BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 09:38 AM

I'm a very straightforward chap and I'm inviting you to expand on your comments, not play a game. In many regards, the Zika crisis is nowhere near as massive in terms of numbers of people affected as the HIV tragedy. That is not to minimise it in any way, and it's early days, and my view is that the Church should abandon its stance on condoms across the board. You appear to be saying that banning condoms for HIV but allowing them for Zika represents some kind of consistency of approach. I can't see it myself. Zika has been been flagged up for quite a short while only whereas HIV has been a terrible problem for decades, yet the Church acts quickly (though in a curmudgeonly way) with Zika but not with HIV. Still, don't engage if you don't want to. I don't set traps, honest.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: DMcG
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 09:01 AM

No, no need for that game. For any policy by any organisation there's an exercise of deciding how two things are alike and how they are different, and then a judgement on whether the differences are significant enough to treat them differently. You are perfectly capable of doing that without my assistance, even if, like me, you come to the conclusion that the similarities dominate.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Rt Rev Musket
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 07:53 AM

I'll get the popcorn.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 07:46 AM

Well come on, do it for me then.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: DMcG
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 07:08 AM

That's all the "compare" side, Steve. To see why it is not inconsistent you need to be thinking about the "contrast". As I say, I don't agree with the stance but I see how they get to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 06:36 AM

I sent that before I'd edited the damn thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 06:35 AM

Condoms prevent the transmission of HIV, a virus that has killed millions in Catholic countries via sexual transmission. The Pope's advice apropos of Zika, whilst making very limited and sourly-expressed concessions, is entirely inconsistent with the
Vaticans long-standing and implacable condemnation of barrier methods in the parts of the world where HIV is rife. How you can say that the two positions are not inconsistent is entirely beyond me.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: DMcG
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 06:11 AM

When I were a lad, many exam questions started with the phrase "Compare and contrast". Now, I happen to think use of condoms is one of the things my church has got wrong and they are equally applicable to stopping all kinds of diseases, not just those two.

But having said that, the "compare and contrast" will highlight differences as well as similarities with using them to prevent zika and HIV. The stance is not one I agree with, but is not inconsistent.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 06:08 AM

Thanks for that, Jim. As a result of reading it I've just spent the last half-hour extirpating the fairies from the bottom of my garden. :-)

"Churches have been league leaders in assisting States that are based on amassing wealth for the few while the majority of the population do without."

Not only that, they openly celebrate it by making a saint of a woman who told the poor to stay poor and celebrate their poverty rather than fight it.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 05:57 AM

"Perhaps, looking at the thread subject, you might ask why your chief executive is saying that condoms to battle Zika are ok but condoms to battle HIV aren't."

Excellent point.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 04:32 AM

THere is a world of difference between folk beliefs that have risen from trying to explain everyday life and experience and organised religion that has been formalised to create a power-bas to control the minds of the masses
One of the outstanding traits of the major religions is the practice of using the superstitions while ignoring the ethics - you can apparently pronounce that we "love our neighbour" in one breath while, at the same time, demand that we send them back to the war zones they came from because they are taking our jobs.
Killing is apparently ok if the State says it is.
Churches have been league leaders in assisting States that are based on amassing wealth for the few while the majority of the population do without.
You choose not to comment on the examples of horrific consequences of religion while at the same time admiring "faerie glens" which were largely based on Victorian paedophilic sexual fantasies - tiny children dressed in diaphanous clothing.
Folk myth proper is often brutal; seldom beautiful and it quite often expounds values totally rejected by today's 'great and good', supported by the church.
In Ireland, it is thought by many that the 'little people' were 'fallen angels' who were banished beneath the ground f or being arseholes.
They were allowed to replenish their race by stealing women to breed from, and if the results of that studding were unsatisfactory, they could be replaced by stolen children.
Threats of punishment for interference of 'Fairy Forts' included loss of land, hardship, maiming and even death - this in a country where land has always been an essential part of staying alive.
Some of this savagery has leaked into the Christian religion - such as the holy wells that have pride of place over medical science, or the mystics, or the 'cures', or the 'wise women'.
The more unpleasant practices include 'churching' - considering women who bear children '"unclean" until they have been cleansed by the Church and forbidden to prepare food.
One of the most inhuman beliefs is remembered by 'killeens' scattered all over the country - unconsecrated graveyards for children who were denied entry into heaven because they had died before the priest could bless them and forbidden burial next to the 'blessed'.   
Folk superstitions are fascinating and entertaining, but they are part of a darker past.
We witnessed a somewhat impractical one not long after we moved here.
The authorities were building a new ring road around our market town when they found a 'fairy thorn' (a whitethorn bush) in their path.
A local semi-professional storyteller with an eye on publicity mounted a campaign to 'save the bush' - he succeeded, it is said at the cost of millions and the road was built round it (denied by the authorities, of course).
The thorn remains on a tatty, weed-filled, untended and uninteresting piece of land between two high-speed roads, virtually impossible to spot but still talked about.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 03:31 AM

