Sensible conscience clause

I appreciate how concisely Father Jenkins explained what this is and is not about. I had a little eye roll though over “Many of our faculty, staff and students … have made conscientious decisions to use contraceptives.” Does he really know they all made well-formed conscientious decisions? The young women I know who chose contraceptives generally chose them because it is the first thing doctors offer them and they do very little research or soul searching….

Salvage,
Beyond the enormous impact of a man and a woman in a sacramental covenant marriage being closed to their great responsibility and joy of cooperating with God for the creation of new life, there are other good reasons to avoid the contraceptive pill.
When the pill was first developed, it was meant to do what you said: prevent an egg from being fertilized. Over time, however, the artificial hormones in the pill were changed to the point where they now work primarily to set up a hostile environment in the uterus so that a fertilized egg cannot implant. Since we believe that human life begins at conception, blocking implantation is unacceptable.
In addition, the artificial hormones are detrimental to a woman’s body. Many have complained about mood changes, facial discoloration, later infertility, and other severe side effects.
Remember, God gave us sex as a way to continue the human species and to bond the man and woman in the joy of their love. Let us trust God with our whole hearts and do things His way.

It seems some information might be useful in this discussion

http://www.pfli.org/faq_oc.html

Is an organization for Pharmacists For Life International. I would assume that pharmacists would know about what chemicals are found in drugs and why they are there.

If you don’t want the info from chemists with an agenda here is an article on About.com

Well it doesn’t really matter how the pill works, it could deploy a baby seeking missile and blow it all up and it wouldn’t change the unalterable fact that what happens inside another person’s body is none of your business.

Yes, even if you think your god has charged you with being a womb shepherd unless its your own insides it’s not your concern.

>who call themselves practicing Catholics and take the pill because it’s easy and that’s what their doctor tells them to do.

Wow, such smug condescension! Let’s see if we can get to the root of it.

“Easy? Sure, why shouldn’t it be? Once again, what is wrong with a woman having sex without having a baby? If it was hard it’d be okay?

What should their doctors tell them to do if they don’t want to get pregnant?

>That is not a conscientious decision.

Because they don’t think having sex without procreation is a big deal?

> It’s amazing how easily duped people are by doctors, the current god of choice for many people.

Well doctors do have some advantages over gods in that they a) are real b) know a lot more stuff than your god did and c) actually help people and are often right.

But tell me, when you or your family is sick do you pray to your god until you get better / dead or do you go to a doctor?

And let’s say you only did the prayer thing, same results?

>More along the lines of praying that the meds will work.

And if you didn’t pray would penicillin suddenly lose its properties to fight infection?

I truly don’t understand what the point of this prayer business is. You ask your all knowing, all wise, all good god to do something as if you don’t believe it already knows what the problem is, what the solution is and whether or not it’s going to intervene and apply it.

That’s the problem with an omnipotent god, it already knows everything that is going to happen so your prayers for aid are meaningless.

Or is it that you have to reach some sort of quota? Like if you say the prayers the exact right amount of times your god will act on it, miss it by one and it does nothing?

>As for cures without meds: Well they exist and there is documented cases; documented by doctors and scientists. I could give you articles and webpages of miracle cures- people cured through prayer. or through the intercessions of the saints, but you won’t believe them or accept them as proof.

That’s cute, the way you say you can prove your point but won’t because I just won’t believe it! Why not try me? Or you could read this:

Study: Prayer didn’t help sick
CHICAGO — Praying for a sick heart patient may feel right to people of faith, but it doesn’t appear to improve the patient’s health, according to a new study that is the largest ever done on the healing powers of prayer.
Indeed, researchers at the Harvard Medical School and five other U.S. medical centers found, to their bewilderment, that coronary-bypass patients who knew strangers were praying for them fared significantly worse than people who got no prayers. The team speculated that telling patients about the prayers may have caused “performance anxiety,” or perhaps a fear that doctors expected the worst.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2002901053_pray31.html

Now let’s go back in time to when sick people went to priests and their faith rather than doctors and science, what was the average age of death? What was the infant death birth rate? How many women out of a 100 died in childbirth? You do know that child birth was the riskiest thing a woman could do back then?

And how much more praying was going on back then?

All you need to do is look at history to see how worthless prayer was in getting your god’s attention. The REAL miracles happened when we put faith in things that actually worked, that were proven, that were measurable and threw the supernatural out.

Jesus walked on water? Big deal, we walked on the moon.

Jesus cured a few lepers? Big deal, we cure them before the disease shows up (if caught in time) and we cured polio and about 40 other fatal illnesses.

Jesus turned water into wine? Okay, that one was pretty cool but we can now turn pretty much anything into booze.

> You’ll just say that there was a perfectly reasonable natural reason why the person recovered, and it’s just that the scientists haven’t found it yet.
Well you would have to show me the specific case before I could comment on it but odds are, yes that if someone recovered without any medical intervention that it was natural and not magic.

I am a bit stubborn that way.

