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tonyrey
Guest
It is not primarily an issue between anti-abortionists and pro-choicers but whether abortion is justified when it is solely for the mother’s convenience…
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T
tonyrey
Guest
Ignorance is revealed by those who offer no explanation at all and merely resort to abuse …
T
tonyrey
Guest
T
tonyrey
Guest
Eugenics is not practised explicitly but to abort unborn children who are in any way defective amounts to eugenics. In practice “any distress” on the part of the pregnant woman covers any abnormality of the unborn child or her reluctance to bring it up. It is a carte blanche for aborting any unborn child who is deemed undesirable…
Yet you criticise Christians for having the same belief!
The development of moral insight does not imply that good and evil were created by man.
The value of life was not invented but discovered.
Good and evil exist not only in deeds but also in a person’s intentions and attitudes and the mental and physical consequences.
In that case it is irrational to believe in values. How can an insignificant being be valuable?
The point is that the criminal relies on the fact that most people conform. He knows most people do not deviate from the social norm. How would you prove he is not entitled to reject morality?
That was the term you used but it cuts no ice from a rational pov! To refrain from selfishness because you believe it is harmful is not selfish or impious but prudent.
No evidence of Design? Even David Hume recognised it…
Is it obvious how purposeless molecules became purposeful?
The question is whether or not we are responsible for our choices and decisions which determine what sort of person we become. Or are we simply machines within a vast machine?
The evidence is in the secular mentality dominated by material interests and fostered by advertising in the mass media.
Spiritual values are not the monopoly of religion but they are submerged by materialism in our present society.
Indiscipline, criminal attacks on teachers, antisocial behaviour and moral ignorance.
It would be folly to re-introduce specific religious doctrines into state schools in a mainly secular society but it is also folly to neglect their moral and spiritual development. Spiritual readings need not be religious and attendance at prayers need not be compulsory but there should be the opportunity for children to pray together if they wish. Specific forms of spirituality should not be imposed on people. Children should be given the opportunity to discuss and learn the things that really matter with concrete examples of integrity, unselfishness and dedication to others.
There is evidence which you reject without offering an alternative.
Who else taught people to love their enemies, forgive them, pray for them and if necessary suffer and die for them as Jesus did… and to be perfect as their Heavenly Father is perfect?
How do you know this?
It’s not demonstrably** only** a human concept
It cannot possibly be as effective as belief in the concept of objective justice - as expressed by the belief in karma, nemesis and retribution after death when there is no way of evading the consequences of one’s actions.
Morality has not only developed but reached a higher level. What determines the fact that it is a higher level? Just people’s opinion?
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Moscati
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The KKK may be “Christian”, as in some of its members belonged to fundamentalist churches, but the KKK has always hated Catholics. Come on, don’t be deliberately idiotic.
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tonyrey
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Of course it should be 2007. Heaven knows how many there will be in a thousand years time!
Perhaps 90%…
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hellopeople
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When it comes to statistics, you can’t just guess what causes something because it seems right. If this is how things were done, people would still think the earth was flat.Ignorance is revealed by those who offer no explanation at all and merely resort to abuse …
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tonyrey
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None of the most important questions in life can be answered statistically but you solve nothing by sitting on the fence…
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wanstronian
Guest
(I said I wasn’t going to continue, but it’s difficult not to carry on when my comments are being misrepresented so blatantly!!)
TO OTHER EAGLES, YES! Don’t play if you can’t keep up. We were talking about the value of animals to other animals.
Well, it’s true that I don’t regard unproven supernatural forces to be more potent.
Yes - the subjectivity of masses. Why do you find this concept so difficult?
You are so dishonest. You know full well that’s not what I have said. When will you stop lying to gain advantage?
At least I only claim it’s a hypothesis, not a fact. That is the true logical error of the theist.
Straw man. Disingenuity. Unsurprisingly from you.
And you have no evidence to show that we are not entirely contained within our physical bounds. Tony, we’ve discussed this to death on a previous thread. Why are you bringing this up again? We’ve discussed it and shown that your worldview is unsupported by evidence. Why do you keep on restating falsehoods? Do you think repetition equals truth?
Because we have evolved, obviously. Why are you asking stupid questions when you already know the answers? Will you grow up - this is like arguing with a broken record player. Do you think the argument will be resolved while you keep introducing new qualifiying adjectives and asking obvious questions and going down irrelevant rabbit-holes? What’s wrong with you?
