Anti-RH Lies About The RH Bill

However plausible your evolution theory might seem to you, it is a fairy tale to us. We are not convinced because NO ONE has actually seen any specie evolving into a higher specie. No orangutan has given birth to a human yet. They should have phased out long before to give way to humans and any time of the year, you should see intermediate species being born IF evolution were really true. NO human has ever been documented as coming out of an orangutan's womb. Sorry, your evolution theory is fiction.

That's all right – Darwin doesn't believe in you either 😉

Funny how an orangutan giving birth to a human being will actually disprove evolution because, THAT'S NOT HOW EVOLUTION WORKS!

The Internet is a treasure trove of information. If I may, I'd like to point you to a very basic presentation of what evolution is. Don't worry! They're very basic discussions. Hope these help. 🙂

Here's if you don't have time. It's just 2 minutes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1xKMqpkMsc

Here's for when you have 20 minutes to spare. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHtCNEZs6Uo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBRXJBM5c-o

If you're afraid that learning about evolution is against your religion, don't worry! The head of the Pontifical Council for Culture views it as compatible with all your beliefs about talking snakes and Adam and Eve! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religi…

"NO ONE has actually seen any specie evolving into a higher specie"

Haven't you heard that pharmacist have to keep changing the formulas for their medicines because viruses are constantly "evolving". An example of evolution which we can observe in our lifetime. Or is that fact just a fiction to you?

[We are not convinced because NO ONE has actually seen any specie evolving into a higher specie.]

Then Richard Lenski would like to have a word with you, 'o erudite one 😉
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Richard_Lenski

And your ilk were quick to try to discredit Lenski, and failed miserably too.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lenski_affair

By your logic, the Church didn't do its job well enough. it should have burned Galileo at the stake like Giordano Bruno.

Its not the few erring clerics that are the problem here – its how the church authorities, all the way to the Vatican and the Pope himself, chose to deal with the problem – they hid it from the authorities, did not give due process of the law to the sex offenders, and abused their position in society to silence the victims and their families.

make no mistake , the accusations are NOT ad hominem by any stretch of imagination, these are issues that officials of the church must first resolve within their own organization before they earn the right to tell others how to keep a chaste and moral sex life.

Maybe you didn't read the argument of Lalon then. I'll re-post it again for your consideration:

"Moral, like a priest convincing a boy that he's gonna go to heaven if he sleeps with him in bed…"

Is the stench of the adhominem setting in now?

No amount of casuistry can hide the fact that it was an attempt to discredit her opponents argument by bandying about the "the few erring clerics".

Nice effort in trying to salvage her argument by painting the whole thing with a bigger brush and saying it's about how the church authorities chose to deal with the problem. But it's toothless, and an adhominem nonetheless since it scarcely addresses the argument it purports to address. It's either a point being made is valid or not, doesn't matter who's making it. And getting a few rotten eggs to represent the whole is a disingenuous strategy. The fact that you don't see it as an adhominem just boggles the mind.

"Moral, like a priest convincing a boy that he's gonna go to heaven if he sleeps with him in bed…" >> that's not ad hominem, that's dramatic irony, or if you prefer it, sarcasm.

ad hominem would require a *baseless* attack on someone's person (eg. claiming that someone is a liar or a thief without citing actual proof). If actual factual events are cited, it no longer can be considered ad hominem. Just because the truth hurts, doesn't diminish the fact that it is still truth.

The original post you criticized was calling out the Church on "trying" to be a moral compass, which could only be credible it the people running it were also held in the same stringent standards. It failed those very same standards of sexual purity and moral honesty it is trying to uphold. Therefore, accusations like this cannot be considered ad hominem since standards of morality are being called into question…
unless you can claim that clergy are exempted from the very rules they preach?

est que ce que vous dites?

@Miguel

Let's get the complete quote from Lalon, shall we?

["Church does not take away the free will of people, but it will always stand firm in its role of TEACHING THE PEOPLE about what is MORAL or IMMORAL."

Yeah right. Moral, like a priest convincing a boy that he's gonna go to heaven if he sleeps with him in bed. Moral, like those church people spreading lies about the RH Bill. ]

The only stench I'm smelling here is a blatant attempt at quoting Lalon out of context.

