What if the Super Bowl were aborted?

Continuing JTTN,

Both you and I start with a basic core presupposition. Mine is that the Christian Scriptures are the very word of God and from them we can know what is true. You start from the position that man, and by man I mean yourself, is the ultimate judge and reference of knowledge and from man as that source it is impossible to know anything objectively.

Right from the start you have fatally shot yourself. You are your highest authority in all your relativism and subjectivity. You can't make sense of truth, you can't justify why you know what you know because you don't know it for certain. You can't explain why man has the nature he has or why there is such a perception as evil and good because you have no specific ultimate standard that you can measure and compare qualitative value judgments by. You have beliefs that cannot show where life or the universe originated from if you believe either had a beginning, and if you think the universe is eternal you can't explain how we would ever arrive at the present, for time has to have a beginning. If life is all illusion, you live inconsistently in your belief because you still look both ways before you cross the street and you use the very logic that you deny by stopping at a red light if it is just an illusion.

No, you have too many inconsistencies to make sense of anything without borrowing from the Christian framework. Show me how these things can be true without the Christian God and your system of thought would be no more believable. You need an objective standard in which to know things as certain. But you can't produce one that has revealed himself/herself/itself to us. All you have is the fallible writings of men that could or could not be true. It is all possible but none of it is probable.

As I have said from the start of coming on these forums, the Christian God is necessary to make sense of anything. I believe in Him because of the impossibility of the contrary.

THAT is the ultimate proof of His existence, and for the fact that He has revealed Himself to me that I may know Him, not just about Him.

Try making sense of anything without Him. That is a challenge. Try making sense of anything without contradicting yourself over and over again. That is the challenge. Try proving anything without borrowing from the Christian framework as the ultimate, objective standard. That is the challenge. Are you up to it?

Hi Justillthennow (February 10, 2010 6:54 PM, on Susan's last 'Obama' forum),

JTTN: "You disagreed that Christian compassion in witnessing and attempted conversion is actually spiritual arrogance and elitism on the grounds that, well, Christians are right and the others are wrong and it is compassionate to bring "the truth" that you are convinced you know, (though cannot validate as truth through objective empirical evidence or the scrutiny of non biased judgment). Pardon the bit in the parenthesis."

You are asking me to validate as objective empirical evidence that the Bible is true. And I say to you that to know anything objectively there would have to be an objective standard which I say is the Christian God. You are asking for an impossible task for a finite, limited human being to do and that is objectively empirically verify the truth of Christianity. I would have to be able to sift through an impossible amount of data and correctly see how it is all related and interconnected in order to do that, or I would have to find an objective, ultimate, all-knowing, unchanging source that revealed truth to me in order for me to know it as certain.

What I am saying is the God of the Bible is that source on the impossibility of the contrary and the necessity of Him being that source.

Hi Justillthennow (February 10, 2010 6:54 PM, on Susan's last 'Obama' forum),

JTTN: "For the moment an input re arrogance masked as compassion. You disagreed that Christian compassion in witnessing and attempted conversion is actually spiritual arrogance and elitism on the grounds that, well, Christians are right and the others are wrong and it is compassionate to bring "the truth" that you are convinced you know, (though cannot validate as truth through objective empirical evidence or the scrutiny of non biased judgment). Pardon the bit in the parenthesis."

To you truth is a matter of perspective. It changes from one person to another, as per your religious beliefs. To me, basing my core foundations on the Bible as what it claims to be - God's Word, I view truth as something that does not change, therefore it is certain, it is constant, it is accurate.

As such it is discovered, not made; it exists outside of our perspective and in order for knowledge to be accurate we must see it as it truly is.

Without God giving us reasoning minds and revealing it to us so we have that standard true knowledge is impossible because without God which perspective do we know for certain is true? Hence, God is necessary for both truth and knowledge.

You object to the way I affirm that in order for something to be known there must be a revealed standard and measure in which to gage truth by. You object to me stating that that standard or measure is narrow and does not change. But, the alternative is Relativism in which everyone MAKES up his/her own truth as he/she sees fit. That is what you are involved in. And you admit that you cannot know anything objectively all the while stating objectives as you argue against me. By stating objectively you use terms as if they were true, but in order for them to be true they state something objective. This just shows the inconsistency of your position. You keep denying it (your position) by your words.

I keep pointing you to the only position that is consistent and you call me arrogant and elitist. Well, you show me why your system of thought can truly know or validate anything and what your standard/measure/source is in making these value judgments. Then let's see just how valid what you believe really is.

As for converting you, that is God's prerogative alone, not mine. I can only be faithful in tell others the truth, in planting or watering the seed. It is up to God on whether it grows and how it grows.

JTTN: "I offer a comparative metaphor that is not religious in nature, (thank God! for we would not be able to objectively prove anything once more!). It does involve something nearly as feverently believed in as some religions, though."

I see your analogy as comparing apples to oranges. There is a vast difference. As I have said before, God is necessary to see objectively. God is necessary to see outside of Relativism, outside of 'That may be true for you but it is not true for me.'

test

test

Hi Justillthen,

Are you ready to continue the discussion?

test

test

test

test

I am sorry for you.

I hope that you get the help that you need and find whatever it is that you are looking for.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DITLD
BUFFOONERY

IRT:
“And one more thing, unless you apologize to me for calling me garbage, I will bring this up from now on, in every thread that I see you posting in, until you do.
Since you do not even have basic manners, then I will try to force some on you.”

ANS:
I am tired of your repeated faceless accusations, threats, and pseudepigraphical remarks. No one called you garbage; you are so witless you called yourself garbage and in your stupor you are so blunted , you do not even know you’ve did it.

This is your statement:
"If you choose to copy and paste from you NewAdvent website, I might read your posts, but I cannot be bothered to click on a website that would take me to your garbage."

"I did not call you garbage; I called your website garbage; propaganda promoting religious mania is garbage; for itself." February 10, 2010 8:36 AM

The links you called garbage, propaganda, and religious mania read:
"Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity….poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practice them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator".5--Pope John Paul II

Consequently, I replied, if that statement on the link is garbage, namely, that these crimes do not poison society, what does that make, not only you, but also all humanity. Then I said that the link is not garbage and consequently neither are you. That is in the post that has your brain all twisted up in knots.

Because you are so blinded by your impudent dispositions, you cannot read the words before your eyes, much less see them. Your condemn you own self by denying these crimes are not crimes against humanity since you called the statement garbage. Consequently, you witlessly make yourself as unimportant as garbage by your own asinine doltish and reckless condemnations of the link.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DITLD
“FACTS ARE FACTS”

IRT:
"The scientists you quoted were giving their personal opinions.... There is no scientific consensus on the matter of abortion."

ANS:
This is incredible. The more you write the more you embarrass yourself. You were given the most renowned scientists in the world today and you make up some ridiculous statements that it is their personal opinion. You have to be joking. I cannot believe anyone is that blunted.

As was previously said, even when the patent truth hits you between the eyes and it contradicts your preposterous beliefs you make up some cockamamie excuse to not believe them. You cannot accept the truth and you are so blinded by your dispositions you are incapable of not only admitting the truth; you’re incapable of even seeing the truth.

What’s more, you persist in your catatonic stupor of ignorance, and say I never answered your question. Of course, I didn't when you are too blind to see it. What in the world do you think all these renowned scientists you were given from diverse backgrounds in the world, all saying the same thing that the conceived is human if it isn’t a consensus.

The Father of Modern Eugenics Dr. Lejeune, the Chairman of Eugenics at Mayo Clinic, Dr Hymie Gordon, Dr. Landrum Shettles, “Father of IVF,” Harvard, Tennessee, Georgetown, University Professors of Medicine, Microbiology, and Embryology testifying before Congress under oath; all concur that the “conceived is a human person.”

Moreover, Dr. Lejeune also pointed out that each human being is unique -- DIFFERENT from the mother -- from the moment of conception. He said, "Recent discoveries by Dr. Alec Jeffreys of England DEMONSTRATE that this information [on the DNA molecule] is stored by a system of bar codes not unlike those found on products at the supermarket...IT'S NOT ANY LONGER A THEORY THAT EACH OF US IS UNIQUE." Since you’re having problems reading, look up the words “Different,“ “Demonstrate” and “No Longer A Theory.”

The scientists you quoted were giving their personal opinions. A scientist is entitled to have a personal opinion, the same as anyone else, but that is not the same a scientific consenus. There is no scientific consensus on the matter of abortion.

You did not answer my question, that you deny the consensus of scientific opinion on some things, and seek to appeal to it on others.

And one more thing, unless you apologize to me for calling me garbage, I will bring this up from now on, in every thread that I see you posting in, until you do.

Since you do not even have basic manners, then I will try to force some on you.

You said, "If this is garbage, then what are you?"

I understand English, very well.

You are a mean-spirited, pretentioius old battle-ax; what has Jesus done for you? You cannot conceive of love, except when there is a mirror in the room.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DITLD
“TRUTH”

IRT;
You are a two-faced lying hypocrite who say that you believe in the sanctity of human life and then call me garbage. If you spoke to me in person that way, I would punch you in the nose.”

ANS:
Wherever you learned to read, you should get your money back. That’s another problem you’re having, viz. seeing things that aren’t there. In fact, the post said the opposite. It is you who have called yourself garbage when you called my link garbage.

The links you called garbage read:
"Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practice them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator".5--Pope John Paul II

My post read if the above is garbage, as you described anything coming from New Advent as Catholic garbage and religious mania, what does that make you. You, in effect, said life is not sacred or dignified. Then it said, “It is not garbage, and neither are you...” Again, you are driven by your frustration because of your preconceived ideas are an obstacle for you to see the truth.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DITLD
“TRUTH”

IRT:
I called YOU a cafeteria scientist, because you pick and chose the parts of science that you think are true and not true.

If that is how you define what is true by picking and choosing scientific truth, then I am sure that you it will show in the raggedness of your arguments. So, be y guest, go ahead. There is no law or rule that says you must accept what is true.

ANS
I have never heard such gibberish. Why in heaven’s name would I pick Scientists who have false analysis? You imply that the Scientists you were given are not true. These are the most renowned Scientists in the field of Embryology Microbiology, and Eugenics in the World. However, they contradict your false predispositions and therefore are not valid. Consequently, it is you who cannot face the truth, and that has you believing in fantasy. You need to get out of the alternate world where good is evil and evil is good and up is down and down is up.

America is heading for financial collapse. Obama is a protégé of Saul Alinsky, a Social Communist, though Alinsky never admitted it. You were given a link, one of many, that explains that. You were given videos that show the Obama Czars praising Mao the Chinese murderer of over sixty million Chinese.

Bush tried to reform SSI and Medicare, but the Dems blocked it and ridiculed him. Now SSI along with Medicare and Medicaid are going bankrupt by 2016, but the Dems are denying it.

This idiot president is proposing to spend another trillion-dollar stimulus. The last one created no jobs but lost four million jobs. Moreover, he is creating a counsel for Global Warming when Washington D.C. has been shut down for two days under a blizzard of snow. My friend, you are living in a world that doesn’t exist. He’s revived the Veterans Book of Death that Bush banned.

He’s created a Medical Panel for Obamacare headed by Ezekiel Emanuel who proposed a Death Curve that rations and denies the aged and the invalids medical care. He defined the aged he denied as people who have already lived their lives. He intimated that the medical care for invalids as a waste of money that could go to people that would be useful to the State.

Hi Peter,
you said "He has disappeared into the panel work. Do you have anything more recent than this?"

No, I don't. I saw a brief post from him on Capital Weather Gang (Washington, D.C. weather blog), but nothing here. Perhaps his neck of the woods has lost power, too. Mine was out for 2 days.

I guess we'll wait for him.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

I called YOU a cafeteria scientist, because you pick and chose the parts of science that you think are true and not true.

If that is how you define what is true by picking and choosing scienctific truth, then I am sure that you it will show in the raggedness of your arguments. So, be y guest, go ahead. There is no law or rule that says you must accept what is true.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

You are a two-faced lying hypocrite who say that you believe in the sanctity of human life and then call me garbage. If you spoke to me in person that way, I would punch you in the nose.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DITLD
“GARBAGE”

IRT:
"I did not call you garbage; I called your website garbage; propaganda promoting religious mania is garbage; and that is what you suffer from: religious mania, in a sick mind that lives in the Medieval world of old Catholicism that promotes a bygone feudal and ignorant world as superior to the world that we live in now, with science, democracy, and pluralism. You cling to superstition, kingship, and bigotry; and if that is all you have for your arguments against me, then that speaks for itself."

ANS:
What is this bigotry, this superstition, and this religious mania? What buffoonery!

Nor was it ever said you did. You were given a statement from that link that you call garbage. If it is garbage, what does that make you? If these things are garbage, what is not garbage? It is not garbage, and neither are you, but your own words make you such because you unwittingly demean the sanctity and unquestionable value of human life that is unequivocally began at conception. By claiming that life is not sacred or above all the creatures of the Universe, you make man garbage, and that is what the progressives have done by murdering the unborn and selling their flesh on the open market.

A sick mind is to deny the truth of the statement you were just given from the link you call garbage. To claim that the human person has a dignity and sacredness above all Creation is not garbage. Garbage is to declare the opposite.

Moreover, there is no human life in an unfertilized egg, or semen. Human life begins at conception. Moreover, the genetic qualities of a parents' child are from the parents, so the parents are responsible for the physical characteristics of their child. That’s why the child looks like one of the parents.

In addition, the parents are also responsible for educating their child and how well they do that is reflected in the child. Consequently, Tebow’s mother is a good example of a mother’s love and relationship to her child.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DITLD
“SCIENTISTS?”

IRT:
“If you do not believe in the validity of science in determinging the age of the world and in determiining the evolution of life on earth from the lower to the more advanced, then how do you extend credibiliy to science on other matters? Aren't you a cafeteria scientist?”

ANS:
Do you have any idea what a Scientists is? You have been given the most renowned and irrefragable scientists in the world in respect to Eugenics, Micro-biology, and Embryology who have found that the “conceived” is a human person, and because they don’t conform to your disengaged propensities you imply they are cafeteria scientists or basically fools.

