B
belorg
Guest
To love one another is what the Belgian law is all about.
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I
inocente
Guest
I’ve said nothing about the Church, and none of what you said here was in my mind. Perhaps you’ll not get confused if you avoid trying to draw unwarranted inferences
.All I meant is that we can all find extreme examples, good and bad, but they tell us little about the average morality of an age.
That so-called progressive should remember he’s living at a time when individualism is at a high peak, perhaps unique in history.
Otherwise you seem to be describing virtue ethics. My impression is that many these days are not taught much virtue ethics or duty ethics, but mainly taught utilitarianism. For instance, is it right to torture a suspected terrorist who may know were a bomb is? Many will answer yes if it saves lives. Little concern for whether the torturer can be virtuous, or for whether our duty as human beings is to categorically prohibit torture. To put it in Christian terms, for the torturer’s soul or for God’s law.
But I guess being taught some ethics is better than none, although it shows how far we’ve had to come and how far we still have to go.
I’d hope the Church is a lot more than just an interest group. I think the best morality is where everyone is educated to consider all the factors, and to always follow their own conscience. At the end of the day we each stand alone to be judged.
R
Rosebud77
Guest
A naive statement… Killing is never loving. Euthanasia is out of hand in Holland and this is already happening with abortion.
A young dancer hurt her foot and would not be able to dance again so she requested euthanasia and it was done. I s that really “loving”? Really moral?
I
inocente
Guest
Is that a utilitarian score card? If so, you forgot to add in the billions more babies alive today due to the dramatic drop in world infant mortality over the last two centuries, and also the utility of quality of lives on top of quantity of all those extra lives.
I guess your imitation of a utilitarian is completed by your dismissing 14 innocent souls superstitiously tortured and killed as “a few witches burned”.
Whew! :dts:
I
inocente
Guest
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” - John 13
Yup. Seems to cover it.
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
In one of his later book, Suicide of the West 1964, James Burnham documents the collapse of traditional moral values and the rise of a corrupt managerial class who want nothing more than absolute control of society. If no one sees that happening at present throughout the Western world, they are willfully blind to it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burnham
Naturally, an essential element of that suicide is to convince everyone of the proverbial progressive lie that the world is in better shape now than in any past century.
Burning a few witches in the 16th century is far and away more horrible than murdering 40million babies in their mothers’ wombs.
National infanticide. That’s progress for you!
Utilitarianism turned on its head.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burnham
Naturally, an essential element of that suicide is to convince everyone of the proverbial progressive lie that the world is in better shape now than in any past century.
Burning a few witches in the 16th century is far and away more horrible than murdering 40million babies in their mothers’ wombs.
National infanticide. That’s progress for you!
Utilitarianism turned on its head.
W
wanstronian
Guest
But, try as we might, we humans can’t get close to the number of babies killed by God each year.
A
Aloysium
Guest
Those babies are eternal beings brought into life and taken from it as we all shall be when the goodness we are meant to bring about, through or against our will, in this world is complete. Behaving as if we were gods, without the love that is God, is what got us into this mess in the first place.
I
inocente
Guest
Corrupt managerial class? Never heard of that guy but the article you linked says it’s part of a series on communism.
It says Burnham was a communist who later changed his mind, joined the CIA, and proposed “a World Empire. In this imperial federation, the United States, with a monopoly of atomic weapons, would hold a preponderance of decisive material power over all the rest of the world”.
And he’s your standard bearer for morality? A Marxist turned imperialist who believed the Bomb was a great way to keep a balance of terror?
Really? Surely you’re joking. Utilitarians of the world, unite! Don’t call us, we’ll call you
.
V
Vera_Ljuba
Guest
What about the phrase: “mercy killing”? Is that also naïve? Decent human beings do not hesitate to put down their suffering pets. There is something wrong when we treat our pets more humanely then our fellow human beings.
P
PRmerger
Guest
I don’t think “what we do for our pets we should do for our fellow human beings” is a very good paradigm to follow.
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I don’t want to put a leash on my fellow human being.
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I don’t want to serve food on the floor to my fellow human being.
Just sayin’…
W
wanstronian
Guest
That’s certainly one way to look at it.
V
Vera_Ljuba
Guest
This kind of “misunderstanding”Just sayin’…
only arises for those who don’t know the difference between “human” and “humane” treatment.
P
PRmerger
Guest
Well, let’s see…This kind of “misunderstanding”
Do you find it humane to feed dogs on the floor?
Do you find it inhumane to leash your pet?
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
North Korea and Iran are the major threats to world peace. Neither country is Christian.
