From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Cath. Christianity 101 - Church on artificial insemination, etc
Date: 19 Aug 92 02:53:08 GMT
Organization: LLNL

In article <l90rqkINNbb7@skat.usc.edu> kriz@skat.usc.edu (KRIZ) writes:
>In article <1992Aug17.051155.22278@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
>>In article <l8r8bnINNbld@skat.usc.edu> kriz@skat.usc.edu (KRIZ) writes:
@ :In article <1992Aug15.071616.21175@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
@ ::In article <l8os3iINNojo@skat.usc.edu|| kriz@skat.usc.edu (KRIZ) write

@ 	Blind faith?

@ 	Or is it because the technology can _work_?

>It's blind faith ... and lots of propaganda.

	It ain't propaganda when it's the truth :-)

@ 	And condoms are a lot easier to test than nuclear reactors or
@ SDI systems, so one can have more confidence in their reliability.

>They also fail more often than nuclear reactors.  

	But much less catastrophically :-)

>If condoms had worked well before ... there would have been no
>need to develop the pill or IUD as more passive methods of artificial 
>birth control. 

	That's because wearing a condom is not the most pleasant thing
in the world.

@ 	Safe sex is a legitimate thing to promote. I think that people
@ have a right to sexual enjoyment, in or out of marriage, and I don't
@ think that one should needlessly deny oneself that. I don't think I'd
@ want to masturbate in public, but I don't want to cut myself off
@ (whether figuratively or literally) from that option either. Besides,
@ masturbation is safe sex, and why complain about safe sex?

>You have a "right" to set yourself on fire I suppose too.  But you'd
>debase yourself if you did.

	Debase myself? I wouldn't get debased. Just charred.

	And why is masturbation supposed to be so debasing, anyway? As
I commented, it's safe sex :-)

	Or are you more concerned about how those poor sperms will
never get a chance to meed eggs?

@ 	And plenty of married relationships are not monogamous.
@ Consider all the men who think it OK to cheat on their wives. And
@ whom the Church has been unable to stop.

>Yup people cheat.  That doesn't make cheating OK and never will.

	But the Church sure hasn't been able to stop it.

@ 	Examples of abortion-on-command:

@ 	Aristotle, who recommended that a city's leaders can order
@ abortion to prevent overpopulation before there is "life and
@ sensation". (BTW, he's the main inspiration for the Church's official
@ philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas)

>Aristotle had some good ideas and some quite lousy ones. Jefferson, et al
>leaned on him too by the way...

	Like...

>But it has been the constant Tradition of the Church (St. Thomas Aquinas
>included) to condemn abortion as well as infanticide.

	But St. Thomas Aquinas also taught that a male fetus gets a
soul after 40 days, and a female one after 80 days. So before a fetus
gets a soul, it's not officially human, and the whole idea that an
early embryo/fetus is a human being falls flat.

>Aristotle also argued that a slave did not have a soul. The Catholic

	I've never heard of any such thing, although he did argue that
some people were naturally fit to be masters and other people were
naturally fit to be slaves.

>Church condemned slavery almost immediately after the slave trade 
>between Africa, the Americas and Europe began.  Further NEVER did

	Where? Was anyone ever disciplined, let alone excommunicated,
for owning any slaves?

>the Catholic Church deny the presence of a soul in any human being,
>Greek, Jew, ... Native American or African.

	So?

@ 	China, which uses abortion as a means of population control

>Great moral example there Loren.  Talk about invading the bed-room.

	That's what the Church does, bud, with its prohibitions of
birth control and nonprocreative sex. What does the Vatican have to
say about mutual masturbation or oral sex?

@ 	The Bible, Numbers 5, which states that a priest is to give a
@ potion of bitter herbs to a woman suspected of being unfaithful. What
@ happens if she is guilty looks like some of the side effects of an
@ abortion. (Yes, there it is, the Bible)

>In the OT they used to stone people too.  

	But it _is_ the Bible, and it is the only halfway clear
reference to abortion.

@ :Indeed, I don't think there is an organization in the world
@ :has has seen this obvious similarity ... other than the 
@ :Church.
@ 
@ 	It aint' no similarity.
@ 
@ 	Putting on condoms is like putting on seat belts in cars and
@ using public transportation.

>Huh?  I don't get the public transportation allusion at all.

	It is using an alternative to the car. It would be like
performing alternative forms of sex, like mutual masturbation or oral
sex.

>Regarding the seatbelt ... would one necessarily remember to 
>wear the seat belt if one was drunk?  And I'd question what
>one were strapping one self to ... a car or a roman candle.

	And would one remember not to do it if one was drunk, either?