So I think belief has to be literal? Not at all. I'm not a priest, and it's them who insist not me.

If you actually read what I put rather than interpretations of my words, you'll see that I defend boutique pick n choose faith. But by the same token, attempts to influence society based on a menu driven ideology hovers between hypocrisy and self serving mind control. In a way, there's more honesty in pete's simple mind.

Perhaps, looking at the thread subject, you might ask why your chief executive is saying that condoms to battle Zika are ok but condoms to battle HIV aren't.

Quite an opportunist, this confused old man from Argentina.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 12:16 AM

Greg F.: "That's right, Goofus - acuracy IS a big deal!"

So right you are....ahem..

You misspelled accuracy!

LMAO!!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 10:15 PM

Well you could try agreeing with me. The only argument I ever have boils down to interpreting the wonderful world we live in using evidence and reason, eschewing notions of fantastical beings for whom we have no evidence, no explanation and, most damning of all, no sightings. As I keep saying, the ball we keep our eye on is what is really true, not what is made up. I'd have thought that any rational being could espouse that without difficulty. Once we have that sorted out there'd be no stopping us when it came to suggesting a moral code bereft of fear of the almighty, punishment in the afterlife and priestly moralising. Wouldn't life be a dream!

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 09:56 PM

Darn, I thought we could reach some common ground here, Steve. Guess you can't allow that to happen. It just wouldn't be right to agree with me, would it?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 09:42 PM

No-one said you had to, least of all me. Unfortunately, you were the author of this misguided claim:

Fiction is an imaginative and highly effective way of presenting truths that are often far deeper than that which can be explored and presented by the Scientific Method. Despite what Jim Carroll says above, the Scientific Method can only explore the process of life and death, not its meaning.

There are no "deep truths" that can't, in theory, yield to scientific process. And, whatever limitations there are on science's exploring "the meaning of life", even worse limitations are imposed on religion or philosophical thought pursuing the same idea. Why? Because they try to do so by thinking about it instead of searching for evidence. The only matters that can't be explored by science are those that religion puts beyond science quite deliberately. That supernatural stuff that is put beyond the laws of nature. Fine, put them there, but be prepared to be scoffed at if you can't show good reason and good evidence for putting them there. Which, of course, you can't. Hence the cloudy, clutching-at-straws talk of deeper truths and sacred this and that, etc. Woolly talk is all you have, poor things.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 08:49 PM

Just what I was trying to say, Steve Shaw - there is no inherent clash between the Scientific Method and poetry, song, family or cultural traditions - or religious thinking. Still, I see no need to use the Scientific Method to appreciate all these other wonderful, useless things.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,AElfwine
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 08:19 PM

Joe Offer sez: Poetry and song and family and cultural traditions serve no practical purpose, and probably should be abolished along with all those legends and such.