Is it any wonder why you never get anything right and don’t know the difference. Dr. Lejeune, the “Father of Modern Eugenics,” and winner of the top and most prestigious award in Medical Research for his work on Downs Syndrome. Dr. Hymie Gordon, the Chairman of Eugenics of the renowned Mao Clinic, Dr. Landrum Shettles, sometimes called the "Father of IVF":plus eminent professors of medicine and micro-biology, micro-physics, and Embryology, yet you intimate they are cafeteria scientists or quacks because they show you are patently wrong. Because you cannot accept the truth, you ridicule and demean them.

Consequently, you derision of these eminent scientists expose your own apocryphal self-delusions. In turn, you incriminate your own credibility and expose your incapacity to recognize the truth when it is right before you.

Blinded by your biases is what is meant by being captivated by your predispositions namely, reason succumbs to concupiscence, namely, the lower appetites that inevitably obscure one’s reason. They obscure your ability to recognize the truth and to be objective. Consequently you grope for the truth blindfolded by your untenable abstruse proclivities that rende you incapable of recognizing the truth even if it hit you between the eyes.

Yeal aka CCNL

It is called birth, not womb-exiting.

Your mom and dad did not create you. They had sex, and then you happened. They don't know how you happened. You came out the way you came out; no one determined it, not even your Mom and Dad. So if you are beautiful and smart, don't thank your parents, and if you are ugly and dumb, don't blame then for that either.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

I did not call you garbage; I called your website garbage; propoganda promoting religious mania is garbage; and that is what you suffer from: religious mania, in a sick mind that lives in the Medeival world of old Catholicsm that promotes a bygone feudal and ignorant world as superior to the world that we live in now, with science, democracy, and pluralism. You cling to superstition, kingship, and bigotry; and if that is all you have for your arguments against me, then that speaks for itself.

.......'now we substract nine months from our "womb exiting" to determine approximately when Mom and Dad created us.'

And what mother giveth, mother can always take away. Humans have considerable natural autonomy over their reproductive destiny, if they choose to exercise it - but mother nature exerts final authority.

Meanwhile, morals and ethics are man-made, relativistic, and subject to change.

Overturning Row v. Wade would signal a return to the days of back street abortions and worse....this would be on the heads of Catholics and the Catholic Church, including over course the justices of SCOTUS. A return to the Middle Ages, in effect...all primarily at the hands of the 'men in charge'.

Mothers have always been acknowledged as holding the organic power of life and death at every level.

Regarding reproduction, men do all the talking, rule-making and inseminating, and women do all the heavy lifting. What a sad and pitiful state of affairs! As we look around, it's hard to see how the world is a better place, with political control almost exclusively in the hands of men.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

"If that is garbage, what does that make you?"

I suppose that makes me garbage, right? You "love" the unborn, but I am garbage.

Number one: what ever happened to "love?"

There is not an ounce of it in you.

And number two:

Garbage-wise, the feeling is mutual.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

The question of abortion is about more than the physical evidence of DNA in a fertilized egg.

It is about what is a human being and what constitutes personhood. It is about human sexuality. It is about personal freedom. It is about law and the power of the state over the individual. It is about conscience and belief. It is about custom, convention, and change.

It is a complex of issues that is beyond the capacity of the fossilized Catholic hierarchy to analyze; all it can do is issue thought decrees, which people, in general, with a multitude of experience, belief, and opinion, could not possibly be expected to bow down to with unquestioning obedience.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DITLD
“TEBOW'S MOTHER'S MESSAGE ON THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE ECHOES THAT OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH”

IRT:
"If you choose to copy and paste from you NewAdvent website, I might read your posts, but I cannot be bothered to cick on a website that would take me to your garbage."

ANS:
"Here are some of the things you claim is garbage.

"Human life is the basis of all goods, and is the necessary source and condition of every human activity and of all society.

Most people regard life as something sacred and hold that no one may dispose of it at will, but believers see in life something greater, namely, a gift of God's love, which they are called upon to preserve and make fruitful.

"Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself.

"Whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed.

They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator."

It would seem if that is garbage, as you say, you have little if any sense of your self-worth. If that is garbage, what does that make you? That is why it is said your mind is closed to the truth because of your predispositions.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

If you do not believe in the validity of science in determinging the age of the world and in determiining the evolution of life on earth from the lower to the more advanced, then how do you extend credibiliy to science on other matters?

Aren't you a cafeteria scientist?

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

"When does life begin?"

Well of course, we track the existence of life back to the moment of conception, back into the sperm of the father and the egg of the mother, back to the time when they were conceived, back to their parents and grandparents, back to all previous generations, back to the the primate ancestors of humanity, back to the ancestors of vertebrate land animals, back to the life emerging from the sea, back from the evolution of single-celled organism. But that is not really the question here, is it?

You ask:
"Why should he acknowledge to something that isn’t true?"

The answer is because it is true, and not false as you claim. Making false claims with emphasis does not make them true.

Citing opinions of authroity figures does not prove your point; just as many authority figures can be cited to approve the opposite point; that is what makes it controversial, by definition. It is like King Henry VIII and his wife Catherine of Aragon, citing thousands of learned men all throughout Europe to prove who was right and who was wrong in their marital difficulties. Your inability to make your own argument without cutting and pasting from others demostrates that you cannot. Beyond that, I am not interested your cuts and pastes.

Remember that great saying that some great commenter always ends with here:

"Always seek the truth."

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DITLD
“CONCEPTION”

IRT:
You still have not acknowledged a fact which I have presented to you several times, that it is universally accepted, without any exceptions, among all peoples upon the earth now, and all past times, that personhood begins on the day of birth.

ANS:
Why should he acknowledge to something that isn’t true?

Dr. LANDRUM SHETTLES sometimes called the "FATHER OF IN VITRO FERTILIZATION":
"Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind." And, on the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade_, “To deny a truth [about when life begins] should not be made a basis for legalizing abortion.”

DR. HYMIE GORDON, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception." ESCR is murder, and the Court , Ethics, or Science cannot change it.

DR. MCCARTHY DE MERE, medical doctor and law professor, University of Tennessee:
"The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."

DR. ALFRED BONGIOVANNI, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine:
"I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty ... is not a human being."

DR. RICHARD V. JAYNES:
"To say that the beginning of human life cannot be determined scientifically is utterly ridiculous."

PROFESSOR EUGENE DIAMOND:
"...either the justices were fed backwoods biology or they were pretending ignorance about a scientific certainty."

Statement by PAUL E. ROCKWELL, M.D.:
"Eleven years ago while giving an anesthetic for a ruptured entopic pregnancy (at 8 weeks gestation), I was handed what I believe was the smallest living human ever seen. The embryonic sac was intact and transparent. Within the sac was a tiny human male swimming extremely vigorously in the amniotic fluid, while attached to the wall by the umbilical cord. This tiny human was perfectly developed, with long, tapering fingers, feet, and toes. It was almost transparent, as regards the skin, and the delicate arteries and veins were prominent to the ends of the fingers."

"The BABY was extremely alive and swam about the sac approximately one time per second, with a natural swimmer's stroke…. When the sac was opened, the tiny human immediately lost his life and took on the appearance of what is accepted as the appearance of an embryo."

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DITLD
“CONCEPTION”

IRT:
You still have not acknowledged a fact which I have presented to you several times, that it is universally accepted, without any exceptions, among all peoples upon the earth now, and all past times, that personhood begins on the day of birth.

ANS:
Why should he acknowledge to something that isn’t true? Of course truth doesn't matter to a closed mind does it?

Dr. Jerome Lejeune, known as "The Father of Modern Genetics," also testified that human life begins at conception before the Louisiana Legislature's House Committee on the Administration of Criminal Justice on June 7, 1990.

Dr. Lejeune explained that within three to seven days after fertilization we can determine if the new human being is a boy or a girl.

"At no time," Dr. Lejeune said, "is the human being a blob of protoplasm. As far as your nature is concerned, I see no difference between the early person that you were at conception and the late person which you are now. You were, and are, a human being."

Dr. Lejeune also pointed out that each human being is unique -- different from the mother -- from the moment of conception. He said, "Recent discoveries by Dr. Alec Jeffreys of England demonstrate that this information [on the DNA molecule] is stored by a system of bar codes not unlike those found on products at the supermarket...it's not any longer a theory that each of us is unique."

Dr. Jerome Lejeune died on April 3, 1994. Dr. Lejeune of Paris, France was a medical doctor, a Doctor of Science and a professor of Fundamental Genetics for over twenty years. Dr. Lejeune discovered the genetic cause of Down Syndrome, receiving the Kennedy Prize for the discovery and, in addition, received the Memorial Allen Award Medal, the world's highest award for work in the field of Genetics.

He practiced his profession at the Hôpital des Enfants Malades (Sick Children's Hospital) in Paris. Dr. Lejeune was a member of the American Academy of the Arts and Science, a member of the Royal Society of Medicine in London, The Royal Society of Science in Stockholm, the Science Academy in Italy and Argentina, The Pontifical Academy of Science and The Academy of Medicine in France

Daniel in the Lions Den and Twmatthews like all of us were created at their microsecond of conception. Today we cannot measure the exact timing. We will someday and then we can use that day as the Great Day. Now we substract nine months from our "womb exiting" to determine approximately when Mom and Dad created us.

Hi Pam,

The last time I heard from Walter was on this link,

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/ramdas_lamb/2010/01/the_law_of_karma.html

He has disappeared into the panel work. Do you have anything more recent than this?

Yeal

You still have not acknowledged a fact which I have presented to you several times, that it is universally accepted, without any exceptions, among all peoples upon the earth now, and all past times, that personhood begins on the day of birth.

It is the momentous day of celebration, and the day from which everything that happens to each and every one of us is measured. You start school, get a drivers license, are allowed to marry, collect social security, all on a time table counted from the day of birth, and not a single day earlier.

And if you would seek to shift all of these many important dates of our lives back nine months before the date of birth, you would have your work cut out for you.

Yeal

Perhaps a better word might be person. What defines personhood? If it is a fertilized egg, a zygote, an embryo, a fetus, an unborn baby, do you hold it, hug it, kiss it, dress it, feed it, change its diapers, and rock it to sleep? Do you remain perpetually hyper-alert to its every need? Do you worry about it with every breath that you take in and give out?

People do feel love for their unborn babies; they give them names, prepare for their arrival, and wait for them; and if it dies in a miscarriage, they grief and have a funeral. But this love is different than the love that we feel for people that are born into the world that we know. There is a degree of complexity to this question which you are either blind to, or are unwilling to accept.

Yeal9,

And what makes something human? You seem to be saying that there's the same relationship between a mother and fetus and mother and child. I don't.

You also seem to be saying that a fertilized egg is fully human. So any group of cells with the potential for growing into a person should be treated as human. Is that right?

Should we have laws protected unborn children so that if a mother doesn't take "reasonable" care of herself, she could be held accountable? Should there be laws, in your view, defining what kind of vitamins a pregnant woman should take? How about drinking -- should a woman who is caught drinking while pregnant be arrested?

I bring these up because you seem to think that a fetus should be treated like a child. Am I correct? And if not, at what point should they be -- that's the point where you would consider them human.

Yeal

An individual is not a spieces, it is an individual; I do not know how one would explain that any more simply. And nothing about the spieces, homo sapiens, is endangered.

Mankind is overpopulating the earth, crowding out all the other plants and animals. They should able to exist also. They are our cousins, whose progenitors are also our progenitors and they belong with us on the earth as it has been created or formed. It is wrong to simply make them all go away, because of the greed an neediness of mankind, in general.

No one is doubting how beloved an unborn child can be to new parents who want a baby. If you are saying that people like me to not understand that, then you are being deliberately deceptive or else, very obtuse. You are conflating personal experience of a local landscape with the fact of endangerment of the entire family of living things upon the earth.

If you are opposed to abortion for moral reasons, then just say that, but do not compare your concern for unborn children with people's concern for the endangered spieces of the earth. Morally, they are not really related, and it makes you look as though you favor the mass extinction of all non-human life on earth, which I assume is not your intended meaning.

And in some places like India, a growing human female is an endangered species.
And no doubt, when Daniel in the Lions Den and twmatthews' parents realized they were pregnant, they remembered the day of said human creation with all its meaning and love for their little ones starting their human lives from conception to death do us part.

YEAL9 / CCNL

A growing baby in the womb is not the same as a fully formed human being. That is universally recognized in all cultures. The day of birth is the time that marks the beginning of a human being.

On the day of fertilizaton, the zygote is a cell which has a human DNA in it and will grow into a baby, but at that point it is not a human baby. It is just embarking on a 9 month recreation of the evolution of man from a single celled organism to a fully formed human being. As the fetus becomes more and more advanced, it is more and more like a baby. At what point is it a human being? At what day, at what hour, at what minute? at what second? No one can say. No one knows. There really is no answer to that kind of question. I suspect that to a black-and-white type of guy like you, that is not a very satisfying way to think.

If a pregnant woman has a miscarriage and loses her baby, I do not doubt the grief that she and the father feel, because I have seen it. But it is not the same kind of grief that one would feel upon the death of a mother or father, a brother or sister, a co-worker, or a best friend.

"Do you really believe that there's the same relationship between parents and a fetus as their is between parents and their child?"

Yes indeed!! Consider how growing babies in the womb are cared for by Moms and Dads i.e. vitamins, folic acid, no drinking, no smoking, weight control, LaMaze classes etc.

And why are there so many abortions if this is the case? Apparently, many procreators of babies in the womb have bought the hype that somehow their growing babies are not human.

Yeal9,

First, at the stage of science some 59 years ago, when I was conceived, my mother didn't know for many weeks after conception that she was pregnant. As is the case with most pregnancies, there was probably some joy and anticipation of new life. But, that doesn't mean there was any relationship with me while in utero.

The idea that my parents would love me while a few thousand cells in the same way as an infant is a stretch, even for my ego. So explain to me your point -- that we should treat a clump of cells in the same was as a child?

You claim that you don't believe in God but you seem to attribute a soul to a newly conceived egg. And what of all the miscarriages in the world and throughout history?

Science estimates that more than 25% of all conceptions end in miscarriage and more than likely, in prior generations when we didn't have the knowledge of medical care that we have today, the number ending in miscarriage was probably higher.

Do you really believe that there's the same relationship between parents and a fetus as their is between parents and their child? And if this were true, there would be virtually no abortions, would there?

The cumulative effects of global over-population dwarf the concerns of those that would restrict the reproductive rights of women everywhere, given the chance.

Anti-choice proponents in the USA are clearly thinking locally rather than globally, when it comes to reproduction.

The fact that the Catholic church has a blanket policy that universally opposes/obstructs the use of conventional birth control in povery-stricken countries is criminally negligent, at the very least.

Superstition frequently trumps common sense where general education levels are persistantly low. The USA is not immune.

The emergence of the populist Tea Party and the continuing political dominance of the Catholic church allied with Protestant fundamentalism are perfect examples of the high emotions of imaginative confabulation and superstitious belief riding roughshod over reason and common sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

I seem to recall President Bush claiming that nothing was wrong with the economy, and that everything was just fine, due to him and his Republican Congress, and that he made these false claims right up until the very edge of economic collapse and disaster. This was near the end of the Presidential campaign process. Who knows? If Barak Obama would have known before hand, the true nature of the plunder that Bush and his Republicans had wrought upon American, he may not have wanted to be President, in the first place.

How can you claim to be interested in truth, to push truth everywhere, to accuse others of not knowing or seeing the truth, when you trail after George Bush and his Republic-Klan white people's party, the Party of the Crooked Scam, the party of deception and treachery? You are not an emmissary of God, but a political partisan of political machine that grinds people up and spits them out, and you have therefore forfeited all of your credibility.

If you choose to copy and paste from you NewAdvent website, I might read your posts, but I cannot be bothered to cick on a website that would take me to your garbage.

YEAL9 / CCNL

"So remind me again why we protect fully developed endangered species or these same species in wombs, eggs, or seed but we do not extend the same protections to a growing human?"

Are you really serious about this question? Very few people would equate the value of an individual animal with an individual human being. So this implication of yours that this is what people do is either an ignorant assumption or a deliberate deception.

An endangered spiecies means that there is a danger that every single individual of that speices will die, and not a single one will be left alive on the earth, and that there will be no more babies of that spieces born ever again. In such a case, each individual of that spiecies becomes precious and dear, for to loose even a single onw is to move a step closer to total extinction. We live in an age of mass die-outs of speicies, caused by the overpopulation of the earth by man. It would be irresponsible not to try and save some of these dying speices, whose extinctions we are causing.

Is irresponsibility your thing now?

And in some places like India, a growing human female is an endangered species.
And no doubt, when twmatthews' parents realized they were pregnant, they remembered the day of said human creation.
Posted by: YEAL9

DITLD
IN REPLY TO (IRT)
"HOW DOES GOD KNOW?"

ANS:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1014.htm

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DITLD

IRT:
"President Obama inherited the huge budget with its huge budget deficits from President Bush and the Republican Congress. He also inherited the bank collapse along with the trillion dollar Wall Street bailout from President Bush and the Republican Congress."

ANS:
Three years ago, the Democrats had an overwhelming majority in the House and Senate, and there was no financial crisis when the Dems took over. After Obama became President, he has tripled the national debt of the Bush Adm.

Bush’s Sect. of Treasury and the MBO attempted some 12 times before the House and Senate to advert the Mortgage collapse.

http://www.bucksright.com/bush-proposed-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-supervision-in-2003-1141

"A September 11, 2003 New York Times article shows that President Bush proposed “the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.” His proposal: An agency within the Treasury Department to supervise mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"Fearing that mortgages would no longer be available to people who were unable to pay them back, Democrats eventually killed the proposal. The current meltdown in the mortgage industry is a direct result of giving mortgages to people who could not pay them back, a practice protected by Congressional Democrats.

"Both entities were recently taken over by the government, a move that puts trillions of taxpayer dollars at risk.

"Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

"The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And. it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios." The Dems rejected it.

Peter and Walter,
Where are we posting now? I've been without power for the last few days and have lost track...

So remind me again why we protect fully developed endangered species or these same species in wombs, eggs, or seed but we do not extend the same protections to a growing human? And in some places like India, a growing human female is an endangered species.

And no doubt, when twmatthews' parents realized they were pregnant, they remembered the day of said human creation.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ

If truth is inside the mind of God, then what is outside of the mind of God? Is the Catholic Church true? Is the Catholic Church inside the mind of God? How can something that is real in the world be inside the mind of God? If everything that there is to be perceived pre-exists inside the mind of God, then what is there for God to perceive, to see, to feel, to know? That can be nothing left for God to know or think or feel, since all of it is already inside of his mind.

This actually seems pretty dysfunctional. This would explain the weird disconnectedness of human experience, that God is a sort of unitary cosmic dysfuntion. But this is just so fantastically fanciful. It does not really mean anything. I cannot suppose that any real, true, and sincere theologian, Catholic, or otherwise, would ever imagine such a thing as truth is inside the mind of God. It only takes just a very, very few questions to wonder this assertion into complete obliteration. Not only are the things that you are trying to prove to me false, but they are almost universally recognized, with but a of moment of reflection to be false, nothing more than navel-gazing word-spinning, for no real purpose of a fulfilment of sincere discovery or elaboration of faith, but merely to oneself pre-occupied with words, to keep the mind busied with puzzles and games or little value or worth, for what reason, but perhaps to keep from worrying about what the truth of all this may really be. I cannot go along with such fanciful silliness, because I have not been brought up to be intimidated by this kind of Catholic false argument. But, I am not even so sure that, even this, is really authentically Catholic; I cannot barely imagine that this what this great and ancient instiution really promotes about truth. This cannot really be, can it?

"When did the life of twmatthews reach its potential and become important to his/her parents?"

I don't know; I'm betting that you don't know either.

"At conception of course since he/she would not exist had it not been for the first combination of his/her father's sperm and his mother's egg."

You do not know this--you don't even know if the person is male or female.

And, for all you know, he/she may have been an unwanted child who was abused all his/her life by his/her father, mother, or both.

"And is the potential for human life the same as human life?"

Posted by: twmatthews

When did the life of twmatthews reach its potential and become important to his/her parents? At conception of course since he/she would not exist had it not been for the first combination of his/her father's sperm and his mother's egg.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ

People who voted for Obama are not morally and politically blind.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ

People who voted for Obama are not morally and politically blind.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ

President Obama is not seeking to overwhelm the system until it breaks.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ

What is Obamacare?

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ

President Obama is not a Communist.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ

Comparing abortion to murder of fully formed human beings is deliberately deceptive.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ

I have no need to convince myself of anything. I believe what seems true, and what seems true to me is just something that happens; I do not do anything to cause the appearance of seeming truth; I just sit back and experience it; if you seek to cause the appearance of, what seems to true, to me, to change, by a new and better argument, then, of course I would feel compelled to believe you. But so far, I have not; your arguments are unconvincing, and if your ticket into Heaven depends on your success at convincing others of your truth, then I would be a little worried, if I were you.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ

President Obama inherited the huge budget with its huge budget deficits from President Bush and the Republican Congress. He also inherited the bank collapse along with the trillion dollar Wall Street bailout from President Bush and the Republican Congress.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ

Marriage a religious and legal arrangement of custom an convention, not pertaining to any such imagined judicial contrivance as natural law.

Sometimes TTWW's rants border to bibletainment: 250 Baal's priests getting their heads cut off, to the delight of TTWW. He thinks that was a good idea.

Those priests were just as indoctrinated with their little tribe's god as the Jews with their little tribe's god.

It burns down to a simple, primitive and rather idiotic power game.

Sometimes I wonder, how a guy who is articulate enough to produce some coherent sentences, has zero judgment about the nonsense his articulate speech creates.

This is an historic opportunity to show who we are! For the first time, the 2010 US Census will count married same-sex couples, in addition to counting same-sex couples living in the same household.

We're winning!

Quiensabe:

Muy loco en la cabeza.

YEAL9:

Okay, I respect your position -- a secularist and anti abortion. Then tell me this: When an egg is fertilized and there is a single cell, is that a human? How about 2 cells? 4? 8? At what point do you consider cells to be human and worthy of the rights and protection afforded children?

And is the potential for human life the same as human life?

Susan, does it give you pause as to why Focus on the Family has more to spend than organizations that promote aborting babies do? Further, only a fool would fail to see the incongruence of a supreme court that has ruled that aborting babies is a constitutional right thereby gagging future individuals but gagging individuals as a group (corporations) after they are born is unconstitutional? The only thing you left out of your piece is that Sarah Palin is responsible for the ad.

DITLD

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_some_opinions_as_to_whether_Barack_Obama_is_a_Communist

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

Why do you think Obama is a Communist? I cannot imagine why anyone would suppose such a thing.

And what the heck is Obamacare?

And do you challenge the authority of the Pope?

"After seeing the ad, one must wonder what all the fuss was about."

After seeing the ad, I wonder what the ad was about.

After seeing the ad, one must wonder what all the fuss was about.

DITLD:
IRT:
“Again, your mission of convincing people of the truth …. I give you a big fat " F".

ANS:
Sorry but I am not trying to convince you of anything, you have to convince yourself. I just state the truth and for anyone that has the intelligence to understand it. The inability to perceive obvious truths is not my problem; it’s theirs.

Consequently, what is more important than your life? Tebow thinks life and a mother’s love is more important than football. Abortion is murder because the conceived is a human being. The Progressives even deny a child being born isn’t human, and Obama voted to allow the murder of an aborted child still alive.

Marriage is a natural institution and not man made.. Nor is the Natural Moral Law changeable. The Court made your inalienable rights alienable.

The consequence have been devastating. They legalized murder and over 50 million unborn have been slaughtered. That’s more people than all the dead casualties in every war we have fought, seven times the population of NY City.

The moral problems are not just in N. Korea or China they have came to America. The Court banned the “Commandments” and claimed they served no ligitimate value to the State when they are the basis of all social order.

Today the majority elected a Social Communist as President. He in the process of destroying our moral and political heritage and its freedoms.

The morally and politically blind cannot see the damage Obama is doing and what he is trying to do, viz. bankrupt the country. His philosophical advisors are Saul Alinsky a Communist, and Mao Czar advocates, A Mao ornament hung on Obama’s Christmas tree. The blind won’t even believe it when shown in a video.

Alinsky’s philosophy for social change, (Social Communism), is to overwhelm the system until it breaks. That is what Obama’s budget and Obamacare will do while he has tripled the debt of the Bush Adm.

He's appointed a pro-abortionist homosexual to the Faith Based Ministry, supports Gay Marriage, mocking the Ministers. Hillary denounced organized religion at the Prayer Breakfast. What audacious priggery. The problem is that you need convincing of that which is patently obvious.

back to the topic:

from: http://www.godlessprolifers.org/home.html

"Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League
Homepage

A nontheistic and nonreligious opposition to the life-denying horror of abortion
"... because life is all there is and all that matters, and abortion destroys the life of an innocent human being."

I'm James Matthew (Matt) Wallace, aka The Compleat Heretic. I'm both a Secular Humanist atheist and a pro-life advocate. All too often, I fear that I'm the only nonreligious person who opposes the genocide of abortion used as a birth control substitute. Accordingly, I have created this web site as a virtual rallying point and clearinghouse for all atheists, agnostics, and other "godless" people who call themselves "pro-life."

Though I am a Republican and a conservative (both social and economic), I intend for this site to be nonpartisan and nondiscriminatory. AAPL is for all nontheists regardless of political affiliation, political alignment, age, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, etc.; the more diversity, all the better. Even so, there are three requirements (explained in further detail on the Membership Form page) for AAPL membership; one must:

1) be an avowed atheist, agnostic, or other nontheist
2) oppose abortion and desire its abolition (with or without exceptions)
3) support nonviolence as the sole legitimate means of achieving the goals of the pro-life movement"

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
ARMINIUS3142
FEBRUARY 6, 2010
“THE READER”

IRT:
“Oh, really? I have read those odd books called the Gospels. In there I found this guy call Jesus. He did not say Follow a set of laws. He did not say Follow a book. He never said Follow some church. He said, "Come, follow ME!”

ANS:
Evidently you didn’t read the Acts much less the Gospels. The Apostles who wrote the Scripture knew Jesus established a Church. Jesus is the Church and consequently a Catholic.

ACTS 8:3cf.
“And at that time, there was raised a great persecution against the CHURCH which was at Jerusalem. And they were all dispersed through the countries of Judea, and Samaria, except the apostles. 2 And devout men took order for Stephen’s funeral and made great mourning over him. 3 But Saul made havock of the CHURCH, entering in from house to house: and dragging away men and women, committed them to prison. 4 They therefore that were dispersed went about preaching the word of God.

Acts 9:3/11
And as he went on his journey, it came to pass that he drew nigh to Damascus. And suddenly a light from heaven shined round about him. 4 And falling on the ground, he heard a voice saying to him: Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

John 15:1cf.
I am the true vine: and my Father is the husbandman. Abide in me: and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine: you the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing.”

Paul was persecuting the Church and Jesus asked Paul, “Why are you persecuting me,” namely the Church. Moreover, Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. By abiding in the Church we abide in God‘s graces.

TTWYSTed:

"Think about that. Just maybe it is the one who thinks they all are imbeciles is the real imbecile."

Actually, I think about exactly that -- each of the many many times that you use the word 'imbecile'.

DITLD

ANS:
God does not save people because they are smart or not Catholic. Tebow may not be Catholic, however, God would never abandoned anyone who loves Him. Hence, Mt 11:25 “At that time Jesus answered and said: I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones.”

"Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.337"

Hence, Psalm 8:32cf., “Now, therefore, ye children, hear me: blessed are they that keep my ways. 33 Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. 34 Blessed is the man that heareth me, and that watcheth daily at my gates, and waiteth at the posts of my doors. 35 He that shall find me, shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord. 36 But he that shall sin against me shall hurt his own soul. All that hate me love death."

