Wonderful essay.

Personally I confess to quite serious disobedience to conscience and this is a great wake up call.

The author reminds me of CS Lewis "Disobedience to conscience makes conscience blind". We cede real liberty for disintegrating license when we ignore the 'still small voice' of our all wise and loving Creator.

In our personal lives we know it leads to the slavery to vice and collectively to some or other dictatorship. Today it is the 'Tyranny of Liberalism' [James Kalb]

Recent C20th regimes resorted to brutal violence when threatened with the question "why should they rule?", today Power is careful to make no martyrs but the end is the same.

For those walking around today, the stuff of history tomorrow, outlawing truth is by bureaucratic enforcement - speech codes, media enquiries, and human rights heresy trials. Our inherited hard won human rights to conscience, religion, and free speech are threats to those who claim for themselves the authority to rule, which is why the political class find the undermining of those rights, like media enquiries so bewitchingly in the national interest.

Freedom to our rulers really does substantively mean we should be free only to want what the regime wants. All else is labelled divisive and a threat to civil peace. Michael Smith the radio presenter is another recent example - hounded out of public life for speaking the truth.

Just as God is hidden in plain sight in conscience, in the Eucharist, in the Word proclaimed in churches on our street corners. So is the same banal, mechanical and inexorable evil hidden in plain sight. We have only two choices.

Something wicked is making itself known in the silent bureaucratic and 'lawful' spilling of the blood of innocent babies by the 50 million world wide every year.

The author gives us the terrible warning - allow the divine spark of conscience to dim, the very power to tell truth from falsehood - our essential humanity - and we have strategically already lost.

Mishka Góra,

Welcome to our peace zone.

I don't find the switch from the general to the particular in this article at all convincing.

To describe war as putting "a spotlight on the things that fundamentally matter" seems to ignore the vital aspect that war itself is inherently unjustifiable.

Once you have cleared that mental hurdle, of course any "moral" decisions will become acutely simplified. In fact, the absence of moral judgments - in particular the licence to take the lives of others with impunity - is the very foundation stone of war itself. It is therefore mere wordplay to parallel the absence of "philosophical abstraction, equivocation, or neutrality" under war conditions, with the far more complex issues faced by a society that does not have a metaphorical gun at its head.

The irony of Ms Gora's position arrives with a rush. Alluding to the individual decisions that upset her, she concludes:

"Such failure to think things through and evaluate right and wrong is a fertile ground for totalitarianism."

Newsflash, Ms Gora. War is also fertile ground for totalitarianism. Holding it up as a prism through which to view the clarity of moral positions adopted under its influence is a nonsense.

While it is always very comforting to think in terms of absolutes, comparing the decisions made by citizens within a peacetime society unfavourably against atrocities committed under the moral "umbrella" of war, seems to me just a step too far.

Thank you Mishka for a thoughtful and challenging article. Pericles, I think your reading of the article may have been too literal and you have therefore missed the nuances of Mishka's comparison of her responses to her experience of wartime compared to her responses to the individual issues that offend her conscience.

The article should be read by our political representatives, their apparatchiki and the members of political parties as it provides a timely reminder of the fate that awaits people when group thinking is allowed to override personal conscience.

"The official line, as far as I can tell, is that these veterans weren't exposed to sufficient radiation."

That sounds quite reasonable to me. In order to show entitlement to special treatment it should be necessary to show that you have special needs. If the Maralinga veterans can't do that, then there's no need to treat them differently to anybody else.

It's a shame that your new conscience-driven world order doesn't have room for evidence and logic, but that seems to be a problem with all ideologically-driven manifestos, whether they come from religion or politics.

Martin Ibn Warriq's comment about the "still small voice" concerns me.

Conscience is developed through the granting and witholding of love in childhood and can be a very poor guide to adult behaviour. Conscience is induced by emotional stress much the same way most religions use fear and promise.

Instead ethical behaviour, or rather an ethicaal platform to guide future behaviour, will grow out of clear thinking applied to each particular issue an individual has to confront.

That is the beauty of the ethics classes now operating in NSW for those young students who have been opted out of religious instruction (dogma). These students now give thought to situations which are created and designed to make them think about issues. Thoy have to consider one another's opinion and, if they ar able, defend their own position or change their view.

The ability to think and discern once developed over about 5o hours or so of such discussion will be an advantage to them, their future partners and offspring virtually for ever. Socrates had the right approach, live an examined life.

Pericles, thank-you so much for proving my point! Perhaps I should have added a paragraph about the tendency of readers to totally disregard parts of articles that don’t fit into their theory about the author and to make irrational judgements.

To illustrate, you said ‘ To describe war as putting "a spotlight on the things that fundamentally matter" seems to ignore the vital aspect that war itself is inherently unjustifiable.’ This totally ignores what I wrote: “I'm not saying that war is a good thing – quite the opposite, in fact! – but it is salutary to recognise what good can be salvaged from the worst of situations.”

You later claimed that I compared ‘the decisions made by citizens within a peacetime society unfavourably against atrocities committed under the moral "umbrella" of war’. Actually, I compared the peacetime decisions with the good that can be salvaged from war, such as “the satisfaction of seeing children whisked to safety”. I didn’t create any ‘moral umbrella of war’ and nor did I discuss atrocities. I did, however, point out the obscenity of not trying to save a defenceless child and the moral responsibility we have to feed and shelter refugees. I don’t think I said very much that was favourable about war, merely that war can – if we let it – bring out the best in us.

However, going by your comments, you are not capable of appraising such things rationally.

Jon J, there is evidence of sufficient exposure, e.g. “A 2007 New Zealand study found that Kiwi sailors exposed to the nuclear testing had three times the level of genetic abnormality and higher rates of cancer than the general population.” (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/maralinga-vets-join-british-class-action/story-e6frg6nf-1225810746108) Our politicians have been furnished with plenty of evidence. Saying the exposure was insufficient doesn’t make it insufficient.

Interesting article Miskha. Provocative. In a good sense. I need some time to reread, sleep and then think. To weigh your ideas up against my conceptions and aspects of my morality.

Initially I sensed little emphasis on responsibility especially mutual or shared responsibilities between all involved/not involved in many circumstances. Eg war, refugee situations, infanticide, abortion, parliamentary exercises.

I'm also a little confused about your anti-semitic labelling. Would you mind clarifying for me. Thanks.

Why, thank you, my dear.

>>However, going by your comments, you are not capable of appraising such things rationally.<<

I might suggest that, going by your reaction to my comments, you are not capable of appraising your own work rationally. But of course I wouldn't do that, because that would be impolite.

I read your somewhat apologetic "I'm not saying that war is a good thing – quite the opposite, in fact!", complete with its emphatic exclamation mark. But it sat poorly with the black-and-white judgments you make in the rest of the article.

Of course good can come of evil.

"...it is salutary to recognise what good can be salvaged from the worst of situations"

No contest. But your position tends to fray around the edges when you shift those same decisions into a peacetime situation. Are you suggesting, for example, that outside a war zone we would be less inclined to "whisk children to safety" where a gun was pointed at their head?

Of course not. But you then equate the "whisking of children to safety" in a war zone, with an implied condemnation of our treatment of refugees.

>>...the obscenity of not trying to save a defenceless child and the moral responsibility we have to feed and shelter refugees<<

The first is a clear moral position, identical in war and in peace.

The second is a moral issue in war, but a political challenge in peacetime. You are attempting to turn it into a moral absolute, I accept that. But I don't see your argument as convincing as, apparently, you yourself do.

The thrust of your piece is that we should be more conscious of the moral dimension of our political decisions. A position with which I completely agree. It is only the clumsy battering-ram of war and peace imagery that I find utterly unconvincing, and detrimental to your argument.

Thanks for your comment Foyle.

Clearly my conception of conscience is the traditional Christian one which any google search could fill out. The CSL quote shows clearly that it can be strengthened, atrophied and therefore formed in childhood.

You beg the question of 'what clear teaching' actually is.

What are the foundations of this 'ethics' course? it's starting premises? Why should these be taken as true? They are philosophical/theological convictions about which you can in principle never produce physical scientific evidence for. Yet it is only from these - from within a narrative context – a picture or story about how the universe actually is - that human action makes sense and can be ethical.

I'm sure you're aware, to assert without argument that anti-traditional moral enquiry is 'ethical' is to hide one's own starting assumption from oneself. It is blind adherence to non-theist orthodoxy. An orthodoxy that has its own fears and promises that give an outline to its own teaching. Without these boundaries of thought and action authoritatively taught as true and good, how can one authoritatively pass on teaching that isn't considered authoritative?

Religious sanctions, (religious in the sense of unpremised and transcendent) will still be taught but they will be passed on uncritically because merely assumed rather than questioned. This boundary keeping while not boundary keeping will still find expression but in perverse ways in the classroom – writ large - political correctness, human rights tribunals and media enquiries.

It is dogmatic to rule out traditional time tested dogma as to how to properly form consciences as dogmatic, - and so incoherent.

So it's just garden variety begging the question to assert Christian inspired forming of consciences lacks the efficacy to: 'consider another's opinion' and 'defend their own position' or 'change their view'.

Foyle if your post was supposed to represent a defence of 'ethics' classes then, you'll forgive me if I think, we have much more to fear from those who support and promote such a thing than what we have now.

*Conscience is developed through the granting and witholding of love in childhood and can be a very poor guide to adult behaviour.*

So very true, Foyle. Of course the Catholic nuns and others try
to brainwash innocent kiddies with all sorts of nonsense, to make
them feel guilty. Given the warped Catholic views about sex and
sexuality, no wonder many are scarred for life.

Your ethics classes sound like a breathe of fresh air to me.
I would have much preferred them at school, rather then the
many attempts at religious indoctrination that I had to endure as
a kid.

You remember much Yabby, I wonder if this teaching made as much of an impression:

"Answer not a fool according to his folly"

Best wishes.

imajulianutter, I regard the incident in question as anti-semitic because:

1) The organisers insisted on labelling a group as “Jewish” even though they had already defined themselves as “Israeli”. No other group had an ethnic label imposed on them.
2) The organisers objected to the specific use of “Israel” and “Israeli”, and Israel is a Jewish state.

Pericles, I am indeed suggesting that we are less inclined to whisk children threatened with death to safety. We live in a country where, at least in Victoria, there is no protection for a baby who has survived an abortion or been delivered with the intention of pregnancy termination. In the example that I gave, a 32-week-old baby was “terminated”, i.e. killed, outside of the womb after being delivered by caesarean section. Whether he would have died regardless is irrelevant, because euthanasia is not legal in this country, (but I would also note that the ultrasound technician’s inability to tell him apart from his twin raises grave doubts regarding the diagnosis of a heart defect). Even though babies regularly survive premature birth without major health repercussions as early as 23 weeks, they may be legally terminated up to 40 weeks. That, in my assessment, is a failure on our part to protect our offspring, both inside and outside of the womb.

As for your comments about moral issues vs political challenges, I am not entirely sure I follow you. I did not imply any condemnation of our treatment of refugees – the fact is we do feed and give shelter to refugees – and I think it’s a moral duty in both war and peace to do so. It may be a logistical challenge, especially in war as I have personally experienced, and whether the refugees in question should stay in our country is certainly a political challenge which I’m not going to discuss here, but the basics of food and shelter are, in my humble opinion, a moral duty.

Conscience does NOT promote TOURISM.

We need TOURISM to maintain OUR AAA rating at Moodys.

Therefore Conscience is dispensable.

PERIOD

Barry O'Swan,

Chancellor,

Desert Island Australia

PS its all in the SWEET SPOT of an optimistic Australia - at ANY cost - TO YOU!

Martin Ibn Warriq,
My promotion of ethics classes (discussion of open ended questions) is based on empirical evidence obtained form a sixteen months trial at Clackmannanshire, Scotland, under the control of the University of Dundee.

Compared to about 90 carefully matched students in differebts schools the students in the trial classes showed an average improvement in intelligence measurement of 6.5% and in the these classes bullying almost disappeared. Retesting at aged 12-13, three years after the trial, the test students had more than retained the improvements they had achieved in the trial.

The initial material for the NSW ethics classes was prepared by Associate Professor Philip Cam who has worked with the Clackmannanshire education authority. Recent subjects in the NSW classes have been about graffiti, fairness; stealing, the structure of argument, homelessness, killing animals for food, why should we trust science and treating people equally. Surely discussion of such subjects is better than filling a child's head with dogma.

The Clackmannanshire report has been available on the OLO site for about 18 months at my request;
http://onlineopinion.com.au/documents/articles/Clackmannan.doc

Everyone reading this should read the report. Dogma dumbs people down; ethics classes teaches them to think and justify their thoughts with cogent arguments

Foyle,

I'm still unclear exactly how Christian belief militates against the promotion of those particular goods. I'm not being argumentative when I ask whether you have any acquaintance with the Gospels at all? The religious tradition of our civilisation?

Again you mention dogma, I don't think it means what you think it means. Did you understand the philosophical point about first premises? About ultimate convictions: God or no-God? Do you understand that in the way you're trying to use the word dogma you hide from yourself your own commitment to a secularist dogma: the first article of which has to be taken on faith that "there is no God". From here we can enumerate all the other secularist dogmas that flow from that.

Now I'm not against you having dogmas I just want the people that I live in society with to be aware of the content of the dogmas they cannot help but have. Turnips and trees have no dogmas, humans simply must have them. I don't want my fellow Australians to be walking around unaware of the articles of their own faith - that is a recipe for in your case secularist atheocracy - an utterly unjustified and therefore ungrounded faith in your own creed.

Mishka Góra

You soon, I hope, will see that your concept of War and Peace as events distinct in Time and Place is absurd.

There is only War and discontinuance of War, but never Peace.

Peace is incompatible with Life.

Foyle along with those of similar ehtics always pulls out the thinking card as opposed to dogma when justifying their ethics classes.

Funny enough most pushing ethics classes refuse to think for a moment when it comes to killing the unborn. In this case they refuse logic and invent pseudo science as a justification for such barbarity.

Oh, that old chestnut, Martin Ibn Warriq.

>>About ultimate convictions: God or no-God? Do you understand that in the way you're trying to use the word dogma you hide from yourself your own commitment to a secularist dogma: the first article of which has to be taken on faith that "there is no God".<<

The first premise, requiring no faith of any kind, is that "there is no evidence for God".

In the same way that there is no evidence for the Loch Ness monster (I was getting a little tired of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny). It would clearly be a misrepresentation to insist that "it is necessary to take on faith that there is no Loch Ness monster". The absence of evidence is sufficient to draw a conclusion that such a creature does not exist.

At the same time, there are many thousands of people who believe that Nessie is indeed real.

Just hiding.

I have no problem with that, but know that their commitment to that belief can only be supported by faith, not evidence. In a strange way, I admire them, for their ability to stick to their guns, each time a new, more sophisticated search reveals... nothing.

Now, if those folk were to insist that the existence of Nessie be taught in schools, alongside the long history of searches that come up empty, on the basis that people wouldn't have been talking about it for centuries if there wasn't *something* there... I would object.

And if some Nessie-lovers were to invent some pseudo-science to boost their cause, I would object to that, too.

*Funny enough most pushing ethics classes refuse to think for a moment when it comes to killing the unborn.*

Not so runner. But a little less bible thumping and a bit better
understanding of biology, could do people like you a world of
good, so that you actually understand the difference between a
being and a person.

Pericles, while you are objecting, please allow me to join you.

The author and others seem to assume that working out the best way to behave in a given difficult situation (as rehearsed in ethics classes) will necessarily come up with a conclusion in conflict with religious teaching. Sometimes it will; often it won't. When it does, it will usually be because the nature of the moral dilemma is such that there is no religious rule exactly suited to solving it because the men (and women?) who wrote the religious rules did not anticipate that situation. Today's humans confront many moral dilemmas that would have been unthinkable to the ethicists of two thousand years ago because they arise from technical and other situations that could not have existed then. If religious rules were adequate guidance to behaviour in all situations in a contemporary world, why would hospitals, universities and research establishments need to have ethics committees? For many people, aborting foetuses is a stomach churning thing to do. For others, who understand that literally thousands of foetuses abort naturally every day and that very often the women who lose babies did not even know they were pregnant, the horror of abortion can seem less. It is understandable that some religions regard every human induced abortion as a monstrous disaster. Others might wonder why, if abortion is so monstrous, God, or nature, or chance, or whatever it is, seems to cause so many more of them than humans are responsible for. To make and impose a single, ineluctable moral judgment on every human who sanctions an abortion because of some religious belief seems unrealistically harsh. Sometimes, moral dilemmas are best solved by people skilled in making ethical judgments rather than by unthinkingly applied religious rules. Ethics classes seem much more likely to produce people with these skills than scripture classes.

What a confused article, one in a string of sloppy articles we have here lately with no backbone, beginning, end, logic, introspection or rational evaluation.

Are you experimenting with the latest essay-writing robot, Graham?

It's getting closer, but still wouldn't pass the Turing test.

GlenC, you may wish to inform yourself a little better. Most spontaneous abortions (miscarriages) occur when the child is still an embryo. It would be very unusual for a woman to miscarry a foetus and not know she was pregnant. Furthermore, the example given in the article was of a 32-week-old premature baby. He ceased to be a foetus when he exited the womb during a caesarean section. He wasn’t even particularly premature – most babies at this age won’t even require intensive care.

As for ethics classes, I studied Ethics and Philosophy under Peter Singer and wasn’t particularly impressed with his conclusions. I will grant, however, that he was very rational, and I do agree with him that to be logically consistent anyone who advocates abortion cannot object to infanticide because birth does not mark some transformation into human or person.

In theory, ethics classes and religious instruction are not only compatible but intricately linked. You cannot teach ethics without teaching the principles of ethical behaviour, and most of the principles we adhere to in the Western world are based on Judeo-Christian commandments such as “thou shalt not murder” or “thou shalt not steal” or “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Without moral principles, rational thinking and ethical judgement have no starting point.

Last time I checked Mischka, the god of the old testament had no
problems with killing off people and babies en masse, hardly a
wonderful guide. Funnily enough the Buddhists developed their
own morals and ethics, without his input.

But of course if you look in nature, social species which kill
their own would not survive too well. We also see empathy and
other qualities in various primate species, even pairbonding in
some. So far more likely our ethics have a genetic background,
but of course religious institutions will always try and claim
any brownie points for themselves.

Teaching kids emotional literacy, conflict resolution skills and
similar, would be far more useful in their lives then threatening
them with burning in hell forever.

Infanticide is not fundamentally different then killing an unborn fetus - the severity of the action is on a continuous sliding scale, based on the baby's development and level of awareness.

From a moral standpoint, both are normally wrong, but it should not be illegal to take the life of someone who has not yet come under the protection of the state (the state, being immoral itself, must not be appointed as our spiritual director).

For someone to come under the protection of the state, they should first be introduced to society. This can be done by the person him/herself if they are old enough to understand that action, or in most cases, by his/her parents (one or both). There should be some rite of introduction to society - some parents may prefer to perform this rite before the baby is born, some while in hospital, some later - and some not at all, and some may prefer to wait until the child grows sufficiently to decide for themselves whether or not they wish to become part of society. So long as a child was not introduced to society, his/her legal status would be similar to that of a pet of his/her parents.

Currently in Australia, this rite seems to be the application for the baby-bonus. I think that there should be a more respectful and meaningful way to do it.

western culture today seems very good at efficient rationalisation and mechanistic Skinnerian explanations of how humans behave. We in the modern secular west seem to have been more persuaded by the likes of Margaret Sangster (which led to eugenics, sterilisations and our abortion holocaust industry today) and Peter Singer (justifying infanticide on the basis of insufficient personality or consciousness, but in justifying euthanasia, he was not inclined to include his own mother, was he) than we care to admit. Their ideologies infest our zeitgeist and collective unconscious but 66 years after Hitler's defeat we still admire the fiendish little hasbeen painter for his ruthless focus and efficiency.