Said commenter was addressing catholichealthpractice's point that the Catholic Church stands for what is moral moral and immoral, by citing that that church also condoned the systematic hiding of rapists, and that it has resorted to distorting information on reproductive health.

And mind you, it is far more than just a "few clerics" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10407559

It only counts as an ad hominem if the charge is irrelevant to the discussion.

[Priests sleeping with boys seem more like the exception than the rule, don't you think? ]

While I agree that cases like these are inevitable in an organization as large as the RCC, it's not the actual rape we're pissed off at (though that is still wrong) – it is the way the institution handled them.

Instead of handing these offenders to the police proper authorities, the Church instead opted to systematically hide them from parish to parish, in an effort to keep the situation quiet.

These incidents are not just isolated – they have already been proven by more than one investigation to be systemic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/opinion/16dowd…. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/irela…

As for how this point impacts the church, it's simple: The CBCP claims the moral high ground in dealing with the RH Bill. Their act of hiding rapists says otherwise. Ergo, they have no right to speak of morality as a motivation.

I'm thinking you guys really have to read up on what constitutes an adhominem. You would be making more sense if you said that questions of character and motive, in this case at least, was relevant to the discussion. It could very well be. And sure, arguments of that sort could be contrived and will probably be very effective in hiding the stench of fallacious reasoning. Nevertheless, even if it were true, it is, and will always be an adhominem.

Maybe, for good measure, I should post what an adhominem actually is. Here copy pasted from an online dictionary:

"An attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making"

In other words:

1. Person A makes claim X
2. Person B makes an attack on person A
3. Therefore Person A's claim X is false.

Simple isn't it?

Now may I suggest you read into what constitutes a false positive of an ad hominem attack:

[Calling someone an idiot when you have explained the evidence five times and they still refuse to address it, or provide counterexamples, is not an ad hominem attack, but rather a statement of fact.

Similarly, tacking an insult onto the end of any argument might be bad form, but it doesn't automatically make it an ad hominem. It's only an ad hominem if you say the other person must be wrong because they are an idiot – not the other way round.

A criticism is also not an ad hominem argument if a person's merits are actually the topic of the argument. For example, "You're drunk," might be an ad hominem if used in an argument about epistemology. On the other hand, it would be a quite persuasive argument if used to support the proposition, "You shouldn't drive." ]

Now going back to the example of the church. Ever since the RH Bill debates began, the RCC, by way of its mouthpiece the CBCP, has resorted to claiming the moral high ground on reproductive health, and asserting that its methods are "morally right," and should be followed.

We pointed out repeatedly that given the institution systematically hides sex offenders instead of arresting them, they have lost their right to claim that moral ascendancy. To put it another way. Newt Gingrich claims that he's a devout Catholic, despite the fact he has already divorced three times, and divorce is again Catholic doctrine.

To elaborate, the subject of the discussion is the church, namely their credibility at being able to say what is "moral" and "right."

The Church intentionally hid rapists in the past, and continue to do so systematically, as investigations have found, indicating that thus activity it systematic, and is then endorsed by Vatican authorities.

So if the Vatican has been found hiding rapists instead of sending them to prison, wouldn't that by extension indicate that they do not have any moral ascendancy on issues?

Isn't the issue about the RHBill? Are we not stipulating that the Church here is talking about the RHbill and not whether raping young boys should be kosher?

Even if I conceded your point on the complicity of the whole church on those child abuse cases. Isn't it that what *ought* to be attacked is whether the Church's view on the RHbill is accurate? Isn't that the objective of this very post, that tries to show leaflets of the Church as ridiculous?

You don't smell the stench? That's because people usually are unable to smell their own. Metaphorically speaking ofcourse.

The article is about the RH Bill, but we were arguing specifically about Lalon's reply to catholichealthpractice's post, specifically about the latter's claim about the Catholic Church having the moral high ground in the discussion.

That aspect of the church's claim of morality I have already addressed in a previous reply. As for the church's validity, I've already arranged a post below.

[You don't smell the stench? That's because people usually are unable to smell their own. Metaphorically speaking ofcourse. ]

I do smell it, admittedly. Athlete's foot is a bitch 🙁

You are purposefully misdirecting my argument onto something completely different. The adhominem charge was made at a particular line of argumentation which I will show below, and not at the broader picture you seem to want to frame the argument in to make your side seem less inconsistent.

