STDs don’t know who did what to whom
A tangential comment in this piece on why Harvard shouldn’t pretend, as Steven Pinker put it in The Crimson, “‘faith’ and ‘reason’ are parallel and equivalent ways of knowing” is pertinent to a recent discussion here of condoms and the Catholic church:
Indeed, it is not uncommon for religious leaders to advocate acting on faith in the face of reason – as when Catholic priests forbid married women to use condoms even when their husbands are infected with AIDS.
Of course, Catholic priests (and bishops and archbishops and cardinals and the pope and many theologians and Catholic thinkers and writers) forbid everyone to use condoms under any circs, but the point Lawrence Krauss is making by putting it that way is the one that gets, bizarrely, overlooked by people (and there are some) who defend the Catholic church’s position on the issue by pointing out that people already disobey the church’s teachings by not being monogamous; the condom issue, they say, is subsidiary to that fact, and therefore no reason to blame the church for its loathsome murderous policy. There are a lot of problems with that defense (such as the lack of fit between crime and punishment – adultery is not self-evidently the right sort of thing to punish with a slow unpleasant death), but one of the most glaring is the one Krauss indicates by his way of stating the policy. The ban on condoms is a blanket ban, so, obviously, it punishes monogamous partners (and children) as well as non-monogamous partners. Of course that is not to say the spread of AIDS is the church’s fault and no one else’s, but it is to say that the church (to put it as mildly as possible) ought not to do anything to hinder AIDS-prevention. The church ought not to be helping along ‘punishment’ in the form of a horrible disease – that seems simple enough. (That discussion got sidetracked in the earlier thread by an irritating eruption of sexist bullshit. I run a classy outfit here; if anyone’s going to lower the tone it will be me. Sexist bullshit is right out.)
To begin by quoting from the article: The physicist Steven Weinberg, of the University of Texas at Austin, has said: “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil, but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.”
Which, of course (Cathal I hope you are reading this) includes communism, because communism is a religion – it hates christianity, because christianity is a rival religion.
We come back again, to definitions.
Faith is belief without evidence.
And faith is what religious believers must have, like the muslim suicide bombers, and the inquisition, and the communoist cadres in the 1930’s or in Cambodia …..
The RC church makes pronouncements, and gives instructions which the faithful are expected to follow without thinking about it .
Given the behaviour in “mother theresa’s” clinic in Calcutta, why should anyone be suprised.
Is it any different from trying to make sure that rape-victims can’t get abortions?
All the RC heirarchy are interested in is power – based on faith.
As opposed to believing in something, because you have rational grounds for doing so, or even a “hunch” – because (I think) all hunches are probably based on unassimilated partial evidence, that has not been fully processed by the individual concerned.
I wonder what Pinker would make of that thought?
Feel free to dismiss the advice from a somewhat-religious ex-Communist, but no, G. Tingey, Communism is not a religion. Even though it has similarities to certain organized religions. But something can have similarities to something else without actually being that something else. The similarity between the Stalinist/Maoist incarnations of Communism and certain varieties of religion lies in the position of dogmatic authority – but this is quite a different thing than faith. Since acceptance of dogmatic authority does not quite require belief, nor does it quite require lack of evidence.
That Communism is a religion and that therefore it hates Christianity because it is a rival religion is eminently silly. Not all religions hate each other. I don’t see Episcopaleans taking up arms to exterminate Catholics, nor do I see any attempts among the various strands of Judaism to combat the other monotheistic faiths.
Communism, in its essence of dialectical materialism, is a metaphysic, to be sure. All religions are metaphysics. But it does not follow that all metaphysics are religions. Communism included an expressly atheistic metaphysic. But that – neither its atheism nor it’s acceptance of a holistic metaphysical system – does not explain why it went wrong. The fact that Communism entailed a metaphysic in which individual human rights were relative, the worth of the individual was de-emphasized, and killing large amounts of individuals in pursuit of an utopian goal was not regarded as a big problem – that would go a long way towards explaining it. A beautifully ambivalent expression of this, if you can find it, is the East German playwright Heiner Müller’s piece called Mauser.
Several people, including me, have tried to tell G Tingey that Communism is not a religion. I worked on the angle that having some but not all features in common is not identical with being identical, but got nowhere. Nobody did. It’s one of those things he knows, I guess, and a closed subject.
