Gay Marriage and the Social Issues Surrounding It

[rossum]

No, rossum. The only “source” of morality is Goodness Incarnate.

So Jews have no source of morality because they do not believe in the “incarnate” part?

What about Buddhists? Was the Buddha “goodness incarnate”? Most people think of him as good, and he was certainly incarnate. Mahatma Gandhi?

You are making the assumption that you are right, and are arguing that therefore you are right.

rossum

 

[PRmerger]

So Jews have no source of morality because they do not believe in the “incarnate” part?

Perhaps you misunderstand the Catholic teaching on “Goodness Incarnate”. He is the Eternal Logos, rossum. So even those, such as Socrates, who did not encounter Jesus the historical man, may have encountered the Eternal Logos.

What about Buddhists?

To the degree that they embrace the morality whose source is Goodness Incarnate, then they are consonant with truth.

Was the Buddha “goodness incarnate”?

No!

He would, I am certain, shudder at that question being asked.

Most people think of him as good, and he was certainly incarnate.

Certainly. But not Goodness Incarnate.

You are making the assumption that you are right, and are arguing that therefore you are right.

rossum

LOL! Um…yes. I certainly am. :yup:

You are not arguing from this paradigm?

 

[atheistgirl]

So Jews have no source of morality because they do not believe in the “incarnate” part?

What about Buddhists? Was the Buddha “goodness incarnate”? Most people think of him as good, and he was certainly incarnate. Mahatma Gandhi?

You are making the assumption that you are right, and are arguing that therefore you are right.

rossum

Some posters are quite persistent in derailing threads; not your fault necessarily as it’s easy to get sucked into their derailment. There’s a general instruction in the guidelines to stick to the topic.

I’m really struggling to see what any of this has to do with the social issues surrounding gay marriage.

Pehaps advice posters determined to derail the topic to start another thread

I’m following this one with great interest as so far there’s been just about no case for any negative social consequences made.

Sarah x

 

[markeverett49]

The Amish are not marginalized, the choose their way of life. I have no idea why you would include Pentacostals. Perhaps you don’t know what I meant by “marginalized?” .

I don’t claim to know what YOU mean by it but I do know what the word means. Actors and actresses were once marginalized members of society, as were “circus people.” (The Code of Canon Law actually refers to “circus people.”) Italian immigrants after WW II were marginalized. Jazz musicians and members of motorcycle gangs were marginalized, as were women with tattoos.

I included “Pentacostals” (aka “holy rollers”) because it has long been permissible for mainstream media to paint them as stupid and backward. Sometimes the word “evangelicals” is used, though there is a distinction. Members of the media are not expected to apologize for calling any white conservative in work clothes as a “tea-bagger” which is INTENDED as an insult but not the sort of insult for which an apology is in order because, well, THEY deserve to be insulted.

 

[Bradski]

It’s like an Engineering professor telling his students to come up with the right formula for building a structurally sound bridge.

There seem to be a lot of different instructions on how to build this bridge. They all seem to work. That’s because there isn’t just one way to do it. Mine is looking a little rough and ready as I’ve made it myself, using bits and pieces of instructions I’ve found here and there. Yours looks really spectacular. But they’re both getting us where we want to go.

However, regardless of the errors inherent in discerning Truth based on Reason Alone, I believe that if I assessed the above truths using Reason Alone, I would come to the very same conclusions that I have now. (Much contrary to the claims of Faithdancer.)

So you’d have very good reasons to reach these conclusions yourself. You could argue the pros and conns of any matter (gay marriage for example - as a desperate attempt to keep this on track) without reference to a religious Truth and suggesting that it’s a sin.

If you think that there could be errors in discerning truth based on reason you must mean that you could come to the ‘wrong’ decision using reason as opposed to one you would reach from within your faith. Can you give me an example?

I completely agree. Many times murderers, and other individuals that commit horrendous acts believe that they were not doing anything wrong.

You’ll find that there are legal allowances made for people who do what we as a society consider to be wrong but who themselves don’t know it’s wrong.

Sorry, I’m going to butt in here a second. This isn’t actually correct, IMO.

This was in response to me saying: ‘Indeed. So you are free to make up your own mind but as the Church has the Truth, your personally-arrived-at decisions will always agree with it’.