Has reason left you all bereft? Abortion is not - and has never been - 'therapeutic', it is murder, full stop. Infanticide. As is euthanasia. It is not some 'merciful release'. This is about the battle between a 'culture of life' versus a 'culture of death', as the late Blessed John Paul II put it.

Slavery was once considered a sound rational economic choice, and even had supporters quoting St Paul. But the buying and selling of human beings - in today's parlance 'human trafficking' - is wrong, evil, and, like torture, can never ever be justified under any circumstances whatsoever.

There is a hierarchy of truth, and if we fail to see even the very basic grounding of it in light of reason, then we can but expect more horrors to come, like human/animal experiments, tailor made babies for IVF, and the sloughing off of the infirm, decrepit, disabled and frail as just so much 'cleansing' of the species to make way for new blood.

Soylent Green may be nearer than we think, and we'd hardly notice.

The average mother in the developed word gives live birth to less than three children in her lifetime. With the depletion of our resources that is more than enough

Over her reproductive period every woman produces over 300 eggs each capable of being fertilised. In the prime of her life almost in every case an aborted fertilised egg can be replaced at some later more suitable time.

Overpopulation rather than underpopulation is the human problem. My Thinking on this subject system convinces me that at least early in a pregnancy a woman has the right to decide if a baby is the best decision for her, particularly if the potential child is genetically defective. Similarly a terminally ill person should be able to determine the time and place of his or her last breath.

Religious bigots should have no rights over another adult’s llife choices.

In effect about 300 eggs in the menstrual cycles of each woman's potential childbearing years are destroyed along with millions of her partner’s sperm.

The sensible limit to abortion is that no one has the right to inflict pain or disadvantage on a conscious personality. The foetus in the first few months is not a conscious personality.

We need to get our priorities right.

All pro-lifers should ask themselves what is their personal priority between unborn foetuses and the 20,000+ children who die each day because we do not feed or house them adequately or did not provide adequate birth control measures to their parents.

Ahhhh Mishka, Your clarification was of emmense hjelp. I've considered your rambling lecture and come to the conclusion it is phoney, as it promotes a fundamental deception... a great big fat lie.

It is a wonderfully fine exposition of you and your attitudes. I find your attitudes disgustingly bigotted and your consciense to be in error if not fundamentally flawed.

In the West our consciense as you claim is not extinguished, it is alive, and well and continues to be nurtured in the finest traditions of our liberal democracies.
In your tyrannical Israel there is ample evidence of no consciense or very limited conscience.

Never mind 'the satisfaction of seeing children whisked to safety.'

Answer these:

What sort of consciense allows the torture and forced confessions, the shackling and handcuffing, the show trials in Israeli military tribunals, where evidence isn't required and the sebsequent automatic jailing of 12 year old Palestinian children who throw stones at armed soldiers, as a show of resistance to an illegal repressive military occupation, and at militarily protected and armed civillian people who are stealling their land?

On many levels we in the west find many aspects of this situation totally abhorrent, against our consciense and fundamentally in complete opposite to our belief structure.

Why don't Jewish Israelis feel the same?

The deception you promote is likening Israeli traditions to those of us westerners.
That is fundamentally flawed and a deceipt.

Western traditions and consciense is built on Christian forgiveness and traditional reasoning.
Israeli traditions are built on the Judean traditions of revenge and atonement.

It is the morality of the Israelis that lacks consciense. It cannot be extinguished as it never exists in the same moral framework as our western consciense.

Our western morality sees us love, have compassion for and forgive our enemy. It is our consciense that ensures that.

As a prime example of our differences compare our occupations of Japan and Germany with those of Israel's occupation of Palestine.

Never mind moving the child from danger why don't you support removing the danger from the Palestinian children.

Yuyutsu, I think you have ably demonstrated what happens when rational thinking is not underpinned by moral principle or at very least the guidance of natural law. You suggest that our offspring should be given ‘pet’ status until the parents decide to either introduce them into society as a person or avail themselves of the legal right to take the life of their child. I am happy to say that I think most Australians have enough of a conscience (even if it is under-exercised) to find this suggestion morally abhorrent. Children are not pets; they are human beings with the same inalienable (human) rights as adults, such as the right to life.

Foyle, in terms of conscience, I would challenge you to consult yours as to whether the right you ascribe to a woman to terminate her pregnancy really ought to over-ride the right of the unborn child to choose life and the right of the father to choose protect his offspring from being killed. I would also remind you that we are not talking about “an aborted fertilised egg”. Abortions are of embryos and foetuses, not zygotes, and most occur at 10-12 weeks when the child is a foetus, which means it is fully-formed – it even has fingerprints. You say that the “sensible” limit to abortion is on the basis of inflicting pain or consciousness, but we do not allow murder of an adult, even if it is painless, and there is evidence that a foetus does feel pain. As to when this sensory ability begins, that is something we cannot determine exactly, which suggests to me that one cannot settle upon an exact point and that erring on the side of caution the only way to be certain one is doing no harm is to not allow it at any point. (cont.)

(cont.)
I would also question the rationality of comparing the deliberate killing of offspring to the deaths of children by malnutrition etc. which we do, in our inadequate but nevertheless commendable way, try to prevent. Thousands of adults die in similar circumstances all over the world, but we do not suggest that we kill off various adults in our society to reduce the population (not that it would help anyway). Reducing the population in the western world has virtually no effect in alleviating overpopulation in the third world. If anything, increasing our population would create more of a tax and charity base with which to combat the problems of the third world. In my experience, pro-lifers are no less concerned about children dying overseas, it’s just that they don’t believe in ignoring injustices at home, and I would suggest that you should ask yourself how numbing ourselves to the plight of our own children assists dying children on the other side of the world. The more we ignore injustice in our own sphere, the less we will be able to recognise it anywhere. If we can remain unmoved by a 32-week-old baby being killed outside of the womb, why should we care about a newborn baby in Africa whose mother is too malnourished to produce sufficient breastmilk for its survival?

imajulianutter, I am fascinated that you have managed to deduce so much from my mere objection to an Israeli group being singled out on account of its perceived Jewishness. I would point out that I am neither Jewish nor Israeli and that I merely oppose anti-Semitism when I observe it, but that given the nature of your rant I will take it as a compliment that you find my views so offensive and remind you that you are somewhat off-topic in your remarks.

Thank you Mishka Gora for your respectful and inoffensive correction when you said, "GlenC, you may wish to inform yourself a little better. Most spontaneous abortions (miscarriages) occur when the child is still an embryo. It would be very unusual for a woman to miscarry a foetus and not know she was pregnant."
Having informed myself a little better, I now know that in humans the embryo becomes a foetus at about 8 weeks. May I respond, though, that you did not distinguish between embryo and foetus in that you referred to "the child" in each stage. So I think my point stands, namely that the way we regard the loss of a "child" through abortion needs to be weighed against the fact that nature (God?) "kills" many more "children" than humans do when they sanction abortions. I'm not saying that this realisation must mitigate against the seriousness of "death" by abortion, but I am suggesting that it might, and that people who adopt a black and white position — "abortion is murder, end of question" — should not, perhaps, be so sure of themselves.
I should also say that I find Foyle's comments on this matter reassuring, convincing and wise. It is sobering to realise that we humans could be complicit in the deaths of thousands of sentient children every day in countries that cannot support them, probably many than are "killed" by aborters, but many fewer than are "killed" by God for good natural reasons while they are still in embryo

GlenC, as a lover of words, I would like to point out that child can mean "son or daughter". It refers to the relationship of the foetus to the mother and Mishka Gora's usage is therefore quite correct, whether it is for an embryo, foetus, or infant. It is the child of the mother and father, regardless of its development.

Mishka Gora,

Since we're talking ethics....

Our "charity base" really serves as some some alleviation to our conscience. Many third world countries are victims of IMF and World Bank intervention which enables corrupt regimes to thrive and Western corporate interests to line their pockets at the expense of the general populations of those countries so affected.

We are numb to their plight - and then we congratulate ourselves for "charity" after pillaging their resources and livelihoods.

Combating the problems of the third world should include an examination of Western corporate profiteering at their expense.

*Abortions are of embryos and foetuses, not zygotes, and most occur at 10-12 weeks when the child is a foetus, which means it is fully-formed – it even has fingerprints.*

It might have fingerprints Mishka, but it does not have a fully
formed human brain. No human brain = no person.

You'll have to wait until around week 23 for what can be called
a human brain to develop.

It's unfortunate that so many people feel unable to disagree with somebody without insulting them. I'm grateful to the Mishka Gora for being prepared to interact civilly with those of us who disagree with her, and particularly grateful for her ability to remain measured in the face of some outrageously over-the-top sprays.
I question her statement: "Without moral principles, rational thinking and ethical judgement have no starting point." I think this is the kind of starting point relied upon by, for example, those who argue for the retention of scripture classes in NSW primary schools to the exclusion of the finally approved, but already under renewed threat, ethics classes. Their argument is that we have to have handed down behavioural rules to start with and that the only inerrant source of such rules is God. I think is it at least as credible to argue that the best starting point for humans is consideration of what behaviours best advance the well being of the human species. I'd further suggest that all of the ethical rules developed by our ancestors in almost all societies were derived from such considerations and that they gave rise to what evolved into religious rules rather than the other way around. We know, for example, that the Christian claim to have developed the golden rule — do unto others — is denied by the historical evidence of its observance in societies that pre-dated Jesus by thousands of years.

Yabby,

According to Desmond, Morris, at birth the human brain is only 23 percent of its final adult size..."Rapid growth continues for a further six years after birth, and the whole growing process is not complete until about the twenty-third year of life.

Poirot, size is not the issue. Its having the bits that actually
can let it function. The neocortex develops very late. Its also
responsible for sensory perception. To cut a long story short,
no neocortex = no human brain.

BTW here is a website that may interest you, all about brains.

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html

.

Mishka,

I never suggested that it is moral to kill babies (born or unborn) - quite the contrary! All I wrote is that it should be LEGAL to kill babies who are not yet introduced to society.

I never suggested that children are pets. All I wrote is that their LEGAL status (those who were not introduced) should be similar to that of pets
(and there are both advantages and disadvantages in having that legal status).

Legality and morality have very little between them.

The only justification for having a state in the first place, is of people freely joining together in a contract to collectively defend each other. The state as such, is a mundane rather than a moral body, and it is immoral for the state to force its protection on anyone who has not asked for it, be they adults or children. As babies are too young to decide for themselves whether or not they want to have anything with the mechanism of the state and be protected by it, it is up to those who by nature love them most to make this decision for them (until such time that they grow and may choose otherwise).

As for the supposed "inalienable right to life", there is no justification apart from human-chauvinism to limit it to humans and fail to include animals as well. Even if such right exists, it is not for the amoral institute of the state to enforce it - or would the state protect the animals in the same way?

Yabby, the example Mishka Gora gave in her article was of a 32-week-old child, so I don't see how your argument regarding brain development and pain is relevant.

GlenC, I have to wonder if you're putting words into Mrs Gora's mouth. She mentioned moral principles and even natural law, and merely said that ethics and religious instruction were compatible. I'm quite a fan of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, for example, and I rather think that the Christian writings (e.g. Gratian and Aquinas) on natural law only enhance rather than detract from our understanding of it. I object to indoctrination in schools, but I don't see why there need be such antipathy towards teaching Christian thought in context.

Yabby,

It's not only about size, it's also about brain development.

Neoteny - the retaining and prolonging of infantile characteristics into adulthood - is what makes our species so brainy.. A chimpanzee has completed its brain development twelve months after birth - a monkey, within its first six months.

So is this as much a question of potential? Should we consider a newborn less human than an adult because its brain development and size is less, or do we accord it the potential it promises?

This 'conscience' attribute, which our author lauds and implores us to employ more extensively, proves to be a rather slippery customer to pin down. Praiseworthy though the acquisition and exercise of a sound and well-developed conscience may be, this thread has already identified problematics regarding its origins, development, and universal efficacy - subject as it is to the individual's environment (culture, religion, family, education and life experience).

'Conscience' appears in fact to be a continuous work in progress, incorporating mores, norms, morals, morality, emotiveness, empathy and compassion, abhorrence and love, ethics and religion. A complicated construct of many vectors, including being subject to societal consensus and debate, and particular context - of war or peace, of feast or famine, of freedom or repression.

Foyle posted early on "Conscience is developed through the granting and witholding of love in childhood..." I consider this proposition to be incorrect, even though Yabby appeared to concur in his subsequent post. I consider alternatively that it is not 'love' but guidance and example which sets the 'initial' path to conscience, with love providing the relevant environment conducive either to belief or to distrust of those early teachings. And interestingly, learning starts in the womb.

The abortion debate gives us a good example of the 'living' nature of conscience. Our law now allows legal abortion, and it appears that a majority of our populace accepts this as a woman's right - even despite the possible contrary view of an individual spouse or biological 'father'. However the debate continues, some favouring pre-conditions, and others outright rejection irrespective of circumstance. No perfect moral, more, norm or morality. In some other cultures there would be no debate, just widespread acceptance of the norm - probably with occasional dissenters. Therefore, should a consensus 'norm' or 'more' determine the exercise of 'conscience', or can it be deeper than that? Given that reasonable dissent is healthy. (Incidentally I agree that the author's example was infanticide.)

I agree with ethics teaching and ethical conduct. Not keen on philosophy though.

@Pericles. You conflate theism with faith. It needs no faith to show that God exists, Aristotle did that 300 BC. Proving God exists is the easy part - trusting in Him, having faith in Him during the hard times is the hard part and where Jesus comes in.

To help you make the distinction this is a very good article. http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/09/classical-theism.html from a professional philosopher and expert on classical theism

Poirot, no I don't think its about potential. Its about what
constitutes a person, versus what constitutes a being. A sperm
is a being, an embryo is a being, a foetus is a being. Without
a human brain, you have no person.The term murder applies to people,
not beings. If the brain stops, you have a corpse, not a person.

Think of it like building a car. Without an engine, its not yet
a car.

Montgomery, if you reread Mishka's post of Friday 9.32 am, you will
know what I was refering to.

Toni being a god botherer will have trouble with gay union i suspect. It must be hard answering to a fictitious being. If such a person existed so many thousand years ago, what has it got to do with now. It impedes the mind, and distorts thinking for the wider community.

Mishka,

Off topic? Really?

The topic was consciense and you quoted diverse examples. I've responded to one of those as it was completely not relevant to a discussion of westerrn consciense and morality.

I then linked to Israeli lack of consciense simply because you raised Israel and Jewishness ... neither of which adhere to or practise our western morality.

You also wrongfully claimed Isreal to be a Jewish state... technically we westerners set up Israel to be a state containing a homeland for Jewish people. When we did that we stipulated the existing residents rights to property, religions, customs and freedoms were to be respected.

Why would you claim anti-semitism when the dancing was not of Isreali in general nature but only representative of one segment of Israeli society. The organisers were not anti-semitic. They were even handed in not allowing the Jewish misrepresentation of Israel as being a Jewish state. (Something you also do.)

Your history of contributions here show clearly you support Israel and it's propaganda and that you in the past have equated Israeli and Western morality.
It isn't important that you are not Jewish nor Israeli. What is important is that you are repeating the Israeli propaganda and it's big fat lies apparently without assessing such from a western moral viewpoint nor are you applying a western consciense.

You'd utterly condemn Israel aggression if you did those two things. Your intellect is obvious from your utterances so it is extremely unlikely it is coincidental or lacking deliberation that you show you confuse the two divergent moralities and continually try to promote Isreal propaganda.

Now what was you position in regard to those shackled and handcuffed 12 year old stone throwing Palestinian children?

In defence of Mishka against Imajulianutter's flawed criticism, I would add my two-bobs' worth. Imajulianutter accuses Mishka of "Israeli propaganda" but takes the opportunity himself of regurgitating long-discredited anti-Israel and somewhat racist propaganda. He asks "Why don't Jewish Israelis feel the same" in terms of opposing alleged human rights abuses against Palestinians.How does he know that they don't feel the same? In fact, every day there are Jewish Israeli protests in this direction (often resulting in High Court proceedings) via Israeli human rights organizations, media outlets (such as the newspaper Ha'aretz) and via joint Jewish-Arab organizations. Either he has not heard of these or has chosen to ignore them for propaganda purposes. Things are not black and white, one-dimensional or monolithic as he wants us to believe. His opinions reflect a rather immature view of this region. Yes, there are abuses such he describes, but these are viewed with disgust by many Israelis, just as the incarceration of our juvenile asylum seekers and juvenile "people smugglers" are viewed by many Australians (at least nobody levels a blanket accusation against all "Christian Australians" as being collectively responsible).Israel exists in a rather tough neighbourhood. Its level of abuses also needs to be compared (though not excused) with the current massacres in Syria, the ongoing murder of Coptic Christians in Egypt, and the torture of Fatah prisoners by Hamas in Gaza.

imajulianutter, I’m not sure you deserve a reply, but for the sake of others I will this last time.

Firstly, not all the dancers in the Machol Israeli Dance Club are Jewish, so I don’t see how the organisers had any right to demand that an Israeli group change their name to Jewish. They labelled this group Jewish, and that demonstrates their anti-Semitism even if it is untrue, perhaps all the more because it is untrue. When people send me hate mail calling me a “dirty Jewess” as they have done, that is anti-Semitism even though I am not Jewish, because they clearly see it as an insult to call someone a Jew. (Personally, I feel quite honoured.)

Israel was established as a Jewish state. Seeing as you seem to doubt this, you may wish to read the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel (May 14, 1948):
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace%20Process/Guide%20to%20the%20Peace%20Process/Declaration%20of%20Establishment%20of%20State%20of%20Israel

As for “those shackled and handcuffed 12 year old stone throwing Palestinian children”, I can only speak generally, because you haven’t given me a specific incident. I would note that you can kill a person by throwing stones at them, and you can certainly cause very dangerous traffic accidents by throwing stones at vehicles, so I don’t think stone-throwing is a minor offence. I have also seen 12-year-olds holding rocket propelled grenades in a war zone, so I am not inclined to consider all children harmless. No country is perfect, and I am sure Israel is no exception, but I can think of situations in which the shackling and handcuffing of 12-year-olds could be justified.

You have concluded that my morality is defective because I believe there is such thing as a Judeo-Christian basis to the Western tradition. I think your moral reasoning is defective because you judge everyone’s morality by their stance on the Middle East conflict. You have said I support Israel and its propaganda. I would dispute the propaganda part, but if you mean that I support the existence of the State of Israel then I plead guilty. I have no more to say to you.

Saltpetre, conscience is indeed a very complicated matter. I wrote this article as a stimulus and I am glad to see it has generated a fair amount of thought and discussion.

Yuyutsu, your moral convictions cannot be very strong given what you have written. I think your advocacy of the legalisation of the immoral is a stark example of the decline of moral reasoning in our society. That you think it immoral for the state to protect those so vulnerable that they are incapable of asking for protection, I find quite flabbergasting.

We do protect animals, by the way, though some argue that protection is insufficient, and we even protect the embryos of animals in certain cases.