Sexist bullshit? Only a woman could come up with that! ;-)
Seriously, I read – and have seen it before, and often heard it quoted – this: ‘The physicist Steven Weinberg, of the University of Texas at Austin, has said: “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil, but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.”‘
Obviously, not in every case is this so, since good people could become evil for other reasons. But it makes a nice sound bite, and is probably mostly true (no way of measuring). However, what if we said, ‘… but for evil people to turn good – that takes religion’? That’s why this slick-sounding aphorism has often worried me, because as soon as I quote it to an astute religionist she or he could well invert the sentiment.
All right, if you think I’m wrong about communism being a religion – was Bertrand Russell wrong as well?
Because he also claimed that communism is a religion, I understand.
It seems to me that G. Tingey has FAITH that Communism is a religion and is therefore (see previous thread) not amenable to rational argument.
Fancy appealing to his/her emotions?
If you keep saying this GT you’ll upset the fluffy bunnies inside Ophelia’s head, so please stop. Pretty please?
All right, if you think I’m wrong about communism being a religion – was Bertrand Russell wrong as well?
Evidently, yes.
Oh my god, Bertrand Russell wrong?! That can’t possibly be! No, if he said it, of course it must be true.
[rolls eyes]
GT,
I have just been taking part in a discussion on ‘What is a religion …?’ on another blog. May I copy a part of my amateurish attempt to define it?
1. A specific and defined supernatural creator whom it is appropriate to worship. Deists often define ‘God’ so abstractly that it seems to be little more than a nexus of philosophy and physics. Without a belief in a personal connection to a god with defined characteristics and a purpose (revealed or not), then a belief can’t meaningfully be called religious.
2. A shared belief system. You can’t have a religion of one. When does a cult become a religion? Is it just about numbers? Probably not, but without enough people to give a sense of belonging to a viable group I don’t thing the term can be applied. If you personally know everyone who shares your belief, it ain’t a religion – it’s a cult.
3. Rules, rituals, revelations. These seem to be universal in religion and are probably necessary to create the sense of kinship with co-religionists.
Of course, it’s a matter of degree. The Abrahmic faiths seem to be the keenest on defining God – we even get long passages of dialogue from him detailing exactly how he feels about diet, clothing, sexual orientation, social structure, legal and financial systems, foreign policy and the correct way to kill those who deviate. I gather (although I could be wrong) that Sikhism is far less specific about the nature of the creator. I won’t comment on Hinduism as I have never felt I grasped it’s core philosophy. And Buddhism can scarcely be called a religion at all.
If you agree that that is a reasonable working definition, then communism fails on count one. Even if a political leader can induce, through indoctrination, propaganda, social dislocation, ruthless purges, hysteria and fear, a 1984 atmosphere of monomaniacal devotion to the Great Leader, that ain’t religion. It doesn’t address the eternal.
Not to say religion doesn’t use all these techniques (hell, where do you think Stalin and Hitler learned them?), but rather that religious impulses are very different from conditions induced by quasi-religious methods for political ends.
I’m sure my definition can be picked apart, but I don’t think the emotions felt by those taking part in a Nurumberg Rally are the same as those felt by most religious believers in their daily lives. Although there is a certain overlap, in some parts of the world.
GT, May I say, you make the mistake of thinking that everyone who disagrees with you on a few points of certainty is either a fool or a liar.
They may be neither, and still be wrong.
To put it as crudely as possible – to say Communism is dogmatic in the same way religion is dogmatic is reasonable; to conclude that it therefore is religion is not, because religion has other features which Communism does not have.
Cats have four legs, and so do alligators; it does not follow that cats are alligators.
Damm it! I was going to post the cat has four legs analogy but O.B beat me to it.It works perfectly for G.T.
Now, OB, I still think that you’re on the wrong tack. I’ll try to explain my view on this.
“There are a lot of problems with that defence”; sorry, are you saying that the Church should be saying that adultery doesn’t matter. How can they possibly take that view and still be taken seriously? Even atheists have legitimate concerns about condoning adultery. And how is the Church allowing adultery to be punished with death? Surely that reponsibility rests with the adulterers themselves. If they don’t want to take the risk of punishment by slow death they can decide to use a condom.
