[Creaux]

I'venever advocated that theCatholic church is for everyone, nor have I argued that the Catholic Church's views should be imposed on anyone. I want to be understood. I don't think that I can change anyone's beliefs with these words, and that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to provoke thought.

Another piece of "Catholic Propaganda"--I assume that you are familiar with Locke's natural rights to Life, Liberty and Property, or the American Constitutionalist's change of the last to "persuit of happiness." An important fascet of these ideas is that they are linked not as equals but in order. If an action is committed in the name of preserving one of the lesser goods that violates one of the greater, for example, you persuing your right to property by enslaving someone, then that is contrary to rational thought, or "evil."

How is this relavant? Well, if you want to talk about rights of freedom of belief or freedom from religion or whatever else, then consider this--What rights matter if you're dead? It really does come down to defining where life begins. Is beginning life at conception perhaps a little extreme? Yes. Is counting life beginning at birth, when a week before the child would be able to survive independently similarly extreme? Certainly.

*Edited for content*

This post has been edited by Creaux: 21 October 2004 - 11:45 AM

[Creaux]

graven images schmaven images... those mutha fuckers changed the bible... i am quite sure that if there really is helll... the starters of the old cath church are there...

my point is that the catholic 'church' is just a business that got out hand to (pardon the pun) biblical proportions!!!

Just so you know...most priests make ~$27,000 a year. They're really rolling in cash, aren't they...

However, I cannot argue against the gibberish argument, you got me on the "schmaven images" front.

[Creaux]

Hey, there wouldn't even be a "New Testament" without the Catholic Church. The Apocrypha are just a few added lines here and there, and there's nothing in them goofier than the Fundamentalist interpretations of Revelations and the Song of Solomon. That's some goofy motherfuckin shit right there, let me tell you what.



This bidness about the sanctity of life, and murder and all that, is rubbish. The Catholic Church's stance on birth control is morally reprehensible, from a purely mathematical point of view. It's a given that people will do what is in their nature to do. So: tell men in Africa that they may not have sex, and they will have sex. Tell them that they may not use condoms, and they will not use condoms. The morally right thing to do would be to acknowledge that these men will have sex, and encourage them to use condoms. Oddly, the Church that most strongly opposes abortion also opposes all methods of reducing unwanted pregnancy. Yes, I say ALL, because the sympto-thermal method might as well be midwifery.

Suggestions to the effect that women should die in chldbirth rather than abort, that women should carry known genetic defects to term, that teenagers and rape victims ought not to forsake the sanctity of life, these are right out of left field. You wouldn't ask someone to carry a cancer in his body until it killed him, and why not? It's life! Yes, any individual's life is important, sure, I get that. But you can't run a society using rules based on individuals. "What if the retarded blind child you had, after that rape that left you paralyzed, and who was likely to kill you in childbirth, might have had a full and rewarding life?" Fuck you. What about the mother? The church asks women to sacrifice their lives on this altar of natural childbirth, and men never enter the equation at all. As Florynce Kennedy may have said (authorship uncertain), "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

If individual life and foetuses are sacred and soul-begotten, then let God himself figure out a use for all the souls. Anti-abortionists always like to point out how many people we'd have if we hadn't aborted them all. To those numbers I wipe my brow with the back of my hand and breathe a sigh of smog-free relief. Keep it coming. Now if we can educate the third world, we might get this species down to a managable number.


Peace out, yo.

Civilian, I'm not ignoring your post, I'm thinking on it. This will later be edited into my response.

[civilian_number_two]

Just so you know...most priests make ~$27,000 a year. They're really rolling in cash, aren't they...

Oh, come on. That's like saying Walmart isn't a huge frightening beast, akin to an ancient one from some opium-smacked Cthulhu novel, because the employees make an average of 16000 a year.

It's not the average employee who's jaw-droppingly rich and powerful; it's the organization.

It really does come down to defining where life begins. Is beginning life at conception perhaps a little extreme? Yes. Is counting life beginning at birth, when a week before the child would be able to survive independently similarly extreme? Certainly.

