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Caustic Soda posted:The issue is also somewhat muddied in that there's no clean definition of what makes someone a person, so singling out when/if a fetus becomes a person is difficult. If the measurement was purely intelligence or independence, then an adult crow would be more of a person than an infant, let alone a fetus: a crow has object permanence, passes the mirror test, can recognize others and do problem solving etc. But I don't know anyone who would argue in earnest that a crow is more of a person than a fetus or a baby*. Intelligence as a measurement of personhood is further problematic due to its history of being abused for eugenics, "scientific" racism or classism and so on. Personally, I feel no issue with drawing the line somewhere around the end of the first trimester, since at that point IIUC the brain is still very far from being developed. Peter Singer, among other currently-living philosophers, advocates for infanticide if the infant's parents are okay with it, for exactly that reason - there's no clear difference between a 24-weeks-gestation fetus and a baby born at 23 weeks 6 days, therefore it's illogical to protect one and not the other, and illogical to protect either rather than an adult corvid, pig, or monkey. I don't think believing in a soul is necessary in order to see an ontological difference between a zygote on the one hand and a spermatozoan or ovum on the other; I think our basic presumption, as humans, should be to consider all living humans worthy of protection, even if we don't think they have adequate cognition. (Without that presumption you get people advocating for murdering disabled children.) As a Catholic, of course, this goes from "should" to "must", regardless of the religious beliefs of anybody in the situation, but I think it's a defensible position without resorting to religion. Having been pregnant, I am absolutely not going to assert that it's "a few months of inconvenience". Without modern medicine one of my pregnancies would have killed me and another might have. I am aware that asserting that unless the unborn person's presence is killing the pregnant person, the unborn person must be protected, puts an enormous burden on those of us capable of becoming pregnant. I don't think that's avoidable unless we decide that a person's worth is dependent on someone else's assessment.
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Mar 22, 2023 17:43
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See, I think there IS a qualitative difference between the fetus and the baby, and it's that criterion of independence I've mentioned. Though maybe independence is a strong word. The fetus is dependent on the parent, specifically, biologically. The baby is dependent on the goodwill of any person in the world, theoretically. Infanticide can't be justified in the same way as abortion because a baby is no longer a burden on the parent in the same way. If you don't want to have your baby any more, you can give it to somebody else. If you don't want to be pregnant any more... That's a different story.
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Mar 22, 2023 18:07
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Edit: I'd just like to add that it's extra interesting for me that we have this discussion, because here in Denmark it's a settled issue, politically. There are precisely 0 parties who oppose abortion here, and IME it's generally seen as a sign of backwardness when other countries make an issue of it. Not coincidentally, 'American conditions' are generally used as a pejorative, at least on the Danish left, though that can be - and is - also applied to non-abortion-related differences.zonohedron posted:Peter Singer, among other currently-living philosophers, advocates for infanticide if the infant's parents are okay with it, for exactly that reason - there's no clear difference between a 24-weeks-gestation fetus and a baby born at 23 weeks 6 days, therefore it's illogical to protect one and not the other, and illogical to protect either rather than an adult corvid, pig, or monkey. Personally, I think Singer is a good example of someone using 'logic' as a buzzword, the way someone else might use 'natural' or 'scientific' or 'inevitable'. An equivalence between an infant and an adult corvid/pig/monkey might just as well be used to argue for better treatment for corvids/pigs/monkeys, rather than worse treatment for infants. As previously stated, I'd also argue that infanticide is (in addition to being viscerally disgusting - also a part of the abortion issue) strictly inferior to adoption, as already mentioned. WRT the value of a human / a person, I personally (no pun intended) do not consider them to be one and the same. Granted AFAIK all known people are human*, but being human is not in itself sufficient to be a person, and I do not think that being human is valuable except insofar as it bestows personhood. This is of course the crux of the abortion issue: whether the fetus should have a right to life as a human being, a person, or some combination thereof. To take a different example of my distinction between humanity and personhood, if I had a stroke tomorrow that rendered me an irrecoverable vegetable/coma, I'd argue that my personhood was effectively at an end, and what remained was less deserving of regard than any sensate animal**, and should instead be treated with the regard comparable to a corpse***. I acknowledge your understanding of the dangers of pregnancy, and