You may be tired of my emoting. That's fair.
I am tired of your trying to impress everyone with your big words and big theological and philosophical theories as if they are the absolute only truth.
Try speaking like a human being, not like a theology text book. You are either in the seminary or you are a student in theology that is doing his "homework" by trying to explain the theories he is studying so that they can BEGIN to make sense to him! It reminds me of a boy friend I had, many, many years ago, who attended a boarding school ran by Jesuites. . . He sent me daily "love" letters who were full of "his" beliefs in God, and "his" theories about God's will for mankind!. . .I was about 2 years younger than he was, and I was soooo impressed by how articulate and "saintly" he was. . .I fell so embarrassed by my own, much simpler understanding of what God's desire was for my life achievement! . . . Until two years later, I was assigned the SAME readings from the SAME books he had been pledgerizing in those 4 to 5 pages daily letters! I was sooo glad I kept those "precious letters" wrapped up in a cigare box. . .Obviously, I aced that class!. . .after all, it was all a repetition of what I had "learned" from my boyfriends two years before!
I'm sorry, I am not impressed either with your "professional journals" rethoric, or your own view of what morality consists of.
In fact, I do not find much of what you are saying either relevant to real life, or very moral. My understanding and my relationship with my personal/universal God is my own, my right, and I find it a lot more satisfying, and a lot more liveable and nourishing to my life and the life of those around me than ANYTHING I ever learn from 18 years of Catholic school teaching! So, you keep your own ideas about "licit sex" and your "philosophies" and your "God," and I'll keep mine! At least, I know that mine has served me well (very well) in a 40 year long marriage!
Am I strange to find the idea of my husband ejaculating in the bed next to me because it "isn't time to procreate" ridiculous and even offensive? Does it have to do anything (or so little!) with "laundry?"
Well, If you think so. . . you probably, as I mentionned, don't have a wife. . .and probably never will!
God didn't create humankind with the only goal to procreate. In fact, if you believe in the genesis, he NEVER even thought of procreation before Adam and Eve "tasted of the apple!"
You may think you are very smart. . . you may even be in your own way. . .but, to me, you are freaky as religion and sexuality are concerned.
I believe this should cloture our discussion. Good luck finding your way to God, to happiness, and to love.
Yes, you keep patting yourself on the back for how wise, tolerant, and compassionate you are, while libeling everyone you disagree with as a sexless plagiarist.
I really wish that flatulent rant would be the last of our discussion but I have a nagging feeling you'll come back, so I'll hold off on the well-wishing for now.
Yes, I understood that was what you meant. My argument is that falsifiability can occur if an axiom is tenuous. Axioms are statements that must be taken as an assumption (on faith perhaps). Axioms in math are assumptions that lead to useful tools in understanding systems. Euclidean geometry allows an axiom that leads to the existence of parallel lines. This proved not to be useful in explaining gravity, so the elimination of that axiom led to a system that allows Einstein's general theory of relativity.
So the crux of our arguments lie in whether I or anyone else accepts your axioms that underlie natural law.
The axioms here are relatively simple: that everything which exists in nature participates in some form or essence; that a thing can be said to be good which most fully instantiates that form or essence; and that, in the case of man, his form or essence is necessarily informed in part by biology.
A good example of the first would be the fact that we can identify as a rolling, cushioned computer chair and a wooden rocking chair as both being "chairs" despite their differences.
A good example of the second would be, as I mentioned previously, the fact that we use the word "good" to refer to all manners of things that are goal-directed. For instance, a "good dog" is a loyal, obedient companion. A "good pen" is one that writes very well. A "good chair" is one that's exceptionally comfortable, supports your weight, etc. In each case, the "goodness" of the object is measured against an objective consideration of the object's
telos: its natural goal-directedness. In the above example, the pen's goodness stems from how well suited it is to writing, since the telos of a
pen is writing. Thus, a "good" pen is one that I can hold in my hand easily, that writes smooth, clear, dark lines, etc.
A good example of the third should be obvious. We already make value judgments about aspects of human biology in evolution, which is why we identify some evolutionary mutations as adaptive and some as maladaptive. This would not be possible if we did not have an idea of what objective end evolution is serving, which is, of course, survival of the fittest.
All of this is a purely academic discussion, of course, since I don't mean to say that a pen or a chair can be "good" in a moral sense. Morality is simply the application of these principles to human behavior.
All of this is why I said earlier that natural law furnishes the only
objective basis for discerning a moral law -- the only basis situated outside the individual.
No it isn't a diversion. It is the basis of our disagreements. My arrogance argument led you to state that you were correct in an absolute sense, and my argument is to say that your stance can be falsifiable if the axioms of your tenets are questionable. That takes the absoluteness out of your argument.
No, your arrogance argument led me to state that your arrogance argument is useless without a demonstration that I'm wrong, which you haven't provided.
You can't, of course, because I'm not. You can say that's arrogance if you like, but again, the label only sticks if I'm actually wrong. There's nothing arrogant about asserting the truth in the face of those that deny it.
My understanding is that Catholics engage in prayer. If prayer is aimed at an intervention by God to prevent death or destruction, what is the use, if God does not manage ecology, etc.?
Wait, when you said earlier, "I do not believe in a god that micromanages our lives, or saves us, or listens to prayers," were you saying that you don't believe God does those things, or that you don't believe in God at all? I assumed it was the latter, so I didn't bother to address your statement re: prayer.
As it happens I don't believe God micromanages lives, either. That's a Protestant superstition for the most part, and to the extent it exists in Catholic Churches, it's because the Church has done a terrible job catechizing people since Vatican II.
A useful definition of prayer
can be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia:
An act of the virtue of religion which consists in asking proper gifts or graces from God. In a more general sense it is the application of the mind to Divine things, not merely to acquire a knowledge of them but to make use of such knowledge as a means of union with God. This may be done by acts of praise and thanksgiving, but petition is the principal act of prayer.
In other words, prayer is a means of establishing what Wikipedia calls "volitional rapport" with God -- of molding your will to His. You don't ask God for Christmas presents or whatever; that's borderline sacrilege. You ask Him for grace, for forgiveness, for courage, etc.; things that are proper to ask of Him.
I don't believe that God is a God of material comfort or happiness or well-being or even safety. In fact, to the extent that material comfort and happiness and well-being and even safety are impediments to man knowing God (his highest calling), it would be better that man have none of them. That is probably not a very popular conception of God, but it's the conception that remains once you strip away all the Protestant nonsense, which reduces God to the level of a Saddam Hussein/Santa Clause hybrid running some kind of cosmic Hellenistic despotism.
As I understand earlier posts, you claim the 5 proofs of T.A. are in a loose sense infallible and that God indeed exists. But natural law is falsifiable. So you don't have a proof that the God that Catholics pray to for some type of intervention exists.
Again, the intervention Catholics pray for is somewhat different than the intervention you probably have in mind.
There are intermediate proofs that go from the Thomist Five Ways to the Christian conception of God. They are far more detailed than I can hope to recount here (i.e., I'm still learning them), but I'll be happy to look up some references later if you like.