This is completely explained in the link below.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH:
http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p123a9p3.htm

“Outside the Church there is no salvation"
846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?335 Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
"Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church.

"He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door.

"Hence, they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.336

847 "This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

Are you saying that only "devout Catholics" are allowed to be employees and students at Catholic Universities?

I am pretty sure that is not right.

Also, you are very noisy about just about every statement that anyone makes here on this thread, but one:

... that your acknowledgement of Catholic authority stops at Vatican-II.

So, are you even smarter than the Pope? Your arguments seem to suggest that your are.

But, of course that would be silly, wouldn't it? He's infallible!

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

"Every existing thing is true, in that it is the expression of an idea which exists in the mind of God ... "

There is no reason to suppose that truth is what is in the mind of God. A more realistic definition of truth is that truth is what actually is. No one who sincerely seeks valid knowledge of the world would every say that truth is what is in the mind of God. If this is the Catholic basis for reguarding truth, then you are even farther off track than I had imagined.

Some people do not believe in God and therefore your definition is not very general. In addition, you make assertions about ideas being in the mind of God defining truth, but you have no way of knowing this. This is therefore, neither ONTOLOGICAL truth nor logial truth. You are just dancing around the question and spinning fabrications from thin air, with sentences that do not make sense.

In addiiton to that, in seeking truth about the world, logic is not what we go by. If there are aspects of the world that do not seem logical, but we know to be true, then we must accept the fact of truth which is what actually is.

You say "the cause of knowledge in man is —ultimately, at any rate — the thing that is known."

But that is a circular argument in which you use the word know to define the word know. That is good enough for a simple dictionary definition, in which the goal is to help you know how to use a word in speech and language, but that is not good enough for the purposes of philosophy.

You have merely done a little pirouette around the word, knowlege, but you're the only one who gets anything out of it.

Again, your mission of convincing people of the truth is sagging. It is sagging because the truth as you procalaim it is not true, but false. Take another look at your false beliefs and claims, and then try again to convince me. Perhaps if you came to me with the truth, then your efforts to convince me might be more successful.

Until then, I give you a big fat " F ".

DITLD

WHAT IS TRUTH?
"TRUTH AND THE ERRORS THAT DESCRIBE TRUTH"
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15073a.htm

ONTOLOGICAL TRUTH
"Every existing thing is true, in that it is the expression of an idea which exists in the mind of God, and is, as it were, the exemplar according to which the thing has been created or fashioned. Just as human creations — a cathedral, a painting, or an epic — conform to and embody the ideas of architect, artist, or poet, so, only in a more perfect way, God's creatures conform to and embody the ideas of Him who gives them being. (Q. D., De verit., a. 4; Summa 1:16:1.)

"Now the cause of knowledge in man is — ultimately, at any rate — the thing that is known. By its activities it causes in man an idea that is like to the idea embodied in the thing itself. Hence, things may also be said to be ontologically true in that they are at once the object and the cause of human knowledge.

LOGICAL TRUTH:
To judge that things are what they are is to judge truly. Every judgment comprises certain ideas which are referred to, or denied of, reality. But it is not these ideas that are the objects of our judgment. They are merely the instruments by means of which we judge.

"The object about which we judge is reality itself — either concrete existing things, their attributes, and their relations, or else entities the existence of which is merely conceptual or imaginary, as in drama, poetry, or fiction, but in any case entities which are real in the sense that their being is other than our present thought about them.

"Reality, therefore, is one thing, and the ideas and judgments by means of which we think about reality, another; the one objective, and the other subjective.

"Objective evidence, however, is nothing more than the manifestation of the object itself, directly or indirectly, to the mind, and hence is not strictly a criterion of truth, but its foundation. As Père Geny puts it that evidence is the ultimate criterion of truth is equivalent to stating that knowledge properly so called has no need of a criterion, since it is absurd to suppose a knowledge which does not know what it knows."

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
SCHAUM POSTED
FEBRUARY 6, 2010 9:32 PM
“DELUSIONS:

IRT:
“Unless you have been part of the Catholic Church, you will probably have difficulty realizing that catholic theology is all about fear and control. They learn it from the cradle. TTWYSTed is just another product of that environment. He cannot help, nor even understand, his delusions. It’s not his fault. The catholic church is a cult, and resorts to cult indoctrination practices.

ANS:
Is a math student indoctrinated with the fundamentals of math? Is an English student indoctrinated to the fundamental basic rules of grammar? When we learn we are all indoctrinated until we can reach the use of reason and decide for ourselves what is true and what is false.

Christianity has more Universities in the world than all the other Universities combined.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_universities_and_colleges_in_the_United_States

Are all the graduates of these Catholic Universities imbeciles? Are the graduates from Georgetown, Notre Dame, Holy Cross, Boston College, Loyola, University of San Francisco, Xavier University, Duquesne, DePaul, St Johns, Niagara, St Joseph, St Louis, etc. all indoctrinated and you are more intelligent than these robots who cannot think for themselves?

I don’t think so. A lunatic is one who thinks everyone around him is a lunatic but him. Think about that. Just maybe it is the one who thinks they all are imbeciles is the real imbecile.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

How is the church the truth? why is it the truth? What about it makes it the truth? and how can a political, business, or religious organization be the truth? Truth is a conscious awareness of what actually is; so it is true to say that there is a Catholic Church, but not that the church is truth. Such a statement can have no real or substantial meaning, but only some type of metaphorical meaning. But by definition, the truth is not defined metaphorically. The truth is not like a thing, but rather, a thing is like the truth. The truth cannot be the comparing object of a metaphor, but the thing that is compared to. So, how does this statement, the church is the truth, even have a grammatical meaning? It is a sentence with individual words that each separately make sense, but put togther in this sentence, the sentence, itself,does not make sense. Why make a sentence that does not make sense? If you want people to understand what you are saying, then say sentences that make sense and not ones that do not make sense.

To reply to me with more sentences that do not make sense is not going to convince me because as we have already established, the very fact of my unconvinceablity makes me irrational. But does it really make a irrational, or does it make you a failure in your very aggressive efforts to convince me that you are right?

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

What the Catholic Church needs is reform, reform, reform, from top to bottom, inside out.

Blow those old doors open and let some air in, so people can breathe.

Change, change, change is what is needed in Catholicsm.

I have a male Catholic friend who makes up titillating sins to tell the priest in confession because he says it makes th priest happy.

And I have a female Catholic friend who is insulted that a male priest would suppose that she would discuss the intimate nature of her sex life with him.

Isn't this ridiculous?

I am thinking of joining up myself, to help with the reforem movement that is deperately, deperately needed.

And I urge everyone else to join up to too; there are centuries of damage to be undone.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

But how do you know the Church is the truth? Because it is written? But who wrote it? People wrote it, who were telling us what they thought God thinks. But what if I don't believe that what they thought God thinks is what God really thinks? And if what they thought God thinks is wrong, then I would expect someone else who knows better what God thinks to tell me. You still have not answered my question. I am not asking you to tell me what other people have thought that God thinks. I am asking you to tell me why I should believe that you know what these people thought God thinks is true.

And if I am irrational, then I do not have free choice, because free choice only operates in a rational person. And therefore, if I am irrational and without free choice, then should I still expect to be punished by God, who created me in my irrationality, without free choice to understand what you say is the truth that has been written by people speaking for him?

Merely to repeat what has been written does not answer my question, and does not convince me. If it is your duty to convince people like me, then you are a failure. And for your failure, do you think that God will punish you?

RELIGION is a set of beliefs and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature, often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law, also encompassing ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience.

PHILOSOPHY is the study, speculation, or musing on the abstract features of the world, and includes the nature of being and consciousness, scope of knowledge, human behavior, the mind-body connection, patterns of thinking, emotional values, and government.

SCIENCE is reasoned-based analysis of sensation upon our awareness, in order to discover or understand how the physical world works with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding.

Science is not a religion nor a philosophy. It is not even, a search for truth. It is more direct and more utilitarian than that. Each scientist has their own problem to solve, their own little thing to figure out. A philosopher would say that the summation of these specific goals is a search for truth, but this again, is a philosophical speculation. Even the laws of nature, which are supposedly the pillars of science, are not a product of scientific study, but are rather, endlessly discussed by philosophers and theologians.

The only people who need to know about science are scientists. No one else needs to know. That is why it is so easy not to know about science; that is why it so easy to reject science, attack science, and belittle science; that is why it is so easy to subvert the findings of science to conflicting religious belief, because to get along and live life in a primal landscape of expierence is quite easy without knowing anything about science at all.

DITLD:
The reason one believes the Church is that it is the Truth. Everyone who denies the Moral precepts of the Church eventually destroy themselves or they live in frustration because they are living against their nature.

There is no perfect man, but God’s Church is perfect and He keeps its doctrines and teachings perfect because He said He would. From Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven, nothing has been added or subtracted from His teachings because they are not man‘s teachings but God‘s. None of these teachings contradicts each other and they do not contradict right reason because they are in consonance with right reason.

Moreover, all other Churches ever on earth have changed their fundamental doctrines from time to time. The Church’s moral laws are based on human nature. Since human nature cannot change, neither can the Moral Laws change that governs human behavior.

How can the unconvinced prove that the Church is unconvincing when the unconvinced are irrational?

The unconvinced believe in abortion; they believe they have the right to determine who lives and who dies. They believe that marriage is a man made institution and they can make the rules for marriage. However, only the blind cannot see there are no rights to murder. The nature of man is a social being, and Marriage is the natural foundation of the Family.

Man cannot make his own moral laws. It has been tried for centuries and all have miserably failed--China, East Germany, North Korea, North Vietnam. Mao, Stalin, Idi Amin, Hitler, all died an ignominious death with their nations in ruin.

Suicide is the third largest cause of death in America because the suicidal have no hope or purpose. They are contradictions of their nature, but Christianity is the antithesis of hopelessness.

Christianity is the rules that man becomes harmonized with himself, God, and the society he lives in. At no time can it be shown keeping God's laws is detrimental to man or society. Not to keep them is detrimental to both.

Truth is what actually is.

Knowledge is a refelction of truth in our minds.

A flaw in the reflection of truth is what we think of as being false. But what is false is not really anything, but a flaw in the consciously refelcted truth.

Deception, on the other hand, is the deliberate deflection, obstrution, or corruption of truth.

It is not necessary to say I think therefore I am, nor to say that the only thing that I know is that I exist, for these are trivial observations.

Instead, I say that I have the perceptions of my five senses, that animate my being and cause me to have experiences of a physical landscape, for which I am perfectly suited to inhabit. This locality of personal experience is so perfectly well-matched to my sesnory ability to perceive it, that I do not really need to know anything about truth, knowledge, or belief, but all I do is live, experience, sense truth, know experience, and make of it all the beliefs that I will.

This is how we were in the beginning, before there was any such thing as truth, knowledge, or belief, and certainly before there was science or religion. This is before there were many voices saying different things; this is when all of the of the truth, knowledge, and belief that anyone could imagine was only as far down in the earth that you could dig, only as far up as you could reach, only as far away as you could see or walk, only amoung a handful of people that you would ever see in your life.

SHAUM
“LOOKS LIKE THE TRUTH WON’T SET YOU FREE’IT HAS YOU ALL TANGLED UP”

IRT:
"Right. Put the blame anywhere except where it belongs: your god and his "infallable" church just don't exist.
You do a lot of LSD when you were younger?"

ANS:
You don’t have to tell me there is no God; tell God when it comes your time. If you had told Pharaoh, after he lost all his army because he didn’t listen to Moses, you would learn very quickly there was a God.

Of course, Sodom and Gomorrah believe God didn' exists and look what happened to them. You are a bit more fortunate than they were.

Not believing in God and believing in Baal, a false god, got 250 pagan priest \ their heads cut off (1 Kings 18 cf.) He is still the same God as He was then, and He hears everything you say. A word to the wise should be sufficient. So are you wise ant or foolish grasshopper?

DITLD:

Unless you have been part of the Catholic Church, you will probably have difficulty realizing that catholic theology is all about fear and control. They learn it from the cradle. TTWYSTed is just another product of that environment. He cannot help, nor even understand, his delusions. Its not his fault. The catholic church is a cult, and resorts to cult indoctrination practices.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE: part I

"I have trust and faith in the Church’s teachings because it is written God will be with the Church until the end of time. Hence, he has endowed the Church with infallibility."

But how does the fact that it has been written given you a reason to trust and have faith in the thing that has been written?

God didn't write it. You may have some reason for believing that the person who wrote it was writing down what he thought God thinks, but that is not a very convincing reason that could be used to persuade people who do not know what you are talking about.

You may believe that it should be convincing, but that is not really your place to say; it is the place of the unconvinced to assure you that you are unconvincing, and it is all clearly on you, and not on them, that your argument is not convincing.

So, if anyone is going to Hell, it is you, for failing to provide a convincing argument for persuading people that they are going to Hell if they do not believe what you tell them.

It is obvious from some of your replies to Schaum and from some of your previous postings that you do not acknowledge the Catholic Church as it exists today as infallible but that your references to Catholicism are to the pre-Vatican-II, Catholic Church, which some Cathlics hold to in rebellion to standard Catholicism. So, even a person did want to become Catholic, which school of the fracturing Catholic Church is the one that is really true? Yours? or the Pope's?

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE: part II

You are right that I do not understand anything that you say about Catholic teachings and about your religeon. I find it unfathomable. Does that mean I will be cast into the Lake of Fire because I am not as smart as you? I assume it does, and there is nothing that can be done about it, since I simply lack the capacity to understand what you say; it is not you; it is me; I was made with an opaque mind, impervious to the truth which you seek to impart to me.

And as for the political structure of the Catholic Church, you are right, it is not a democracy, but it should be. It should be reformed from to top to bottom, in its political, business, philosophical, and theological structure, because in all of these things, it as ridiculous antiquated hold-over from Medeival Europe. It is ruled by an infallible monarch, chosen by a very narrow oligarchy, acting with pompous and imperious gestures, but yet at the mercy and in the care of the secular Italian Republic.