empathy for the pregnant. IMO, that's a good example of how the general ethos of this thread and you being a thread regular helps me know that you're arguing in good faith, since you've a history of such reflected compassion (that's a compliment, just to be clear  ) That said, I'd argue that it's impossible for us to structure our society without directly or indirectly assessing other peoples (and beings) worth. In practice, how people are treated is directly related to factors such as how similar they are to others, whether they're seen as innocent, deserving, capable of contributing, seniority etc. This is at once a necessity and also not necessarily bad in itself. With modern medicine, abortion in a case of life-threatening pregnancy is prioritizing the pregnant person over the fetus. By contrast, a C-section with pre-modern surgery/medicin and the attendant risk/near-certainty of death for the mother is prioritizing a late-stage fetus/newborn over that of the mother.Wrt. the burden on the potentially pregnant, I think it's relevant here to mention the options that can forestall anyone being in a situation where they might want an abortion, even if they can't reduce the demand for abortion to zero: sex ed, birth control, a supportive environment for someone who chooses not to get an abortion, financial stability for a potential parent/parents etc. This is another case where it's easier for us in this thread to have a constructive discussion, since out in the world there's a fair amount of people who are allegedly pro-life yet don't do anything to actually make parenthood more appealing as an option. All stick and no carrot, as it were. *Though compassion might lead one to argue particularly clever non-human animals might deserve comparable rights. **Barring those that are directly harmful to humans, such as disease spreaders or maneaters and the like. *** Though this comparison is inexact, given that a human being in an irrecoverable coma would be better suited for organ donation than a corpse. Caustic Soda fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Mar 22, 2023 |
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Mar 22, 2023 20:27
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In a lot of cases they had the pre existing vision of society to achieve and looked for a reason. If it wasn’t abortion it’d be something else. The contours would differ but the conclusions would be similar.
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Mar 22, 2023 20:47
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Earwicker posted:again i dont really see how whether a fetus is "life" or not, or where life begins, is really the issue. I think that the non-negotiability of bodily autonomy does not actually resolve the issue here. For this I am going to assume that the non-negotiability of bodily autonomy is a property that automatically belongs individually to all entities we define as "people" and that all such entities have a right to it. For the purposes of this argument I am also not taking a position on whether a fetus is actually a person or not. Bodily autonomy may be non-negotiable but when the exercise of the non-negotiable bodily autonomy of one person affects the non-negotiable bodily autonomy of another person then almost tautologically there is a negotiation between the two (often a negotiation by way of violence which is a form of negotiation). If you do not give an organ to another person then you have not actually violated their bodily autonomy - neither of you has directly affected the body of the other and they can still try and get an organ from someone else. Abortion as currently practised, however, necessarily entails the destruction of the fetus. If the fetus is not a person then there is no real issue however if the fetus is a person then destruction of the fetus is clearly a direct violation of its non-negotiable bodily autonomy that it has in-and-of-itself by virtue of its personhood. Simply saying that the mother has a non-negotiable right bodily autonomy and that is the end of it is not enough if the fetus has the same right: in that case you are going to violate the rights of one or the other. Note that in this instance I make no argument that one must automatically privilege the right fetus, it is quite possible and logically consistent to privilege the right mother but it is not a simple as "bodily autonomy solves the problem". Ways you can get around this potential violation of rights include defining the fetus not to be a person (a common approach and one with much logical and historical justification) or to say that not all people posses/have the right to bodily autonomy (seems very dangerous and open to abuse) but you still need to go further than just "bodily autonomy of the mother" to get at the real issues. It gets complex and messy but all important things do. On another note, I think that the arguments that fetuses can't be people because most fertilized eggs don't implant and many pregnancies end in miscarriage are rather spurious because in the end every person dies. All people come into existence (whenever that might be) with a death sentence: I will die, you will die, everyone you ever knew will die, and everyone you never knew about will die because every fetus, whether it miscarries or eventually grows up to be an adult human being, will die - it is just a question of how long it will live first. The fact that something dies cannot be what determines whether or not something is a "person"! Again, thanks to this thread for