Do you know that every supernatural event that was previously unknown to science turned out to have a natural reason?

Every.

Single.

One.

From the sun to earthquakes, what was once thought to be the work or presence of the supernatural turned out to be perfectly natural.

>So really why ask questions when you won’t accept any answers?

No, I accept answers that make sense, that are proven, that are believable.

Your god is not any of those things, how many times do I have to make this point before you will even acknowledge it? Can you please at least say you have read the following, I’m starting to think some of you mad.

Please, read this, please comment, please if you do nothing else for me, please comment on the following.

I do not believe in Zeus or any other god and I assume you do not either. Why do you know there is no such thing as Zeus? Whatever answer that is, it’s the same you would give for EVERY other god humans have ever worshiped I assume? Well why doesn’t that apply to your god?

Please, if you never answer me on anything ever again please answer me on the above, even if it’s just to say “I don’t know” (a perfectly valid answer).

> it has been proven scientifically that people who are seriously ill, who believe in God and pray do handle the disease better and the positive attitude that comes from faith can go along way to helping the meds work.

Absolutely true! Yes this has been shown to be so, a positive mental attitude is always beneficial. Our bodies and minds are tied together and when one if off it affects the other. This same effect can be observed with placebo experiments where a patient is told that they will gain benefits from a pill that is in fact nothing.

And for certain this is something that religion does, people who have faith in a religion are often happier and live longer lives. I know many theists and I can tell you most are better, happier and generally more productive than I’ll ever be.

Doesn’t make it true however and that’s my bone with theism that I pick endlessly, it’s not true, it’s obviously not true.

>Even if they are just fooling themselves; if believing gives them hope, and the hope helps the ill recover, why do you care?

I don’t care, I’m not running down the street yelling this stuff, screaming at preachers or invading hospitals burning Bible shrieking “LIEs! LIeS!!”.

This is a blog about religion, it post stuff about religion, I find it interesting and educational to post comments and have these chats.

I’ll take a bullet for your right to believe any dang fool thing you want, that I respect without reservation but that’s the only respect you’ll get out of me in terms of theism.

>You don’t want to believe it is even possible.

Nope. My wants have nothing to do with, I look at the facts and the facts are clear, there are no such things as gods.

>You have gone on to say that EVEN IF YOU ARE WRONG, you would refuse HIM, because HE is a lunatic, among other things.

Well yes, it is, have you read the Bible? The horrific things your god has done to people for reasons that make no sense at all? The way it changes its mind, the games it plays with its miserable suffering creation? The wars it demanded? The church Jesus left in his wake? Punch in Vatican and Mafia for the freshest outrage.

You’re god isn’t real and if it were it would be insane.

See I’m not just saying it’s crazy for the sake of it, I look at what your god has done and these things are crazy, don’t you think? Flooding the whole planet? Punishing Adam and Eve for being tricked by Satan? Sending bears to eat children for mocking a bald man? Demanding wars? What kind of god demands one group of humans slaughter another? Why would you worship something like that? Fear I suppose but that seems an awful reason to bend our knees.

> If you would refuse to worship HIM should you meet HIM, for any and all the reasons you’ve given in the past, why would you expect to go to heaven, where people, who get in, are expected to worship him unceasingly, and sing His praises??

Once again, I don’t expect anything of the sort, heaven is a silly idea to begin with and would become so lame so fast you’d be looking for the nearest exit.

Life isn’t having it’s getting and holding on for awhile then losing, that’s what makes it so beautiful, it ends and then we’re gone, no more, we’re a unique blip in a nearly empty universe. To go on forever is pointless, nothing in the universe goes on, it changes, lives, dies and then vanishes.

>Do I finally understand?

No, but if you answer my question about Zeus honestly, if you read the history of your religion from the Neolithic to the modern day and if you read Stephen Hawkings latest you might.

No, because you view their own personal choices about their body and health as wrong.

What’s really cute here is the way you skipped everything else I said, you do that a lot, you notice that? Here they are again, why don’t you answer them?

>who call themselves practicing Catholics and take the pill because it’s easy and that’s what their doctor tells them to do.

“Easy? Sure, why shouldn’t it be? Once again, what is wrong with a woman having sex without having a baby? If it was hard it’d be okay?

What should their doctors tell them to do if they don’t want to get pregnant?

>That is not a conscientious decision.

Because they don’t think having sex without procreation is a big deal?

> It’s amazing how easily duped people are by doctors, the current god of choice for many people.

Well doctors do have some advantages over gods in that they a) are real b) know a lot more stuff than your god did and c) actually help people and are often right.

But tell me, when you or your family is sick do you pray to your god until you get better / dead or do you go to a doctor?

>Tell me how the man, who was the kid is lying

Well lying implies that he knows it isn’t true and I doubt that, people can convince themselves of a great deal, delusion it’s more common than you’d think.

But let’s break it down with some critical thinking.

