though, people do still hold to these ancient ideas. Why I should pay them any mind still remains to be explained.
Oh, just a note on the origins of the unvierse. It is not proposed that the big bang was "nothing" exploding into everything. It is proposed that all the energy in the universe was comprssed in a singularity. Science simply doesn't try to go back beyond this point. We don't have any evidence to work with. It is not the contention of science that nothing became something. That is the Christian view though.
Sure, the people whom Scott knows haven't (in his reporting) denied the divinity of Christ or the Resurrection or something of that order, but they have denied the sinful nature of several somethings the Church has always considered sinful.
Are you concerned with what the church has always said or with what is actually true?
Do you accept that the two may not be the same thing? In other words, do you accept that the chruch might be wrong?
oh chris, to equate nutrition with catholicism, even in a remote analogy, is to return to bullshit.
what are your motivations for this engagement?
Celtic Chimp:
Many good thoughts you advance but, as you might expect, it is the conclusions you draw which bother me - not the scientific evidence.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that something may be accepted by the populace and still be wrong. Nazism comes to mind. Slavery similarly leaps on stage. In our own day, "Civil Rights" is the mantle under which a whole host of ideas, some good and some positively wierd and manifestly unhealthy, gather. It would be wrong for me to blast everything called Civil Rights just because of some of the ideas which claim credence thereunder. Similarly, it is wrong to defend everything which calls itself a Civil Right. My favorite example to illustrate this involves the late Senators, Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond.
Imagine the following: Senators Helms and Thurmond announce to the Senate that they have a new Civil Rights Bill to put before the body. It's the Civil Rights Bill of 1999, Senate Bill 666, which promotes the rights of blacks in each town to receive recognition as examples of selflessness, and celebrate their black heritage. The Senate passes the bill without reading it. THe text says this: "It is the right of every town to lynch one black man every day, and to post the names of those executed on a public monument."
My point is not to defend the late Seantors or their ideologies, but to demonstrate how much of the conversation in our country revolves only around categories, rather than truth.
Based on what you have said in the most recent posting, I suspect that you have been nodding your head and muttering to yourself: see, he recognizes the Catholic Church. This would be an understandable response, but it would be wrong.
I see that you don't accept the existence of Hell. This is not a modern denial. Camus ( I think) said that Hell is other people. A great many men, including Hans Urs Cardinal Von Balthasar asserted that Hell exists, but nobody lives there because a truly merciful god would never send anyone there. It should be noted, however, that if I don't believe that the terrorists will crash into the Pentagon, this disbelief won't stop them from doing so. Therefore, I assert that not only the Catholic Church, but many ancient religions identify rewards and punishments for actions committed on Earth, even when these religions don't explicitly identify the place of torment.
In order to decide whether some action is good or evil or neutral, one must have some standard independent of the action itself. If this standard doesn't exist, then Nixon's only crime was getting caught, and Governor Blogojevich isn't wrong if he thinks he isn't. Hitler isn't wrong unless there is some standard against which his actions can be assessed.
Yes, by the way, I'm aware that the Big Bang theory doesn't assert that there was nothing which became something, but that all the matter of the universe (or the energy, but that's new to me) once existed in the space of a tennis ball (or something similar). It exploded, but the theory leaves several really important questions unanswered -- and, I might add, unanswerable by science. Where did the matter/energy come from in the first place? If it expanded, into what did it expand? Was it always this tennis-ball size, and if so, what suddenly caused the cascade explosion? Many religions, as you point out, solve the science conundrum by asserting a point of creation. Are all religions false on this ground? Surely it is impossible for science to falsify the claim, for the simple reason that it can not provide any evidence because of the limitations of science, not the willing halucinations of the adherents of religion. Is it right and proper to say that there are questions which science is not equipped to answer, while at the same time acknowledging that these same questions are important and have answers? Or, like Descartes, must we retreat to absolute disbelief?
I've left parts unaddressed, so if you'll let me come back to it, I will try, in a future posting.
Scott:
No, to equate a system of bodily sustenance with a system of soul sustenance is entirely proper, analogically speaking. Veruca wants what she wants, and no-one, not even her own father or the need for self preservation, can talk her out of her own pursuit of selfish desire.