being a very calm and reasonable place! Edit: Just to be clear: I am in no way trying to make some verbal equivalent of the McCain sweeping away the "welfare of the mother" with his hands gif that used to make the rounds or any awful crap like that. I am simply saying that if the argument for the morality of abortion is the non-negotiable bodily autonomy of the mother then for that argument to work logically it also needs to be shown that either: a) The fetus does not also have non-negotiable bodily autonomy, or, b) That if the fetus does have non-negotiable bodily autonomy then the non-negotiable autonomy of the mother supersedes that of the fetus. Both can be done depending upon your assumptions and I think that point a) in particular is pretty widely held and has a lot of historical backing. A_Bluenoser fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Mar 23, 2023 |
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Mar 23, 2023 01:14
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A_Bluenoser posted:On another note, I think that the arguments that fetuses can't be people because most fertilized eggs don't implant and many pregnancies end in miscarriage are rather spurious because in the end every person dies. All people come into existence (whenever that might be) with a death sentence: I will die, you will die, everyone you ever knew will die, and everyone you never knew about will die because every fetus, whether it miscarries or eventually grows up to be an adult human being, will die - it is just a question of how long it will live first. The fact that something dies cannot be what determines whether or not something is a "person"! Personally, I don't think a fertilized egg is a human being, although it has the potential to be one given the right conditions. A literal seed, a human bean, if you will. However, I am willing to entertain the opposite view. If the opposite view is valid, and a fertilized ovum is a human being, then the remarkable thing to me is not that they die; it is that it means the modal human experience is dying before you are born. This has several implications beyond "woah." One implication to me is wondering why it was "made" that way, if you believe that humans were wholly or largely created by the direct action of a Creator. Could they not do better? Are they alright with this sort of a system? It is a sufficiently large quantity that I believe it would require some sort of answer in the theological works, or else you are not really engaging with the implications of the premise. Another implication is that these fertilized eggs, if equivalent in value to other persons, should be rescued. Most of the implications of this are grotesque, although one less horrid possibility would be a strong moral reproof on casual potentially-reproductive sexual activity, even in marriage. It would be fine, of course, once steps could be taken (which might involve some research) to ensure these implantations could be guaranteed, or at least, their chances maximized, or failing that, that the fertilized ova could somehow be secured (cryogenic storage, perhaps?). I don't know of either of these broad topics being discussed, but they seem important, not least because development of the necessary advances in fertility-related medicine would not actually be that hard, compared to some other technological projects.
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Mar 23, 2023 01:47
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Nessus posted:I was talking about this and I'm not on my phone so I'll articulate it a little more clearly now. Oh yes, there are some really interesting implications to all this which I must confess I have not really spent much time thinking about
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Mar 23, 2023 02:31
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A_Bluenoser posted:Oh yes, there are some really interesting implications to all this which I must confess I have not really spent much time thinking about I guess the other converse is, what would be Hell to such an entity?
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Mar 23, 2023 02:57
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Alternately, Limbo is real loving full. Didn't an earlier Pope abolish Limbo?
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Mar 23, 2023 03:08
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A couple quick thoughts: 1) The ostensibly-abysmal survival rate for embryos is based on studies of "habitual aborters", i.e. women who have repeated miscarriages, and on how difficult it is to get an embryo conceived in vitro to implant... 2) ...but even if only 25% of naturally conceived embryos die before implantation, that's a lot! 3) Someone who believes in reincarnation might posit that some souls just have to repeat those first ten-ish days of life a lot. 4) Don't Mormons believe that we choose our lives during our premortal existence? Maybe some people don't want to have a very long mortal life? Or maybe it's like the trial period on human life, so you, I dunno, have to prove you can handle growing to be twenty cells before you qualify for a can-grow-to-adulthood life? 5) Maybe the mean lifespan of a human is supposed to be a certain number, but people sometimes live to be 120, so it balances out? (look, I'm just throwing ideas out, here) 6) I don't think anybody would be happy with "if you want to terminate a pregnancy after 24 weeks, you have to surrender custody and then have the fetus(es) delivered alive".
