Hard News: Swine flu, terror and Susan Boyle
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Dyan:
My third son was born at 37 weeks and he needed no extra care except for waiting for a few days for his jaundice to subside through feedings. 38 weeks is really not premature.
But either way, we're just not going to agree, especially when it comes to how religion interacts with society. I'm personally quite taken aback and uncomfortable about how quick people can be at trying to move religion out of public life.
I have to say it strikes me as blow to human rights to not allow people of faith to act publically in regards to their beliefs. No one wants a theocracy a la Iran, but I also don't want to live in country that refuses to let people like me play their part in a democracy because I have to hide my beliefs in private.
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supertstition dear Giovanni sir is manifestly NOT "harmless" What a reckless statement that is! In grade school i was 'certified' for my crippling superstition! Upon leaving school i found myself holed up in the vancouver airport for three entire weeks, unable to move in case i read another 'sign'.. Your tone evinces the presence of brute cynicism as bulwark of your being...
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I'm personally quite taken aback and uncomfortable about how quick people can be at trying to move religion out of public life.
Quick? Some people have been trying all their lives, and the damn thing won't budge.
No one wants a theocracy a la Iran
Actually, your Church most certainly does, it's just that it no longer has enough followers, and those that it has have evolved somewhat. (Plus, the Holy See obviously *is* a theocracy a la Iran).
But it's the same old story: nobody's denying you the right of letting the Pope look into your pants. We'd just like it if it didn't become the law of the land for us unbelievers.
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No one wants a theocracy a la Iran, but I also don't want to live in country that refuses to let people like me play their part in a democracy because I have to hide my beliefs in private.
When the 'faithful' of the catholic church democratically elect their leaders your argument might carry a little substance. As it stands, you're an apologist for an absolute monarchy that only practices diplomacy towards other beliefs when compelled to do so by the force of secular law.
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Being a woman who isn't on contraception I have often wondered what I would do if raped and got pregnant, and I still couldn't kill my own child because of what his/her father had done.
Case in point: nobody denies you the right to that decision, but what your Church wants is for other women to have only that one option. You seem intelligent, yet somehow this point appears to elude you.
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Tess, think for a second about how important your faith is to you, about how you don't want to have to hide it and how you want to be able to live by it. None of those things are endangered by a formally secular society, which gives space to anyone to live by their beliefs. All of them would be endangered should a faith different to your own take hold of the reins of power. The religious wars of the 1600s in England, the 20th century in Ireland and today in Iraq and Afghanistan are testament to that.
A pro-life person living in a pro-choice world is free to live according to their faith, to treat every scrap of life within them as just as important as every other living breathing person around them, and to sacrifice everything they have to protect it.
To a pro-choice person, their ability to make their own decisions about themselves, their health and their families according to their own consciences is just as important as your ability to live according to your own conscience. Just as important. Choice is harder to personify and sympathise with than teeny weeny fetuses, but it's part of what makes us human.
Even if you agree that religious texts are useful sources of authority, there is nothing in any religious text I know of to say that non-believers should be forced by law to act as if they were believers.
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what amazes me most about the bulk of this blog is that folks seem more pressingly concerned with fantasizing about being returned to what they most fondly imagine as some sort of catholic 'theocracy', rather than the fresh exercise of what degrees of freedom they do most certainly possess, and how to exercise these
to put it rather boldly: to attampt to evacuate the cognitive content of religion, that first science & founding condition of what it is to be human, is to abort the very substance of personhood and all who sail within her..
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there is nothing in any religious text I know of to say that non-believers should be forced by law to act as if they were believers
You kidding? The bible states that rather explicitly that they should, or else be killed.
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and here's what our mark had to say - thru fictional laughing-gear, about this business of yer "own conscience"
So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so brash as I was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow -- though I hadn't done nothing. But that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same.
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Gio, sorry, missed that bit. Was it in the section where we shouldn't blend different fibres or eat shellfish, or reiterated a bit more enthusiastically?
In any case, that lends strength to arguments that unbelievers should be allowed to kill as many of their offspring as they want. Saves the believers some of the hassle of working out how to get around Thou Shalt Not Kill.
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As it stands, you're an apologist for an absolute monarchy that only practices diplomacy towards other beliefs when compelled to do so by the force of secular law.
That is untrue.
For example there have been major interfaith gatherings at Assisi. Just read the wikipedia page about John Paul II's relationships with other faiths. The Dalai Lama apparently met him eight times, more than any other dignitary.
Sigh, anyways It's time for me to bow out of this conversation since it has turned into a slagfest against my Church. And whilst it's fine for you to say and feel what you like, I also don't have to stick around and put up with it, especially when it's false.
Although I still would have liked to know what people thought about the demonstrations outside Yoo's home and the fliers distributed around saying that he lived in the area and was a war criminal.
Ah well.
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"When the 'faithful' of the catholic church democratically elect their leaders your argument might carry a little substance."
Democracy gave us Adolf Hitler. That said the Pope is elected and has more variety than the US Presidents.
