"Conservatives"

[fpb]

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/british-mp-urges-government-to-force-churches-into-same-sex-unions?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4aa5467bd0-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_Headlines09_08_2011&utm_medium=email

What is breathtaking is that no British news medium seems to have given this any attention.

Comments

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

"My personal feeling" is wholly irrelevant.
No it isn't - certainly not in my case: my personal feelings about issues of legality affect my behaviour. For example, my personal feeling about the terrible 'Criminal Justice Bill' in this country ended with me going on protest marches to complain about it. It is the vocalising of personal feelings which are imperative towards persuading laws to be changed - or at any rate, it is to a small degree and should be far more important.

"some religions" include practices that are at odds with morality,
WHOSE morality? My morality, and that of millions of people, say that refusing to give homosexuals equal rights is immoral. But you're arguing in favour of that.

this means a certain prediction that in the future everyone will do as you do
Actually, I think it is likely that things will change and Pagans will get the chance of being married legally in their religion. But my point was that given that it is NOT a 'legal right' for all religions to be able to carry out marriages, there's no particularly good reason why it should be legal for some and not others.

post-protestant Europe and America are not only numerically exiguous (the Pope can call to Madrid more young people than there are "pagans" in the whole western world) but receding.
You are good with facts, as we agreed on my LJ - I am not, therefore, arguing this but I would like very much to see where you have got these statistics from, please.

seems to neglect the small matter of Britons being less than one hundredth of the world's population.
Um, very much NO! You are dealing with a BRITISH law, not a law which is going to be worldwide. Therefore, the point of the matter is not to do with the effect on the world population, but on the people in the country for whom this law is going to apply.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Morality is only a matter of feelings when the whole notion of making sense of it has been driven out. If feelings were in any way a reliable guide to morality, the vast majority of mankind's "yuck!" reaction to homosexual acts would totally overshadow the small minority who don't suffer from such instinctive reactions. The only thing that kept the whole gay movement from being squashed and silenced with little effort is that people silenced their own feelings and listened to argument. Feelings are irrational and dangerous.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

vast majority of mankind's "yuck!" reaction to homosexual acts

Again, I am not denying that this may be true, but this is such a wide statement that I'd appreciate evidence of it. (It is ridiculously far from anything I've ever thought myself, but then humans do a lot of things which are far from anything I could contemplate, so I certainly wouldn't take my own experiences as 'truth'.)

listened to argument

And again, I am opening a can of worms which I should have more sense than to open... but what are the rational, scientific arguments for religion; and particularly for Catholicism being the 'correct' religious view?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Now you want me to bring you "evidence" that 60 or 70% of seven billion living people - let alone the dead - have an instictive reaction of disgust to the idea of homosexual sex acts? Let's just forget it, shall we?

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

The thing is, I have twice asked for evidence and twice you have not given it. I have never ever said that your facts are wrong, but I have asked for evidence that the numbers of Pagans are dwindling and that the vast majority (incidentally, I would not count 60% of people as a VAST majority) of people immediately think 'yuck' at the idea of homosexual activity. Also, you have not responded to my request for rational, scientific arguments for religion, and for Catholicism as the one-and-only-true-religion.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I did not say that actual pagans are dwindling, although I admit that what I said could be read that way. If I did, I withdraw it. What I wanted to say is as follows: first, the population from which the Politically Correct world is drawn is not growing, and is certainly both growing older and growing smaller as a percentage of total mankind; second, Islam, Evangelical Christianity, and Catholicism, are certainly growing; third, even not considering relative levels of growth, the difference in sheer numbers between the one and the other is such that, compared to these three groupings, paganism barely registers.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And I have responded to your request for etcaetera. Perhaps you haven't read my answer yet.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As for the "rational scientific" arguments for Catholicism: first, this is plainly unacceptable as a concept. Reason cannot be reduced to science, and rational does not mean scientific. As for scientific arguments for religion, that is simply nonsense. You might as well ask for arguments for Catholicism out of football or stamp collecting. Science only measures the perceptible world; since religion is by definition about metaphysical realities, to claim to use science to assess the validity of the category of religion as such means to ask science to do what science is incapable of doing. As well ask a man to eat his own head. That does not mean that science cannot disprove certain religious claims. The creationist account of physical reality is a particularly curious case, since it was effectively invented long after it had been disproved. Working in concert, historical investigation, geology, and paleontology, had already by about 1830 wholly disproved the notion that the world had been created 6000 years ago; but the series of publications that made this a matter of faith - called "Fundamentals", hence "Fundamentalism" - were only published in America in the last years of the nineteenth century. But science also disproves the Buddhist account of an ever-existing world in which mankind has existed at roughtly the same level of civilization for millions upon millions of years - an account which is fundamental to Buddhism, because otherwise it would have no space for its vast mythology of previous Buddhas and Bodhisattvas - and historical research, if not science, contradicts the historical claims of Islam. These are things that science can do; but to ask science to judge about the validity of metaphysics itself is utter nonsense.

As for reason as such, I happen to be a thoroughgoing and devoted rationalist. And being very firmly rationalistic, I reject, for instance, those superstitions that place illogical restrictions upon God - as if God, for instance, could become incarnate in a human being but not in a piece of bread. Logically the two things are exactly on the same level, since ontologically a human being is not much closer to God than a piece of bread. Or that accepts the existence of God but not the possibility that God might make miracles. These are irrational notions that reason ought to reject. But reason cannot be the judge of the existence or otherwise of God, because reason can only work on objective reality. Reason can tell you - in fact, that is all that reason ever does - that A is not non A, that you can't have a thing or its contradiction, that you can't have your cake and eat it; but reason can't tell you whether you have a cake or not, or whether A exists.