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Mar 23, 2023 04:10
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Nessus posted:I was talking about this and I'm not on my phone so I'll articulate it a little more clearly now. For the first point, that's very much in the realm of the problem of evil/problem of pain, and I doubt any of us is going to be breaking any new ground on that. The second is far more interesting and would be a complete revolution of human existence. I'm not going to lie, even though it will make me very unpopular: I think that... a great deal of human sexuality, as practiced, is sinful and should not be happening. Now I don't think I or anyone else should have the power to stop it, by means other than gentle persuasion and encouragement, and to continue off on a bit of a tangent I will add that by commission and omission, I am quite the prolific sinner myself in a wide variety of ways, so please do not think I am condemning anyone.
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Mar 23, 2023 04:28
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Winifred Madgers posted:For the first point, that's very much in the realm of the problem of evil/problem of pain, and I doubt any of us is going to be breaking any new ground on that. But it follows, doesn't it, if you go from the original assertion. Nobody brings that part up. It's like when Zardoz gets a big chorus of agreement for the GUN is GOOD, but not the other part. zonohedron posted:A couple quick thoughts: I didn't know that about Mormons. The Mormons in general address a lot of this stuff. It's explicit from what I know of Mormon theology that everyone will get a fair shot at hearing the gospel, in full, from angels, on Judgment Day, with thorough explanation of all points. Real talk: if I wake up post-mortem on a big starry shore with angels talking at me, I'm probably going to jump ship.
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Mar 23, 2023 04:52
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Nessus posted:Real talk: if I wake up post-mortem on a big starry shore with angels talking at me, I'm probably going to jump ship. Not Mormon but I sincerely hope we all get that kind of chance.
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Mar 23, 2023 05:21
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I also find it very interesting when discussing this from an academic standpoint when one considers that contraception and abortifacient herbs (the wild carrot family, and more famously silphium) are well known in the writings of the ancient world but never called out in the Bible. The primary mention of loss of a child in Mosaic law being Exodus 21:22 where the penalty for causing a bystander to suffer a miscarriage in a fight is not the same as the punishment for murder, but rather financial recompense.
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Mar 23, 2023 05:38
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I wonder if Bulgakov was influenced by Alice in Wonderland?
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Mar 23, 2023 10:04
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A_Bluenoser posted:Bodily autonomy may be non-negotiable but when the exercise of the non-negotiable bodily autonomy of one person affects the non-negotiable bodily autonomy of another person then almost tautologically there is a negotiation between the two (often a negotiation by way of violence which is a form of negotiation). If you do not give an organ to another person then you have not actually violated their bodily autonomy - neither of you has directly affected the body of the other and they can still try and get an organ from someone else. Abortion as currently practised, however, necessarily entails the destruction of the fetus. If the fetus is not a person then there is no real issue however if the fetus is a person then destruction of the fetus is clearly a direct violation of its non-negotiable bodily autonomy that it has in-and-of-itself by virtue of its personhood. a fetus does not possess bodily autonomy in the first place. in my view bodily autonomy does not just derive from "personhood", it derives from having a body that can live autonomously. fetuses do not have them. its arguable at what point they even have bodies at all. it is entirely possible for a full grown fully functional human to enter a state, through disease or injury, in which they no longer have bodily autonomy. this doesn't meam they are no longer a person. a person can completely lose their ability to feed themselves, to communicate, to move etc but this doesn't mean they lose "personhood". however. in such a state no one else should be forced by law to use their own body to keep that person alive. they might be required in some contexts to use other means, but not their actual body. no person should have the right to the physical use of any other person's body in order to prolong their life, whether they are a unborn fetus, a 2 month old infant, or 25 years old adult. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Mar 23, 2023 |
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Mar 23, 2023 14:20
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Yeah like a lot of this just feels very besides the point to me, because even if a fetus was a person, if there's a fetus in my uterus, it's leaving. Consider it Stand Your Ground.