Montgomery, I don't understand your point. You say, " GlenC, I have to wonder if you're putting words into Mrs Gora's mouth. She mentioned moral principles and even natural law, and merely said that ethics and religious instruction were compatible." I don't think I put any words into Mrs Gora's mouth. I merely repeated what she said. I even enclosed it in quotation marks. What she said, and what I questioned, was: "Without moral principles, rational thinking and ethical judgement have no starting point."
I said, and still think, that by implying that rational thinking about ethics cannot proceed until after moral principles have been agreed, she is implying that to do ethics, we have to import some starting principles from somewhere beyond our own resources. That is pretty close to arguing that we cannot develop ethical principles without firstly accepting religious tenets and the existence of some out-of-world intelligence to tell us how to behave. And that is what the Sydney Archbishops, the religious right wing of the Coalition government and other trenchant opponents of ethics classes in public schools argue.
You imply that I disputed Mrs Gora's contention that, "In theory, ethics classes and religious instruction are not only compatible but intricately linked. You cannot teach ethics without teaching the principles of ethical behaviour, and most of the principles we adhere to in the Western world are based on Judeo-Christian commandments such as “thou shalt not murder” or “thou shalt not steal” or “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I didn't dispute that for I agree with her that there is considerable similarity between the rules that Christian religions teach and the rules that ethicists work out from first principles using only rational processes.

Continued…

… But Mrs Gora's understanding seems to be that ethics is a process of getting acquainted with and adopting pre-existing moral principles. It's a circular argument. You start with moral principles and end up using ethics to discover or establish that they are moral principles. Ethics is surely a process of using rational functions to work out from first principle what it's most sensible to accept as moral principles.
And I think that Mrs Gora, and the Christian apologists, draw a very long bow when they imply that before Christianity, there can have been no understanding that murdering and stealing were bad habits for societies to engage in. As I suggested, it is preposterous to assume, as most Christians seem to, that Jesus invented the golden rule.
By the way, if religious instruction and ethics were completely compatible as you come close to saying is Mrs Gora's position, why would we need both? Why not just go with ethics and avoid all the fights that inevitably arise when one religion flexes its doctrinal muscles against another's; or its current understanding of what the Scriptures say against last century's? Isn't it the case that most of what now pose as tenets of Christian religious practice were known and observed in many societies long before Jesus went back-packing in India?

@Glen C.

A more general point is being made when saying that all ethical systems have to start from somewhere. It wasn't to say meta-ethical positions like deontologism (an a priori system - categorical principles that shape the entire system) is necessarily true rather, that no one metaethical position is undisputed, with first principles accepted by all. Philosophical journals continue to publish articles about Divine Command Theory, Kantianism, biologism, natural law, utilitarianism etc.

Where do you stand with respect to the existence of universals? In trying to answer that question I hope it will bring out the point.

So all ethical system require a metaethics so that the reasoning makes sense - so that it can reach the goal of morality: to order human actions to properly match the way the world really is, so that what we do doesn't hurt us. But one has to know those goals before hand. When you leave your house you take a particular direction because you have a goal, a purpose - movement alone won't give you that. It is the same with moving the intellect along a reasoning process - in what direction should it go? What are needed to direct the intellect are concepts about what is really fundamental about the world and human life. And it is important to point out today, these fundamentals cannot be demonstrated in any physical scientific way - they are theological/philosophical claims - things you need to before you can read off meanings from physical facts.

It doesn't work to insist that the meaning of the word 'rational' is self evident. It's a word about human purposes, and includes ultimately the purpose and meaning of life itself.

But we know that in asking the question we become more human.

God bless.

P.s. If you'd like to know in what sense ethical reasoning depends upon God this is an excellent guide http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/does-morality-depend-on-god.html

Yes Miskha, Three things:

Firstly I am seriously questioning you morality and I am calling your consciense as in error.

There is a Judaen tradition and there is a Christian tradition.

There is a divergence from the Judaeo tradition or the old testament and the Jewish book, with the establishment of the Christian tradition as spoken by Christ and the New Testament.

The traditions clash often.

The irreconcilable difference is the forgiving nature of the Christian tradition and the vengenful nature of the Judaen tradition.

You must show us all how you have recconciled this fundamental difference.
You cannot.
You in consequence cherry pick moralities to support your positions.

That shows an error in your consciense.

Secondly 'Israel was established as a Jewish state.'

Yes ... by Jewish people who never applied the conditions of the Balfour declaration,

'... the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, ...'

Clearly Isreal has never extinguished the rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Israel so Israel is then in fact a multi-cultural state that draws it's legal systems legitimacy from the Judean religion.

Just a we in Australia have a multi-cultural community but our justice system is based in a Christian belief.

The Jewish community when claiming Israel as a Jewish state attempt to extinguish, in world opinion, the rights of a claim to Israeli statehood of Israeli Muslims, Christian and other communities.

You might have to agree these groups don't share the Cultural tradition of the traditional Jewish Machol Dance.

You issued an anti-semitic slur against an Australian Festival when the organisers of the festival recognised the deceipt in calling the traditional Jewish Machol Dance, Israeli, and then acted on their consciense in demanding honesty.

That about sums up your attitudes.

When you are confronted with the dishonesty of Israeli behaviour you do not employ Western morality nor consciense in arriving at a western reasoned position.

GlenC and Montgomery, you are both correct to a certain degree. In order to think rationally on a topic and make an ethical judgement, I do believe you need to start with a relevant moral principle. I did not, however, say how one could or should arrive at those principles. I did not, as GlenC claims, imply that there were no moral principles prior to Christianity, and nor do any of the Christians with whom I associate. I gave Judeo-Christian examples because they are familiar and because our society and law have been built on such examples.

Personally-speaking, most of my principles were thrashed out as an atheist. My parents did not allow me to attend RE at school so I grew up entirely free of religious indoctrination. I'd dearly love to see the Classics taught in our schools, but I think it would lessen our understanding of natural law to exclude some of the greatest Christian thinkers on this topic, such as Aquinas. I think there are many ways of arriving at moral principles, but in hindsight I could have arrived at the same conclusions via a shorter route if I had been educated in the various Christian teachings of Augustine, Aquinas, etc. It may have been an even shorter route had I been educated in the teachings of the various Church councils, but I’ve always been the sort of person to question everything, so I probably would have taken the longer route regardless.

As for ethics classes vs RE, I think both are flawed in practice, but would favour the reform of RE rather than its replacement by so-called ethics classes that merely indoctrinate moral relativism. In theory, good religious education would include Plato, for example, because of his influence on early Christian thinking, but primarily because he is a giant in the area of moral reasoning. I think it should also be remembered that some people would rather not spend their entire lives grappling with moral philosophy and would prefer to be offered a starting point, and I believe that starting point should be a Judeo-Christian one.

Thirdly and finally.

You attempt to justify the illegal Israeli occupation and it's mistreatment of children.

see the Weekend Australian of Saturday 27 November 2011
'Stone Cold Justice' by John Lyons.

Yesterday in Redcliffe Qld, a youth was committed to trial for using a slingshot to fire stones at two women.

He will follow the process.

There was no interrogation, no forced confession, no handcuffs nor shackles, he had able representation and evidence will be presented at his trial, in a civillian court before a civillian Judge. He's been charged under criminal law.

He won't automatically be sentenced to time in an adult prison.

Now our western consciense is clearly in play in this situation.

Your consciense, if you claim to be western, with your displayed attitudes shown in the Palestinians childrens situation, is in error or you have applied quite a different set of non-western liberal democratic morals.

'I think your moral reasoning is defective because you judge everyone’s morality by their stance on the Middle East conflict.'

Errr ... no I judge peoples' conscienses on how they apply their consiense to any situation.

I might remind you that you raised the odd-ball middle East morality in denigrating the operation of western consciense in western behaviours, because you believe only Jewish traditions represent Israel.
If you don't see that, just try to tell us how you can recconcile that Machol, as Israeli, is in any way representing Bedouin.

Whyever you'd do that is completely unfathomable.

imajulianutter, you said

"The Jewish community when claiming Israel as a Jewish state attempt to extinguish, in world opinion, the rights of a claim to Israeli statehood of Israeli Muslims, Christian and other communities.

You might have to agree these groups don't share the Cultural tradition of the traditional Jewish Machol Dance."

I don't share the cultural tradition of Australian aborigines, but I would never in a million years ask them to change their "Australian Dance Group" name to "Koori Dance Group". That would deny their Australian identity and be discriminatory.

Israel is and has been a Jewish state since 1948. Its citizens include Jews, Christians, Muslims, and atheists. Get over it!

Imajulianutter, what is with your obsession with Israel? What is wrong with having a Jewish state, particularly in a region where more and more countries are opting for an Islamic identity.
Yes, so it is OK to have a multitude of Islamic republics in the Middle East, often concomitant with the curtailment of basic freedoms on non-Muslims within their borders. No, so it is not OK to have a single Jewish republic in the same region??
About 20% of Israel’s population is not Jewish, but is predominantly Arab ( Muslim and Christian)
There are Arab members of parliament, Arab judges, Arabs in the diplomatic service, Arabic newspapers, independent Arab schools and Arabic is an official language. In the surrounding Arab countries there are no such Jewish equivalents, particularly as the Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Arab world . ( see p.37 in this attachment http://www.justiceforjews.com/jjac.pdf) . Of the roughly 900,000 Arab Jewish refugees (in essence they were Arab in culture and Arabic was their language) expelled from the various countries after 1948, most ended up in Israel. They are, and always were, indigenous to the Middle East. They and their descendents number well over 3 million, just over half the Jewish population of Israel. Little wonder that there is a prevailing view that what happened in 1948 was an exchange of populations with the surrounding Arab countries, much the same that occurred post-1945 in other parts of the world.
Yes, there is discrimination at various levels imposed on the Arab citizens of Israel, and it is officially sanctioned and it is a gross injustice. Yet despite this, the consensus is that as individuals, Israeli Arabs enjoy more rights and freedoms than their counterparts under various Arab regimes.

Just because my moral convictions are different than yours, Mishka, does not make them any less strong.

The whole idea of making things illegal is sick. The phenomena of states imposing themselves and their rules on everyone just because they happen to live in a particular area, is simply a form of bullying - it is immoral (how much more so given that no area on the face of the earth is free of this state or the other) and the blind acceptance of which, is a stark example of the decline of moral reasoning in our society.

It is not that states are totally illegitimate -they have their place as voluntary pacts of people who choose to defend themselves collectively. Those who want to participate in the state-thing may subscribe to whatever rules they want, but the state has no moral right to dictate its rules to others who have not agreed to participate in their game.

If people (or animals for that matter) who are not members of that defense-pact disturb the peace of members, then the state may consider them "enemies" and take necessary actions to stop them (that's what defense is all about after all), but the state has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of non-members.

Becoming a member of a state is a serious decision with numerous long-term implications, advantages and disadvantages. Apart from having one's life protected (to the best of the state's ability), these implications usually include welfare payments, health services, immunization, schooling and similar measures designed to bring up a person to become the type of citizen which the state desires.

Does the baby want to be part of this package deal? The answer is not obvious and the state has no basis to assume it will be in its favour.

As a baby (born or unborn) is technically unable to voice such a decision, s/he is represented by those closest to him/her, those who love him/her most and his/her best well-wishers - his/her parents, to whom s/he chose to be born (or in their absence, his/her grandparents).

(continued...)

(...continued)

Having expressed your horror at the legitimacy of killing children, let me give an example: Mr. Abraham is told by God to take his son, his only son, his beloved son Isaac, to a certain mountain to be sacrificed there to God. However, the government of Canaan tells him "Stop. That's illegal" and puts Abraham in jail: does it truly serve Isaac's interest to have his father in jail and himself unsacrificed against God's request? Did he come to this world just to have fun - or in order to set an example? Wasn't the experience of walking together with his father up the mountain worth more than any other experience Isaac could have in life.

Is it the government's right to interpose itself between a man and his God and claim itself superior? If your answer is Yes, then you consider the state as your God and I have nothing further to say to you, but if it is No, then consider another example: Ahaz sacrificed his son to Moloch. If you say this should be illegal, then essentially you are saying that the state has a right to determine which God is the true God.

History is full of states imposing a specific religion on its populace while persecuting, torturing and executing those of other religions. Australia claims to be religion-neutral, but is it? As the pendulum in Australia is swinging away from Christianity, the Australian state is instead currently approaching the rule of the pseudo-religion of humanism.

Humanists would not admit to being a religion because they consider themselves atheists, but in fact, they consider man as their god. Their assumptions look like any other religious principles and should not be taken for granted. Some of them are:

* Life is a physical phenomena, determined primarily by the presence of breathing.
* Human life is superior than animal life.
* All men/women are equal.
* Living is the highest value.

I don't buy that! - and that places me in a religious minority here.

(continued...)

(...continued)

In summary:

When an unbroken family is of a religion, or in general of a belief-system, other than the state's, it is their natural and unalienable right to not belong to that state and not introduce their children to that state. There in no moral justification in the world requiring them to adhere to the state's laws.

As the state is a secular, amoral institute, is can define "threat" at its pleasure, and if the state in question believes that the action of the above family threaten its members, then it may take actions against it (which may or may not be moral) - but not when the only "threatened" are the family's children, not being members of that state.

Should a state attempt to enforce morality (not that it actually can, nor is it its role), then it should go all the way, stoning adulterers, banning alcohol, meat, unhealthy food, and any form of abortion, chopping the hands of thieves - and more, depending on the specific religious views upon which it attempts to construct its morality (perhaps torture unbelievers or burn those who work on the Sabbath?).

However, what I say is that a state must not play God.

Unless you indicate otherwise, I take it that you do not consider religious persecution immoral, nor the slaughter and eating of animals.

@ Yuyutsu.

I agree that the family is the fundamental unit of society, and thus is pre-political. I agree it is not the state that mediates or creates our freedom it is constitutive of our very humanity. And states must not play God. An unjust law is no law.

The justice of feticide and infanticide, is in your account, premised on no higher will but that of the parents - a kind of divine will - the power over life and death. Parents who did not self-create, but rather inherited a universe, world, humanity and the freedom that comes with it. Not being the source of these things but acting as if they were - is to play God.

You chafe against State absolutism quite rightly but you replace it with the absolute will of the individual. These are two sides of the same debased coin of voluntarism (the philosophy that good has no real existence or nature but is created merely in the act of willing some thing) - that arbitrary desire is the sole criterion of the good.

Voluntarism as an idea in the West began in the error of theological voluntarism (William of Ockham in the C14th). The declension beginning from the sovereignty of God's will (God can will evil), to the King's (divine right of Kings), to the nation-state's (positive law), now to the sovereignty of individuals (abortion, infanticide, gay 'marriage', sexual license) has had horrific effects.

A small error at the beginning of a chain of reasoning results in very big errors in its conclusion. Yuyutsu, your hideous belief in infanticide is one of those.

P.s. you need to fly immediately to Aristotle-Aquinas and natural law http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/does-morality-depend-on-god.html and hope for the best.

God be with you.

Lindy,

The indigenous people of Australia and Palestine have much in common.

Their lands have been invaded and stolen. We in Australia initially attempted to repress the Aboriginal cultures.

In Australia we've ceased those things and apologised. We've also started to return rights to vast tracts of traditional lands. We also formerly recognise and highlight Indigenous culture. Modern Australian and he traditional culture in Australia are highly recognisable. Many Australians like to think they can share the tradition of both Australian cultures. Don't you?

Israel culture isn't recognisable at all and it's various parts are not able to be shared by all.

I don't think anyone in their right mind would try to compare conditions in Australia for indigenous people as being on a par with conditions in Israel for it's indigenous people.

In Palestine the discrimination, land-theft and repression is ongoning.

Lindy, my consciense is stirred whenever I see injustice and underhanded or overt support for it or feeble attempts at justification of it.

Should I not act on, or extinguish, my consciense?
Wasn't that the point of Mishka's article?
Or is it that both you and Mishka would have us all extinguish our conscienses when it comes to blatant Israeli wrongdoing?

Bempec,

do you think it wrong to have an Apartheid state in South Africa, a Nazi state in Germany, Communist states in much of Eastern Europe and North Korea, Right-wing dictatorships in Chile or Argentina, Mullah-led dictatorships in Iran, left-wing dictatorships in Libya, Yemmen, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. Madness in many African states.

I did and in cases still do.

Israel represses it's own and other people, has invaded it's neighbours and has ongoing illegal occupations.

Your attempt at justicifation by choosing the lesser of two evils doesn't at all change the fundamental vengeful nature of Israel which leads it to be repressive and outlaw.

My consciense stirs whenever there are claims that Israel is like us westerners ... we westerners who exercise consciense.

Israel simply applies it's consciense to only Jewish people and does not apply it to all equally ... like we westerners.

Imajulianutter, I could perhaps take your comments a bit more seriously if you just as vehement towards other “immoral” countries as you are towards Israel. Instead, you seem to solely focus on a campaign of vilifying and de-legitimizing both Israel and the Jewish people, and in the process continue to attack Mishka’s credibility. You make over-generalizations about Israel without any factual back up. In short, you are a negative, one-dimensional thinker. For you everything is black and white, and monolithic, and your world is divided into goodies and baddies. You find nothing good in those that you attack. In short, your ideas contribute nothing to world peace.

Dear Martin,

We have no disagreement. I think I have made it clear already that individual will does not morality make. Morality is from God (though there is still the question of how we get to know God's will, which we may or may not agree on, but is beyond the scope of this article) and one who kills a baby (born or unborn) for selfish reasons will be judged accordingly in heaven (so also one who kills an animal for selfish reasons).

May God also be with you.

One would think that if Catholics were so against abortion, they
would have every reason to encourage better family planning,
tubal litigation, better sex education in schools and suchlike.

Instead, all we've seen is the Vatican fighting 3rd world family
planning all the way, where they can, however they can.

One wonders where their concience is, given the hunger, suffering
and misery that they are responsible for, due to their flawed
dogma.

@Bempec.

Agreed. The anti-Israel crowd lack all proportion and give lip service to equality under law. Israel is 7 million and surrounded by 300 million muslims whose doctrine of dhimmi, or permanent second class status to Christians (who are being murdered and expelled en masse from mulsim countries) and Jews, precedes the State of Israel by 1300 years.

http://markdurie.blogspot.com/2011/06/dhimmitude-and-ibn-ajibah-on-death-of.html

The UN partition of India-Pakistan receives - muslims are the common denominator - is studiously ignored.

These anti-Israel people, especially in Western media, give air to corrupt authoritarian Arab regimes who find the Palestinians useful in their 'blame everything on the Jews' control of the population. And their mindless support of Arab Spring - only ushered in Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood political control.

So imajulianutter has tens of millions under Sharia to worry about now!

Sorry, Martin Ibn Warriq, I can't let that one through to the 'keeper.

>>It needs no faith to show that God exists, Aristotle did that 300 BC. Proving God exists is the easy part<<

Aristotle did no such thing. He completely fudged the question of proof, just as you do yourself. Not to mention, he changed his mind later in his life, as he gained more real-world experience. Just as so many people do today.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, eh?

@Pericles.

Aristotle's cosmo-logical proofs are metaphysical. They don't rest on an accumulation of physical facts. Only one instance of change (challenge: try and understand change) is enough to reason to God. I've linked to Feser many times who shows how it is done if you don't understand. So Aristotle adding experiences later in life, in principle, can make no difference to these proofs.

While I'm here, to generate a bit more respect for the man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ-QIH-6duc is gushing about Aristotle.

People like James Chastek can try and help us approach minds like Aristotle and Aquinas but ultimately . . . we have to awe.

P.s. Aquinas, that stupendous genius himself (of the 5 greatest to have lived?), reserved special esteem for two people other than Our Lord. He called Aristotle 'The Philosopher' (probably the greatest philosopher?) and St. Paul 'The Apostle' "Your great learning Paul" Acts 26:24

Bempec,

You completely fail at comprehension.

Those other countries in the mid east do not lay claim to be like westerners. If they did that and continued in their current mode of operation I would just as vehemently condemn them.

Israel makes claim to western behaviour but behaves in a vein similar to all those on my list. It is dishonest.

And please I will give you just one opportunity to withdraw your charge of me vilifying Jewish people.

I have never ever done that and it is against our laws.

Martin Ibn Warriq
You too completely fail at comprehension and your slur also shows you not only as an intellectual midget but also a dishonest one.

I expected way better from you.

