chilehed

Only if it were truly a belief of that religion, yes? That's not the case for Catholicism, nor, I believe, for Ba'hai.

This sounds rather similar to a narrow point of Catholicism, which holds this as a possibility. I've known a couple of Ba'hais, and, based on my conversation's with them, CraigD's summary is pretty good.

It most certainly is not an invention of the Catholic Church, because in fact the Catholic Church rejects the idea that we are of a dual nature. In Catholic theology, the word soul indicates "the principle which animates the body of a living being". The Catholic understanding is very similar to the Jewish idea that one finds in the terms nephesh, nuah, and neshamah. Although it's possible to abstractly discuss the body and the soul as if they were separate things, in reality they are intimately united and inseparable: together they constitute a single substancial being. The body/soul is a unity, not a duality: they are united as matter and form.

Do you really think that the existence of evidence for a proposition eliminates debate about it? That's at least as absurd as anything I've ever heard the most ardent YEC say.

Maybe I was feeling a bit cranky. Usually I’ve got enough judgment to not post at all if I’m going to be overly terse, but I guess I fell off the wagon. I have the same reaction when I hear Kent Hovind bloviating about how entropy is synonymous with disorder, so evolution must be false because it requires more information to be generated which is a violation of the Second Law. The guy doesn’t know a damn thing about either thermodynamics or information theory, and he’s so sure that he does that he’s unteachable. You've substituted the word "proof" for the word "evidence" (which is what Dawkins actually said). They're not the same. In real personal relationships we come to trust someone because we have some evidence that they're worthy of trust. And while that doesn’t prove that they’ll be trustworthy in the future, it is certainly evidence that they will be, and proof that they were in the past. And so we make an act of the will to adhere to the other. That’s what faith is: an act of the will by which we adhere to another who is known. Faith is historically used as the translation of the Hebrew emunah. And notice how the word’s actually used: the characters in the bible are said to have faith in God, a god with whom they’ve been speaking! They most certainly do have evidence that he exists, because they’ve seen it with their own eyes and heard it with their own ears. You might not believe that the story is true, but that doesn’t change the fact that within the context of the story it is true and that it shows the proper use of the word faith. That's how it's always been used in Hebrew, Latin and English. In English, when speaking of an absurd belief that is completely without foundation, it is never said that such a belief strains faith. We say that it strains credulity. That’s because “believing something without having evidence or in the face of evidence to the contrary” is the definition of credulity; it is NOT the definition of faith and it never has been.

So it wasn’t trivial for Dawkins to give them as reasons why theists are delusional, but it was trivial for me to point out that his reasoning is pitiably flawed?