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Mar 23, 2023 14:35
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Earwicker posted:a fetus does not possess bodily autonomy in the first place. in my view bodily autonomy does not just derive from "personhood", it derives from having a body that can live autonomously. fetuses do not have them. its arguable at what point they even have bodies at all. So you resolve the issue using additonal postulate a) the fetus does not have bodily autonomy (on the grounds that not all people actually have bodily autonomy). That is perfectly logical but the additional postulate is necessary for the argument to work in the general case. I must confess I am rather uncomfortable with the idea that not all people have bodily autonomy. I rather think that all people do have bodily autonomy but that there are situations like some of the ones you describe where we can/must violate that autonomy. It may amount to practically the same thing but I think there is a philosophical difference that is important. A_Bluenoser fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Mar 23, 2023 |
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Mar 23, 2023 15:32
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If we had external cyberwombs it would solve a lot of problems. Is anyone working on that? I mean I can think of several reasons why not but you’d think it would be on someone’s agenda.
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Mar 23, 2023 15:33
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Killingyouguy! posted:Yeah like a lot of this just feels very besides the point to me, because even if a fetus was a person, if there's a fetus in my uterus, it's leaving. Consider it Stand Your Ground. This resolves the issue by use of postulate b) even if the fetus does have bodily autonomy the bodily autonomy of the mother supercedes it. Again perfectly logical and as you point out an argument we definitely use in other situations. However again specifying the additional postulate is necessary for the bodily autonomy argument to work in all cases which is my only point.
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Mar 23, 2023 15:37
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A_Bluenoser posted:I must confess I am rather uncomfortable with the idea that not all people have bodily autonomy. I rather think that all people do have bodily autonomy but that there are situations like some of the ones you describe where we can/must violate that autonomy. i'm not sure what you think "autonomy" means but imo if a person enters a state where they cannot eat or breathe unassisted, then their body literally cannot survive autonomously. they are, however, still a person. A_Bluenoser posted:That is perfectly logical but the additional postulate is necessary for the argument to work in the general case. I have no idea what this means to be honest.
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Mar 23, 2023 17:11
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I think bluenoser means that the quoted post making a modification to the premise. It is a defensible and reasonable modification to the premise but it is a modification. E: I’m literate I swear
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Mar 23, 2023 17:31
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Nessus posted:I think bluenoser means that you’re making a modification to the premise. It is a defensible and reasonable modification to the premise but it is a modification. Exactly. And I took "non-negotiable bodily autonomy" to mean the right to do with your body what you will, not just its existence. The existence of the independent body (bodily autonomy) and the right to full control of it (non-negotiable) by the possessor of said body are distinct concepts and I took the non-negotiable phrase to mean we were talking about the right.
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Mar 23, 2023 17:39
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A_Bluenoser posted:Exactly. i don't see how that "right" can be separated from the fact that, in the case of a fetus, it literally does not possess an autonomous body. a fetus is not a "possessor of a body", it is possessed by someone else's body and exists entirely within it, functionally as part of it. whether or not it has a "soul" or can be defined as a "person" is more of a philosophical question that is going to change depending on one's spiritual or philosophical views and thus isn't something that should be the basis for law. it seems a lot more concrete (to me) that a fetus does not have its own autonomous body, and thus the concept of "bodily autonomy" does not apply to it, while the person who is pregnant absolutely does have an independent body, and thus their right to bodily autonomy is absolute. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Mar 23, 2023 |
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Mar 23, 2023 18:09
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Earwicker posted:i don't see how that "right" can be separated from the fact that, in the case of a fetus, it literally does not possess an autonomous body. I do think a person with a fetus in them has the right to get that fetus out, but we’re kind of tinkering with nuances of moral philosophy.