The theology of the Catholic Church is based on what men thought that God thinks. These assumptions of men about what they thought God thinks are wrong. They can revise them; they can figure more correctly and more exactly what God thinks, instead of promoting the thoughts of God which are not true.

Merely to say that it is true because it is written is not a good proof if what is written is wrong. And I believe that what is written is wrong. And if you want to convince me that what is written is true because it is written, you need to stop arguing about what it is that is written, and tell me just why I am wrong in saying that what is written is not true.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
ARMINIUS3142
FEBRUARY 6, 2010
“THE READER”POSTED “

IRT:
“Oh, really? I have read those odd books called the Gospels. In there I found this guy call Jesus. He did not say Follow a set of laws. He did not say Follow a book. He never said Follow some church. He said, "Come, follow ME!”

ANS:
Duhhh! Either you don’t read to well or you need a new Bible, or else, you skipped Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, and all the Epistles that followed.

As to the Church, let me give you a little hint; Jesus is the Church.

Thus, it is written.John 15:1/5
“I am the true vine: and my Father is the husbandman. Abide in me: and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine: you the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing.”

Paul on the way to Damascus was struck off his horse, because he was persecuting Christians. Jesus said Paul, Paul, why are you persecuting me. Paul was persecuting the Church.

I believe these are law he said follow.
Matthew 5:19
He therefore that shall break one of these least commandments, and shall so teach men shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But he that shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven

Matthew 19:17
Who said to him: Why askest thou me concerning good? One is good, God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

Matthew 22:40
On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.
in parallel | Compare Translations

Mark 10:19
Thou knowest the commandments: Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, bear not false witness, do no fraud, honour thy father and mother.

Luke 18:20
Thou knowest the commandments: Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery: Thou shalt not steal: Thou shalt not bear false witness: Honour thy father and mother

John 14:21
He that hath my commandments and keepeth them; he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father: and I will love him and will manifest myself to him

TTWYSTed:

Right. Put the blame anywhere except where it belongs: your god and his "infallable" church just don't exist.

You do a lot of LSD when you were younger?

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
SHAUM
CATHOLICS v. PUBLIC SQUARE”

ANS:
The pedophile problem is not the Catholic Church it the Sexual Revolution created by the Progressives and the Political Correct.

In New York schools alone a study showed 5 % of PSS teachers are pedophiles, in respect to 0.25% in all Catholic priests of the last 30 years and little if anything is done about it by public school officials. One child per day in the New York Public Schools is said to be molested by PSS personnel.

http://www.sinaicentral.com/gendercentral/7_30_PR_Rapists_Protected_in_NY_Pub_schools.htm

"The New York Post revealed yesterday that every day in New York public schools a child is molested. One third of those apprehended are repeaters, known to the system, but allowed to remain within the schools, ready to strike. The Post story revealed that teaches, when caught, are transferred to other schools, to molest children there, or are given desk jobs within the schools, where they are still free to lust and fulfill their lust with our children.

"Some blame the teachers union for defending pedophiles so strongly that it takes twenty months to rid the system of a known criminal. All of the senior officers of the school board stated that they were shocked about this. Nobody denies it, even the teachers union. But nobody is doing anything about it.
The New York Post revealed yesterday that every day in New York public schools a child is molested. One third of those apprehended are repeaters, known to the system, but allowed to remain within the schools, ready to strike.

"The Post story revealed that teaches, when caught, are transferred to other schools, to molest children there, or are given desk jobs within the schools, where they are still free to lust and fulfill their lust with our children. Some blame the teachers union for defending pedophiles so strongly that it takes twenty months to rid the system of a known criminal. All of the senior officers of the school board stated that they were shocked about this. Nobody denies it, even the teachers union. But nobody is doing anything about it."

Back to the topic from http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/feb/06/tim-tebow-super-bowl-ad-good-society/

"In 1987, Pam Tebow, a Christian missionary at that time working in the Philippines, faced a difficult reality. While pregnant, she contracted an extremely dangerous infection brought on by a pathogenic amoeba. She slipped into a coma and when she recovered doctors recommended she have an abortion because her own life may have been in danger.

Despite these warnings, Pam Tebow refused her doctor’s suggestion and on Aug. 14, 1987, she gave birth to Timothy Richard Tebow. Both mother and son were healthy and whole, and the entire Tebow family was overcome by the miracle they had witnessed.

Pam Tebow passed plenty of that courage along to her newborn son because his life has been defined by courage ever since. The boy who doctors predicted would not have been born has come a long way from Makati City in the Philippines. Today he stands as high as any 22-year-old American athlete can stand — Heisman Trophy winner, BCS National Championship winner and National Football League draft prospect. Tebow is widely seen as among the greatest college football players of all time and is beloved in Florida and beyond. He stands as a counterweight and exception to the stereotype of modern athletes.

Tebow leads a life of self-restraint and discipline, rejecting intoxicants and other temptations. He is a missionary himself, having gone abroad multiple times to lift up the poor in the developing world and alleviate human suffering. He is a devoted family man whose parents’ unrestrained pride and overflowing love is evident anytime the camera turns to them in the crowd. In a time when many top-tier athletes have fallen short of their traditional stature as role models to kids, Tebow is a man who is worthy of the adoration of children. Young people who live their lives like Tim Tebow are likely bound for all the rewards this life has to offer, including the excitement of personal accomplishment.
"

"I have trust and faith in the Church’s teachings because it is written God will be with the Church until the end of time. Hence, he has endowed the Church with infallibility."

Oh, really? I have read those odd books called the Gospels.
In there I found this guy call Jesus.
He did not say Follow a set of laws.
He did not say Follow a book.
He never said Follow some church.
He said, "Come, follow ME!"

TTWYSTed:

Because, you limbic-brained christer, we were not talking about public schools! We were discussing the catholic god who keeps the church inerrant.

Are you dyslexic, or do you just deliberately refuse to follow the thread of your own conversations?

"You might try doing your homework before you scandalize the Catholic Church and the priesthood..."

Only the Catholic Church and the priesthood can scandalize the Catholic Church and the priesthood, and from what I've read and heard, they are doing a pretty good job of it.

SCHAUM:

ANS:
You might try doing your homework before you scandalize the Catholic Church and the priesthood and getting your facts straight. Try bad mouthing the Public Schools whose problems are 25 times greater than anything done by priest who betrayed their vows and the Church Notwithstanding, the public in general is worse than the Public schools.

Public Schools are a feeding ground on innocent children. I haven’t seen you vilifying them or is it acceptable because they are not Catholic.

"According to a survey by the Washington Post, over the last four decades, less than 1.5 percent of the estimated 60,000 or more men who have served in the Catholic clergy have been accused of child sexual abuse. According to a survey by the New York Times, 1.8 percent of all priests ordained from 1950 to 2001 have been accused of child sexual abuse."

"Thomas Kane, author of Priests are People Too, estimates that between 1 and 1.5 percent of priests have had charges made against them. Of contemporary priests, the ASSOCIATED PRESS FOUND THAT APPROXIMATELY TWO-THIRDS OF 1 PERCENT OF PRIESTS HAVE CHARGES PENDING AGAINST THEM."

"The Oregonian" in Portland launched its own investigation of the problem. In summary, they found:

1. Child molesters are moved place to place in the school system without anyone getting a heads-up.
2. It takes almost a year-and-a-half to investigate claims of abuse in the public schools.
3. Teachers guilty of touching a minor or accessing porn on a computer need only see a shrink.
4. Public school molesters who admit to their crimes are given a second chance.
5. Investigators are all staffed from inside the public school system.
Six Deals are routinely cut for accused public school molesters in secret, protecting the identity of the molester from the community.
7. Accused molesters can walk away with cash settlements, health insurance and letters of recommendation.

CBS AND TIM TEBOW"

When is a proper time to speak to the sacredness and dignity of human life? Is it not at every moment in one's life, that man should defend the Right to Life? No, it is not 6:00 AM, as one prelate suggested, but every moment that there is the unjust slaughter of the unborn going on.

It is written, Matthew 5:15:
"Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house."

What are more important, commercials for beer, cars, drinks or human life? I believe it is the dignity of human life, and this is a forum reaching a vast audience of America and even the world that should be reminded that human life is sacred and inviolable as is love of a mother.

"Tebow’s message is dignified, noble, and more important than what happens on the field, or in the whole world. It is a message that a mother’s love for her child is greater than her own life.

The Culture of Death has spoken, "Human life is no different than any other life and should be treated as any other life.

"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men.

"It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society.

"It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters"

"Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”--Mother Teresa, One of the World's Greatest Humanitarian"

The message of Tebow is the antipodal answer to the death mongers who are frustrated that Pam Tebow and Sarah Palin did not have their babies murdered, and a rebuke of Obama’s Harry Knox, the gay appointee to the Advisory Committee of the Faith Based Initiative bashing the Pope for his Pro-Life stance. How many more insults must our American values, our heritage take from this juvenile incompetent Communist Socialist troglodyte?

TTWYSTed:

"I have trust and faith in the Church’s teachings because it is written God will be with the Church until the end of time. Hence, he has endowed the Church with infallibility."

So..your "god" just hung around twiddling his thumbs all those decades and centuries when his priests were screwing little boys. Some "god"! I want no part of him.

Emonty:

""he has endowed the Church with infallibility."

Galileo might quibble with this statement."

Galileo might also ask why, in its infallibility, has the church spent so much time and money apologizing for and paying reparations for its previous errors...

Wow, great column, Susan. Once again you've managed to hit every wrong button.

Focus on the Family is calling Pro Choice out, in a very public way.

Abortion is protected under the law.
Free speech is sheltered there too.

The Focus on the Family Sunday message to a large part of planet Earth will be candid, it should be … it is their right.

Americans have always used their freedom of speech to defend, declare and define their rights and beliefs.

For those opposed to the message … Stop whining, consolidate your resources, and respond. Doing nothing is to literally hide behind the law.

Debating, disagreeing, giving no quarter nor expecting any is more important to a nation than we realize. These basic exchanges are the growing points of this plant we call American progress.

"he has endowed the Church with infallibility."

Galileo might quibble with this statement.

YEAL seems to have learned cutting and pasting at the knee of CCNL.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DANIELINTHE LIONSDEN
THE CHURCH

IRT:
"You have trust and faith that the literal word of this creation allegory is true."

ANS:
No, I have trust and faith in the Church’s teachings because it is written God will be with the Church until the end of time. Hence, he has endowed the Church with infallibility. Thus, it is shown in Mt. 28:20, Mt.10, John 15: 26-27.

IRT:
In addition, from this assumption and faith, you follow the lead of Catholic theology to acquire a kind of knowledge that is fanciful, impractical, and virtually useless.

ANS:
It is useless to those who cannot fathom its meaning and purpose, or the Omniscience of God who is its author. It is useless to those who rely on their own resources and eschew the wisdom and knowledge of the God who created them. Moreover, the fruit of the Church’s wisdom is unequivocally profitable to all mankind. When the precepts of the Church are followed man is in complete harmony with his nature and in the society he lives.

IRT:
"And because you reject trust and faith in more ordinary kinds of knowledge, then there is no way to argue with you or persuade you on any of this. So, that is fine. There is no rule that says you cannot delve into the depths of whatever this stuff is. We have separation of church and state, and freedom of religion. So go ahead, and puff yourself up, and up, and up with all of your grand imaginings."

ANS:
There is no huffing and puffing except from you who are frustrated because you cannot understand what God is telling you and prefer to rely on your own reconnaissance.

Unfortunately history is proof that man without the counsel of God falls into error. Hence, we have some 26,000 to 35,000 different denominations of Christianity alone contradicting each other in part or whole, notwithstanding the multiple numbers of sects and religions not Christian attempting to define God.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DANIELINTHE LIONSDEN
“CONCUPISCENCE”

IRT:
[When Adam was created he had complete control of his concupiscence.]

“I looked up this word concupiscence. It means "an intense desire, which cannot harm those who do not consent. This is just a big word for the sake of a big word. It has no purpose or use, since it communicates no reasonable meaning.

ANS:
It is a word you do not understand. Its meaning describes the effect of Original Sin that occurred at the fall of Man. Try looking it up on the link below.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04208a.htm

“In its widest acceptation, concupiscence is any yearning of the soul for good; in its strict and specific acceptation, a desire of the lower appetite contrary to reason. To understand how the sensuous and the rational appetite can be opposed, it should be borne in mind that their natural objects are altogether different.

“The object of the former is the gratification of the senses; the object of the latter, reason, is the good of the entire human nature and consists in the subordination of reason to God, its supreme good and ultimate end.

“The lower appetite is of itself unrestrained, so as to pursue sensuous gratifications independently of the understanding and without regard to the good of the higher faculties. Hence desires contrary to the real good and order of reason may, and often do, rise in it, previous to the attention of the mind, and once risen, dispose the bodily organs to the pursuit and solicit the will to consent, while they more or less hinder reason from considering their lawfulness or unlawfulness. This is concupiscence in its strict and specific sense.”

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
DANIELINTHE LIONSDEN
THE CHURCH

IRT:
"You mean love your neighbor as yourself, like you do? Even if your neighbor is a Republican? and a non-Catholic? or is gay?"

ANS:
Yes, even if it were Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Saddam; all men are man’s neighbor. Does not a priest counsel a murderer before his execution? Did Mother Teresa ask what religion was the dying man laying in the gutter of Calcutta covered with maggots or ask him what he had done before she treated him with kindness and love? Did the Good Samaritan ask the robbed man laying on the road if he were a Jew, because Jews hated Samaritans? Theresa said, she saw Jesus in every human person.

IRT:
"A devout Catholic would not be allowed to vote for a pro-choice candidate? nor to seek a fundamental reform of the Catholic Church? to modernize it, make it more democratic, and to make more compatible with accepted standards of good and common sense?"