This guy claims that's what the Rumhoth did to the Elves of Luthany

The Seven Invasions 

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 07:42 PM

As a matter of fact, I don't know a single scientist or atheist who decries poetry, song, family or cultural traditions. I am both those things and I love poetry, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Ravel, Gershwin, Bernstein, Manuel de Falla, flamenco, Vaughan Williams, opera, ballet, Elvis, the Beatles, Rhihanna and musicals. As we all know, jazz is crap, but hey. ;-) You can't keep me out of cathedrals and village churches and I never miss an opportunity to go to art galleries in the European cities I visit. I was bowled over by Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae and the archaeological museum in Naples and have visited archaeological sites all over Cyprus, Sicily and Andalucia. This year I'm hoping to visit the ancient cities of Puglia, and I shall be visiting the Mezquita and other sites in and around Córdoba this summer. How odd then that I adhere strictly to the scientific process for evidence of what is really true. How odd that I can do that yet still allow my imagination its full wings in all those areas of art and culture. The thing is, I'm not going to blur the lines in my head between what is the culture that enhances humanity and what is damaging and controlling mythology. The aim of organised religion is to make sure that its flock can't tell the difference. It certainly seems to have worked on Joe Offer, going from his recent posts. They may have taught cynicism in that seminary of his, but they appear not to have taught scepticism and the need for evidence.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 06:24 PM

May I suggest that you acquaint yourself with the meaning of "irony"? You clearly haven't a clue what it means.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: akenaton
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 06:17 PM

"Poetry and song and family and cultural traditions serve no practical purpose, and probably should be abolished along with all those legends and such."

Delicious irony Sir, congratulations!

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 05:36 PM

Well here we go. I see we have people who not only operate their own lives around mythology but who also belong to organisations that not only base their whole philosophy around the same mythology but who also control the lives of billions of others with it. Unfortunately for Joe Offer's pleadings, hardly any of those people can operate quiet rebellions on the back of eight years in seminaries. I note the demonisation of the scientific method [sic] too. Strange, that, coming from a man who constantly pleads that science and religion need not confront each other. I also note the resurrection of those "deeper truths". Why bother with what's really true when you can appeal to deeper truths!

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 05:21 PM

Right, Ake. I think those "nature-based" belief systems helped people to see and appreciate and respect and protect the mysterious beauty that surrounded them. And I think that made their lives much richer and more meaningful.
Poetry and song and family and cultural traditions serve no practical purpose, and probably should be abolished along with all those legends and such.

But I'm glad they're all still here. There's a lot of good in simply musing, pondering, wondering, savoring...

Most of that doesn't require the Scientific Method - but neither does it deny the Scientific Method.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: akenaton
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 05:14 PM

Yes Joe, the old Gaelic culture which I just remember, and which survives still within the highlands and islands of Scotland, was steeped in mythology.....most of it nature based.
There is a conical peak above my house which is known as the "Fairy Knowe" from the Gaelic.....the old folks said that fairies gathered there and lights could be seen sparkling in dark nights.
The fairies were not all beneficent and had to be appeased in numerous ways.....It is said that there are wise humans who can converse with fairies......we still call such people "fey"
There are "Kelpies"....water spirits and "Brownies" usually house dwelling fairies.
The Rowan was the fairy tree, and it is still considered very bad luck to cut one down...there are always many rowan trees dotted along the verges of the older roads in Argyll which have been passed by council woodmen

I would NEVER cut down a rowan.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 04:23 PM

OK, so Jim and Steve and Musket have all chimed in. Greg_F addressed a different subject (and I agree with Greg on this).

But Jim and Steve and Musket all seek to make their point based on the fact that faerie legends, like the Bible and Koran and other sacred stories, are not literally true. And I wholeheartedly agree that these legends and writings are NOT literally true.

Farther up, Musket says: Rejecting fairy stories as true isn't bigotry, it's enlightened thinking. To engage in religious ceremonies and faith based activity but to consider yourself above literal belief seems odd to me

I believe that Musket does not practice a religion himself, but yet he feels competent to insist that belief must be literal. I spent 8 years in a Catholic seminary and I've been a teacher and leader (and singer) in my Catholic congregations all my life, and yet I have never detected a mainstream trend in my Church toward a literal understanding of scripture and church traditions and teachings. And the same goes for most Christian denominations - literal understanding is a thing of the distant past.