I was clarifying PR’s position, as she had just said that it’s good to make your own mind up ‘based on the truth’. There was meant to be a hint of a raised eyebrow in my response, because I don’t believe it either. It’s hardly worth the attempt to ‘make your own mind up’ on issues, even if you are apparently obligated to do so, as PR had said, if you know what the answer is going to be before you start looking for it.

In the end, if we are informed and capable of understanding, we will be judged on our own choices and decisions and we cannot use “the Church said so” as an excuse if we truly believe that a different decision is more in keeping with God’s Will and Christ’s teaching. We are responsible for our own salvation.

Couldn’t agree more. There’s nothing as horrifying as blind faith.

If sex is not merely a simple pleasurable sensation, then what is it? Is it a bonding activity?

It can be both. To (desperately) try to keep this on topic, sex isn’t the only reason people get married. I don’t think it should come into consideration at all. But if you become committed to someone, then sex can bring those two people together in an intimate way.

If so, then why is it only “consenting adults” that’s your paradigm? Wouldn’t you want to add: who are in a relationship?

How can you have sex with someone who doesn’t consent? And you don’t need to be in a relationship to have sex. But if you are, it can add something to the relationship.

MY paradigm is not that sex is just for pleasure.

It can be, but it’s not always. Now I think we’re done with this aspect.

 

[PRmerger]

There seem to be a lot of different instructions on how to build this bridge. They all seem to work. That’s because there isn’t just one way to do it. Mine is looking a little rough and ready as I’ve made it myself, using bits and pieces of instructions I’ve found here and there. Yours looks really spectacular. But they’re both getting us where we want to go.

Certainly. Unless you use some sort of formula that you “made up your own mind about” that’s false.

Then your bridge collapses.

 

[PRmerger]

There’s nothing as horrifying as blind faith.

And that makes you very Catholic. Catholicism shudders at the concept of Fideism.

 

[PRmerger]

It can be both.

What? For pleasure only AND for pleasure and bonding?

But if you become committed to someone, then sex can bring those two people together in an intimate way.

Sure. But I haven’t figured out yet why this paradigm does not allow you to have sex with your co-worker, even if you’re in a “committed” relationship with someone else.

Why couldn’t you do this if it could be “for pleasure only”???

How can you have sex with someone who doesn’t consent? And you don’t need to be in a relationship to have sex. But if you are, it can add something to the relationship.

Then why would you need the consent of your beloved to have sex with someone else?

I don’t need my honey’s permission to have someone at work scratch my back. In fact, I could have a complete stranger do it–someone I have never been in a relationship with–and it wouldn’t matter at all.

That’s because having an itch scratched is just for pleasure only. It’s very satisfactory. Nothing more.

It can be, but it’s not always. Now I think we’re done with this aspect.

Huh? You’ve limned your position on sex just over maybe the past 2 days! How could we have exhausted the subject already?

 

[stewstew03]

The Amish are not marginalized, the choose their way of life. I have no idea why you would include Pentacostals. Perhaps you don’t know what I meant by “marginalized?”

Blacks before civil rights were marginalized. And very much still are.

I will assume you are referring to Clarence Thomas, Allen West, etc…

 

[PRmerger]

You’ll find that there are legal allowances made for people who do what we as a society consider to be wrong but who themselves don’t know it’s wrong.

So here’s the thing, Bradski. Is it still wrong to kill your children, even if you’re not completely culpable?

One would think, objectively speaking, that even if one “makes up one’s own mind” about this, a reasonable, thinking person will conclude: yes, even if someone suffers from a severe post–partum depression, killing one’s children is…wrong.

 

[Bradski]

Certainly. Unless you use some sort of formula that you “made up your own mind about” that’s false.

Then your bridge collapses.

How far can we stretch the bridge analogy before someone points out it has nothing to do with the thread…?

You believe that any truths that you come to yourself, through reason alone, will match the teachings of the Catholic Church. They will be the same, but they can be reached independently. You can work out the truth yourself.

So if you say I am using a framework or a formula for my life that I have come to myself, you feel confident in saying that it’s false on the basis that it’s different to yours. You say my bridge is going to collapse.

But I’m standing on mine and it feels pretty solid. I’m looking over to yours and call out: ‘Way to go, PR!’ because your plans seem to be working for you as well as mine are for me.

