Italy is experiencing its own version of the Terry Schiavo case. A woman, Eluana Englaro, was in a car crash 17 years ago that caused catastrophic brain damage — she’s been in a vegetative state ever since, and the family has been engaged in a legal fight for many years to pull the plug and allow her to die with a little dignity. They finally won that battle recently, and are easing her off life support and a feeding tube.
Cue the right wing. Silvio Berlusconi, Bush-like Prime Minister of Italy, has rushed to impose an emergency decree blocking the suspension of life support, a decision made after consulting with the Vatican. Here’s a good rule: never consult the priesthood of a death cult before making a life-and-death decision. They always give stupid and evil advice.
Berlusconi’s rationalization is appalling and repugnant. He claims to be “rescuing” Englaro — not true, since she was effectively dead 17 years ago — and in what has to be the most tasteless and disgusting excuse made yet for the actions of these villains of the right, has further justified it by saying that physically she is “in the condition to have babies”. So, what is Berlusconi going to do next in his bizarro Prince Charming act? Fertilize her eggs?
It’s nice to know that the Catholic Church’s criteria for the value of a woman’s life focus on the functionality of her ovaries rather than the existence of her mind.
Oh, for fuck’s sake!
PZ, this is the catholic church we’re talking about here, ofcourse her ability to have kids is more important than her ability to think.
I must disagree with the Vatican’s position on this subject (which is pretty normal for me anyway). She may be physically capable of having a baby, but if she cannot give consent then it would be highly immoral to impregnate her. Therefore, unless she is expected to wake up she is most definitely NOT “in the condition to have babies” in any ethical way.
This woman is in no condition to consent to any sort of sexual activity or fertility treatments anyway, so what Berlusconi is saying is that there’s still time to rape her! He is quickly becoming the Asshole of the Decade.
My thoughts exactly!
Reminds me of Alan Keyes justification for protecting “traditional” marriage-it’s made between two people who can in principle have children.
Cue the “Terry Shiavo was murdered” kooks. Counting down from 10…
Oh, won’t someone please think of the (unfertilized eggs which may yet become) children…
In fairness, mebbe it’s not so surprising Berlusconi’s unusually sympathetic, here…
I mean, seein’ as he may, in face, be clinially brain dead himself, he may be feeling particularly compelling feelings of solidarity.
Berlusconi is evidently a Tleilaxu, and won’t be deprived of his axlotl tanks.
Prince Charming is spot on. In the original Italian version of Sleeping Beauty, Prince Charming finds the sleeping princess, effectively rapes her, and then goes off again. She’s still asleep. What eventually wakes her up is giving birth.
Perhaps Berlusconi has the same idea…
‘It’s nice to know that the Catholic Church’s criteria for the value of a woman’s life focus on the functionality of her ovaries rather than the existence of her mind.’
must have little babies to infect with gobbly gook….and when they get only slightly more mobile to be used as sexual fodder for our rabidly inadequate and totally deluded not to mention misogynistic clones to fiddle with as they are want!
Heresiarch, ewwww, I never heard that version. Where’d you find that?
Thanks, PZ, for pointing out what should be obvious. She’s not in a condition to have babies because she’s not in a condition to consent to be impregnated. Berlusconi’s statement is so horrifically sexist it blows my mind. I know I shouldn’t be surprised after all of his “rape is a compliment to beautiful women” statements, but this is beyond sickening.
yeah, why not prolong the suffering of the family just to satisfy our own self-righteousness?
typically evil thoughts of god-motherers.
There’s something positively Orwellian about the Catholic Church’s use of the term “human dignity”.
And that expression of Ratzinger’s in the linked story – “shrouded in the mystery of suffering” – is pretty damn revealing about the conservative Catholic mindset. Just when I thought he couldn’t get any more creepy and obnoxious …
back to say that Heresiarch is right- I found the Google Books version of Italo Calvino’s “Italian Folktales” and it’s under the title “The Sleeping Queen.” That’s horrendous.
Re: Porco Dio, what is a “god-motherer”?
So, if Eluana Englaro were post menopausal, it would be alright to take her off of life support?
Have to love the Catholic tradition of turning suffering into a fetish, how the Pope says society had to protect the sick even when “weak and shrouded in the mystery of suffering”. The “mystery of suffering”? Great, Jesus kisses. Suffering is not a mystery to behold, it is a condition that a humane person tries to alleviate. Funny thing, Eluana Englaro is not capable of feeling suffering. But her family, friends and medical personal can suffer for her.
On rape by Charming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty
After 17 years in a persistent vegetative state I rather doubt Eluana Englaro is in any shape to bear a child. Even if she could become pregnant, the burden of bearing a child would likely kill her.
Heresiarch (#10):
If I recall the story correctly, she slept through giving birth, too, and woke up when one of her children sucked the needle (or the flax thread) from her finger.
Seems like every day my former religion/cultural identity shames itself even more than I thought possible.
I wonder what the “patriarchy no longer exists” commenters from the female orgasm thread think about this. according the the standards of patriarchy, Englaro is the ideal woman – no thinking, wants or needs, only passivity and receptiveness.
Wow, this is ridiculous. There isn’t anything in Italian law that protects the family from fascist crackpots (to use Hitchens’ term) commandeering their wife, daughter and mother?
Give them some dignity in their time of grief. Religion claims to offer solace for the grieving, clearly, that’s a crock.
The case is reminiscent of Terri Shiavo to a T.
Right wing politicians playing doctor/god. So typical.
And he tried to undercut the judiciary effectively circumventing a court ruling by decree, except that president Napolitno of Italy refused to cooperate. So now Berlusconi will try to railroad a law through the legislature, which he controls, to have his way.
Amazing.
Demented, deranged, irrational religion intrudes into realism and humanity again. Whatever must and should be done to break its hold on reason is warranted.
…
Fuck, now my morning’s ruined. Son of a bitch.
I thought Europeans were supposed to be smarter than Americans.
This is beyond evil. This is monstrous.
I think it’s time the Face Dancers rose up against the Tleilaxu Masters. This story is just insane.
I’d confidently wager that the excuse about her fertility was just the best the could have come up with, and that if it was a guy they’d still object to pulling the plug.
Eluana Englaro is “in the condition to have babies” So who is going to take responsibility for theses babies: the Catholic church? Not likely!!
Attention: Benedict and Prime Ministers and Presidents of countries.
To paraphrase Pierre Trudeau
[I] take the position that the state has no jurisdiction over women’s reproductive systems. So “fuddle-duddle.”
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pierre_Trudeau
Too bad this post couldn’t be sent to Berlusconi to help him think about it.
The case is reminiscent of Terri Shiavo to a T.
Not quite? Berlusconi is one of the richest people in Italy. He also controls, owns in fact, a significant percentage (c.50% as I recall) of the Italian media (TV and print). Neither of the Bushs had the Big Brother machinery Berlusconi has at his disposal.
This is why I completely turned my back on the RC Church after high school in 1970. These people hate women.
As for Berlusconi, I never thought I’d say anyone was worse than Bush, but he is. Even Bush wouldn’t have done this.
Jessica,
The original Sleeping Beauty story was a 14th Century romance called Perceforest. An episode, the “Histoire de Troïlus et de Zellandine” has Zellandine in a deep coma and Troïlus rapes her. She becomes pregnant and delivers the child without waking.
The next known version of the tale is the one Heresiarch refers to, Giambattista Basile’s Sun, Moon, and Talia. Here the sleeping princess is raped by the prince (actually just a common nobleman). She gives birth to twins but does not wake up. You can get a longer synopsis here. It’s not a children’s story.
The most famous version (other than Disney’s) of Sleeping Beauty is Charles Perrault’s. This is another one where the prince comes across a beautiful maiden in sound slumber and, overcome by her beauty, does the old slam, bam, thank you ma’am. This time Sleeping Beauty wakes up during childbirth.
The Brothers Grimm toned down the sex in their version, which like Disney’s has Sleeping Beauty wakened by the prince’s kiss.
Just another example of the church making decisions without taking responsibility for those decisions. Disgusting.
So, has anyone asked for Sting to help out yet?
“I thought Europeans were supposed to be smarter than Americans.”
Well, not while people like Berlusconi and Blair are still here. Not to mention this sick freak in Austria.
Now I’ll go and hide under a rock in shame for the rest of the afternoon.
peter (#26):
Think of it like this:
America elected Bush twice (and on the first occasion only with the intervention of the Supreme Court), but eventually got fed up with him and his cronies. The Italians have elected Berlusconi on four occasions now in the past 15 years, and have yet to show any signs of stopping.
No one country or continent has a monopoly on fuckwittery.
I was raised Catlick. By the time I was 14 I was avoiding it like the plague. It wasn’t until I left home that I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. 35 years later and I still wonder what it is that my family sees in it. It might be that the seeds of ignorance didn’t take in me.
I have wondered about this for years as to why this church business is even relevant in this era. Yeah I know I answered my own question. It is business. When you lose your client base you suffer financial ruin. This is also the same church which calls embryonic stem cell research a “Culture of Death”.
So long as they have power to influence peoples lives. We will continue to see them engage in this type of phony and deceptive practise. It is about the excersise of their power and insinuating themselves into situations where they lack medical or scientific expertise.
…she is “in the condition to have babies”.
Is the “Great Seducer” contemplating his next conquest?
Time to change their motto:
“Life begins with working ovaries”
It has a nice level of inanity to it.
I found this excuse very appalling indeed.
I am confused by this. I have a friend who is a Catholic Priest (a gay priest who has no qualms about sleeping with men, so he’s hardly the typical archconservative Catholic, but anyway).
We debate issues all the time, usually at the gay bar on Fridays after a few tequila slammers. He tells me that the Church’s position on these situations is that extraordinary care is not mandated for medical situations, and that removing artificial life support is not equivalent to murder.
So, he’s either misunderstanding his own doctrine, or the Holy See is enforcing rules that don’t actually exist.
Argh, if they want her womb/ovaries to have kids that much, they should just remove them from her and implant them into the bastard. Should shut him up. Assuming she’s signed up as an organ donor… Not that I think it’d work well to implant a fertilized egg in someone who keeps having to take a lot of meds to prevent the tissue from being rejected, as well as female hormones…
That is the point. As far as I know, American media have never turned wholesale to a propaganda machine. I mean, ALL of them. Berlusconi may own 50% of them, but his control is not limited to that. He writes laws, You know. And sheeple are never lacking.
Besides, the country is not “divided”. Most people thinks the whole thing is insane. Only, Silvio, Joseph and the Rest Of Them have troubles with the concept of democracy. They are never stopped out of polite cowardice.
I learn all sorts of things about fairy tales at this blog…oh yeah, and Sleeping Beauty, too.
Parts of Italy are banning “ethnic food,” they aren’t the most reasonable legislative body. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next excuse for keeping the woman alive is ‘we have to save as many Italians that we can!’
The value of a human life is to.. replicate? I guess all Berlusconi knows is “be fruitful and multiply” – and nothing more. How many children does Berlusconi have anyways?
wait a minute.
Are you suggesting that there are Gay Priests?!?!
How do we remove this cancer (from the USA) without violating the first amendment? Since congress can’t prohibit their free exercise of religion, can we declare the Vatican to be an enemy country and give it a surge? Regime change and nation building seem in order, here.
Rev. BigDumbChimp,
Yes, believe it or not there apparently are gay men in the Catholic Church! I was totally shocked. This must be a new thing ;-)
From an Italian perspective, my sense is that Berlusconi is only looking for an excuse to gain more power and to change the Constitution, while also obtaining more support from the Vatican.
I don’t believe that he cares about the tragedy of Eluana’s story, or the fact that she may still be fertile, but only about the fact that this is a perfect situation to exploit for his purposes.
Sadly, he won an election, and his politics are the choice of the majority of the voters.
“The Vatican’s Grip on Italy”:
http://www.concordatwatch.eu/showtopic.php?org_id=878&kb_header_id=842
It never ceases to amaze me how f-ing stupid the religious are. Her ovaries work? Does this matter? There was that Python skit in which they sing “every sperm is sacred”. Do we need an “every egg is sacred” version too? If the moron followed that thought to its logical conclusion, the idea is rather gruesome.
I’ve heard that for whatever reason, Italy’s government is more or less a gerontocracy, and a big political issue is that anyone under the age of about fifty really has no voice. And of course it’s cranky old men who are the main drivers of most conservative movements, so…
Dr P:
I looked up what you referred to. It looks like a similar case — a few racist idiots with political power dictating terms to everyone. As a foodie myself, I find it appalling.
@ Segfault (#37):
Don’t forget that clown Sarkozy here in France! He’s catholic, like the majority of the people here, but he supports all kinds of religious loonery if he can see some political use in it. The pope, Saudi-trained imams, even scientologists are welcomed by him if they can provide opiate to the masses. You would think in the country of Voltaire the head of state would have more respect for free thinking? Ha! He seems intent to become Bush’s understudy.
#38
In a democracy, a lot of stupid people vote and can control the political process for a long time. Makes one appreciate a strong, secular Bill of Rights with iron clad human rights and civil liberties.
“It’s nice to know that the Catholic Church’s criteria for the value of a woman’s life focus on the functionality of her ovaries rather than the existence of her mind.”
Yah – hasn’t changed for about 1200 years. At least they’re consistent.
And Berlusconi is a complete idiot: he made his money in organized crime and bought his way into the government… which is to say he got his power by emulating the catholic church.
Of course the woman is unable to give consent. But my God, are you all that dense — how can supposedly “educated” and “intelligent” people fail to understand such a very simple point?
The woman is married, obviously. (If she weren’t, how would she be capable of having babies?) Since she is married, the original owner of the rights to her reproductive system — her father — has transferred them to her husband, the new owner. So the fact that she cannot consent to bearing a child (or do anything else at all) is irrelevant. Who cares what she thinks, even if she could think?
Once they are married, it is the husband’s decision when and how often he uses the wife to bear his children. If he were to assert his sacred rghts as husband by clambering atop her now, carefully pushing the feeding tubes and catheters to one side, that would in no way violate the infallible and divine laws of our holy mother curuch (and any mere secular laws that purport thereby to be violated are not in accordance with God’s will and are thus null and void).
Yes, it’s true, her brain was destroyed, her mind erased, her personhood extinguished nearly twenty years ago. But why are people raising those essentialy irrelevant points? As long as her body is physically capable of fulfilling the purpose of her existence, letting her die would be an horrific offence against the rights of God and of her husband.
(Her husband, of course, might have some quaint notions of “loving” her, and of “doing what she would have wanted”, and letting her “die with dignity”. An unfortunate man, if that is true. In that case he has obviously allowed his mind to be seduced by wicked modern concepts, so his choice in the matter is no longer important and the priests alone must discern the Lord’s will.)
Berlusconi simply said in polite words that she has period (i.e. mestruation).
Is there anybody that can understand when someone does not speak as a villain?
All the bad news lately, including this, make it the kind of day where I just want to go to bed and never get up, but now I can’t dream about doing that EITHER because if I do someone still might come along and make me have a baby. Argh. It amazes me how many people really, really hate women deep down.
Berlusconi is a total nutter and an unbelievable hypocrite.
Berlusconi simply said in polite words that she has period (i.e. mestruation).
Is there anybody that can understand when someone does not speak as a villain?
Raven @ 7,
Cue the “Terry Shiavo was murdered” kooks. Counting down from 10…
Oh, trust me they’re on it. My cousin, representative of many of my relatives, pointed out this story to me several days ago, saying “They’re going to murder her, just like they did Terry Shiavo!”
Sometimes it’s everything I can do to not scream obscenities at these people, relatives or not. As it is, it’s a wonder I still get invited to any family reunions.
First of all, right now I’m ashamed of being Italian..or, as we shold say, Italian-Vatican, since all our politicians can do, is ask the Pope what’s best…It seems reason has no right to stay here in this country, and, as for abortion, stem cell research, gay rights , and many other issues, vatican intromission is heavy. But in Eluana’s case, at least to me, things appear tremendously clear. No use talking about coma, brain damage or anything else, the fact is just that SHE never wanted to “live” this way, so all people should do is respect her will. No one has the right to tell anybody else how long we should live and suffer when we’re sick. No Berlusconi, no Pope, no religion.
I fail to see the connection between Berlusconi’s stupid statement (something he does often) and the Vatican. So your comment at the end doesn’t make a lot of sense, and is intentionally misleading.
I wish I believed in Hell, so I could imagine these Christian fuckers rotting in it.
lol, so berlusconi now supports rape and what borders on necrophilia?
If he were to assert his sacred rights as husband by clambering atop her now, carefully pushing the feeding tubes and catheters to one side, that would in no way violate the infallible and divine laws of our holy mother curuch (and any mere secular laws that purport thereby to be violated are not in accordance with God’s will and are thus null and void).
Actually, Mrs. T, you’re more correct than you meant to be. Legally, at least in Wisconsin, a man can indeed legally rape his comatose wife, since he owns her and all.
Donovan @43,
your priest friend is right. Roman Catholic teaching does not demand that so-called “heroic measures” be used to maintain life. Heroic measures would be things like respirators, heart-lung machines etc.
By contrast, a central feeding line is, to the Roman mind, an ordinary and not an heroic measure. To disconnect it would be a sin. Since the empty husk formerly inhabited by this unfortunate woman continues to breathe on its own, it is obvious that the Lord is, for reasons that surpass mortal understanding, pleased to keep her alive. It would be not only sinful but arrogant and presumptuous of us to permit her body to join her mind.
Your friend is likely to get into trouble with his bosses, by the way: it sounds like he’s sexually attracted to consenting adults.
Every person needs food and water to survive, whether they’re fully functional or not. Therefore, if you withdraw food and water and replace those things with medication, it’s my belief that you’re not allowing them to ‘die with dignity’, you’re starving them to death. While my sympathies are entirely on the side of the family who are suffering the grief and loss, and have the responsibility for the outcome, I do believe that this is euthanasia, and not a natural death. That’s not to say it shouldn’t be permitted in tragic cases like this one; perhaps thinking of it as ‘death with dignity’ is the only way the grief-stricken cope with it.
Berlusconi simply said in polite words that she has period (i.e. mestruation).
Ok, Francesco, what the hell bearing does that have, then, on whether her feeding tube should be removed? That’s still privileging the functioning of reproductive parts over and above all else. Never mind whether her brain works, the uterus does!
#63
One just showed up @ #58.
The connection Between berlusconi and the vatican is simple and clear: Mr.B needs friends and polical support, so here are all the priests voting and suggesting to vote for him when they preach on sundays, as he’s the Defender Of Faith. We’re worse than Ireland 50 years ago. By the way, I suggest you all to watch a film, “Magdalen”. It’s about catholic power in Ireland…but in Italy it’s still this way, even in a more subtle and hypocrit way.
Talking snake @72,
this is the first time you’ve read one my comments, I take it?
Tell me Pauline in UK (#70), is it euthenasia to disconnect a breathing machine? After all, everyone needs to breathe air–even if they’re incapable of doing so on their own.
talking snake, #63 One just showed up @ #58.
I have no idea if Mrs Tilton is a “Terry Shiavo was murdered” kook or not, but I seriously doubt it. Did you actually read all of Mrs T’s post @58? Try doing so.
Hint: Mrs T won a Molly exactly a year ago.
Andrew #65:
Perhaps you missed this part of the article:
It is the Vatican which preaches that the purpose of women is to be fucked by men and make babies. This is why condoms, Plan B, birth control pills, IUDs, and abortions are all opposed by the Catholic Church.
Berlusconi is worried that a fertile female body might be mercifully allowed die before the womb is used up. That would be an affront to God.
