EU is becoming anti-christian in politics

[Kuciwalker]

The two are the same case, BlackCat. A government controlled by clerics inherently strictly limits other religions. It's just in this case, the government is controlled by atheists.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Ned
Second, regardless of all that crap about the EU and abortion about how Catholics are not oppressed, the article seem to suggest that a Catholic who "believes" in positions that differ from official EU policy cannot be a member of the EU government.

That IS discrimination.

That would be true if the person was elected, but since he is applying for a job at EU the employers has a right to check out if he can do the job right. No responsible employer would hire a HRM who states that certain people (women, gay etc) would be filtered out if he is hired.

[Kuciwalker]

Actually, the opposite is true. There's no wrongful discrimination in an election, by definition, but in hiring any discrimination not absolutely necessary is wrong. And being a Catholic wouldn't necessarily prevent the person from doing his or her job.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
The two are the same case, BlackCat. A government controlled by clerics inherently strictly limits other religions. It's just in this case, the government is controlled by atheists.

That depends highly on how an atheistic government is implemented. In my view anybody has the right to belive in any religion they want, but in the same moment they try to force something upon others that is based on this religion instead of facts, then i say stop. That's the main difference between a religious rule and a atheistic - you cannot take a 2000 year old book and say that according to this, things shall be like this book describes.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Actually, the opposite is true. There's no wrongful discrimination in an election, by definition, but in hiring any discrimination not absolutely necessary is wrong. And being a Catholic wouldn't necessarily prevent the person from doing his or her job.

As a far out example - it would be ok to hire a outspoken childmolester as a kindergarden teacher ? He states that he won't abuse his position and you trust he wont ?

Before everybody starts flaming me, i admit it's a unfair comparison, but i only want to make it clear that with the statements Buttiglione have made, it's quite reasonable that EU has their doubt wether he will be able to keep his opinion out when he is doing his job.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Why should morals based on religion be forbidden, but morals of "atheists" be allowed? Your morals have exactly as much evidence for them as the Christians' do.

Forbidden is maybe the wrong word. I will say you think at least three times before you accept anything based upon reigious terms. Moral based upon religion is the same as saying that you accept that the way of life now shall be ruled by the laws witch defined the moral 2000 years ago (for christians, islam has a couple of hundreds years less).

It does not much sense to try to implement something in a society which is totally meaingless to the old moralmakers - things like telephone, tv, photgraphy, medical science and internet have a great impact upon todays moral views and in religious terms they dont make sense, that is they wasn't invented when the religion was created and therefore cannot be a part of the actual religions way of defining moral an ethic.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by BlackCat
That depends highly on how an atheistic government is implemented. In my view anybody has the right to belive in any religion they want, but in the same moment they try to force something upon others that is based on this religion instead of facts, then i say stop. That's the main difference between a religious rule and a atheistic - you cannot take a 2000 year old book and say that according to this, things shall be like this book describes.

They're not forcing religious beliefs or even religious morals on anyone. It's accepted by all the members of the EU that government at least ought to protect innocents. All they are "forcing" on people (by voting, oh horror of horrors) is their view of what constitutes a person by expanding the category. It's no worse than expanding the definition of a person to blacks, which was certainly "forced" on the South (a lot more violently, too).

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by BlackCat
Forbidden is maybe the wrong word. I will say you think at least three times before you accept anything based upon reigious terms. Moral based upon religion is the same as saying that you accept that the way of life now shall be ruled by the laws witch defined the moral 2000 years ago (for christians, islam has a couple of hundreds years less).

There are more modern religions. Moreover, they often do NOT actually espouse the morals espoused by practitioners of their religion 2000 years ago. And morals based up religion are jut as valid as morals based upon something else.

It does not much sense to try to implement something in a society which is totally meaingless to the old moralmakers - things like telephone, tv, photgraphy, medical science and internet have a great impact upon todays moral views and in religious terms they dont make sense, that is they wasn't invented when the religion was created and therefore cannot be a part of the actual religions way of defining moral an ethic.