@ :HUMAN BEINGS ARE DIFFERENT ALL OTHER FORMS OF LIFE.  WHY?  BECAUSE THEY
@ :ARE CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD (Gen 1:26).  If we don't begin there,
@ :we are doomed.... to reduce ourselves to ||||nothingness<<.

	We don't have to :-)

@ 	Here is perhaps the last word of that, from a contemporary
@ named Xenophanes:

@ 	Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are
@ a shame and disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and
@ deceivings of one another ... Mortals deem that gods are begotten as
@ they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form ... yes,
@ and if oxen and horses and lions had hands, and could paint with their
@ hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the
@ forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies
@ in the image of their several kinds .,. The Ethiopians make their gods
@ black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red
@ hair.

>And so once again we are nothing but a bunch of protoplasm.  The
>burn victim has to hope that he/she doesn't have to be put up
>against a harp seal.

	So?

	Harp seals aren't sentient.

@ ::	And since I'm not "man", I can do whatever I want to :-)

@ 	Well, to tell the truth, I just checked a Bible (Today's
@ English Version), and I find that it referred to God creating "human
@ beings", to "resemble" and "be like" him. As Xenophanes showed,
@ however, it is really the other way around :-)

>Loren, are you just stupid or being dishonest.  Go even to a King
>James Version and you'll find the verse says:

	I don't particularly care for the King James (mis)translation.
For one thing, it was done back in 1611, so I, with my living in the
20th cy., find it needlessly difficult. That's why I prefer
modern-English translations. If one is to do a translation, one should
go all the way :-)

>	God created man in his image, MALE AND FEMALE he created
>	THEM [Gen. 1:27]

>That is one thing that is so amazing ... even in the OLDEST texts
>that verse truth reads like that.

	I guess I'll have to learn Hebrew sometime ;-)

@ 	And do you mean that animals have no rights? That it's OK to
@ set a cat's tail on fire? Or do other mean things?

@ 	Well, no one has ever claimed that smallpox viruses have the
@ right to grow in their natural hosts :-), so I suppose that there are
@ limits :-):-)

>I didn't say that ... Indeed, neither does JP II (Statement on the
>Environment).  But the human being is the crown.

	I recall that in the 19th cy., an animal-welfare society went
to the Pope to petition for help. The Pope's response was that we owe
no duty to the "lower" animals, and that is because animals have no
souls.

@ 	And I wonder if there will also be a comparable market for
@ drugs that destroy the sex drive so one can successfully live
@ celibate, and even have Josephite marriages (that is, celibate ones).
@ Interested?

>Actually, I don't think the Church would go for that because it would
>affect one's free will.

	Oh, and celibacy is not _legitimate_ celibacy if one has no
sex drive to begin with? Sheesh. If that isn't heartlessness, then I
don't know what is. It's like stating that married people who hate
each other ought to stay married just to demonstrate how much they
believe in marriage, and to demonstrate that by continuing to hate
each other.

>I just pointed out how it would become possible to manufacture 
>embryos for solely for industrial production purposes.

	So?

	One might get some valuable medicines that way.

>One would also constantly wonder ... what else about me was 
>manipulated by my laboratory creator?  That is a horrible
>anxiety to be oppressed by.

	How is that supposed to be so terrible?

@ 	Furthermore, do identical twins have two souls or one? After
@ all, they both came from a single zygote.

>That's a question for God to answer.  We would naturally assume that
>they have each a soul of their own.  We would destroy one of the
>twins under the argument that "well the other one is still alive
>so who cares?"

	But if they have two souls, then did the original zygote's
soul split in two when the zygote split in two?

	And what about amputation? If one loses an arm or a leg, does
part of one's soul disappear with it?

@ 	The whole "right-to-life" movement has a very cavalier
@ approach to all these unfortunate dead blastocysts.

>Again, in the case of the human embryo which does not implant 
>on the mother's womb and flows out of the body in the menstral 
>stream, the whole process is "an act of God" [TM].  Only God
>knows of its existance, through its whole existance only God
>is in communion with it.

	Out of sight, out of mind :-)

	What an excuse for not holding a funeral for each period's
menstrual blood with its sometimes-present dead blastocyst (it has a
soul, and is fully human, right? :-)

@ ...God only sets in motion his plan
@ :of salvation of humanity with Abraham (Gen. 12:3).
@ 
@ 	...who may have been a mythical character, like Achilleus or
@ Theseus.

>Yes may, those damn Sumerians, with those damn clay tablets, you'd
>think there'd be at least ONE receipt or credit card purchase which
>would show up with Abraham's name on it :-).

	Centuries before the invention of money, let alone credit
cards :-)

	It is disappointing that the only written records of "Abraham"
were written down centuries after when he supposedly lived. And when
you consider that there is no Egyptian record of Moses...

/Loren
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc