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estesbob
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No.
Mike Huckabee: U.S. moving toward 'criminalization of Christianity'
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estesbob
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Not for my business BUT I got drug into another business when a buyer bankrupted-others partners are involved and I was overruled on the insurance issue.
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ishii
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Gary, the enemy of justice is moral confusion. Had the ideas presented by you in your previous posts ruled the day in the 1950’s, black people would still be eating at segregated lunch counters in the south. Some things are right, and some things are wrong. If we don’t stand up for the truth and for what is right, then we might as well look forward to chaos and anarchy. And lots of bloodshed and injustice.
Ishii
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estesbob
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No doubt given that both the Abolition movement and Civil Rights Movement were spearheaded by Christian ministers trying to force their religious beliefs on others.
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unstoppable_II
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unstoppable_II
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That makes two of us. I have read all the arguments advocating SS"M" and found none of them compelling, especially the one about equality.
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unstoppable_II
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ishii
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That is the point that I’ve repeatedly tried to make with this poster, but it seems to fall on deaf ears. This isn’t about forcing people to not eat meat on Friday, or force non-muslims to wear a burka. Its about basic human rights that anyone with a rational mind should recognize as universal - regardless of what society says. I guess we owe slave owners and southern racists an apology, and Thomas Jefferson a reprimand for writing “we are all endowed by our Creator, certain inalienable rights.”
Ishii
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ishii
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Exactly.
Btw, nice quote by Lawrence Auster. I used to follow his blog, VFR and even corresponded with him. But I disagreed with him when he basically accused Pope JP2 of being a neo-con.
Ishii
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unstoppable_II
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I have quite a few of Auster’s articles, and I corresponded with him a couple of times myself. One of my favorites is “Liberalism: the Real Cause of Today’s Anti-Semitism” because it has application beyond anti-Semitism.* He was brilliant. I don’t recall his accusing JP2 of being a neocon; I probably just blew it off. Did you know he converted to Catholicism just before he died?
- “once liberal tolerance rather than traditional morality becomes our guiding principle, we must ultimately tolerate the presence of evil,”
- “In a society dedicated to that proposition, the good itself must ultimately be seen as evil, because the good discriminates against evil, while evil must be blessed with victim status, because it is excluded by the good.”
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unstoppable_II
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How can it be? How can relativism say that nothing is absolutely true for everyone and turn around and claim that relativism is absolutely true for everyone?
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Gary_Sheldrake
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Sure I am. By providing healthcare to my employees I am doing the right thing. Jesus gave free healthcare by the way. He was the only healer among hundreds of Jewish healers in Palestine at the time who didn’t charge a fee for healing. Healers were a very prevalent means of curing people at the time. There wasn’t much else. Now, if someone uses the healthcare I provide to do something I disagree with, that is not my problem. The same goes for paying people a salary. I cannot account for what they do with the money. Maybe they’ll buy drugs or maybe hire a hooker. That is not under my control. My job is to make healthcare available for what I feel are true needs, and if someone misuses it, I cannot control that. I in turn am not forced to procure services that I as a Catholic disagree with, so yes I am free to be a practicing Catholic while leaving other people free to follow whatever it is they follow. That is what a free society guarantees.
All the best,
Gary
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Gary_Sheldrake
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Good Evening Unstoppable: To say that all things are relative is not the same as saying that nothing is true. The problem is that we look to have everything be either this or that and nothing in between, when in truth, this and that are two parts of a whole. This is why people get confused.How can it be? How can relativism say that nothing is absolutely true for everyone and turn around and claim that relativism is absolutely true for everyone?
All the best,
Gary
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St_Francis
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No one is denying that paying for people’s broken bodies to be repaired is a bad thing.
However, you are saying that you are paying for their birth control, which is a sin. Your paying for it puts you in a participatory relationship with the sin they are committing.
And God forbid that abortifacients are involved, in which case you would be participating in their killing an unborn child.
This is the reason that Catholic organizations are taking this to court.
And He told sinners to go out and sin no more. He did not in any way facilitate their sinning.
Yes, it is your problem, because you are *directly *paying for it. You are not giving them money in a fair exchange and then thet are deciding to use it for their own purposes: you are paying for their birth control. It’s as if you went out and bought condoms and handed them to your employees instead if money.
This is why Catholic organizations are taking this to court.
But because you are actually paying for the birth control, you are actually being forced to procure “services” that you as a Catholic disagree with.
