Other than the parameters of my post, I agree that the analogy falls apart. My post was a sardonic interpretation of Bricker’s analogy intended only to highlight my belief that punishing people for sex (mainly women) appears to be at the heart of many religious and/or conservative proscriptions involving sex.
All due respect Jodi but that’s a heaping load of fresh crap.
If they believed that hiding pederasts from the law was seen as a favor to God, would they be…oi, hold on, they did that and it was, wait for it…wrong!
I’m absolutely in a position to say their stance, based on their “morals” is wrong,wrong,wrong. It’s wrong, bad and stupid. They don’t have to listen to me and I sure as hell am not listening to them, but it’s as wrong as wrong can be. That’s my opinion and my opinion, though it carries none of the weight of the church has done damage to precisely no one. Conversely, the opinion of the church in this and many other circumstances has injured or killed millions thoughout history.
That, could not BE more wrong.
Okay. It’s just that I find it hard to believe that the Catholic Church really views sex outside of marriage as something as bad as rape. If they do, my mistake. Though that man who raped his stepdaughter wasn’t excommunicated so maybe rape is also forgivable.
I’m very much in favor of safe sex, but even I think that’s going a bit too far.
Joking aside, I disagree with the above very strongly. Labeling something a “moral belief” does not exempt that belief from criticism. A great many heinous beliefs are considered “moral” beliefs by the people who hold them, on topics ranging from the advisability of medical treatments for minors, to the rights of people to hold different religious beliefs, to the role of women in society. The Catholic Church’s position is of a piece with these sorts of beliefs. While it is, indeed, a “moral” belief, it is also a belief that is doing tangible harm to millions of people, in the form of preventing effective medical care and encouraging the endemic poverty of the region. Once a moral belief starts killing people, it become fair game for others to judge the rightness of that belief.
Bosstone, yes of course; I meant conception. :o
Gee, good thing you added “all due respect”. :rolleyes:
Cite that the RCC believed hiding pederasts from the law was a favor to God? You don’t have to make ridiculous arguments, you know; your original one was pretty good.
Yeah, well, sez you. And that has about as much weight and value as if you were going to say that being religiously vegetarian was wrong, or keeping kosher was wrong, or adhering to any religious moral position was wrong just because you, personally, don’t like the ramifications. Catholics do not arrive by their moral beliefs based on the ex post facto reasoning: Let’s see the consequences of potential beliefs, and then decide what we’re going to believe.
It is of course your opinion and you are welcome to it, but if that’s the extent of your argument – who cares? The RCC’s stance in this regard boils down to “because we said so” too, and it’s of equal value to me as a non-adherent, which is to say none.
Well, that depends on who you talk to, right? The Aztecs believed in human sacrifice – clearly not in the best interest of the Guest of Honor – but was that “wrong”? Are you asking me, or an ancient Aztec? And I never said beliefs were exempt from criticism, I said that if they are genuinely morally held then they can’t be summarily announced to be “bad” or “wrong,” because they people holding them quite obviously do not consider them bad or wrong, and who can then proclaim that they are? I mean, who do you think you are – buttonjockey308? It’s not like informing them of that is going to change their mind on the subject anyway.
Exactly. On what grounds do you declare that any of these beliefs are “heinous”? Is Christian Science? Is animal sacrifice? To me, the point at which we can step in to say that religous beliefs are objectively “wrong” on a societal level – not a moral level – is when they directly cause objective harm to others: female genital mutilation, human sacrifice, children dying – literally dying – for a lack of immediate medical care. But those societal decisions do not require us to gauge the morality of the belief, merely the societal cost of the consequences.
Why IMO the RCC in this case does not fall in that category is because the harm is not direct. The RCC is not, as a general matter, telling people to have unprotected sex; they are telling married people to have unprotected sex and the rest of us to have no sex at all. Therefore, I agree with Bricker that it is unreasonable to blame them solely for the consequences of unmarried people having unprotected sex, which is not something the RCC has ever been in favor of. But, people say, this POV is not realistic, because of course unmarried people will have sex; they always have. And I personally agree with this myself, but I do not think we are entitled to demand that the RCC change millenia of moral beliefs to be more “realistic” about what people actually do, as opposed to what the Church says they should do.