Dawkins is a brilliant expositor of biology and evolutionary theory, but the fact is that he’s woefully ignorant about philosophy and theology in general and Christianity in particular. For example, (this one’s in an interview he did with Richard Fidler) he says things like “Catholics don’t know anything about the bible at all, do they, the bible’s taboo in the Catholic Church, it always has been, it has to be interpreted by the priests, they don’t trust the people to read the bible”, which is not merely absolute nonsense but nonsense which is very easy to disprove. There’s quite simply no good excuse for someone to believe something like that. The Church was involved in making translations into the vernacular (well before the 13th Century) precisely so that laymen could read them, and there has long been a plenary indulgence granted for the reading of scripture. If only priests could interpret the bible there could be no female Doctors of the Church, and yet there are three: St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Therese of Lisieux. There’s so much evidence that Dawkins hasn’t the slightest clue that it’s difficult to know where to start, it would be like rebutting a claim that the United States was founded by people who fled a representative republic and wanted to institute a monarchy. The bit about the belief in the virgin birth being due to a mistranslation of the prophet Isaiah is another one. The translation he speaks of was the Septuagent, which was done by Jewish scribes and rabbis who were fluent in both Greek and Hebrew. The Hebrew word alma indeed indicates a young woman of marriageable age, and in that culture it was the norm for such a woman to be a virgin. That passage in Isaiah speaks of a miracle that is to be given as a sign to the king, the miracle involving an alma giving birth. Not much of a miracle if she’s not a virgin. Sure, the word almah taken entirely by itself doesn’t demand that the woman is a virgin, but virgin is within the standard meaning of the word and the cultural and literary context of the passage in question indicates that it’s a good translation in this case. That’s what the Hebrew and Greek experts at the time thought, and it’s pompous for Dawkins to just blithely assert that they were wrong. Furthermore, there’s no indication whatsoever that the people in Jesus’ day believed that Mary was a virgin for any reason other than they thought it was true. Another thing is the absurd notion that faith is “believing something without having any evidence”. That’s not what the word means, it’s never been what the word meant, it’s absolutely inconsistent with the historical development of the word and is not the way any of the cognates are used in everyday language. “Believing something without having any evidence” is actually called credulity. If Dawkins were correct, then then phrases such as "being faithful to your spouse" would be meaningless unless one had no evidence that one's spouse existed... which would strain credulity. There’s a lot more, but I find it tedious to listen to him and I can't spare the time it would take to rebut him on everything he's got wrong. I’ve always understood ignoramus to indicate someone who is not merely ignorant of a topic (which Dawkins manifestly is) but one who is intentionally ignorant. And while I can think of no good excuse for someone to spout the kind of inane nonsense he’s prone to, I admit that I’m not privy to his subjective intentions. So I shouldn’t call him an ignoramus. He does, however, bear a very strong resemblance to one.

Dawkins is an ignoramus.

I'm very sorry that your dad put your family though that. "Hypocritical" is a very charitable way to describe it. But the fact that your father was a scumbag doesn't prove that theists are wrong, any more than the fact that the existance of kind and loving atheists proves that atheists are right. Religion wasn't the cause of your father's behavior, the cause was irreligion. At least, it certainly wasn't adherence to the teachings of Christianity.

Whoever came up with THAT idea must be smokin' the good stuff.

By definition this is the *** hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. And, in fact, what it means is "People are Catholic because they're poor and ignorant”. What part of “feels sorrow in his soul and destestation of it, and firmly resolves to not do it ever again” is unclear to you? Your understanding of Catholic teaching is extremely poor. I know many people who do. There’s nothing unique about them. As I’ve said repeatedly, this is a problem of the will. People will not adhere to common sense (which is what the teaching of the Church is), therefore they get sexually transmitted diseases. You’re claiming that the fact that people get diseases who refuse to abstain from behaviors which transmit those diseases, proves that teaching that one should abstain from those behaviors is a cause of the epidemic. That’s not merely silly, it’s insane. I’ll say it again: it’s incoherent to say that people who ignore the teaching of the Catholic Church are observing it.

Well, I for one can't see why, so could you explain it? "Correlation equals causation" is the *** hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. "People are Catholic because they're poor and ignorant" is an ad hominem argument that also begs the question by presupposing that Christianity is not true. I could just as easily say that people are atheists because they’re ignorant, with the same lack of validity. "Poverty prevents people from being free moral agents" is not worthy of any response. How is it absurd?It’s like saying that a woman tolerates infidelity who kicks her husband out of the house unless and until he stops it, admits it to her, feels sorrow in his soul and destestation of it, and firmly resolves to not do it ever again. What makes you think this? Behavioral studies have shown it.So you say. I’d be very interested in seeing a valid study that manages to distinquish between what we do out of instinct, out of will, and out of a pathologic psychological condition. Humans have a very strong hormonal interaction which results in the pair imprinting to each other. That’s like saying you can evaluate the performance of a car without having anyone start the engine and drive it. It’s an absurd position, especially since it’s a given that you won’t get a sexually transmitted disease if you follow Church teaching. What makes you think that you have a sufficient background in philosophy or Christian theology to qualify yourself to make such statements? What makes you think he doesn't?Because he says things that make it obvious that he has only a shallow understanding of Catholic theology. That comment was actually more like gnostic thought.