That's clearly not the case regarding abortions.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by BlackCat
As a far out example - it would be ok to hire a outspoken childmolester as a kindergarden teacher ? He states that he won't abuse his position and you trust he wont ?

A childmolester is someone who has already broken that trust. Moreover, a pedophile is someone who will inherently have urges to break that trust. A Catholic can't really do that much damage in a bureaucratic position - if he doesn't do his job, fire him!

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Regardless of whether or not they are of inferior intelligence, why should superior intelligence actually imply "superiority"?

Because I said that the position of blacks not being persons was irrational, given their own definition of personhood.

You are obviously dead wrong on that one. Why don't you give up?

I know what your answer will be anyway, let's go on with your following point (related to the one being discussed here)

1) Reason clearly is not one of the more prevalent abilities amongst humans (half-serious here)

Maybe, maybe not. It's most obviously though, the one with the highest potential for normativity, and that's what counts. And that's freaking definitely something that has been evading you so far.

2) What does the ability to, say, sign a contract, have to do with anything?

Haven't you read Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, etc? Reason is the constitutive idea of modernity, and its existence, assumed either as an a priori (Descartes) or empirical evidence (Hume), is at the root of modernist thinking. The ability to make a meaningful statement, turn it into a promise, and assume its coherency of the basis of 'natural laws' (self-preservation, namely) has been used to justify Social Contracts. It is irrational and useless to add whiteness of skin on top of that.

Ah, so now you're simply arguing empirical fact about what they believed, not whether or not they were actually correct.

No!!! We are still talking about what was irrational and what wasn't.

Clearly, a system of beliefs whose subpropositions violate the very axioms at its core is LESS rational than one that doesn't, WHATEVER those axioms are!

Why should I accept your axioms? You aren't defining a system, and then saying that your conclusions are true only within this system.

On the contrary, this is exactly what I'm doing, albeit in a much more theoretical way than just providing arbitrary definitions (I'm actually trying to find sure relationships between oberved practical phenomenons and how reason should deal with them).

WRT to my axioms, you don't have to accept them, and they are irrelevant to this discussion. But don't worry, we'll discuss them anyway, later.

You are saying that these aspects actually have some intrinsic empirical quality.

You're out of luck here, I never talked about intrinsic empirical qualities and I don't believe in them.

For instance, if you are simply defining the word "person" to mean "human that has been born", then you haven't made any case at all. You haven't established that suddenly, oh, "humans that have been born ought to have rights" (assuming that a person ought to have rights), because your "person" isn't the same thing as the "person" that is supposed to have rights. And if you simply define "ought" and "rights" and all those words so that it's true, you haven't established anything about the "ought" that means should.

I don't get your point.

If they're what you say, they have NO bearing on the real world and might as well be ignored.

Hmmm... NO! Epistemology deals with how empirical knowledge can be classified and organized, and which ones can be safely considered safely true because of a very high likelyness. Self-preservation ranks amongst these.

(The reason we don't do this with mathematics has nothing to do with math and everything to do with the fact that we've actually observed that this completely arbitrary, non-empirical system happens to be used by the universe. There can obviously be no corresponding solution for definition of right and wrong, because there's no experiment you can perform that tells you them. You can observe that people tend to follow certain moralities, but that's all it is: people tend to follow certain moralities.)

The belief in an objective world is, ironically, ONE HELL OF A METAPHYSICAL FABRICATION!

Just because their statement of their moral principles are contradictory with each other [...] doesn't mean their actual beliefs are contradictory. It just means they don't actually follow their stated beliefs, and is not an indictment of the beliefs they actually follow.

You do realize that this is sig material?

(As to the second part of your argument, i.e. that practical actions don't have any effect on the actual beliefs, it is stronger but still quite weak. For instance, if one had, say, the belief that no one ever lies and that he lied himself, you'd have a strong case of claiming this belief to be self-contradictory, albeit not, I grant you, in a purely non-empirical, non-observational manner).

What is "epistemological" evidence?

This is what makes the world function, i.e. that engineers, even knowing that nothing about their knowledge is certain, still succesfully build bridges and power plants. There are also such things in all science, including psychology.