Well now you've come to the heart of it. All this jazz about abortion doesn't mean a thing if you don't prioritze the foetus's rights at least equal to those of a living breathing human being. And no, the question isn't when LIFE begins, because even sperm cells are alive, in their limited way. The question is at what point is human life of worth? Do we really count the zygote as a human life? Does it make legal sense to think in those terms?

I think the question boils down, unfortunately, to the church's resistance to the rights of women. A funny statistic I saw in a pro-life march was a comparison of the number of foetuses aborted versus the number of casualties in the first two world wars. Hmm, ok: I take it then that wars = bad? What was the church's stance on those wars, then?

As far as I learned in history class, the church considers wars justifiable in the right circumstances, yet prays for peace. Sometmes, the church takes a vocal stance on its side in a war as well, an in its distant history it was even known to have its own soldiers. Why can't it waver on abortion, while praying for more reliable birth contol and universal access to education and medicine? Why is abortion NEVER justifiable, and even in extreme circumstances if performed it means hell! Oh, I know why: because who gives a fuck about women? And: there are things to be gained from wars after all, while there is nothing to be gained from women not having babies (apparently).

[Creaux]

I really don't know what to say about the whole Africa deal except it's quite tragic, and the Church is doing no one any favors there. It's a painful subject for me. I don't know. The tough thing about trying to stick to principles is that the world isn't very simple. Of course, the church actively attempts to resist change, as they see theselves as the line of Peter and all and the less-changed over time the better. They see it as if they make a few changes here then soon they'll be forced into admitting Androids have souls and that yes, chee-tohs can be used as substitute host for the sacriment in emergency situations. I don't think that acknowledging and internalizing the full equality of women or homosexuals constitutes that.

Part of me does see how much sence abortion makes, but another part of me sees it as being a murder. As long as this conflict remains, I don't see how I can possibly say it's categorically OK. And again, how safe can we make pregnancy? How does paralyzation occur? If the woman is given the best of modern health care (Yay national healthcare for USA!), will it be more ok? Can the baby in dangerous cases be removed from the mother before any critical harm is done and incubated until it can survive normally? I do want to know these answers.

That statistic makes me remember when some woman called into the Howard Stern show and compared the chicken industry to the Holocaust and Stern grew irate and shouted at/about her for a half hour. Not that I see a correlation, just the general style of the argument.

I respect the Catholic church more for the Priests that I have met than for anyone else in the heirarchy, although this is likely due to my experience. All of the pomp of the church is as much for the benefit of the church goers as anyone else.

and hey, my best friend works at Waru-mart! Hehehe.

[Amber-Nicole]

I'm behind, and I haven't read all of this yet, but I just now read this:

A child of rape can achieve great things. The Church's stance on abortion is with a longer view than that of any one person. An unwanted child may screw up someone's life, but that child might have a life of it's own some day.

What the FUCK, dude. You let an eight pound alien do the equivalent to a chestbuster to your GENITALS, and then get back to me. Yeah, that child could have a life, but the woman already has one. I don't support abortions if the woman got herself into the mess with being retarded and having unprotected sex, but rape? Come on now. Stop thinking like such a fucking man.

EDIT: Typo

This post has been edited by Amber-Nicole: 21 October 2004 - 07:30 PM

[Jordan]

Yes abortion is great. I hope my mother pondered killing me off before I could have a chance. I'm sure all of you do to. WOMENS RIGHTS!

[WalrusOfPlastic]

As Civilian pointed out, it all boils down to determining at what point the life is equal to the lives of us post-womb dwelling humans.

In that sense if it were somehow possible to make a determination in that category Womens Rights and Catholics/Fundamental Christians could all agree. However the churches are going to try to determine that by the point at which the creature is given a soul. If there are souls they are certainly unproveable in even us big kids. On the other end without the soul issue people will have to re-consider why murder is not okay. Is it because it doens't seem right to take away the future life of that individual? If so than the same applies to abortion. If it's, let's say, because it hurts society then abortion isn't that bad, even benificial.