Which is why Catholic organizations are taking this through the courts.
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Gary_Sheldrake
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From St Francis:
All the best,
Gary
Much like paying taxes that are then used to wage a war that you might disagree with.
That is the proper process.
But if He saved someone who then went out and committed another sin against His advice, then doesn’t that kick in that participatory relationship you were talking about by letting the person live to do it again? I’m waiting for the standard “Free Will” reply, because I know it’s coming. And will tell you in advance that I will then apply it to birth control with health care. Free will is always the card people have left over when they propose a bad theory, and of course, I am always ready for it.
So you don’t pay them their paycheck? I think you forgot the other half of the argument. People can do most anything with the money you pay them. Even if you take healthcare that pays for contraceptives away, they can buy contraceptives with money YOU gave them in their paycheck. And they can buy porn and rent hookers and buy meth and heroin and pay for an abortion. This is a bit more involved than I think you’re giving it credit for.
Lots of things are done with our money that are against our beliefs. What you and I do with our own money is another thing altogether.
All the best,
Gary
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St_Francis
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Not at all. You are paying taxes, which is a good act. Others are deciding what to do with that money, which is no longer in your control.
No… how do you figure that? If I save someone’s life, I am not responsible for what they do afterwards.
You are conflating two different actions. On the one hand, you give money to people in exchange for their labor. The money then becomes *theirs; *there is no longer any connection ti you at all.
With the HHS mandate, the government is requiring that you pay money to a company for the purpose of providing birth control to the employees.
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Gary_Sheldrake
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From St Francis:
All the best,
Gary
The reality of the matter is that people are doing all sorts of things with your money, and whether it is via a specific fund to pay for one thing you object to or embedded in a package that is mixed with things you agree with and things you disagree with, it is all the same. My point is that YOU are responsible for what you do. The way we influence what others do is by the example we set in the way we conduct our own lives, not by chin wagging people about our religion. If our lives are a demonstration of what we believe, that gets people’s attention.
You job is to save the life. What they do with their life is on them.
Everything in this world is connected to you. You are part of everything that happens. The point is to make your own actions the best they can be, because they are part of the whole.
That’s a rather legalistic separation of personal culpability. Whether it is paid directly for a specific purpose or embedded in a larger set of funds such as our taxes to pay for things like executions in states like mine, or wars that kill 125,000 non combatant men, women and children, it’s all the same. We are guilty in both cases. I am always amazed at how the far right hates abortion yet often supports wars, capital punishment and the like. Pro life is not selective. It doesn’t mean pro life just until we get you born and then all bets are off. I am totally amazed by many of the thought processes I run into with conservatives. Even this post will get half a dozen attacks by people who carry guns, support executions, are fine with wars but get rabid about abortion. I would encourage such people to walk the walk when it comes to being pro life. I am against all forms of killing, whether it’s abortion, capital punishment or unnecessary wars. Yet I’ll soon be attacked for this post by lots of people who think they are pro life but in truth it’s hard to figure what is going on in their heads - just watch. Ironic.
All the best,
Gary
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unstoppable_II
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I’m not saying that nothing is true. I’m saying that relativism doesn’t pass its own claim. If the statement, “everything is relative,” to what is the statement relative?
People get confused because they know down deep that is intended to confuse them. It cannot answer questions like I posed. I put it in the same category as polylogism.
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ishii
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Well - let me respond, and I hope you won’t write it off as an “attack”. To simply dismiss as an “attack” those who challenge your veiws would seem to go against the whole reason for posting on a forum, but oh well.
Quite simply, from a Catholic moral teaching perspective, war and capital punishment are not comparable to abortion which is intrinsically evil, and never justified. Again - that is not right wing talking points from the Mike Huckabee campaign, but actual Catholic teaching. Abortion is always morally wrong. War is not always morally wrong, but can be justified in some cases. The Catholic church has never taught that capital punishment is always wrong (although these days the church does seem to teach us that it is not necessary anymore). Abortion is always morally wrong. And yet, so many Catholics vote for politicians who keep it legal.
One could look at it this way: if we do not protect the most vulnerable - babies in the womb who are defenseless, who cannot run away from a scalpel or vacuum, then how can we even begin to be pro-life? What kind of society protects a serial killer from execution but is fine with abortion? Or is against war but does nothing to protect the unborn? Is such a person truly pro-life?
Anyway, I would hope you don’t view this as an attack.
Ishii
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