All that said – and as I said before – teach whatever the hell you want to your own adherents as a matter of doctrine or belief, but do NOT misrepresent the realities of science or the real world in order to make your position more palatable or make it seem like it’s grounded in reality. It is not grounded in reality, it is grounded in moral belief. IMO, if the RCC cannot speak honestly about the efficacy of condoms as an HIV preventative, they have the obligation to shut the hell up about it. What is IMO their sin is not believing as they do, but lying about condoms in order to defend or further that belief. And I use the word “lying” advisedly; when the Pope says that condoms make the problem of AIDS worse in Africa (or anywhere) that is nothing more than a lie.
IOW, to me it’s as if Jewish elders were trying to convince people to keep kosher because if you mix your dishes, you’ll get sick. Believe what you want, follow your own beliefs, heck, teach them to those who will listen. Just don’t lie about them, that’s all.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, “Yes.” Sure, an Aztec’s going to disagree with me, at least so long as he’s the one holding the knife, and not lying on the altar. But so what? The fact that people have conflicting moralities does not mean that one cannot make moral determinations.
This is an absurd position. The Nazis believed that wiping out the Jews was a moral good. Al Qaeda believes that blowing up the WTC was a moral good. The fact that a person feels that a particular belief is a good thing does not mean that other people can’t say, “No, that is not, in fact, a good thing. That is a horrendous thing.”
If that were true, the Catholic Church would still be drowning witches and burning heretics at the stake. Religious beliefs can change over time, and the mechanism by which this happens is changing the opinion of individual worshippers. Quite a lot of Catholics already believe that there’s nothing wrong with using a condom. At some point, the percentage of Catholics who believe this will be large enough that the Church will change its doctrines.
My own moral sense, naturally.
And I say that there is no difference between a moral wrong and a societal wrong. When a belief is causing people to suffer and die, it’s a moral wrong. The Catholic Church’s opposition to sex education is causing people to suffer and die. Therefore, it is a moral wrong. If it makes you feel better to call it a societal wrong, then go ahead. I don’t see a distinction between the terms.
I disagree. When the Pope says, “Using a condom is a sin,” and someone thinks, “Well, I guess I won’t use a condom, then,” the Pope bears a portion of the responsibility if that person gets sick. Not all the responsibility, of course, but enough that he deserves criticism for that statement.
Why not? We certainly can’t force them to change, but I don’t see any reason we can’t say, “Hey, that policy is all kinds of fucked up, and promoting it makes you a big ol’ douche.”
Sure, but you only get to make them for yourself or yor kids, unless you can show direct societal cost in allowing them to be followed. On what basis would you impose your morality on me, or anyone else? That’s why as a collective, a society, we don’t weigh in on “morality” – being, as it is, purely subjective – but only on harm.
People can say and believe whatever they want. But what made the Nazis and Al Qaeda objectively “wrong” was not what they believed but what they did. On what basis do you declare that it is “wrong” to be opposed to contracepton, be it barrier form or otherwise? Do you have something more to your argument than “I think so”? Because that’s pretty much all the RCC has and, as I said, I don’t find it at all persuasive.
Well, then you’re wrong. (See what I did there?) Is it wrong to dance? Wrong to play cards? Is it wrong for women to lead worship? Is it wrong to have more than one spouse? Is it wrong to eat meat? Wrong to eat meat and dairy together? Just because YOU assert there’s no difference between a moral wrong and a societal wrong, doesn’t mean your position is particularly defensible. People believe a lot of things are “wrong” based solely on their own personal or religious morals, yet many of those things are obviously not “wrong” in any objective sense to outsiders. The difference is of course whether we are talking about a purely subjective wrong (moral wrong) or an objective wrong, i.e., harm to others (societal wrong).