ANS:
A devout Catholic would vote for the lesser evil if two candidates were both Abortionists. Fundamental reforms are always taking place in the Church, viz. Church Laws change with the times, dogmas and teachings can never change. Catholics cannot change the Scriptures or the Commandments, or add to them, or subtract from them, because they are made by God, and only God can do that.

Third, the Church is not a democracy, it is a Divine institution created by and governed by God not man. The Church and its priests are the instruments through which God acts. Man doesn’t tell God what to do, God tell man what to do.

Fourth, all things are created by God, all truths come from God who is Truth and Truth does not contradict Truth. Truth is Reality. Consequently, the Truths of the Church do not contradict right reason, or common sense that are in consonance with reality. Man, when he is unreasonable, contradicts God. To say God created a Church that contradicts reason is a contradiction in itself. To the contrary, man contradicts God, not vice versa.

Part one.

Of what value to the human race is the pursuit of truth?

Why does the human race pursue truth, consider it of value and to be distinguished from false conceptions of reality when no other species has this pursuit in mind? Must the truth be of value to the human race or does it make sense as some contemporary people obsessed with science say to uphold the truth even if it hurts us?

Obviously the human race pursues the truth because it feels there is some value to be derived from it. The human race really does not pursue the truth in dispassionate fashion, which is to say pursue the truth regardless of whether it helps or hurts us. The religious person has his truth and believes his salvation lies in it. The atheist is against religion because he believes religion harmful, not based on reality--which means the atheist supposes reality to be helpful and not harmful.

Part two.

And Mr. Charles Darwin sheds great insight on this matter. Darwin declared a species will do what it takes to survive. A species does not exist to pursue truth and avoid falsity--only humans apparently believe so--but simply exists and tries to go on existing. This clearly squares with the typical religious person and scientist. Both believe themselves dedicated to the truth--and expect something from it.

Now what are we to make of those people who are so obsessed with the truth that they attack such things as religion viciously (for its falsity) and go so far as to say the truth must be arrived at even if it is something which dismays the human race, causes resignation,--such truths as entropy? What would Darwin say about that? I think we can only conclude that Darwin would say a species willing to pursue the truth in the direction of painful truths (truly harmful ones) is a species which is in degeneration, not doing what it takes to survive but preferring a view of existence which harms it.

Part three.

Darwinian theory implies that survival comes first--whether by illusion or truth. Furthermore every species including humans has been getting by without any real knowledge of the truth. The human race has been concerned about the truth for only a fraction of its existence and animals not at all. So why bother with the truth? Answer: apparently intelligence is of value and it pays to see into things.

But seeing into things must pay or else we are pursuing a vision of not only no value but one which will bring us to extinction. This calls of course the whole scientific enterprise into question. The scientific enterprise is dedicated to the truth, proof leading to the upholding of foundational truth. Science apparently is unconcerned with whether the truth helps or harms us. The whole modern age shares this prejudice. But then again fortunately despite our noble, dispassionate declarations of seeking the truth--no matter whether harmful or helpful--we fasten with obvious speed on useful truth.

The point being that truth is not necessarily a positive thing, to be preferred over a piece of obvious falsity. The truth must help or be rejected for helpful falsity. Basic Darwinism. What it takes to survive. The truth can help. It can harm. It does not necessarily set one free. It can kill one. And falsity does not necessarily imprison one. It can set one free. Thousands of children with their imaginations can testify to the last sentence.

Truth must help or it must go. Falsity must help or it must go. What it takes to survive. What does this all mean? Among other things, it means the human race really has not become sophisticated at using its consciousness. It is trapped in a prejudice of preferring truth over falsity. It operates in a one way fashion, does not know when to accept or avoid a truth. Does not know when to accept or avoid a piece of falsity.

Operation of consciousness. Employ it well.

And back to the topic of defending children and endangered species.

Thou shalt not kill/murder defenseless children or any other endangered species in their wombs, eggs or larvae.

The word “truth” has lost its correct, original definition and is being used more often to describe that which is both untrue and unprovable by those who desire to have their viewpoint more widely accepted or to influence the beliefs and actions of others. These people believe that if they say their unprovable fallicies often enough others will start believing it—that magically, it will become true. Whether these people actually know their information to be false or they, too, have been genuinely convinced does not matter when the real problem presents, that being the PROOF that the “truth” is true. Without proof who is to say what is the truth?
Truth consists of a fact or group of facts that can be proven as fact by one or more established and accepted methods which are strictly defined and rigorously applied.
Methods of proof are evident in their simplicity and authoritative in their absolute observability. The laws and customs of most of civilization are those requiring eyewitness testimony and physical evidence that is at once unique to the fact and identifiable in nature. They are universally accepted as valid methods of proving the truth of a matter.
Things that are considered useless, even detrimental, in proving facts include testimony by those with an interest or desire for a particular outcome (ulterior motive), those who have previously been known to offer false testimony (perjury), statements attesting to statements made by others (hearsay), circumstances which are seen as irrelevant to, or not consistent with, already proven facts (irrelevancy), most testimony of young children, speculation, and opinion except that of a bona fide expert. These are globally inadmissable as proof of fact because the results of such are not consistent, not undeniable yet unidentifiable in their nature, and offer no absolute, undeniable verification of being fact or fiction.
These methods just don’t make anything plain or obvious, but tend to confuse and raise doubt, and are the primary tools of prigs and religious fanatics.
Only physical reality, and its ability to be PROVED, is truth. No amount of insistence, no quantity of reiteration, and no amount of personal willpower proves truth. Only indisputable, obviously recognizable evidence is proof of truth. Truth is not open to opinion or customizable per person or cause, there is not my truth and your truth, there is only fact. If statements cannot be proven impartially they are assumed to be false. There is no other possibility. It either is or is not the truth, period.
If it is truth, it is provable.

"What I am suggesting is that we learn to fully appreciate the consequences of those actions. That while we are free to engage in sexual intercourse at our every whim, we also understand the responsibility that does, or could, arise from such an activity."

Well, "we", who have been properly educated, are well aware of the above.

Unfortunately, many people who were home-schooled, church-schooled, or un-schooled, are not.

"Because science/medicine has minimized both the emotional and physical toll of having an abortion, we have found it convenient to choose that as the "responsible" alternative."

It can be the responsible alternative.

"I wonder if we would feel the same if abortion methods were as they were 200 or 500 years ago?"

We would probably feel differently about most things if they were as difficult and dangerous as they were 200 or 500 years ago.

Hi Justillthennow,

I posted to you on this preceding forum before it ran dry,

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/susan_jacoby/2010/01/suffering_and_the_futility_of_faith.html#comments

February 3, 2010 6:33 PM
February 3, 2010 6:30 PM
February 3, 2010 6:43 PM

I'm also going to post on Susan's "Obama" forum in answer to your latest critique of February 1, 2010 4:32 PM. and subsequent unanswered posts.

Since this one is most recent I'm posting on the Obama segment since we won't have to wade through as much to find our posts.

Globe alone

I understand what you mean, and it would make sense if you had control over those whom you are lecturing. It would make sense if you were discussing this with your own children, or even in a schoolroom class, or if you were a counselor to people who are appealing to you for your opinion.

But, you are just giving free-floating advice, to no one in particular, in what amounts to plattitudes. It is a curmudeonly spouting of what the world ought to be doing to be a better place, but there is no pratical suggestion of how to do this.

Telling people what they should have done differently after it is too late to undo what has been done is not particularly helpful and sounds an awful lot like gloating.

Globalone

"Your understanding of the word "responsibility" clouds your thinking"

Nope. I understand the word perfectly. I see it as you who has a clouded view of it because you see a zygote as a human to whom responsibility is owed, and others don't. In a case such as this, whether or not someone has a "responsibility" is a subjective opinion, based on your personal belief of when human rights begin.

"I am not suggesting a world in which people only have sex for purposes of conceiving a child"

Whew. My bad I guess.

"What I am suggesting is that we learn to fully appreciate the consequences of those actions"

Consequences to who? You mean to the possible future zygote? This is based on your subjective belief that a zygote has human rights.

Otherwise I think that girls who engage in sexual behavior are well aware of the consequences, which are, that they might get pregnant and have to have an abortion. They weigh those risks for themselves, and make their own call. What you want, is to push your belief that the zygote is a baby and that she needs to consider the consequences to the human life she will destroy. That is the "responsibility you are talking about and it is subjective based on whether or not you believe that a zygote has human rights.

"That while we are free to engage in sexual intercourse at our every whim, we also understand the responsibility that does, or could, arise from such an activity"

REsponsibility to who?

"Because science/medicine has minimized both the emotional and physical toll of having an abortion"

This is a good thing, not a bad thing.

"we have found it convenient to choose that as the "responsible" alternative"

Nonsense. The responsible thing to do if one can not raise a child is to have an abortion. Unless of course you believe that a zygote has human rights. Use of the word "responsible" here is subjective dependent on your belief about when human rights begin.

"I wonder if we would feel the same if abortion methods were as they were 200 or 500 years ago?"

Sounds like you are pining here.

Justtillthennow

I read your reply to me in the earlier threads and you said:

"The concept of being powerless with our beliefs, choices, directions in life, not to mention reactions to input, etc. is frightening. You could make a horror sci-fi on that subject."

I did not say or infer any of these things. You have completely misunderstood me. I tried to give many small examples of what I was getting at; perhaps I gave too many.

I said, "we cannot control our thoughts." From this statement, you inferred all the rest, which I did not say.

Instead of giving you many examples of my thinking, let me just give one, doubt.

I say that you cannot keep doubt from seeping into your mind, and you cannot dismiss doubt once it is there.

Just consider that one point: doubt.

What do you think of doubt? I would like you to think of this one point, doubt, and communicate back to me, what you think of doubt? How do you control doubt? How do you keep from doubting? How do make doubt go away? Tell me how your excercise your free will over doubt, and choose what to doubt and what not to doubt.

I would appreciate a specific reply at some point, if possible.

In addition, I think that you may have the wrong idea about my ideas on free will and have it misconsrued as a horror story, because the word free will is not a single thing or a single concept; the expression free will stands for several different things; that is part of the difficulty of communicating subtle thoughts with words that are not subtle.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ1

You say,

"To be a devout Catholic you must keep the Commandments, and perform the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy. In addition, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself, and as God so loves you.' "

You mean love your neighbor as yourself, like you do? Even if your neighbor is a Republican? and a non-Catholic? or is gay? A devout Catholic would not be allowed to vote for a pro-choice candidate? nor to seek a fundamental reform of the Catholic Church? to moderniz it, make it more democratic, and to make more compatible with accepted standards of good and common sense?

"When Adam was created he had complete control of his concupiscence."

I looked up this word concupiscence. It means "an intense desire, which cannot harm those who do not consent."

This is just a big word for the sake of a big word. It has no purpose or use, since it communicates no reasonbable meaning.

You have trust and faith that the literal word of this creation allegory is true. And from this assumption and faith, you follow the lead of Catholic theology to acquire a kind of knowledge that is fanciful, impractical, and virtually useless. And because you reject trust and faith in more ordinary kinds of knowledge, then there is no way to argue with you or persuade you on any of this.

So, that is fine. There is no rule that says you cannot delve into the depths of whatever this stuff is. We have separation of church and state, and freedom of religion.

So go ahead, and puff yourself up, and up, and up with all of your grand imaginings.

Tim,

Reading is fundamental. Your understanding of the word "responsibility" clouds your thinking.

I am not suggesting a world in which people only have sex for purposes of conceiving a child. Even as a Christian, that would go against Biblical principles.

What I am suggesting is that we learn to fully appreciate the consequences of those actions. That while we are free to engage in sexual intercourse at our every whim, we also understand the responsibility that does, or could, arise from such an activity.

Because science/medicine has minimized both the emotional and physical toll of having an abortion, we have found it convenient to choose that as the "responsible" alternative. I wonder if we would feel the same if abortion methods were as they were 200 or 500 years ago?

Psolus:

"His/Her solution would be to outlaw sexual intercourse for everyone except for purposes of breeding."

Ah, brave new world, to have such people living in it.

"It sounds like the only "responsible" thing to do in your situation, would be to move your family to a mennonite colony, or some other country where sex, for reasons other than procreation, is either outlawed or highly frowned upon."

That does not go far enough for him/her; he/she wants to enforce his/her version of sexual responsibility on everyone.

His/Her solution would be to outlaw sexual intercourse for everyone except for purposes of breeding.

Globallalone,

It sounds like the only "responsible" thing to do in your situation, would be to move your family to a mennonite colony, or some other country where sex, for reasons other than procreation, is either outlawed or highly frowned upon.

If you can find such a place, to not take your family there would be highly irresponsible. Because Americans love them some intercourse.

More facts about contraceptives from

www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html

"CONTRACEPTIVE METHOD CHOICE

Contraceptive method use among U.S. women who practice contraception, 2002

Method No. of users (in 000s) % of users
Pill 11,661 30.6
Male condom 6,841 18.0 "

i.e.
The pill fails to protect women 8.7% during the first year of use (from the same reference previously shown).

i.e. 0.087 (failure rate)
x 62 million (# child bearing women)
x 0.62 ( % in decimals of these women using contraception )
x 0.306 ( % in decimals of these using the pill) =

1,020,000 unwanted pregnancies
during the first year of pill use.

For male condoms (failure rate of 17.4 and 18% use level)

1,200,000 unwanted pregnancies during the first year of male condom use.

The Guttmacher Institute (same reference) notes also that the perfect use of the pill should result in a 0.3% failure rate
(35,000 unwanted pregnancies) and for the male condom, a 2% failure rate (138,000 unwanted pregnancies) .

Meant to write:

My husband would find both propositions problematic.

TTWSY,

"Try becoming a devout Catholics, and if you wish to have sex get married."

My husband would find both proportions problematic.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
FARNAZ1MANSOURI1
“WHAT SHOULD MEN DO?”

IRS:
“What should men do?”

ANS:
Try becoming a devout Catholics, and if you wish to have sex get married. St. Augustine said “Love God with your whole heart, your whole mind, and all your strength, and then go out and do what ever you want. In a recent survey sometime back, it was found that deeply devout Catholic Marriages have a separation rate of two percent as opposed to lax Catholic marriages of some 42 percent in lax Catholic unions.