The Church’s view is, given what they have to start with, morally consistent. Abstinence and monogamy will greatly reduce the spread of Aids and other STD’s if people commit to that regime. You do not have to be religious to see that it might be an effective strategy in combatting those diseases.
I can’t see how all these people out there having unprotected adulterous sex (sometimes with members of the same sex), against the wishes of their Church, suddenly decide to not use a condom just because the Church said so. If a man has committed adultery and become infected, and then has unprotected sex with his wife, then that is a despicable act. But is that an act that the Church would condone? Surely they would recommend abstinence.
The Church’s policies, if carried out as the Church requires, would actually help in AIDS-prevention.
Except oh dear little christian eagle-bomber, that the church’s policy on condoms also condemns the poorest parts of the world to overpopulation.
And, do you really, really REALLY think – assuming that you can think independently of the Vatican – that people won’t screw outside of marriage (whether married or not)?
They’ve been doing it since before written records began, and I don’t think there’s any likliehood of it stopping become some unmarried male in Rome tells them to.
Alternatively, you could try reading the “Decameron”.
P.S. for Richard – four-legs analogy bad – read my cross-posted piece, just above yours.
I am curious as to whether the African countries that are most at risk from AIDS are predominantly Catholic? Nigeria, for example has about 3,000,000 AIDS cases but only 15% or so of the country are papists (that’s about 17,000,000 souls). How come the remaining 14,000,000 Nigerian catholics have survived the murderous policies of Rome?
John M: was wondering about that, too.
The subsaharan African countries with the highest prevalence of AIDS are Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Malawi, South Africa (with Swaziland and Lesotho), Central Africa, Mozambique, and Zambia. All of these with higher than 10 percent infection rates.
These are, respectively, predominantly non-Catholic Christian (Botswana); syncretistic indigenous/Christian (Zimbabwe); Lutheran (Namibia); Protestant (Malawi); various non-Catholic Christian (South Africa); mainly indigenous with 25% RC (Centrafica); various Christian/Muslim with about 25% RC (Mozambique) and predominantly Christian with about 25% Catholics (Zambia).
Right. For comparison, the subsaharan African countries with the lowest rate of HIV infection are Benin, Somalia, Guinea, Madagascar, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone. All below two percent. Of religion, these are, predominantly indigenous (Benin); muslim (Somalia); muslim (Guinea); about half indigenous, with 40% Christian and Catholics apparently half of that (Madagascar); muslim (Niger); muslim (Senegal) and muslim (Sierra Leone).
To gain a clearer picture, the main catholic countries of subsaharan Africa are Burundi, Cape Verde, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, Sao Tome et Principe. These are, I think, the only majority Catholic countries in Africa.
Their rate of HIV infection is respectively 3.3% (Burundi); unknown(?) (Cape Verde); 3.2% (Congo); 3.2% (Eq. Guinea); 3.1% (Rwanda); unknown (Sao Tome et Principe). The sub-saharan “average” is 6.1%.
Now, it would probably be nonsensical to claim that the lower-than-average infection rates in Burundi or Congo, or the low infection rates in many islamic countries, are due to the salutory effects of Roman Catholicism or Islam. But conversely, there is, on the face of it, surely not much of a correlation between prevalence of HIV and theoretical adherence to Papal commands. So to regard as Fred Halliday does the Pope as a mass murderer is a hysterical exaggeration.
This does not let the Vatican off the hook, mind you. Particularly in the way its standpoint on condom use may interfere with the work of aid organizations, etc.
eagleb, of course I’m not saying that the Church should be saying that adultery doesn’t matter. Why would I be? Just for one thing, not everything that matters entails the death penalty. For another, the fact that something matters doesn’t make it a good idea to punish innocent bystanders.
“And how is the Church allowing adultery to be punished with death? Surely that reponsibility rests with the adulterers themselves. If they don’t want to take the risk of punishment by slow death they can decide to use a condom.”