For much of my life, I have generally stood back from born-again Christians and fundamentalist Catholics, believing my caricature of them as rigid, unthinking literalists who live only to condemn other people. But in recent years, I've been placed in situations where I've had to deal with fundamentalists. And yes, sometimes they still drive me crazy. But I've found that many of them are not the rigid literalists I thought them to be.

Which brings me back to what maybe I should call Joe's Axiom: Most people aren't as stupid as we think them to be.

And maybe I should propose another Axiom: Most people are far deeper than the ideology or belief system they profess.

Ideology is not the essence of life - it's just a broad outline, lived out in an infinite variety of realities. If we view a person only by his ideology, we see him only on the surface. We put him in a neat little box that just doesn't fit.

So, OK, I've been a Catholic all my life, and I enjoy being a Catholic for the most part. Some people might call me a liberal, heretical Catholic - but most of them haven't had eight years of Catholic seminary training, so what do they know? I respect the authority of the Catholic Church, for the most part, and I go along with most things the Catholic Church teaches unless I have good reason to disagree. I push a little bit on everything, hoping to help my church evolve into what I think it should be - but I make issues only on matters that I consider to be important. I don't really think that the virgin birth is literally true, but I don't argue about it because it's not really all that important to me. But I push pretty hard on the abortion issue, because I think it's something that affects a lot of people very seriously. Admittedly, I push only as hard as I think I can get away with, because I don't think I would be able to help effect a change if I were outside the Catholic Church.

I heard a sermon by a Seventh-Day Adventist minister at an interfaith service this week. I've known him through working on our homeless shelter, but I had never heard him preach before - and I was prepared to hear fundamentalist literalism from him. I was wrong. He confessed to being a liberal, and said he was addicted to the news programs on National Public Radio. He preached about the six spiritual disciplines he found to be important, and he made a lot of sense. One thing he said really stuck with me - he spoke of the need for daily meditation, and he called it "purposeful pondering."

And I suppose that's how I practice my faith - I "purposefully ponder" all of life that I encounter, through the perspective of my religious tradition. Now, people often refer to me as "different," and I take pride in that. When I do my purposeful pondering, I try to do it through a wide variety of perspectives. Sometimes, I'm an atheist, sometimes a Muslim, sometimes a Buddhist, and most of the time I'm a liberal Catholic. I try to keep myself open to all possibilities and all perspectives.

As for sacred legends and myths and writings, I respect the fact that large numbers of thoughtful people have treasured these communications as sacred, often for centuries. I don't simply dismiss them as "untrue," although I do think that they are largely fictional and intended to be fictional. But fiction is not untrue. Fiction is an imaginative and highly effective way of presenting truths that are often far deeper than that which can be explored and presented by the Scientific Method. Despite what Jim Carroll says above, the Scientific Method can only explore the process of life and death, not its meaning.

Author Harper Lee died this week at the age of 89. For most of her life, she was known only for her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. A second novel, Go Set a Watchman, was written in the 1950s and not published until 2015. I doubt that second novel will have much of an impact, but Mockingbird told the truth about American racism to many generations of Americans, in a way that transformed many hearts and minds - including mine. Was Mockingbird untrue? Of course not, but people have to think to understand it. Is the Bible untrue? I don't think so - but people have to think to understand it, too. Since some people are likely to misunderstand Mockingbird and the Bible, should they be suppressed? I think not.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 01:56 PM

They serve a purpose Joe. American tourists generally...

Yeah, a fertile imagination is a great thing. The issue here is allowing it to dictate social policy and community control.