To be a devout Catholic you must keep the Commandments, and perform the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy. In addition, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” “Love your neighbor as you love yourself, and as God so loves you.”

When Adam was created he had complete control of his concupiscence. When Adam sinned, he lost the preternatural gift of sanctifying grace. Without this grace, restored through the Redemption by the Redeemer, man is vulnerable to sin. Consequently, after Adam's sin he covered himself with fig leaves.

Concupiscence is any yearning of the soul for good; in its strict and specific acceptation, a desire of the lower appetite contrary to reason whose formal object is the good of the entire human nature.

Consequently, since Adam's fall, reason is wounded, and man, without a relationship to God who is the vine and we the branches, who acts through His Church, man is under a powerful temptation to succumb to the desires of the lower appetites and man has little or no defense against these appetites without God‘s assistance (Romans 7: 21/25).

Hi Justillthennow,

Strike that last comment for now I went back into the Obama Post and it is still active. There is still life there, but I don't know for how long. I posted on it so we won't have to resort to the other forum for now. It just took a while to register for some reason.

Globalone:

Farnaz,

This isn't rocket science.

If men do not wish to become fathers, they should not engage in activities that would put them in that position.

That is, if you don't want a child, don't have sexual intercourse.

But that's too hard, isn't it? Especially in the me-first, immediate gratification culture we have created.
--------------------------
Globalone, I believe you have found the solution. Lo, after these many years of man's life on earth, a population control sage walks among us.

Perhaps, you could run an ad during the SuperBowl?

Hi Justillthennow,

I'll post on Susan's last forum since it still have a week of life in it and so as not to disrupt and break up the theme of this one just yet.

If you feel, for whatever reason, that CBS has blundered in running a pro-life ad as part of the SuperBowl presentations, let CBS know how you feel.

http://www.cbs.com/info/user_services/fb_global_form.php

"Facts on Contraceptive Use

www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html
January 2008

WHO NEEDS CONTRACEPTIVES?

• 62 million U.S. women (and men?) are in their childbearing years (15–44).[1]

• 43 million women (and men?) of reproductive age, or 7 in 10, are sexually active and do not want to become pregnant, but could become pregnant if they or their partners fail to use a contraceptive method.[2]

• The typical U.S. woman (man?) wants only 2 children. To achieve this goal, she (he?) must use contraceptives for roughly 3 decades.[3]

WHO USES CONTRACEPTIVES?

• Virtually all women (98%) aged 15–44 who have ever had intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method.[2](and men?)

• Overall, 62% of the 62 million women aged 15–44 are currently using one.[2] (and men?)

• 31% of the 62 million women (and men?) do not need a method because they are infertile; are pregnant, postpartum or trying to become pregnant; have never had intercourse; or are not sexually active.[2]

• Thus, only 7% of women aged 15–44 are at risk of unwanted pregnancy but are not using contraceptives.[2] (and men?)

• Among the 42 million fertile, sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant, 89% are practicing contraception.[2] (and men?)

WHICH METHODS DO WOMEN (men?) USE?

• 64% of reproductive-age women (men?) who practice contraception use reversible methods, such as oral contraceptives (how about one for men?) or condoms. The remaining women rely on female or male sterilization.[2]

FIRST-YEAR CONTRACEPTIVE FAILURE RATES

Percentage of women (men?) experiencing an unintended pregnancy (a few examples)

Method
Typical
Pill (combined) 8.7
Tubal sterilization 0.7
Male condom 17.4
Vasectomy 0.2

Periodic abstinence – 25.3
Calendar 9.0 –
Ovulation Method 3.0 –
Sympto-thermal 2.0 –
Post-ovulation 1.0 –

No method 85.0 "

(Abstinence) 0

(Masturbation) 0

"But that's too hard, isn't it?"

Well, that's one potential problem.

After four hours, call your physician.

Globe alone

Saying that men should stop having sex is not very plausible.

It just ain't gonna happen.

It just ain't.

Special shout-out to Sally Jenkins. Her op-ed on the Tebow commercial is top notch.

One of her best lines, "If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem."

Or, perhaps even better, "Apparently, NOW (National Organization for Women") feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikinis selling beer is the right one."

Farnaz,

This isn't rocket science.

If men do not wish to become fathers, they should not engage in activities that would put them in that position.

That is, if you don't want a child, don't have sexual intercourse.

But that's too hard, isn't it? Especially in the me-first, immediate gratification culture we have created.

Farnaz1:

" comment on what MEN should do to avoid unwanted pregnancies."

A man who wants himself to be protected from parenthood should get a vasectomy. No brainer.

I find interesting all these opinions about what a woman should do.

I wonder if some have not yet been informed that women do not become pregnant by themselves.

Men are fifty per cent responsible. So, perhaps, bloggers would care to comment on what MEN should do to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

"Your college professors have taught you well, in that the truth is relative. But truly I say to you, there is only one definition of responsibility."

And I truly ask you, what is your one single definition of responsibility?

"Having an abortion because that is the convenient and "easy" solution is not accepting responsibility. That argument is laughable at best."

Actually, it all depends on the circumstances. Bwah hah hah.

"If you are not in a position to have a baby, care for a baby, or provide financial support for a baby, then don't engage in an activity that would create a baby. THAT is responsibility."

So, I presume that you're not so much anti-abortion as you're anti-sexual intercourse.

Are you aware of how pleasurable sexual intercourse can be?

Globalone

I thought that you were advocating pro-life which I had understood to mean banning legal abortion.

Also, I am more or less in agreement with you that people should not be engaging in unprotected sex if they are not ready or willing to have a baby, and I agree that when a woman gets pregnant, she should accept responsibility for it, and I agree that having an abortion is not a good method of birth control, and I do not think most people would regard it as such.

HOWEVER, would'a, could'a, should'a ...

The sex drive is very powerful. I suppose it has to be or there would be no human race. Woman get pregnant who are unwilling or unable to have a child.

A lecture about responsiblity doesn't really help them. This is the real world, not an ideal world.

And I do not think holding this point of view makes me a baby killer.

"What you're suggesting is that every woman on earth accept your definition of taking responsibility when it comes to handling their pregnancies"

Your college professors have taught you well, in that the truth is relative. But truly I say to you, there is only one definition of responsibility.

Having an abortion because that is the convenient and "easy" solution is not accepting responsibility. That argument is laughable at best.

If you are not in a position to have a baby, care for a baby, or provide financial support for a baby, then don't engage in an activity that would create a baby. THAT is responsibility.

"What I'm suggesting is that the we move the discussion towards responsibility, or lack thereof if you're dealing with abortions."

What you're suggesting is that every woman on earth accept your definition of taking responsibility when it comes to handling their pregnancies.

"They gave birth because they chose to engage in sexual intercourse."

No, they gave birth because they became pregnant. Sexual intercourse does not inevitably lead to pregnancy.

"Pregnancy, which as everyone is well aware, is a potential consequence of engaging in such an activity."

Yes, and sometimes it is an unintended consequence of such an activity.

"millions of Catholic girls who gave birth because they thought abortion was a sin..."

They gave birth because they chose to engage in sexual intercourse. Pregnancy, which as everyone is well aware, is a potential consequence of engaging in such an activity.

Danny,

I never said I wanted abortion to be illegal. Making it so puts lives in danger.

What I'm suggesting is that the we move the discussion towards responsibility, or lack thereof if you're dealing with abortions.

DITLD,

Evidently, you were correct about problems posting. Just heard back from David Waters. He says there must be a system glitch--new blog.

I think that if anti-choicers have two and a half million dollars for an ad, they have ample money to devote to helping poor families with children.

They have ample funds to help the millions of Catholic girls who gave birth because they thought abortion was a sin, who are now in dire straits, and whose children have no chance in hell.

Focus on those families, FOF, and then get back to us.

DITLD:

Farnaz

I posted on Susan's other thread and it vanished, without a trace. I was afraid to post again, for fear that it would pop up twice and make me look goofy. So after a few hours, I tried again, and it worked. Just be patient, while the bugs get worked out.
----------------------------
Daniel, thanks for the post. However, I tried again this morning and again my post was "held for the blog owner."

I emailed David Waters last night, but haven't hear back from him. Guess I'll try again.

Farnaz

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-term_abortion

"Legal restrictions on later abortion

As of 1998, among the 152 most populous countries, 54 either banned abortion entirely or permitted it only to save the life of the pregnant woman.[15] In addition, another 44 of the 152 most populous countries generally banned late-term abortions after a particular gestational age: 12 weeks (Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Rep., Denmark, Estonia, France, Georgia, Greece, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Rep., Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Norway, Russian Fed., Slovak Rep., Slovenia, South Africa, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Yugoslavia), 13 weeks (Italy), 14 weeks (Austria, Belgium, Cambodia, Germany, Hungary, and Romania), 18 weeks (Sweden), viability (Netherlands and to some extent the United States), and 24 weeks (Singapore and Britain) [15]
"

Back to the question at hand:

The pro-life people want to put a commercial on tv advancing their politcal agenda; so what? let'em.

Outside of an election campaign, I do not think I have ever seen an ad on TV about abortion, one way or the other. I suppose they think that if they put it on during the superbowl, they will have a large audience. But it is probably not going to be a predominantly female audience. And people are not likely to change their beliefs about abortion based on a tv ad.

Is selling an emotional political agenda anything like selling ketchup? Not likely. And aren't commercials, generally, about anything, a little annoying?

If they want to throw away their hard earned money begged from little old ladies, then they should be go for it.

YEAL9

Well this is not a third world country; this is not China and this is not India; this is America; late term abortions are not performed to get rid of the female babies; even the most extreme pro-life people do not make this claim.

Late term abortions, what pro-life people falsely call "partial birth abortions" performed under medical supervision, are the result of complicated pregnancies, sometimes catastrophically so. In such cases, I do not that that red-neck Senators like Jeff Sessions of Alabama should have their bloody finger prints all over the operating room and all over the patients.

"Case Study:
Female Infanticide
Focus:
(1) India
(2) China

Summary

The phenomenon of female infanticide is as old as many cultures, and has likely accounted for millions of gender-selective deaths throughout history. It remains a critical concern in a number of "Third World" countries today, notably the two most populous countries on earth, China and India. In all cases, specifically female infanticide reflects the low status accorded to women in most parts of the world; it is arguably the most brutal and destructive manifestation of the anti-female bias that pervades "patriarchal" societies.

It is closely linked to the phenomena of sex-selective abortion, which targets female fetuses almost exclusively, and neglect of girl children."

www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html

" If atheism is to convince, it needs much more than it currently has going for it"

The only thing that atheism doesn't have going for it, that religion does have, is the privilege of making stuff up, or believing in made-up stuff, to make you feel better. Beyond that, atheism has everything else.

People with religious faith do not have a "purpose" that atheists do not have. They a "delusion of a purpose" that atheists do not have.

People on a placebo don't need more of that delusion. They need to be told that they are on a placebo and that the ailment they think they have (in this case, a lack of purpose without God and heaven) is all in their head.

My life is completely fulfilling with no need for a God delusion to give me a sense of purpose, an sense of morality, a sense of community, passion for life and knowledge, spiritual thoughts of the unknown. There is nothing missing. This is true of most atheists I know or have ever heard of. So why isn't it true for the religious? Why do they need this thing called religion?

Were they born fundamentally different from us in some way, that they need religion? No. They are the same as us, capable of being completely fulfilled without the need to make stuff up. But they were put on a placebo as children, by parents who had been put on a placebo as children by a brainwashed society.

A much bigger myth than God is that some people "need" to believe in him.

In short, atheists are under no obligation to come up with a replacement for a placebo. They should however feel obligated to tell those who are on a placebo that they are on a placebo. And there is nothing rude about that. Like telling someone they have a booger hanging from their nose, it's embarrassing, but it's a case where embarrassing someone is actually the compassionate thing to do.

It's not about ridiculing the believers. It's about ridiculing the belief. Let them decide if they want to be part of something that is ridiculed as primitive and childish in public. To make them think real hard about what they believe. In the end that's all atheists really want. Is for people to really think critically about what they believe and why, without the influence of the church and it's lies that have brainwashed billions for millennia.

I was once present for the catastrophic birth of a calf; I was not present in the barn, but I was inside the house when it happened.

The cow was having difficulty delivering the calf, and the vet had to be summoned late at night, and the calf was born in a catastrophic position, torn to pieces; it was a horrible and bloody mess, traumatic for the vet and traumatic for my uncle the owner of the cow.

It was not just the monetary loss of the calf, nor the worry of the loss of the very sick cow, but it was just the horrible, bloody, and gory suffering of the mother and of the calf that freaked us all out. And this is just an animal, and not a human being.

It is really offensive for pro-life people to toss around their invented medical term "partial birth abortion" when this kind of thing happens to human beings. Late term pregnancies sometimes go very wrong. Not so long ago, women and their babies commonly died in childbirth.

Doctors should be the ones who manage difficult pregnancies, not politicians, and not Congressmen and Senators. There is no way that I will ever believe that pregnant women and doctors choose to "get rid" of a baby just before it is born, just for the heck of it, without any good medical necesity.

That is another big lie of the pro-life people.

... and furthermore ...

... when an egg is fertilized, and grows into a fetus and then into a baby, the phases that it goes through in nine months mimics the phases of evolution.

This process, which is easily observable, is just one more proof of evolution, which by the way, has nothing to do with belief or unbelief, but is merely a matter of science.

Globe alone

On the day of conception, it is not a human being; on the day of birth, it is; that is just common sense about a very wondrous and mysterious process. No culture anywhere in the world regards the day of conception as the point at which human life begins. "Birthday" is the universal convention; that just plain is how it is. Furthermore, there is no convincing argument to say that a fetus is equivalent to a fully formed human being; if that is your opinion and belief, then fine.

But, finally, the reason that pro-choice people want abortion to be legal is so that women do not die in illegal abortions. You are so compassionate, but you have no compassion for women, even really young girls, who died in botched abortions, and who would die in the future if abortion was once again made illegal.