Your favorite philosopher, Mill, relies exactly on this.

1) Empirically, everyone wants to be happy and has a strong sense of self-preservation
2) Happiness and preservation can be threatened when different moralities collide
3) If people are to follow a moral code consistent with their desires and their reasoning ability, they will want it to be as universal as possible (as to avoid the danger posed by no. 2)
4) For a moral code to be as universal as possible, it has to rely on strong empirical evidence and try to derive conclusions from in the manner that has the highest potention for normativity (thus, logically, using the rules of what are sound arguments)
5) Thus, a good moral code will define as useful what, in its observed practical consequences, goes in accordance with no. 1

In fact, I'd say you are JUST as guilty, by your logic. Assuming things like sentience and intelligence make a person, if you aren't against third-trimester abortions then your propositions are not validly derived from your axioms.

Which axioms?

Since every single human being acts as if he or she believes them, it's completely pointless to say "I don't believe in causality/objective reality/etc." In fact, it's really just an intellectual conceit. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm saying it's a complete waste of time to even think about it.

Then, why isn't it a waste of time to claim that moralities are equally false, because clearly everyone acts as if their own wasn't.

Homosexuality being a choice or not has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Banning it would still be legislation against sin, unlike banning abortion.

Of course it is! An atheist can conceivably believe that homosexuality is wrong, independently of religious beliefs. Are you claiming that it's OK to outlaw adultery because some atheists believe it's wrong?

Wake up, this is the real world. Religious people are pushing an agenda built on religious beliefs, and that's enough to be careful about it when you deal with the issue (assuming you value the aforementioned principle of separation of Church from State).

It doesn't matter if there are any atheists who hold the view; the point is that it is not inconsistant for an atheist to hold that view, therefore, even if I concede your point in general (which I don't), it doesn't apply to this case.

WTF? Let's analyse your reasoning.

1) No moral statement is more consistent than another one, because every moral statement relies on unproven arbitrary axioms.
2) Thus, separation of Church and State becomes an unapplicable principle, because any atheist with whatever position can claim that he holds the same values in a consistent manner without believing in God. (!!!)

Your argument that it has nothing to do with separation of Church and State is way too naive and extremist when you look at the ideological map. The question here becomes: "how much religiosity is too much?", not "can it, in any way, be non religious?"

It has nothing to do with separation of church and state, else EVERY law would have to do with separation of church and state (I consider morality and religion as fundamentally the same, for that pupose).

Of course, every law has to do with it, if only as a simple stamp-approval.

How all of this started still amazes me.

For the record, you started to say that the RCC believed that fetuses were people. I then asked "on what basis do they happen to believe that", the point being of course to know if they are known or not for a strong religious bias.

I can't believe I bit to your troll about black persons.

Smile, you've been pwned anyway.

[Heresson]

Possibly something to do with the trend that rights for women and minorities seem to increase in proportion with the distance between church and state.

Not true. For example, it was church that forced Europeans to treat marriage
as a matter of personal will of two human beings, not a form of alliance between
two families forced upon the couple.

btw, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was a humanist. And that was before Constantine

But He was not a secular humanist.

It's in my brain.

Who put it there?
Morality isn't a thing that there's from the beginning.
You have to learn it.

Name me the Roman emperor that freed the slaves? Abraham Lincoln?

No-one freed them, but Constantine introduced a law that made a killing
of a slave equal to killing any other person. And several other humanitarian
laws.

So, if Christians came along and you allowed them to put a cross into the classrooms of a public school,
would you grant the same right to Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Wiccan and the like, to also put a religious symbol of their religion into the classrooms (of the same school of course)?

Why not?

Anecdotal evidence. I could as well bring up some christian mass-murderer or an non-believing benefactor from history and you could mention another example for you point and so on. Pointless.