Neither Bempec nor Mishka have displayed your intellectual heights.

In other words, they are not proof at all, Martin Ibn Warriq. Exactly as I said.

>>Aristotle's cosmo-logical proofs are metaphysical<<

Interesting, though, that you cannot even be honest about this either, can you.

Aristotle engaged in a cosmological argument. There are no such things as "cosmo-logical proofs", as you very well know.

"The cosmological argument is less a particular argument than an argument type. It uses a general pattern of argumentation (logos) that makes an inference from certain alleged facts about the world (cosmos) to the existence of a unique being, generally identified with or referred to as God." (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/

Naturally, if you assume that there is a God, you will eventually arrive at the conclusion that there is a God.

>>So Aristotle adding experiences later in life, in principle, can make no difference to these proofs.<<

One more time.

They. Are. Not. Proofs.

Understand?

imajulianutter, none of what you have written makes sense. You are inconsistent and irrational in your attempts at arguments, and you twist what people say to make it fit with what you think they must be saying given that they hold a contrary opinion. I don't see the point in attempting any further discussion with you. Sorry.

Yuyutsu, I think I will allow your posts to speak for themselves. My only response is to say that I disagree with you vehemently and believe that Australians would not want to live in a state that refused to protect children because their parents were of a different religious or cultural persuasion. As to your final sentence, I am opposed to religious persecution but I approve of the humane slaughter of animals for consumption. I do not think it is any more immoral for a human to eat meat than it is immoral for a lion to do so.

Good to see you waving the white flag of surrender Lindy. It would be even better if you were to actually examine the behaviour of Israel rather than simply believe the Israeli propaganda.

Mishka Gora,

You have put forward a well-framed and worthwhile article, and I wish it could be given wide and thoughtful consideration throughout the world at large. Who knows, it might thusly provide some means towards overcoming the major deficiency, as I see it, in the exercise of conscience - which is the inordinate flexibility with which individuals are prone to exercise, or to deny, 'conscience', depending on particular circumstance.

This flexibility reveals itself so clearly when an individual is starving or is placed under severe stress, or is indoctrinated to hate or to loathe some other group or society, is raised without a proper sense of morality, is perhaps recruited as a child soldier, or is defending home, family, kin, or 'group'. Thus, not only does no universal sense of conscience exist, but is rather subject to environment and environmental influence, and particular circumstance.

There may only be one chance for conscience, and that is in a universally free, safe and supportive world, where universal human rights prevail above all else. Such a world may only be achievable under a democratically elected, benign and benevolent world government, with universal suffrage, and where all the resources of the Earth are deemed to be the propery of all. In our present situation it is only the fortunate minority who are free to exercise conscience, compassion and benevolence unreservedly, and even they may be expected to falter.

Sadly, I can only view conscience as a privilege, exercised by one in consideration of the wellbeing of another, a Samaritan act, a genuine exercise of the 'Golden Rule', by the privileged as an act of charity and moral strength, rather than as a universal right or responsibility, unfortunately. Wished that it may not always be so, but given the inherent nature of man it may take a more advanced humanoid species to overcome man's baser drives and ambitions.

We appear far from the attainment of universal wisdom.

Mishka,

You oppose religious persecution -unless it happens to be YOUR religion that persecutes others. Perhaps you are trying to justify it by claiming that your belief-system is technically not a religion. Humanists fail to admit to being a religion, based on the poor excuse that their belief-system has no identifiable god, but missing the elephant in the room, that although they do not make it explicit, they consider MAN to be God.

The humanist doctrine claims that we are just biological blobs and that the highest religious value is in keeping those blobs breathing, especially if they are of the human kind. The arrogant claim by humanists that they know what is the good of a child better than its parents, is based on nothing but this dogma. Since humanists do not believe in spirit, they do not accept, for example, that a child selects the parents to which s/he is born, thus appointing them as his/her best representatives; also that a baby's spirit may at times wish/need to visit earth only for a short term.

The act of "protecting" the life of a child against its expressed wish, interfering with the integrity of a family united in a different religious persuation than the state's, amounts to violence and your argument about what "Australians would not want" is of the Argumentum ad baculum (appeal to violence) fallacy type.

So you consider it moral to kill and eat a cow, but not a human baby, even when the adult cow is more developed and aware than the human baby. That preference for humans is none but another humanist dogma.

The lion preys because he is slave to his instincts. It is those same instincts that drive humans to cling to life practically at all costs. There is nothing sacred or particularly moral about those instincts, it is not the voice of God, but essentially the voice of the genes screaming "propagate us". If you need an example, one result of sanctifying our instincts and those little tyrants (our genes), would be that no child would know who his/her father is!

Saltpetre, thank-you for sharing your thoughts. I’m afraid I’m less optimistic than you about the likelihood of universal human rights and freedom under a democratically-elected world government. History suggests to me that attempts at artificially uniting peoples under a larger umbrella than that of nationhood tend to have the reverse effect of what's intended and create more division and less freedom. So too with democracy in many parts of the world, where the majority vote for repression. Conscience may well be a privilege of sorts, but if it is I believe it comes with a heavy responsibility. Ultimately, though, I think conscience is something we are all born with, but it is something that must be used frequently and habitually to function at its best. It must be informed, as it cannot operate in a vacuum, but it shrinks and shrivels if indoctrinated. And it is something I like to believe unites all humans, regardless of creed or race.

Yuyutsu, I wouldn't call myself a humanist, but I suppose you’ve based that label on the fact that I accept that most humans are carnivores. In fact, I do believe in God, not that man is God as you suggest – if you haven’t worked it out from my previous posts, I’m a Christian of the Catholic variety - but oddly enough I still don’t approve of religious persecution, no matter who’s doing the persecuting. I don’t perceive saving anyone’s life as religious persecution, and I don't see how any child, especially a newborn, could legitimately express its wish to die. I don't believe that a child selects his or her parents - oddly enough, I have this idea that a child is a product of human sperm fertilising a human egg – and I don’t think anyone has the right to take another’s life without a justification such as self-defence. If that’s a dogma, so be it, but I would rather my dogma than your dogma that says that the state and people of goodwill should allow parents to kill their own children in the name of freedom of religion.

@Pericles.

Has the word been exiled from philosophy now? I hadn't heard. And what of the poor 'ol mathematicians after Godel?

It is still the subject of considerable debate, Martin Ibn Warriq, as you are undoubtedly aware.

>>@Pericles. Has the word been exiled from philosophy now? I hadn't heard.<<

The problem with "proofs" of God, is that there are none that do not begin with the premise that God exists. In other words, the existence of God cannot be derived independently of the presumption of God.

"One general criticism of ontological arguments which have appeared hitherto is this: none of them is persuasive, i.e., none of them provides those who do not already accept the conclusion that God exists—and who are reasonable, reflective, well-informed, etc.—with either a pro tanto reason or an all-things-considered reason to accept that conclusion." (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/

>>And what of the poor 'ol mathematicians after Godel?<<

Ah yes. Gödel.

The man who said "But I am convinced of the afterlife, independently of any theology. It is possible today to perceive, by pure reasoning that the existence of the afterlife is entirely consistent with known facts."

With logic like that, who could remain unconvinced?

Do you believe in an afterlife, Martin Ibn Warriq? Seriously?

*but I would rather my dogma than your dogma that says that the state and people of goodwill should allow parents to kill their own children in the name of freedom of religion.*

Ah, good old Catholic semantics at work once again.

How many "children" are put to death in Australia each year?

They will talk of children, or infants, or little ones, or any
other language thinkable, in order to push emotional buttons.

Fact is that most abortions are carried out before 12 weeks
and involve a foetus, which is little more then a human organism.

If the Catholic Church really cared about the "little ones", they
would start flogging off some of their huge real estate holdings
and start feeding those starving to death around the world.

But of course pontification is so easy to do.

Yabby,

Methinks you are too rash. I wonder how many of those starving masses, or their parents at least, are Christians, let alone Catholics? Or, have possibly been truly cajoled or influenced inordinately by any Christian doctrine into increasing or staunchly maintaining their rate of propagation? Broad brushes may smear widely, but will lack clarity and definition, let alone reveal truth.

Also, you do Mishka a disservice in your apparent misinterpretation of her response to Yuyutsu, who himself seems to have fallen into some sort of malaise. Yuyutsu is very religious, but I would suggest that he has been sadly misled somewhere along the line.

As the question of abortion is truly one of conscience, it falls to those poor unfortunates having to make such a devastating decision (at least in good conscience one would hope that it would always be a devastating decision), to reconcile their own conscience and their own soul with the responsibility of such a decision. Surely in the end result, due care, even abstinence, would be a wiser course; but then all are not wise, at least not all of the time. Many a slip, and such may possibly be excused; but the careless and unthinking should rightly be stigmatised. No perfect world, but one should always hope, and perhaps if possible act, for improvement. Maybe the threat of a 6 month course of intensive religious instruction in morality might prove an effective deterrent to sloppy habits? Blame should always be placed where it rightly belongs.

Yabby, I refer you to my post of 2/12 at 9:56:37 AM in which I said "I would like to point out that child can mean 'son or daughter'. It refers to the relationship of the foetus to the mother and Mishka Gora's usage is therefore quite correct, whether it is for an embryo, foetus, or infant. It is the child of the mother and father, regardless of its development."

Yabby, you are the one twisting semantics and peddling propaganda.

We are all human organisms. An organism is "any living structure, such as a plant, animal, fungus or bacterium, capable of growth and reproduction". (Chambers Dictionary) A foetus is not "little more than a human organism". It IS a human organism, as are you and I.

I spoke of children, because that term encompasses the various stages of development of which Yuyutsu was speaking. He referred to children both prior to and after birth. He made the claim that parents should be able to kill their children without state interference. What else am I supposed to call them?! They weren't created in a test tube via genetic engineering. Even an embryo has parents and is therefore a child.

As for the Catholic Church, there are many things I criticise about it - anyone who knows me well can attest to that - but allow me to point out two errors in your reasoning. 1) Dogma cannot be judged by other aspects of the Church. I can believe in the teachings of the Catholic Church without approving of every little thing that its representatives do. They are human, after all, sinners like me. Some may be guilty of hypocrisy, but I prefer to think of them as merely people who fall short of an ideal. It is good to have an ideal even if one fails to live up to it. 2) The Church does not have huge real estate holdings. Here in Australia, it is regularly closing and selling off parishes due to low numbers, and low numbers mean low income. In France, all churches built prior to 1908 using taxpayer funds are owned by the state, which means almost all Catholic churches in France are state-owned - and just as well because their upkeep is enormous. And even if the Church were wallowing in wealth, as you seem to think, I think you will find that Catholic charities and aid groups make one of the highest contributions to feeding the hungry, and so forth.

@Pericles.

You've mistaken the ontological for the cosmological arguments for the existence of God. Of historical note: Aquinas wasn't persuaded by the (Anselm's) ontological argument.

I'll assume you weren't trying to impugn Godel's theorem because he was a theist and looked forward to the afterlife, but just mention it out of biographical interest.

For me, I know there's an afterlife. We're made for it. We're supposed to be using our freedom preparing for it. When the love songs speak of 'this person, no other, and for ever' that's no trick, our hearts really do have the deepest longings for unlimited love.

"You've made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you" St. Augustine (one of those geniuses of the Western Tradition I mentioned).

I hope Christmas, a measure of God's humility and loving desire for us, is a time of Grace and blessing to you Pericles.

Mishka,

I am very glad that you believe in God and are not a humanist. Yet strangely, some of your views are very close to those of humanists.

The hypothesis that "a child is a product of human sperm fertilising a human egg" is materialistic. Based on that it's clear how your claims follow -that a child does not select its parents and cannot express his/her wishes through them. No wonder -a product of sperm+egg cannot express its wishes even when 70 years old.

The preservation of the sperm+egg-product is in the genes' interest, but I find it strange why we, you and I, should bother to adopt and own their interests as ours. I do however believe that it is of value (though not an absolute value), because this body serves as our "home" for a period of time, a temporary earthly shell using which we can learn, pray and serve the Lord.

Like you I don’t think, and I believe I made that clear already, that anyone has the right to take another’s life without a justification. There may be other justifications besides self-defense (which itself is already a compromise: turning the other cheek is superior), but selfishness is not one of those.

I wasn't saying that the state (and people of goodwill, but how in hell did those two get to be bundled together?!) should allow parents to kill their children, only that if the children in question were not introduced to the state, then the state is in no position to either allow or disallow their killing. It is simply none of their business.

A secular humanistic government is in no position to distinguish right from wrong, up from down, darkness from light, divine from demonic. The only justification for their existence is the agreement of people to participate. If a family does not agree to participate, then government has no justification whatsoever to tell it what to do in its internal affairs.

As for people of goodwill, certainly, I would not speak with or be friends with people who kill their baby for selfish reasons.

*We are all human organisms.*

Indeed we are, Mishka. But of course not all human organisms are
people. No human brain and you are an organism, not a person.

I'll stick with the biological definition of "child", rather then
the feelgood, less accurate versions. No human brain, no child.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child

As to the wealth of the Catholic Church, you clearly forget that
huge money spinner: legacies! All those childless couples
and spinsters need to leave it to somebody, huge numbers want their
ticket to heaven. The US Catholic Church paid out over a billion$
in compensation claims for sexual abuse, but of course the Catholic
Church is globally the largest landholder on the planet.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7558375/ns/business-cnbc_tv/t/church-finances-challenge-pope/

The Vatican owns banks in Spain and all sorts of shareholdings too.
They are a very powerful financial organisation.

True, I do get them tangled up Martin Ibn Warriq.

>>You've mistaken the ontological for the cosmological arguments for the existence of God.<<

Each, however, requires the premise that God exists before it embarks upon its argument. In that sense they are identically circular - certainly from a non-theologian's perspective.

>>Of historical note: Aquinas wasn't persuaded by the (Anselm's) ontological argument.<<

The relevance of this escapes me, I'm afraid. But again, probably only because I have had no theological training.

>>I'll assume you weren't trying to impugn Godel's theorem because he was a theist and looked forward to the afterlife, but just mention it out of biographical interest<<

Impugn? Sort-of, probably. But not because he was a theist, but because he expressed a firm belief in the existence of an "afterlife". To me, this casts doubt upon his ability to draw rational conclusions from any set of data.

>>For me, I know there's an afterlife. We're made for it. We're supposed to be using our freedom preparing for it.<<

That's pure wishful thinking, I'm afraid.

I can certainly understand how people who believe in God need also to believe in an afterlife. But the concept is so riddled with internal contradictions, it is beyond rational contemplation.

Not that "rational contemplation" plays any part in your belief system, of course, but I thought I'd point it out anyway.

>>I hope Christmas, a measure of God's humility and loving desire for us, is a time of Grace and blessing to you Pericles.<<

Given what you know about my stance on God, was this deliberately ironic? Or is it just automatic, a sort of religious version of Tourette's Syndrome?

Whichever, I hope you and your family have an enjoyable holiday season, and wish you health and happiness for the New Year.

Yabby, the Catholic Church is a major provider of education and health care all over the world. I hate to imagine the suffering that would go unalleviated if it ceased its charitable works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_of_the_Catholic_Church_in_Western_civilization#Social_justice.2C_care-giving.2C_and_the_hospital_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholicism_in_Australia#Social_and_political_engagement

As for your odd ideas about children, Yabby, a foetus has a brain. In fact, an embryo has a brain. Not only does it have a brain, but brain activity has been established as early as 40 days, and while there is plenty of growth and development to go, the same can be said of the brain post-birth.

Yuyutsu, though I am glad you do not approve of killing for selfish reasons, I find your position less defensible than that, let's say, of Yabby, who appears to be convinced that a foetus doesn't have a brain until the last trimester. You say "I would not speak with or be friends with people who kill their baby for selfish reasons" but fail to allow for the state to intervene on the child's behalf. I find that thoroughly immoral. If you truly believe a situation is murder, how can you suggest that the state should stand by and allow it to take place? I have friends who have had abortions, often for selfish reasons, but they were convinced that their child was not yet fully human and therefore (in my assessment) were not fully culpable. Culpability requires knowledge that the act in question is wrong. You have that knowledge. You recognise that infanticide and abortion are wrong, and yet you deny the state any right to stop this wrongdoing. Saying that you don't condone murder but offering a loophole for people to commit murder (by not introducing their child to the state) is warped and utterly lacking in compassion for the potential victims. It's an arrogant and false neutrality that denies the basic human right of a child to not be deprived of its life.

Mishka, the Catholic Church does indeed run schools and hospitals.
They also receive huge amounts of Govt money for doing so.
Go to St John of God Hospital for instance, you will be slugged full
fee and hospitals can be quite lucrative.

Service providers in the third world are often funded through UN
agencies and Western Govts. That includes Catholic services provided.

When will the Catholic Church become open and accountable about
what they have, what they earn and what they spend?

A foetus does in fact have a brain. So does any other species.
If you know anything about brains, you'll know that there are
3 so called sections. The repitilian, the emotional circuits and
the thinking bits. The neocortex, which makes us human and
differentiates us from other species by its size, is not there in
any functioning form until week 23 or so. So no human brain at
day 40 I am afraid.

Yabby, I'm pretty sure the Catholic Church accounts for the public funds it receives. As for any other funds, it is a private institution and if anyone has a problem with the way they operate they simply don't have to give them money. However, the last time I checked, my local parish was fully audited and parishioners not only were informed of how funds were spent but given a voice in decision-making through the parish council. I think you'll find a similar process exists for Catholic charities and other Catholic NGOs.

As regards brain development, yours is a moot point in relation to the example in my article and the ensuing discussion. I will indulge your tangent, however, and note that - given the principles of doing no harm and erring on the side of caution - I and others of my acquaintance have grave concerns about using brain development as an indication of human life or personhood (as some prefer). Whether we are talking about 40 days or 23 weeks or post-birth, the question arises as to exactly when the line is crossed from non-human to human or human organism to person. It doesn't really matter what criteria are used or which stage of development is being discussed, because at any of the stages and using any criteria there is the insurmountable moral question of when is it right to kill and when is it not. Current laws rely on pregnancy dates that are notoriously unreliable, and every embryo/foetus is different in its development - one woman's child born at 23 weeks survives without health problems while another woman's dies soon after birth. Personally, I can't pin down exactly when our offspring become "human", and that is one of the reasons I give benefit of the doubt to any human organism, regardless of its brain development. That may not be a satisfactory answer for you, but I personally would rather not take the risk that an evaluation in these terms might lead to the death of an innocent human being.

Mishka, I am sure that your local parish accounts for every cent of
what lands up in the collection tin. But parishoners would have no
idea about what is sloshed away in the Vatican Bank, where only
the pope and the cardinals have a look in. In fact it was only
claimed "diplomatic immunity" which saved the day when officals
were going to be legally charged over the Vatican Bank scandal
involving billions, including money laundering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Works_of_Religion

"Do no harm" is all very sweet, except of course that living the
Western lifestyle, you do harm every day by living unsustainably.

Women have around 300 chances to have another cute baby, reality
prevails, you can't keep them all. Having children when they are
actually wanted and loved, would eliminate much suffering that we
see around us.

Since the industrial revolution, our human population has gone from
1 billion, to 7 billion, heading for 10 billion. As Darwin so
accurately mentioned, far more of any species will be created, then
can ever survive. If you think that the human population can keep
growing, wiping out all other species in the process and largely
at their expense, then your philosophy is clearly doing far more
harm then you are aware of.

The human psyche is indeed paradoxical; and rationalisation a marvellous magic trick for deluding 'conscience'.

It is theorised that humans are born with an inbuilt or innate sense or right and wrong, good and evil. Whether correct or not, all humans (save the odd psychopathic personality) seem to exhibit such a sense early in development. Curious then how layer upon layer of 'learning', rather than reinforcing such an innate sense, seems to dillute and confuse that sense, rendering it flexible to the extent of submission to contemporary and transient 'values'. Even rendering 'conscience' unreliable, weak, or obsolete.