Ah - okay. No, my use of the word ‘proven’ in that context has no bearing on probability. Why would it? Do you give a probability for the earth revolving around the sun? Of course not! It’s a scientific fact. Like the scientific fact that humans are biological organisms that share a common ancestor with all life on the planet.
My opinion of your reasons is based on the fact that you haven’t provided anything other than opinion to support them.
As I said before, we have conflicting, and seemingly equally valid, statistics. There’s no point discussing it. I know that you think you can make your point of view true by painful repetition, but I have a more realistic outlook. But if you remember, I was illustrating that the burden of proof is upon you to prove your claim, not for me to prove it’s wrong. You’re dodging the point… AGAIN.
What a vacuous comment. It confirms my suspicion declared in previous posts, that you would rather have any answer, then admit that you don’t know the answer. It’s not obscurity or fence-sitting, it’s a recognition of the fact that we don’t have enough evidence to make a firm statement. It’s intellectually honest - THAT’S why it’s invulnerable. Science explains an awful lot, but where it has no conclusive evidence it says so. You seem to think that’s a weakness, whereas it’s a strength for a theist to make absurd claims with no supporting evidence!
Again with the conjecture. Care to give some evidence? Thought not…
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wanstronian
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I don’t dispute them - I haven’t checked them but I accept that more children are born out of wedlock these days. I deny your implication that this is either the cause or result of reduced morality. I have friends who are unmarried but have kids. They love them no less, they are no less moral for the lack of a piece of paper. Parenthood is a greater commitment than marriage ever was, in my opinion. More to the point, this is a new statistic that you’re introducing - why don’t you try substantiating your existing ones first?
I’m not the one failing to substantiate my claims. You are. This is a new meaning of the word evasiveness that I wasn’t previously aware of - it seems that it’s now ‘evasive’ to ask a claimant to back up their claim! Who’d have thought!!
Yet again you dodge the issue - which is that you have provided ZERO evidence for any of your original claims. And you cover up by accusing me of dishonesty! You really are a piece of work!
There is a massive amount of evidence for people being biological organisms (let me remind you that you introduced the word ‘machine’). I listed the fields of scientific endeavour that categorically and unanimously conclude that this is true.
Well, again you’re going to have to provide statistics for your claim that a distressed mother is somehow able to abort on the basis of a fabricated birth defect, and get this past a doctor. This seems like a non-sequitur. I admit that women have abortions for a number of reasons, but not wanting to bring the child up is NOT Eugenics.
Of course I don’t! Are you mad? I criticise them for saying that God begat morals and not providing any evidence. Don’t feel victimised - I’d equally criticise anybody that made such assertions without evidence - in any field.
No, but in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, and the clear documentation of how moral behaviours have changed over time, as a result of lobbying by groups resulting in changes to legislation, it’s pretty clear-cut.
Prove it.
Yes - these concepts exist in potential as well as actual. That doesn’t disprove my point.
You must have asked me this same question about twenty times in the last year. Outside of human ethics, there is NO evidence that a human life is significant or valuable. WE, as humans, ascribe value to human life. I’ll mark this date on the calendar and see how long it is until you ask me the same question AGAIN.
He is entitled to reject morality. And society is entitled to force him to pay the consequences if he is caught. I’ve made this abundantly clear.
Piety is, broadly speaking, the doing of good for its own sake, rather than for the sake of the individual. To do good purely to avoid alienation (or, as you’ve changed the context, ‘harm’) is not doing good for its own sake.
I didn’t say there’s no evidence of design. But there’s no evidence of **intelligent **design, or intentional design, in nature. Like so many theistic representations of quotes from scientists, this falls down as soon as you put his comment in context. David Hume did not believe in ID.
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wanstronian
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Yawn… are we here again already? Back to your argument from incredulity? The answer is “no.” You are, no doubt, going to conflate “We don’t know” with “It can’t be possible.”
Now you’ve changed the subject - until know you implied it was just about our death date. Remember, the source for this was euthenasia. We are nominally responsible for the decisions we make. Whether free will is an illusion is a separate subject with which I’d rather not bloat this thread any further.
No - that’s opinion, not evidence!
Ok, whatever. Now answer my question, if you would.
Ok, but surely there’s nothing to stop children praying together? Schools don’t ban prayer, do they? At any rate, I asked what you thought would abolish poor behaviour (with justification, of course!), not for a viewpoint on the practicalities of reintroduction of prayer. I do believe you haven’t actually answered a single question that I’ve put to you!