I said how. You’re ignoring the most blindingly obvious problem with what you’re saying. It’s just arithmetic, if you like. Condoms are relevant to two person (or more than two) sex. A and B have sex. A has had sex with someone other than B; B has not had sex with anyone other than A. A has HIV or AIDS; B does not. The Church forbids condom use by anyone; if A and B have sex without a condom, A will be very likely to infect B, especially if A is male. The Church is condemning B to death along with A. This is, I repeat, blindingly obvious – and yet you haven’t addressed it at all. Everything you say on the subject is an evasion. It’s not always a question of ‘the adulterers,’ it’s often a question of one adulterer and his (usually his) faithful spouse or partner; it is also a question of their children. It’s not just a question of taking ‘the risk of punishment,’ it’s a question of taking the (very large) risk of infecting someone else. I would of course oppose the church’s policy even if it did apply only to people with multiple sex partners, but you’re refusing even to notice the fact that it doesn’t.
“If a man has committed adultery and become infected, and then has unprotected sex with his wife, then that is a despicable act. But is that an act that the Church would condone? Surely they would recommend abstinence.”
Of course it damn well is an act that the Church would condone, in fact it mandates it. It doesn’t condone the adultery, but it does forbid using a condom given that the adultery has taken place (or given anything else). That makes adultery a capital crime, and it also condemns the innocent to death along with the guilty (to adopt the rhetoric of guilt and innocence for adultery for the sake of argument).
Your position is, apparently, that it is worth punishing adultery by condemning both adulterers and their non-adulterous spouses or partners to death and their children to misery and possibly also death. You haven’t given a ghost of a reason why the Church can’t condemn adultery in the strongest possible terms without also forbidding the use of condoms – you haven’t said anything about why the first entails the second.
“So to regard as Fred Halliday does the Pope as a mass murderer is a hysterical exaggeration.”
Oh dear, how shocking. The pope is not a mass murderer; he murders only a few million or hundred thousand people. The definition of a ‘mass murderer’ is…um…more than however many the pope has murdered. It’s very very very shocking that Fred Halliday is so hysterical; hardly shocking at all that the pope is in the business of sub-mass murder for the sake of not using birth control devices.
Blegh.
Perhaps I should not have used the word “exaggeration”, then. Because it is the whole attribution of AIDS deaths to Papal policy which I find dubious, at least to the extent Fred Halliday uses it. There’s a host of factors involved here. To what extent does the Pope’s policy lead to Catholics risk HIV infection to a greater extent than non-Catholics? Not much, evidently. Ah, but you might say that Evangelical Christians and other denominational groups relate not much differently to condom usage than the Vatican. True (though one might ask whether it is religion that causes reactionary moralism, or reactionary moralism finding an all too cozy place in religion) – but then again, condom use isn’t exactly celebrated in islamic circles either, and in majority muslim countries, there does seem to be a lower -than-average infection rate.
Also, to what extent is Papal policy transmitted to local priests, Catholic aid organizations, hospitals, etc.? Again, here attribution is a very difficult issue because many heterosexual men are quite eager to hear condom use is disallowed, and find it much more difficult to obey the Church’s policy on monogamy than its policy on condom usage. Take for example Uganda, which does seem to have achieved some remarkable success in pushing back HIV infection rates (though they apparently stagnate at about 6%, still) by a policy promoting both abstinence and condom use. About a third of the population of Uganda is Catholic. To what extent did the Catholic Church in Uganda obstruct, to what extent help government efforts to push back AIDS? To what extent have churches been happy to promote abstinence, while leaving the government at peace to promote condom use? This is quite a complex issue.
All in all, I am not all that convinced whether the situation would change very much, were the Vatican to reverse its policy on contraceptives tomorrow.
But all that may be beside the point. Regardless of whether Vatican policy has good or ill effect, the Vatican has a moral duty to do the right thing. Which in this case is clearly to promote the use of condoms. Regardless of one’s position to sexual promiscuity – to fail to encourage protective measures against a lethal disease because one is afraid of sexual promiscuity is perverse.
I just don’t think that the Vatican’s culpability in that regard leads to Ratzinger being a mass murderer. And I suspect that charge is being levelled quite often without much reflection on how much influence Vatican policies really have on human behaviour.
Well, the Vatican’s moral duty is what jumps out of the whole thing for me. The fact that it feels able to go on saying ‘No condoms’ under the circumstances is, I think, morally despicable. If it causes just one extra death, it’s appalling, and there seems little reason to think it doesn’t cause a lot more than that.