On a practical level, no-one ought need promise of an 'afterlife' or of any other reward for living a 'virtuous' life - such as 'luck' in this life, or subsequent reincarnation in a higher form. Life should carry its own reward, good or ill, as conduct dictates. Strange and problematic then how materialistic 'success' in this life is accorded such a high level in the 'virtue' stakes.

Living in harmony and balance with one's evironment ought be viewed as the highest virtue attainable, 'live and let live', in respect for and acknowledgement of the natural order. But the drive for conquest appears to know no bounds, be it number of cows, pigs, oil rigs, mansions or offspring.

One cannot blame Man for his inherent weaknesses, but rather for failing to learn true respect, for failing to evolve despite his many gifts and ultimate promise. For all his worldly development, Man is no master, but rather a slave to weakness and corruption. God, I'm sure, would be far from impressed.

An ethic of restraint is absent, supressed or derided, and in consequence all sense of 'conscience' is compromised, and in some quarters is totally defeated. Though some may rail against the storm of iniquity, it will take a far greater movement to effect a real change of direction, for Man to become a conservator, to achieve inner peace, to cherish and nurture virtue, and to personify the true meaning of 'conscience'.

Murder is indeed a grave sin, but its severity varies. One factor that you already mentioned, Mishka, is the awareness of the perpetrator to wrongdoing. Others are the amount of pain inflicted; the level of awareness of the victim; the amount of accumulating learning which the victim loses; and the degree of attachment of the victim to its body. Also, without the seed of selfishness sin cannot exist. Such cases are rare, but if one kills while pursuing their duty with no self-interest in mind, then they are pure as snow (even when making a mistake).

There are several different reasons why a state should not intervene in the case of killing an unintroduced child:

1. Consistency:

If the state is to "protect" a human baby that is not a member of its society, then it should also protect animals (that are also non-members) in the same way. If a non-member animal can for example be legally eaten, then so should a non-member human. Similarly, the state should not distinguish between the born and the unborn, only between members and non-members.

(that's a challenge to the humanist dogma that man is a superior species)

2. The right of the child to not-belong:

Whence this automatic and nonsensical assumption that anyone born within a certain territory wishes to belong to the local society?

(that's a challenge to the humanist dogma that mankind has a collective purpose)

Now one could say that the child is not asked directly, but rather his/her parents: it is indeed less than ideal, but we currently know of no better outlet for a baby to express its wishes.

(that's a challenge to the humanist dogma that a baby is nothing but sperm+egg, hence cannot choose its parents)

The parents should not act in self-interest but as the child's best representatives: a parent who knowingly misrepresents his/her child claiming that it would not be interested in joining society while knowing that it would, commits contemptible fraud and a criminal offense (note that any of the parents may introduce the child to society even without the others' consent).

(continued...)

(...continued)

Had there been an objective test, such as an EEG machine that reads the child's brainwaves and can answer whether or not they wish to join society, then surely I would prefer such method - but since there isn't any (yet), we need to rely on the parents to best represent their child.

3. Ignorance:

The state has no moral or spiritual credentials, so is in no position to tell the difference between selfish and unselfish acts.

(that's a challenge to the humanist dogma that all knowledge and all wisdom is objective and scientific)

4. Non-exclusivity:

Why the state and not a different organization? If someone is to "protect" unrelated children, then why not the Sicilian Mafia, Ali-Baba and his 40 thieves, or the local bikie club?

(that's a challenge to the humanist dogma that humans joined together form a larger and better organism)

5. Wider implications:

Outright murder of one's child is a very rare event nowadays, but more common and morally compelling cases are when parents refuse, based on religious/spiritual principles, to treat their child in certain ways which the state demands, such as providing them with certain medical procedures; certain foods; or specific education which trains the child to cope and integrate with the surrounding society (evil as it may be). The state does not distinguish between outright murder and "murder" by "negligence" - notwithstanding the fact that it is the state, rather than the parents, which is negligent of the child's spiritual welfare, placing the survival of its physical body above all other considerations.

(that's a challenge to the humanist dogma that we are just bodies with no spirit)

Yuyutsu,

There is one paramount universal edict, that 'Thou shalt not kill', which is held not to include the killing of beasts, but is held by many to have come from God, is supported by every faith of Man and is held to refer to the killing of humans - with the only exception being when in defence of the life of another human, and only if killing is necessary in that defence. This is embraced in law, conscience, morality and faith in all civilised societies. Any deviation from this law of Man and God is illegal, immoral, and a mortal sin.

In war, killing is held to be permitted when in defence of life against a brutal aggressor - whether that defence is of one individual or of society at large. This is imperfect, and war should always be a last resort, and killing as limited as possible.

In society in peacetime some exceptions are deemed necessary, as in the execution of convicted murderers (though even this is not permitted in some quarters), and in respect of the abortion of certain pregnancies in certain circumstances - though this area is troubled indeed. Though each individual must be held to his own conscience when it comes to abortion (and some would argue that they will answer to God), morality, law and conscience may allow an abortion to be held to be in defence of life in the case of significant genetic, physical and mental defect in an unborn foetus. Some may argue that defence of life may also apply when a pregnancy is unwanted, when there is reason to believe that it would not be in the best interests of a foetus to be allowed to go full term, though this is somewhat conjectural. It is also highly conjectural when it comes to a pregnancy which is just untimely, unwanted or inconvenient. In this, the law is somewhat in dispute, but would almost certainly not be in accordance with the highest level of morality or the law of God. However, God is compassion, and is forgiving of our weaknesses.

Yuyutsu,

No-one can know when a soul may enter the life of an unborn child, and it is my belief that the soul represents the presence and the will of God. It is also my belief that whilst a soul may select an embryo or foetus as a worldly host, that embryo or foetus is the product solely of the biological parents. Hence, a baby does not select its parents, but rather God or a soul itself selects a suitable host.

In Man's and God's law, infanticide will always be immoral, illegal and a mortal sin, without exception, as entry to society will occur automatically at birth, needing no further introduction, and all must accordingly be held to the law of the society in which they reside, and hopefully to God's law. This surely is God's will, as surely as God resides in the life of every child even as it draws breath for the first time.

May God be with you and give you guidance.

Dear Saltpetre,

From you I would expect something more intelligent than blindly citing the current western-civilisation credo. If you were born a few centuries earlier you would also include in your thesis the "divine right of kings" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings), but apparently that section fell out of grace.

Collusion between church and state is not new, where clergy seeking worldly convenience compromise religion.

Ideas such as that one who just took a breath is essentially different than what s/he was a minute before in the womb, or that one occupying a human body has more rights than one occupying say a dolphin body, are arbitrarily conjured by men for their convenience, not by God.

Social norms are not divine.
Shaping God according to the desires of people and kings - no thanks!

Saltpetre, thank-you for your balanced reply to Yuyutsu.

Yabby, perhaps you should read the sources you quote more carefully and less selectively. The Institute for Works of Religion relates to the Vatican in its secular capacity as a state. It is a non-profit institute, whose "surplus is used for religious and charitable purposes". Your article also states "that Pope Benedict XVI had issued an Apostolic Letter that established the Financial Information Authority as an independent agency to oversee the monetary and commercial activities of all Vatican-related institutions, including the Vatican bank. It will monitor all Vatican financial operations and make sure they meet international norms against money-laundering and the financing of terrorism."

I don't understand youre reference to 300 chances to have a baby, and I don't think you're in a position to judge whether or not I live sustainably or to make the accusation that I "do harm". You know nothing about my lifestyle. Given that most western countries are struggling to replace their population, I also reject your insinuations about over-population. I do not advocate an open-border policy, so I cannot see how limiting population growth here or in the West generally is going to alleviate over-population elsewhere (if it does indeed exist). My attitude to problems such as these is to attempt to create solutions, not to kill off the people experiencing the problem.

Lol Mishka, so finally by 2010, the old pope sets up an "independant"
authority to make sure there is no money laundering or terrorism
being financed by the Vatican Bank. Did you check which cardinal
heads this authority?

The fact remains that there is vast wealth tucked away in all sorts
of Catholic coffers and its not being spent to feed the starving
babies. But its easy for them to pontificate to the flock.

The human population keeps growing at around 250'000 per day. The
population explosion of the last 100 years is on the back of cheap
and abundant oil. What will you do, when it starts to run out?

If any of us were living sustainably, we would not be plundering
the world's ocean of fish to the point of sending species extinct,
we would not be wiping other species out as our species keeps growing
in numbers.

There is a simple solution. Give women a choice about how many
children that they actually want to have. Yet in places like the
Phillipines, women who have had 5,6,7,8 children, plead to have
a tubal litigation. The Catholic Church controls the hospitals and
denies them this option. The Catholic Cardinals do their utmost to
deny people access to Govt funded family planning. Where is your
conscience about the hunger, suffering and misery that the Catholic
Church is enforcing on these poor people?

Yabby,

Who's plundering the oceans?
It wouldn't be highly industrialised countries would it?

Who's contributing the greatest to the extinction of species? Industrialisation has only ever benefitted humankind. It's "for" us and "against" nature. It's a continually developing mechanism for keeping nature at bay.

Yuyutsu,

For all your posturing and criticism of humanist thought, you fail to perceive that man as he has developed, is the product of an evolutionary chain from his beginnings as a ranging plains hunter. His brain had to develop to the extent it has in order for him to survive in competition with true carnivores. He is a primate whose ancestors came down from the trees to hunt protein.

Your brain can conceive the entity of "God" because of its advanced form. Whether it's a case of God shaping our minds, or our minds shaping God - we are the physical, psychological, behavioural and social products of our particular evolutionary path.

Yabby,

How much family planning information does any sane and mildly intelligent person need, if they're really serious about limiting their family size? It's not rocket science after all. A large part of the Phillipines is not all that backward in any case, and there has been much Western influence in addition to that emanating from the Christian church. From all accounts Manila itself is not exactly as pure as the driven snow, so conformity with Christian doctrine may not generally be as fervent as you indicate. It would appear that other factors are at play. People can make all sorts of excuses when they are trying to avoid facing up to the truth.

Is Portugal, another significantly Catholic society, also suffering from overpopulation or population explosion?

I don't see why you are so down on the Catholic Church. Ok, the church has assets, but it is these which enable the church to do charitable and other worthwhile works, and to dissipate those assets could only act to limit the scope of those works, and that would be counterproductive. Also, there are many other church and NGO organisations endeavouring to relieve the situation of the poor and needy, but we know that whatever they do it will never be enough until population equates with available resources. How could anyone contend in all honesty that these churches and NGO's could be equally culpable with Western decadence and insatiability for the plight of the poor and needy? Credit where it's due, and blame where it rightly belongs.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1812250,00.html

Ah Salpetre, lucky you that its not your kids scrounging on those
Phillipines rubbish tips, you too poor to afford contraception.

The Catholic Church should be ashamed of itself.

Dear Poirot,

"Your brain can conceive the entity of "God" because..."

My brain does not conceive anything - it merely passes chemical and electrical impulses.

"we are the physical, psychological, behavioural and social products of our particular evolutionary path."

With due respect, we are not.

Though we wear, this physical/psychological/behavioural/whatever body for a time and use it to observe and act in the world, we are not it.

"you fail to perceive that man as he has developed, is the product of an evolutionary chain from his beginnings as a ranging plains hunter..."

So far so good, man is mainly carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, sulfur, sodium, potassium, magnesium and phosphorus, with smaller quantities of most other elements, but all this is only about the vehicle that we currently use, not about us.

We've been here before, Yuyutsu.

"My brain does not conceive anything..."

Your brain decodes sensory input arriving in the form of impulses - and whether you believe it or not - animates you with responsive thought and action.

...or did you not purposely press your fingers upon the keyboard under instruction from your brain to transmit the thoughts conceived in your mind to post your last comments?

Your brain conceived the thoughts that comprised your last post in response to my previous one.

"...we are not it."

Your opinion, nothing more.

You do come up with some inane replies.

Dear Poirot,

If a tree falls in a forest with no one to notice - does it matter?

Yes, the brain decodes sensory input and animates my body, often even without my knowledge. It is quite good at that. The brain also prepares material for thoughts, but where there is no thinker there is no thinking, only computation.

BTW, how is this related to the topic?

Entirely relevant I'd suggest, Yuyutsu.

>>BTW, how is this related to the topic?<<

You have distilled the essence of "being" into a series of independent chemical reactions.

>>My brain does not conceive anything - it merely passes chemical and electrical impulses... man is mainly carbon, oxygen, hydrogen...etc etc<<

Conscience, along with consciousness and rationalization, can only be some form of operating system that manages those "chemical and electrical impulses". Otherwise we would all function at a very similar level to each other. Ants, I suspect, would be a good example of communal behaviour that is primarily chemically-driven, whereas more developed forms of animal life exhibit greater individual control over those impulses.

At the level to which we humans have evolved, the concepts of morality and ethics have developed to a greater degree, thanks to the emergence of a consciousness, that itself evolved further into a conscience. So the question of "what can we conceive with our brains" lies at the very heart of this discussion, I would have thought.

Dear Pericles,

Poirot discussed the human body and brain, she did not mention consciousness or conscience.

The brain does many things 24/7 that we are not even aware of.
Does it do EVERYTHING on its own? Maybe, maybe not.

As the brain evolves and is able to handle more abstractions, more objects come to our awareness, but that does not mean that our consciousness itself has evolved, only that more objects, including objects that are more complex and abstract, come to our attention than previously. Consciousness has never emerged: in association with a human body and brain it merely has more toys to play with.

Take the statement: "The fork should be laid to the left of the plate and the knife to its right".

Is there indeed such a moral imperative? the answer depends on the presence of a diner. If someone is going to sit there and eat, then it makes sense, but otherwise it makes no difference which way you place the fork and the knife. Similarly, if all is just body and brain with no-one to observe them, then there is no reason why the chemical molecules should be arranged this way or the other, whether the electric impulses in the brain go clockwise or counterclockwise or whether that body lives or dies.

With the greatest respect, Yuyutsu (and we all know what that means), you have it ass-backwards.

>>Consciousness has never emerged... Take the statement: "The fork should be laid to the left of the plate and the knife to its right" Is there indeed such a moral imperative? the answer depends on the presence of a diner.<<

The diner is the motivating factor for both the knife and the fork, and their relative positions. The existence of cutlery is not independent of the human brain, being a product of its consciousness of the necessity to eat efficiently. And their position on the table is a result of rules, created by that consciousness, as part of its societal evolution. I doubt whether Cro-Magnons were particularly into the niceties of fine dining, and their brains were full of pretty much the same chemicals and electrical impulses.

>>...if all is just body and brain with no-one to observe them, then there is no reason why the chemical molecules should be arranged this way or the other<<

Not sure where you are going with this. Observation, coupled with a growing awareness, and the evolution of consciousness into conscience, are fully integrated into the development process.

I suspect this might be the stumbling block:

>>As the brain evolves and is able to handle more abstractions, more objects come to our awareness, but that does not mean that our consciousness itself has evolved<<

We clearly have different opinions on the use of the word "evolve". To me, the fact that "the brain is able to handle more abstractions" is by itself the evidence that consciousness is evolving.

I'm not even sure that the two concepts - increased abstraction-handling, and evolving consciousness - can be logically separated.

Let me put it in other words, Pericles, as simple as I can without metaphors:

As the brain evolves, it presents us - we who are conscious, with new objects that may indeed be more complex and more abstract. I do not dispute that.

However, consciousness itself is not dependent on what you are conscious of.

To an extent, Yuyutsu.

>>...consciousness itself is not dependent on what you are conscious of<<

I can happily accept that at its face value.

However, I cannot accept that it is necessary to be aware of the agency that is acting upon your consciousness, in order for that consciousness to evolve.

Using your example, man slowly became aware of the need to invent cutlery, and proceeded to act upon that awareness. Then, later, assimilated the concept of social niceties, that led to a determination as to how to display that cutlery to best effect.

Your insistence that they are entirely separate constructs, with the chemical and electronic responses on the one hand, and "consciousness" on the other, I find puzzling.

It makes the massive assumption that consciousness is a static state. Unchanging. Binary, on or off. Further, it would suggest that morality, ethics, conscience etc. must also be a static state, unable to evolve, predetermined and unchanging across the ages.

Have I misunderstood?

Dear Pericles,

You, the conscious, are unchanging.

In the cutlery example, you were there already, long before your brain developed. When your brain was in the baby stage of development, you were only barely presented with simple concepts such as "Mon" and "Dad", but later as your brain developed, your consciousness was presented with the advanced concept of social niceties.

As for morality, ethics and conscience, unlike you these are relative to one degree or another, with morality relatively being the most stable (or static) of the three, followed by ethics and conscience.

Morality begins at the moment you consider yourself associated with a physical body, so it is pretty stable - but not as stable as yourself because once that is not the case (for example if your body dies or if you no longer identify with it), you are exempt. Otherwise, naturally, that same morality may apply differently in different circumstances.

Ethics are dependent on human agreements, hence are less stable than morals
(cutlery arrangement would belong to that category).

Conscience is a feeling, a sense, an emotion, hence it comes and goes.

No, Yuyutsu, conscience is not a feeling. It is a faculty.

I was also using the word "sense", Mishka, which is closer to "faculty", but whatever it is, it is unreliable, as you pointed yourself in this article.

Morals are morals, they come from God regardless whether or not you are aware of them or believe in them.
Ethics are stable enough, once agreed upon.
But conscience - now you feel it, now you don't; or if it is a faculty, now it works, now it doesn't. It also depends on many factors, such as education: with bad education one may feel bad conscience about things that are not morally wrong at all, while sleeping well with crimes that one was told are OK. An example is if you don't feel a pang or twitch when eating a slaughtered animal.

Acting on conscience is mediocre.

Just as "My tooth hurts, so I see the dentist", so is "My conscience hurts so I make amends and help others": such a response is not out of the love of God, but out of necessity, and so its merits are limited.

Goodness is not determined by the results, but by the purity of the intentions behind one's actions - results are anyway not ours but up to God.

Only in the most abstract sense, Yuyutsu.

>>You, the conscious, are unchanging.<<

Only in that I am fundamentally the same "consciousness" that I have had all my life. I haven't stolen or borrowed anyone else's.

But that is the only sense in which "unchanging" can apply. You are using it in the sense of "self", which demonstrably remains unchanged throughout my life. I was born and will die, the same individual person.

As you so rightly point out, my awareness expanded as I got older. But to suggest that my consciousness remained unaltered by this additional information is to completely redefine the word.

I am using the term "consciousness" - somewhat more loosely, and far less philosphically - in the sense that Kant employs:

"...consciousness according to Kant... had to be the experience of a conscious self situated in an objective world structured with respect to space, time and causality."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/

The "objective world structured with respect to space, time and causality" necessarily undergoes change. It cannot possibly remain unchanged.

Which, to bring us back to my original point, is why I disagree with your assertion that:

>>Consciousness has never emerged: in association with a human body and brain it merely has more toys to play with.<<

And as you would be aware, I could never accept your word on this:

>>Morals are morals, they come from God regardless whether or not you are aware of them or believe in them.<<

As so often happens when religion intrudes on a discussion, we get a statement such as this which relies upon an entirely circular argument. It takes as its base premise that God exists; once you do that, God becomes the answer to everything. To refute the proposition, you need to take God out of the equation, and I know that would be impossible for you to do.

But it does shed light on why you are so hung up about an unchanging consciousness.