Remember this thread and what it is about? It's about people using their fertile imagination to control others, and in this case, fuck up the lives of people so as not to look weak. You may call it the Vatican, I call it a huge evil that needs to apologise and stop putting nonsense above public health.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 09:42 AM

Old legends, parables and fables are wonderful things, grist to the imagination. Some may even contain lessons for life. That's great. But if real live grown-ups start seeing deeper, mystical things in them, delusion has set in big-time. What's really true about nature, the world and the universe is wonderful enough in its ordinary-extraordinary way. No need for the supernatural add-ons supplied by over-fertile imaginations. Leave all that to the soothsayers, the mediums, the astrologers, Mystic Meg and all the other charlatans.

The NYT article isn't especially scholarly, though its conclusions are probably OK. Babies crawling around in the stuff is completely irrelevant, as they're already born and their die is cast. I'm not surprised, given the mode of action of the larvicide, that it came under suspicion, though a dig into the circumstantial evidence suggests that it has nothing to do with microcephaly. Good science urgently needed.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 09:10 AM

Zika Virus Rumors and Theories That You Should Doubt
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr., February 19, 2016
New York Times


Although there is no absolute proof that the Zika virus is behind the surge in microcephaly in Brazil and outbreaks of Guillain-Barré syndrome in six countries, the world's leading health authorities are close to certain that it is.

"With each passing day, the evidence that it is the cause mounts," Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said recently.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, who is leading the World Health Organization's response, said on Friday: "At this time, the virus is considered guilty until proven innocent."....

Entomologists have dismissed as "ridiculous" the idea that the larvicide pyriproxyfen could have caused such a large wave of birth defects. It does not attack nerve cells; it is a chemical mimic of an insect hormone that signals larvae to stop growing, and insect hormones do not endanger humans.

Complete article Here

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 03:57 AM

Joe
"When I visited the faerie glens on the Isle of Skye last summer"
None of those stories are believed any more - a thing of the past and recognised as such.
Even when they were, they carried with them a dangerous element - did you ever here of the case of the burning of BRIDGET CLEARY , the misnamed Clonmel witch - the case was used as an argument not to give Ireland Home Rule around the end of the 19th century- not a great support for your argument, I'm afraid?
Mystics always have sought to explain things they didn't understand at the time - progress had provided us with if not %100 proof, certainly far more rational explanations to The Meaning of Life, The Universe and Everything.
The legends are interesting - we have spent half a lifetime recording them - but I wouldn't set my clock by them, let alone allow them to guide my life.
A cautionary tale.
We recorded a very fine singer here in Clare in the 1970s.
One year we turned up to find he had been ill - when we visited him, he welcomed us as usual, but he was having a lot of trouble with a sore eye.
Despite his acute pain, he insisted that he didn't need medical help and was visiting the local, 'St Brigid's Holy Well at Liscannor which offered a "cure for eye trouble"
When we returned the following year he was dead - of cancer of the eye - easily curable by a small operation.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 09:39 PM

Musket says: Rejecting fairy stories as true isn't bigotry, it's enlightened thinking. To engage in religious ceremonies and faith based activity but to consider yourself above literal belief seems odd to me.

When I visited the faerie glens on the Isle of Skye last summer, I was halfway tempted to believe in Faeries, and my wife and some other wonderful women had an even stronger inclination to believe. The stories of the Bible and the Koran seem downright pedestrian, compared to the faerie stories of Skye and the mystical experience of Orkney. What's that stuff all about? I don't know, but I'm certainly not ready to scoff it off. I think it's all part of a genuinely human attempt to reach beyond the self and the mundane to something higher, something beyond the imagination. I think it's a mistake to take such things literally. They're meant to expand and challenge the imagination to infinite possibility, to go beyond saying, "This is the reality and there cannot be anything more."

Mystics have always sought what is beyond literal belief; and there are mystics in all philosophical/religious persuasions. Mystics seek the ultimate: ultimate joy, ultimate love, ultimate peace, ultimate harmony. Mystics defy denomination, but yet are present among every denomination and also among those who profess no belief and no denomination.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 12:52 PM

Evil is as evil does.

Mind you, credit where it's due.   Trumping Trump with suggesting bridges are better than walls wasn't bad. Snag is of course, as left footism is a Marmite cult in The US, it might increase Trump's popularity.