You might try to ask me whether I have any historical reasons to believe in the Catholic account of things. After all, I am a historian, not a scientist. But that is way too long a story and I will not discuss it here.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

I put a comma between 'rational' and 'scientific' which you have removed. This makes a difference to what I was saying. I was asking about rational OR scientific arguments. And as you say, when it comes to science it is nonsense. And you do not explain why your metaphysical viewpoint is more valid than any other - and to be honest, you could do so and I could pick holes in it, and you could defend those holes from now until eternity (were eternity to exist).

But there is no rational nor scientific nor, indeed, historical reasons to say "I can demonstrate that my Catholic God exists and therefore that my view of morality - mostly, albeit not entirely, based on what the Catholic God allegedly tells me - is correct."

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Did you read what I wrote? I said that reason cannot prove or disprove the existence of ANYTHING, even a blade of grass! Reason, that is the use of logic, works only with things already existent and known. Reason is the thing that tells you that you can't have your cake and eat it, that you can't say yes and no of the same thing, that A is not non-A. You can't prove by reason that your own young boy exists; a sufficiently smart arguer could easily convince a third party that you are delusional about Mouse's existence. EVERY ACTUAL FACT CAN BE BOTH PROVED AND DISPROVED BY REASON WITH EQUAL LIKELIHOOD; and it follows that we absolutely must limit the ambit of reason to things whose existence we know on the grounds of experience. In actual fact, many kinds of insanity are very rational indeed.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

EVERY ACTUAL FACT CAN BE BOTH PROVED AND DISPROVED BY REASON WITH EQUAL LIKELIHOOD

So, if we can't trust feelings because they're "irrational and dangerous" and we can't trust reason because it can be "proved and disproved with equal likelihood" and we can't use science because ir only defines "the physical world", what should we believe in?

God? And if so, why YOUR version of God?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Everything is good in its place. Morality deals with actual human beings, human beings whose existence we know; and in dealing with such things, it is certainly right and proper, indeed it is necessary and just, to use logic and reason. Metaphysics deals with that which we cannot know by the senses, and in that area, as I believe Kant has shown, reason is at a loss, because, lacking an anchorage in physical facts, it can literally argue everything and its opposite with equal likelihood. And, as I said clearly and at some length (you really ought to try and read what I write every now and then!) science can certainly be used to DISPROVE specific religious claims, but not to argue about the status of religion and metaphysics as such. Kant thought he had got rid of metaphysics; but there is probably more of it since his time than before.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

So, given that you're saying that there's no reason in science, facts or feeling that I should agree with you; and in history there's no reason where I should come to the same conclusions as you have come to...

Basically, you're saying "I'm right, because I know from my own opinions, and from what I have felt on a religious and metaphysical level, that I am right."

Fair enough. I am not so confident, so I can't say it with as much conviction; but given the same level of defence, I can certainly defend my own position.

(Also, being not so confident, I probably won't read any response to this in case I become a shivering wreck. I'm sure your God would be pleased if I did; but my son - real or imaginary* - wouldn't be.)

*The edit was because I used the wrong word first time! Despite knowing that I wasn't going to read a response, the mis-use of a word annoyed me too much to leave it!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

My God is Love. He does not will evil for anyone, at worst He allows it as a trial. The only way a human being can damn him or herself is by his or her own choice. As CS Lewis beautifully says, in the end there are only two kinds of people: the kind who says to God, "Thy will be done", and the ones to whom God says, "Thy will be done". Which one any of us is will only be revealed in the end. But even if you find me reprehensible, it would be very silly to take it out on "my God".

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As for there being no HISTORICAL reasons to believe in Jesus and in the Church - speaking as a historian, that is plainly false. There are enough for me.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

I could equally argue that there are "enough for me" reasons for a lot of things (including the sky being grey). And I could bring historical and scientific and rational and religious fact to back me up.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Now let us practice some reason. If you say that "there are no historical reasons to convince anyone of the Catholic claims", it is quite enough to disprove your claim to say: "Yes there are, for I am a historian, and they have convinced ME." I am not saying that I am right or wrong in taking this view of the universe; I have however just proved that the sweeping claim that a person of moderate intelligence cannot be converted to Catholicism by the study of history is just plain wrong. That is, of course, unless you want to argue that I am a moron or an ignoramus. Which you very well might, as you have just said that I am "unworthy of rational argument".

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

But there is no reason to say, given history, that your viewpoint must be right because the Catholic argument is so strong that anyone who HAS moderate intelligence should be converted to it.

My comment about "rational argument" should be read alongside my opinion that one should argue without being personally abusive. If you feel the need to be aggressive (your word, not mine), to be honest I'm not certain I feel that arguing rationally will get me anywhere.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

No, you are dealing with a British attempt to force worldwide bodies to accept a British fad for British reasons. The notion that a Baptist or Hindu body, not to say a Catholic one, could imagine having one definition of marriage in most of the world and a quite different one in Britain is utter rubbish. Besides, there is an international dimension to this: the campaign to force the religions to change their definition of marriage would not stop in Britain.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, Brits are such a tiny population that our views should not count; on the other hand, we will affect the entire world's opinion on marriage?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As you know perfectly well, the campaign for these things is international. It still represents a small and faddish percentage of the world's population, but it is also a rich part thereof. If you want to question the accuracy of this remark, I have nothing more to say. I will not accept to be asked to prove that the sky is blue.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

Good. Quite regularly the sky is NOT blue.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

A witticism proves nothing.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

But a truth is true, whether or not someone accepts it.

Is the sky grey on occasion?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I suggest you make a serious study of the difference between opposition and contradiction.