Yes OB, I follow your A and B example. And I agree that if A has been infected, and might not even know it, and has unprotected sex with faithful partner B, then B is condemned through no fault of, usually, hers. And the kids may wind
up as orphans.
But I find it hard to believe that people who would be willing to have unprotected sex outside of marriage, with same sex partners possibly, and be reckless enough to do so without a condom, have a strong enough religion zeal to then deliberately decide not to use a condom with their monogamous partner, simply because the Church says so. I would suggest that in such a culture it is the disdain for condoms that is the problem. And yes, the Church has encouraged disdain, but for different reasons.
My point is that the Church doctrine is morally consistent if it is followed to the letter. And that if the Church relents and says that, well if you must, somehow, find yourself committing adultery, then, for God’s sake(!), use a condom; then it is seriously weakening is abstinence message. If not completing negating it.
“Of course it damn well is an act that the Church would condone, in fact it mandates it.” I haven’t checked that with a local Catholic priest, have you?
Regarding “you haven’t given a ghost of a reason why the Church can’t condemn adultery in the strongest possible terms without also forbidding the use of condoms – you haven’t said anything about why the first entails the second.” Well, that is because yes, they could. But the Church has adopted the view that condoms are wrong (whether we agree with that or not). What I’m saying is the adoption of that view, if combined with their message of monogamy and abstinence is still consistent and can play a part in reducing the spread of Aids. To blame the Church because some fellas can’t keep it their pants is unjust.
eagleb
Right. And by the same token, parents who forbid their children to play with knives would be ‘consistent’ if, after one of their children disobeyed and played with a knife and cut herself, they refused to get the child medical attention and allowed her to bleed to death. Parents who forbid their children to play with matches would be ‘consistent’ if, after one of their children disobeyed and played with matches and burned herself, they refused to get the child medical attention and allowed her to die screaming of second degree burns.
I’m not disputing whether the Vatican is consistent or not, I don’t care whether it’s consistent or not, I think it’s wrong, and brutal, and thuggish, and reckless, and evil.
“the Church has adopted the view that condoms are wrong (whether we agree with that or not).”
That parenthesis is rich. So if you are ‘consistent’ you think the church is morally okie doke if it declares some random piece of latex – gloves for medical workers, for instance – ‘wrong’ for footling reasons and then when the random thing turns out to be essential in the prevention of a lethal disease, goes on declaring it wrong without breaking stride. Say the medical workers are all energetic adulterers if you like; it’s still a morally revolting stance.
No OB, your analogies don’t make sense to me. The Church is not advocating not treating the sick.
Abstinence and monogamy are essential to prevent the spread of disease as well, and might actually be more effective. The Church is advocating an alternative, it is not ignoring the problem.
On a similar theme, should the green movement be tried for mass murder because of the ban on use of DDT? Did the green movement have a morally revolting stance? They also advocated alternative strategies to combatting a lethal disease. What is your view on this issue? Is it morally consistent?
“e-b” said: “The Church is not advocating not treating the sick.”
Does this apply in the “clinic” that used to be run by the Albanian madwoman called “Mother Theresa” in Calcutta, where painkilling, and other medicines were forbidden to the patients, then?
Or in forbidding women and girls who have been raped the ability to get an abortion?
It is also worth remembering that the church, or significant portions of it, have at various times over the past thousand years attempted to:
Prevent any medicines being used – because that would be contrary to “god’s will” …
Prevent dissections for the advancement of medical knowledge….
Prevent the use of anaesthetics, especially in childbirth …..
Prevent the use of IVF for childless MARRIED couples ….
And now prevent stem-cell research ….
How dare you?
I think I’m starting to see now what’s behind your fondness of the L-word, GT. You seem to apply it to people who make statements that you think are untrue, regardless of whether they know it is untrue. But the L-word is only applicable to people who knowingly, consciously make untrue statements. Newton’s cosmology was proven to be “wrong” as a whole (though it remains a decent approximation) – this does not make Newton a L. Fred Hoyle was probably wrong about the steady-state universe, but not a L. You have made many statements concerning religion which I think are quite wrong, but intellectual insincerity would be the last thing I would accuse you of. In contrast, it is not unreasonable, pace Hitchens, to think that George W. Bush was a L. with regards to the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
“The Church is not advocating not treating the sick.”