No, Yuyutsu. Conscience is not a feeling that comes and goes. The only reason is is unreliable is if it falls out of use or is not heeded. It's a means of determining right and wrong. What you're describing is more akin to guilt, which is a feeling that might arise from the workings of one's conscience, which we sometimes describe as being "on one's conscience" or a "guilty conscience". The feeling or sense of guilt may come and go, but conscience is always there, we just have to remember to use it, and the more we exercise it the more reliable it is. Guilt shows that our conscience is still operative - whether we ignore it or fail to consult it regularly is another matter. Conscience is not a guilty feeling, and it is not "mediocre". Acting according to one's conscience means evaluating what is the right and good course of action in any given situation. Guilt only arises when one disobeys one's conscience and does not act as one should.

Morals can be individual and determined by one's conscience or society-wide and a means of informing one's conscience. I may be religious, but I don't think religion has a monopoly on morality. Atheists can form morals and live according to moral norms, and that morality can be innate - whether that natural sense of right and wrong ultimately comes from God as our Creator isn't particularly relevant.

*It's a means of determining right and wrong*

So tell me something, Mishka. Let's say a child has been indoctrinated
by religious parents, about the evils of masturbation.
The child of course believes this, yet his/her hormones
trigger as they do and the child lands up doing what comes
naturally.

Is this really a means of determining right from wrong?

Is masturbation really evil?

Dear Pericles,

Since you asked and as you guessed, God is not an answer, but the answer to everything is God. I would try not to mention "God" when writing to you, because I understand that the word carries for you all sorts of socio-historic connotations that would only drive you away (though I don't carry such connotations myself), but in this case I was writing to Mishka, not to you.

Kant's definition of "the experience of a conscious self situated in an objective world structured with respect to space, time and causality" sounds to me like a pretty accurate description of ego. If that's what you mean by "consciousness", then I agree - ego has emerged and does evolve. You, of course, are not your ego!

Dear Mishka,

What you are describing is more akin to listening to the voice of God within. I fully agree that atheists can do that too, because intellectual conceptualization of God is not necessary (though it can be quite useful on one's spiritual path, especially for removing fear).

Listening to God's voice is cultivated by refraining from listening to other things. Guilt is produced by not following whatever one has been listening to - ideally that would be the voice of God within, but it could also be the voice of men, the voice of society or even the voice of those little devils, or genes. Your personal experience seems to be that guilt comes from disobeying your conscience (eg. the voice of God within), so then you are lucky, but others get to feel guilty for less noble causes (a common example in contemporary western society is to feel guilty out of failure in sexual conquests).

Yabby, call me old-fashioned, but my ladylike sensibilities make me recoil from a frank discussion of masturbation in a public forum. However, seeing as you've been so crude as to bring it up, allow me to deal with it in more general terms. Conscience can overcome indoctrination. I agree it makes it more difficult, but I would not excuse anyone for participating in death camps just because they had been indoctrinated by some political group. We expect conscience to operate in such extreme circumstances and so too it can operate in lesser matters. Your example has two incorrect assumptions: 1) that the child is incapable of using his/her conscience to decide for him/herself whether he/she has been instructed correctly; and 2) that conscience is identical to morals. Conscience and morals are separate, as I noted in my previous post replying to Yuyutsu. I suggest you re-read it. I think we should question everything, but that doesn't mean never finding an answer. Conscience ideally should be well-informed - we can't exercise judgement in a vacuum - and that should include the instruction we receive from parents, schools, etc.. Obviously, the younger the child the more susceptible to indoctrination and the less freedom they have to make decisions, but they should nevertheless be encouraged to begin using their conscience to evaluate situations.

As for your final question, why don't you ask a priest? Seeing as you have so many misconceptions about the Catholic Church, you might be surprised at the answer. Most of the priests I've spoken to say that they hear more confessions from non-Catholics than from Catholics, and I think you will find that masturbation is considered 'venial' and 'not a big deal' in the larger scheme of things. A child who really believes they have done something wrong needs understanding and forgiveness, not to be told that they're wrong. Telling someone who has a genuine moral conviction that their belief is wrong and that they should go about doing wrong things is highly disrespectful to their conscience.

Yuyutsu, you said "others get to feel guilty for less noble causes (a common example in contemporary western society is to feel guilty out of failure in sexual conquests)". Yes, they feel guilt, precisely because they are not consulting or exercising their consciences. Instead, they are listening to society, allowing themselves to be indoctrinated by social expectations, falling prey to insecurities. Conscience, when nurtured and exercised, counters such things and allows people to 'go against the flow'. A person of sound conscience will not evaluate another person or themselves by their sexual activity. You yourself have said that these people might be listening to a voice of society or of men. They are listening to others, not to their consciences. You said it yourself.

Well Mishka, I wasn't discussing death camps, but something as
simple as masturbation, to test your theory of conscience being
a guide.

Given that the topic is freely discussed in today's society and
is openly discussed on Wikipedia, I see no reason not to discuss
it on the internet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_on_masturbation

It seems that the Catholic Church views masturbation as a "grave
moral disorder" and a sin. I recall too, a Jewish friend telling
me of many a jewish boy rubbing their genitals against the sheets,
as the Talmud considers it evil and it was their way of getting around
it.

I know all about the Catholic religion, Mishka. Sadly I was born
a Catholic and those nuns and priests spent years trying to brainwash
me with their religion.

My point here is that conscience is clearly not a good guide to
the rights and wrongs of masturbation, so your
theory is not the best, it seems.

Mishka,

There appears to be some confusion arising, warranting clarification.

Some posts appear to limit or confuse morals/morality as referring only to sexual morality. This must clearly be wrong, and I would suggest that morals/morality refers to all conduct and behaviour, conscious and unconscious. Murder is immoral, as is rape, abuse and violence without justification, dishonesty, unethical behaviour, graft, lying about something important, etc. We may and do differentiate degree - for example whether venial or capital - but all are degrees of morality or immorality, in my view.

We have ethics, morals, virtue, integrity, honesty - and maybe some more. To me these all collectively represent morality, and concurrently the exercise (or disregard) of conscience. Certainly 'normal' behaviour includes such ordinary activities as laying out a dinner table or doing the dishes, but also conveying an opinion or instructing a child - but in all instances there is not just conformity (or otherwise) with an accepted 'code' but also an underlying conformity (or lack thereof) with morality in relation to the attitude, honesty, integrity, empathy, compassion, and the spirit in which these activities are conducted - and conscience as well as consciousness provide the underlying guidance.

Someone has suggested that conscience and morality are separate functions of the human psyche. I don't see how this is possible. To my mind morality and conscience are inextricably intertwined, evolving with experience and with learning.

Mishka, I think you undervalue the impact of erroneous early instruction and of indoctrination. It is these and some other environmental influences which result in prejudice and bigotry, and in various levels of Amoral conduct. Of course prejudice and bigotry also usually involve self-interest, greed, pride and envy, as well as idiocy and a lack of ethics and integrity. Conscience and morality contaminated, distorted, dulled or rendered inoperative.

Yabby, did you ever consider that it may have been the environment and/or methodology rather than the content of your early experience of Catholicism with which you logically take greatest exception?

Saltpetre, thanks for your observations. There does, indeed, seem to be an uncommon emphasis on sexual morality. Both morality and conscience should have everyday application, and I consider it a great shame that they don’t. I believe that if they did, there would be less indoctrination and adverse influence.

Yabby, I’m sorry you’ve had such a bad experience of the Catholic Church. My experience has been vastly different. If I had to criticise the priests in my diocese for anything it’d be that they’ve failed to instruct the laity in the teachings of the Church and that they put so much emphasis on God’s love that they forget to teach any sort of morality.

My point was that an individual’s conscience should be respected and that the Church does so even when it considers a person’s conscience to be over-scrupulous or ill-informed. I don’t think conscience is in any way deficient on the topic of masturbation. You have clearly decided it is so because you have a different moral perception, but conscience is individual. In a diverse society, you cannot expect everyone to agree on everything. Conscience is what has allowed you to decide that the Church is wrong on this topic – either that or you’ve been indoctrinated by someone or something else! Without conscience, you wouldn’t have an opinion you could honestly call your own. I may consult my conscience and disagree with you, but both consciences are in working order. The difference in conclusions between people can be because of a lack of input just as much as it might be due to defective reasoning. It’s difficult, after all, to make any sort of decision without balanced information.

I also think you misunderstand sin – just because someone does something wrong doesn’t make them guilty. The Church is very clear on this; sin requires knowledge/intent and free will. The child you described would not fulfil these requirements.

P.S. There are plenty of things freely discussed in society nowadays that I think best left unsaid. Call me old-fashioned if you like, but that’s how I feel.

Salpetre, I feel great empathy for the many victims of the Catholic
Church. I quoted you a URL earlier in this thread, did you get time
to read it?

Have you ever bothered to read about its history? It used to burn
heretics like me. Corruption was order of the day and the sex lives
of past popes is quite entertaining.

This same organisation takes 5 year old kiddies who foolishly trust
adults,and brainwashes them with all sorts of hocus pocus, claiming
it to be the one and only truth. Yet they don't have a single piece
of substantiated evidence for their claims.

The world is full of Catholics with all sorts of hangups about sex
and sexuality. They are unable to see it as normal and natural,
for they were brainwashed from a young age to feel guilt. Then
they have a guilty conscience about the rubbish that they were taught.

Religion should be a lifestyle choice, like golf. Let the pope
preach to his flock, but when the Catholic Church tries to force
the rest of us to live by their codswallop, people like me will
protest loudly and expose them for what they really are. A bunch
of snakeoil salesmen with absolutaly no conscience about the damage
that they do to the lives of individuals along the way.

Luckily in the first world we are fortunate enough, to most of the time,
be able to tell them to get stuffed. Many in the third world,
as the Time article showed, are not so fortunate.

Thanks, Yabby,

I must admit I do abhor all forms of religious extremism, and I guess the Catholic Church's official views do fall into this category in some instances, including on masturbation and birth control, so it would seem from the Wikipedia link and other clear evidence, including from your Time article link. I guess I was already aware of this, but failed to recognise the full scope of the potential ramifications. This particular deficiency is of course not limited to Catholicism. The Phillipines example also reinforces the necessity for due separation of church and state.

I feel an overriding parameter for all religions ought to be 'do no harm'.

As you have said, it is fortunate for us that we can pick and choose or ignore, without fear of repercussions, where many others have little or no choice. It is sad indeed that so many aspects of religious teaching and practice have seen necessary to go many steps too far, and have staunchly retained what could only be viewed as divisive and out of step. My view is that the purpose of religion should be to develop and strengthen the 'conscience' muscle, but not to get too involved in people's daily lives.

I guess the following extract from Wik more or less says it all: "The Catholic view of masturbation has been consistent for all of the Catholic Church's 2,000-year history." It would seem that such reluctance to take a more contemporary world view is also not limited to this particular issue.

It would appear that many religions have unfortunately found it necessary to go to some extremes to maintain relevance (and control), leading to some strange interpretations of what it means to nurture and give succour to its flock, and have in many cases retained some of these extremes. Would it were not so, and that there may be a real hope for an adoption of the universality of humankind under an umbrella of universal civil and human rights.

Yabby, I think you need to stop living in the past. I went to a Catholic school run by nuns in the 1980s, and even then there was hardly any Catholic content. I learnt about Shintoism in RE and we did meditation. The only Catholic thing I recall was the saying of the Our Father each morning (but all Christians do this). My atheist stance was respected and no one tried to "re-educate" me.

But if you are going to live in the past, at least get it right. The abhorrent craze of witch-burning, for example, was most rampant in non-Catholic countries after the Reformation, and the Inquisition didn't actually burn anyone at the stake - heretics were handed over to the secular authorities for a secular form of punishment. If you genuinely want to know about the Inquisition I suggest you consult Henry Kamen's work - it is highly regarded amongst academics (who don't tend to be sympathetic to Catholics) and I believe he's a Jewish historian (not that it should matter, but I suspect it does to you).

As for your other ludicrous claims, do you actually know any practicing Catholics under 40? You've described a caricature of the Church. There are plenty of things to criticise, corruption to fight, and so forth, but you'll find that Catholics themselves are engaged in changing the Church for the better (and that they have a healthy attitude to sex, alcohol, and various other pleasures of life). You're entitled your opinion, but when your opinion of the modern Church is clearly based on a skewed and selective reading of the Church centuries ago, it's difficult to have any respect for that opinion. The Church has always respected people's freedom of conscience, which is why so many of its saints were rebels against members of the Church hierarchy. It was the Inquisitor-General who found that the English trial of Joan of Arc was invalid and that she was innocent, after all. If ecclesiastical law had been followed, Joan of Arc would never have been burned at the stake.

Saltpetre, I think your understanding of the Church’s stance on birth control is somewhat under-informed. Yabby and Wikipedia are not exactly good sources of Church teaching – may I suggest you read some of the varied views within the Church? Wrt the Time article, I personally think a better approach would be to address the living conditions that make having multiple children so problematic. I think it's dreadful that any woman should be in such circumstances that she's denied the choice to have more than one child and that the priority should be to improve living conditions. That said, the issue of birth control isn’t as clear-cut as some like to make out. If you go along to Natural Family Planning classes provided by the Catholic Church, you will find that half the class aren’t remotely Catholic – there are non-religious health/medical and lifestyle reasons to use NFP. Furthermore, more than half of the women who have abortions in this country were using artificial contraception that failed. Whatever one’s views of abortion, most people I know disagree with it at some point during pregnancy and consider it a reluctant last resort, and the reliance on artificial contraception is often under the false belief that it's highly effective with no health repercussions. There is a ‘do no harm’ ethos behind the ban on artificial contraception and, while you may disagree with the Church’s conclusions on this subject, it's unfair to suggest otherwise.

I understand that most people will never be able to reconcile themselves to a lifestyle that relinquishes control over procreation – we expect to have so much control over our lives, nowadays – but I think it's presumptive to cast the Church’s stance as some backward hangover from the Middle Ages. It's a complex and somewhat radical stance, but the Church isn't an arbitrary spoil-sport – there are complex and valid reasons behind all Church teaching which some Catholics choose to follow and others not. No one's forced to stay in the Church; we all have freedom of conscience. That ought to be recognised and respected.

Thanks Mishka,

I'm not trying to pick a bone with you, or with the Church, and my comment about extremism was meant in broad-brush, and not particularly with the Catholic Church in mind, if you know what I mean. There are unfortunately far more relevant cases of religious extremism in our troubled world. I also accept that people are free to exercise their conscience, and very many do I'm sure, but that doesn't really alter the Church's official view, and it is this which I have some difficulty justifying.

You are not the only one on this forum to mention that artificial contraception methods may be detrimental to female health, but I fail to see how the use of a condom could produce such unwanted side-effects, for male or female. I am aware that the pill can be a problem, and probably IUD's as well. However, I don't see how a blanket ban on artificial contraception can embody an ethos of 'do no harm', for obviously it does, even indirectly perhaps, cause harm and hardship to some followers. Then, you also indicate that even NFP is unacceptable, perhaps being contrary to God's law? This more or less shuts the gate, doesn't it? Thus logically forcing people to break the rules or risk a lot of unnecessary pain for themselves and their potential offspring. I don't see how this can be justified in good faith.

A well-nourished conscience should not be so burdened with such unnecessary complications, in my humble opinion.

As for masturbation, I think it's perfectly natural and acceptable, in appropriate moderation. Birth control, however, is a far more serious consideration, and unwanted pregnancies present a host of very serious ramifications, not the least being the trauma and ethical dilemma of abortion.

I can understand the virtue of restraint in all things sexual, and why the Church would wish the world to contain far fewer sinners in this regard, but then I'm just an old fogey, and some would even label me prudish. (Or perhaps, more correctly, prudent.)

Mishka, I think you will find that Catholic doctrine and the effort
to enforce it, varies somewhat from country to country. In Chile the
church fought to the end, to lift the ban on divorce, for instance.
In the end they were thankfully rolled by people power.

Indeed Catholic schools have had to alter their tune somewhat.
Firstly there are simply not too many priests, nuns or monks left
in the West. Secondly few Western parents would accept the abuse
to their children that people like myself experienced. So most
teachers at catholic schools are far more like normal people, then
used to be the case.

How kind of the church to contract out the burning of heretics.
It saves getting ones hands dirty after all.

The issue of contraception is not about limiting children to one,
but not having 5,6,,7,8 etc, when they are not wanted. Tubal
litigation would be the easy solution, but in places like the Philippines
the church controls most of the hospitals, so that is
not an option. They just enforce their dogma on a poor public through
political and other means, these people arn't given options like we
have. Shame on them.

Crossing your legs for Jesus has been shown to be a dismal failure
when it comes to family planning. If the church was really so concerned
about abortion, they would look at the country with one
of the lowest abortion rates, ie Holland, to see how they do it.
It starts with great sex education. But of course when the WA Dept
of Education launched a comprehensive website for teens, to teach them
about sex education, family planning and contraception, catholic
schools in WA did their utmost to prevent access for their students.

It took the church around 400 years to concede that Gallileo was right
all along. No doubt it will take them about the same to concede to
reason on these other issues. The old farts who run Rome should frankly
have been put out to pasture, years ago.

Saltpetre, I must be brief, so I hope I can answer you satisfactorily. NFP is acceptable but should be governed by each Catholic's conscience as to its appropriate use, the guide being that it should be for grave reasons, not selfish ones. For example, Catholics use NFP when undergoing chemotherapy so as to not harm any offspring in the womb. As for your query about condoms, I know people (both male and female) who have latex allergies, and I know even more who have had condoms break - it seems to be a fairly common occurrence that often results in unwanted pregnancy.

Wrt do no harm, contraception reinforces a mentality that treats children as a commodity and an attitude towards sex that can be very selfish. It gives people a false sense of security that they can have sex without any consequences. But there are consequences, and not just children, but STDs, broken relationships, etc.. This blog articulates some of the concerns of someone who doesn’t even object to artificial birth control in theory: http://thinklaughweepworship.blogspot.com/2011/03/beyaz-commercial-part-2-making-myself.html I hope it helps explain just a tiny amount of the sort of thinking that lies behind Church teaching.

As for the pain you mention, pain and suffering are part of life. The fact that we all suffer to differing degrees shouldn’t be an argument for avoiding or exterminating life.

Mishka, if you know so much about the Catholic Church, why don't
you just come clean.

As you would know, buried deep within Catholic dogma is the belief
that suffering is actually noble.

http://opentabernacle.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/john-paul-iis-penitential-practices-the-opus-dei-connection/

That's just one of the URLs which came up when I googled Opus Dei
and whipping. There are many claims that old JP2 had his own
little whip to beat himself and of course he was closely associated
with Opus Dei.

What a freaky lot they are and what damage they do. It is truly
amazing....

Yabby, next you’ll be quoting Dan Brown! I must admit that Opus Dei aren’t my kettle of fish, but matters of personal piety are, quite frankly, none of my business or yours.

You entirely missed my point about the burning of heretics. Burning at the stake was a standard secular punishment. Just as I wouldn’t assess today’s British justice system by its practice last century of hanging people for petty crimes, it isn't valid to assess today’s Church by a form of execution that was standard at the time and utilised by non-Catholic countries.

You also ignore the obvious implication of your discussion of varying efforts to have secular law reflect ecclesiastical law. If the Church’s activities vary so much from country to country, then one must conclude that the differences are cultural.

FYI, NFP has been shown scientifically to be more effective than barrier methods.

Your claim that Holland has a low abortion rate due to sex education simply does not stand up to the fact that Sweden has had ‘great sex education’ since 1956 and Denmark since 1971, yet they have some of the highest abortion rates in Europe.

As for suffering, of course it's noble to endure suffering without complaint – there's no lack of non-Catholics who share this belief. The idea that the Church in any way promotes suffering is obscene and defamatory. I quote from the Catechism: “The corporal works of mercy consist especially in feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked...”

