Religion and the Discomfort of Biology?

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ricmat said:
I’m restating the Catholic position on IVF. You said you are Catholic. So the official position should be important to you.

You should read the Catholic documents on these matters before dismissing them as irrelevant.
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Well on my profile it says “Christian”.
I am interested in the formal philosophical arguments.
I have read these documents.
 
StAnastasia said:
Open heart surgery is unacceptable, for it frustrates death the way God designed it to occur. We are interfering with a dying process God designed and desires.
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You are inventing your own theology here. This is not Catholic teaching.

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Doc_Keele said:
It’s argument by analogy.
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The fifth commandment obliges us to save and preserve lives. Doctors can and should perform surgery e.g. for heart disease.

This has nothing to do with the creation of a new person. There is no fundamental right to manufacture a baby.

StA’s analogy is not a very good one.

By the way, StA, God did not design death as our final end. God does not desire our death. That’s what Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection is all about.
 
Doc_Keele said:
It’s argument by analogy.
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Bad analogy. The dying process begins at birth. 🤷
That is the discomfort of biology. The biological sciences point to decomposition of the human, while religion points to the human’s immortal soul.
 
Doc_Keele said:
It’s argument by analogy.
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Right. Death is a natural part of life, as is birth. If we’re worried about frustrating the process by which God has impeded a couple from conceiving a child, we should be worried about frustrating the dying process through extreme interventions like quadruple bypasses, feeding tubes on PVS patients, heart-lung transplants, and other extraordinary measures. But these issues are no doubt ectopic to this thread,
 
grannymh said:
Bad analogy. The dying process begins at birth. 🤷
That is the discomfort of biology. The biological sciences point to decomposition of the human, while religion points to the human’s immortal soul.
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Not true, except in a poetic sense. Normal babies are developing, growing, and integrating, not dying.
 
ricmat said:
God wants obedience to himself, and his earthly representatives.
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What you term “God’s representatives” are old, heterosexual (for the most part), celibate males. When this august body begins to include women – including women who have suffered the agony of infertility – people might being to take their pontifications on difficult moral conundrums somewhat more seriously.
 
StAnastasia said:
What you term “God’s representatives” are old, heterosexual (for the most part), celibate males. When this august body begins to include women – including women who have suffered the agony of infertility – people might being to take their pontifications on difficult moral conundrums somewhat more seriously.
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As a Catholic I take them seriously now. As always, when God does not conform to your image of what God is, or how God works, you dismiss “that” God and put your own god in his place.

By dismissing the authority of the magesterium (for whatever reason), you undermine the Church itself. The Church has existed for 2000 years without recreating God in the image and likeness of StA.

God does not need to provide a rationale for us to obey him. God does not need to give a logical (to us) reason for his actions. God does not need to explain himself to our satisfaction.

Church teachings are hard for everybody to accept (each for their own different reasons). Your whining about God being sexist or not creating “the Church of Diversity” would be quite funny if it didn’t lead people down the wrong path.

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StAnastasia said:
Not true, except in a poetic sense. Normal babies are developing, growing, and integrating, not dying.
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Without a correct identification of the entire human being, there is no complete definition of growth. Simple biological identification as this or that is an incomplete description of the human person as taught by the Church.

Current biology is incapable of defining the human person completely.

Peace,
Ed
 
ricmat said:
The fifth commandment obliges us to save and preserve lives. Doctors can and should perform surgery e.g. for heart disease.

This has nothing to do with the creation of a new person. There is no fundamental right to manufacture a baby.

StA’s analogy is not a very good one.

By the way, StA, God did not design death as our final end. God does not desire our death. That’s what Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection is all about.
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Is that what the 5th commandment says?
It says “you shall not kill” or “you shall not murder”
when you look at the Rabbinical Tradition, abortion is not absolutely prohibited IIRC
 
StAnastasia said:
What you term “God’s representatives” are old, heterosexual (for the most part), celibate males. When this august body begins to include women – including women who have suffered the agony of infertility – people might being to take their pontifications on difficult moral conundrums somewhat more seriously.
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To what people do you refer? The Body of Christ holds the complete answer and description regarding the human being. The Catholic Church has no authority to ordain women and this must be definitively held by all the faithful as stated by Pope John Paul II. Here, again, women are misidentified as to their part of the Body of Christ. This separates them from their natural biological reality.

Peace,
Ed
 
ricmat said:
OK - at what point does the transition occur from developing, growing, and integrating to dying?
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That’s a good question, and I suppose it varies according to which subsystem you are talking about. The nervous system, the digestive system, the musculo-skeletal system, and the cardiovascular system might all degrade at different rates in different people.

But the main factor (the biologists at my institution tell me) is telomeric erosion. When the telomeres on the ends of your DNA molecules begin to be shortened, transcription errors in the copying of DNA begin to creep in. After that it’s only a matter of time before cancers and other life-threatening conditions begin to crop up.

StAnastasia
 
Doc_Keele said:
Is that what the 5th commandment says?
It says “you shall not kill” or “you shall not murder”
when you look at the Rabbinical Tradition, abortion is not absolutely prohibited IIRC
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Rabbinical Tradition while important is not the final word in Catholic teaching.

The CCC tells us that the 5th commandment informs us that human life is sacred.

see this from the CCC
 
Doc_Keele said:
Is that what the 5th commandment says?
It says “you shall not kill” or “you shall not murder”
when you look at the Rabbinical Tradition, abortion is not absolutely prohibited IIRC
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Why do you bring up Rabbinical Tradition? This is Catholic Answers and we must present the teaching of the Church regarding human persons, not just their biology but their spiritual aspect as well.

Peace,
Ed
 
StAnastasia said:
What you term “God’s representatives” are old, heterosexual (for the most part), celibate males. When this august body begins to include women – including women who have suffered the agony of infertility – people might being to take their pontifications on difficult moral conundrums somewhat more seriously.
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Absolutely right, qua far-out speculative counter-factual (except that you should have used the subjunctive rather than the indicative mood) - and absolutely irrelevant. 🤷
 
edwest2 said:
To what people do you refer? The Body of Christ holds the complete answer and description regarding the human being. The Catholic Church has no authority to ordain women and this must be definitively held by all the faithful as stated by Pope John Paul II. Here, again, women are misidentified as to their part of the Body of Christ. This separates them from their natural biological reality. Peace, Ed
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Nah – that’s a model that no longer flies. Arguing that a woman’s place is barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen while a man’s place is leading the church is so “fifties,” Ed! “Natural biological reality” has nothing to do with leadership of the Church.

But we should probably get back to the topic of being uncomfortable with biology.
 
StAnastasia said:
That’s a good question, and I suppose it varies according to which subsystem you are talking about. The nervous system, the digestive system, the musculo-skeletal system, and the cardiovascular system might all degrade at different rates in different people.

But the main factor (the biologists at my institution tell me) is telomeric erosion. When the telomeres on the ends of your DNA molecules begin to be shortened, transcription errors in the copying of DNA begin to creep in. After that it’s only a matter of time before cancers and other life-threatening conditions begin to crop up.

StAnastasia
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And so just when is that? (How about immediately after conception?)
 
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