I didn’t say anything about the sick. My analogies were to children who were injured because they disobeyed an order. The church is not advocating not treating the sick or the injured, but what it is doing is advocating non-use of a known medical preventive; in your account (and that of all the apologists who make this argument, and they are Legion) it is okay for the church to do that because if everyone obeyed their order to be monogamous, the condom issue would not exist. My analogy was not intended to match every detail; it was intended to ask if you think disobedience of one command is a reason for allowing the disobeyer to die.
Of course abstinence and monogamy also prevent the spread of AIDS, and indeed there is no doubt that they are more effective. Of course they are more effective! But that is not the issue; the issue is that the church sees fit to go on forbidding the use of condoms despite the fact that they too are effective at preventing the spread of disease.
“The Church is advocating an alternative, it is not ignoring the problem.”
But the church is not compelled to advocate an alternative to the exclusion of everything else – and it ought not to, just as evangelicals and the Bush admin ought not to. By insisting on doing so, it makes failure or refusal to be monogamous or abstinent a capital crime. The church ought not to do that. The fact that it does do that is morally revolting, and nothing you have said makes it any less so.
Can you explain why you think (if you do) that advocacy of abstinence and monogamy plus forbidding condoms is morally better than advocacy of abstinence and monogamy by itself?
Ophelia writes:
“A has HIV or AIDS; B does not. The Church forbids condom use by anyone; if A and B have sex without a condom, A will be very likely to infect B, especially if A is male. The Church is condemning B to death along with A.” [emphasis mine]
Strictly speaking, the Church in a non-theocratic state forbids nothing. The Church interprets what it believes to be God’s word, and advises the faithful in this respect. The Church says to B: “it is entirely your business whether you use a condom or not, but you should know that according to the Bible (as we read it) God will be deeply displeased and, should you die while in the state of mortal sin, you will be condemned to hell. It’s up to you to decide about what you want to do with your immortal soul. It was God’s idea, not ours – take it or leave it.”
When you state that the church … ought not to do anything to hinder AIDS-prevention. The church ought not to be helping along ‘punishment’ in the form of a horrible disease .., you are preaching to the converted (i.e. to people like myself). But your ‘ought’ won’t cut any ice the Church, because God’s transcendental ‘ought’ always trumps the secularist’s this-worldly ‘ought’. AIDS will merely destroy your body; over-population will merely lead to pestilence and war; but sin is the road to perdition and will damn your immortal soul. And compared with the promise of eternal life, earthly suffering is peanuts. That is the doctrine of the Catholic Church: in for a penny, in for a pound.
As to use of the terms ‘loathsome’ and ‘murderous’: readers might well take this to mean that you consider Catholic priests to be virtually criminals (= people who do loathsome and murderous things) and indeed that devout Catholic laypeople are much the same, or at least that they are trotting after criminals, since they are effectively aiding and abetting the perpetrators of loathsome, murderous things.
Demonising one’s adversaries is justifiable only when one’s adversaries ARE demons. But most people are no more responsible for their beliefs than they are for their skin pigmentation, since only a small percentage of the world’s population seems to have the intellectual competence to question the truth of the religion or ideology or value system in which they were indoctrinated during their formative years.
Humans are probably just as hardwired to believe in supernatural agents as they are to have curly hair and a dark skin or to be sexually attracted to the same sex. They literally ‘can’t help it’. So people may make tragic errors with appalling consequences, but to virtually dehumanize them for such errors is tantamount to dehumanizing the human race for being human.
Cathal,
Now you’re just being a tease.
Cathal is always just being a tease.
The Church says to B: “it is entirely your business whether you use a condom or not, but you should know that according to the Bible (as we read it) God will be deeply displeased and, should you die while in the state of mortal sin, you will be condemned to hell. It’s up to you to decide about what you want to do with your immortal soul. It was God’s idea, not ours – take it or leave it.”
Like hell it does! It says don’t use condoms.
Sorry, not enough time to reply in detail.
OB – “Can you explain why you think (if you do) that advocacy of abstinence and monogamy plus forbidding condoms is morally better than advocacy of abstinence and monogamy by itself?” With the question framed like that then, clearly, no, it is not morally better.