I think we’ll both get to where we want to go. Whether there’s actually going to be anything there is another matter.

So here’s the thing, Bradski. Is it still wrong to kill your children, even if you’re not completely culpable?

Let’s use an example that doesn’t have as much baggage as the one to which you linked. If someone spikes your drink with an hallucinatory drug and you kill someone under the influence of that drug, then you are not culpable. That is, you have not done anything wrong when ‘wrong’ is used in a moral sense. You are not morally responsible.

The degree of culpability stretches from ‘none at all’ as in the above, to ‘total’ as in premeditated murder done for the pure pleasure of the act. So the degree of ‘wrongness’ likewise stretches from one extreme to the other. There is no right or wrong. It is entirely dependent on the circumstances. That is (and here comes the punch line)…it is relative.

 

[Patavium]

Men never find truth. They must, let the Truth find them - Bishop Ambrose

 

[Bradski]

Men never find truth. They must, let the Truth find them - Bishop Ambrose

That sounded sexist on the first reading. And it was from a film script wasn’t it?

 

[PRmerger]

Let’s use an example that doesn’t have as much baggage as the one to which you linked. If someone spikes your drink with an hallucinatory drug and you kill someone under the influence of that drug, then you are not culpable. That is, you have not done anything wrong when ‘wrong’ is used in a moral sense.

Huh? OF COURSE you’ve done something wrong, Bradski! I am astonished that you would even consider such a thing! You tell that to the family of the victim: “nothing wrong was done to your loved one” and see what response you get.

You are not morally responsible.

On this we are agreed.

 

[Patavium]

That sounded sexist on the first reading. And it was from a film script wasn’t it?

Sexist? Is that your truth Bradski?

You may be reading too much into a simple line. The bottom line is that a man cannot be the guardian of the same rules he makes, and he cannot be the judge when he is the plaintiff. Is a man going to cut his own hand?

What protects you from making your own morality from the many out there who followed their own rules, and their own morality, but still committed terrible acts (murder, theft…)?

You say well those are wrong, and I have an anglican background so I draw my rules from it as well. You mean you based your morality on Jesus Christ’s? .

 

[PRmerger]

How far can we stretch the bridge analogy before someone points out it has nothing to do with the thread…?

You believe that any truths that you come to yourself, through reason alone, will match the teachings of the Catholic Church. They will be the same, but they can be reached independently. You can work out the truth yourself.

Yes.

So if you say I am using a framework or a formula for my life that I have come to myself, you feel confident in saying that it’s false on the basis that it’s different to yours.

No, Bradski.

It’s not false because “it’s different from” mine.

Imagine you telling your 10 yr old son, “Count how many beans there are in this bowl.” He tells you “There are 8!”

Actually, there are 7, and you correct him.

He responds with, “You just believe I’m wrong because it’s different from your answer.”

Um…no, son. It’s wrong because it’s not consonant with the truth.

So your beliefs aren’t wrong “because they are different than mine”. They are wrong because they have divorced themselves from Truth.

But I’m standing on mine and it feels pretty solid.

Yeah, and the Emperor was walking around butt naked but he felt pretty dern fine, didn’t he?

I’m looking over to yours and call out: ‘Way to go, PR!’ because your plans seem to be working for you as well as mine are for me.

I think we’ll both get to where we want to go.

However you come to the Truth is with me. And if your bridge is built on a formula that is founded upon principles that are True, then your bridge will be just fine.

However, if you are counting on the fact that you can build a bridge (that’s going to be structurally sound) by coming up with principles on your own, regardless of what the universal laws of physics dictate, your bridge will end up like this:

http://www.donan.com/assets/images/engineeringInvestigations/bridges3.jpg

 

[PRmerger]

Sexist? Is that your truth Bradski?

You may be reading too much into a simple line. The bottom line is that a man cannot be the guardian of the same rules he makes, and he cannot be the judge when he is the plaintiff.

Yep.

The quote essentially echoes what Pope JPII has stated (who, of course, echoes the theological giants who went before him): the human person is not the determiner of truth. He is the discerner of truth.

That’s the fundamental moral of the story of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Even wanted to claim for themselves that which belongs to God alone: eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That right to decide what’s right and wrong is what they attempted to usurp when they ate from that tree.