My main issue with what you have written throughout this lengthy discussion is that you expect the Catholic Church to adopt your morality and have no respect for those Catholics who, of their own free will, adhere to the teachings of the Catholic Church. As I said before, conscience is individual. In a diverse society, you cannot expect everyone to agree on everything. The Church and Catholics must follow their conscience, just as you must follow yours. You ought to respect that if you have any sort of belief that people ought to be free to think what they want.

Mishka, why should I quote Dan Brown? Fact is that the press has
exposed some of the goings on within Opus Dei (the fanatical end
of the Catholic Church) and I've read quite a few reports of JP2
allegedly carrying his own little whip. When people of such public
influence do these things, the psychology behind it all becomes an
interesting question.

So because some non Catholic countries burnt people at the stake,
you seemingly excuse the Church for doing the same? Come on, this
is the mob apparently preaching love and kindness, but we'll just
conveniently get rid of anyone who happens to disagree with us.

I have no problem at all with Catholics believing whatever they want,
as long as they don't try to enforce their dogma on the rest of us
normal people. Like I always say, swing by your testicles from
your chandelier, as long as both the testicles and chandelier are
yours :)

So go ahead by all means. Whip yourselves, torture yourselves with
sexual guilt, suffer as much as you want, but please leave me out
of it all, for you don't have a scrap of substantiated evidence to
back up your claims.

But the Vatican refuses to do that. They want to enforce their dogma
on the rest of us, one way or another, usually by lobbying politically
in what are indeed very clever ways. They learnt something in 2000 years.

Suffer all you want on your deathbed Mishka, you will win a couple
of gold stars in heaven, I am sure. But frankly the rest of us want
to move on and I see no reason why the Vatican should want to tell
us how to live, it is none of their frigging business.

Yabby, get real! Accusing Catholics of “sexual guilt” because a tiny number of them practice mortification is like accusing all Australians of being sado-masochists because some are into S&M. Furthermore, mortification has nothing to do with sex – it’s a way of training oneself to give up bad habits. Members of Opus Dei recognise that they’re not perfect, and they practice mortification. It’s like giving up chocolate for Lent.

The Church, like any other group, has the right and duty to follow its creed and cannot be expected to go against its conscience. If you try to force it to conform, it will have no choice but to cease its institutional efforts to do good. If it isn’t allowed to provide charity, healthcare, and education in good conscience, then these things will have to be shut down (as have all its adoption agencies in the UK). Most people are happy to engage the Church’s services, and I think most people have the objectivity to appreciate that tolerance for Catholic beliefs is a small price to pay for cheap private education, etc.. I would not expect a Muslim charity to cook pork for the hungry, so why should anyone expect the Catholic Church to provide sterilisation procedures in its hospitals?!

The Church, furthermore, doesn’t force its beliefs on anyone. It has a legitimate voice, that’s all. Ultimately, democracy rules (unless you’re in a Muslim country) and the people choose whether they agree with the Church. No one is forced to elect Catholics, and it has little effect anyway. After all, Tony Abbott has promised not to interfere with the Medicare funding of abortion. How is that enforcing dogma?!

The Church didn’t burn people at the stake for merely having a different opinion, by the way, and it never said Galileo was incorrect in the first place, but I don’t think you’re interested in the truth, so I won’t bother you with facts that you’ll just distort and disregard. You say I excuse burning people at the stake when I actually called it “abhorrent”. You’re clearly incapable of having a sensible conversation.

Mishka, as we have established, the Church considers masturbation a
grave sin, and as we know that just about all males and a whole lot
of females do it or have, clearly many Catholics suffer from a guilty
conscience! Let them suffer.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0029.html

Even the Church acknowledges that 3000-5000 were err regretably burnt
at the stake and many tortured.

Look up Giordano Bruno and the charges against him, they are listed
in Wiki as the documents were found some years ago. Nearly all
of them are for "holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith"
of one kind or another.

The church holds far more power then just as a "legitimate voice".
After all the church controls the alleged ticket to heaven which many
a Catholic politician would have been promised, so it holds huge
influence, unlike the rest of us.

So does it threaten politicians?

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/141973.php

They seemingly certainly try, as the above article reveals. Fortunately
some politicians are " no longer scared by the Church's
threats". I can only deduce that the chruch does indeed threaten
politicians and that some are indeed scared, hardly just a
"legitimate voice".

Interesting defence-in-the-form-of-attack, Mishka Gora.

>>The Church didn’t burn people at the stake for merely having a different opinion<<

Somewhat revisionist, though? Or perhaps... slippery is a better word.

"The Church" may not have themselves burned unbelievers at the stake. However, when they found them guilty of "heresy", they handed them over to the State for burning (Jan Hus, Giordano Bruno etc.) An early form of rendition, I guess. Good for keeping one's hands clean.

But were they really all that clean?

Here's a bit from Emperor Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis, issued in the sixth century:

"We order all those who follow this law to assume the name of Catholic Christians, and considering others as demented and insane, We order that they shall bear the infamy of heresy; and when the Divine vengeance which they merit has been appeased, they shall afterwards be punished in accordance with Our resentment, which we have acquired from the judgment of Heaven."

"Punished in accordance with Our resentment" meant burning at the stake.

Nice.

Closer to home, Mary's attempts to turn England Catholic by force deserves some attention.

http://www.elizabethi.org/us/elizabethanchurch/marian.html

"Those who refused to adhere to the Catholic form of worship were to be burnt to death as heretics... Some three hundred people were burnt to death between 1555 and 1558."

I suppose that if you look at it sideways, it is "the State", rather than "the Church" that burned them. But was the Church a) for or b) against such action, I wonder.

And then, this:

>>[the Church] never said Galileo was incorrect in the first place<<

No. He was merely stating facts that were "formally heretical, for being explicitly contrary to Holy Scripture;"

http://web.archive.org/web/20040829092858/http://www.msu.edu/course/lbs/492/stillwell/galileo_trial_docs.html#sentence

Hair-splitting, par excellence.

Yabby/Pericles, I have tried to keep this discussion on the topic of conscience, but it has turned into a have-a-go-at-Catholics thread. I made my view of burning at the stake clear – “abhorrent” – and yet you continue to bring it up. Am I supposed to defend every single Catholic throughout history?! Should Catholics be held solely responsible for wrongdoing that was standard practice for Catholics and non-Catholics alike? Have you any sense of balance and relevance?! You have no respect for the consciences of Catholics, and your bigoted attacks on the Church of the past are irrational. You clearly have no respect for my opinion or historical truth, so I will not continue the discussion.

I will, however, clarify the matter of Galileo, to give you just one example of how you prefer bigotry to the truth. Galileo’s heliocentric theory was never declared incorrect by the Church. The heresy for which he was convicted was that he claimed his theory to be fact, without scientific proof. What you have entirely missed is that his theory was only partially correct and that the scientific consensus of the day (which the Church supported) was also partially correct. If the Church had sanctioned Galileo’s theory, it would have sanctioned something that has been disproven by modern science. (Galileo believed that the sun was the FIXED centre of the universe. We now know that the sun is NOT the centre of the universe and that it DOES move.) Despite all this, the Church has formally apologised for his mistreatment (denunciation and comfortable house arrest), but it did not take “400 years to concede that Gallileo was right all along” because a) he was NOT right all along; and b) the ban on his works was lifted in 1718. According to the scientific philosopher Feyerabend, “The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just…” (Oh, and they didn’t burn him at the stake, funnily enough!)

Yabby, last time I checked the Philippines was a democracy. And if people have such a problem with what the Catholic Church preaches, they can leave.

And you might want to actually expand a bit on those "threats" you mentioned. The threat was of civil disobedience by pro-life groups (i.e. that they won't pay taxes to fund things that go against their conscience) and that the government likewise threatened Catholics with being charged with sedition if they did so. Sounds to me like the Catholics were exercising their right to protest, whereas the GOVERNMENT was the one doing the threatening....

It's a bit late to yell "unfair", Mishka Gora.

>>I made my view of burning at the stake clear – “abhorrent” – and yet you continue to bring it up.<<

Just to remind you, Yabby made the perfectly accurate statement that:

>>[the Catholic Church] used to burn heretics like me.<<

Your response was essentially one of denial:

>>the Inquisition didn't actually burn anyone at the stake - heretics were handed over to the secular authorities<<

Yes, you did also describe it as an "abhorrent craze", but the thrust was "it wasn't the Church, it was the State". Which positively demanded a response along the lines "well, that's a bit expedient, don't you think?"

Incidentally, I chuckled at your line on Joan of Arc - "It was the Inquisitor-General who found that the English trial of Joan of Arc was invalid", which carefully ignores the fact that it was a French, Catholic Bishop who conducted the trial that led to her being burned at the stake in the first place. [Sounds off: more hands being washed]

Your next move was "well, they all did it":

>>...it isn't valid to assess today’s Church by a form of execution that was standard at the time<<

Which, of course, still fails to contradict Yabby's initial assertion.

And this is quite breathtaking:

>>Galileo’s heliocentric theory was never declared incorrect by the Church.<<

Not "incorrect". Just "explicitly contrary to Holy Scripture".

Perhaps, with your extraordinary ability to tap-dance around commonly understood words and expressions, you can enlighten us on the difference?

Were they saying "we know Holy Scripture is incorrect, but we can't possibly let the plebs know that"?

Surely not?

A sense of balance or relevance Mishka? The way I understand things,
any organisation which is active in political lobbying about how
we all should live, is clearly up for scrutiny and criticism about
its own beliefs and values. I can't remember ever saying a word
against the Hare Krishnas for instance, because to the best of my
knowledge, they chant their mantras and don't get politically
involved. The question then arises, why should the church say
what it essentially pleases politically, but unlike other organisations, have some kind of
exemption from any criticism?

Mary, this is the quote from the article:

*Ramon San Pascual, director of the Philippine Legislators' Committee on Population and Development Foundation, said that the "fact that this bill has gotten so much momentum indicates that politicians are no longer scared by the church's threats. Some cultural change is taking place."*

I would have thought that the wording about who was threatening whom,
is actually quite clear.

I seem to recall many an occasion where politicians in various
countries were threatened with excommunication, if they did not
follow the church line. Now from my perspective such a threat would
be laughable. But from the perspective of a politician who was
indoctrinated as a child that only the Catholic Church could supply
his ticket to heaven and actually believed them, no doubt this could
seem quite scary and gives the church enormous power. The poor living
on the rubbish tips of Manilla are clearly paying a heavy price for
this. They have my empathy.

Yabby,

Talking if excommunication...

This papal bull was issued by Pope Innocent VIII in the late 15th century.

"The bull urged local authorities to cooperate with the inquisitors and threatened those who impeded their work with excommunication."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summis_desiderantes_affectibus

This thread has become pretty sad, with all the 'raking over of the coals' of ancient and almost entirely irrelevant history. Want to point fingers? Why not have a go at the Brits sending convicts to the penal colonies, or the wonderful early treatment, and much more recent treatment of our indigenous people, or of our woeful treatment of asylum seekers, or of Asaad in Syria, or Indonesia in West Papua, China in Tibet, Myanmar, Shri-Lanka and the Tamuls, Israel/Palestine, Pakistan and India in the disputed north, Afghanistan and Iraq, ......

In the current, and relevant, world situation, it could be strongly argued that a lack of balanced 'conscience' and a consequent lack of any genuine attempt to respect human and civil rights is in large part responsible for these current disastrous situations.

How many Catholics are running around stirring for blood? How many saying fie on all ye damned non-Catholics? How many doing any more than protecting themselves, neighbours, kith and kin when set upon by radical elements? And, what do Catholics preach - Peace, and love toward all Men!

Let's get real here! There are some dead-set prunes in this world, but I don't see any Catholics among them, no Catholic terrorist organisations, no suicide bombers or constructors of roadside bombs, no demented mass-murders or psychopaths. How many Catholics have ended up on Death Row?

Perspective my friends. Do unto others, but do it without thought of admiration or personal profit; do it for your fellow man in the spirit of giving, and in humility.

Empathy and hostility are unhappy bedfellows, and if one wants to ask what has gone so wrong with our international community, look to the elevation of nationalism and self-interest over the rights of citizens, and point your finger at the shambles of the United Nations - united in name only.

Yabby, you are such a bigot. You trawl the web to find things that fit your warped worldview, then when someone points out an error in your sources you simply ignore it.

If you had any sense of integrity you wouldn't rely on one English-language quote. Haven't you heard of research - you know, finding out all sides of the story, digging for the truth? If you really cared about the Philippines and the plight of its people, perhaps you'd bother reading some of the Filipino media. Perhaps you'd realise that the original quote was in Tagalog and open to misinterpretation. According to the Filipino media, pro-life groups had threatened civil disobedience (by not paying taxes) and the government had threatened to charge them with sedition. It had nothing to do with the Church threatening politicians with eternal hellfire. I've already told you this, but you prefer to twist one vague quote to suit your agenda. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

But, hey, don't let the truth get in the way of your prejudices!

I'm not sure how that makes the Church's actions ok, Saltpetre.

>>This thread has become pretty sad, with all the 'raking over of the coals' of ancient and almost entirely irrelevant history. Want to point fingers? Why not have a go at the Brits sending convicts to the penal colonies, or the wonderful early treatment, and much more recent treatment of our indigenous people, or of our woeful treatment of asylum seekers, or of Asaad in Syria, or Indonesia in West Papua, China in Tibet, Myanmar, Shri-Lanka and the Tamuls, Israel/Palestine, Pakistan and India in the disputed north, Afghanistan and Iraq<<

It is interesting though that you chose this particular bevy of beauties with which to associate the Church's historical activities. Did you have a particular reasoning or method when you made the choice?

An interesting point, Salpetre. Perhaps you have noticed that there
are all sorts of threads on OLO, where we criticise all sorts of things.

Why should the Catholic Church be exempt? Good intentions are not
enough, I am afraid, not when religious dogma lands up being the
cause for much suffering and misery.

The past burning of people like me is indeed still relevant as a point.
For of course the church, preaching love and caring, also
claims near exclusive knowledge about what the Almighty is really
thinking. Clearly the lines of communication must have been down
for a few hundred years. I had to chuckle about Mishka's lame
excuse, of oh well others were doing it too. Those others don't
claim special contact with the boss himself!

So in that sense it makes perfect sense to question all church
dogma, for clearly in the past they got it very wrong.

Given that church dogma affects my freedoms of choice, why should
I not protest?. Given that church dogma causes much misery and
suffering, why should I not feel empathy for those who are so misfortunate?

In fact the freedoms that we have today were hard fought for by our
ancestors, from a time when the Church was all powerful and could
knock off those who disagreed, to a point where its substantially
had its wings clipped, thankfully.

But of course the Church still has enormous power, especially in the
third world. As I've explained, first indoctrinating children to
believe their dogma and then threatening true believers with
excommunication, can indeed be seen as a powerfull political weapon
which should not be underestimated.

I must admit I can't keep up with all these comments, but I did want to make one point, as a history buff. You all (except Mishka Gora who has alluded to it but failed to spell it out) seem to be ignorant of the basis for capital punishment - in this case, burning at the stake. People like "Bloody Mary" didn't burn heretics simply because they had a different opinion. They received the death penalty - most unfairly, I hasten to add! - because they were guilty of treason. In a Catholic state, as all states were in Europse prior to the Reformation, heresy was just another form of treason. It has always been considered treason against God and the Church, but in a Catholic state it was seen to undermine the monarch too. Mary I was trying to restore her (Catholic) power in England after twenty years of Protestantism, so any sort of heresy was perceived as a treasonous threat and treated accordingly.

Non-Catholics weren't any better. As an Englishman, I'm heartily ashamed of the way Catholics were treated throughout history - indeed, continue to be treated. We can havea Muslim on the throne, but not a Catholic, after all!

I should also like to point out that there's a difference between criticism, which should consider good and bad in a balanced manner, and censure or calumny. A little more respect for freedom of conscience wouldn't go astray in this thread!

That's my two cents' worth - take it or leave it!

With all due respect, Lindy, just your say so is not a good
enough source for me.

So I've had a look further.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54045

This news source certainly discusses Bishops threatening politicians
with excommunication.

The second source claims that the Philippines President is even
concerned about it.

So its clearly an issue and I seemingly had it summed up just about spot on.

Just shows you how ignorant you and some of these Catholics are, Yabby. The bishops can't threaten to excommunicate someone because it happens automatically. All they can do is talk about it:

"Any Catholic politician who casts a vote with the intention of legalizing abortion, or of protecting laws allowing abortion, or of widening access to abortion, commits a mortal sin.

When such a vote indicates that the Catholic politician believes that abortion is not always gravely immoral, such a politician incurs a sentence of automatic excommunication, under canons 751 and 1364, because of heresy. "

(http://www.catholicplanet.com/articles/article78.htm)

Even if the bishops stay silent, those politicans will be excommunicated anyway. No one has to do or say anything. A pretty empty threat, don't you think?!

Finally we are back on the topic after a full round of abuse (which I am so glad I did not partake in):

"Any Catholic politician who casts a vote with the intention of legalizing abortion, or of protecting laws allowing abortion, or of widening access to abortion, commits a mortal sin."

So if I were a Catholic politician, I would be committing a mortal sin, yet I would not be excommunicated because my vote would be neither out of belief that abortion is not always gravely immoral, nor out of intention to assist women who want to have an abortion. My vote would be with the sole intention of getting government out of our life, in this area as in any other.

Suppose a thug bikie gang threatened a woman: "if you abort your baby we will break your teeth". If I understand correctly, then a Catholic (including a Catholic policeman) would then be forbidden to stop them and protect the woman. If so, then it is my good fortune that I was not born a Catholic.

I see no difference between the state and its government, being a non-voluntary organization that imposes itself on people against their will and any other criminal/gangster/terrorist organization.

Poor Mishka, even if deep in his heart he belives otherwise, he has no choice but to oppose me vehemently because otherwise he would commit a mortal sin.

Montgomery, thanks for the perspective. Yabby and Pericles seem to be stuck in a loop of hysterical historical hoohah having no bearing on the topic of the contemporary exercise of conscience - unless they mean that all Catholics should instantly chuck their faith in the good aspects of Catholicism, and berate and whip themselves soundly, out of desperate concern for all the ancient bad. But, who is without sin?

Yabby, a bit of moderate self flagellation can be an attempt to empathise with the trials that Christ, the disciples and many saints had to bear, and thus for the truly devout can simply represent an attempt to feel closer to their God. Nothing strange or deviant in that.

"Given that church dogma affects my freedoms of choice, why should
I not protest?. Given that church dogma causes much misery and
suffering, why should I not feel empathy for those who are so misfortunate?"

Your freedoms affected? In the past I can understand, but now? Ok, I'm sorry, some hurts last a lifetime, but fortunately times have changed, and with it extreme zealotry, even if with the best of intentions, is rightly deplored. Too slow coming? Probably. Too little recognition and reconciliation? Probably. But, hopefully, lessons have been learnt and methods and programs amended accordingly. Past times have been difficult, and many unsound practices employed in misguided fervour. If possible, time to move forward.

Causes much misery and suffering? Did the Church dictate that certain people had to live on rubbish dumps and produce swags of children to share in their misery? Or have the likes of Mother Teresa tried to comfort the poor and disenfranchised? Perspective, balance, truth, my dear Yabby. Not all is at it seems, and not all tarred with the same brush.

Catholicism is the big bogey? I suppose Hitler, Pol Pot, Sadaam, Gaddhafi, Bin Laden and so many other deluded psychotics were all closet Catholics then?

Pericles, I chose these contemporary abhorrences in attempt to focus on our new and more 'enlightened' world exercise of 'conscience'.

No, Yuyutsu, you are not correct. The Church teaches that you cannot commit a sin in order to prevent one, even if the one you wish to prevent is greater. A Catholic policeman would most definitely intervene to prevent the sin of breaking the woman's teeth. He is not responsible for what the woman chooses to do after her 'rescue'. I'm not sure what gave you that idea in the first place. Moreover, there are sins of commission and omission, and the policeman would commit a sin of omission if he failed to fulfil his duty to protect the woman.