There may well be evidence, you just haven’t provided it. And there is no onus on me to provide an alternative. Your responsibility is to provide evidence for your claims, I may then reject the evidence if I can show why it is flawed. I have no obligation to provide an alternative.
Well this is just conjecture of course. It’s not evidence. What proven value do these lessons provide? Would you suffer and die for your enemy? If someone broke into your house, raped and murdered your wife, but then you had the chance to save their life by giving your own. You’d do that, would you?
I don’t know it. It’s just that there’s no evidence of any. The reality of justice that we DO know about is clearly subjective, as I have demonstrated upthread. And on other threads, for that matter. It’s indisputable without relying on conjecture.
Well, unless you can show me another being that irrefutably holds the same concept, the rational point of view is that it is.
It may not be as effective, I don’t know, I’ve never believed in any of that nonsense. But of course, a belief in an objective justice does not mean that it exists. Only evidence will show that. And there is none.
Yes. What else?
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wanstronian
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Probably isn’t far off that now, if you take spontaneous abortion into account. Why does God kill these young lives…?
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tonyrey
Guest
An supreme example of negativity in what is supposed to be a rational argument. The upshot is that you believe and preach that “Outside of human ethics, there is NO evidence that a human life is significant or valuable.” It is no wonder that in our secular society such a mentality leads to an increase in crime, abortions, divorce, euthanasia and the disintegration of families. Statistics are not required to reach that conclusion!
Thank God the Catholic Church stands up for the objective value of human life!
The final irony lies in your statement that “Parenthood is a greater commitment than marriage ever was, in my opinion”, the evidence being that there are now more than one million one-parent families in the UK!
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tonyrey
Guest
I understated the figures:
“The number of single-parent families has almost doubled in the past 15 years, new government figures show.
Lone parents now account for 26 per cent of all families in the UK - 1.75 million - compared with just one in seven in 1986. A quarter of dependent children live with them.”
highbeam.com/doc/1P2-12992051.html
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Tybourne
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Wanstronian- firstly, I take my hat off to you :tiphat: for having the courage and perseverance to debate your case here, where you are likely to find many who disagree with you. These are good qualities and, as far as I can see, can only help you in your search for truth.
Yet, your search is hampered by your misunderstanding of the nature of evidence. See the thread in the Philosophy Forum on ‘Demanding Evidence’ for more on this. Your *a priori *assertion of materialism and scientism renders you deaf to the valid arguments that Tony is making here. All of which has taken us away, perhaps somewhat, from the motion that “the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world”.
If you could loosen your grip on your world view for a moment and try to see the Church’s claim to be such a force in Her own terms, you would note that She claims to be a vessel of sanctification, through Christ’s grace. In other words, She can help people become good and to reach levels of goodness inaccessible to our evolved nature.
For example, you ask, “Would you suffer and die for your enemy?”. This is precisely what St Maximillian Kolbe did in the Auschwitz concentration camp, when he voluntarily stepped in to replace a prisoner who had been marked for death by starvation. This prisoner was a former non-commissioned officer in the army, the very force that had imprisoned and tortured Kolbe. As an evolved organism, this makes no sense whatever. Yet, it is a demonstrable sign of goodness beyond our human capacity.
Where can a universal standard of goodness found? In the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written partly in response to the evil of the Holocaust. The First Article states that we should:
This is what Kolbe did towards his enemy. The notion that our enemies are to be treated as our brothers and sisters was almost unheard of before Christianity. Now it is enshrined as a universal principle underlying international relations. Here indeed, is a force for good.
Keep up your passionate search to be right, to find the truth.
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Syntax
Guest
This guy’s a trip!
“I don’t know justice is not objectively real…but I do know it’s indisputably subjective…I’ve demonstrated this in other threads. Hey, just because justice is indisputably subjective doesn’t mean it is not objective; it could be objective after all.” Lol!
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Syntax
Guest
This Wanstronian guy’s a trip!
Even better!:
Here’s another double standard:
“When you provide evidence for your hypothesis, I will decide whether or not it supports your hypothesis. And even though I am under no obligation to provide an alternative interpretation of the evidence you do happen to offer yourself, I still will think your hypothesis is a false, even though I am under no obligation to tell you why I think your hypothesis is false. On the other hand, just be aware that when I do offer an alternative interpretation of my own, it will always be much more realistic than yours anyway–and I don’t have to prove this to you either.” Lol.
Even better!:
“There is no objective reality of justice, but I don’t know this…but I do know it’s indisputably subjective…I’ve demonstrated this in other threads. Hey, just because justice is indisputably subjective doesn’t mean it is not objective; it could be objective after all.” Lol!