When Armageddon arrives, the people who want to destroy us because we are Christians will get a rude awakening. It will get very ugly, a good deal more ugly for them than for us, since we are entitled to defend ourselves against world class lunatics from abroad. We could, of course, lay down our weapons and convert. I don’t think that is the kind of peace Christ was preaching. Perhaps the secularists would preach that, since they like the idea of all religion being abolished … Muslims, Christians, Jews.
That in their opinion will bring utilitarian happiness for all humankind …the latest and greatest morality the world has ever known.
Tell that to the Germans under Hitler, the Russians un der Stalin, and the Chinese under Mao.
Hitler
“The religions are all alike, no matter what they call themselves. They have no future – certainly none for the Germans. Fascism, if it likes, may come to terms with the Church. So shall I. Why not? That will not prevent me from tearing up Christianity root and branch and annihilating it in Germany.”
Stalin
“We guarantee the right of every citizen to combat by argument, propaganda, and agitation all religion. The Communist Party cannot be neutral toward religion. It stands for science, and all religion is opposed to science.”
Mao
“Religion is poison.”
Not to mention Voltaire
“The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of inevitability….That was how things went with the Roman Senate which was almost entirely composed of atheists in theory and in practice, that is to say, who believed in neither a Providence nor a future life; this senate was an assembly of philosophers, of sensualists and ambitious men, all very dangerous men, who ruined the republic." (from Voltaire’s essay “On Atheism”).
When Armageddon arrives, the people who want to destroy us because we are Christians will get a rude awakening. It will get very ugly, a good deal more ugly for them than for us, since we are entitled to defend ourselves against world class lunatics from abroad. We could, of course, lay down our weapons and convert. I don’t think that is the kind of peace Christ was preaching. Perhaps the secularists would preach that, since they like the idea of all religion being abolished … Muslims, Christians, Jews.
That in their opinion will bring utilitarian happiness for all humankind …the latest and greatest morality the world has ever known.
Tell that to the Germans under Hitler, the Russians un der Stalin, and the Chinese under Mao.
Hitler
“The religions are all alike, no matter what they call themselves. They have no future – certainly none for the Germans. Fascism, if it likes, may come to terms with the Church. So shall I. Why not? That will not prevent me from tearing up Christianity root and branch and annihilating it in Germany.”
Stalin
“We guarantee the right of every citizen to combat by argument, propaganda, and agitation all religion. The Communist Party cannot be neutral toward religion. It stands for science, and all religion is opposed to science.”
Mao
“Religion is poison.”
Not to mention Voltaire
“The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of inevitability….That was how things went with the Roman Senate which was almost entirely composed of atheists in theory and in practice, that is to say, who believed in neither a Providence nor a future life; this senate was an assembly of philosophers, of sensualists and ambitious men, all very dangerous men, who ruined the republic." (from Voltaire’s essay “On Atheism”).
G
goout
Guest
Human beings put down their pets because they are not human, and they deserve humane treatment within the bounds of what they are as creatures.
For instance, a dog living in the US does not have the right to run for President.
A huge part of Christianity is that God became a man. That makes human beings uniquely valuable.
Pets are valuable also, but not exceptionally as are human beings.
Pets are not made in the image of God.
V
Vera_Ljuba
Guest
There is nothing wrong with this approach - on the contrary! Just bring it to the logical conclusion.
From this concept it follows logically that one should treat fellow humans even MORE lovingly and compassionately than pets. If it is considered cruel to allow pets to suffer needlessly, then it is even more cruel to allow fellow humans needlessly.
P
PRmerger
Guest
P
PRmerger
Guest
One has to wonder, if the paradigm is: “we kill people when they are suffering”, are you proposing, Vera, that it’s moral to end their suffering by killing them?Very Catholic, this.
No Catholic should allow fellow humans to suffer needlessly.
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V
Vera_Ljuba
Guest
I think that there is some major misunderstanding here. No one proposes “killing”. We simply use the time-honored principle of double effect. Our intent is not to kill, rather to alleviate the pain and suffering. It is a regrettable, foreseen, but unintended consequence of using twice the lethal amount of morphine to stop the pain and suffering which also happens to stop the heart… the intent is very important! Let me spare you the need to respond: “Very Catholic, this!”. I already know that.
When someone puts a full metal jacket’s worth of bullets into the terrorist’s brain, the intent is not to kill! It is to prevent the terrorist from pushing that button, which would detonate a dirty bomb in the middle of New York. Very useful principle is this “double effect”. Don’t forget the “foreseen, but unintended” paradigm. When in doubt, invoke it.
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