I was at a conference the other day and Zika was on the old agenda. It has to be said, the epidemiological findings reported to this public health observatory crowd don't seem to resonate with some of the crap contained in many of the links here. The WHO delegates aren't impressed by some of the stuff doing the rounds...

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 12:32 PM

I see that this enlightened Pope of ours has conceded that contraception may be a "lesser evil" in Zika-affected areas. That isn't really much progress though, is it? It's still "evil" after all...

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 02:16 PM

If I were associated with wickedness I'd hand in my membership cards. Of course if Joe is comfortable conforming to this criminally reckless organised crime outfit, that's his affair.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 02:10 PM

And while I posted that, this came on-line:

-Pope suggests contraception can be condoned in Zika crisis -

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 02:07 PM

I know Steve, I was fully agreeing with you.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 01:28 PM

It does, but I was using it to try to point out to Joe that the Church isn't necessarily the soft, warm, cuddly, compromising beast he makes it out to be in several posts in this thread. The map is very instructive too.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 12:09 PM

It speaks for itself and it's not the Graun spinning it either.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 12:01 PM

From Peter's link.

Pregnant women exposed to the Zika virus and who may be carrying foetuses with serious brain defects should not be permitted to have abortions, the Vatican has said.

The Catholic church restated its opposition to abortion in all circumstances...

None of your meek and mild indulgent liberal stuff here, Joe Offer. "Should not be permitted." There you go, men in frocks from just one religion trying to impose their "moral" code on EVERYONE else. Unconscionable.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 08:40 AM

-Vatican says abortion is 'illegitimate response' to Zika virus -

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 07:42 AM

I'm not opposing or attacking anyone Joe. I'm attacking the assumption that dangerous make believe can be allowed to interfere with the health and well being of people. A different thing entirely.

I have a mate who is convinced the moon landings didn't happen. I have cousins who genuinely believe there is a concept called God and he did everything the bible says he did. (My aunty's husband became a Jehova Witness to avoid being called up in the war and forgot to leave afterwards, the rest being history..) A neighbour actually thinks Sheffield Utd are worth spending the price of a season ticket on.

I don't despise them. But I'll hold my mate in contempt if his grandchildren embarrass themselves by telling their class and teacher nobody went to the moon and their granddad can't be wrong.. Ditto other hypotheticals from above.

Actually, there is logic in opposing different fantasies, it's in the rule books of fantasies.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 07:19 AM

There is no valid perspective to be derived from any religion. You can't derive a valid perspective from something which is completely invalid in the first place. You are entitled to hold deluded beliefs without being ridiculed. Propagate those beliefs to other people and you deserve not just ridicule but also utter condemnation. You simply do not have the moral right to tell children or anyone else that there is an entity that made the world and that stands in judgement of you, or any other interpretation couched in foggy language you care to propose, without having a scrap of evidence that it exists. I don't know whether there's a God or not, but, unlike you, I'm not going to go around telling people that he's there and that he's made the moral code that I live by. There is another way and it's the right way. There is no truth in a pack of lies. As for your softly-softly language about the Church and how much people ignore it, that's just bollocks and you know it. The people who ignore the rules are the millions like me who haven't parked their arses on a pew for decades. The Catholic Church still has powerful dominion over hundreds of millions of people, mostly in third-world countries in which it is solidly backed up by conniving states in enforcing its extreme illiberalism. We're talking about some of them in this Zika thread, aren't we. Your Church is responsible for millions of abortions, legal and illegal, all over the world, yet refuses to accommodate the teachings and practices that would drastically reduce unwanted pregnancies. That's just wicked.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 05:22 AM

" preference is given to baptized children in the admission process "
Children are being turned down for schools because they have not been baptised - call that preference if you life - I call it religious bigotry aimed at children on the most important aspect of their lives.
Primary school education is overwhelmingly in the hands of the catholic Church - a questionable fact anyway, considering the brainwashing implications - but if it is unable to provide sufficient schools it is bringing education to a standstill for those areas affected at one of the most important stages of a child's life.
To select pupils on the basis of their religion underlines for me the dangerous practice of allowing the church to control such an important aspect of our lives
I really do believe the Jesuits put it in a nutshell about what religion was about.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 05:08 AM