OB again – “it (not using a condom) makes failure or refusal to be monogamous or abstinent a capital crime”. But isn’t the Church on higher moral ground if it insists on monogamy and abstinence? They say that failure to adhere to their doctrines on monogamy and abstinence are transgressions that will send your soul to hell, unless you repent. If people are taking the Church seriously, then they would not be transgressing in the first place, their use or non-use of condoms are not going to be determined by the dictates of the Church.
Ultimately, what I’m saying is that the Church sincerely, genuinely, deeply, believes that what have determined is correct, moral and for the good of mankind, on earth and in heaven. Sure, we may, in the end, disagree with them, but we should not blindly reject their ideas without trying to understand them.
‘Ultimately, what I’m saying is that the Church sincerely, genuinely, deeply, believes that what have determined is correct, moral and for the good of mankind, on earth and in heaven.’
There may well be individuals who believe that, but the church (as in the roman catholic church) is a vast bureaucratic organisation which has given a high priority to temporal power for almost the whole of its existence and whose upper echelons are peopled by men of keen political instincts, a firm grasp of realpolitik and a long tradition of ruthless pragmatism when it comes to forwarding the organisations interests.
Your view seems a little starry eyed.
eb,
“With the question framed like that then, clearly, no, it is not morally better.”
Okay. The framing started with you, really – you kept posing monogamy and abstinence as an implied antithesis to abstinence and monogamy plus forbidding condoms, and I wanted to see if you would agree to the explicit antithesis. You don’t; so, good. If you agree to that much you agree (it seems to me) that there is no very good reason for the church to ban condoms, since not banning condoms does not in the least prevent them from insisting on abstinence and monogamy. They can insist on abstinence and monogamy to their hearts’ content and simply leave condoms alone.
“But isn’t the Church on higher moral ground if it insists on monogamy and abstinence?”
One, see above – they can do that. Two, not necessarily. It depends on whether one thinks monogamy and abstinence are morally better. I would argue that that’s a large and complicated issue, rather than a simple matter of church dogma and mandate.
“If people are taking the Church seriously, then they would not be transgressing in the first place”
We’ve done all that. You’re back to ignoring the problem of the innocent bystanders again – the problem that even on your own terms, even if one agrees that non-monogamy is wicked, the punishment entailed by banning condoms falls on monogamous people as well as non-monogamous people. The problem here is that the punishment is wildly, wickedly indiscriminate, even if one agrees (as I certainly don’t) that non-monogamous people deserve to get a horrible fatal disease as punishment for disobeying the church.
“what I’m saying is that the Church sincerely, genuinely, deeply, believes that what have determined is correct, moral and for the good of mankind, on earth and in heaven.”
I know. But I sincerely, genuinely, deeply believe that that’s a bad and dangerous argument, for the simple reason that people can and do sincerely, genuinely, deeply believe godawful cruel murderous terrible things, so that sincerity and depth of belief is simply no guarantee at all of the value of what is believed. There’s a horrible hellish yawning gap there – between sincerity and benevolence. My point about the church’s ban on condoms is not that it’s insincere but that to the extent that it is obeyed it has terrible, hideous effects, and that it is morally revolting that the church persists in the policy.
“Sure, we may, in the end, disagree with them, but we should not blindly reject their ideas without trying to understand them.”
What makes you think I haven’t tried to understand them? What do you mean by ‘in the end’? How do you know this isn’t already ‘the end’? How do you know and what makes you think I haven’t already tried to understand them, thought about and discussed the issue, and in the end, disagreed with them? Why do you think the end doesn’t occur until after you have entered the discussion? Why do you assume you have come in at the beginning? In short, from my point of view, this already is the end in which I disagree with them.
OB said “people can and do sincerely, genuinely, deeply believe godawful cruel murderous terrible things, so that sincerity and depth of belief is simply no guarantee at all of the value of what is believed”. Yes, I agree. My point was that they do not have evil intent.
And, apologies to you OB, I was not trying to refer to you when I said that we should first understand them. I was referring to the likes of Fred Halliday and his hyperbole.
Thanks for the discussion OB, its been instructive for me.
The End (at least for me on this thread).
Thanks, eagleb; for me too.