Bad Catholic has a discussion up about women who were denied abortions and the problems with a recent study of them.
My problem with all such studies, on both sides, is that the people being studied are self-selecting, and thus, there's a huge amount of politics and confirmation bias going on.
I'm Outside the Autistic Asylum!
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The crazy stuff I can't post anyplace else
Introduction to Wonko the Sane and Outside the Asylum, which this blog is named after.
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Interesting articles, both of them. The story of S is inspiring. Nonetheless, abortion should never be made illegal. Women should be made aware of alternatives and be helped if they choose not to terminate their pregnancies.
I learned last night that our mother's day activities raised over $1000 for Mother and Child Education Center- formerly known as Birthright- that gives to a wide variety of programs, including local Pregnancy Resource Centers.
I'm finally beginning to feel like we have *options* to offer women tempted by abortion.
That's excellent. Now isn't that a lot more rewarding than trying to tell gays that their sexuality is disordered and sinful?
"And yes, the sexuality remains disordered for the mere reason that it isn't ordered."
Well. I guess you're entitled to your opinion.
Math isn't an opinion. Normal has a definition, and the tail end of a bell curve is rather the opposite.
By that reasoning, you are not normal either because of your autism and where that puts you on the bell curve. So what? Are we to say that because there are relatively few gays compared to straights, they are not normal and don't have the right to marry? The Supreme Court is going to settle this and our differences in the matter will be moot.
I am saying that I don't see neurodiversity activists getting anywhere with forcing neurotypicals to accept autism, so why should gays be accepted?
Either do away with the highly bigoted and discriminatory sane/insane idea to begin with, or apply it equally to all minority thought crime groups.
Do away with judging people's sanity? This coming from someone who judges people's sinfulness.
Sinfulness is a matter of will, not sanity. You decide whether to sin or not. Sinfullness is never a matter of compulsion.
Which is why, in sexual attraction, the attraction part isn't sinful. It's what the individual *chooses to do* with the attraction that can become sinful- or holy.
In addition, sin/virtue is *far more concrete* than the diagnoses in the DSM-V. It is also more scientific with a lot more observation behind it (of course, the DSM evolved from the 1845 US Army manual on psychological conditions worthy of dishonorable discharge- Catholic sin/virtue has 2000 years worth of theologians observing and arguing about it).
Plus, it's pretty easy to see that the DSM has been edited to be politically correct- after all, homosexuality may no longer be a mental illness, but "Gender confusion disorder" is with the exact same symptom list. Homophobia was added to revision III-TR at the same time. And of course the latest is Oppositional Defiance Disorder- used to institutionalize teenagers and toddlers.
Thus, like I said before- you actually know any sane people? Because I sure don't.
"It's what the individual *chooses to do* with the attraction that can become sinful- or holy.
"Sinful" and "holy" are not clinical terms. They only relate to whether a thought, word or deed conforms to religious morals. For example, to the Catholic Church, all sexual activities except for intercourse without contraception between a man and his wife, who he married in a ceremony performed by a Catholic priest, is sinful. But to most people in this world, it is not. To the Church, a man or a woman is practicing holiness by not having sex before marriage. To others, they are not.
I'm fully of the opinion that the world would be a better place under Catholic ideals of virtue and sin.
I was attempting to explain to you why the world would be a better place that way.
I consider non-Catholics to be very deficient in terms of objective truth.
"I consider non-Catholics to be very deficient in terms of objective truth."
This sounds interesting. Was Einstein deficient in objective truth? What objective truths do we learn as Catholics that are not known by non-Catholics? The Incarnation? The Trinity?
Yes, Einstein was deficient in objective truth.
The incarnation and the trinity are NOT objective truths. But History and the Natural Law is. And those are the very things that for all their worship of science, or what they think is science, modernists of every stripe have divorced themselves from.
Laws of Nature - objective truth
Natural Law - philosophical concept not objective truth.
History - some objective truth but not all
Natural law is not an objective truth because different people see it differently. It is subjective.
History is too broad a topic to say that what people claim to be historical facts are all objective truths. Some see events described in the Bible as historical facts and therefore objective truths.
Different people do NOT see natural law differently. Some people *choose to ignore it* usually at great psychological peril, causing schizophrenia.
Events described in the Bible are objective truths, because they were observed and written down. The interpretation of those events is not objective, but the events themselves are.
Cutting oneself off from these two sources of truth is simply subjective instead of objective, and not scientific in the least. It's why I say that scientism worships science instead of DOING science.
"usually at great psychological peril, causing schizophrenia."
Schizophrenia is not caused by ignoring what you present as "Natural Law".
The great flood is an objective truth?
It's been verified by more than one geologist. It wasn't worldwide, and was likely just a local earthquake tsunami, but it did exist. It created the Black Sea.
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1207/features/noah.htm
That by no means makes the account of Noah and the Ark an objective truth. You are really grasping at straws. I guarantee you that there is not a single creature on this planet that is a descendant of anything that survived a great flood by being loaded onto a giant boat.
If you can't even accept geological evidence, then I have little hope that you'll accept any objective evidence at all.
"If you can't even accept geological evidence, then I have little hope that you'll accept any objective evidence at all."
Ok. If that makes Bible stories objective truths to you, that's what faith is all about. I'll take skepticism.
Skepticism should be more skeptical about skepticism itself, when it rejects even scientific evidence.
There might be scientific evidence for a massive flood in the Middle East thousands of years ago but it does not make the story of Noah an objective truth.
Yes, it does make the flood of Noah an objective truth- it happened. To deny that it happened is to deny the scientific evidence of the flood.
What part of that is hard for you to understand?
"What part of that is hard for you to understand? "
Which is it? A localized flood in which the whole human race was not wiped out and for which there would be no need for an Ark filled with animals or the biblical account?
It can't be both. If it was just a localized flood, then the biblical account is just a legend. Legends are not objective truths. I can't believe we are even arguing about this. Don't go all fundamentalist on me.
A single tribe *was* the whole world to those people, so yes, the "whole world" as they knew it was wiped out.
There is ample genetic evidence for that fact.
Just because YOU want to be as stupid as the Biblical Fundamentalists, taking verses out of context, doesn't mean I have to be.
Who conveyed the details of the story of Noah to the writer of Genesis? You're really stretching it trying to say that the stories in Genesis are objective truths.
It was tribal oral tradition. I have no problem with that- in fact, local to me, we have the tribal oral tradition of Bridge of the Gods- a natural formation over the Columbia that collapsed a few years before Lewis and Clark came through. They even wrote in their journals about boating through treetops in the middle of the river.
Despite the slide on the North Side, it was sufficient for there to be a manmade Bridge of the Gods there today.
"It was tribal oral tradition."
Tribal oral traditions need not be actual historical facts. And, in fact, in most cases, they are embellished as they are passed on and, in the end, they bear no resemblance to the actual event. There is not one objective truth in the Torah.
I disagree- they always bear some resemblance to the original event.
People don't lie for the fun of it when there is nothing in it for them to lie. They DO embellish to make a story more memorable however.
I refuse to be a literalist when it comes to the Vedas, why should I be a literalist when it comes to the Bible?
"People don't lie for the fun of it when there is nothing in it for them to lie. "
People write fictional stories all the time. It is much more difficult to do research and interview eyewitnesses to write a factual account. It is much easier to sit down and write a story that is not factual than one that is.
Tribal and pre-literate cultures are different. I suggest you spend some time in one.
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