Rejecting fairy stories as true isn't bigotry, it's enlightened thinking. To engage in religious ceremonies and faith based activity but to consider yourself above literal belief seems odd to me. You don't need to practice any of it whilst kneeling at a pew, it's outside of the building where claiming to live by a creed is held to scrutiny. I take it Joe Offer is one of the good guys in life. I thank Joe for that, not the pope, not his line manager.

Questioning the malign influence of organised religion in the lives of people isn't bigotry, it's questioning bigotry.

If social justice is a tenet of said religion, it's for those spouting it to deal with the misogyny, homophobia and bigotry, not rational onlookers.

You do have a habit of interchanging your personal creed with the organisation that dictates it, Joe.

Show me a photo of the old bloke with the white beard, show me evidence of just one, any will do, of the miracles they get excited about in The Vatican or even show me where he was hiding when I used to inspect childrens' hospices and I'll concede your phrase "valid perspectives."

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 05:05 AM

To take that a little further, Musket, there is no logical requirement that a person who does not believe in a god, must oppose or insult or attack or ridicule those who do.

Similarly, there is no logical requirement that those who espouse Catholicism, must oppose or insult or attack or ridicule Islam or Judaism or other religions.

We're not playing rugby here.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 04:12 AM

I've defined my "born again atheist" term quite often, Musket. I refer to those atheists who share the rigid-minded bigotry and militarism and absolutism of the born-again Christian fundamentalists, those who cannot accept the possibility of a wide diversity of valid perspectives.

You say that "Atheism is by definition a stance that opposes theism." I suppose you're correct according to the modern understanding of the word, but the modern understanding makes the term a misnomer. It it were to follow the pattern of formation of similar words, atheism would be simply not believing in a god - and I believe that is the original meaning of the word before the recent advent of anti-theistic atheism. I think that anti-theistic atheism came into vogue about the same time as fundamentalist Christianity.

I believe both of these extreme, antagonistic phenomena to be very unhealthy developments in our society, because both make discussion and tolerance and diversity impossible.

You accuse religions of "basing such [social justice] opinions on the same fairy stories as those that promote misogyny, homophobia and bigotry." But many who treasure sacred religious writings do not end up practicing "misogyny, homophobia and bigotry." I would suggest that you should address those who are responsible for the misogyny, homophobia, and bigotry, and not paint the rest of us with such a broad brush.

To do otherwise, is to practice the same bigotry that you yourself condemn.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 03:39 AM

Born again atheists?

You presume all rational people were once superstitious Joe. It's a bit like Goofus assuming people reject or deny sky pixies where the real situation is never having considered it in the first place.

Atheism is by definition a stance that opposes theism. You seem to confuse such people with the vast majority of bemused rational folk who see no reason to consider such hobbies in the first place. I'm not an atheist at the same level that I'm not a theist, philatelist or member of the Cleckheaton and District Pigeon Fanciers Association.

The call by religions for this, that and the other in social justice is fine but basing such opinions on the same fairy stories as those that promote misogyny, homophobia and bigotry makes it very important to ignore anything and everything coming out from their pulpits, however seemingly benign. That they impress vulnerable people makes it double important to question their influence.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 03:21 AM

Steve Shaw says: I really don't want to hear from apologists for an organisation that promotes ignorance and that bans contraception, which then condemns women for getting abortions.

Gee, whizz, Steve, does that mean you don't want to hear from lil' ole ME?

Or what does it mean, Steve? What are the implications of the attacks from you and Jim Carroll and all you other born-again atheists? That the Catholic Church must be disbanded or restricted or suppressed?