My job requires me to take a lot of data in automobiles, and since it's often very sunny I have polarized sunglasses. I've had three of four different laptops at work and every one of them has the screen polarized at an angle, which is a pain in the rear because it means I have to tip either my head or the laptop. Why don't they have them polarized vertically?

Oh, I get it: correlation equals causation, people are Catholic because they're poor and ignorant, and poverty prevents people from being free moral agents. I don't need to explain why that argument is less than convincing. I'm struggling to find a charitable way to describe the absurdity of that statement. You have a very strange understanding of human nature; if that was instinctive then our biochemistry would reflect it. The desire to have multiple partners doesn't come from our instinct, it comes from our will. ROTFLMAO! The effectiveness of a course of action is not to be judged based on whether or not it's followed? What a load of nonsense! What makes you think that you have a sufficient background in philosophy or Christian theology to qualify yourself to make such statements?

That might seem to be a reasonable assumption to some people, but it certainly can't explain the HIV epidemic in Africa unless you know of a religion that insists that its adherents must engage in fornication, homosexuality, prostitution and drug abuse.

I've been a Catholic for only six years and I've lost count of the number of folks I've heard say that whose knowledge is no more advanced than what they learned in grade school, or who think all kinds of absurd things about Catholic doctrine. You might be surprised. Oy vey... you've GOT to be kidding. Abused women go back to being abused because they LIKE it?? Try telling that to a woman, any woman, who's got any time in recovering from the sex industry. *shakes head* A blessed evening to you and yours.

Fair enough. I meant nothing more than someone with HIV has some level of moral obligation to not marry someone without it. The question of whether or not they can marry someone who also has it is a different matter entirely.It wasn’t very long ago in the U.S. that blood tests were required for a marriage license, for the very reason that the prospective spouses could make an informed decision. It was a wise practice. Where did you get this impression?I apologize. It was not you, but rather dduckwessel, who dragged in poverty in response to my comments about people being free moral agents. It’s a common argument which is deeply flawed. People make foolish decisions because they’re foolish; having money doesn’t make a foolish person any wiser, and poverty doesn’t doom one to foolishness. I’m reminded of something that G. K. Chesterton said in Orthodoxy: I have listened often enough to Socialists, or even to democrats, saying that the physical condition of the poor must of necessity make them mentally and morally degraded. I have listened to scientific men (and there are still scientific men not opposed to democracy) saying that if we give the poor healthier conditions vice and wrong will disappear. I have listened to them with a horrible attention, with a hideous fascination. For it was like watching a man energetically sawing from the tree the branch he is sitting on. If these happy democrats could prove their case, they would strike democracy dead. If the poor are thus utterly demoralized, it may or may not be practical to raise them. But it is certainly quite practical to disenfranchise them. If the man with a bad bedroom cannot give a good vote, then the governing class may not unreasonably say: “It may take us some time to reform his bedroom. But if he is the brute you say, it will take him very little time to ruin our country. Therefore we will take your hint and not give him the chance.” It fills me with a horrible amusement to observe the way in which the earnest Socialist industriously lays the foundation of all aristocracy, expiating blandly upon the evident unfitness of the poor to rule. It is like listening to somebody at an evening party apologizing for entering without evening dress, and explaining that he had recently been intoxicated, had a personal habit of taking off his clothes in the street, and had, moreover, only just changed from his prison uniform. At any moment, one feels, the host might say that really, if it was as bad as that, he need not come in at all. So it is when the ordinary Socialist, with a beaming face, proves that the poor, after their smashing experience, cannot be really trustworthy. At any moment the rich may say, “Very well, then, we won’t trust them,” and bang the door in his face. On the basis of Mr. Blatchford’s view of heredity and environment, the case for the aristocracy is quite overwhelming. If clean homes and clean air make clean souls, why not give the power (for the present time at any rate) to those who undoubtedly have the clean air? If better conditions will make the poor more fit to govern themselves, why should not better conditions already make the rich more fit to govern them? On the ordinary environment argument the matter is fairly manifest. The comfortable class must be merely our vanguard in Utopia. Having conceded the question, the case for blaming the Pope is dead. Our efforts would be better spent on encouraging and helping people to live up to their inherent dignity as human beings. Throwing rubbers at them as if they’re rutting animals is not the way to do that, and if doing so reinforces behavior that is inherently destructive to the human person (which it does), then it most certainly does not help. The WHO puts out documents that recommend things like “adopting a non-judgmental attitude” and “respecting sex workers’ human rights and according them basic dignity”, but that say absolutely nothing about helping them figure out a way out of the business. What a crock! There’s not a person on this forum or in the WHO who wants to see their own sister or daughter become a whore, and yet they’re willing to leave someone else’s wallowing in the mire as if the worst part of the business is something other than the spiritual and emotional state it causes. And then people have the nerve to blame the Pope for the social fallout? THAT’S hypocrisy. Again, if you really want to be able to fairly judge Catholic moral theology it would help to understand it, which isn't something that one can do well in five minutes or by listening to sound-bite argumentation.

I said no such thing, nor anything remotely resembling it. Nor did I say that they should go sit in a cave to die somwehere - you’ve made that up out of thin air. People know in advance what the Church’s teaching is, as well as the risk of infection by marrying a person with HIV. You guys seem to think that people who are poor are also stupid, or that they can’t be their own responsible moral agents. That’s pretty darn arrogant. Not compared to adherence to Church teaching. A person who adheres to Church teaching and decides to not marry someone with HIV has virtually zero chance of being infected. By comparison, condoms are extremely ineffective. Your premise is false, and so is your conclusion. I have no more time to waste going in circles with someone who insists on making stuff up out of whole cloth, and denying undeniable truths such as "those who refuse to expose themselves to a behaviorally contracted illness will not get it". *chilehed walks off, shaking his head*

I know you can't be directing that comment at me, because I've said nothing sounds remotely like that. And your point is what? That it's immoral for someone without HIV to decide to not marry someone who's infected by it? Or that it's immoral for someone who does have it to decide to marry only someone who also has it? It's abysmal considering the extreme consequences of failure, and compared to the reliability of adhering to the teaching of the Church (which is the point of this thread, remember?). The claim is that the Church bears moral culpability, through it's teaching, for the epidemic of HIV. That's patently false, because condoms are vastly less reliable than is adherence to Church teaching.

It doesn't conflict with it because the relevant passages are written in a literary form which indicates that it's not intended to communicate historical events in the same manner that one would intend to communicate the details of what happened at, for example, the building of the Hoover Dam. And the actual Hebrew text itself doesn't demand a 144-hour creation, there's quite a bit of ambiguity in the words and phrasing used and when you account for that then the idea of an old universe is seen to not contradict the story. And no, you don't need to buy his book to hear good explanations of this, all you have to do is google around a bit.

I suppose you'd be very happy if the brakes on your car were that unreliable. You've conceded my point, given that the vast majority of HIV infections (and specifically the ones earliest in the epidemic) are caused by drug abuse and sexual behavior against which the Church teaches. If you really want to be able to pass judgement on Catholic teaching, it would be helpful to understand it. If you're interested, a good place to start would be Humanae Vitae and Pope JP!!'s Theology of the Body. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2tbind.htm It's not as if people aren't free moral agents. To love is to know, will and do the good of another. Someone with HIV is not acting in accordance with love in marrying someone without it because that forces their spouse into a position of having to choose between two evils: infection or contraception. A person who submits to the teaching of the Church and who does not want to risk HIV infection merely needs to not marry someone who's infected. This problem has arisen and continues precisely because people don't adhere to the teaching of the Church. To turn around and blame the teachings of the Church for it is silly. I'm reminded of my adolescent child, who freely makes choices which he knows in advance will cause him adverse consequences, and who then accuses me of getting him into trouble when he gets them.