This is annoyingly trifling.. But for good measure, this is how the argument, that I was attacking, was formulated:

//"Church does not take away the free will of people, but it will always stand firm in its role of TEACHING THE PEOPLE about what is MORAL or IMMORAL." //

To which the response was:

//Yeah right. Moral, like a priest convincing a boy that he's gonna go to heaven if he sleeps with him in bed. //

We can go on and on and on and debate on whether the Church's "TEACHING" is accurate or not. We can on and on and on and on and debate whether they take away "free-will" or not. The point of contention here (which apparently isn't as blatantly obvious as I previously thought it was) is whether the Church's view on the RHbill, from a moral perspective, is valid or not. So one must show why it isn't valid. Any attack other than that falls somewhere in that vast continuum between nonsense and adhominem.

That first argument was attacked by saying something akin to "No you have no say because your institution protects pedophiles" . And once more, the fact that you don't see this as an adhominem completely boggles my mind.

You can forget about that huge slab of words you just posted, since it doesn't seems like an accurate summation of what has just happened.

[The point of contention here (which apparently isn't as blatantly obvious as I previously thought it was) is whether the Church's view on the RHbill, from a moral perspective, is valid or not. ]

Which shouldn't even be an issue in the first place given Reproductive Health isn't about what is "moral" or "right" based on one religion's understanding of said concepts. What makes their morality any more or less valid than mine (I'm a deist) for example, and what gives them the authority to tell me that I should follow their sensibilities?

["No you have no say because your institution protects pedophiles" ]

It's closer to: "Your organization has no right to tell us what's moral because it protects rapists."

[You can forget about that huge slab of words you just posted, since it doesn't seems like an accurate summation of what has just happened. ]

@Miguel

Let me post a more solid example here:

The Church (or at least its Pro-Constituents) claim that contraceptives, including condoms, causes cancer.

The claim is fradulent in that is fails to take into account that while some Oral Contraceptives may have a link to increasing risk of certain forms of cancer, there are also OCs that have been indicated to reduce other forms of cancer as well.
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk…

As for condoms causing cancer:

While a German study did find that condoms contain trace amounts of nitrosamines, a carcinogen, the amount required for them to affect the chances of one contracting cancer is too minute
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11759152 http://www.shsu.edu/~pin_www/T@S/2006/kellyjcondo…

The church resorting to exaggerations of medical data, if not flat-out lying; If I recall my Catholic theology, lying is considered a sin.

No need to tell me these things. I am only against abortion. I believe life begins at conception. I take no issue with condoms, or whatever forms of contraceptives that do nothing to the unborn.

That's why I'm pretty much agnostic about the whole thing.

I wasn't trying convince you dude. My point is that the Church, given the bulk of credible data out there, resorted to lying to prove their point.

And personally, I'm not about to narrow "life" down to conception, but that discussion is is better left to another forum.

Looking back at some of my comments, I think I owe you an apology for sounding like an ass.

It's all good man. Don't take my adversarial stance as me being hateful or anything. I just like debate. I'm a contrarian at heart.

[Don't take my adversarial stance as me being hateful or anything.]

I may have erred here. I'd been confronting a wide variety of Anti-RH activists over the past few months, and most of their screed is just as bad – if not worse – than the flyer posted on this article.

I guess that may have made me a bit more trigger-happy than I should be.

[Which shouldn't even be an issue in the first place given Reproductive Health isn't about what is "moral" or "right" based on one religion's understanding of said concepts.]

— Which is a futile attempt at proving a point since it isn't a reaction to any objective circumstance at all –namely I did not say "moral…based on one religions view.."

[What makes their morality any more or less valid than mine (I'm a deist) for example]

–What makes your morality any less valid than theirs? Are you a moral relativist? Might as well bring Hitler in the mix; what makes your morality any more less valid than his? I'm not referring to one religion's morality, I'm speaking of objective morality, and whether the Church's is able to reflect such or not.

"No you have no say because your institution protects pedophiles"
It's closer to: "Your organization has no right to tell us what's moral because it protects rapists."

–Which is almost exactly the same thing. If I tell you killing is bad, it doesn't matter whether I love killing people –killing is bad in and of itself, no matter who is making the assertion of it's being bad. Something tells me that analogy is crude, but bear with me, I'm writing things off the bat.

