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SeriousQuestion
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That’s a theological perspective, but that part wasn’t uncharitable.
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PetraG
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I hate to break it to you, but I have a PhD in the hard sciences. We are talking about different kinds of knowledge. It is not true that nothing can be known with certainty to be true and it really isn’t true that nothing can be known with certainty to be false.
Yes, scientific theories are, in a way, mnemonics for the truth rather than the truth itself: that is, they are ways to help us make sense of the patterns seen in physical data that has been gathered to date. That is why scientists do not speak of theories as being true: when more data is uncovered, the pattern may not hold any more. The converse, however, is NOT true. Scientists do not hesitate at all to discard a theory that has proven to make false predictions! Of course when a theory fails, they call it false! I know someone who treated a woman whose eyes were damaged because someone told her to treat her eye problem with lemon juice! They told her lemon juice would make her eyes better! That was false!!
Of course it is possible for a scientist to practice deceit, as well. I would hope that premise does not even require more examples, they are so plentiful* and well-known.
The Church, in contrast, has a source of truth that is reliable. There are things we can know with certainty; they just aren’t the things revealed by scientific investigation. We do know many important things by other means.
To contend that someone who self-identifies as some certain sex is actually a member of that sex and is not affiliated in any way with the opposite sex in spite of having the body of the opposite sex is to contend that we as persons are ultimately minds who own our bodies. That is not true. The Church can know the nature of the human person and can know that our bodies are features of our persons that are not ours to change.
That is why the Church is not overstepping her authority when she says that it is false to be telling patients that it is possible to change one’s sex by drugs, surgery and an altered lifestyle.That is not to say that everyone who perpetuates this idea that sex can be changed is knowingly perpetuating a falsehood. I am not accusing people of being liars. I am saying, that what they are proposing is, in an ultimate sense, a false pretense. They may be be deceived themselves because of a false notion about the human person, but it is not true.
While it is perhaps strong language to use, the requirement that someone represent another person they know to be a male as a female or vice versa is to require them to perpetuate a deceit. The patient may not know better, but that does not mean that no one does. I am saying that violation of the consciences of members of society at large should not be required as a treatment for a psychological dysphoria.
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PetraG
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I do not mean that the instances of deceit are plentiful in science in an ultimate sense! As human endeavors go, deceit makes big news in science because deceit is so fatal to the enterprise of science.
Generally speaking, scientists are still honestly shocked when science is deliberately falsified. To science, one deception is like one crash is in aviation. One deceit is one too many. For a scientist, being incorrect is inevitable, but being dishonest is intolerable.
Having said that, it is a big mistake to only believe what comes from experimental demonstration and theories explaining observable physical phenomenon. That view is far too narrow. Besides, it would lead to existential agnosticism!!
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Thorolfr
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First, of all, it seems to me that you are misrepresenting the transgender issue. I don’t think that any transgender person believes that by using hormones or having surgery they are changing their biological sex. Everyone knows that biological sex cannot be changed. If you look at what the APA says about what it means to be transgender, it says:
http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/transgender.aspx
As you might notice, it doesn’t say anything about biological sex. It only talks about “gender identity” and “gender expression,” i.e. someone’s “internal sense of being male, female” and how they communicate their gender identity to “others through behavior, clothing, hairstyles, voice or body characteristics.” I’m not convinced that someone’s “gender identity” and “gender expression” must match their biological sex.
When it comes to identity, a lot of people here in CAF also get upset when people who have what they call SSA (“same-sex attraction”) identify themselves as “gay” as if there is something wrong with that identity. Studies have also shown that a lot of gay people, both boys and girls, often grow up being “gender non-conforming” in different ways. Personally, as I already said, I don’t see gender identity as necessarily being tied to biological sex. Most things in this world are not either/or and black/white kinds of situations. Things are much messier and more disorganized that that. I don’t think that someone’s gender identity must be either “male” or “female” and that their gender expression must be either “masculine” or “feminine.”
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Thorolfr
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And I also don’t agree with the blanket statement that “the Church can know the nature of the human person.” When the Church says, for example, that homosexuality is “disordered” and is not a normal part of some people’s human nature, I don’t see that as being true. Anyone who looks at what actually exists in the natural world as opposed to what is asserted as part of a philosophical construct like “natural law” will see that same-sex sexual activity is far from uncommon. It exists in thousands of other species on earth besides homo sapiens and appears to me to be a normal form of sexuality for some. Asserting that it is “disordered” is based on a religious belief, not a scientific fact.
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SeriousQuestion
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Cannibalism, incest and all other sorts of abominations happen in the natural world.
Here are examples of natural animal behavior.
Here are examples of natural animal behavior.
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Thorolfr
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Perhaps they do, but that is still a religious issue, not a scientific one. Scientists don’t talk in terms of “abominations” and from a purely scientific and anthropological point of view, cannibalism, for example, is not unnatural. Some human societies have practiced cannibalism and it often occurs in the natural world as well. Stating that it is against a particular religion is something completely different and has nothing to do with science.
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Thorolfr
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It’s kind of silly to personify animals and call them “jerks”.
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SeriousQuestion
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The fact that only science can tell the truth is a philosophical idea and also science by itself might not be able to say if something is natural (depending on how the word is used.)