With this imagery, Revelation teaches that the power to decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone.–Veritatis Splendor

 

[Peter_Plato]

The degree of culpability stretches from ‘none at all’ as in the above, to ‘total’ as in premeditated murder done for the pure pleasure of the act. So the degree of ‘wrongness’ likewise stretches from one extreme to the other. There is no right or wrong. It is entirely dependent on the circumstances. That is (and here comes the punch line)…it is relative.

WARNING: No dots were actually connected in the formulation of this argument.

If you construct bridges the way you assemble arguments we won’t be seeing you standing on a deck for long.

Degree of culpability is only one dimension in assessing the ethical implications of any action. I can think of at least three facets.

1. The motives of the agent
2. The situation or circumstances in which the act occurred
3. The rightness or wrongness of the act itself

To claim, as you do, that all acts are morally relative because culpability can vary is just wrongheaded. You could not even bring up an issue of culpability (or praise) if the act itself could not be deemed right or wrong. A person can only be culpable, to any degree, of an act that was in some sense, wrong.

The circumstances and motives of the person could mitigate the culpability of the agent carrying out the act, but the act itself carries it’s own value.

The killing of an innocent person is an objectively wrong act, but to assess the action of the agent committing the act then circumstances and motivation must be taken into account. These do not change the fact that the death of the person was objectively wrong, but the culpability of the agent could vary depending upon motive and circumstances.

All three dimensions enter into ethical considerations undertaken to assess the actual wrong done.

For a more complete understanding of why relativism is simply a false notion, go to this talk. by Peter Kreeft:

peterkreeft.com/audio/05_relativism.htm

 

[atheistgirl]

How far can we stretch the bridge analogy before someone points out it has nothing to do with the thread…?

Thanks Bradski

I know it’s very difficult when someone is trying to suck you into their own unrelated discussions within threads because that’s what they want to talk about - but it has nothing to do with the OP and out of respect for the forum guidelines, and expecially out of respect for the OP, it would be great if we could get back to dicussing the social issues around gay marriage.

I for one am very interested in hearing and examining an exposition of these.

Sarah x

 

[Bradski]

Huh? OF COURSE you’ve done something wrong, Bradski! I am astonished that you would even consider such a thing! You tell that to the family of the victim: “nothing wrong was done to your loved one” and see what response you get.

Doing something wrong in the sense you’ve used it above and being morally responsible are two different things. We are talking the latter – or at least I believed we were. You can agree that the person who, for example, killed a child under the influence of drugs in a spiked drink, would not be morally responsible. Indeed you did. Isn’t that the definition of wrong in the sense we are talking about it? The person was not morally responsible, therefore he personally was not wrong.

You can no more say that he did something wrong to the child than you could say that a cliff that the child fell over did something wrong. You can certainly say that something has gone tragically wrong, but that’s not the meaning of the word we’re discussing. We’re looking at it as it relates to culpability.

The same result can obtain in a variety of circumstances, yet there are degrees of culpability. If a child is killed in the scenario above and one is killed by someone for the sheer pleasure of it, then who is the more culpable? If you say neither, then you should punish both equally. If you decide there is less culpability in the first example, then you are agreeing that there are degrees of guilt.

Sexist? Is that your truth Bradski?

Sorry. Poor attempt at humour.

What protects you from making your own morality from the many out there who followed their own rules, and their own morality, but still committed terrible acts (murder, theft…)?

There’s a social contract running on top of the ‘do unto others’ rule that nearly everyone applies to their own life. I don’t steal my neighbours tools because I don’t want him stealing mine (apart from the fact that I think it’s wrong to steal). Civilisation has a civilising effect. That’s why they call it civilisation. Read Lord of the Flies for an idea of what happens when the social contract breaks down. Or maybe the Fall of Berlin.

You say well those are wrong, and I have an anglican background so I draw my rules from it as well. You mean you based your morality on Jesus Christ’s? .

Well, I don’t want to sound rude, But Jesus didn’t come out with any earth shattering pronouncements that a reasonable person couldn’t have decided him/herself. So no, I don’t specifically base them on what Jesus said – I just think that what He said made a lot of sense in light of what I expected to be true in any case.