Surely, as a good Catholic, you recognize that the Eucharist is food for the soul? Celtic Chimp may not recognize the existence of the soul or the need for that soul to be freed from sin, but then he's not a Catholic. You must even recognize, being a good Catholic, that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ Himself. People who have no use for most of the Church's teachings will still cling to their Catholic faith for this one reason.
As I began to search for good hymns -- and found most of the modern stuff decidely insipid, I found refuge in texts such as Jesu Dulcis Memoria and the Adoro Te. I don't want to worship me. I want to worship God. As someone greatly concerned with justice, social and otherwise, I want to know that God is still God, and all is right in Heaven, since it manifestly has gone wrong here. So, like many of your friends, I turn to God to know peace. The difference between me and them isn't that I'm a saint and they are all irredeemable sinners (since both parts of that are false) but rather that I found these gems, and they haven't, yet; or, if they have found them, they haven't recognized them as gems, yet.
As to my motivations, what do you suppose them to be? I found the blog originally because my mother pointed me to it. I stay here because Sam has some interesting topics, from Peak Oil to this one, which I enjoy trying to tease through. Places like this one hold out hope that the internet isn't merely one giant cesspool. As a teacher, I need to practice the skills I try to teach my students. Why do I engage in the defense of the Church's teaching on contraception: because I recognize it as true and, especially in our day and age, important to defend? Please note, for the umpteenth time, that the original topic we were discussing was that Greens and Christians can come to common cause but for very different reasons. I gave the example of contraception, and here we are.
In order to decide whether some action is good or evil or neutral, one must have some standard independent of the action itself.
Indeed. And yet, where does that standard come from?
chris, you're the first person in a long time to mistake me for a good catholic. you've given me the giggles. i haven't chuckled so much since john hobbins told me my metaphors were sexy, but in a good way.
there's a girl on my tv set who tells me what the temperature is, and whether there's a light chop on inland waters. she calls herself a meterologist. a lot like veruca salt is a nutritionist. perhaps they're just speaking in metaphors.
much like the catholic church is the mystical body of christ.
peace--
scott
Scott, I liked the part where your entire comment was "invalidated" by a "No True Scotsman" fallacy. But it was really, really revealing: Is a faith made manifest by the body of believers, or by the dictates of its hierarchy? Which is the "real" Catholic Church, do you think? And would that change with the liberation Catholics of Latin America, and then again with Americans, and yet again in Africa?
One wonders.
james, now watch: my whole argument will be invalidated with the 'only insiders who truly know the paradigm can be authentic players' view...
wait for it...
wait for it...
james--
you can bet that oscar mc-romero knew early on that glasgow, i mean rome, didn't feel he was a true scotsman...
scott
But the real question is, "Do you put sugar in your porridge?"
Scott:
I made the assumption charity required of me.
James:
Indeed, quite correct, in asking whence comes the external standard! Perhaps you could identify where your external authority for judging the rightness or wrongness of an action originates?
The archbishop wasn't murdered by Rome because he was a proponent of liberation theology. The good archbishop was murdered, lest you need to be reminded, while saying Mass.
Gnostics claim some secret knowledge. I claim no such thing. I merely backed up in my explanation far enough to include those who know nothing about the Catholic Church and might, therefore, find Scott's a sympathetic position.
oh, my position is most sympathetic.
all of my motivations still stand, inside or outside the paradigm.
peace--
scott
I'm sorry -- you've completely lost me. What do you mean by
"oh, my position is most sympathetic.
all of my motivations still stand, inside or outside the paradigm."
I recognize all the words as English, but I haven't the foggiest notion of what comment generated this response.
It must be New Year's fog?
chris, at al:
one of the netanarratives we celebrate in the heritage of american society is that we are citizens, not subjects. we are governed by leaders, not rulers, chosen by citizens, from among citizens.
this is not so in the heritage of the roman catholic church. and it’s one of the interesting rubs between the church (actually, any religious intentional community) and american society. not just between insiders and outsiders, but within individual members of the church in american parishes as well.
i think that one of the reasons jefferson, franklin, adams, and others were deists and not christians circles around this very concept. to believe in the judeo-christian god as presented in the hebrew and christian scriptures, the king, the lord, the father of all, is to think of oneself, and others, as subjects. and that just doesn’t align very well with one’s identity as a citizen.
