Quoting Archbishop Silvano Tomasi (via the always wonderful Butterflies and Wheels) ;
"People are being attacked for taking positions that do not support sexual behaviour between people of the same sex."Could it be because you have offensive opinions and actions, and that you constantly persecute people you don't agree with? Could it be that people are getting fed up with your hypocrisy of attacking people of a sexual orientation you yourself so obviously are filled to the brim with? Could it be that science is shedding a more reflective and correct light on what the alternative sexual orientations are all about, that biology shouldn't be dictated by doctrine and opinion?
The mind boggles at religious people's stubbornness to change, to just understand that more knowledge through unbiased science renders you old and outdated, that unless you embrace change it will render you pointless but to the crazy fringe. Merge new understanding into your fold, by all means, it's your only avenue of hope, but people around the world are less and less willing to let unadulterated doctrine have precedence over facts and ethics.
Luckily, the Catholic Church - in my opinion one of the vilest large-scale organisations in the world, shooting themselves in the foot on numerous occasions where their bigotry and hatred has a direct relation to people's suffering, like denying condoms to AIDS-ridden Africa (!!) - is in decline in most parts of the world. Let's hope more and more people pay actual attention to what the Catholic Church are saying, the implications of their doctrine, and their willingness (or not) to clean up and apologize for some of the worst scandals in distant as well as the near past.
Why do people still think these people's opinions should have impact on societies, again?
Luckily, the Catholic Church - in my opinion one of the vilest large-scale organisations in the world, shooting themselves in the foot on numerous occasions where their bigotry and hatred has a direct relation to people's suffering, like denying condoms to AIDS-ridden Africa (!!) - is in decline in most parts of the world. Let's hope more and more people pay actual attention to what the Catholic Church are saying, the implications of their doctrine, and their willingness (or not) to clean up and apologize for some of the worst scandals in distant as well as the near past.
Why do people still think these people's opinions should have impact on societies, again?
As society moves in this direction, I wonder about whether or not people even think to ask questions like the following:
ReplyDelete1) How might the differences between the sexes be valuable, even necessary?
2) Is it reasonable to infer that two loving opposite sex parents are at least preferable to two loving same-sex parents?
3) What might it mean that, barring complications, only the act of man-woman love results in the fruit of children?
4) What does it mean that children who are created through artificial or technological means often have a deep, innate desire to know who their real parents are?
(Related: Is adoption always a tragic necessity - or should we feel no qualms about the creation of situations whereby children do not know - or are deprived of the right to know [even in later years] - their true parents)
Should we not even be asking questions like these? Or if we should, is it your view that they are not really related to the issue in an important way?
And yes, I am a Christian, but as best I can tell, the questions I ask above might be the kinds of things any reasonable and critically-thinking person would ask. :)
Best regards,
Nathan
Hi Nathan,
ReplyDeleteI wrote an answer a few days ago that I lost due to browser crash, and I won't rehash it the way it was written. A few days have gone by, and I think a different approach is in order.
Having questions are very important, and questioning everything very good. But under a Christian model there are some glaring problems, foremost driven by the word "doctrine" and secondly by the bias inherit in the system.
Doctrine is what the church teach you, what the church believe in, and there's different doctrines from denomination to denomination (there are thousands and thousands of different Christian denominations alone!). Stray from the doctrine of one denomination, and you may have to find another that accepts you. Think for a second that evolution is true, the list of places to join decreases. Same with most subjects of note (sexuality, humanism, sexism, ethics, philosophy, free will, and the list goes on). Doctrine drives what it means to be a Christian.
But there's a big problem with doctrine; it defines what is accepted as true. And in such an environment it is *not* encouraged to ask questions, and in many of them outright condemned. And for a lot of people, the asking is not asking for answer, but asking for confirmation of bias.
So, my question to you would be; are you asking questions without bias for wanting true answers?
I am myself not afraid of asking questions that are hard, and I've created a habit of doing so all the time. I want to ask questions about stuff we take for granted; I don't believe that our 3000 year old philosophical tradition is ever going to be finished asking questions, even the seemingly simple ones;
What does it mean to be human?
Kind regards!
Alex,
ReplyDeleteI just lost my lengthy comments to. Sigh. I'm afraid this interesting debate will have to wait.
Best regards,
Nathan
Alex,
ReplyDeleteI feel bad that my post was lost (it happened when I tried to preview). Still, I came across this article this morning, which kind of addresses your questions to me:
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/reflections-on-education/a-golden-oldie/
I track with Bauer in a lot of ways, although not in all ways.
~Nathan