(And I'm female by the way.)

Splendid, Mishka,

In this case, may I assume that you agree with me that it is not a sin for a politician to vote to get the state out of the way in the case of abortions (and I include also the case of babies who were not introduced to the state, although for some reason you find this case different), thus protecting the woman from being imprisoned if she aborts? Indeed, the politician is not responsible for what the woman chooses to do after her 'rescue'.

Agree or disagree with him - I think Christopher Hitchens death is an unfortunate extinguishment of a critically thinking modern mind and conscience.

*The bishops can't threaten to excommunicate someone because it happens automatically. All they can do is talk about it:*

So are they bluffing and lying, Lindy? How Christian is that?
Clearly these devious tactics have worked for years.

It seems like even the Prez got sucked in.

http://www.uscatholic.org/news/2011/04/philippine-president-says-hell-risk-excommunication-legislation

Salpetre, perhaps you should go and reread the Time article to
understand why the Catholic Church is responsible for much misery
and suffering the the Philippines. We won't even start about the
rest of the third world.Or perhaps you simply lack the compassion
of what it is to be human in the third world, where the church controls everything and you have nothing.

Of course the Catholic Church affects my freedom to choose. When the
NT inroduced voluntary euthanasia, it was amazing how the Catholic
policitians rallied to shut it down.

Meantime we have a whole lot of oldies who want choices about their
lives and how they end, who are forced to turn criminal, head for
Mexico and smuggle back their stash of Nembutal.

You want freedom of religion, but we want freedom from religion,
for those of us who feel so enclined. Force Catholics to live by their
dogma if you will, but leave me out if it and many others out of it,
or we'll have every right to protest.

Sorry, Yuyutsu, you're not making much sense. We were talking about a policeman, who has a duty to defend the public from physical assault. Suddenly you're talking about a politician as policeman and the state as thug. The state does not threaten anyone with physical assault - it is not a thug - but if it did then a politician could vote to remove that threat, theoretically. In the case of abortion, however, it would be sinful for a Catholic politician to support abortion because it is the woman's offspring that is under threat, not the woman. The woman does not need rescuing from any illegal activity. The politician is, however, responsible for legislation, and he should not vote for any legislation that is harmful to innocent human life.

WmTrevor, agreed.

Saltpetre, thanks again for your sensible and polite comments.

If grabbing someone by the neck, handcuffing them and throwing them in jail (and shooting them if they resist) is not a physical assault, Mishka, then what is?!

The only thing that COULD differentiate the state from other thugs is when people willingly agree to be ruled by it. However, were you ever given the option? were you ever asked for and given your consent to be ruled by it?

Er, Yabby, there's nothing in that link that contradicts what I said. The President "risks" excommunication if he votes for the RH legislation. Nothing new there.

"The phrase “latae sententiae” means a judgment or sentence which is 'wide' (latae) or widely applied; it refers to a type of excommunication which is automatic. Such a sentence of excommunication is incurred “by the very commission of the offense,” (CCC 2272) and does not require the future particular judgment of a case by competent authority."

Bishops can declare that an excommunication has been incurred, after the fact. That is not a bluff or a lie. When they tell someone they will be excommunicated if they do something, it is a warning - they are informing their flock of the repercussions of their actions. That's not threatening, that's warning someone of risk or danger.

Sorry, Yuyutsu, you've lost me. Abortion is legal in this country, in some places up right up to birth. The state protects women who have abortions, and it deals lightly with those who commit infanticide (I imagine because of mitigating circumstances). I don't know of any pro-life groups, Catholic or otherwise, who advocate the criminalisation of abortion. Most concentrate their practical efforts on reducing abortion numbers and providing services to alleviate the problems that lead to women having abortions in the first place. Even if (hypothetically) the state did arrest women as they tried to enter an abortion clinic, they would be doing so in order to prevent a murder; if, after the fact, on account of a murder taking place (but state laws do not exist for such a scenario and are not likely to). Arresting someone for a crime is not assault.

I am afraid I will no longer be able to comment on this thread as I am taking a vacation as of now - I've already worked past my knock-off time!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

Yabby,

I think you can have the last word. I will only say this - the Catholic Church is pro- life, and this is understandable for a faith believing in God and the hereafter and in Heaven and Hell. My belief is that this pro-life stance is intended to encourage people to lead good lives, and to believe in the sanctity of their own and every other life. The situation in the Phillipines is indeed regrettable, and it is also regrettable that there is this lack of separation of church and state. A similar situation probably exists in many other parts of the world, and mostly involving other faiths than Catholicism or Christianity. There are also over-the-top Christian movements with far more radical views than Catholicism, but fortunately the state is not governed by them. All belief systems seem to have their failings, but I think Catholicism is far from the worst of them. We should all believe in live and let live, but that appears far from accomplishment at this time in a very troubled world. Mankind in dreams of a better future has made many errors and is due to make more yet before all can come to accept the weakness of spirit which has led mankind so far from enlightenment. All we can really do is hope that wise men and women will find a better way forward, where 'good conscience' is given due sway, in the name of peace and goodwill on Earth toward all men.

Have a good Christmas and New Year, and safe driving.

*When they tell someone they will be excommunicated if they do something, it is a warning - they are informing their flock of the repercussions of their actions. That's not threatening*

Lol Lindy, what clever wordplay! Clearly those Philippinos perceive
those err warnings as threats. Its also a clever way for the church
to control a Govt. Do as we say or your future is hell and damnation.

But lets take a look at this automatic excommunication thinggy.
Women who have had an abortion, automatically excommunicated. People
who don't see abortion as a grave sin, automatic excommunication.

Given that most of the Western world supports abortion in the first
trimester and to my knowledge, the abortion rate amongst Catholics
is not much different from non Catholics, clearly a good chunk of
that diminishing Catholic flock in the West, is not Catholic at all!

WM Trevor, I certainly agree with you. Hitchins was a great thinker
and a great wordsmith.

Yes, Yabby, my guess is that a very large chunk of people who identify as Catholics aren't very Catholic after all. Lots of my friends regularly point this out. But that's what I respect about the Catholic Church - you can follow your conscience, leave, believe what you want. If those politicians really don't believe they're doing anything wrong, then they shouldn't bothered by the prospect of excommunication - give these people some credit for basic intelligence, Yabby. If you don't believe abortion is wrong, you can simply leave, find a church that fits your views better, or simply abandon church-going altogether. Catholics have some pretty difficult rules to live by, but outside of those rules there's an amazing amount of diversity, a lot of leeway for different opinions. And there's always the option of going back. I don't know any Catholics who are tormented by guilt, because they have a very human attitude towards sin and know they can get a clean slate any time they want by going to confession. Whether you believe in it or not, that's pretty cool.

Lindy, IMHO the Catholic Church shot itself in the foot with its
backward contraception policies, for couples feel that the church
has no business in their bedrooms. So people have left, from Europe
to South America, joining other denominations. Only in Africa,
where people are still less educated and more superstitious, is the
church growing.

What you think is great is simply realpolitik calculated by the
numbers men in Rome. If they tried to clamp down on the few remaining
churchgoers, they might as well keep closing churches down even
more then they already are.

My bone to pick with the church is that it has absolutaly no respect
for the rights of those like me, who think that their so called
divine law is a heap of codswallop. I seem to recall various statements made
by JP2, where he made it quite clear that the church
would try to enforce its dogma on everyone, not just Catholics. They
achieve this by huge political lobbying, done very cleverly, I admit.

About a year ago we had a well publicised case in WA, of a bloke
who'd led a fullfilling life, but due to various misfortune, he
was in palliative care, unable to move anything but his mouth.
Nothing but years of this lay ahead of him. He frankly had had enough
and had a lawyer trying to find ways to get to Switzerland, not an
easy thing in that condition. I felt huge empathy for this guy and
frankly I too would want a choice about my future, in that situation.
Only Catholic dogma and their influence on the political circus stops
it happening. So my fight with the church will go on.

Hate to break it to you, Yabby, but that's not the Catholic Church imposing its dogma on you, that's democracy. The reason things like euthanasia aren't legal in this country is because a majority of people don't want it, and most of those people aren't Catholic, let along practising Catholics. If a majority want it, they'll get whether the Church likes it or not, and I think you'll find that it's Protestants who constitute the bulk of pro-life activists. I know what you're saying, but I think it's really unfair to blame the Catholic Church just because they speak up on certain issues. Ultimately, the people decide, and if you think Australians give a hoot about excommunication you really are loopy! lol

I hate to break it to you Lindy, but the majority of Australians
are overwhelmingly in favour of voluntary euthanasia.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/per-cent-support-voluntary-euthanasia-poll/story-fn3dxiwe-1225791455181

It just doesn't come up at election time, as there are so many
other issues, all parceled into one vote.

Perhaps the church will agree for us all to hold a referendum on
it?

Of course those Catholic politicians fear losing their alleged ticket
to heaven. Religion is hardly based on the rational.

A referendum would remove their guilt and would limit the amount
of political manipulation that the church could do behind the scenes.

But it would be very democratic.

And how many Catholic politicians would that be, Yabby? The DLP is the only remotely Catholic party - and even it has non-Catholic members, so that would be one Senator and perhaps Tony Abbott (but he's not much of a Catholic if he won't do anything about abortion). So what Catholic politicians are standing in the way?

Even if a majority of Australians are pro-euthanasia - and I'm pretty sceptical about polls, especially their wording - it can't be a very important issue for them. I think they've got better things to worry about. I know I have!

Plenty of Catholic politicians, Lindy. They don't have to belong
to a Catholic party. We saw what happened when the NT tried to
introduce voluntary euthanasia. Remember who led that one?
He's still in parliament too. Then we have the intense lobbying
from a small band of pro lifers, using every tactic in the book
on their local MP. Chain letters, phone numbers to call and all
the rest. I once joined a US Catholic lobby group, just to
understand how they functioned. (until they kicked me out when the
truth came out) Every tactic in the book was used.

A referendum would be fair democracy, would you not agree?

Really, Yabby, what world are you living in?! C'mon, there's no way there's a majority or even a substantial minority of practising Catholic pollies in Australia. How many are there (and of those there are how many haven't already been excommunicated by their votes)? What percentage? You say you've done "research" into all this. Back up your conspiracy theory!

That said, a referendum wouldn't bother me, though I suspect most people would think it was a waste of money. Wouldn't mind a referendum on the useless carbon tax, though....

*That said, a referendum wouldn't bother me, though I suspect most people would think it was a waste of money.*

Not really Lindy, not if it was done at the time when people are
voting anyhow and its just one more piece of paper. It would
be the democratic way to decide the issue and take all the religious
heat out of the political debate.

You forget that when it comes to politics, it can only take a small
% to change outcomes. The Greens don't have 51%. Do you think that
their views don't affect political outcomes? Do you think that
the deals which Harradine did about family planning for the third
world, did not affect outcomes?

There are many seats where only a small change in the % of votes
will change the outcome of the seat, the religious right are
pretty good at exploiting that to their advantage.

I personally don't like to see our oldies having to be turned into
Nembutal smuggling criminals, because the law is an ass, so I think
that it needs changing, so that people can make choices about their
own lives.

Enlightened societies like the Swiss and the Dutch have moved in that
direction, no doubt in Australia we are simply behind, its just
a matter of when we finally change the law. Taking the politics
out of the debate by way of a referendum, would let it happen sooner
rather then later.

Yabby, you're failing to distinguish between the Church and the political system that it allows it to participate in democracy. There is nothing wrong with any group lobbying or campaigning, and you're going on like the Catholic Church and Catholics are the only ones who are active in the political arena. In fact, you're delusional about the political power of Catholicism in this country, shown by the fact that practising Catholics are disgusted by the number of technical Catholics who either do nothing about things like abortion - abortion is available in Victoria up to 40 weeks, so obviously the Catholics aren't doing very well there! - or actually support things like RU486. Sure, smaller parties and independents can hold the balance of power in our poltiical system, but that's a problem with the political system. The fact is that if anyone holds the balance of power it's the Greens, but I don't hear you complaining about them incessantly! Or about the three independents! Anyway, I've got better things to do than debate someone with a grudge and who can't see the wood for the trees. Happy Christmas!

*In fact, you're delusional about the political power of Catholicism in this country*

Absolutaly not. But to understand the situation you need to understand
how the whole big picture works. In the end people power matters.
If politicians tried to ban abortion, they themselves would soon
be turfed out of office by the mob, who would be demonstrating in
the streets. Abbott, Andrews and others are realists enough to
see that and see how pointless it would be to their political careers.
So the church has little choice but to concede defeat.

Voluntary euthanasia is a different kettle of fish. Most
Australians are for it, but are not yet prepared to go and
demonstrate for it. So for a politician to run on it, they would
win a few votes but also upset a few people and lose a few.
So its easier for politicians not to touch it at all. They know
that the lobbying power of the church is there to be used when
required and voluntary euthanasia is still at the point politically,
where it will work.

You just go an enjoy yourself Lindy. I know its a long way away,
but one day you too will perhaps be gasping away for your last
breathe, with little choice in the matter. Keep gasping whilst you
remember that some humane and compassionate people tried to change
it all, so that you actually had a say in all of this, unlike today.

Even better, by then the law might finally have been changed as
reason and compassion finally get to be judged more important
then church dogma.

You're entitled to your views on euthanasia and whatever else, Yabby, but it's a pity you base your views on your prejudices instead of cold hard facts. I've heard some good arguments for euthanasia, but claiming that it's compassionate while those who are against it are lacking compassion is not only stupid but malicious. People on both sides of the debate care about human dignity, passionately - it's just that they propose different solutions. One proposes dying with dignity and the other proposes living with dignity, but both arise due to compassionate concerns about the way we live when we grow old and feeble and are struck down by inevitable disease and decay.

Personally, I'm one of those people who loves life even when it's pretty s**te. When I'm depressed I wallow in it. I think anyone who's managed to get through a lifetime without learning that the little things matter, like watching a leaf blown in the wind or feeling sunlight on your face, probably needs to live a bit longer. If that's lacking compassion, so be it, but I think we should all have every last chance to enjoy what this earth has to offer, even if we're too stupid to realise it. That may be a very subjective perspective, but it's got nothing to do with church dogma or your prejudices against the Catholic church either.

*Yabby, but it's a pity you base your views on your prejudices instead of cold hard facts.*

Facts Lindy, is what my views are based on. In fact I find it highly
arrogant and patronising of the church, that they think that only
they know what is good for me, because only they are in touch with
the Almighty himself.

How can a total disregard for my views, a lack of understanding of
my persective, be called respecting my dignity?

I now have a number of Swiss friends, who had terminally ill relatives,
mostly long suffering cancer cases. They attended the
voluntary euthanasia services and have all described them as very
moving experiences which they will remember with fond memories.
These were not decisions taken in a hurry. In each case, the patients
made the decisions and they all expressed huge relief that they
had some control about their lives, not just doctors and nurses.

To really understand these cases, you have to understand their
individual medical conditions, you need to understand the patient's
perspective and why they think as they do.

To deny patients their rights and wishes, because church dogma
dictates it as so, is hardly compassionate.

Selective facts, Yabby. You have only considered one part of the jigsaw. I'm not going to get into a debate on euthanasia - there are plenty of other threads you can do that in, and I notice you couldn't help Catholic-bashing in the Paul Russell article either - but what I will say is that you have forgotten that euthanasia isn't suicide. If it were, anyone could simply go off and top themselves. It's assisted suicide, and it involves doctors who are supposed to swear an oath to preserve life and not to kill. It involves doctors who are supposed to make every effort to save lives, not kill people. It involves relatives. And it involves a legal/justice system that fundamentally opposes the taking of life. It's a lot more complicated than you make out. And it's got nothing to do with the Catholic Church. As I said before, I've heard some good arguments for euthanasia, but they don't have anything to do with reinforcing bigotry and anti-Catholic sentiment.

Point of clarification please Lindy.

>>[Euthanasia is] a lot more complicated than you make out. And it's got nothing to do with the Catholic Church.<<

Are you suggesting that the Catholic Church is silent on the topic?

Because many people would be surprised to hear that.

*you have forgotten that euthanasia isn't suicide. If it were, anyone could simply go off and top themselves.*

When they are bedridden and can't move a muscle, as say in the Perth
case, they can't just "simply go off and top themselves", as
you put it.

IIRC, the man was given the choice of starving himself to death.
How compassionate.

I know of no organisation which has done more lobbying against the
introduction of voluntary euthanasia, then the Vatican.

Yabby and Pericles, as usual you both totally miss the point. You read what you want to read.

In answer to your request, Pericles, I never said the Catholic Church was silent or ought to be silent on the topic, merely that "it's more complicated". If, like Yabby, you think euthanasia is about Catholics vs non-Catholics you're really delusional. In terms of lobbying, I know more non-Catholics who are actively opposed to euthanasia than Catholics. Even if you took the Catholic Church as an organisation out of the picture there would still be a robust debate.

Yabby, I'm not denying what you said in your last comment. What you've ignored is that there are other people to think about than just the person who wants to prematurely end their life. Those other people have to be taken into consideration whether you're anti-euthanasia or pro-euthanasia if you are serious about creating safe and moral legislation on the issue. You can't just legalise it and never mind the consequences. Whether you're pro or anti, you need to see the bigger picture, and that's a picture that will be a lot clearer if you can get off your anti-Catholic bandwagon.

*if you are serious about creating safe and moral legislation on the issue*

Well there is the rub, Lindy. We haven't even got to discussing
that point yet. Correct me if I am wrong, but I have never seen
the Catholic Church concede that they would agree to voluntary
euthanasia, under certain terms and conditions. Its a plain and
simple "No, its against the dogma"

What your average Catholic thinks, is not even that important, for
its made little difference to the hierarchy, when it comes to
things like contraception etc. So your average Catholic has the
choice of doing what all the rest of us do, the majority of Catholics
it seems.

With voluntary euthanasia its different, they just suffer like
everyone else, with a blanket no from Rome. Woe betide any politician
who tries to change that. Any oldie who wants a bit of control
over their end and tries to smuggle in their stash of Nembutal,
would become a criminal in the process.

I don't think this euthanasia question is all that black and white, but rather has lots of shades of grey. My understanding is that medicos intervene quite a lot to end suffering, in dire cases, though the legality may still be in question. While I can quite agree with medicos having greater latitude, I can't agree with the idea of individual liberty to pull the plug on mere whim.

I do have a concern that better aged and invalid care should be available, for so many nursing homes etc are awful, and it is extremely distressing having to put an aged or invalid relation in such a situation. But what can we do? Quality aged/invalid care is really at a premium, and the best ones seem only to be provided by church organisations (and by the Anglican Church in particular).

I guess when it comes down to it, if a person can live with their conscience and their convictions in making a decision to end their life, I wouldn't stand in their way - though I would hope they would have access to some good counselling before going ahead - and in my view a medico assessment ought still be mandatory. I certainly don't like the idea of promoting suicide by making it as easy as a trip to the local pharmacy!

Quality of life is such a variable commodity, with so many factors affecting both its definition and its means of attainment, but it is this which society should aim to provide for everyone. Still, this is hard to achieve, and additionally difficult to justify at an extreme level when so many in the world are living with, and accepting of, so much less than we generally have available to us in the West.

There is much to be done to achieve adequate worldwide quality of life, and the West will almost certainly have to re-educate itself in what quality really means, and to be far more willing to share.
Youth suicide in our midst is a sad indictment.

http://www.exit-geneve.ch/Exempleoas.pdf

There you go, Lindy. This is how it works in Switzerland.

Quite reasonable, quite sensible, no good reason the same laws
could not be applied here, despite religious flapping of the wings.