one way to resolve this is to jettison one’s citizen identity and resume one’s subject identity as a believer in god as king and jesus as lord. another is to keep one’s citizen identity and jettison one’s subject identity by looking for other understandings of the nature of god and the value of jesus, in non-lord, non-king ways. this is my choice, (and i think that of sam, as well).
it’s why we have separation of church and state. citizens who wish to entertain a religious paradigm in which they perceive themselves as subjects, may do so, for whatever reason. citizens who wish not to, are free from this particular form of entertainment. but it’s not really this simple.
you’d be amazed at the number of participants in religious intentional communities who wrestle within themselves, and within the community itself over this very dichotomy. that’s the fabulously rich collection of voices i spoke of earlier. and a ‘no good catholic’ argument that focuses on parishioner-as-subject, through appeal to ‘truth,’ or tradition, or shame, or god-as-lord, or jesus-as-king, or rome-as-law-giver, doesn’t magically resolve the cognitive dissonance or existential angst posed by the subject-citizen struggle. for some, the ‘argument’ precipitates them ‘back into the fold’ of subjects. for others, it drives them to dismiss religious beliefs that require them to be subjects, and they leace the church. for many, it just pisses them off.
this is why i have such a problem with religious indoctrination in children, and why i won’t let my children, or any children i love, be a part of an ‘indoctrination-only’ program. i want citizens raised here, not subjects. it’s why chris got such a rant from me a few weeks ago. i don’t mind teaching heritage to children. i do mind teaching them subjugation.
so, yeah, i’m sympathetic—with the dilemma, as individuals, as communities, as people who love the traditions of royalty but hate the subjugation (that would be me), and with catechists who are american citizens, and yet at the same time catholic subjects, who have to figure out what kind of balance of this to share with children. i’m most sympathetic especially with those who wrestle so, who are my very good catholic friends. friends who are trying to be authentic citizens in a paradigm that requires obedient subjects.
peace—
scott
Scott:
All very interesting, but I think you have set up a straw man here, for there is no necessary conflict between being a subject and being a citizen. Every election cycle, some media mouthpiece [which I'm not claiming you are, by the way] advances the "he can't really be a good American: he's Catholic" argument. It's a new kind of religious test, which our country claims not to allow. Jack Kennedy announced to his audience that he wouldn't let his faith guide his decisions as President, and so was electable -- or so goes the narrative. The problem with this narrative, however, is that it produces by necessity the arbitrary ethics rules and the unrestrainable conduct which those ethics rules claim to circumscribe. Governor Spitzer, Governor Blogojevich, Senator Craig, Senator Stevens and a whole host of others illustrate precisely what's wrong: they claim they didn't break the ethics rules, but these rules are their only constraints. They lust for power and the sense of invincibility which supposedly comes from it. Neither party is immune, and the hypocrisy is greater among Republicans, who claim to be the party of family values and American values and all this palarva.
In fact, however, it is perfectly possible for Catholics (and others, mind) to bring their morals into the "Public Square", as Fr. Neuhaus calls it. We are subject to the legitimate authority of the government, but we are similarly not bound by any law which contradicts the law of God. When, not if, FOCA passes and reaches President Obama's desk, it will be a signed edict, announcing the full-fledged arrival of arbitrary rule, tyranny in America. It will not, however, be a binding law.
Being a monarchist, myself, I can nevertheless be a citizen of America, for this is the country where I reside. [Ignore claims that California isn't really part of the United States].
Our Lord solved this dilemma, put to Him by a group of Jewish "leaders": Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's.
I don't think the so-called "wall of separation" between Church and state makes any sense whatsoever, for it doesn't protect either one from any evil, and instead does great harm to our society.
foca is tyranny?
absolutely!
FOCA imposes that all previously, legitimately passed laws be swept aside, and requires that tax payer money be increased to support that which is morally insupportable. FOCA and the Human Rights Commissions (or the Patriot Act, if you prefer) are cut from the same cloth.
Did you ignore the rest of what I said?
yeah, pretty much.
my tax dollars pay for abortion on demand, and federal monies to education programs in california. your tax dollars pay for the war in iraq.
bottom line: if you don't want an abortion, chris, don't have one. if your wife doesn't want an abortion, she shouldn't have one, either. no is forcing you to have one, if you don't want one.
that would be pro-abortion.