I think we should close down and seal off the entire Vatican and isolate them for the public good. I’m tired of stupid, ignorant morons who think they should spread their archaic nonsense everywhere. Let’s move forward. Seriously, who could object to that? Why be so conservative that progress is halted altogether?
Religion really does poison everything.
To the Catholic Church, a woman is a uterus with legs.
That’s a whole new form of necrophilia, Mr. Berlusconi.
I am so appalled.
BTW, if you want to see a good article on this check out:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/08/eluana-englaro-assisted-suicide
segfault @ 37
Difficult to read. Is it the translation ot inattention to grammar?
Oh, please… Legs aren’t required.
Thanx PZ, from (soon) fascist Italy
#76
Yes, I read the entire post. I like sarcasm. Sometimes I need help. You can back off, now.
A small point perhaps but “Bush-like” is a poor description of Berlusconi. On the one hand he’s not stupid and is no ones puppet and on the other is a much deeper threat to democracy in his country than Bush could ever have hoped to be.
At # 83
Yes, as likewise my inattnetion to grammer.
Comment #1 resumes my thoughts in the best way possible.
And I have a TERRIBLE mental image now. Thank you, vatican. FUCK YOU.
“Religion really does poison everything.”
My inner narrative constantly repeats that quote as I read about the lobbies of ID, theocracy, imagined divine favour, etc. and their incessant attempts to roll back all recent progress.
Of course, Ratzinger et al. only want to keep this woman alive for the sake of her reproductive capacity, so that she may one day provide them with another blank slate of a child to stain indelibly with their ridiculous beliefs. Is it not our obligation to remove these people from any position whence they may have access to power? My pessimism worsens.
@ Science Pundit (Post 75)
By my argument, yes it would be, and I can’t know whether I’d feel the same if I had to make that decision for a loved one. It’s a conflict, I know, life’s full of them. If I’m not taking responsibility, I don’t have the right to say what’s right or wrong for someone else. I’d just rather each individual decision could be made by the family in private, with professional support, free of publicity and interference from anyone else. Sadly, as long as we have organised religion we won’t be able to discuss issues of euthanasia and ‘death with dignity’, sensibly.
Governing, Ur doin it rong.
I mean, hey, I’m totally aware of the fact that there are utter crackpots out there with some fucking misogynistic/misantrophic viewpoints. But please, can’t they just STFU on those as long as they hold some public office?
PZ Myers:
Effectively dead! I love it!
+++
KI @49:
Given the US armed forces’ glorious record in past decades, I say bring it on. A few Swiss Guards will send the buggers packing.
+++
Jessica @12:
What’s wrong with being sexy?
Sounds a lot like necophilia to me. Why can’t they just stick to one perversion at a time, like say pedophilia?
Comedy is not your strong suit Pilty.
The pope is the voice of gawd on Earth. Why doesn’t he just command the woman to be healed? Problem solved.
PZ:
Dude, she’s like, in a coma!
Damn, death cult now getting into necrophilia.
At # 88
See?
raven, you just don’t get it.
See, necrophilia is BAD ’cause the womb doesn’t work anymore. Fucking without the possibility of a resulting pregnancy is TEH EVIL(tm), so necrophilia ranks within homosexuality, contraception and beastiality.
But impregnating a brain-dead girl is a god-given right and duty to a husband as long as her womb will do for some nice childbearing.
At least they are consistent in their lunacy.
Is this dirtbag suggesting that someone should either rape or artificially inseminate a comatose and dying woman ?
If so, has someone tested HIM for brain activity?
Hey, look, the definition of asshole!
BTW, asshole, the poor women has not been a sentient being in seventeen years. That is dead.
What evidence do you have that this is among the criteria the Catholic Church set? Yes, they talked to Berlusconi, but how do you know this was brought up in the conversation? It sounds like the stupid sort of thing Berlusconi would come up on his own.
I’ll bet they could find plenty of priests willing to keep her pregnant for years to come.
Bigjohn756 at #103 –
Nope, she’s the wrong sex and much too old for the priests to be interested in her
Patricia, OM @ 96
Gee, it sounds so simple and surely can be done, but why the hell isn’t it? And the relgious idiots still cannot figure it out. And they further claim that they are not insane.
For people like Berlusconi and the Pope we need to bring back the pillory WITH RUSTY NAILS IN IT!
There, I’m better now.
Patricia, OM @ 96
Holbach @ 105
Gawd works in mysterious and complex ways, don’t cha know?
How to deal with the onslaught of religious insanity:
Constantly demand proof of their imaginary god, and not in just an image in a cow turd or indiscriminate tornadoes that are definitely divinely designed; and perhaps more important and with punch, unceasing ridicule which might get the attention of their imaginary god. So far it has not. And the morons still do not get it.
The pope is the voice of gawd on Earth. Why doesn’t he just command the woman to be healed? Problem solved.
The poop is more like Voice Of Sauron, he spews shite and puts the frighteners on sheeple, but is all huh and puff with no actual ability. However, there’s noticeable differences; e.g., the poop’s Sauron (yahweh) doesn’t exist and isn’t even good fiction.
@99 “At least they are consistent in their lunacy.”
To bad their beliefs aren’t consistent with reality.
So, could a through gynecological exam on this woman possibbily determine that her reproductive organs have degraded along with her brain?
There is more to fertility than menses. Being in a vegatative state for 17 years just doesn’t seem like it would promote all over good health for the body.
And, what scares me is, will this case set a precedent where if a woman is found to clinically infertile that infertility will become the primary decicding criteria for this type of life/death issue?
Disgusting.
And Berlusconi is a complete idiot: he made his money in organized crime and bought his way into the government – 60613
I’m not clear how that makes him an idiot. He’s an evil scumbag all right, but he’s a clever one.
I’m generally unsurprised by Berlusconi’s position and general contempt for female personhood, because he said only a few weeks back that the rape problem in Italy wouldn’t be such a problem if they didn’t have such beautiful women in the country, and further, that women ought to consider it a compliment to their beauty. My initial reaction to those statements is not very, um, enlightened or progressive, nor does it reflect well on me, but it does involve a pinecone and compliments for the oh-so-worthy prime minister.
His obvious disregard for the issue of consent is problematic, but I can’t help wondering if he deliberately introduced it to muddy the waters. The case is: Her family believes she would have not wanted to “live” under those conditions. The court granted the right to die. Prime Minister Dickhead swoops in and takes that right away, and starts babbling about how she could still produce kids.
Unsurprisingly, they all believe in Zombie Jesus. So why not zombie everyone else. She’s dead. She’s gone. She can not consent. But no, they gotta prop up the body and animate it as best they can.
I am Italian and a blogger. You still can have no idea of what Berlusconi really is if you can’t listen to his delirious rants every evening on TV.
You named Bush. Well, he is worser than any Bushes. I would gladly share Dubya for him.
Berlusconi is the most ignorant and fascist fella who happened to rule Italy since Mussolini.
I deeply apologize for this creepy government of ours.
Holbach, Thanks, yes I think my solution is rather simple. If the pope can’t raise this woman up then he should be drummed out of the corps and a new one brought in until they find one capable. They’re 17 years behind. High time to get the job done.
You have no idea how deep is the pool of shit in which we are swimming here in Italy. Thanks to the Vatican and thanks to the spineless italians politicians. And thanks to berlusconi of course.
Bob O’H #102
I suspect you’re right. The Church isn’t interested in whether an unmarried woman could conceive and have children. Instead the Church is against euthanasia. Pulling Eluana’a feeding tubes would be that. IMNSHO, that’s the Church’s major objection.
There’s the further point that they’re doing the Mother Theresa thing. “Offer up your pain to Jesus. Suffering is a gift from god.” Eulana’s and her family need to continue suffering. It’s god’s gift.
Patricia, OM @ 115
At that rate, any moron can apply to be the poop pope, and they will be marching in and out, all trying to raise the dead. Their brains are dead, but their bodies keep functioning even though their ossified brains are telling them to lie down and join them.
Has anyone yet asked Berlusconi what exactly he means by that statement? Like, does he think Ms. Englaro should, in fact, be kept alive so that she can be impregnated and give birth? I’m a firm believer in saying stuff out loud, is all. Has anyone yet raised this question to him?
The other possibility is that he is reasoning “she could wake up, and then have babies.” This is still horrible, because her value has been defined by her reproductive ability. By making her uterus so important as to use it to argue for her feeding tube, it means without a functional uterus she’d be less worth feeding.
Raw evil. And of course, we expect nothing less from both that corrupt criminal Berlusconi and that foul, wicked institution, the Catholic church.
Why doesn’t the Vatican just fly her to Lourdes and splash some of that magic water on her? She’ll be right as rain in no time and everything’s hunky-dory. Right?
Pilty, “She” is 17 years gone, it’s just her meat that they’ve kept alive.
#Alison Myers
Berlusconi, to justify his position, was hinting at the possibility that Eluana may recover and could still have children.
This of course says a lot of his opinion of science and of the doctors who have established that her coma is irreversible.
Reason #325,258 of “Why I am Not a Catholic”.
So, does her vagina still get wet? I wonder how many guys the family could get money out of to screw her so she can have babies.
What? Obviously the catholic church thinks she is nothing but a cum dumpster. Who am I to argue with the most powerful religious organization in the world?
/sarcasm
Well it fits, since the far right wing(nuts) think life begins at conception – certainly no brain is present then, and it means that the only job for women is to bear children. Our two-legged underclass of human cattle should therefore be silent and do their duty.
All the better, obviously, that this woman has neither the mind nor a brain to answer back with. The best sort of woman there is, they must think.
So, after consulting teh highest priests of land, and presumably spending time in deep thought, Berlusconi can only observe that our poor Eluana Englaro remains fertile? OMFW.
This is amazing! He actually values unborn humans over living humans to a similar degree that he values dead humans over living ones.
What? Not amazing? You say it is quite in line with the current death cult that afflicts most all living people? Well, you’d be right.
It’s a dammed shame, and something that makes my ass tired, that this sort of sordid superstition has become the unconsidered refuge of those who will not address the deeper questions of being human. Shrill assertions from the shills of ancient wisdom and those tout new forms of understanding are sufficient for them.
Just imagine, coming to terms with an indifferent universe in just a few easy lessons! Boy howdy. I wish it were as easy as just a few minutes a day.
What then, of the living?
From reading the article she isn’t married. She had the accident when she was quite young. This has got to be dreadful for her parents, to top it off, she’s an only child. The damned pope should mind his own business.
Actually, Berlusconi values hypothetical, imaginary human beings more than he values living ones. And perhaps, dead ones. I don’t really care.
typo fix: And those “who” tout new forms of understanding are still at it.
Imagine; potential takes precedence over actuality.
The promise is more valuable than that which is possessed.
You can’t live correctly.
You are evil.
So much for the living.
Equistem: +250 rep with teh intenets
This doesn’t surprise me; Berlusconi is a crooked nationalist demagogue who’s been bilking Italy since Clinton’s presidency. He’s been playing hard to the Vatican since he was once again elected to the PMship ~ a year ago and pro-religion civil rights abuse cases like this one have been popping up pretty frequently.
Crudely Wrott @127:
OK, I’m listening. What are these “deeper questions” about human identity that religious refuse to address? What does it mean to be human?
(And what does “effectively dead” mean? I always thought you were dead or alive, period.)
Ragutis @122
So “she” is dead but her body (“meat” as you put it) is alive? That suggests there is a human essence distinct from the flesh.
Mrs Tilton @ 74,
you’re right. I’ll update the Mrs Tilton “point of view” meter, and wash the egg off my face.
Only to someone lacking intelligence. To anyone else it suggests that mind and personhood are processes that her body is no longer capable of performing.
Oh good, Piltdown Man to the rescue.
Now all we need is Heddle. *snort*
No, it means there is a consciousness (that’s the thing that lets you type on a keyboard and pick your nose simultaneously) and the mechanical parts of your body. Englaro is incapable of operating a keyboard but her heart and lungs still function (more or less).
When you fall asleep, your consciousness does its own thing, which is why you don’t wake up with snot under your fingernails (if you do, don’t tell us about it, we don’t want to know). When you wake up, you’re capable of de-boogering your nostrils again. All the while, your kidneys still process urine, regardless of what your consciousness is doing.
Englaro’s consciousness stopped functioning 17 years ago. However, due to the miracles of modern medicine, her kidneys are doing their thing.
No, the consciousness is not a soul. Not even if you consider picking your nose a sacrament is the consciousness a soul.
Donovan: Ratzinger isn’t a big fan of Vatican II which relaxed many of the extremely conservative positions the Catholic church once held.
LOL! Why do these religionists always fail to distinguish between the abstract manifestations and categorizations of neural processes such as personality, consciousness, and ideas, and the ineffable spirit/soul thing that is alleged (but thoroughly undemonstrated) to exist? How utterly predictable and unoriginal.
Sorry, Pilty, it does not.
It means that there is no brain activity, and her body cannot live without artificial stimulation.
Of course, you already knew that, and are just a dishonest asshat.
Kseniya wrote:
I’m going to go with it being because their beliefs are based on the superstitions of a meandering gaggle of bronze-age goat herders who hadn’t the faintest idea about such things when they concocted their mythology all those thousands of years ago.
And for the current crop of herders (though these days it’s sheep, not goats) to admit that their predecessors’ supposedly ‘god-given’ scripture isn’t equipped to encompass the understanding modern humans have of the world would be to totally undermine the control they are obsessed with exerting over us.
So they stick to their old, rusting, misfiring and terrifyingly inaccurate guns.
I guess the neocortex doesn’t count as “flesh.”
And what does “effectively dead” mean? I always thought you were dead or alive, period. – Piltdown
Which just demonstrates what an ignorant idiot you are. Most of the brain can have stopped working and even have shrivelled (as turned out to be the case with Terry Schiavo), while machines keep the body functioning. Where’s the “soul” in such a case Pilty? Well of course, the answer is that there is no such thing.
What a bunch of fucking ghouls your church hierarchy are.
Piltdown Man asks, “OK, I’m listening. What are these “deeper questions” about human identity that religious refuse to address? What does it mean to be human?”
I thought you’d know. Life. The Universe (our place in it, what is of value, what is fun, what smells bad, and questions that children ask like, “Dad, do you think we could ever go across the water and see what is over there?”) and Everything.
You know, the kinds of questions that people ask and ponder. Not that an insight is going to help pay the rent but, hey! people think about them. Pretty standard stuff.
Thanks for asking.
Not sure why Myers is upset over this.
My thoughts on this is that perhaps she’s a good candidate for some of those human/ape fertilization experiments that he’s on about.
Surely if he doesn’t find horror in the idea of a potentially intelligent individual not being quite man and not being quite ape, and having to deal with that, merely to satisfy some morbid curiosity, then he can’t have issues with a woman laying around in a vegetative state as a potential baby factory.
Debbie @ #104. It’s a common misconception that Catholic priests only rape boys. Many, many girls have been raped, too. For some unknown reason, our “no longer sexist” society seems to find assault on boys much more abhorrent and newsworthy.
Mr. Macker: What?
Brian Macker. please, kindly point out where PZ ever advocated any of those charges.
example http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/05/08/1917705.htm
“Adelrick D’Cruz, 77, is facing 13 charges over incidents in the 1960s and 70s.
Police allege he assaulted an eight-year-old girl and then raped and assaulted the same girl when she was 17.
D’Cruz was the assistant priest at Yarrawonga’s Sacred Heart Church in the late 1970s in the state’s north.”
What Lameduck # 112 and Enrico #116 said.
Berlusconi is “appalling” as usual, and as Prime Minister rules over public television and radio as well. In Eluana’s case, the Vatican’s interference is so heavy-handed that even some Catholic groups, and priests, joined the protest yesterday in Milan and said they will do so again in Rome next week. Support and signatures are welcome, click on link “Firma l’appello”
http://temi.repubblica.it/micromega-online/
Plus Giertych, the racist-antisemitic-antigay Pole,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maciej_Giertych
is welcome both in the Vatican – his brother being a theologian of Ratzinger’s entourage – and at La Sapienza in Rome, Italy’s largest university, along with his creationists friends. The xenophobic Northern League has its green-shirted vigilantes round up and beat immigrants, whether legal or not. Not much opposition left, so… we’re worried.
Foul on Macker #143.
Dear all,
my name is Goffredo and I am an Italian expat living and working in Paris.
Someone asked:” isn’t there a law protecting Italian citizens from fascists?”
Yes there is. It is our Constitution; and this situation is used by Berlusconi to attack it.
It is an extremely serious situation. Berlusconi controls a great part of the Italian media and they are presenting a distorted views of the facts. Eluana’s father had to beg the media reporters to stop inventing on Eluana’s condition.
Berlusconi did indeed say that she could have a son. That was not a methaphor or an expression of hope. The video of the interview is available everywhere on the net (and nowhere on the italian media…). The campaign orchestrated by the neo-fascist and the church is appealing and disturbing. And extremely dangerous. What they aim to is to change the constitution. They are attacking fundamental human rights. Please keep the international attention alive on it.
Beppino Englaro is a civil hero and all the democrats, secular and humanists of Italy, the vast, but too silent majority of the country, need you.
Thank you.
TS @132,
no worries. You simply misread me, but then, I was writing ironically, and irony by definition runs the risk of being misread. I was using irony as a woefully inadequate substitute for the response this disgusting nonsense really deserves. That you took me seriously might speak ill of your irony meter but it speaks well of your status as a decent human being.
To be fair to Berlusconi, BTW, I’m sure he could not give a rat’s arse what the RC church thinks about this poor woman. He is merely happy to manipulate signals that may gain him the votes of citizens crippled by superstition. Does doing so make him worthy of even more contempt than those voters whose minds are shackled to the yoke of Roman Catholicism? You might very well think that; I could not possibly comment.
Bloody hell! How can a person who runs a country, any country, be so brainless? And why is a head of one state consulting with a head of another one? And this poor woman and especially her family in the middle of this insanity. This is seriously scary.
So lemme see if I’ve got this straight …
Consciousness does not survive death.
This is because consciousness is a product of physical processes.
To use an expression like “she is conscious” is to indulge in metaphysical sleight of hand. All we can really say is that “the process known as consciousness is currently being exhibited by this lump of female flesh”.
Consciousness = humanity.
Lack of consciousness = lack of humanity.
‘Tis Himself @135:
“Your consciousness does its own thing“?? Are you conscious while you’re asleep? It seems not. You’re actually unconscious. So sleeping people aren’t really alive? “Effectively dead” even?
Crudely Wrott @142:
Thanks for clearing that up.
This is absolutely disgusting. But still, not at all surprising to me and spot on for the catholic church. This sentiment of women being useful for their wombs and little else is a deeply rooted feature of catholicism everywhere. I know that even my own fairly mild catholic upbringing left me feeling ashamed of my mind, body, and gender for many years… once I saw the light it took a long time to rectify all of that brainwashing.
Berlusconi obviously considers a woman’s womb her most valuable asset. Even if her brain (which is her) is dead.
He says, in essence, that as long as a brain dead woman is capable of being impregnated, she must be kept alive.
Against the chances that she might suddenly become pregnant, Silvio? By whom, then?
Does the possibility of some future pregnancy depend on her suddenly and miraculously recovering from “catastrophic brain damage” as if by magic?
If so, how come it is not common among the population of brain dead patients?
>> . . . and in what has to be the most tasteless and disgusting excuse made yet for the actions of these villains of the right, has further justified it by saying that physically she is “in the condition to have babies”.<< Surely he will be able to find some necrophile willing to impregnate her for the good of the Church and the glory of Christ. Pardon me, I feel the need for a shower and a good purge.
Pilt @153,
Consciousness does not survive death
Drawing up a consent form that will protect all concerned will be a bugger for the lawyers, admittedly, but if your commitment to scientific enquiry is really that strong, I’m sure we can find a way for you to help us test whether that proposition can be falsified.