Here’s another double standard:
and then…
“You’ve provided only opinions to support your beliefs, not evidence, and I’ve been doing the same. But hey, at least my beliefs are only hypotheses and not facts. So why should*** I ***be held accountable for providing evidence?”
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wanstronian
Guest
You know very well that I refer to objective significance, ie. significance in the Universe - NOT significance in society. You’re just straw manning again. You are without doubt the leading perpetrator of misrepresentation on these fora. If only you were able to debate honestly!
And again, you just speculate, without providing evidence? Will you ever back up your claims?
Well, it stands up for its subjective opinion that life is objectively valuable. To the point where its mandates result in human life being lost to Aids…
No - no evidence involved. It was my opinion, as I stated. You’re the one claiming evidence that isn’t there.
In any event, there’s no irony in my statement. I believe that one’s children are more important, more needing of protection, than one’s spouse. You clearly disagree. I feel sorry for your children, if you have them.
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wanstronian
Guest
Perhaps you’re right. If you can show how non-empirical evidence can be shown to be irrefutably true, then this might be a way forward. However, at the moment, I cannot see how such evidence can be relied upon.
Actually, I have never expressed my opinion on the subject. I merely asked Tony if he could substantiate his assertions that the result of the poll was due to his perceived decline in morality. He has been unable to substantiate either his claim of decline, or its link to the poll result.
Okay, that’s one example. I don’t believe it’s representative of all, or even a majority, of those who proudly call themselves Christians. I might be wrong. I don’t much care. It’s clearly not beyond human capacity, as a human did it. It’s just a choice, albeit something of a whopper… But I am interested - why is this act deemed to be good?
Agreed. This is the colloquial meaning of the word ‘objective’, in that it has been reached by concensus by rational individuals who share a sensible understanding of the concept of ‘good.’ It’s not ‘objective’ in the sense that it meets some immutable standard that would exist even if humans didn’t.
Leaving aside for a moment the sense of such an interpretation, there are few who claim to be Christians that follow such an ideal (or indeed atheists, although that is not relevant here). This is evidenced by the number of wars that have been fought in the name of (although not necessarily caused by) Christianity. How does one pick and choose when to apply this ideal?
I devour each morsel of truth as it arrives, properly and objectively tested, documented, peer reviewed and accepted into the annals of human knowledge.Keep up your passionate search to be right, to find the truth.
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wanstronian
Guest
Wow - you do en even better job than Tony of misunderstanding and misrepresenting what I say! I’m amazed that you know what my reaction would be if evidence were to be produced. You seem convinced I wouldn’t accept it. On what basis do you make this assertion?This Wanstronian guy’s a trip!
“When you provide evidence for your hypothesis, I will decide whether or not it supports your hypothesis. And even though I am under no obligation to provide an alternative interpretation of the evidence you do happen to offer yourself, I still will think your hypothesis is a false, even though I am under no obligation to tell you why I think your hypothesis is false. On the other hand, just be aware that when I do offer an alternative interpretation of my own, it will always be much more realistic than yours anyway–and I don’t have to prove this to you either.” Lol.
Another misrepresentation. I stated that I don’t know for certain that there is no objective standard for justice. That does not mean that the justice we do know about cannot be shown to be irrefutably subjective (in the absolute sense, ie. immutable). I can demonstrate this quite clearly by pointing out that justice is dispensed differently in different parts of the world. It’s a shame you can’t read/understand what I actually wrote.Even better!:
“There is no objective reality of justice, but I don’t know this…but I do know it’s indisputably subjective…I’ve demonstrated this in other threads. Hey, just because justice is indisputably subjective doesn’t mean it is not objective; it could be objective after all.” Lol!
Why is it a double standard to admit to a hypothesis, for which I have little or no evidence? It seems pretty honest to me, unlike the theist who presents conjecture as fact then blusters and dodges when challenged to substantiate.
And another miss! Tony has been asserting as fact throughout, whereas I have only done so where I am able to produce objectively-researchable substantiation.and then…
“You’ve provided only opinions to support your beliefs, not evidence, and I’ve been doing the same. But hey, at least my beliefs are only hypotheses and not facts. So why should*** I ***be held accountable for providing evidence?”
You’re clearly letting your allegiance to your superstition cloud your judgement. Did you think your post through before submitting it? I only ask because every single judgement you’ve made about me has been shown to be BS, and I’m not sure whether you’ve realised this yet.
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