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SeriousQuestion
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I wasn’t the one who wrote the article’s headline and from a scientific perspective you are an animal too.
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DignumEtJustum
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This is not a civil rights issue and to call it one is a bastardization of the principal of civil rights and to those who fought and died for actual civil rights. A man who chooses to sleep with another man is not at all akin to being born of a certain race.
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Thorolfr
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So, do you believe that gay people don’t deserve to have any civil rights? Do they not deserve to have protection from discrimination in employment or housing? In the 1950s, thousands of gay people were fired from their jobs in the federal government because Joseph McCarthy claimed that homosexuals had infiltrated various government agencies and were a threat of national security. Many of them committed suicide. And should a gay man be subject to policemen barging into his own bedroom and being arrested if they were to find him in bed with another man. That’s what happened to John Geddes Lawrence at his apartment near Houston, TX in 1998. That’s why sodomy laws were ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas.
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SeriousQuestion
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I thought that they already have their civil rights by now in America. DignumEtJuestum is probably talking about something else. Some of those examples are quite outdated.
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Thorolfr
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There are still some states where someone can lose their job for being gay and where there are no protections on the basis of sexual orientation.
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PetraG
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Yes, it is very noticeable that they don’t say anything about biological sex, and instead say “the sex to which they were assigned at birth,” as if this determination were done arbitrarily. No, they think their interior experience–which I think everyone believes is quite real–is the ultimate indication of their biological sex and that their body has nothing to do with it. This puts the whole person in the mind, which is deemed correct, and the body is a possession of some kind belonging to the mind, rather than an aspect of the person. This is why they use terms such as “assigned gender,” as if their sex was something that children are arbitrarily assigned at birth.
No one is saying they are not confronted with a real problem. What you (and they) are saying is that when gender identity does not conform to their physical sex, it is their physical sex that is wrong, that it ought to be corrected through surgery and by altering their appearance. The Church is saying that gender dysphoria is a state of confusion about one’s gender. It is not wrong to say “it upsets me to see that I’m female.” What is incorrect is to say “I am not a female. This body is wrong. Someone has assigned me the wrong way–this is all a mistake.” Those kinds of mistakes are extremely rare, and involve cases in which bodily ambiguity was felt to have forced a gender assignment based on a human decision.
I don’t think you can name another psychological sense of having the wrong body that psychologists do not consider a confusion rather than an indication of true identity, by the way. In what other way can someone feel their body is wrong in the sense that their true identity is other than what their outward appearance and not have their psychiatrist conclude that they’re deeply confused individuals? Why are people who have racial identity dysphoria considered confused, rather than in need of cosmetic surgery to confirm their “true” race?
The Church is quite aware of what animals do. That does not disqualify the Church as the authority on what humans may morally do and what deviates from the moral order for humans.
Philosophical constructs like natural law are not used to legislate divine law. The Church not only has the authority to teach what belongs to divine law but the duty to do so.
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Thorolfr
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“The” authority sounds rather broad. How about “an” authority on what Catholics may do if they want to abide by Catholic doctrine, not what all human beings may do. Even a lot of other Christians would dispute the notion that the Catholic Church has any authority over what they may morally do.
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adgloriam
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Listen up !!! The church has not take stance on a number of issues for the simple reason of “preserving the peace”.
ONE EXAMPLE: Pope Francis not mentioning the Rohingya (although being pressured, prompted, and criticized to do so) when he visited Myanmar is such an example. Yet (guess what?) the pope probably did more for peace -and helping to solve something- by visiting and not mentioning the problem than all those trying to pressure and denigrate him.
First, I take offense at your pretense that the church is incompetent. Currently, and since the death of pope saint John Paul lI, the church is making ever greater efforts to take informed stances on scientific issues and corresponding ethical issues. The most recent (and lauded) example is “laudato si”.
But I have come across issues in my own life, that the church having taken a stance on did however not “address directly”. And why @Thorolfr ?? Why?? Because if the church did pronounce itself, there would be a war the very next day. And peace is a superior good.
God bless.
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adgloriam
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And your issues are always only around homosexuality and that seems a bit “narrow”. Not to say “reducing” or “reductive”.PetraG:
“The” authority sounds rather broad.
I honestly appreciate this can be a “key” issue to those whom it does concern and affect directly - and everyone of them has my fullest sympathy for it. But we must give “ourselves” a break from time to time not to incur in a sort of “obsession” and reevaluate ourselves instead of reevaluating everything “in light” of ourselves.
There has been a lot of violence on CAF recently surrounding LGBT issues, and that does not create the conditions necessary to bring forth a fruitful dialogue allowing for charity and an increased mutual understanding.
God bless.
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Thorolfr
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One of the reasons I ask is because people here in CAF often say that the Church’s main authority lies in the area of faith and morals and if it’s not in that area, they say that it’s just someone’s opinion. That especially happens if the Pope or some bishops say something about immigration or the importance of helping poor people, or if they implicitly criticize someone’s favorite politician.
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adgloriam
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I’m must be off CAF for today @Thorolfr, but before I go let me say I love you. Let us be at peace in the meanwhile and I look forward to the next time. Your brother in Christ.
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