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Mar 23, 2023 18:16
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Earwicker posted:i don't see how that "right" can be separated from the fact that, in the case of a fetus, it literally does not possess an autonomous body. From my perspective I can draw a circle around the fetus and say "I can identify this as the fetus and not the mother". Thus at least at some level I can think of the fetus as an entity that is distinct from the mother. Therefore it is possible to define a separate body for the fetus. If this entity is then defined as a "person" then the question of the rights of this body naturally come up. I am not arguing that one must do this or that it is even the most logical thing to do but it is definitely possible to do so. As such I don't think that the argument from bodily autonomy of the mother is self-evidently correct - it needs additional premises and argumentation in my view.
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Mar 23, 2023 18:36
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Nessus posted:If we had external cyberwombs it would solve a lot of problems. Is anyone working on that? Do you want axolotl tanks? Because this is how you get axolotl tanks.
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Mar 23, 2023 23:22
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Mad Hamish posted:Do you want axolotl tanks? Because this is how you get axolotl tanks.
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Mar 24, 2023 00:24
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Prurient Squid posted:I wonder if Bulgakov was influenced by Alice in Wonderland? I don't think so. But I checked and Carrol's only expedition outside of Albion was to Russia; it may have been the inspiration for Through the Looking Glass, according to a very obviously biased source. Further research is needed. https://www.amazon.com/Russian-journal-other-selections-Carroll/dp/0486235696 It seems he did visit, and furthermore published a journal about it. https://www.graceguts.com/essays/trains-to-moscow-a-comparison-of-lewis-carrolls-russian-journal-and-e-e-cummings-eimi This cat brings comparison between Carroll's journey and E.E. Cummings decades later. And it seems Cummings also found it to be a hellish experience, just like Bulgakov. Interesting stuff
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Mar 24, 2023 00:31
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zonohedron posted:4) Don't Mormons believe that we choose our lives during our premortal existence? Maybe some people don't want to have a very long mortal life? Or maybe it's like the trial period on human life, so you, I dunno, have to prove you can handle growing to be twenty cells before you qualify for a can-grow-to-adulthood life? Resident exMormon lurker here. Trying to pin down theology in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is like trying to nail Jello to a wall; there is pretty decidely a premortal existence in the theology but there will be a wide spectrum of various beliefs about how the premortal existence functions and subsequently affects mortal existence. Historical Church leaders have often theorized in ways that are now distasteful to many people now (for instance, the idea that being born black and thus subject to the exaltation ban was due to misbehavior in the preexistence, which has now been quasi-disavowed), so the apologetics crew at FAIR pretty much conclude about how actually we don't really know for sure. You can see how those ideas affect the culture in things like the production of the musical Saturday's Warrior. Nessus posted:I didn't know that about Mormons. The Mormons in general address a lot of this stuff. It's explicit from what I know of Mormon theology that everyone will get a fair shot at hearing the gospel, in full, from angels, on Judgment Day, with thorough explanation of all points. Real talk: if I wake up post-mortem on a big starry shore with angels talking at me, I'm probably going to jump ship. Not quuuuuite like that, officially I think, but yes people definitely get a fair shot to accept the gospel if they didn't in life. You can end up getting the gospel preached to you after death and your subsequent shuffling into spirit prison by goody two shoes faithful missionaries from spirit paradise. And that's why there's baptisms for the dead and whatnot.
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Mar 24, 2023 06:51
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I'm dead and I still have to get preached to? Just throw me in the pit already!!
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Mar 24, 2023 14:20
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Here I was roasting in hell and then this "Buddha" came down and tried to teach me about enlightenment. Hey buddy, just give me the pamphlet and clear off.
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Mar 25, 2023 08:47
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Okay so I am not, by nature, a religious person but I have a few questions about this particular article. https://medium.com/inserting-philosophy/calvinism-and-the-american-conception-of-evil-b3db0a7e7f91 The wider points are not something I would not, necessarily, disagree with but I think that it is absolutely very weird to say that "Religion and the state" were conceived of differently in the medieval period and that it was a "new invention" as to the idea of having a state that told you what to believe. Not least in the fact that, for the most part, the idea that there was even a "state" seems very very ahistorical in this instance. Alongside that I am also not particularly enthused with the authors view of Manichaeism as being somehow a root cause of these problems. Just wondered if folks would like to say if I am wrong, or own opinions. Thanks!