Piltdown wrote:
No – not even close, as I’m sure you’re well aware. During sleep there is still significant brain activity. For a person in a peristent vegetative state there is not. Stop being so bloody obtuse.
Words fail. Simply. Dumb. Founded. I can only bask in awe at the appallingly repugnant and immoral mindset that Berlusconi seems astoundingly capable of holding. Why oh why is Christianity still relevant to so many in this day and age?
You see, that’s the point when I start to puke. Screw the Pope and the whole religious bunch.
You would take away the Hoax greatest debating tool.
Sven,
Once upon a time there was a article on this site that has been deleted along with it’s comments that delved into the subject of bestiality. One of the objections made as to why such sex might just be unethical was that it might result in a fertile cross between a human and a chimp. PZ chimed in that he wasn’t against that. Of course, the objection being that the baby might come to term.
He’s had several articles on this blog that have been on the pro side of making human animal hybrids.
He also is of the opinion that fetuses only count as a collection of cells.
I fail to see why a woman who is in a vegetative state counts as anything more than a collection of cells in this view. Surely her eggs are merely cells too.
Myers, in his moralizing, often fails to quote primary concerns and likes to quote mine. For example, the primary reason given in this case was “This is murder. I would be failing to rescue her. I’m not a Pontius Pilate.” not that she should be impregnated. The comment about the babies was probably a reference to how physically healthy she was, not a suggestion that she be used to pump out babies.
So, Patricia, #149, I call foul on Myers. If he can lie by omission in order to imply that Berlusconi plans on using her as a baby factor, then surely he can’t complain when deductions are made from his public positions.
I’m not even sure that Myers would have an objection if the family of the girl decided to go along with a humanzee experiment based on his public pronouncements.
You’d think that the religionists would be upset over the extraordinary measures being taken to interfere with their deity deciding it’s someone’s time to die.
Two things. First, Eluana Englaro cannot give consent to this. Second, she is hardly in any condition to carry out a full term pregnancy.
All you are doing is taking random statement said by PZ and trying to say he should support an action that PZ came out against.
You, Brian Macker, are arguing in bad faith.
I call bullshit on #162
1)There were a handful of bestiality threads in the past, none of which included hybrids, a few of which however included defending against ad hominems against Pharyngu-spawn
2)Human-chimpanzee hybrids are impossible, as years of failed Lysenko-ism proved sufficiently; hence, there is no possibility of such, hence the possibility of viable hybrids is a non-argument against bestiality
3)Fetuses ARE clumps of cells, for the most part. How this figures into the debate, I don’t know
4)It’s not the braindead woman that’s of concern to us. she’s dead, a lump of cells indeed. our concern is for a)the family, who has to prolong their suffering of loss, and b) the misogynistic attitude revealed in the argument
This has me worried. I’ve made it clear to my family, that in similar circumstances, I wanted to be kept “alive” as a sperm donor. Now I realize that I had better get it down in writing.
What would Berlusconi say about a woman who had a hysterectomy as well as several degrees in science, a solid history of publication, the admiration of her peers and had been declared brain dead.
Given that she is not capable of bearing children, what is wisdom now?
Maybe Brian Macker is just concerned that an chimp/human hybrid would be able to write better and more well-thought-out posts than him and so render him useless*.
*Well, more useless than he already is.
I gave you a personal foul for using the idea of this poor defenseless woman being used in such an experiment. That is a repugnant thing to say, and there is no way PZ would ever suggest such a thing.
Foul stays, and you loose one turn at the spanking couch.
Janine,
You are ignorant no longer. I can’t help you with your other issue.
The comments I first saw by Myers (late 2007/early 2008) on this had no conditions on the experiment. Just that he thought it would be neat to make a man chimp hybrid. I think he deleted the entire article that was posted on in the interest of his daughter. I can no longer find it.
I suppose we have the Catholic church to thank for the legal necessity of doing it this way instead of just administering a lethal dose of barbituates and being DONE with it.
Incidentally, the article to which the pathological liar and alleged “child molester” known as Brian Macker is referring is here.
Macker, proof or it didn’t happen. seriously, if you can prove that PZ or ANY Pharyngulite has ever seriously(!) suggested the possibility of human-simian hybrids, I’ll eat a broom. this is either pure bullshit, garbled recall, or reading comprehension fail regarding a joke of some sort.
Why even ask, since you’ve already demonstrated you have no compunction whatsoever about making up positions to attribute to “them” anyway?
A truly horrible situation. Perhaps more so because it’s been dragged out for 17 years.
But, a question: what if someday it becomes possible to regenerate brain tissue and restore higher brain functions again ? I could see it happening sometime in the future.
Of course, this woman wouldn’t be the same person, as far as her brain were concerned, but in theory she could be taught to function again.
Note: I am not saying this woman should be left in a PVS j against the future possibility that some such experimental therapy may become available.
This is a situation in the here and now, not in some dimly possible future. A sad case, truly. There really isn’t any “good” outcome here, aside from an end to her family’s suffering.
Mr Macker: You have precisely 24 hours to provide evidence for your claim that I have intentionally deleted articles from this site. If you can’t do so, you will be banned.
I do not delete anything from what I’ve posted. It’s all there. I consider such a charge to be a serious accusation of dishonesty.
I have said in the past that I think a chimp-human hybridization experiment would be extremely informative scientifically, and that I’d like to see something done along those lines…in a petri dish. I also think it would be an ethically insurmountable problem to do the experiment to generate a human/chimp hybrid child, because it would produce a conscious being with an indeterminate social state and an absence of parental responsibility.
I endorse human-animal hybrid experiments in stem cell research. Those are not exercises in Island of Dr Moreau fantasies — they are controlled experiments to test the development of cells in known tissue environments. If you think otherwise, you’re a bigger moron than I thought.
Get to it. Don’t bother posting until you’ve shown that I’m guilty of your accusation, or you’re willing to apologize and retract. I’ll be deleting anything else you post until that time.
Asshole.
So please explain why “sleep = brain death”
Gah. edit out the “j” between “PVS” and “against” in the third paragraph.
aaah, now the weird connection between making human-simian hybrids and the fetuses being clumps of cells makes sense
I was right. pure bullshit combined with garbled recall. fetus != embryonic stemcells; hypothetically informative != we should SOOOOOO do it!!!
Macker,
I think you are jumping to conclusions and unfairly maligning PZ. I just searched “beastiality”, and there is no way that I am only only one that has mentioned that in a comment. You should not assume that the google based search engine is complete. I’ve often noticed that there are comments and thread that are missing. I bet the article you reference is still there.
Is there any way to interpret his raising that point in a fashion that makes it remotely relevant to the situation that does not imply him to be a villain?
Seriously. What “innocent” sentiment would you have us believe he was getting at?
Here is what PZ wrote about a hybrid human-chimpanzee fetus.
To claim that PZ would want to use Eluana Englaro to make the hybrid on the basis of this is sleazy.
Good-bye, Brian Marker. You will not be missed.
Yeah, I’m sure Eluana Englaro has lots of courage and commitment to spare right now.
Janine, of many names (raises libation in salute).
Nerd, raise a libation in salute to Azkyroth. He lead me in the right direction.
In much maligned Australia (see other thread) we have a song about such things.
The chorus:
Bestiality’s best, boys,
Bestiality’s best,
(fuck a wallaby),
Bestiality’s best, boys,
Bestiality’s best.
It has about seventeen verses, each one worse than one preceeding it. I consider that my knowledge of it is amongst the benefits of having obtained a university education in a nation that loves to sing songs whilst drunk.
“it has to be recognized as an individual with all rights, and it must have a family committed to raising it as a full member.”
This wouldn’t really be humane, knowing in advance that he/she might have difficulty competing for mates. There should also be humans of the opposite sex that have agreed in advance to mate with him or her, without contraceptives.
Brava! Janine the vile Bloodhound strikes again.
That guy IS an asshole PZ. *snort*
You see? Nothing about her actually having babies, it was all about her “condition” all along. As every Catholic knows, the immortal soul is housed in the hypothalamus-anterior-pituitary-gonadal axis. If hormones are cycling she cannot be truly “dead.”
KI @ 49:
I came up with the solution when I was just a kid, like 45 years ago, so it can’t be that hard.
The law requires any American citizen functioning as an “Agent of a Foreign Power” to register as such. This law was used against Communists in the McCarthy era on the theory that they were “agents” of the Soviet Union.
Vatican City is (supposedly) a sovereign state. Therefore, any American Catholic is an agent of a foreign power.
How many of them have registered?
Wowbagger – You might explain how the hell you can sing while drunk (nice), and keep your beer in a glass while being upside down?
To Azkyroth (raises glass in salute, then takes a sip). I love to get my citations right.
Brian Macker @ #170
That’s debatable
What Janine dug up (kudos to you, Madam, for your digging) would be an interesting topic for discussion.
I’m not a biology/anatomy/genetics type in any way, shape or form. However it strikes me that a human-chimp hybrid would be defective from the start. The mismatch in chromosome pairs would likely cause genetic disorders, c.f. Down’s Syndrome, Huntington’s Disease, polycystic kidney disease, etc., or something quite probably fatal to the fetus.
The ethics questions would be as interesting as the biological ones.
Oh, and Macker:
Maybe if you could spell “bestiality” the search function could find it for you.
Africangenesis:
I’m pretty sure that due to chromosomal mismatch, any chimp-human hybrid would be a mule, anyway.
Of course, Piltdown Man’s comments show that he has a vested interest in the state of being a “living person” not being defined based on brain activity.
The mismatch in chromosome number would likely interfere with proper meiosis, so the hybrid would very likely be sterile. But gene-dosage problems like Downs need not occur, since the same genes are present (just divvied up differently among chromosomes). As for single-allele disorders, the interplay of chimp and human alleles during development would sort of be the point of the experiment.
Well, that might explain his existence.
To be fair, I only had it immediately to hand because I was recently looking up this comment as an example of how to deal with people who dishonestly pretend that the connotation of words doesn’t matter. ^.^
Thank you, Sven. That’ll teach me to make biological noises amongst the biologists.
Lurkbot @189:
… whatever bigotry is in evidence in the United States is exhibited solely by the Roman Catholic hierarchy; … the Canon Law of the Roman Church and the directives of the Pope validate the fears of the people that the dual allegiance of American Catholics is a present danger to our free institutions … the people in passing upon the qualifications of a Catholic candidate for the Presidency will be guided by their knowledge of history and their great store of plain old-fashioned common horse sense, and their innate caution not to gamble when their liberties and the national security are at stake.
Among American citizens there should be no question or suspicion of allegiance to any foreign power, but in the case of the Roman Catholic citizen, his church is the guardian of his conscience and asserts that he must obey its laws and decrees even if they are in conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States.
– Luther A Smith, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite (Southern Jurisdiction), 1960
“I’m pretty sure that due to chromosomal mismatch, any chimp-human hybrid would be a mule, anyway.”
Probably, but occasionally mules are fertile. But without willing sex partners lined up in advance, it certainly shouldn’t be a bonobo. Hmmm, given the length of time until sexual maturity, those old enough at the beginning of the experiment to have consented to be partners might be getting rather long in the tooth. The volunteers will probably have to be found among the freshman class.
Biological noises are always welcomed here. It’s the anti-biological noises that piss people off. Oh, and the libertarian noises.
Pilty – I’d be much more impressed with a quote from Gen. Albert Pike. If you’re going Scottish rite.
Or since you’re such a frisky Hoax today maybe you should buzz off, and read the Rite of Memphis. It’s only 350 pages, plenty you’ll enjoy.
Patricia wrote:
We’re Australians, Patricia. We don’t waste time thinking about these things. That’s somebody else’s problem. No doubt some bloke in a lab did something.
“Oh, and the libertarian noises.”
I know, a limited government libertarian society would have too many ethical restrictions on scientific experimentation for you anarchists.
Sorry, Pilty, but when whatever bishop it was declared that John Kerry was ineligible to receive communion because he wasn’t four-square against abortion, it was obvious that the RC church felt their law trumped the Constitution.
Piltdown Man:
Pointless blather. I’m sure anybody spying for Stalin 60 years ago was told by their handlers to “obey the law” so as not to call attention to themselves. It’s the subversion due to their divided loyalties that’s at issue, not whether their true masters tell them to behave.
“it was obvious that the RC church felt their law trumped the Constitution.”
Non-sequitor, they are in completely different domains. You are wrong on two levels really. There is strong argument, even among those who are pro-choice that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided constitutionally as well.
Ah yes, here’s the thing about Kerry and communion.
Kerry, if you remember, said that while he was personally against abortion, he was pro-choice.
Are you denying that the Church has historically claimed and to a degree still claims the right to prescribe the temporal life choices of its followers?
If there is, why haven’t I heard it?
Wowbagger – Awwwh. I thought you were gonna say something about scalawags. You do get extra points in sportsmanship though, for not making a wise crack about grits, which would have stiffened the spines of the Rev. & I both. Salute!
“Kerry, if you remember, said that while he was personally against abortion, he was pro-choice.”
Well, he wasn’t pro-choice when it came to “public service”, though he quickly backtracked when the draft became an issue.
Azkyroth#211,
Finding a “right to privacy” and then applying it to override the states in this circumstance is argued to be judicial activism and legislating from the bench. Strict constructionists, no matter where they stand on abortion, find the decision abhorent. It should have been left to the states or to a constitutional amendment giving the federal government this power or establishing this “right”.
There is
strongan argument so weak it was almost non-existent, even among those who are pro-choice that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided constitutionally as well.Fixed it for you. Don’t bother to thank me, it’s part of the on-going education I’m happy to provide to the delusional.
Askyroth#211,
The “liberal critiques” section of the wikipedia Roe v. Wade article provides a pretty good summary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade#Liberal_critiques
Patricia @204:
So mote it be!
Cagliostro was the Agent of the Templars, and therefore wrote to the Free-Masons of London that the time had come to begin the work of rebuilding the Temple of the Eternal. He had introduced into Masonry a new Rite called the Egyptian, and endeavored to resuscitate the mysterious worship of Isis. The three letters L.P.D. on his seal, were the initials of the words “Lilia pedibus destrue;” tread under foot the Lilies [of France],
and a Masonic medal of the sixteenth or seventeenth century has upon it a sword cutting off the stalk of a lily, and the words ” talem dabit ultio messem,” such harvest revenge will give.
A Lodge inaugurated under the auspices of Rousseau, the fanatic of Geneva, became the centre of the revolutionary movement in France, and a Prince of the blood-royal went thither to swear the destruction of the successors of Philippe le Bel on the tomb of Jacques de Molai. The registers of the Order of Templars attest that the Regent, the Duc d’Orleans, was Grand Master of that formidable Secret Society, and that his successors were the Duc de Maine, the Prince of Bourbon-Conde, and the Duc de Cosse-Brissac.
The Templars compromitted the King; they saved him from the rage of the People, to exasperate that rage and bring on the catastrophe prepared for centuries; it was a scaffold that the vengeance of the Templars demanded. The secret movers of the French Revolution had sworn to overturn the Throne and the Altar upon the Tomb of Jacques de Molai. When Louis XVI. was executed, half the work was done; and thenceforward the Army of the Temple was to direct all its efforts against the Pope.
PZ Myers @175:
Interesting use of “insurmountable” rather than “unacceptable” or “inadmissable”.
PZ Myers quoted @181:
“You see things; and you say, “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?”
Κύριε ἐλέησον
Tis Himself#215,
You may not be familiar with the US legal system. It is not just common law. There is a constitution with super majority provisions, limiting the federal government, and reserving to the states and people all powers not specified.
Finding a “right to privacy” and then applying it to override the states in this circumstance is a logical consequence of the Supremacy Clause and the “due process” clause of the 14th Amendment, the 9th Amendment (why do “strict constructionists” always seem to miss that one?), and the ability to make basic inferences combined with reading amendments 3 through 5 and arguably others.
Piltdown Man – Touche’
May you never thirst!
Pilty. I’ve told you before. You’re better off not trying to be witty or funny.
Because you aren’t
So does this mean the Republicans are going to go past their current efforts to regress to their roots in the Know-Nothing party by leapfrogging it to resurrect the Anti-Masonic party? Or not? I’m confused!
Shorter Piltdown Man’s opinion of Freemasons:
My loopy ancient cult run by men who wear dresses and perform arcane rituals and revere an imaginary being is better than your loopy ancient cult run by men who wear aprons and perform arcane rituals and revere an imaginary being!
(I mean, of course, the entirety of section 1 of the 14th Amendment).
Azkyroth#220,
The US is a constitutional system, the “supremacy clause” is not like a devine right. It only applies where the federal government has constitutional jurisdiction.
You don’t have to agree with those critical of the Roe v. Wade decision, but at least now you have “heard” that it is considered bad law by more than just one end of the political spectrum.
The Constitutional “strict constructionists” pretend they know exactly what the Founding Fathers meant when they wrote the Constitution. Of course, they ignore the facts the document was the result of compromise and the Founding Fathers were a contentious bunch who agreed on very little.
The first commentary on the Constitution was The Federalist Papers. One of the authors, Alexander Hamilton, argued against a Bill of Rights (in Article 84), feeling that if rights were listed explicitly, it would later be interpreted as a list of the only rights that people had. This objection was covered by the Ninth Amendment:
There’s your right of privacy right there.
Of course, the strict constructionists’ main objection is “the courts are making decisions we don’t like.” So if a strict constructionist doesn’t like Roe v Wade, the whine goes up “there’s no ‘right of privacy’ in the Constitution.” However, if a court rules in a way that the strict constructionist likes, then the right was always there and just needed a little judicial interpretation to unveil.
Thank you, ‘Tis Himself; I had not put it together that way previously, but even then, the framers were grappling with the issue of what the domain of knowledge representation would later call closed-world and open-world assumptions.
I had not previously made that connection; thank you for triggering it.
Tis Himself#227,
I think you underestimate the humility of the strict constructionists. If they can’t find insight into what the constitution meant to the founders in areas where the meaning isn’t clear, they will defer to the Congress and the states. They don’t presume that the courts should be making law.
Now, I like to think that there is a “right to privacy”, along with a “right to chemical freedom” that would make any coercive powers exercised by the FDA unconstitutional. Let’s end the drug war now. Where are judicial activists when I’m willing to agree with them? Hmmm, it turns out it is more likely to be the strict constructionists that will get the Feds out of our “herb” gardens and basement labs.
I note that for all your smarmy condescension you are still too intellectually dishonest to engage the rest of the argument.
The 14th Amendment forbids any state government from denying to any inhabitants of the state the rights they are due as citizens of the United States. The Supremacy Clause nullifies any constitutional provision (and, needless to say, any law) of any state which would seek to nullify this (or any other portion of the Constitution or its amendments). The 9th Amendment explicitly states that, contrary to your implications, rights do NOT have to be explicitly stated in the Constitution or its amendments in order for the people to possess them. The rest of the Bill of Rights, particularly amendments 3, 4, and 5, clearly imply, and are arguably intelligible only under the assumption of, a general right of the citizenry to live their lives free from unreaonable intrusion by the government – in other words, a right to “privacy.” Find an error in this argument or STFU.
Incidentally, the “liberal critiques” section you linked to contains remarkably literal resembling your line of argument.
In all fairness, I taunted Pilty.
Crap! Now I have to cut my own bar tab.
I mean, of course, “remarkably little resembling your line of argument.”
Azkyroth#230,
To the best of my recollection, I’ve never edited the Roe v. Wade article. Frankly I like the 9th amendment and think it is too frequently ignored. Unfortunately the “rights” are usually not allowed to be made up out of whole cloth, but have to have been found in the common law or such. We are stuck between strict constructionists who wouldn’t know a “right to privacy” unless it was written in stone, and liberal activists who have used to commerce clause to run amuck. As someone who has pledged allegiance to the constitution, I find that I must defend the constitution against what the liberals have done with it more than against the humble circumspection of the constructionists.
This morning’s Australian newspaper reveals further catholic thinking on what’s acceptable in a priest – Holocaust denial is OK; treating women as equals gets you sacked.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25026470-2702,00.html
According to this, “such,” for the constructors, included the “law of nations”:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/50404/
If so, the denial of human rights increasingly recognized around the world is contrary to their original intent. That is if we’re going to treat a single 18th-century constitution like a freakin’ bible in the first place, which I’m not.
I made the same oath when I joined the US Navy ever so many years ago:
That’s why I got so angry with Bush shitting on the Constitution. I also noted that many libertarians* were cheering Bush on.
*I except Ron Paul in this, probably the ONLY honorable thing that racist, America-hating bastard ever did in his life
The Constitutional “strict constructionists” pretend they know exactly what the Founding Fathers meant when they wrote the Constitution
We know what they meant, because we have the text of the constitution itself, and many contemporary documents explaining their intentions, and the whole body of English common law before it.
As for you calling Ron Paul a racist, you’re still full of shit:
-jcr
Why would anyone bother to wade thru a kooky rant from 911-truther Alex Jones, when they can evaluate Ron Paul based on his own words?
“If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.”
– Ron Paul, 1992
“Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,’ I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”
– Ron Paul, 1992
The strict constructionists can kiss my ass. Their position doesn’t meet the basic tenets of logic.
What condition is a constitution supposed to be modifying? In the age of Rousseau, when our constitution was drafted, everyone thought that in a state of nature, everyone did exactly what they wanted with no restraint whatsoever. A written constitution’s only function would be to restrict behavior that did not “promote the general welfare.” Anything else that does not impact the public weal or damage anyone else in some demonstrable way, is completely outside the ambit of those restrictions.
Strict constructionists seem to think that in a state of nature, mankind lived in the most authoritarian regime imaginable, where their every action was prescribed, and the constitution merely offers a few specific “rights” that represent the maximum permissible deviation from the authoritarian utopia man was naturally destined to live in.
I categorically reject the second theory. Anyone has an absolute right to do anything not specifically forbidden in the constitution. When people seemed not to get the point, the 9th amendment was passed to make it crystal clear.
Bob Bork is not on the Supreme Court (thanks largely to our new Vice-President.) The sane people are now going to have hopefully at least 8 years to clean some of the crazy out of that venerable institution and start trying to return our body politic to the form it once had, before the Dark Side seized power.
And no, my argument is not meant to give any aid and comfort to Libertarians, at least not since “Libertarian” stopped meaning the opposite of “Authoritarian” and started meaning “Were fired out of a cannon pointing off the end of the extreme right wing.”
Why am I not surprised that John C. Randolph pretends that his hero, Ron “order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks” Paul, isn’t a racist.
Yeah, I know that he claims that he didn’t write the stuff that appeared numerous times in his newsletters. I also know he claims that he never read the newsletters that appeared with his name on the banner. I know he was endorsed by Stormfront, Vanguard News, and the Nationalist Coalition. I also know that blatant racism was published under his name.
James Kirchick wrote in the New Republic:
Here’s a few choice tidbits taken from USA Election Polls:
Face it, John, your boy is a racist AND YOU SUPPORT HIM! If you had a shred of honor and decency, you’d disavow him. But you’re a libertarian. Honor and decency are unnatural concepts to you.
Alright, that’s it. My wife and I will now have to start the group we’ve joked about, which is a large consortium of women who dictate what MEN will do with their bodies, for example, which men should have vasectomies and when. Men have been treating women like baby machines and telling them what to do with their bodies for long enough. It’s about time the ladies got some equal time. Think that fat white guy in the expensive suit should have his balls chopped off? Go get him, babes! Saw his fat fucking nuts off so he will calm down a bit! Of course, I will just keep the books and keep quiet, lest I become one of their targets…
As for the libertarians on this site, don’t worry. Some day, you’ll grow up, graduate from high school, get a real job, and see that life isn’t so bad. Maybe you’ll even get a real girlfriend! Hell, maybe you’ll even read some real philosophy and realize Ayn Rand was a fucking hack!
I repeat:
I had never realized “strict construction” was intended to convey boneheaded computer-like hyperliteralism.
Well, duh. Honor and decency refer to obligations to something other than oneself. Libertarians confuse “freedom” with “never being told ‘no’.” What do you expect?
Regarding the recent scienceblogs update, I note that the time delay for additional comment submission remains excessive.
Azkyroth,
I’m putting your post #230 into a folder. It might come in handy some day. I’ll give you credit if I use it. Thank you.
So do “strict constructionists” when attempts are made to place restrictions on behavior in order to actually benefit people.
Africangenesis
…”Kerry, if you remember, said that while he was personally against abortion, he was pro-choice.”
Well, he wasn’t pro-choice when it came to “public service”, though he quickly backtracked when the draft became an issue.,,,
What did you mean by this?
Come on, PZ; you say that like it’s their ONLY fucked up priority. Let’s review: On top of their fucked up views toward women, the Catholic church thinks a cracker is their god, that throwing said cracker in the trash is worse than the Holocaust, Holocaust-deniers aren’t as bad as atheists, etc. Need I go on?
It took a while but the kooks showed up. Macker is so all over the place incoherent and crazed, that it is hard to see his point.
Terry Shiavo’s brain had atrophied and shrunk to the point that it wasn’t much bigger than a chimpanzee’s. Which is unfair to the chimps who are self aware, thinking, functioning, beings. PZ is not alone in thinking that pulling the plug on animated corpses is OK. It is legal and commonly done in this society, usually at the stated a prioir wishes of the victim.
Well, to be fair, the Vatican stated that Bishop Williamson’s personal views about the alleged nonexistence of the Holocaust had absolutely no bearing on his de-excommunication-ing. The Vatican also stated that if Williamson is entertaining even the slimmest daydream of working in the Roman Catholic Church as an ordained official, he must first publicly recant his Holocaust denialist statements.
James R#247,
John Kerry had prominently featured his proposals for mandatory public service for graduation from high school, and that a term public service be a requirement for federal college education benefits. When the draft became an issue during the debates, they quickly deleted these from his web site, because they knew how the looked. The problem with people like John Kerry who speak of a lot of “duty”, is they think the rest of us have a “duty” too.
“Strict constructionists seem to think that in a state of nature, mankind lived in the most authoritarian regime imaginable, where their every action was prescribed, and the constitution merely offers a few specific “rights” that represent the maximum permissible deviation from the authoritarian utopia man was naturally destined to live in.”
The founders were not concerned the power of the state, not the state of nature. States had to be restrained, and they hoped the checks, balances and standards and the super majority protections of the constitution would restrain the state. Activists liberal judges have broken the state free of these bounds ever since the time of FDR.
Macker’s ideological standpoints, so far as I can tell, are as follows:
Religion: big-L Libertarianism
Political Views: Petulant Narcissism
He seems to have pretentions of being a Socratic gadfly but his political views referenced above render this entirely ineffective.
Does this clear anything up?
Tis Himself#236,
“That’s why I got so angry with Bush shitting on the Constitution. I also noted that many libertarians* were cheering Bush on.”
I don’t know any libertarians that were cheering Bush on. I’m about the only one that could see him in historical perspective and actually liked him. There were many among the liberals daemonizing Bush who were admirers of FDR and Wilson who make Bush seem like an ACLU member by comparison. Most libertarians I knew also deamonized Bush, but didn’t have to be pressed too hard to admit that FDR and Wilson were worse.
Yeah, really. Fascist bastards. It’s like they think living in a society and depending on the resources and stability it provides means you owe them some effort to help sustain it. Why, next they’ll be saying you should help PAY for the government services your quality of life depends on. Who do they think they are?
And you figure restricting the rights of the citizens which the government is obligated to respect and uphold to those explicitly enumerated is going to accomplish this how exactly?
(Incidentally, on the public service thing: at least in California, high schools already have a requirement for a certain number of hours of “community service” for graduation. While this seems to have been fairly effective at instilling the feeling that volunteer work is a “chore” or a “hoop to jump through” it does not appear to have lead to any form of tyranny.)
In other words, your moral beliefs and political agenda have as much to do with human needs and human welfare as Burlusconi’s.
You must be proud.
Azkyroth,
“Yeah, really. Fascist bastards. It’s like they think living in a society and depending on the resources and stability it provides means you owe them some effort to help sustain it. Why, next they’ll be saying you should help PAY for the government services your quality of life depends on. Who do they think they are?”
I haven’t receive a government service in years other than use of the roads, and those are being rebuilt about twice as often as needed so some politician can claim he brought us jobs.
Aside from, for starters, breathable air, clean water, police protection, building and safety codes, fire protection, sanitation, social stability (big-Ls always gloss over this one), the promise of defense against invasion, and the opportunity to invest and take risks with the knowledge that you are unlikely to actually starve if they don’t pan out…
Hmm, what is it you do for a living?
Azkyroth,
“Incidentally, on the public service thing: at least in California, high schools already have a requirement for a certain number of hours of “community service” for graduation. While this seems to have been fairly effective at instilling the feeling that volunteer work is a “chore” or a “hoop to jump through” it does not appear to have lead to any form of tyranny”
You are quite wrong. The community service requirement was tyrrany. Apparently it has lead to your acceptance of tyranny and your inability to recognize it. let’s not confuse “education” with “indoctrination”.
….
Azkyroth,
So I must thank the state for the air I breathe, the water I pump out of a well myself, the building inspectors I work hard to keep off my property, the trash I pay to dispose of myself, the fire department that took over the volunteer fire department made up of my neighbors saying we were not “professional”, the police who are waging the drug war and don’t consider burglaries important enough even to take fingerprints, and for protecting us against other states. This state was constitionally supposed to protect us from itself, and is doing a poor job of that.
I am ready to strangle every single goddamned libertarian.
Shut up, africangenesis. Find some other place to peddle your blinkered, selfish ideology, ’cause I’m fed up with it.
Everyone else, please ignore that moron.
Thank you.
“So, what is Berlusconi going to do next in his bizarro Prince Charming act? Fertilize her eggs?”
Is there even a word for this fetish? And I’m really weirded out by the idea of Berlusconi fantasizing about knocking up a brain-dead woman.
“Pragmatism?” I mean, it’s not like any other woman would have him…
I am ready to strangle every single goddamned libertarian.
I’ve noticed that the guts of all of the climate-change-denialists are being put to no good use at all…
Why don’t we just force the blinkered fucks to actually live in a state of nature for a while and require them to make extensive amends before we’ll let them back into society when they come running back to it crying?
Azkyroth#260, Yes they went too far, adding mandatory community service to compulsory education. State employees leading the impressionable young in the pledge of allegiance, allegiance to the state of course.
Maybe Berlusconi doesn’t like women who move around during sex, or ones that my judge his performance.
PZ,
Why would libertarianism be particularly frustrating to you? My concern is that it is really that my questioning of the AGW faith elsewhere in this blog that you are trying to “shut up”, but that the culture of mocking libertarianism here would provide you cover to “censor” an inconvenient truth while retaining popularity.
Is there anything about what we know of human evolutionary history that you think should inform the choice of the type of society we should have? Do you subscribe to the blank slate?
Bonsai-Mussolini! One cannot help, to ask the state of mind of those who voted twice for this Clown.
“Pragmatism?” I mean, it’s not like any other woman would have him…
Sadly, Berlusconi is not known to have trouble in that department. He divorced his first wife to marry a hot actress. He had a disagreement with the pope last year about not being allowed to take communion as a divorcee (Silvio wanna cracker?), so maybe this is his cunning plan of getting back in favor.
I have to admit I knew next to nothing about libertarianism before a few months ago – about the only time I’d even seen the word outside this site was on the facebook page of my ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, where he’d listed it as his political affiliation* – but now I think I know more than enough.
While I actually agree with much of the personal freedom aspects, I can’t see how the rest of it would be applicable anywhere other than some bizarre fantasy land where corporations aren’t run by greedy scumbags and where they don’t do things like allow people who purchase their products to die fiery deaths and pay out the lawsuits rather than do a costly recall.
I mean, I hate corruption and waste and the other less-than-perfect aspects of government – but it’s still the best system that anyone’s come up with. Until human beings become less greedy and selfish it’s the best way to protect those who need it most.
*Which, now that I know what it entails, makes me wonder whether or not being in a relationship with me can actually permanently damage your sanity, as has been suggested on more than one occasion.
So, why was Berlusconi elected? Is there some vulnerability in human nature as expressed in mass societies, that we should structure societies to avoid? What did he appeal to?
even if you impregnated the vegetable woman and the resulting infant was born, it would be totally messed up from not having the same sensory experiences a normal fetus experiences in utero. But the christians are all about babies, not what they become.
“I mean, I hate corruption and waste and the other less-than-perfect aspects of government – but it’s still the best system that anyone’s come up with. Until human beings become less greedy and selfish it’s the best way to protect those who need it most.”
Western agreement on what constitutes good governance is relatively recent, and the reality still falls short of the open and transparent ideal. Human greed and selfishness are what makes government dangerous as well, arguably more dangerous than corporations which are already at the mercy of the government and so have checks on their power. If you are speaking of more government management of the economy, central planning does not have a good track record.
Big-L Libertarianism is annoying because petulant narcissism gets old, especially when it hinges on the idea that “freedom” begins and ends with never being told “no.”
Willful obtuseness coupled to smarminess doesn’t help either.
My grandfather went into a vegetative state after a doctor’s mistake and subsequent efforts to cover it up. His neurologist told us that he barely had enough brain activity to maintain a pulse and that there was no hope of recovery. Fortunately he had a living will and my family had the hospital pull the plug.
Bizarrely enough, this happened in a Catholic hospital.
After my grandfather’s body died and my family tried to leave, a nun kept bothering them. First she wanted to pray and when that request was rebuffed she then told my family that they should ask for forgiveness for ceasing life support. In essence blaming my family for his death. My mom also got the impression that the nun was trying to see if our family might sue. Assholes.
So I can sympathize with the story. Everyone wants a happy ending when the comatose person wakes up and all is well. Unfortunately life doesn’t always have a fairytale ending. There is nothing wrong with hope, but it must be tempered with reality. If there is no possiblity for a recovery, even a partial one, then there is no point in keeping a body alive.
You can’t kill a dead person.* If enough of your brain ceases to function, then you the person ceases to be. What is left is a shell being kept artifically alive by machines. A pulse is a sign of life, but it isn’t the sole determiner of life. And keeping your carcass warm doesn’t mean that you’re still there either trapped unable to communicate or in some state of suspended animation.
In my grandfather’s case, hospital staff (minus the neuro) tried to give my family false hope that he would recover. Later my family learned that his heart had stopped beating for a prolonged period of time before being revived. His brain was dead save for one primitive sliver.
Anyway the whole “Dignity of Life” nonsense is just a red herring to distract you from their real goal: control. The Catholic Church and their like-minded fundies do not care about the quality of life of other human beings. They just want everyone to live like they tell them to.
Any personal autonomy threatens their control and that’s why they’ll try anything to keep their grip on power.
It says in the Bible that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. In that sense the Vatican disguises itself as a benevolent entity, but is in reality a twisted, sadistic, and depraved organization. And I should know, I’m an ex-Catholic.
As for their enablers, people that trivialize end of life or abortion decisions are either naive or just plain evil.
*Excluding vampires and zombies.
Africangenesis wrote:
I don’t think you’d find anyone – here or anywhere else – who wouldn’t like a more efficient, more transparent government. I, for one, have many issues with the standard political system and those who make their livings manipulating it.
But my problem is that I can’t see how it is that you, unless you’ve spent your life with your eyes closed, could imagine that a society run on the principles you seem (from the posts of you and the other self-identified libertarians) to espouse, isn’t going to lead to a far worse situation than the one we’re in.
Especially when we’re talking corporations. It’d be like taking one of those Supermax prisons and asking the inmates to run it themselves under the honour system.
Azkyroth,
What evidence do you have of petulant narcissism other than your mere assertion of it? Freedom to swing your fist ends where someone elses nose begins. That is different than never being told “no”. Could you be confusing the humility to never presume to tell others “no” when they aren’t harming others, with narcissism? Who has the “right” to tell other adults “no”? Does such a “right” even exist, where does it come from?
AHAHAAAAHAAAAHAHAAHHA!!!!!
oh, wait… you were serious, weren’t you.
ok then, please do tell me, which government are the multinationals restricted by? And which laws exactly can they not circumvent by moving stuff to another country?
not to mention that in the Libertarian version of “government”, there wouldn’t be enough government to even limit what damage a corporation can do within the country.
Wowbagger,
“Especially when we’re talking corporations. It’d be like taking one of those Supermax prisons and asking the inmates to run it themselves under the honour system.”
I guess I don’t buy into the general demonization corporations. The financial system has been privileged by government with money creation and a tax favored status and has gotten a bit parasitic and in need of reform, but there are millions of productive corporations in the US alone. The honour system works well for most of them, with a good reputation being a key asset they work to preserve for the success of their business. Contracts, market discipline and laws against fraud, are enough to keep most of the system working well.
“Who has the “right” to tell other adults “no”?”
And so it begins again…
Jadehawk,
Any corporation is an artificial legal being totally at the mercy of government. The minute a government doesn’t recognize it, it doesn’t have the power to move assets within that country anywhere. It has ceased to exist within those borders. Perhaps governments will run into trouble with other governments if they exploit corporations in this way, or perhaps governments risk frightening investment by other corporations away.
For the Libertarians present: consider the following scenario.
Somewhere in a desert area, some distance from the equator in the upper latitudes of the northern hemisphere, there is, for lack of a better word, a pit, in the form of a concrete-coated depression in the ground. For the sake of argument, its footprints in the shape of a square, with sides, say, 40 feet in length, and oriented perpendicular to the arms of the compass. All of the walls are 20 feet high and rise straight from the bottom of the pit. On the East, West, and North sides, and for about the first 5 feet of the South side in either direction, there is an additional 20 feet of concrete wall; on the South side (where the angle of the sun leaves a significant area under the wall in shadow) there is merely flat ground above.
It’s summer, and with the sun beating down and the wind shut out, it’s hot in the pit. Fifty people have been placed in this pit and abandoned, with food and water enough to keep them alive, technically. A bunch of them have staked out positions against the South wall of the pit, and there’s no free space in the shade here. A few of the people in the shade, who happen to be at the east and west ends of the wall (where there’s also additional wall above the pit) are offering to take turns with others for free; others are considering offering their places to others in exchange for those others’ share of the food and water. The rest are sitting back, smiling smugly and thinking that they’ve done pretty well for themselves.
Then, a ladder is dropped into the pit. I don’t feel like working out the trigonometry problem, but it’s just barely long enough so that, if it was placed right against the South wall, it would allow everyone in the pit to climb up and out. However, this will require someone to move from the part of the South wall below the opening in the higher section of the wall. The people who don’t have spots by the wall get ready to set the ladder up and climb out, but find that no one in the right area of the South wall is willing to move. Their reasons for refusing aren’t really relevant: they be tired, they may feel so hot already that going into the sun for a moment would be unbearable, they might believe that whatever’s outside the pit will be even worse, they might simply feel like being contrary. Perhaps they doubt that the ladder really is tall enough to get them out, and demand to see “proof” of this before they move, then brush it off when the others hold the ladder up straight to illustrate its height. One or two might offer to move if given everybody’s share of food and water, but with the desert to cross even after they get out of the pit, the others aren’t willing to agree to this. A few people attempt to reason, cajole, browbeat, or threaten the people in the shade who refuse to move, but those people smugly respond that they’re entitled to their spots and they shouldn’t have to move if they don’t want to since they “aren’t harming anyone.”
I think it obvious to any sane person that, even if one takes “freedom” to be the paramount good, that the people in the pit will be more “free” after they have climbed out (and also that the claims on the part of those in the shade that they “aren’t harming anyone” are absurd). Yet, the version of Libertarian tenets that has been prevented to me dictates that this state of affairs would be profoundly immoral, since it requires them to force one or more people to move out of the shade, away from the wall, thereby imposing on their free choice. If this line of reasoning sounds absurd, well, that’s because it is. I invite you, keeping in mind that this is an allegory and some elements are simplified slightly or glossed over, to draw the obvious connections.
Under what circumstances could it possibly be legal to impregnate an unconscious woman anyway?
Well, there’s no entry in the Constitution specifying a “right to not be impregnated without one’s consent…”
Azkyroth,
Irrational human behavior can thwart any system. You could just as easily have posited a collective existing in the pit, that had the hysterical belief that global warming existed outside the pit that would kill anyone who left, and who refused access to that wall to those “individualists” who would use the ladder to escape, to protect them from their own “folly”.
Which is to be preferred a system that allows individual follies but thwarts collective follies, or one that concentrates power so that collective follies become more dangerous. We have two centuries of every increase collective follies behind us, with the rise of nation states and conscript militaries, nationalism, collective and racial identities, and religious extremism. These things don’t keep happening by chance, humans are susceptible to collective identities that probably contributed to their success at the hunting group and tribal level. Look at the ease with which we can mock, demonize and dehumanize each other, even here at this blog. There are some who have even tried to argue that such us versus them behavior is a virtue. This human vulnerability has been and still can be exploited on a mass scale by demigogues, religious hierarchies, idealogues, racists and nationalists. Human social makeup also includes the valuing of altruism, self-sacrifice and heroism, but lets not overlook the vulnerabilities to the irrational mass identities that we were left with when our “success” perhaps prematurely aborted our evolution.
Observing that problems can develop in the other direction is not an answer to the contradiction I posed.
Why is it that libertarians seem to be the most passionate AGW deniers? The only libertarian I’ve ever come across who accepts the scientific consensus on global warming was Dr Michael Shermer. It seems libertarians hate climatologists (except the few brave enough to speak out against the systematic incompetency of climatologists in general) just as much as they hate the idea that the government takes taxes.
oh.my.
you’ve removed yourself completely from the real world into the world of pure theory, haven’t you.
Kel,
Two or three of the seven leading candidates for the Libertarian presidential nomination were AGW believers. None were still in the running when it was narrowed to the final three however.
Libertarians are a pretty skeptical lot, and anything being used as an excuse to impose central control will receive special scrutiny. So libertarians may seem well represented among those who are skeptics, because they are the ones that have looked at the evidence.
So what “evidence” convinced you that every competent climate scientist on the planet is wrong?
Azkyroth,
You assume that libertarians are fundamentalist idealogues, perhaps the minority that are objectivists are, but a significant plurality are just classical liberals favoring a return to the constitution and a limited low tax government, with the minimum military necessary for self-defense. They share values of social and economic freedom and a pacifism and tolerance towards others both at the national and personal level. They are skeptical of those who would presume to impose their values and decisions upon others. It should not be a surprise that the educated are well represented in a group that values reason and personal responsibility.
It just seems that AGW sceptics are quite a proportional of libertarians, and it far outweighs the current scientific scepticism on the issue. And that’s what bugs me, it’s that the scientists who have worked on climatology for decades who have studied the evidence in far greater detail than you or I are saying it’s true, and it seems that the allegation from many libertarian circles regardless of qualification is that those scientists are incompetent or reading the data wrong. What’s even more surprising is that it comes from libertarians who are normally on-board with science, and from those who normally hate conspiracy theorists.
I guess what I’m saying is why do libertarians think they know everything?
Azkyroth,
“So what “evidence” convinced you that every competent climate scientist on the planet is wrong?”
The work of Solanki and others showing that solar activity had increased to an unusually high level during the 20th century. Examination of the argument put forward for the AGW hypothesis, showed that less than 30% of the recent warming could be explained by the direct effects of AGW, all the rest was model based. Given two plausible hypotheses, a complex non-linear system, and a relatively small energy imbalance of about 0.75W/m^2 globally and annually averaged, we need models to attribute the warming to the possible causes. There is an extensive diagnostic literature on the models showing that the models are not yet up to the task of attributing this small an energy imbalance.
You might want to check out “The Usual Lies” thread for a recent discussion of the evidence.
While I’d posted my repetition of the question before I saw your response, it turned out to be apt. Googling “Solanki Global Warming” led me to this. I quote:
Support for potential interplay of causes and complex, multivariable explanations: sure.
Support for “human activity is plausibly not a cause”: not so…at all, really.
Try again?
AG @287,
This seems a loaded question.
You mention 3 factors:
C=an instance of collective folly
I=an instance of individual folly
M=power is concentrated and that makes (can make?) collective folly more dangerous (to an unspecified degree)
The alternatives are:
1.(I & C)
2.(I & ¬C)
3.(¬IF & CF)
4.(¬I & ¬C).
5.(M)
It’s a problem, especially since I don’t know much about M, only that M↔¬(I & ¬C)*.
Can you justify having to choose between only 2 and 5 and ignoring 1, 3 and 4?
* Though that’s an assertion I disagree with.
Kel,
The worlds climate modelers will probably fit within one auditorium, and I doubt they would say AGW is “true”, because undoubtedly they would acknowledge most of the diagnostic literature I am relying upon. Probably many think they have the actual climate sensitivity to GHGs bracketed by the models, although, you will find that their arguments for this are based not upon GHGs but upon aerosols and solar radiative forcings. They may well have the sensitivity to one or both of these bracketed, especially at the lower end, but we are realizing that the solar coupling to the climate is quite different from GHGs and has significant non-radiative components, such UV’s influence on the stratosphere and impact through chemistry, specifically the creation of ozone in both the stratosphere and troposphere. Assuming CO2’s purely radiative forcing coupled to different components of the climate system than solar is equivilent is questionable. Climate feedbacks to all the forcings is poorly understood. Aerosol forcings even in the latter half of the 20th century are poorly understood.
Morales…
Translation plz?
And this supports your contention that AGW is not occurring and/or a hoax how exactly?
Azkyroth,
“Support for “human activity is plausibly not a cause”: not so…at all, really.”
AGW is plausible. I fully expect it to come in somewhere between 20 and 60% of the attribution. In the lower half of this range it will be swamped by natural variation, in the upper half of this range, we get another century like the last if solar activity returns to normal levels, above this range we get into the climate sensitivity range of the climate models, but their projections are still likely way off, because some of their documented errors come back to haunt them with a vengenence in a few decades of simulation, biasing their projections too high.
Solanki’s statement about GHGs predates the wealth of model diagnostic literature associated with the AR4 and that has continued to be published since. In addition his only earlier analysis was just a simple correlation analysis that did not factor in the thermal inertia of the oceans that was acknowledged in the TAR but not really well quantified until a year after Solanki’s statement. This is not about argument from authority anyway.
So what the hell is it you’re actually arguing?
Azkyroth, he’s putting forward a false dichotomy, even in its own terms.
I also have a problem with his term “collective folly” – I’m guessing he means “folly collectivelly decided on” rather than “multiple simultaneous cases of individual folly”, but he doesn’t make it clear.
AG indulges in vague and sophistic language.
Forgive me from asking then, but how is this view any different from advocates of AGW?
John, Collective folly is folly by collective identities or justified by collective identities such as nation states, religions, racies and ideologies. The rise of nation states in the 19th and 20 centuries, the religious crusades and the muslim jihads, the war between aryan Germany and the marxist soviet union, the imperialism of Japan, the cold war that exploited ethnic differences and national aspirations, etc.
Individual follies in a free society are hopefully balanced by the benefits of individual risk taking, invention and enterprise.
I should have perhaps clarified that by collective follie, I wasn’t referring to the decisions by the leaders of the collectives, but to the dangerous human vulnerability to collective identity. The masses of people that were fooled into actually identifying with a religion, race, nation or collective ideology. The leaders merely exploited this susceptibility and according to some arguments, such as that by F.A. Hayek, the worst will always rise to the top.
AG, I figured. But..
Maybe.
Might it also be, however, that collective follies in a free society are hopefully balanced by the benefits of collective risk taking, invention and enterprise?
I imagine Berlusconi will say what the vatican wants so that he is owed a favour when it comes to the next election. He’s the sort of guy who never does something for nothing.
Kel#305,
The IPCC statement is:
“It is very likely that humans are responsible for most of the recent warming.”
“very likely” corresponds to 90% confidence in the statement. The statement has been interpreted to mean and and intended to mean that nearly all the recent warming was due to AGW. The IPCC also made projections with their models about future temperature increases and claimed certain risks were likely if no action were taken.
There is no evidence to support their level of confidence other than the models in the attribution, and multidecadal projections are unjustifiable with the documented model errors.
The current evidence doesn’t justify their level of cconfidence, attribution or alarm. But AGW is plausible and significant, but even just 20% attribution is significant without being any cause for alarm. The solar hypothesis is also plausible, despite being poorly understood, because there are good correlations of the climate with solar activity in the past, although the correlation seems larger than is thought to be explainable by the estimated variation in radiative forcing. The level of solar activity seems too high to be a mere coincidence. We need advances in models and understanding to credibly attribute the recent warming.
The scientists involved seem to think that there’s reason to be confident. Again, what makes you think you know how to better interpret the evidence than the scientists who have trained for decades who look at them?
And how is this vulnerability avoided in your system?
windy#312,
If the central government is severely limited in power, then not much harm can be done with it, even if a collective identity gets ahold of it. Ideally, there is cultural support for a constitution, checks, balances, standards and individual rights that keep the government small. If that fails, once a collective identity gets ahold of the government, they won’t be instantly strong, it will take some time (years) to build up strength, like Hitler had to before WWII. Keep the central government small.
Kel,
“The scientists involved seem to think that there’s reason to be confident. Again, what makes you think you know how to better interpret the evidence than the scientists who have trained for decades who look at them? ”
The scientists involved are not supposed to “think” there is a reason to be confident. They are supposed to have evidence. You should review my posts on “The Usual Lies” thread. It should be clear that the scientists peer review statements of the implications of their own results call the models into question. The “consensus” is a fiction, so it isn’t just me. Just see if anyone can back up the IPCC AR4 statement. It wasn’t backed up at the time it was written, and even more problems with any such statement have been published since then.
AG, the power a government wields is a separate variable to the set of laws a govermnent enforces, and the size of that government yet another. What good is small, weak government with bad laws?
There are eight combinations of factors you should address, since you have three variables. (I’m kindly leaving aside the cultural support of which you speak, I guess that’s a constant)
John Morales,
More laws imply a larger government wielding more power. The impact of bad laws are greatly reduced if the government is small and weak. If you look at the current US, the federal government adds little to what the states provide. It is a bit more efficient at collecting revenue, when it then feeds back to the state with strings attached. About the only time you don’t want the federal government weak and limited is when under attack by another strong government. So really the shrinkage of the federal government should be accompied by an attempt to shrink governments everywhere, so that they can’t get away with mutually justifying their larger size.
Africangenesis,
Somalia’s central government (to the extent Somalia can be said to have one) is small and weak. Must be paradise; I expect you’re packing your bags even now.
(And that’s not all Somalia has to offer libertarians yearning to breathe free. You’ll be delighted to learn that firearms are abundant and easily available in that enlightened realm.)
AG,
I said bad laws.
The continuum is bad…good, not few…many.
This is not self-evident to me.
Well, yes, but if so, conversely the enforcement of good laws is greatly reduced if the government is small and weak.
That would not be a good thing.
I note there’s “power” in the sense of the scope of and authoritativeness of decrees available, “power” in the sense of control over legislature, and “power” in the sense of de-facto enforcement of law.
I don’t care to speculate about the US, I’m an Aussie.
Frodosaves, a woman’s consent isn’t important, just look at how their savior was conceived. Gimme an R, gimme an A, gimme a P, gimme an E!
The worlds climate modelers will probably fit within one auditorium, and I doubt they would say AGW is “true”, because undoubtedly they would acknowledge most of the diagnostic literature I am relying upon. – Africangensis
Complete crap. Almost all climate scientists, modellers and others, consider that increased greenhouse gas levels account, once feedbacks are included (africangenesis’s dishonest “30%” claim neglects the well-understood positive feedback that warmer air holds more water vapour, itself a greenhouse gas), for all the warming since 1970. Almost none believe the sun had anything to do with this. Anyone who wants to know the real state of climate science should look at what climate scientists actually say about it, not at the words of an ideologically-driven cherry-picker such as africangenesis, who recently showed on “the usual lies” that he was ignorant of basic modelling terminology, and apparently thought that a warmer sea would hold more carbon dioxide. I have challenged him repeatedly to post his lies on the recent thread on climate modelling at RealClimate. He won’t, because he knows damn well he’d get shredded.
Well, aside from the fact that I think you’ve misrepresented the argument via that simplification – since you asked; I think it very much demonstrates that patriarchy is very much alive in Italy.
The Catholic Church has done more to oppress the rights of women, and perpetuate the ignorance of men and women to create a climate for the oppression of others, than probably any extant organisation.
THe Vatican represents the ultimate abuse of undeserved privilege. It is a organisation that exists entirely for the satisfaction of the elite men who run it, who mascarade as living gods to subjugate and oppress the ignorant faithful.
The leaders of the Catholic Church represent the most terrible of abusers, because they are the most powerful, but also the most fearful and conservative. They know that allowing the exercise of freewill will necessarily compromise their power. They know that their dominion depends upon the control of every aspect of the private lives of their followers. They exploit an anachronistic subservience to their status as possessors of penises and the gaudy baubles of office, to undermine women, men, and children. And all for their own personal gain.
THe world would be a much better place for the non-existance of the Catholic Church.
Sorry for this interjection, everybody else.
Bernard,
Actually, you’re spot on the topic, we’re waffling. No need for modesty or to apologise.
More laws imply a larger government wielding more power. – africangenesis
Garbage. The government becoming weaker (say, because of rebellions, or bankruptcy), does not reduce the number of laws. Conversely, Nazi Germany had effectively one law: what the Fuehrer says, goes. In this sort of tosh we see the true quality of “libertarian” thought.
As I posted 2 days ago:
I propose a new Internet law called Bojan’s law(after the unconscious drunk I have just dragged out of a car into my Emergency Department) :
“As a internet discussion involving politics grows longer, the probability of it being hijacked by Libertarians approaches one.”
Why do you think that collective identity can only be harmful when it gets ahold of a central government? Is an “us and them” mentality not a problem between the tribes of Papua New Guinea? What prevents things like gangs and sports hooliganism from occurring in a “free society”?
Knockgoats#320,
If you know what you claim to know, you should be able to challenge me here. Even when corrected you continue to make ignorant statements.
Yes, cold water can hold more CO2 in solution, but the fearmongering about the oceans becoming more acidic are based upon more CO2 in the ocean, otherwise it wouldn’t be more acidic. We are well below the saturation point for CO2, so the fearmongering about a more CO2 causing a more acidic ocean and hurting coral reefs and other calcium shelled creatures for instance is plausible, because CO2 levels in the oceans can increase. You should try to understand the fearmongering at least.
You know darn well, that my 30% claim has always been about the direct effects of CO2 and has always openly neglected the water vapor positive feeback. That is because it is the “net” feedbacks that are important and the net feedbacks may well be negative despite the strong positive water vapor feedback. You’ve have been corrected on this before. Water vapor is also a positive feedback to solar warming and to decreases in aerosol cooling. The others are welcome to see the discussion on “The Usual Lies” thread, and on other threads, where peer review evidence is cited.
You misunderstand so much, that I think you mustn’t have been following the threads closely. realclimate.org is highly censored. Evidently you haven’t found anything on that thread that addresses the issues raised by the model diagnostic literature. You are welcome to seek answers there to issues raised here, cut and paste if you like. I doubt you will receive answers there that you can defend here, unless of course, their answers are correct, and I’ll quickly acknowledge that. They aren’t wrong on everything there you know. They just try to hand wave or gloss over too many issues that can’t be ignored in a model of a nonlinear complex system. Don’t expect them to concede many points. The haven’t been intellectually honest about the problems with the Mann hockeystick and are still scrambling to defend it.
What part of shut up is confusing to you AG?
Why are the rest of you still replying to this bozo?
I am sure I am not the only lurker sick to death of people letting Libertarian morons derail thread after thread.
Windy#325,
Those are legitimate points. A tendency towards collective identities was probably selected for in our evolution, and may well be responsible for the extinctions of neanderthal in Europe and home erectus in Asia, and well as the first Americans and any number of other modern human groups. We’ve discussed this here before, with recent hypotheses questioning the population bottleneck explanation for the small effective population size of humans. The hypothesis put forward was that there was little outbreeding and that effective population size was decreased as different groups were extinguished.
Mrs Tilton,
Somalia is more like left anarchy than limited government libertarianism. Note the lack of respect for private property.
Spurge,
“What part of shut up is confusing to you AG?”
The part I asked PZ about.
Do you really want a fawning, confirming, unchallenging environment? Do you really understand what you believe in and know its basis? Are you just giving lip service to evidence based inquirey, and hoping someone else has done it right, but get scared when you see them challenged? If you want to be on the side of the evidence, all you have to do is be open minded and seek to understand.
The most damning indictment of Libertarianism might be that, even in a matter of this kind of gravity, self-interest allows someone like AG to hijack this thread with self-indulgent Me, Me, Me arguments.
Even AG’s limited attempts to engage with the actual subject of the original post quickly degenerate into indulgent, abstract discussions of interspecies breeding ethics.
It isn’t like there aren’t alternative, and appropriate forums for this kind of discussion, AG. For fuck’s sake; there is a time and place to argue one’s corner, and time and place to bow out for the sake of decency.
Bernard Bummer,
“abstract discussions of interspecies breeding ethics.”
It wasn’t “abstract” at all was it? Do you really think PZ’s proposal to acknowledge its rights and have it raised by a family addresses the ethical concerns. Whether he/she would be accepted sexually or in any other meaningful way is quite a concrete concern about the humaneness of such an enterprise and meaning of such a life. That said, I don’t think this was PZ’s final thinking on the issue, if he were to think about it seriously, he might well decide the ethical concerns were too great to go beyond the embryo stage.
AG
Just because no one wants to listen to your bullshit does not make this a “fawning, confirming, unchallenging environment”
I know that it is hard for a selfish person such as yourself to understand but it is not all about you.
You derail thread after thread with completely irrelevant Libertarian bullshit.
“If you want to be on the side of the evidence, all you have to do is be open minded and seek to understand.”
That is rich coming from an AGW denialist.
Don’t bother to reply to me as I will be ignoring you again as PZ has requested.
The host of this blog has told you twice now to shut up.
What part of that is confusing to you?
Hmmm, looks like Brian Macker has 10 hours to prove his claim that PZ posted his support for the idea of a human/chimpanzee hybrid and then deleted said post. Or Brian could admit that he was just very confused and/or made the whole thing up.
AG, did you read the original post?
You’ve managed to railroad this topic into a defence of your own personal ideological beliefs, where a better person would have refused to take the bait (if bait it was, rather than a reaction to provocation). You’ve allowed your beligerent defence of libertarian ideals to get in the way of a discussion about Catholic moral imperialism, and much, much more importantly, the rights of a person in life and death.
I’m all for organic development of comment threads, but this is just a little too distasteful – you’ve managed to divert this thread as far as arguments about global warming and the size and role of federal government.
(And it is abstract, insofar as, it is an entirely hypothetical discussion based on rights which have no agreed formulation or formal status. It is also insultingly trivial in its real-world implications, in the context of this post.)
“As a (mainly) USAian internet discussion involving politics grows longer, the probability of it being hijacked by Libertarians approaches one.”
Fix’d.
I’d be very confused to see e.g. a mainly Russian dicussion be hijacked by libertarians.
Rrr,
plus, the word “libertarian” is, like “liberal”, subject to significant regional variation. In the usual usage here in Europe, libertarians aren’t dorkish Republicans congratulating themselves for thinking they’re openminded about gays and dopesmokers, they’re people with black flags and a fond nostalgic regard for Buenaventura Durruti.
(Myself, I used to be a libertarian and am now a liberal; in each case, not necessarily in the sense that AG would use the terms.)
Bernard Bummer,
Did you read the original post?
Which comments in this thread do you think shed new light on “the rights of a person in life and death”? Certainly not yours.
“if bait it was, rather than a reaction to provocation”
Evidently, you decided to criticize without caring to check. It was about my 17th post on this thread (#254 And it was a simple correction of a misimpression that was being given, and NOT a personal defense. Libertarianism had been mentioned 10 times previously by others on the thread, so they thought it was relevant.
Which direction do you think this thread would have gone, if it hadn’t been hijacked? Do you have anything to offer on the original topic?
I do remember posting directly on-topic. By the time I arrived, you’d already ruined the thread.
Yeah, yeah; not your fault. Strangely, many threads on Pharyngula end up as a discussion of libertarianism, with you at the centre of them. I’m sure it isn’t your fault in those cases, either.
As I said, baited or not, a better person would resist.
Aside from my opinions on the Catholic Church, which are germane to the original post (and given above)?
It seems very obvious to me that life and death in a case such as this should be a matter for the next of kin and the medical professionals providing treatment. Well-intentioned meddling by other agencies is bad enough, but this kind of cynical, sanctimonious exploitation is truly horrible. That anybody would choose to draw, or be seen to draw, equivalence between value of life and reproductive capacity, simply compounds the insult.
?!
This just in … 37-degree incubators have ‘right to life’.
I see AG again hijacked a thread with its morally bankrupt libertardian sophisms after PZ asked it to leave. I see a plonking in its deluded future.
Bernard Bumner,
Apologies for misspelling your name earlier. I now see your post #321. Some of the hyperbole might be justified if your context is the whole long history of the church, but if you are speaking of recent decades, the Islamic fundamentalist world would seem to be worse offenders. If by extant organizations would you include the Peoples Republic of China, forced abortions and restricting of reproduction would appear to compare unfavorably with a voluntary organization such as the Catholic Church.
so, a woman is little more than a fetus/baby receptacle in Berlusconi’s eyes. How very “pro-life” of him. He puts the creation of a new life over the enjoyment of an existing one.
In general, the Islamists don’t represent a single monolithic organisation. The concerns of individual sects and local interests are often disparate and singular. However, I think that one could easily substitute either of the examples you gave into my original comment, and the point would hold.
The population of the PRC is similar in size to membership of the Catholic church worldwide. I suppose that the only difference is that the influence of the leadership of the PRC is somewhat restricted to its own citizens, whereas the influence of the Catholic Church is mutlinational.
I wouldn’t really want to try to construct any kind of league table; they all deserve equal criticism.
I’m not really sure how voluntary membership of the Catholic Church really is, and especially not for the often fundamentally disempowered women who are born into the church. Also, the church wields disproportionate power in many countries and via many agencies. Simply to be born into a society dominated by Catholic influence, is to fall under its power; this is certainly the case in Italy.
Really, it is not very different from the abused spouse who stays with, and even defends, their abuser. The will of a captive victim is not necessarily a free one.
Jebus, africangenesis, you aren’t challenging — you are a goddamned droning BORE.
Let’s see if you can just stop babbling for a day. Take a break. Go off somewhere else for 24 hours. I am really tired of you morons dredging up this crappy Libertarian gobbledygook and going on and on in thread after thread.
And if you can’t shut up for a little while, I can shut you down permanently here.
“and won’t be deprived of his axlotl tanks.”
Axlotl tanks are the most terrifying thing I’ve ever read about in sci-fi and this story brings such just a little too close to reality. This rape-apologist douche is *scary*.
I am strangely (creepily) reminded of the Spanish film Hable con ella/Talk to her.
Disclaimer: I do not like Berlusconi, but the English-speaking press is not translating correctly his blunders… So international public opinion will keep barking up at the wrong tree.
According to the Italian opposition press, what he said exactly is: “She is alive, she could even have a child”, referring to the fact that Ms Englaro could come out of her coma. I do not think he was implying that women are only valuable for their reproductive system (he also said: “I cannot put a soldier next to every pretty woman – we would run out of soldiers” and not that rape was a compliment to a woman’s beauty).
The risk is that Mr. Berlusconi is using this dramatic situation to create a precedent to change the Italian constitution, with the help of his old cronies, and overrun the high court’s decisions – dictatorship anybody? Clearly, do not expect a divorced-then-remarried man to be a paladin of catholic faith but for his immediate gain. On the bright side, I have to report that most other confessions (like the valdese church) have called for respect of the judge’s decisions and have joined the protests against the PM decree. I pity poor Mr. Englaro who had to make such a hard decision – religious or not, hope is the last virtue to die.
That brings gross to a whole new level.
The Englaro case is repulsive, but unsurprising given the Catholic Church’s elevation of suffering of all kinds, however unnecessary or preventable, to an incomprehensible mystical virtue. I don’t agree, though, that getting rid of religion would necessarily do away with such grotesqueries; people so inclined would just find or concoct some other ideas to explain/justify their attitudes & actions.
Nature 1, Berlusconi 0; the body of Eluana Englaro has ceased to function. Her grave marker can read “Died 1992; buried 2009”.
This is why I have a living will and power of attorney for health care. The Biophysicist and I have agreed that a PVS is not where we want to be. Plugs will be pulled, no nourishment provided and nature will take its course.
The online edition of Repubblica has just posted that Eluana Englaro died at 20:10 CET.
http://www.repubblica.it/2009/02/sezioni/cronaca/eluana-englaro-3/addio-eluana/addio-eluana.html.
(If she weren’t, how would she be capable of having babies?) Since she is married, the original owner of the rights to her reproductive system — her father — has transferred them to her husband, the new owner. So the fact that she cannot consent to bearing a child (or do anything else at all) is irrelevant. Who cares what she thinks, even if she could think?
Excuse me?
How about: No.
The owner of the reproductive system is the woman in question. No one else has a right to her body, be they husband or father.
That kind of thought process is absolutely inhumane, not to mention misogynistic.
Then what was the point of saying it at all? It betrays a failure of his mind and his morality.
That “Why she could even have a child” statement has serious implications of evil thinking.
Since she cannot consent to sexual relations or to artificial insemination, she could NOT have a child.
What’s your evidence that religion is not a motivating factor in the formation of their beliefs and attitudes?
Lin @352,
well, it looks as though I’d better not tell you about my ideas for Irish babies…
The Catholic Church just simply can’t mind its business. Italians don’t care what the church thinks or says (and politicians are a joke. The only reason why those people are in the positions they’re in is because nobody else wants them!).
I just read on yahoo news that she died today. Hopefully her poor family will now be able to mourn in peace.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090209/ap_on_re_eu/eu_italy_right_to_die
Sorry, don’t know how to make pretty links on here.
Mrs T,
I hate to tell you this, but I suspect that Jonathan Swift already had that idea.
‘Tis Himself, Mrs Tilton is letting Lin know that Lin was commenting to satire. Just in her funny and indirect way.
To all of the individuals who are defending the Vatican and Berlusconi:
There is something SERIOUSLY wrong with all of you.
Yes, I saw the article about her passing away. Good for her — maybe now her family can get a little peace.
However, the article included this bit at the end:
Idiots! It has been “too late to save her” for the last 17 years, and no legislation could have saved her anyway! These people and their supporters are certifiably insane, if not outright evil.
~David D.G.
Outright evil. The bottom line is, the whole thing only gave them an opportunity to crank up a way to circumvent a Supreme Court decision, as well as the President’s. That’s why they’re still pushing.
So, does this mean we cart off ALL sterile people to prison since they’re incapable of reproducing anyway?
ok, I have to admit, this post made me LOL
Way to twist my words to make it sound unreasonable. I should rephrase for you: the scientists have come to their strong conclusion based on the evidence. Of course there’s some doubt in the climate models, but there’s a difference between reasonable and unreasonable doubt. It seems you are casting unreasonable doubt by calling into question the sheer amount of conclusion that has been based on models that turned out to be wrong, do you not think that the vast majority of people who actually work on the matter know of the trappings on which you speak?
That’s what I find really incredulous, is the sheer arrogance of libertarians on this matter. They fall into the same borderline-conspiracy mode when it comes to a large body of science and large body of evidence as creationists do. Do you think the scientists working are that incompetent that you, who does not have climatology training, know better than all of them? How is that not better than a creationist complaining about bad radiometric dating results, or cases of “fraud” like piltdown man or the peppered moths? How is it better than them talking about the mathematical impossibility of evolution or irreducible complexity? It seems that there’s a parallel between the creationist arguments against evolution as the AWG-deniers against global warming… given the amount of science and looking at the evidence done, surely you’d have to concede that there is some merit behind the IPCC statement.
We had a case in the US a few years ago. A comatose woman in a nursing home was starting to look more and more pregnant with each passing week.
Turns out she was. She had been raped by a worker there. DNA tests led to the scumbag being identified and prosecuted.
Her parents didn’t want the pregnancy terminated – they wanted to raise the result of the rape because it would be part of their daughter. How disgusting is that?
Anyway, she had the kid….and mercifully it killed her.
Raven @ 7,
My cousin, representative of many of my relatives, pointed out this story to me several days ago, saying “They’re going to murder her, just like they did Terry Schiavo!”
Are ALL these “right to lifers” NUTS?
I am ashamed of how my own country is dealing with this case. Not surprisingly I moved to the Netherlands.
Eluana Englaro eventually died yesterday.
But the parliament, once again in control of the catholic church, is passing a law to prevent anyone from stopping the treatments on comatose patients, even the ones that already decided not to be kept alive by machines.
Italy is becoming more and more like Iran, in the heart of Europe.
I have to add for clarity: stop the treatments on comatose patients, whose basic brain functions are shut down and have no chance to wake up.
People like this?
Yes pilty, the case of someone in a degenerative coma for 17 years and someone a few hours after an accident are exactly analogous.
Just goes to prove the Vatican could care less about women as long as they produce offspring – preferably male offspring. Sick bastards!
Leave it to Pilty to get his evidence wrong. And he wonders why we don’t believe him. TSK.
Rev. BigDumbChimp @371:
Mr Dunlap wasn’t in some kind of vegetative coma – he was ‘brain dead’. Now either ‘brain death’ is Death with a capital D or it isn’t. If it is, then it doesn’t matter if you’ve been ‘brain dead’ for a few hours or for several years – you are Dead and everybody knows Dead people don’t come back to life. That’s why you’re allowed to withdraw their life support and slice them open to harvest their organs.
In traditional Christian culture the only sure sign of death (ie that the soul had left the body) was the onset of decomposition (hence the significance of John 11:39). Which is why priests would baptize recently deceased infants or pagans.
Hoax, please explain how a doctor’s misdiagnosis is anything like a brain dead woman who’s body was on life support for seventeen years?
Actually, Med school told me that the only sure signs of death are
– livores mortis
– rigor mortis
– injuries incompatible with life (e.g. decapitation)
and (later on)
– decomposition and some similarly unsavory changes.
The time span inbetween brain death and those signs is called intermediate life, but nobody can return from intermediate life if brain function has ceased.
Now, the question is:
Who assessed Mr. Dunlaps alleged death on what criteria?
See, he says he HEARD the doctor say something. You can not hear (much less understand) anything if your brain function has ceased.
There is definitely something fishy about this case and I absolutly disbelieve that the guy was brain dead in the first place.
Janine @375:
How do you know there was a “misdiagnosis”? You don’t – but your worldview demands that there just had to have been.
(Be afraid …)
Hoax, I am justified in thinking that there was a mistake made rather then thinking that prayer brought the person back from the dead. I know, I am taking a strict materialist view here. How closed minded of me.
Hoax is a hoax. Situation normal.
That’s even better than PZ’s “effectively dead”, lol.
And still, the Hoax compares the case of a misdiagnosis to that of a brain dead woman kept on life support.
“Facts are stupid things.”
Piltdown, if it was a miracle, how are we to know that it wasn’t because a nearby Hindu prayed to Ganesh to heal her? How do you go about showing that it could only have been your god that intervened as opposed to one of the many others?
Oh, maybe the proper translation is “intermediary life” or something along the lines. i don’T know, maybe one of the native speakers can help me out.
The german term “Intermediäres Leben” is used and teached as a term for the time span between brain dead and the dying of the last body cell.
Funny, eh?
Pilty, his picture is in the dictionary next to the definition of “failed evidence”.
Yet “effectively dead” is exactly what Jesus was between death and resurrection.
Say, Pilt: Have you decided on whether or not ideas are for true girls, and does your wife know your opinion on the matter?
You’ve been uncharacteristically shy about answering that one.
The Germans do like their terms, don’t they? Lebensunwertes Leben comes to mind …
Well, I scanned the comments and it seems that this update has yet to be posted here, so I am chiming in.
The battle over this issue is yet to be decided here in Italy, as the Parliament is voting at top speed a quite awful “last will” law for this case. The law was rushed to the Parliament in the hope to counter the judges’ decisions and “save” Ms. Englaro.
However, his father had already had the dishydratation protocol begun, and on monday night his daughter finally passed away peacefully. The preliminar autoptic results report that death occured by cause of dishydratation alone, and for the moment there is no evidence whatsoever that doctors mismanaged the protocol (strictly defined by the sentence) or administered any medication to quicken the death.
So, as I said, the battle rages on – yet the Englaros have won their war.
To be clear, and to use a cliché: Berlusconi does not represent many people of my country. There are many who actually have his positions (and even more absurd .. some MPs actually shouted “She has been murdered!” in Parliament), but many others who do not.
People who actually made this outcome possible, after all, have much more respect for issues such as this, are less vocal, and are less prone to similar scandals. But they are here.
Wow Pilty, you Godwined REALLY hard. Congratulations.
But nice to know there are no proper arguments left on your side.
Huh. Interesting that you should bring that up, Pilt.
Those particular Germans, the ones who came up with that phrase, were lead by a devoted Catholic who was inspired by the model of utter, fierce loyalty to the Catholic Church, and also inspired by the utter condemnation of everything outside of the Church.
PS: Are ideas for true girls or not, and does your wife know your opinion on the matter?
Are any of your children daughters? If so, are you going to withdraw them from school?
Till Eulenspiegel up to his lustige Streiche again?
Someone should have told this devoted Catholic it was a mortal sin to blow your brains out.
On what do you base these assertions?
+++
(Re your PS – I have just finished reading Bp Williamson’s letter. I’ll address your queries on the thread dedicated to His Eminence asap.)
Piltdown wrote:
Oh, probably second- or third- hand accounts by people who weren’t there and from historically unsupported documents that may well have been spun from whole cloth by people who could benefit from the consquences of people believing it. And let’s not even get in to the issue of translation…
Oops, hang on – that’s the story of Jesus. My mistake.
Piltdown: photographic evidence.
John Morales, #392
Hmm, knowing Piltdown’s track record with such damning evidence he’ll probably go for some equivocation – either about history in general or the Nazis in particular – and/or some facetious nonsense he seems to think is funny.
Gosh! A Catholic acted in a manner inconsistent with Catholicism! How novel! How unprecedented! Quelle surprise!
Oh, merely his own words. Your own statements about the glories of the Church and the nobility of monarchy are quite often strangely similar to them.
Und so weiter
Hitler probably dinnae make his porridge the right way either – the wee gadgie Sassenach…
Owlmirror @394:
There have plenty of people who were baptized Catholics and went on to disregard Catholic teaching. The British politician Clare Short, for instance, who called herself a “cultural Catholic” while supporting abortion. Or the ex-Dominican Matthew Fox, who publicly rejected Original Sin and eventually left the Church to get in touch with his inner dolphin. Not to mention that irascible, slightly crazed anti-Semitic German fellow who kick-started the Reformation.
But you called Hitler a “devoted Catholic”. “Devoted” as in devout as in someone who takes their Catholicism seriously.
Wowbagger @395:
Plucked at random from a Pharyngula thread:
Is that the distant skirl of pipes I hear?
John Morales @392:
Evidence of what?
Hitler and Nazis greeting Church dignitaries and photographed with churches in the background or even inside churches …
I could post pictures of Hitler greeting the French head of state, standing proudly in front of the Eiffel Tower or standing with a reverential demeanour before Napoleon’s tomb. Perhaps Hitler was really a fervent French nationalist.
I could post pictures of ex-President George W Bush standing at the Wailing Wall wearing a yarmulke or sitting in the Oval Office surrounded by Lubavitcher rabbis. Is that proof that Dubya was a practising Jew?
Pictures of Nazis with Christmas trees …
Well that clinches it. Proof positive that the Nazis were all devout Catholics or Lutherans or neo-pagans or something.
Owlmirror @394:
Frances Kissling would doubtless say the same thing.
The beauty and spendour of traditional Roman Catholic liturgy is proverbial. Anyone with the slightest aesthetic sensibility is liable to be impressed – doesn’t make them “devoted Catholics”.
I don’t know anything about this “Christian Social movement” – do you? Was it Catholic? Whatever it was, this quotation rather suggests he disapproves of its lack of “racial knowledge”.
This could mean anything. No mention of Catholicism or even of Christianity, just vague waffle about “spiritual conviction” and “spiritual base”.
Now then …
Very well. Taken together, these quotations do indeed suggest that Hitler was influenced, at least in part, by the Catholic Church’s militancy & dogmatic intransigence. I concede the point.
I hope you would concede, however, that it doesn’t follow that Hitler was a “devoted Catholic” or that Nazism derived from the Christian religion. I admire the militant fervour of many Muslims but I’m not thereby an admirer of Islam.
Moreover, while he may have admired or been inspired by certain aspects of Catholicism, there are at least as many aspects that he fiercely denounced, as I’m sure you’re aware.
Finally, Hitler was influenced by many currents of thought, from Wagnerism to Ariosophy. It seems to me there was very little intellectual coherence to the man, who was prepared to be all things to all men as it suited him.
Snort*. Yes, because the lack of belief in a god is such a profound motivator. There’s the lack of historical precedent for genocide, the absence of a being to forgive you for your crimes if you ask nicely, and no book describing a race of people to shoulder the blame and be persecuted for killing the being you worship. And no church at which someone could inspire you to support acting on these principles and who can also give you forgiveness in the deity’s name – and easing you conscience – for doing so.
But why stop at their non-belief in gods? What about all the other things that they both didn’t believe in? Perhaps it was their aunicornism that made them monsters. Or it could have been their aminotaurism. I hear amermaidism is a shocker for inspiring genocide. Ooooh, and I’ll be they were adragonists as well. You know you can never trust someone who doesn’t believe in dragons.
My dear old grandmother, no-god rest her soul; well, she would swear that if someone didn’t believe in Elves they weren’t worth talking to. ‘Don’t you be hanging around with them no-good aElvists, young Wowbagger – they’ll get you in all sorts of trouble, you mark my words,’ she’d say.
And you know what? She was right. I’ve never met a criminal who believed in Elves. 100% correct my dear old Gran.
*Of derision – if you hadn’t already guessed.
Pilt,
Wow, Plity has Fatwa envy. Who would have guessed?
/sarcasm
Here in Italy some of us took a different view of Berlusconi’s actions. He waited until the legal mechanisms to allow the girl to die were well along before making his announcement, one he could have made at any time earlier if he’d really wanted to stop it. What he did was the old double-whammy political trick that many of them do: say one thing to please a certain constituency, but do nothing to make it happen.
Another thing I wondered is the comparison with Terry Schiavo doesn’t really work. This Italian girl was a complete vegetable, no response whatever. The Schiavo case was a bit more complicated by the fact that some people said she was happy and all that.
Yawn, Pilty is such a bore. And with his long winded post after being warned against such by PZ, maybe we will be free of his idiocy. Pilty, your god is imaginary, existing only between your ears, and your chuch is a vile institution that needs to be disbanded for the good of humanity.
Why?
Y’know what? Fine. I concede that Hitler was not a “devoted” Catholic.
This, however, I will not entirely concede, since at least the folk-anti-Judaism that Nazism proudly promoted can be traced back to the theologians Martin Luther and John Chrysostom and others, and even further back to the gospels themselves. Hitler’s own religious beliefs become irrelevant once you have to take into account the fact that the religions of the people of Nazi Germany who joined the Nazi Party and the Nazi military organizations were Protestant and Catholic.
Oddly enough, so did the non-devout Catholic dictator.
Wowbagger @397:
If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that because atheism has a “negative content” in terms of belief, it’s unlikely to be the cause of persecutions.
That sounds plausible in theory, but in practice atheism is rarely a simple dispassionate non-belief in God – it’s more often a positive disapproval & dislike of religion. Dawkins, Myers, Harris, Hitchens et al don’t just think religion is false – they think it’s dangerous to the point of being evil. And there is absolutely no reason why such attitudes could not lead to persecution. Consider Sam Harris’ notorious statement that “some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them”.
Well Lenin did set up an outfit called the League of Militant Godless. As far as I know there was no League of Militant Dragonless.
+++
Nerd of Redhead @400:
Oh Nerdy, Nerdy, Nerdy.
The Catholic Church has outlived Nero, Julian the Apostate, Attila the Hun, Mohammed, Ogodai Khan and his Amazing Mongol Hordes, Luther’n’Calvin, Voltaire, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. We’ve seen ’em come and we’ve seen ’em go.
Any attempt to eliminate the Church has exactly the same chance of success as an attempt to eliminate the Jews (and for the same reason).
And of course while you liberal atheist types are busily contracepting and aborting yourselves into demographic oblivion, we’ll be outbreeding you. I wonder how many new Catholics were brought into the world in the time it took you to write your last post?
They got the guns but we got the numbers …
Actually the numbers of Catholics has been dwindling as the numbers of godless has been growing. The godless/agnostic outnumber catholics in the US.
Thus Spoketh The Hoax
Can you believe it? An organization has outlasted individuals. Well, The Middle Kingdom was around even longer then the Catholic Church. Even that came to an end.
Thus Spoketh The Hoax
Is being a catholic passed on from the mother? And do you think other peoples want to put catholics through a Holocaust?
Too many. Familiar with the concept of overpopulation? The tragedy of the commons? While you-all are smugly outbreeding us, you’re killing the planet for future generations of whatever delusion. Nice.
I was wrong. Rechecked the census. Catholics are about 26% of the population. Atheist/Agnostics are 15%.
Thus Spoketh The Hoax
So atheists are not having babies? Atheists make it a practice to have as many abortions as possible? Are you proud of putting more pressures on all of us when it comes to limited resources? Do all children of catholics end up being catholic?
Too bad your church does not have the same strangle hold on western society as it did in the thirteenth century.
Thus Spoketh The Hoax
While I am hesitant to show support for anything Lenin did, it is not like millions of people were guided by their collective belief in dragons.
I see Pilty is full of shit today. Situation normal. Any organization that covers up child molestation should not survive. And you like such a morally repugnant group? And call your self moral? I have other names for both you and the group. By the way, your god doesn’t exist and your bible is a work of fiction, and the church dogma is pure idiocy.
So tell us again, Pilty, about how the Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against AIDS in Africa. How the good priests and nuns are instructing Africans on proper condom use and providing condoms free of charge.
Let’s not forget how the Catholic Church, together with the Mormon Church, fought to get equal rights for gays in California. I was certainly impressed with how these two denominations, often at odds with each other doctrinally, forged an alliance so that gays and lesbians could enjoy the same rights of marriage that the rest of us enjoy.
It’s inspiring how evangelicals and fundamentalists are insisting that public schools teach only science instead of a 2500 year old creation myth.
Yes, religion has always been purely a force for good in the world. There is the occasional backsliding however. The Inquisition (excuse me, the Holy Office) hasn’t burned a heretic at the stake for several years. You might have a word with your local bishop, tell him to get Rome to stop goofing off.
Ah, but the second someone persecutes a person for their religion then they are adding something to their atheism (antitheism, in your example), aren’t they? Atheism alone cannot inspire anything, because it is nothing more or less than the absence of belief in gods. It is not hostility towards theism, it is the lack of it.
Which you might argue is also true of religions – except that, like I mentioned, many religions have books in which they are historically precedented to commit atrocities, an ideology by which to measure the righteousness and right-to-life of others (usually it’s that they have neither), and – most importantly – the knowledge they can be forgiven (or even rewarded in the afterlife) for any crimes they might commit.
Extremely powerful motivators which are – of course – completely absent from atheists. No-one tells us it’s okay to wipe out entire tribes or all but 8 members of the whole human race. We don’t have verses that we can interpret to mean we can persecute an entire race for an act that the existence our non-belief depends upon.
Funny, you never provided me with the statistics that demonstrate Italy’s profoundly higher birthrate than other, non-Catholic European nations – why is that, exactly? Oh, that’s right, because Italians, despite being a profoundly Catholic country that encompasses the Vatican itself, abort and contracept at about the same rate as everyone else. As do Catholics in most other countries.
Demographics FAIL.
And even if what you say were true, are you saying that no-one who’s ever been born to Catholic parents has avoided indoctrination or successfully shrugged it off later in life? Are there no ex-Catholics? Not one? Hmm, you might have something there, since your lot didn’t think Hitler did anything bad enough to warrant excommunication.
And as for your success via numbers, well, I think the Hindus might have something to say. Let us know when you’re ready to trade in your Bible for a copy of the Bhagavad Gita.
Tiso, Pavelic, Salazar, Franco, Pinochet, Trujillo, the Duvaliers,…
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/mar1999/pope-m04.shtml
My mother is Catholic, doofus. (Well, I don’t think she rally is anymore.)
Thus Spoketh The Hoax
Finally, a statement in which the Hoax is right.
Pius XI: “If a totalitarian regime exists — totalitarian in fact and by right – it is the regime of the Church.”
Even a stopped watch is right twice a day. Far more often than Pilty is.
By Pelor, are you still pounding that Troll? Fer cryin’ out loud, he’s only worth an average of 845 XP, and in all the time he’s been bleating I went out and scored twice that many just by hanging around the Alchemists’ Guild and picking off their Homeopathy Potions department.
Just stuff him in a barrel with the rest of the garbage and tip the lot of them down the nearest garderobe.
The MadPanda, FCD
Are you aware that a) Emperor Nero predates the Catholic Church by a few centuries, b) Julian the Apostate never intended to destroy Christianity to begin with, c) Attila the Hun had no grudge against Christians, only plundering the Roman Empire, and punishing them for violating treaties, d) The Mongols had no grudge against Christians, either, as they not only graciously hosted European merchants and envoys, but, the Mongols of the Yuan Dynasty also installed Christians as government officials, e) Hitler was a Catholic: in fact, the only high-ranking Catholic Nazi Official who was ever excommunicated was Joseph Goebbels, for having married a divorced Protestant.
So is this to say that Catholics view women as baby-factories and their fellow Brothers in Christ as nothing but cannon fodder?
Yet, people think that atheists and liberals are supposed to be the inhuman monsters. How strange.
Stanton,
Peter predates Nero. The marxists probably gave us atheists a bad name. Stalin, Mao, N. Vietnam, N. Korea and Pol Pot surpassed the Christianity real quick. Their ideology had religious elements however, fictions like the dialectic and historical determinism, an eschatology of the state fading away, and heaven following on earth.
No, the Marxists gave Marxists a bad name. Their lack of belief in gods is as relevant to what they did as their lack of belief in Atlantis, Drop Bears, The Wendigo, Das Vampyr, Elves, Pixies or anything else that doesn’t exist.
And you’ve admitted before that you’re not an atheist, Africangenesis. So using statements like ‘us atheists’ is being disingenuous, to put it politely.
BS, wowbagger. I’m just not a fervent atheist. Now if I had said us “fervent atheists”, you might have had a point.
Yawn, AG, go away. You add nothing, so why show your irrelevancy by posting?
Africangenesis,
Atheism is atheism – the lack of belief in god or gods; either you lack that belief or you don’t. Fervour is irrelevant. Funnily enough, it’s only ever theists who make the distinction.
Amen brother. Say it like it is.
Pilty: Hinduism and Buddhism both predate Catholicism, have more adherents than Catholicism, and appear to be in no danger of fading away. Both are actually growing while Catholicism shrinks.
Start working on that concession speech where you accept the superiority of Vishnu. And enjoy a few last steaks and burgers while you can.
Wowbagger,
Your dismissal of the marxists denies their historical association with atheism and the suppression of religion. Just yesterday, we were posting about the “new scientist”/economist map. Some of the areas low in religiosity were due to Soviet suppression of religion. We may think their atheism is irrelevant, but they didn’t and neither did the people oppressed by them and opposing them in the cold war. Humans may well be less than optimal. When god oriented religiousosity is denied, something may be sought to replace it in most people. Marxism and environmentalism, and a host of new age pseudo religions may end up filling the vacuum.
Please explain why you think Marxism and environmentalism are “new age pseudo religions”
Also, please explain why the Soviets and Marxists’ suppression of religion makes atheists morally reprehensible ties directly to the subject of this blog entry, which is about the Italian Prime Minister refusing to pull the plug on a brain-dead woman because, after consultation with the Vatican, her ovaries are still functional.
Stanton#429,
I hadn’t thought of marxism and environmentalism as new age pseudo religions, but in the case of environmentalism, it may make sense. Environmentalism is kind of a wholistic communion with the earth, and has modern man as the sinner who needs to repent.
#430, The soviet and marxist subsets taint the atheist superset in the minds of many. The past atrocities by Catholics taints today’s catholics in the minds of many. It doesn’t relate to the ovaries, you’ve been off that topic for awhile.
If modern humans are less than optimal, and have this propensity to religious type beliefs, then if may be fair to ask atheists what has replaced their god belief, and if their atheism is in their face and fervent, it may be fair to warn them and others of what other fervent atheists have done.
Africangenesis,
If you were actually interested in the relationship being atheism and Marxism beyond its handiness to you as a contentious talking point you mightn’t be making these nonsensical claims. But if you want to pretend I’ll go along. Why might the Soviets have suppressed religion? What reasons would they have? Is it because they dislike the idea of people believing in gods?
No, it wasn’t – as I suspect you know full well. It was because the church was a) a political power that could oppose them, and b) it was a part of the old regime which they wished to remove in its entirety. They removed what they suspected would undermine their system. The so-called ‘atheistic’ aspects of Marxism were about eliminating the competition. And Stalin – since he trained in a seminary – knew better than most about how intricately linked the church was to the power structure in Russia at the time.
Marxism only ‘taints’ atheism in the eyes of liars and fools, since it is only liars and fools who accept that atheism had any impact whatsoever on why the Marxists did what they did. Honest, discriminating people know better. Perhaps if you could produce atheists who had no other discernible ideologies to impart the need for power and evoke the behaviour that leads to genocide and antitheism then you’d have a point. Can you do that?
The past – and continuing – atrocities of Catholics taints the minds of many (though not as many as it should) because it is a belief system that claims adherence to it makes you a better person than someone who doesn’t. It also provides the believer with a book full of precedents for mass-murder and genocide; the dogma also allows for those who commit such crimes to not only be forgiven and but rewarded with eternity in paradise after death.
What inspiration, do you suppose, the absence of belief in gods provides? How would it do that? Do atheists believe there is a heaven they can go to as a reward for their actions?
What if nothing has replaced it? Why do you assume that when something is taken away – or was never there in the first place – it needs to be replaced?
(contracepting and aborting?)
*sigh* Geneticists caution people that genes are not destiny. How the hell is religion destiny?
Martin Luther and John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli all had Catholic parents, as did the founders of so many other splits from Roman Catholicism.
Can you even guarantee that your own children will stay Catholic, and your grandchildren? Or are you planning on murdering them if they stray?
Meanwhile, RC church attendance is down…
Perhaps your great-great-(however many greats)-grandchildren will stroll through the museum that was once the Vatican, murmuring to each other “Did anyone really believe all this?”
Janine @406:
Er no, I meant that both were of divine origin, hence immune to human attempts to destroy them.
Why not? The Nazis did.
‘Tis Himself in sarcastic mode @412:
In other words, you share the view that my religion is a force for evil in the world. What I see as good, you see as evil and vice versa. This is why there can be no dialogue, no common ground. It is truly a cultural war.
Wowbagger @413:
That’s superficially plausible, but I don’t buy it. Just because something has a ‘negative’ content (ie a rejection of belief in God) it necessarily follows that people won’t persecute to defend and promote it.
A non-belief in God doesn’t arise in a theoretical vacuum, nor does it exist and act in a cultural vacuum — perceived facts have moral implications and beliefs (or the lack of them) have cultural consequences. In practice atheism is often accompanied by antitheism.
Again, superficially plausible. In practice non-theists will easily find their own Absolute of choice to give its imprimatur to atrocity. Race, class, history, progress, reason, science, democracy, liberty, equality, fraternity … all of these have at one time or another been courts against which there has been no appeal.
Pukey Lukeys condemn themselves to the same demographic doom as liberal secularists.
Bound to be some leakage.
I said we’d outbreed liberal atheists, not Hindus or Mohammedans.
+++
SC @414:
wsws = World Socialist Web Site (“Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International “)
Por Dios, por la Patria y el Rey
Are you saying the substantive, historical claims made in that article are incorrect? Which ones? Based on what?
This thread’s dead, but I feel I need to add this. Piltdown wrote:
But history tells us that adhering to a religion is no barrier to atrocities for those reasons. So, for all the reasons you give as a motivator for atheist violence, I can add religion on top – which gives the win for ‘group with the most reasons to commit atrocities’ to the religious, because it will always be the other reasons ‘plus one’.
And yet one group of divine origin(Catholics) spent centuries accusing an other group of divine origin(Jews) of blood libel, segregating them and committing the occasional pogrom. How bloody divine.
Those Catholic Churches that were targeted were because they did not fall into lock step with Hitler. Quite a few German Catholic officials were supportive of Hitler. While very brutal, that is not the basis of a Holocaust.
This is why there can be no dialogue, no common ground. It is truly a cultural war.
only if it’s idiots like yourself against everyone else.
seriously, go ahead, carry your firebrands into battle.
see how well you do.
Wowbagger @436:
Not dead, but sleepeth.
I’m not sure history does tell us that. Religion (at any rate the Christian religion) subjects man to a higher Law that cannot be legitimately transgressed on grounds of race, class etc.
Of course people will always transgress the Law. Others will seek to neutralize the Law by identifying it with their worldly idol of choice. But the Law remains as a reproach to their actions, an ideal which is no less valuable for being frequently ignored.
Who can confidently say it does (or did) not exercise a miitigating & civilizing force on the violent human passions? Someone once said that while an English Christian might war against France in the name of St George, and a French Christian might war against England in the name of St Louis, neither would seriously entertain the notion that the two saints themselves were slugging it out in heaven. Thus it was acknowledged, at least implicitly, that partial human interests were not the final arbiter of right and wrong.
By contrast the atheist is answerable to nothing higher than humanity. And, left to itself, humanity has a habit of turning on itself and denying its unity — 34 years after the Church beatified the illegitimate son of an African slave, Charles Darwin declared the black races to be closer to the great apes than Caucasians.
Yawn, short Pilty, I believe in god. You don’t. I win.
Pilty, you have never proven your god, just alluded to that imaginary being. That means your bible and your theology are nothing but fiction. Live with it.
Thus brayed the Hoax:
What a fucking tiresome lying ass motherfucker.
So, all of those people cut to pieces or burned alive for the sake of the Christian religion… was that upholding this “higher Law”, or were they all illegitimate transgressions?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
Perhaps. But Christianity is vastly inferior in this regard to the Eastern religions that espouse nonviolence. Especially since Christianity has verses in its scripture that directly call for violence.
Say, wasn’t someone calling for the death of all readers of the Guardian? Could it be that someone has a religious veneration of the Daily Mail? I guess religion just failed to mitigate and civilize, there.
I think this “someone” was seriously underestimating the superstitious mythologizing that the human mind is capable of (as demonstrated by you yourself).
I could have sworn that one of those religious laws you claim are so damn great was against bearing false witness.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/03/was_darwin_a_racist.php
Utter rubbish. If these rules do no good, why have them? What good is a law no-one upholds? Why did your god bother? Why is it in the bible? Why did Jesus make so many references to peace, tolerance and non-violence?
That the people who do believe in the sky-fairy’s carrot of heaven and stick of hell pay little-to-no attention to the rules he set down is a damn good indication that they care not a fig for either the commandments or Jesus’ peaceful principles is damning evidence for your god’s non-existence – or, alternatively, his impotence and/or indifference.
But, as numerous examples show, adherence to Christianity does nothing to stop this! On the contrary, religions and religious schismatics provde yet another out-group that people can call the enemy.
The argument might have weight if all Christians, everywhere, were pacifists or – if all Christian nations had no armies and no weapons of war. But they do not. Wars of religion – between Christian and non-Christian, and between sects of Christianity with minor quibbles over the interpretation of scripture – are numerous and continue to this day, with no indication of diminishing.
Yet secular countries are far more peaceful. How is that possible if your god abhors violence, and believing in him inspires peace and love?
Janine @441:
No, it’s the gospel truth.
Owlmirror @442:
I’m not bearing false witness. The thread you linked to doesn’t really address the passage I’m referring to. Sure, PZ does say:
One well-known passage in which Darwin talks about civilized races exterminating savages is this:
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.
As PZ quite rightly points out that there is no evidence that Darwin is here advocating genocide. He’s just stating what seems to him to be a likely outcome of historical trends. He may even, as PZ suggests, be lamenting this state of affairs.
Unfortunately, the particular passage occurs in the context of a discussion on the incompleteness of the fossil record:
The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, convinced by general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks incessantly occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridæ—between the elephant and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and other mammals. But all these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
There’s no mistaking the meaning here — negroes and Australian aborigines are closer to gorillas than Caucasians.
And it’s no good saying this unpleasant view has no necessary connection with Darwin’s theory of evolution. There is a most definite connection — the very concept of evolution makes it possible to subvert our common humanity by placing peoples on different rungs of the evolutionary ladder. It permits one to envisage certain groups of people as being less removed from previous stages than others and therefore less fully human.
Christians of Darwin’s time may well have regarded Africans etc as degraded savages, but they were so regarded because they had yet to be exposed to the benefits of Christianity. There was no question of Africans being less than human.
Owlmirror @442:
Eastern religions, eh?
Would that be the Hinduism that gave us the caste system, suttee, thuggee and the Bhagavad-Gita, which urges a warrior to follow his dharma and kill with a clear conscience?
Or the Buddhism that persecuted the native Tibetan Bon religion? Perhaps the variety which the Japanese samurai found so congenial?