So, basically I see no way to resolve the conflict.

[barend]

graven images schmaven images... those mutha fuckers changed the bible... i am quite sure that if there really is helll... the starters of the old cath church are there...

my point is that the catholic 'church' is just a business that got out hand to (pardon the pun) biblical proportions!!!

Just so you know...most priests make ~$27,000 a year. They're really rolling in cash, aren't they...

However, I cannot argue against the gibberish argument, you got me on the "schmaven images" front.

if that's US dollars, then yes they are... (+all the free wine)


secondly... go visit the vatican... the place is pretty nicley decked out for a headquaters of a religion that teaches that all men are equal...

I don't really want to start a serious argument here... because quite frankly i'm too lazy to put in any serious points...

they changed the comandemnt 'do not covert thy neighbour' into two :
'covet not thy neighbour'
'covet not thy neighbours wife and possesions'
(something along those lines)
to flesh it out to ten...

because the bible was aginst "limiting" GOD to small man made strucure of any kind...

however alot of the pother pagen religions were totally into it so the original caths changed it to get more numbers...

they also used to charge people for forgivness...

the bible also says not to pray to people... but you do something wrong... say 10 hale mary's...

as if repeated prayer of a prewritten one is the direct path to redemption...
I mean really?!?
why not send god ten copies of the same halmark card saying "opps, I did it again"

-----------------------------------------

and don't try and catch me out on being silly...
I'm alowed to have fun with this...

because at the end of the day, I don't really have any emotional attatchment to this debate...

ALL organised religion is evil.. because it betrays it's own doctrine!!!
and the Catholic Church is one of the biggest offenders of this...

[Jordan]

I'd say Organized religon is evil too. Since most organizations have some sort of head at the top.

But civilian would say that I'm part of an organized religon, even though I'm not.

The future of Protestant churchs will be home bible studies. My family left the church. And a few of my parents friends are starting to leave too.

Many small denomonations are starting to become mired with corruption of varying magnitude. My fathers friends have told him stories, they're pretty sad.

Society is slowly cutting itself completely from all religous things. In time, all religon will probably be deemed evil, at least in the west since it preaches intolerance and "only one path" doctrine which is not allowed since every path needs a fair chance. And there is no mind, like an open one.

This post has been edited by Jordan: 21 October 2004 - 10:18 PM

[Creaux]

It isn't so much a matter of when the life of the fetus and the life of the mother are equal, as when the life of the fetus and the inconvienience of the mother are equal. Now, I'm covering a lot of ground with inconvienence here, from using abortion as birth control to the mother has a 95% chance of dying from this.

I still haven't gotten any info about how often these "life threatening" cases come up.

Barend...27,000 in US dollars in the US really isn't very much. Similar ammount for managing a convienence store.

The 10 commandments are not written in the origional hebrew with a convienent numbering system. The first commandment in the Catholic way of reading it says that you shouldn't have other gods and includes the "graven images" line as a subclause, but it leaves coveting your neighbor's wife and coveting his other property seperate. The protestant version basically seperates out the graven images line, and puts the coveting lines together. Political maneuvering, not EEEVIL plots.

Indulgences were anoyher matter entirely different. They wern't quite making people pay for forgiveness of sins, they were making people pay for pennance. Basically, if you were sorry, you were sorry, but you had to do something to make up for it. The thought at the time was that Jesus, not to mention the (in comparison insignificant) previous saints had done so much good, that there was a stored up quantity of salvation-they had done more than enough to save their souls, and this favourably disposed God towards humanity. Keep in mind that this is post-Augustinian thinking here, excepting with an Aristotlian influx that tought that the soul was NOT immortal. Kind of foreign, Anyway, paying the money to the church was making a sacrifice out of your own life, showing you were sorry financially. You could certainly preform pennance in other ways, but thinking at the tinme was perhaps only clergy would make it into heaven no matter what. Lots of different thoughts.