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Mar 25, 2023 11:45
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That guy is making incredibly sloppy arguments and using words incredibly loosely. This: “Something Americans are never taught in school is that prior to Calvin, there was a basic, rough separation between the Church and the secular state. No, the U.S. revived, but didn’t invent, the idea. The medieval idea, deriving from the 400s, was that God chose separate leaders for church and state. This is not to say that there wasn’t significant meddling between kings and clergy in each other’s business, but the pretense of separate domains was always maintained. This was an important part of the feudal system. The Church supported and legitimized the king, and the king defended the Church, but they were separate pillars that upheld the social structure.” Is also certainly a take. Does this description of the medieval relationship between church and state sound like a “separation between church and state” “FIFTH, the acceptance of these doctrines as the foundation not only of the Church but also of the state, because the state has no other content than the content the Church gives it., so that he who is supposed to undermine this content not only undermines the Church but also the state. He is not only a heretic who must be excommunicated; he is also a criminal who must be delivered into the hands of the civil authorities to punish him as a criminal.” Not to mention that the medieval church and state relationship in an inherited Roman church and state relationship. Now I’d imagine this guys response would be along the lines of: well practically they were separate, but that requires a rather selective and I think disingenuous look at the medieval period.
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Mar 25, 2023 16:56
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i wonder how would he rationalize the fact that medieval rulers were constantly being excommunicated or threatened with excommunication if and when they fell out of line with rome's wishes? like if you look at this list particularly during the middle ages it's clearly extremely political https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_excommunicated_by_the_Catholic_Church and yes of course as you mention there is also the major problem that "states" as we know them today did not even really exist at the time
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Mar 25, 2023 17:07
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I'm watching the third episode of Star Trek TOS entitled Where No Man Has Gone Before. There's a scene where a bedridden character is reading Spinoza's the Ethics. Very syncronious. Almost uncanny actually.
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Mar 25, 2023 17:25
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Josef bugman posted:Okay so I am not, by nature, a religious person but I have a few questions about this particular article. As for Manichaeism, my own feeling is that you can't treat Manichaeism as all good or all bad, you have to accept that it's a mixture of both, and if you can't do that, you don't really understand the idea. 
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Mar 25, 2023 19:17
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The modern idea of national sovereignty literally stems from a treaty stating that each ruler had the right to choose what religion their country was
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Mar 25, 2023 22:26
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Nessus posted:I think a lot of quasi-Calvinist ideas are part of the folk wisdom in American culture/politics even in the minds of people who were never actually raised Calvinist. I would say "quasi" because in a lot of cases they don't map 1:1 to what John Calvin taught, but the ideas seem to bear meaningful similarities to what I understand as Calvinist doctrines. The Calvinist conception of the 'deserving poor' underpins nearly everything wrong with American social services that can't be directly traced to racial prejudice, and the two align more often than not in American history.
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Mar 25, 2023 23:20
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Josef bugman posted:Okay so I am not, by nature, a religious person but I have a few questions about this particular article. This dude is an absolute clown. He understands jack poo poo about the history he's talking about. Dude has terminal Trump brain and instead of manifesting his rage in coherent or useful ways chose to write the stupidest article I've seen all day. Go ask a forced convert in Spain how separate Church and State feel. Or a Christian being forced to sacrifice to the Emperor in the Pagan period of Rome. quote:. Only the U.S. could create the vitriolic parochialism of the NRA, the Moral Majority, the Tea Party, and Trump. There's a reason this cat pushed this piece on Medium and not anywhere it would get scrutiny. Nessus posted:I think a lot of quasi-Calvinist ideas are part of the folk wisdom in American culture/politics even in the minds of people who were never actually raised Calvinist. I would say "quasi" because in a lot of cases they don't map 1:1 to what John Calvin taught, but the ideas seem to bear meaningful similarities to what I understand as Calvinist doctrines.
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Mar 26, 2023 00:50
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