It was a splenetic rant (for which I apologized) not a call to genocide.
Nah, the Mail is the mouthpiece of plutocrats and Tories.
Just like Catholicism gave us pogroms and Crusades, and setting heretics on fire, and the Inquisition, and massacres of Protestants and Jews, and plenary indulgences so as to urge a warrior to follow the will of God and kill with a clear conscience?
I note that Bon still exists, while Christianity exterminated the local pagan religions.
Dude, you are the one who admires militancy.
All that kill kill kill in the name of God; Deuteronomy 13 & 17; Numbers 31; “Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword” and all the rest: every violent verse, that’s all yours. You worship a proudly bloodstained butcher.
The principle of ahimsa predates Christianity and is far more widespread in the East among Jains, Buddhists, and Hindus than “brotherly love” is in the West.
And while of course there were and are those that reject ahimsa just like you reject “brotherly love” for Muslims and other non-Catholics, well all I can do is point out that cruelty, anger, and violence are endemic in humanity, and Catholicism, by its own track record of deaths, is certainly not the cure for those faults.
Oh, hell no. Racism predated the theory of evolution. And yes, racism did pollute some scientific theories for a while (although, really, physiognomy and phrenology were pseudosciences).
But it is precisely because we now know much better what it means to be human, because we can actually compare our common DNA, that we can say with certainty that all humans are in fact descendants of a common human ancestor. And we can declare from biological scientific knowledge that racism is a ridiculous, pathetic, and primitive expression of xenophobia.
Bullshit. It is precisely from the bible and from religion that the idea that people and lineages and races could be cursed for generations or blessed for all time; that the idea of some sort of inherited essential goodness or inherited essential badness stuck to people like spiritual glue. The chosen people of God versus “Let his blood be on us and our children!” It was Christians who came up with the idea that blacks were under the curse of Ham, and of course, at the back of every Christian’s mind was the curse of Adam and the curse of Eve, “infecting” every human.
Wowbagger @ 436 again:
It’s just dawned on me what an arbitrary way of looking at it this is. I could just as well argue that the relatively recent ideological cause of liberty added ‘one more’ reason for violence on top of religion.
Owlmirror @ 446:
Maybe, but you implied that Eastern religions were uncontaminated by such horrors.
Good riddance.
And so I do (although militancy needn’t imply militarism). But you were the one who implied that Eastern religions were uncontaminated by such horrors.
How do you know? Have Indians never waged war? (According to the Wiki entry for ahimsa, “Violence in self-defense, criminal law, and war are accepted by Hindus and Jains.“) And how do you know the Chinese torturers who administered the “wire jacket” didn’t include a few Buddhists, Confucians or Taoists among their number?
(Admittedly I dinna ken if they were true Buddhists, Confucians or Taoists.)
On that we are agreed.
And while of course there were and are those that reject ahimsa just like you reject “brotherly love” for Muslims and other non-Catholics, well all I can do is point out that cruelty, anger, and violence are endemic in humanity, and Catholicism, by its own track record of deaths, is certainly not the cure for those faults.
((Oops, last bit should have read:
Perhaps not, but I don’t see secularity doing any better. In any case, Catholicism is primarily a mechanism to get to Heaven, not a manifesto or programme for making a heaven on earth.))
Owlmirror @447:
No duh.
And what, pray, have physiognomy and phrenology to do with Charles Darwin’s statement in The Descent of Man that blacks are more closely related to the great apes than whites?
I suppose it’s gratifying that science finally caught up with what the Church had always taught. The problem is, Darwinism doesn’y stop at postulating a common ancestor for humans. It claims that all life shares a common ancestor – ie that species or subgroups within species can evolve into different species. Species thus become “provisional” entities, part of a fluid continuum of life. In theory a particular human population could diverge from the rest of humanity. From there, it’s just a short step to claiming that a particular group of humans is closer in evolutionary terms to its predecessor than the rest of us. Such a claim might not be true but it could be. Evolutionary theory may not require one to believe that blacks are closer than whites to gorillas, as Darwin did, but it makes it possible to do so.
Even if one takes the harshest possible interpretation of such passages and accepts that the Bible sanctions the idea of corporate inherited guilt, this can only be understood in a spiritual sense. You yourself use the expression “spiritual glue”. Now, on this side of the hereafter, one’s spiritual condition is not immutable. Curses can be lifted. If it were not so, no black or Jew could be baptized into the Church, let alone be raised to the altars. By contrast, if a black is closer to a gorilla than a Caucasian, well, there’s not much he or anyone else can do about that.
BTW
Since you believe that the biblical concept of corporate guilt is a human invention rather than a divine reality, it follows that specific humans – the people who conceived and wrote the biblical books – were to blame for unleashing this peculiarly monstrous idea on a hapless world. And, to the extent that their descendants still uphold this biblical teaching, they share their ancestors’ guilt.
Who were/are these people?
Christians might have bought into these ideas and some of the more traditionally minded ones may still do so. But it was the Jews who first came up with the concept. Yes, you have just accused THE JEWS of inventing one of the cruellest, nastiest ideas ever conceived by man.
And that’s just on top of what your atheist/Darwinist fellow travellers have already accused THE JEWS of inflicting on the planet – ecological devastation (thanks to the injunction in Genesis to exercise dominion over other life-forms), not to mention the invention of an intolerant psychopathic God in the first place.
Frankly, Owlmirror, I’m disgusted that you should be openly spewing such blatantly anti-Semitic hate on the internet. I’ve half a mind to tell that nice Mr Foxman about what really goes among the more fanatical members of the Darwinist community.
Wow. Did the pharmacy close early today. They’ve all gone off their meds.
Forgive the abuses done to living people for that is not important.
I specifically denounce collective inherited racial guilt, and you go ahead and proclaim collective inherited racial guilt for inventing the idea of collective inherited racial guilt (and accuse me of supporting it)?
Really, you take a rhetorical shotgun, brandish it triumphantly and aggressively, and shoot your own feet off. With both barrels, yet.
*eyeroll*
Right-wing Catholics, of course, who insist that they are the sole authoritative inheritors of the biblical canon, and that killing people of different religions is right and proper.
Right. Like you, citing Deuteronomy 17 and Numbers 25.
Nope. As you would know if you read up on Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Middle-Eastern mythology. Not to mention even a basic work on anthropology and/or the social psychology of religion.
Nope. That’s all you, again.
Say, Pilt, as you lie there (staring at the sky wondering where your feet buggered off to), can you answer a quick question:
How often do you go to church? Daily? Weekly? Weekly, but more often if you can?
Pilt, the record of your many disgusting statements is embedded in Pharyngula’s comments, and can probably be found online elsewhere as well. Are you sure you want to call attention to them? Especially the ones about the Inquisition? Not to mention that you are on the record as supporting the SSPX and the anti-Semitic Bishop Williamson, you delusional psychotic religio-fascist moron.
Just wondering.
Janine @453:
Of course it’s important. Any genuine abuse needs to be acknowledged and repented. But an abuse is just that, an abuse. The massacres of Jews during the First Crusade (for example) is a terrible stain on the history of Christendom but it doesn’t follow that the Crusading movement was evil, any more than the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima & Nagasaki or the Red Army’s rape of Berlin mean the Allied cause during World War II was evil.
If history teaches us anything it’s that civilisation is a very thin crust covering a magma of violence, irrational hatred & lust which can erupt in any place or time.
Piltdown,
If history teaches us anything it’s that civilisation is a very thin crust covering a magma of violence, irrational hatred & lust which can erupt in any place or time
.. Proponents of religion, of course, make the claim that adherence (as long as it is to their particular brand of woo) reduces this, but reality has proven them wrong – over and over and over again. In fact, an honest reading of history shows the chief contribution of religion to have been as additional fuel, turning what would have been small fires into raging infernos.Fixed it for you.
Owlmirror @ 454:
An elementary distinction is on order here. I’m not talking about inherited guilt in the biblical sense, I’m talking about shared guilt based on a common ideology (in this case the biblical ideology of collective guilt). That’s why I wrote: “to the extent that their descendants still uphold this biblical teaching, they share their ancestors’ guilt.” A young German neo-Nazi who reveres Mein Kampf and tries to live by its precepts can be said to share the guilt of his Nazi grandfather – the guilt attached to following the Nazi creed.
Maybe the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Babylonians etc had a concept of inherited guilt similar to that found in the Bible. I don’t know or particularly care. The point is that, unlike the Mesopotamian etc examples, the articulation of the concept in the Jewish Bible and its propagation via the Judeo-Christian religions exercised a decisive influence on Western culture and continue to exercise an influence. Thus, for all practical purposes it’s fair to say that, for us, the idea began with Ancient Israel.
Whenever I hear the words “anthropology” or “social psychology”, I reach for my rosary.
Why do you ask?
I daresay there’s a socio-psychological explanation of my psychosis. Hey – there might even be an evolutionary explanation. Perhaps religious traditionalists belong to a subgroup of humanity whose evolutionary distance from the apes is less than that of secular liberals? Or maybe they’ve started to evolve back in an anthropoid direction?
If one accepts that evolution has occurred, it would appear that the process has (broadly speaking) involved a development from the simple to the complex – in the case of humanity, increasingly large brains which eventually reached a point where they somehow gave rise to language, art, ethics etc. But if evolution occurs in response to environmental pressures, then this increasing complexity is purely because environmental pressures have so far favoured increasing complexity – there’s no teleological ‘ascent’ or ‘progress’ going on here. Ergo, there is no reason why – should environmental pressures demand it – evolution might not go into reverse, so to speak, as simpler, stupider life-forms find themselves flourishing in the new conditions. Perhaps religious people are destined to devolve into shambling hominids chipping flints!
What would Darwin say? After all, he believed different groups of humanity were at different evolutionary stages — didn’t he?
Of course there is. Those who, when the swords were held to their throats, the torches thrust against their huts and their infants dangled above the packs of wild dogs, answered ‘Yes – I believe in Jesus*,’ weren’t slaughtered, and therefore passed on their genes.
Congratulations, Piltdown – your ancestors had evolved the common sense to fear torture and death. Praise the Lord!
*They may or may not have added ‘The Prince of Peace’, depending on exactly how many savage beatings they’d suffered.
Only one I see around here doing that is you.
Or a Catholic who tries to live by the precepts of the Inquisition can be said to share the guilt of Torquemada and Arnaud Amalric – the guilt attached to following the Inquisitorial creed?
Why? I had not heard that there is anything inherently demonic about those fields of study. Is there something you’re not telling us?
I’ll tell you after you tell me. Wouldn’t want to skew the results….
If I had a rosary, I might be tempted to reach for it. Seeing you trying to clumsily parody evolutionary psychology is like watching a duck try to waltz.
“What a maroon”, say I.
I am sure that it has already been explained to you that what Darwin believed does not matter because evolutionary biology no longer includes the parts that we now know he got wrong.
Although in your case, I am sometimes tempted to make an exception…. Are you quite certain that you are not a baboon?
Sheesh.
Wowbagger @456:
By that reasoning human society would have become less violent as it became more secular.
Funny*, a list of the countries in which there are wars occurring are almost always religious – Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Somalia and Israel/Palestine – would imply that the violence is still, as it almost always has been, religious in nature. Certainly those countries report extremely high levels of religiosity. Doesn’t seem to have done much to stop the fighting, has it?
About the only place that it isn’t is in Mexico, where it’s about drugs. Which religion and sect, exactly, predominates in that country?
Right back at you.
*Not really – though Piltdown will probably throw in something facetious to try and make light of the suffering.
I see Pilty is still showing us the prime reason religion is irrelevant to modern life with his continuing inane posts. Pilty, time to give it a rest. Fade into the bandwidth.
Wowbagger @ 460:
Limiting ourselves to the 20th century, the major conflicts which spring to my mind are the Second Boer War, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the First Gulf War.
All notorious for being religious conflicts.
Owlmirror @ 459:
Yes, that’s the sort of thing, although obviously from my perspective the Inquisition was an admirable institution.
Of course, your attribution of guilt to the Inquisitorial ideal still implicates the Jews, given the concern for doctrinal purity evinced by the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 17: 2-13).
Stop trying to pretend your anti-Catholicism isn’t rooted in anti-Judaism. Really, you’ll feel better for it.
I would say they’re demonic only insofar as they derive from the general Enlightenment project to make mankind rationally transparent to himself without the benefit of divine revelation. I suppose one could in theory envisage a “Christian anthropology” or “Christian social psychology” that rejects the presuppositions of secular modernity, but it probably wouldn’t be recognizable as such to modern-day practitioners of those disciplines!
Then help this poor waddling duck by explaining where it’s going wrong. Does evolutionary theory admit the possibility of human subgroups diverging into separate species or does it not?
So where exactly did Darwin go wrong in this instance? Merely in his particular belief that blacks were closer to gorillas than Caucasians — or in the general thesis that different groups of humanity could be at different evolutionary stages?
How can me knowing the reasons for your query skew the results? Do you think I’d be tempted to lie if I knew why you were asking?
Piltdown wrote:
Er, Pilty? Perhaps you’d better get your mind’s spring oiled – it’s a little rusty. We’re in the twenty-first century now. Did you miss that? I guess when the most important events in your life happened over 2,000 years ago you don’t tend to pay that much attention to what’s happening in the present.
Are you trying to say that wars from between 15 and 100 years ago are caused by today’s secularism? That’s a pretty impressive feat; I didn’t realise that secularism had retrospective influence, or came with its own inbuilt time machine
You know what’s important about the (overwhelmingly religious) conflicts I listed? They’re happening today. Where’s your list of secular conflicts happening right now, when secularism (in the West at least) is increasing?
Oh, and WWII was, for the most part, between Christians allied with other Christians (and Japan) against other Christians allied with Communists; Christians killed many, many millions. How is that an argument for your side?
For living in the past, you get this.
Of course, your attribution of guilt to the Inquisitorial ideal still implicates the Jews, given the concern for doctrinal purity evinced by the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 17: 2-13).
Stop trying to pretend your anti-Catholicism isn’t rooted in anti-Judaism. Really, you’ll feel better for it.
Disingenuous, Pilty. Rabbinical Judaism is no less than Christianity the progeny of Second Temple Judaism, practiced in Palestine from the end of the Babylonian exile to the destruction of the temple and the temple state of Judea in 70 CE by the Romans. The kind of “doctrinal purity” embraced in 2nd Temple Judaism is in support of an Ancient Near Eastern temple state. The Deuteronomistic code is a mixture of priestly rules for ritual purity and civil strictures codified by a scribal intellectual elite. “Doctrinal purity” of the sort enforced by the Inquisition bears no relationship to this whatever.
To make the charge of anti-Judaism stick, you’d need to define Judaism more rigorously. When a modern uses the term, it almost certainly means post-1st century Rabbinical Judaism, not 2nd Temple theocracy. The two cannot be identified. Of course, the Catholic heirarchy at the time of the Inquisition was about as anti-(rabbinical) Judaism as it’s possible to be, so I guess I can understand why the urge to tar with that particular brush.
So stop trying to pretend your Catholicism –the entire history of Christianity, really– isn’t rooted in anti-Judaism. You’ll feel better for it.
Pilty still trying to prove is church is relevant in today’s world? We won’t agree, and he is just wasting his and our time by trying to prove the impossible. Yawn, what a bore.
On that – I’ve never heard the Christian rationale for why the Jews did not accept that Jesus was Messiah. It’s always struck me as odd that Christians would consider them to have gotten everything else right – creation, commandments, genocide with God’s approval etc. – but, when it came to the crunch, picked the wrong side.
Because if it’s that God chose for them not to, then that’s a pretty good indicator that Christianty is founded on the principle that God had abandoned the Jews in favour of the newbies, and therefore being against them is doing God’s work.
It’s interesting that during World War II the safest place to be a Jew was fascist Italy. The reason is quite simple. During the unification of Italy in the mid-1800s one of the strongest voices against establishment of an Italian state was the Papacy. When the Roman Republic was founded in 1849 one of the first things that happened was the tearing down of the Ghetto wall and abolition of Papal anti-semitic laws.
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, recently elected president of the newly declared French Second Republic, saw an opportunity to assuage conservative Catholic opinion in France, and in cooperation with Austria sent troops to restore Papal rule in Rome. After some hard fighting Pope Pius IX was returned to Rome in 1862. Repenting of his previous liberal tendencies Pius pursued a harsh, conservative policy even more repressive than that of his predecessors. While the Ghetto wall wasn’t rebuilt, anti-semitic laws became even stricter and a “fine” of 1,400,000 lire (about $220,000 in 1862 dollars) was levied by the Papacy against Rome’s Jews.
Finally, in 1870, Rome was captured by the Italian army and annexed by the Kingdom of Italy. All anti-semitic laws were repealed.
To this day, anti-semitism is seen in Italy as a part of the Catholic Church. Since many Italians object to the Church intruding into secular life, anti-semitism is not highly regarded in Italy.
Wowbagger @465:
No, they were caused by the secular ideologies of the 19th & 20th centuries, jut as the Napoleonic Wars were caused by the secular ideologies of the 18th & 19th centuries. Secular ideologies were a major force long before the 21st century — and the fact that you want to concentrate purely on the present suggests you’re reluctant to acknowledge the blood that was not shed in the name of religion.
The conflicts you listed do indeed have a strong religious component insofar as they all involve Islam in some form or another. But they also have a strong secular element, namely the Western powers the jihadis are fighting. It’s a clash between religion and secularism; and since a case can be made that Western arrogance & meddling played as much a part in provoking the conflict as Islamic aggression, the blame cannot be laid entirely at religion’s door.
The fact that religious people fight in a war doesn’t make it a ‘religious war’.
Pildown:
No, but it illustrates that Christians are warlike, and have warred with each other, contrary to their claims.
John Morales wrote:
Beat me to it, John.
I would also add that the fact that, when religious people fight in a war when the central figure of that religion preached a gospel of pacifism and forgiveness and explicitly condemned acts of violence, it not only exposes them as hypocrites but also undermines the claims made for the religion being a positive influence on humanity.
John Morales @ 471:
I wouldn’t say it shows Christians “are warlike”, just that they can be soldiers.
Wowbagger @ 472:
Funny thing is, while you see Jesus as Mahatma Gandhi, the estimable Owlmirror sees Him as the Rev Jim Jones.
Somewhere there’s a great big FAIL.
CJO @466:
Oh I don’t know … “priestly rules for ritual purity and civil strictures codified by a scribal intellectual elite” sounds to me like a pretty good description of the “ecclesiarchy” of pre-modern Christendom.
And I don’t see any significant difference at all between the aims and methods of the Inquisition and the passage from Deuteronomy:
When there shall be found among you within any of thy gates, which the Lord thy God shall give thee, man or woman that do evil in the sight of the Lord thy God, and transgress his covenant, So as to go and serve strange gods, and adore them, the sun and the moon. and all the host of heaven, which I have not commanded: And this is told thee, and hearing it thou hast inquired diligently, and found it to be true, and that the abomination is committed in Israel: Thou shalt bring forth the man or the woman, who have committed that most wicked thing, to the gates of thy city, and they shall be stoned.
True, but modern Jews do claim a continuity – they still see themselves as Israel, God’s Chosen. And some look forward to a restoration of the old patterns of Temple worship.
I’ve never denied it. it seems the most obvious thing in the world that Roman Catholicism and Rabbinical Judaism must necessarily be at odds, because Church and Synagogue both claim to be the sole legitimate heir of the Temple. Each regards herself as the one true Israel, hence each poses a fundamental ‘existential’ threat to the other that is not duplicated in their relations with any other religion. Hence the ‘bad blood’ that cannot be expunged by fawning words from recent (doubtless well-meaning) popes.
Piltdown:
Really.