...where your external authority for judging the rightness or wrongness of an action originates?
I deny the need for an external authority. I further deny that you have one. No one does.
"FOCA is tyranny"
Yes, indeed, I can see how one might think that a law giving others the right to contravene your moral standards is tyranny. At least to those who choose to privilege their own sense of propriety.
Human Rights Commissions
???
Being a monarchist...
Yeah, that's not surprising.
We are subject to the legitimate authority of the government, but we are similarly not bound by any law which contradicts the law of God.
How Lutheran of you. (You do realize that this argument is akin to the one Luther made against the princes of the Church?) By all means, let's explore this one to its logical conclusions (hint: it ends poorly for both Luther and Paul...).
Which law of God would that be? Noahide? Mosaic? And if Mosaic, just the 10 commandments or the other 600 or so, too? Or is it Paulian, where he's for or against certain things, like circumcision, depending on who he's writing to at the time? That should get very interesting indeed.
Scott:
I lament the war in Iraq every bit as much as you do. I subscribe to the New Oxford Review and encourage other Catholics who want to hear reasoned opposition to it to do so. No, Dale Vree isn't paying me for this. Shoot -- Dale Vree doesn't know me from Adam.
To say that my tax dollars only pay for the programs I like (but don't, as the case actually is) is absurd. I pay taxes and the government misappropriates them. I wish I could fix the system, but so far I haven't figured out what to do. The best I can do is elect men to go to Washington or the State House to be better stewards of the money.
About health care, into which category you seem to put abortion, your argument makes no sense at one level. All sorts of medically unsound behavoir is taxed or prohibited: smoke-free buildings, train cars, airplanes and such. "Sin taxes", not my term, allow people to engage in these activities while allegedly paying for the medical costs up front. Why, at the level of health care, would it be wrong to limit or forbid certain actions? On another level, since biologically the growing human is genetically distinct from his mother, the issue is no different from slavery or the holocaust. Saying to me, in 1859:" YOu don't like slavery? Fine, don't own slaves." is an absurdity you would have to recognize. What about "You don't think the Jews should die? Fine: don't kill them."
On still another level, one reason health care costs don't come down is that there is a nearly endless pot of money paying for procedures, medicines and such, and the actual worth of such things is never evaluated. A single payer system, government style, won't solve the problem; it will only temporarily hide the costs both financial and personal. Oh, to return to the days of Doctors who make house calls.
On still another level, one reason health care costs don't come down is that there is a nearly endless pot of money paying for procedures, medicines and such, and the actual worth of such things is never evaluated.
Actually, a big reason for this is that doctors are still paid on a fee-for-service model. It is within the doctor's interest to prescribe multiple treatments. Cure a cough with an MRI and an uber-antibiotic, so to speak.
There are lots of reasons prices are higher. One of those is increased administrative overhead. Did you know that Medicare and the Veterans' Administration are two of the cheapest, administratively speaking, systems around?
I declare this thread officially derailed. Or is it full-circle? Either way, we probably can't go any further.
it's bullshit.
affectionately,
xxx
Fortunately for sensible interlocutors everywhere, I don't make this decision, and neither do you. Sam makes it.
I agree, I lost steam a while ago on this - it's officially derailed and affectionately bullshit...
Sam,
how about throwin the hammer down on this and start another thread.
What on?
Hm, well, (now you put me on the spot)
if I'm acting for my own self interest, and recognizing the argument from authority that *seems* to exist in Chris' stance - how about posting on that.
What's your position on the Church as an authority? Or perhaps, more generaly, what place does the Church have relative to the freedom of thought within Christian belief - and I mean Church in a general sense here, not specifically the Catholic Church. Chris seems to think (and correct me if I'm wrong chris) that the Churches authority is absolulte outside of whether he grants it or not.
P.S.
what ever happened to "The Victory of Reason"?
Victory of Reason will be posted on tomorrow, the Lord being my helper.
Right on, I've been lickin my chops.
What help does your lord give, precisely? Mops your sweating brow? Grammatical edits with a red-tipped pen? Fetches your slippers and pipe?
Stops me feeling ill.
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