See, here’s where I don’t buy your argument. The RCC’s teaching are: Don’t have sex outside of marriage. Don’t use contraception when you do have sex, which you surely are not doing outside of marriage. I find it really hard to leap from that to “causing people to suffer and die” without adding in several other steps, like (a) demanding that the RCC amend its aspirational behavioral requirements to reality, as if just because people don’t, the CHurch is not allowed to say people should or must; (b) completely ignoring that adults are volitional and are capable of choosing to have sex or not (as if the RCC is making Africans have unprotected sex); and (c) adding in the heaping helping of misinformation about the efficacy of barrier contraception – the last of which I join you in finding completely indefensible.
I have no problem with you assigning him a portion of the blame; I think that’s completely reasonable. If the RCC wants to turn a blind eye to the realities of human sexuality and the AIDS epidemic in Africa, I see no reason why they should not be expected to own their own part in failing to stop that epidemic. But then I don’t think they have any affirmative obligation to actually assist in stopping it (much as I wish they would do so). I just think they have an affirmative obligation not to obstruct through misinformation all those who ARE trying to stop it. That’s where the rubber hits the road for me.
Where in this thread have I said anything about imposing my morality on you? For that matter, where in this thread has anyone attempted to impose their morality on anyone else? Unless I missed it, no one has called for the Catholic Church to be forced to abandon their teachings on contraception.
Yes, actually, I do have more than “I think so.” I have countless studies demonstrating that sex education is a more effective method of preventing the spread of disease and the conception of unwanted children than abstinence only education. The RCC opposes effective safe sex education, thereby rendering it more difficult to fight the spread of deadly diseases, or resolve one of the fundamental causes of the rampant poverty of the region. If the RCC did not insist on abstinence only education, then there would be fewer sick and dead people in Africa today. I consider that to be direct harm.
No, none of those are moral wrongs. Because none of them do harm. For something to be immoral, it has to cause harm. Therefore, societal wrongs and moral wrongs are the same thing.
Mind you, that’s just my own personal moral code. Other people have different ones, which cover things ranging from the absurd (no dancing) to the obscene (honor killings of rape victims). The ones that are absurd I shrug at. The ones that are obscene I agitate against. On this issue, the RCC is tending towards the latter half of the scale.
You impose your morality where and when you decide or declare whether a moral belief is “wrong” or not. When you are (and others) declare that something is morally “wrong” in any universal sense, you are obviously trying to assert that your version of morality is the correct one – because the other one is “wrong.” Whether that constitutes “imposing your morality on anyone else” is a matter of opinion.
But of course the question is not which is “more effective” but whether the RCC is “wrong” in some objectively measurable way to believe and to declare that the use of contraception is immoral.
And I consider that a huge leap, relying as it does on the paternalism of presuming that Africans cannot be taught outside the rubric of a single religion, and cannot be trusted to make up their own minds if and when given correct facts by entities other than the RCC. The RCC has always insisted on abstinence-only education – everywhere, all the time. They have never supported the use of contraceptives, not ever. They cannot support “effective safe sex education” because they believe, as a moral matter, that it is wrong. So what on earth would you ask of them? They cannot support something they think is wrong. To the extent their actions cause harm – including “insisting on abstinence only education,” which is not what I’ve been talking about, seeing as it’s an action and not a moral belief – by all means, feel free to take them to task. But to me, if you don’t like how the RCC is educating people, then the solution is provide alternative, more effective education – not to expect them to start teaching or supporting things they believe are sinful.
Whatever your own personal moral code may be, my point is that you have no standing to impose that moral code on anyone else – unless there is some objective harm done. You, apparently, agree with this, but would argue that the RCC’s position is an objective harm done. I only disagree to the extent that I think the position itself is effectively unassailable (being a matter of belief) but the actions that flow from it are fair game for criticism and refutation.