[You can forget about that huge slab of words you just posted, since it doesn't seems like an accurate summation of what has just happened.]

Let me keep it simple: The church lied about the facts on the RH Bill. I did not.

And if you're going to refer to Hitler in our discussion, may I refer to Godwin's Law? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_Law

[If I tell you killing is bad, it doesn't matter whether I love killing people –killing is bad in and of itself, no matter who is making the assertion of it's being bad. Something tells me that analogy is crude, but bear with me, I'm writing things off the bat.]

I'll wait until you rewrite that then because as it stands, that did not make sense.

Let me rephrase it then:

In the unlikely scenario that you would be debating Dahmer about the merits or lack thereof of the act of killing babies, and you, rather fortunately, find yourself in the position of arguing against the proposition –that killing cute, little, cuddly babies should be all well and fine — then you really ought to refrain from making statements like "you are a psychopath, therefore no one should really hear what you have to say about the pleasures and endless fun to be had in slaughtering these tiny bundles of joy"

Well, you could do that. And it probably would make a lot of sense. But it's still an adhominem.

Which I might add, isn't a 100% representation of what we just argued about. But no analogy is a completely accurate representation. But anyhow, that's what I wanted to say about the 'killing' thing.

Psychopath, meaning that said person is mentally imbalanced to begin with, and does not adhere to social norms on empathy. Not exactly the best premise for a logical discussion XC
http://www.suite101.com/content/psychopathantisoc…

As I said, I will have to rethink your point. I think I'm beginning to understand what you mean on the matter, though I have to say you need to make a less wordy analogy.

You're basically saying that the church's stint with sheltering child rapists should not be used as an attack on their stance on the RH Bill, and that it would do better for our side to attack them on that matter directly, right?

Why am I sensing this to be a trap of some sort. Yes, insofar as they are separate issues, we should treat them separately. And I like being wordy.

[Yes, insofar as they are separate issues, we should treat them separately. ]

No traps here. Just trying to make sense of this after giving it some thought.

So as it follows, you'd prefer an argument focusing on the CBCP's stance on the RH Bill, right? Can you elaborate on what sort of evidence you had in mind.

I think the Church isn't arguing for their cause in a very effective way. If they paid me to do it, I'd base my arguments solely on secular grounds –which I think they can do. I think they have a case when they say that life starts at conception, thus any such pill, or what have you, that kills life at this point would be doing exactly that — killing life. I don't claim to know all the arguments from both sides. I know there are persuasive arguments on both. But I take issue with how the Church argues it's cause (citing Damnation, excommunication and so forth), and how the pro RHBill side sometimes tries to reinterpret the constitutional definition of what human life. But this is not a debate I have done research on.

While conception is technically the beginning of the development of a human life, my issue is if it should be given the same legal rights as the woman carrying it; though I think that's best left to another discussion.

So basically, you're saying that regardless of the church's track record with child rapists, it is irrelevant to their claim that the RH Bill is immoral, and that we should treat each each matter separately?

Insofar as it is a separate issue yes. And I've already conceded your point on the complicity of the Church on those child abuse cases, as far as I can gather, the jury is still out on that –that is a significant concession mind you.

This is actually funny because I'm not even against RHBill.

@Miguel

Yeah, I wasn't even trying to be "proper" in my comment here. Why state the obvious? Oh I get it, you're "a contrarian at heart".

Funny how you can belittle my capacity to raise proper arguments here just by reading a few lines glazed with sarcasm. That's quite a presumption you have there. Good reasoning at its best.

You had your fun chance of flexing your wit. Happy now? Good for you. 🙂

@Wes and Twin-Skies

Thanks! I know you're not doing it for me, but something tells me I should thank you guys. 🙂

I said it raises question about your ability to form proper arguments. I don't know you, I'm completely justified in making generalizations based on your arguments.

Funny that you judge a whole Church through the actions of some priests, and yet demand that people refrain from doing the same when you make a comment "glazed with sarcasm". It certainly wasn't obvious that you were being facetious in that comment. Although in retrospect, I certainly understand why you would want everyone to think you were.

.

Actually, Abstinence-only has been proven on several occasions to be unreliable as a family planning method.
http://www.guttmacher.org/media/inthenews/2007/04…
http://www.empowher.com/sexual-well-being/content…

A citation would be appreciated. Thanks, Mr. Catholichealthpractice.