First the general, this is a story of faith healing. Faith healing has been tested by science countless times and always found wanting. At best it’s a placebo and at worst it’s a predatory scam. There has never been any recorded instance of faith healing being any better than any theistic nostrum, the person believes in it and it happens. This can sometimes be destructive in the case of someone who is lame believing they can walk and then damaging their legs when they do.

Specifics:

1) He was a child, children don’t understand things, children misremember events and are easily confused and time further clouds and warps memories and experiences. So our only witness is suspect right from the get go.

2) who, according to doctors, was going to die as a child.

Of what? Did I miss the part of the story where the specific illness is mentioned? It sort of sounds like polio. So right there we have a vital data point missing.

3) ‘You will rub his wounds with dishwater,’

Now this sounds like something that time has warped because it just makes no sense, not even on a theistic level. What an Earth would this do? It’s just weird and as such unlikely.

4) The witnesses are where?

I know he claims there were witnesses but unless they are interviewed and his story corroborated that’s meaningless. Anyone record this with the local hospitals? Like wouldn’t the doctors who had said the kid was going to die have noticed that his wounds had healed and his walking? Wouldn’t they swarm around him looking to see if they could figure out why and apply it to other similarly afflicted children? What was in the dishwater would be something they’d want to know at the very least! Did the local papers write up about this miracle? Did parents from all over the world start bringing their dying children there to be saved? What were the results? Shouldn’t there be books and papers, lectures and articles about this “miraculous” priest?

That’s the curious thing about miracles, no one ever seems to notice them until they happened a long time ago.

It also makes your god rather capricious and vile, that it lets children suffer and die because they don’t believe in it or know of its Earth bound representatives? So while your god was healing one child it was letting millions being consumed by disease?

I have made four clear and concise points as to why I don’t believe this story to be true, I am not dismissing it because it’s religious, I’m dismissing it because it doesn’t hold any water whatsoever.

But please, show me where I’m wrong, tell me that children understand all of their experiences, tell me people don’t misremember things, tell me that what he was dying from is unimportant and that witnesses and corroboration is never needed to confirm unlikely tales and that the world didn’t notice this child saving priest’s magic power and dishwater blessing skills because…?

> The reason I don’t address you point by point is I haven’t read any of your posts in there entirety in at least two weeks if not more.

It’s cool that you don’t let that get in the way of commenting and saying I’m wrong about stuff.

>The simple facts are that you have no interest in learning about our faith and have no respect for anyone who has a belief in God.

I have no respect for those specific beliefs but that hardly forms my opinion of people as a whole. I know many theists who are great people their superstitions notwithstanding.

And I think I know a fair amount about your faith that you refuse to even acknowledge.

For instance the first Holy War of Christian on Christian took place in North Africa, do you know what set it off? Hint Popes sometimes lie.

> While you find yourself brilliant, witty and apparently have an inordinate amount of time on your hands, most of us, myself included, don’t.

Ah classic, I don’t have the time to comment on what you say but I just have enough time to say you’re wrong and I have no time to explain why! Makes sense!

>making negative assumptions about their character,

Huh? Where have I done this and if you don’t read my posts how do you know what I’ve said about anyone?

Are you sure you’re telling the truth here? See this is me calling your character into question because you seem to be contradicting yourself and that can often suggest a lie if I’ve watched my Columbo (And I assure you, I have).

> The questions you ask about deities and belief are legitimate (and others have addressed your questions) but

Once again for someone who doesn’t read my post in their entirety you sure seem to know an awful lot about them.

> com-box discussions are too limited do

Well this sure quacks like a cop-out.

> You are wanting us to expound on thousands of years and volumes of study and spoon feed you the information and that just won’t work.

Ha! Ha! Yes! That’s it! You have perfectly sensible answers but me too dumb to understand! Darrr!

You’ve read the “thousands of years of volumes” have you?

SO you don’t read my whole posts, only the bits where I ask why your god is real and all the others fake (there is answer but apparently it would be 16 gigabytes long) and where I insult people’s character (won’t show me where I’ve done this?)?

Well that makes perfect sense!

> You don’t believe in God.

No, I don’t believe in godS. Once again, your god is not the only one, there are tons of the darn things but yours is real and ALLLL the other’s fake.

Why?

You can’t even give me the Reader’s Digest version? Point me to a page on the net that explains it?

>ok. We do. ok.

I know, what I can’t figure out is why and no one here can seem to explain it.

Because knowing stuff is how we make our lives richer if not better. I like understanding so I asked questions until I do.

Look, Salvage. You ask very difficult questions. I am NOT a Catholic Apologist. I am simply a practicing Catholic. The joke around this house is we are practicing until we get it right.

As for the critical thinking and analyzing what you’ve said, I didn’t comment because I at the very moment don’t have time. I have a 23 month old who is at this very moment trying to wear his bread and butter on his head. I don’t want to comment on what you’ve said, unless and until I have read it.

Further to that last statement. In trying to have this discussion on a third party’s blog is confusing, because it jumps from post to post. If you want feel free to pop over to my blog.

Be warned I have a very rambling rant about our exchange up.

Polly Pushypats?????? can I use that one?