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Tess, I wouldn't support those kind of protests against anyone, no matter how evil. You let the mob rule, then what happens when you don't like what the mob say? Those things channel power to those who already have it.
Incidentally, people used to do that to Dr/Dame Margaret Sparrow back in the 70s or 80s.
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Sigh, anyways It's time for me to bow out of this conversation since it has turned into a slagfest against my Church.
It's turned into you not answering any of the easy, straightforward questions. Again. We should make it into a weekly tradition, I reckon.
Gio, sorry, missed that bit. Was it in the section where we shouldn't blend different fibres or eat shellfish
Yes. Which explains why, whenever I see somebody wearing a Benetton jumper, or a Belgian, I stone him. Or her. There are other parts that are all about genocide and killing the stranger or infidel. Shibboleth, and all that.
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I will comment back to B Jones though.
What if instead of abortion we swapped it for infanticide?
"To a pro-choice person, their ability to make their own decisions about themselves, their health and their families according to their own consciences is just as important as your ability to live according to your own conscience. Just as important. Choice is harder to personify and sympathise with than 6 month old babies, but it's part of what makes us human."
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Is anyone else finding sachae's rhetorical style a little... familiar?
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Yep, just been looking at the Not and i in littlep
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Tess, 'interfaith' is yucky and just sounds like plain bad intercourse.
'Portant thing to remember is FIRST CONTACTS made by one religion with another - CRIKEY FLIPPIN DICKSTAR MATE! IMAGINE that FIRST ENCOUNTER!what these first contacts change irrevocably above all is the present & active relation WITHIN each community between its mimesis - ie deisre by another's eye, or pre-eminent characteristic of the human - and transcendence, the ability to defer this always mimetic conflict by means of a more beautiful and more desirable sign!
so there
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Is anyone else finding sachae's rhetorical style a little... familiar?
Yep - same old subtext - 'please please please , step on my face and put me out of my misery'.
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giovanni:
The questions don't feel straightforward. The implication in the questions is that my Church is an evil organisation that wants to hurt people.
It's been said that I haven't dealt with you with enough empathy, and that's probably very true. Given your family's dark history with the Church, you are very negative about it, and I'm sorry I wasn't more empathetic about that with you.
I think it's better for me to back out of a discussion where mulitple posters criticise and insult and I have to try and reply to often complex questions, rather than for me to get wound up and angry and deal unfairly with people - as I dealt unfairly with you.
Realistically none of you need me to answer questions about the Church, you are all capable of finding out for example, the interfaith diplomatic efforts of the Holy See. Likewise you can all google for the Catechism and other documents to discover the theology of the Church.
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Joe, that was just pathetic - and i hope yr ashamed of yourself.
there is no misery here. there is just disgust for unexamined resentful structures.. -
The questions don't feel straightforward. The implication in the questions is that my Church is an evil organisation that wants to hurt people.
Bingo. But (and please believe this has nothing to do with the dark history of my family) you still haven't answered the very simplce case I put forward to you a couple of pages ago. You said that if you became pregnant after being raped, you'd keep the child, and that's naturally your right. But your Church says that women (even women who don't believe) shouldn't be allowed to have that option. How do you explain/justify that?
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Tess, do ytou really *believe* that we got here by means of diplomacy and "interfaith efforts"?"
no, we got here by the wholly violent means of bringing buried difference to the surface through warfare, where it may only begin to be treated by this thing we call democracy
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But your Church says that women (even women who don't believe) shouldn't be allowed to have that option. How do you explain/justify that?
Ok, this is a fair question.
I believe that human persons begin at the moment of conception and end with natural death. I think that killing human persons is wrong, because life is special and precious. I do however think that people can defend themselves, and there are some cases where defending a community may lead to war, but this must be a last resort.
Even lives conceived via rape are precious. Killing the unborn because of the actions of their father is wrong.
I don't even agree with the death penalty for criminals, how could I justify killing an innocent unborn baby even in such difficult circumstances?
On the more practical side... That doesn't mean I think that a pregant woman should deal with this alone. Women in this terrible situation should have access to unlimited support. I also have little problem with women using Emergency Contraception to suppress ovulation after a rape.
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Tess, wrt 6 month old babies, there are alternatives like adoption if the parents simply no longer want to care for them. It's harder with respect to serious painful/incurable debilitation - the father who was charged for either the murder or infanticide of his anencephalic baby I'd put in a totally different category from whoever killed the Kahui twins, and our legal system has provision for infanticide in some circumstances to be treated differently.
But six month old babies are significantly more developed than even newborns, let alone first trimester fetuses. They express preferences for different kinds of food, they howl when they can't see their caregiver, they smile back when someone smiles at them. They are starting to express their own humanity, along the continuum. You wouldn't give them the right to vote or manage their own financial affairs, but they would have a call on society to provide for their necessities if they couldn't secure them from their parents. The alternative of adoption makes non-insane infanticide unjustifiable - it's not something that works in utero, though.
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