Back in the 1960s, birth control pills were relatively new, and they were a hot topic of discussion in the Catholic Church. We were sure Pope Paul VI would change the rules, but in 1968 he came out with his Humanae Vitae encyclical that banned the pill. Many Catholics left the Catholic Church over that issue, and a few tried to practice rhythm or other abstinence methods, or they went ahead and had lots of children. But many of us who had paid attention in catechism class knew that an act can't be sinful if a person doesn't believe it's sinful, so we simply ignored the prohibition and learned the valuable lesson that the Pope can be wrong sometimes. Still others practiced birth control but felt guilty about it, and I feel really bad for them and have done my best to convince them there's nothing wrong about contraception. And gradually, the issue of contraception has more-or-less been forgotten If people don't make an issue of it, I think the Catholic Church will eventually deny that it ever officially prohibited birth control, and that will be that (like what happened to Limbo).

Abortion is a stickier matter, because the rational argument against abortion is a lot easier to defend. The biggest question in the debate is when life begins, and the easiest answer is that it begins at fertilization/conception. The next question is, at what point does it become wrong to cause that life to cease, and the easiest answer again is at fertilization/conception. To come up with any other answer to these two questions, you have to do a little dance into arbitraryland. And many people do that dance, ad infinitum.

But I think there's another question: are there factors that are more wrong than ending the life of a foetus? My answer to that question is yes. There are many times in life were there are no good choices; and we're forced to choose among bad choices, choosing the lesser of two evils. It's a balancing act, as most significant moral choices are - and I think that oftentimes the answers are (and must be) very subjective. And ultimately, I believe that the person best-suited to make the choice is the woman who is pregnant.

There are many, many absolutists in the Catholic Church who disagree with me and condemn me for my thinking on this, but I'm not ready to give up my church because other people think I should. The absolutists play hardball on this issue, and I and many others have suffered because of the atrocious things they have done to defend their position.

But every atrocious thing they do, makes them a little less credible. There's no question that this Zika virus issue undermines the anti-abortion movement worldwide. The excommunication of the nun in Phoenix was a remarkable victory for pro-choice people in the Catholic church, as was the excommunication of the parents of the 9-yr-old rape victim who got an abortion in South America. Bombings of abortion clinics are a real blow to the credibility of the anti-abortionists. The most significant thing I've done myself is to write my bishop and demand my contribution back when he withheld funds from an anti-poverty organization whose director had spoken favorably about Planned Parenthood.

There are many pro-choice people within the Catholic Church, working quietly and steadily and very rationally. Many are in leadership positions, so they do have to be cautious about what they say and do. For the most part, they avoid hysteria and condemnation and attacks like those that appear so often in this thread, because that just strengthens the resolve of the anti-abortion people. It seems to work best to let the anti-abortionists make themselves look stupid, and then all others have to do is quietly and rationally point it out.

Sooner or later, somebody will come up with a solution to all this. In the meantime, I'm not ready to surrender my church to the Dark Side.


-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 12:41 AM

Then, Steve, I suggest that you do as I do and pay no heed to what the Catholic Church says when it doesn't make sense. But Pope Francis is making a lot of sense in Mexico this week, and the Catholic Church has spoken eloquently and effectively and very rationally on economic justice and the rights of the poor and homeless, on the rights of immigrants, on mass incarceration and capital punishment, on peace, and on many other justice issues.

There's no question that the Catholic Church has a blind spot on matters related to sex - so be smart and don't go to them for sex education.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Feb 16 - 07:58 PM

I really don't want to hear from apologists for an organisation that promotes ignorance and that bans contraception, which then condemns women for getting abortions.

Subject: RE: BS: Zika vs anti-abortion cults
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Feb 16 - 07:15 PM

Pyripyroxyfen has been used for decades, with no reports of increased birth defects, said Ernesto Marques, associate professor of infectious diseases and microbiology at the University of Pittsburgh, who is working in Recife, Brazil to study microcephaly.

"It's ridiculous," said Marques, of the purported link between the chemical and microcephaly. "These guys come out of the blue, and people believe them, with no evidence at all. It really shows the lack of science education among the public."

USA Today