When you say a "hail Mary" or pray to a saint, you are asking them as another person, a pure person, to pray to God with you. It's sort of an ally system. I don't believe that Mary or any other saint has any power to save me or not or to directly influence my life, but I believe in praying with someone else, and I believe in life after death, and I believe that there are others who have died in God, so if I think prayer might work with someone on thisplanet, there isn't any reason I shouldn't ask someone who'se dead to pray with me.

Somewhat similarly, a crucifix is not something that holds God, but something I can focus on to remember what Jesus went through as I pray to him.

Is your keyboard or your monitor your computer?

iI'd like you to be a little less lazy if you're oging to say "It says it in the bible!" and look it up for me.

And it's the feeling put into a prayer that makes it important, not the wording. If I ramble on for 5 minutes, saying whatever God-related words come into my heart, is that more of a prayer? In some ways perhaps, but it isn't in all ways superior. Besides, the levels of meaning in the "Our father" are really deep, and I find it fascinating how much meaning I can put into it.

Amber Nicole, what would you seriously suggest I do to understand rape on a female level? I've heard of it being used as an exception and I can't figure out why the child of the rape is such a symbol of hatred. I understand certain things about rape, how it is a violent disempowerment and a hate crime more than a sexual crime, but I have difficulty understanding the depth of it.

[Creaux]

And there is no mind, like an open one.

Just remembering the Warhammer 40K quote, "An open mind is like a fortress with it's gates unbarred and sentinels sleeping". hehehe, goood times...I wish there were more cyborg-daemon babies involved with the church...

[Amber-Nicole]

I don't think rape is something you'll ever understand, unless you get raped by a woman or something. It's not that the child is a reminder, or a bad sign, that's not it at all. What it comes down to is that if this raped woman wanted a baby, she would have gone out and gotten pregnant herself. I'm never having children. I am absolutely TERRIFIED of child birth. It's a horrible, painful experience that no woman should have to endure after already enduring the pain of rape. If she's expected to have this baby, then the pain just keeps on coming for her. Then she would have to set it up for adoption, or raise it herself, and she might not be financially able to take care of this child herself. And honestly, think about this. Is a child really better off if they are born and their parents do not want them? They're going to have a terrible life. Not every kid gets adopted, and this world is already overpopulated. It's not about the woman in nonrape abortion cases, it's about the kid. Honestly, I think they should make the abortion procedure really really really fucking PAINFUL for women who are retarded enough to have unprotected sex and get themselves knocked up.

[Jordan]

It's a horrible, painful experience that no woman

Oh come on, my sister had a natural birth at the age of 27. She's expecting again and can't wait. And if it's so bad get a ceaserian(sp?)

[Creaux]

From what I do know of birth, Amber Nicole is exagerating...My mom didn't scream or cry when she bore me.

And if you have a fear of childbirth, then you'll have to admit that mayhap your views of ANY sort of pregnancy, especially an unwanted one, would be tinted more negatively.

A very good friend of mine, my girl friend throughout my time at Seton Hall, wanted me to post a link to this website. I don't think shock tactics are the way to solve an argument, but I'm going to do what shewanted me to do and post the link. http://www.holylamb.com/abortion1.htm Just so you guys know, I couldn't get past the second picture. I had to shut it off.

Anyway, her main point was that dangerous pregnancies occur in maybe 2% of cases. Both her and I are virgins, and we're both in our earily 20ies, and we are both arguably normalish people. We have managed to live without sex. Most abortions are from unwanted fetuses, when, and I'm quoting her,

everything else was, ops, didnt keep my legs closed and i dont feel like dealing with the consequences

.

And as a matter of fact, she IS a catholic. She's the daughter of immigrants from the Phillipines and has had a life about 3.82*10^6 tougher than mine, but she has an amazing resivoir of spirit. Despite the mysogynist tendencies of the church, she works to change it by serving mass every week. She goes to mass in the mornings with her family, and in the evenings by herself to serve. She's served 3 masses on one day before. (This woman gives an EXTRORDINARY ammount of herself...I'm amazed by it...heh...she's going to get her degree as a doctor, serve in the air force, then join the peace corps or doctors w/o borders. Such a plan...)