Unfortunately most news sources employ people who are woefully incompetent to report on religious matters, and this is a classic example. The Pope most certainly did NOT say or imply that condom use is morally permissible, nore did he say or imply that it helps prevent the spread of HIV. As Janice Smith put it, “The Holy Father is simply observing that for some homosexual prostitutes the use of a condom may indicate an awakening of a moral sense; an awakening that sexual pleasure is not the highest value, but that we must take care that we harm no one with our choices. He is not speaking to the morality of the use of a condom, but to something that may be true about the psychological state of those who use them. If such individuals are using condoms to avoid harming another, they may eventually realize that sexual acts between members of the same sex are inherently harmful since they are not in accord with human nature.” Unfortunately it's been a while since I saw the study, and it was a hard copy. Certainly it's difficult to evaluate, you need to consider not only direct contributions from the Holy See but also the work done by the various religious orders as well as that sponsored directly by dioceses, parishes and individuals. But for example, in 2009 Catholic Relief Services alone provided over $200M in HIV related services, $248M in emergency aid, and $109M in agriculture aid worldwide. Of their total of $780M in operating funds, $156M was from private donations and only 5% of their expenditures were for operating expenses: 95% goes to the programs. Their HIV programs served more than 8 million people, distributed nearly 3M mosquito nets, completed drinking water projects in I don't know how many locations,... they have hundreds of programs worldwide. And that's just ONE organization. So I find it disingenuous for people to imply that the Church isn't working to support the sick and needy around the world. One who does not follow the teachings on sexual morality by definition does not submit to the teaching of the Church. BTW, abstinence isn't really the best characterization for the Church's teaching because it implies that one should not engage in sexual relations. A better term would be chastity, which is defined as "the moral virtue which, under the cardinal virtue of temperance, provides for the successful integration of sexuality within the person leading to the inner unity of the bodily and spiritual being." The problem here is that you need to be looking not based on whether or not people identify themselves as Catholic, but based on the degree to which they actually adhere to the teaching of the Church. There is no credible way that one can claim that a couple who remain chaste for the duration of their lives will be at any risk of contracting an STD. If the brakes on your car worked only 85% of the time, you'd consider them to be effective? THAT's an unusual definition. The fact remains that chastity works 100% of the time it's tried. That's not debatable.

This reminds me of something my dad told me once: "Any nitwit with $20 can file court papers against you; if you've never been sued then you might not be amounting to much in the world."

The fact is that the Catholic Church is by far the single largest provider of medical aid in Africa. You mean like they obey the teachings against fornication, homosexuality and drug abuse? Your line of reasoning is incoherent. The problem isn't that folks are listening to the teachings of the Catholic Church, the problem is that they're ignoring the teachings. No reasonable person can deny that those who observe Catholic teaching on sexual morality and drug abuse have vastly lower rates of STD infection that those who do not, and that if everyone observed those teachings infection rates worldwide would be many orders of magnitude lower than they are. It's disingenuous to tout condoms as a means to combat infection when it's well known that they are far from effective even when used properly, and then blame infection rates on the folks who point to a simple and utterly reliable method that actually works. Those who do so are poisoning the well themselves, and if anyone is culpable it's them.

Let me see if I have this right: the Catholic Church teaches against drug abuse and sexual acts outside of the bond of marriage (which acts are the cause of the vast majority of HIV infections), and yet it's responsible for these same folks not using condoms which are known to not reliably prevent the transmission of disease in any case? I'm absolutely sure that someone who's shooting dope or engaging in risky sexual practices will avoid condom use after he hears that the Pope says he shouldn't use them... *rolleyes* What a load of nonsense.