All of which is a long way of saying I don’t really think we disagree all that much. I just don’t jump up and down on people for what they believe, since I find it much more effective to attack what they do. And I consider it manifestly unreasonable to expect people to teach or to do things they feel are immoral, or to declare them “wrong” for not doing so.
Has the RCC ever changed it’s stance on whether something is morally wrong? Has it ever changed it’s stance on what constitutes absolute dogma? If so, it can do it again.
I honestly don’t know. Someone above mentioned something about witchcraft; AFAIK they’re not much more in favor of witchcraft than they’ve ever been, t’s just that opinions of what “witchcraft” might look like have changed. But I do think it’s safe to say that you would have to go a long way before finding an organization less likely to change its moral stance that the RCC. “Flexible” and “progressive” are not the sort of terms that are usually flung at it. But then, I’m not RC so I’m not really in a position to say how or when they’ve reversed course. As to “how often” – I’m fairly confident the answer to that one is “rarely.”
It has, so manifestly it can. But I wouldn’t be the ranch on a turn-around on fundamental doctrine like “right to life” anytime soon.
Well they did eventually retreat from the “the earth is the center of the universe and everything revolves in circles around it” postion. At the time, that was a hardcore dogma. To argue against it was heresy.
Yes, let’s. The analogy between speeding laws (routinely used as a form of literal highway robbery rather than for their ostensible purpose of safety) and opposition to contraception (routinely used as a form of social control rather than for its ostensible purpose of moral improvement) is rather more compelling that any analogy you’ve offered.
So, having a moral belief is the same as imposing a moral belief?
No, the question is, indeed, which is more effective. If abstinence-only education were equally (or more) effective, or if there were no way to tell which was more effective, then there would be no problem with the Church promoting abstinence only education. However, we know, for a fact, that abstinence only education does not work. Therefore, continuing to spread abstience only education at the expense of more effective ideas is recklessly irresponsible at best.
I have made precisely the same arguments about abstinence-only education being promoted in the US, by entities other than the RCC.
A stupid idea does not become less stupid with age.
Ideally, I’d like the Catholic church to get over its medieval obsession with the horrid sinfulness of sex. But that’s asking a lot, and probably not going to happen any time this century. In the interim, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect them not to value dogma over keeping people alive. They are free to continue considering abstinence to be preferrable to safe sex. However, if they are going to act as a public health and sexuality educator, they should not be spreading ideas that actively work against those goals.
I agree, except that I don’t think you can reasonably equate disagreeing with a moral belief with imposing your own moral beliefs on someone else. If I hear a bad idea, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying that it’s a bad idea. Appending “moral” in front of “idea” doesn’t grant an automatic exception.
Pah. This is the SDMB. I’m not about to let a petty little thing like agreement stand in the way of a good fight.
Oh, I agree. I’m just countering your argument that such things don’t work that way. Sometimes they do. And, if they do so, as some have suggested, because society as a whole has moved in a different direction; i.e., the change percolates upward, then this issue seems to me to be one where persistent vocal opposition by all who oppose the Church’s stance, whether they be Catholics or not, is the right thing to do.
How about heresy? At one point, it was the RCC’s position that only members of the Catholic Church were saved, and that anyone following a Protestant faith was damned. That is no longer a part of Catholic dogma. IIRC, they’ve also ammended their faith to allow Jews into heaven, which is also in stark contrast to their beliefs during the first and most of the second millennium.
Does anybody have a cite that condoms are any better than abstinence/monogamy in preventing AIDS (As a whole, not per incident)? Using Uganda as an example, according to the statistics here:
http://www.aids.org/atn/2005/04/uganda-rakai.html
In men, for example, in the last ten years, condom use increased from 10% to 50%. New infections (not prevalence, which is affected by deaths!) also rose from slightly during that time period. Monogamy and abstinence fell during that time period.
So it seems that its quite possible that condoms, although they reduce the chance per incident, might encourage other risky behaviors that more than make up for that reduced risk.
Where are you getting that “10% to 50%” increase in condom use?