And I know you don't like hearing this, but I gotta say it again, that pro-life people have all of the compassion in the world for the unborn, as though such an easy concern which is after all, merely a political gesture, would cast them in a better light in the eyes of Jesus and God, but that compasion ENDS, on the day of birth, when a fully formed human being is ushered into the world, and when concern and care for such people, alive in the world, would actually require you do do something good for them.

Doing is harder than talking; actions speak louder than words.

Farnaz

I posted on Susan's other thread and it vanished, without a trace. I was afraid to post again, for fear that it would pop up twice and make me look goofy. So after a few hours, I tried again, and it worked. Just be patient, while the bugs get worked out.

And back to the topic of defending children:

Thou shalt not kill/murder defenseless children or any of the following endangered species in their wombs, eggs or larvae:

"Mammals

Bison bison athabascae (Wood bison)
Canis lupus (Gray wolf)
Canis rufus (Red wolf)
Corynorhinus townsendii (Townsend's big-eared bat)
Dipodomys casks (Stephen's kangaroo rat)
Dipodomys heermanni morroensis (Morro Bay kangaroo rat)
Dipodomys ingens (Giant kangaroo rat)
Dipodomys merriami parvus (San Bernardino Merriam's kangaroo rat)
Dipodomys nitratoides (Kangaroo rat) (vulnerable)
Dipodomys stephensi (Stephen's kangaroo rat)
Eumetopias jubatus (Steller Sea Lion)
Lasiurus cinereus semotus (Hawaiian Hoary bat)
Leptonycteris curasoae yerbabuenae (Lesser long-nosed bat)
Leptonycteris nivalis (Mexican long-nosed bat)
Microtus californicus scirpensis (Amargosa vole)
Microtus mexicanus hualpaiensis (Mexican Hualapai vole)
Mustela nigripes (Black-footed ferret)
Myotis grisescens (Gray bat)
Myotis sodalis (Indiana bat)
Neotoma fuscipes riparia (Riparian woodrat)
Odocoileus hemionus cerrosensis (Cedros Island mule deer)
Oryzomys palustris natator (Rice rat)
Ovis canadensis californiana (California bighorn sheep)
Perognathus longimembris pacificus (Pacific pocket mouse)
Peromyscus gossypinus allapaticola (Key Largo cotton mouse)
Puma concolor couguar (North American Cougar)
Puma yagouaroundi cacomitli (Gulf Coast Jaguarundi)
Puma yagouaroundi tolteca (Sinaloan Jaguarundi)
Rangifer tarandus caribou (Woodland caribou)
Reithrodontomys raviventris (Salt Marsh harvest mouse) (vulnerable)
Sciurus niger cinereus (Delmarva Peninsula fox)
Sorex ornatus relictus (Buena Vista Lake ornate shrew)
Sylvilagus bachmani riparius (Riparian brush rabbit)
Tamiasciurus hudsonicus grahamensis (Mount Graham red squirrel)
Trichechus manatus (West Indian manatee)
Urocyon littoralis (Island fox)
Vulpes macrotis mutica (San Joaquin kit fox)[1]

Birds

Agelaius xanthomus (Yellow-shouldered blackbird)
Amazona vittata (Puerto Rican Amazon)
Ammodramus maritimus mirabilis (Cape Sable seaside sparrow)
Campephilus imperialis (Imperial woodpecker)
Campephilus principalis (Ivory-billed Woodpecker)
Caprimulgus noctitherus (Puerto Rican nightjar)
Corvus hawaiiensis
Corvus kubaryi (Mariana Crow)
Corvus leucognaphalus (White-necked Crow) (vulnerable)
Dendroica chrysoparia (Golden-cheeked Warbler)
Grus americana (Whooping crane)
Gymnogyps californianus (California condor)
Hemignathus munroi (ʻAkiapolaʻau)
Loxops coccineus coccineus (Hawaii 'Akepa)
Numenius borealis (Eskimo curlew)
Phoebastria albatrus (Short-tailed albatross) (vulnerable)
Picoides borealis (Red-cockaded Woodpecker) (vulnerable)
Tympanuchus cupido attwateri (Attwater's greater prairie-chicken)
Vireo atricapilla (Black-capped vireo) (vulnerable)
Vermivora bachmanii (Bachman's wood warbler)[2]

from wikipedia.com

You know, it's interesting. On Dawkins' thread last week, I posted that his reductive Reason vs. Faith opposition was hundreds of years old, becoming tired, etc. I stand by that. What I do think important in Dawkins' "discoursing" is his fearlessness. Jocky and self-promoting though he is.

Dennet and Harris are not in quite the same camp as Dawkins. Dennett has argued, in fact, on this blog, for comparative religion courses. Harris is heavily into history and speaks eloquently from that perspective.

Still we need some sort of rationale, philosophy consistent with the twenty-first-century state of the world, and that philosophy we do not have. If atheism is to convince, it needs much more than it currently has going for it.

Farnaz:

I remember, when John Paul died after a month as pope, there were some conspiracy ideas that suggested he was "assisted" into the next world because he was about to reveal something.

I wonder......
----------------------------------
Interesting....What disturbs me most is the dearth of coverage on this. It's extremely serious. The people for whom the Bank is laundering money are assassins, killers of elected officials who try to curb the mafia in Italy. This scandal is dominating the media there.

The media is becoming curiouser and curiouser. It is prevented from going to sites of hurricane devastation in Texas and says nothing. Now it will be braodcasting adds for the presidency courtesy of foreign nations.

As I understand it the SCOTUS ruling did more than strike down McCain Feingold. Following the ruling, money began pouring into US Chambers of Commerce. Constitutional lawyers say it will be next to impossible to track this money in many cases. Congress is beginning to consider damage control legislation. Obama was right.

Some right-wing religionists probably have no idea of whom they're in bed with. Others, I'll bet, do.

Farnaz:

I remember, when John Paul died after a month as pope, there were some conspiracy ideas that suggested he was "assisted" into the next world because he was about to reveal something.

I wonder......

VAtican Bank

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116924§ionid=3510213

Dawkins--Vatican Bank scandal

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/4965

Schaum,

Farnaz:

Ever notice that people like Glob Alone, who are so anxious to end abortion and curtail a woman's right to decide whether she wants to be pregnant with an unwanted child, never come up with any suggestions about how we pay for the unwanted child's maintenance, healthcare, education, etc., when an unwanted child is sent to the state to be cared for?
---------------------
Yes, indeed. And what about her medical care during pregnancy? And after?

Very odd. These men seem to think that all women become pregnant through divine intervention. They never mention the men involved.

Another blogger argued that men have no business in this discussion. Perhaps, she is right.

Meanwhile, we can, no doubt, expect dollars from the Vatican any day now, courtesy of the Mafia deposits held in Vatican Bank.

Next step: The Vatican says it has nothing to do with Vatican Bank. I would bet on it.

"Has absolutely nothing to do with my God, anyone else's god, or with me individually my friend."

Are we friends?

"We, as a society, try to conduct ourselves within the bounds of both implicit and explicit ideals and norms…."
.
.
.
"…That is, we are teaching them to be responsible citizens. Not because we want them to be pleasing to God, but because taking responsibility is the RIGHT thing to do."

Sure, whatever.

"Having an abortion is to say that you would rather not take responsibility for the actions you knowingly engaged in."

This is not necessarily true; this is something that you want to believe is true.

"Understandably, given that this choice seems far easier than the alternative."

Again, this is not necessarily true; this is something that you want to believe is true.

"Unfortunately, the "easy" answer is not always the best answer."

I agree.

"The hard is what makes it good."

I hope you're not talking about what I think you're talking about.

On a related note, I find it curious that the mainstream media is not reporting on the Vatican Bank scandal, which is dominating the Italian press.

Evidently, Italy made good on its promise to investigate, following denial by a US Appellate Court of Nazi priest survivors' rights to sue said bank, which stole the victims' money sixty years ago and will not settle.

At all events, thus far its 200 million and still counting laundered money. The Italian Mafia, possibly Russian mafias, as well, have been using the Bank of the Holy See for unholy purposes.

This would be the mafia that kills elected officials who attempt to investigate its doings.

Surely, if the Vatican has hundreds of millions to launder, hundreds of millions to pay off the victims of pedophile priests, the stolen property of people it's priests tortured and killed, it can contribute much, much more to all those unwanted children who come into the world courtesy of its doctrines.

I wonder when we can expect a check in the mail.

Farnaz:

Ever notice that people like Glob Alone, who are so anxious to end abortion and curtail a woman's right to decide whether she wants to be pregnant with an unwanted child, never come up with any suggestions about how we pay for the unwanted child's maintenance, healthcare, education, etc., when an unwanted child is sent to the state to be cared for?

Globalone:

Having an abortion is to say that you would rather not take responsibility for the actions you knowingly engaged in.
-------------------
It means the opposite, at least, for the mother.

Hi Daniel12,

Did a bit of scouting around today with folks at work (psychologists) about the mixed state you describe.

Have you tried Depacote? (SPelling?) Also, newer mood stablizers? Was told that Lamictal (sp?), Neurontin, among the mood stabilizers have been affective with mixed states.

Anyway, you may well know all this, but I thought I should pass the info. along.

http://www.depression-guide.com/agitated-depression.htm

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/bipolar-disorder/complete-index.shtml

PSOLUS,

Has absolutely nothing to do with my God, anyone else's god, or with me individually my friend.

We, as a society, try to conduct ourselves within the bounds of both implicit and explicit ideals and norms. Responsibility and the act of being responsible is one such norm.

Explicitly, when someone breaks the law, we hold them responsible for those actions by passing judgment. This could be in the form of a prison sentence, community service, monetary fine, etc., etc.

When a child lies about doing or not doing something, we teach them that lying is wrong and that they must learn to accept responsibility for the words they use and the actions they take (or don't take). That is, we are teaching them to be responsible citizens. Not because we want them to be pleasing to God, but because taking responsibility is the RIGHT thing to do.

Having an abortion is to say that you would rather not take responsibility for the actions you knowingly engaged in. Understandably, given that this choice seems far easier than the alternative.

Unfortunately, the "easy" answer is not always the best answer.

The hard is what makes it good.

PSOLUS:

"Responsible to whom? You, and your imaginary god?
"Accountable to whom? You, and your imaginary god?
"Live according to whose "integrity"? Yours, and your imaginary god's?"

Yeah. Glob Alone just doesn't get it.

At any rate, I did take the time to write this, and, so I guess I'll post it here, since for some reason, I can't post on S's other thread:
-------------------------------
Myth No. 5: Atheists deny the possibility of "transcendent" experience. They can't see beyond the material world. This stereotype is partially true, but it all depends on what you mean by transcendent.
--------------------------
Interesting. Today, I was with a group of foreign-born students, one of whom, Ukrainian, by birth, wrote of growing up under Communism.

The absence of God, of church in her life, had left her empty she wrote, with endless questions about the purpose of humanity, etc.

This led to a broad, far-ranging discussion on religion, Marx, religion and politics, religious institutions, secularism, transcendence.

One student, from PRC, a quiet sort, listened, occasionally shaking her head. I asked her if she'd ever missed a "transcendent God" in her life. She replied, "Physics."

"What?" I asked.

"Physics." She proceeded to explain, while walking to the board upon which she quickly drew diagrams, wrote formulas, her face flushed with excitement. It was something to see.

This is weird. I can't post on Susan's other thread.

Anybody else have this problem?

"Perhaps this becomes the launching point for a campaign that is built on the idea that being pregnant is not about your liberties and rights. But, instead, on how mothers and parents can be responsible, accountable, and live with integrity."

Responsible to whom? You, and your imaginary god?

Accountable to whom? You, and your imaginary god?

Live according to whose "integrity"? Yours, and your imaginary god's?

Susan,

If you don't get it, you just don't get it.

The ad is clearly going to be a step in a new direction for the pro-life movement. I hope this signals an attempt to move the discussion to education and responsibility instead of murder and death.

Perhaps this becomes the launching point for a campaign that is built on the idea that being pregnant is not about your liberties and rights. But, instead, on how mothers and parents can be responsible, accountable, and live with integrity. The values clearly not evident when one chooses abortion.

Advertising during the Super Bowl costs millions of dollars, far more than advertising on any other programs. So if a group or company really wants to get their message out (and who doesn’t) the Super Bowl would be the place to do it. However, most companies can’t afford to advertise during the Super Bowl and few non-profit groups have that kind of money to throw around.

You can read the rest of my response to this topic: http://lnk.ms/5kL7g

I will be responding to every issue posted in the 'On Faith' section. If you would like to be notified when my new response is up, please subscribe.
-Staks
http://www.DangerousTalk.net

Thou shalt not kill/murder defenseless children or spotted owls in or out of their eggs!!!

Think how many packages of diapers or cans of formula that Super Bowl ad would buy.

Of course they should be aloud to advertise and of course CBS should decide for themselves what ads they chose to run. Who on the "choice" side of the debate could argue otherwise.

I'd personally like to see more pro-life ads in all areas of public view. There's an old saying in the ad biz, "nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising."

But seriously, anything that keeps Janet Jackson's nipple off the airwaves even for 30 seconds is a good thing.

Last I knew of, we still have freedom of speech and freedom of the press. So what's the problem??

I doubt that anyone is going to base a decision as important as whether to carry or terminate their pregnancy on the content of a Super Bowl commercial.

My gut-level feeling is that most of those people who would be attracted to the television to watch the Superbowl are probably of an age and level of emotional development to have already decided whether they are pro-choice or pro-life. I can't imagine that such an ad, unless it is very graphic, will have much influence on many individual attitudes.

Focus On The Family is, I think, throwing its money away. And I'm all for that!

Even though your Alzheimer's analogy isn't the main point of your article, it is an issue important to me. Sports media is dependent on access, so the shows that should be covering the post-career lives of football players avoid the subject to placate the NFL, on whom they depend.

Doesn't NOW or Planned Parenthood have enough $$$ to sponsor their own ad? OTOH, football players and coaches are among the most vocal defenders of the least introspective forms of Christianity.