Not at all. Prove me that actions of any recent mass-murderer's actions were due to Christianity.
Stalin wasn't Christian. Nor was Hitler, though they were both baptised. The reason why they became
monsters was because they departed from Ch-ty.
Mass murderers... Name one sane mass-murderer who kills in the name of Christ.
While the actions of Theresa were due to Christianity, had official church sanction and support,
were being done as a part of church's actions, what mass-murderers do, even if they were baprised,
are being done aside from, or against the will of the church. There are mass-murders in entire world,
and there are not that many people like Theresa.

Moral values do change with time, and with locations.

Moral values are a form of unwritten law (with soft enforcement by all members of society), whose aim is to force the individual behaviour into not being threatening to the whole.

For example, there was a time where having sex with women other than your wife (i.e girlfriends, one night-stands etc.) was immoral, because you'd then make kids you wouldn't support. Nowadays, thanks to contraception, this problem is solved. And most modern societies don't see any moral problem wrt sex without marriage.

You're making an equivocation mistake. Morals, according to the church are something different than what You've presented
in this post. Moral values according to the church are sent from God, and are not being changed. Claiming that church has
to change with time may seem right from atheistic point of view, but from Christian, Muslim, Jewish point of view, they
are simply unappropriate. It's people that should bow to God's command, not the other way round.

They can raise their family in a traditional way if they so wish. It's just that most European societies
don't force families to adopt the traditional way. Other ways are made possible, for the people to choose among.

You're wrong. If they are making a problem of that someone prefers traditional vision of family, it means that
what they want is not an alternative, but that they want to replace the traditional model. They have right to want
to do it, but not by intolerance towards people prefering the traditional model, and that's just what they did!

Christians then spent the next millenium or two perfecting the art of social stratification

And then changed their mind and spent last centuries destroying social stratification in their world
and elsewhere.

That depends highly on how an atheistic government is implemented. In my view anybody has the right
to belive in any religion they want, but in the same moment they try to force something upon others
that is based on this religion instead of facts, then i say stop.

Even when majority wills it, hm?

That's the main difference between a religious rule and a atheistic - you cannot take a 2000 year
old book and say that according to this, things shall be like this book describes.

So, the fact that you're basing your state on a book by Marx for example written 150 years ago,
it makes it better?
There are always some ideologies, and there's no point in discriminating religious ones.
It's not democratical, it's biased and intolerant.

As a far out example - it would be ok to hire a outspoken childmolester as a kindergarden teacher ? He states that he won't abuse his position and you trust he wont ?

Before everybody starts flaming me, i admit it's a unfair comparison, but i only want to make it clear that with the statements Buttiglione have made, it's quite reasonable that EU has their doubt wether he will be able to keep his opinion out when he is doing his job.

Is that supposed to be a joke?

Oh, and that fetuses are humans, it's as obvious as that 1-year old child is a human. They don't vary that much from humans, and they are definitely humans a while later. There's no reason for not considering them humans.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Because I said that the position of blacks not being persons was irrational, given their own definition of personhood.

You mean inconsisten with their stated definition of personhood.

Maybe, maybe not. It's most obviously though, the one with the highest potential for normativity, and that's what counts. And that's freaking definitely something that has been evading you so far.

What's normativity?

Haven't you read Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, etc?

No. It shouldn't matter, if you're point is actually correct.

Reason is the constitutive idea of modernity, and its existence, assumed either as an a priori (Descartes) or empirical evidence (Hume), is at the root of modernist thinking. The ability to make a meaningful statement, turn it into a promise, and assume its coherency of the basis of 'natural laws' (self-preservation, namely) has been used to justify Social Contracts. It is irrational and useless to add whiteness of skin on top of that.

Let's see if I understand correctly: because it happens to be the most common stated justification in recent century for various moralities, it is somehow more rational?

No!!! We are still talking about what was irrational and what wasn't.

Clearly, a system of beliefs whose subpropositions violate the very axioms at its core is LESS rational than one that doesn't, WHATEVER those axioms are!

Clearly, the subpropositions of a system of beliefs never violate the axioms at their core (because a system of beliefs is defined in terms of those core axioms). It may violate its stated core axioms, but not its actual ones.

On the contrary, this is exactly what I'm doing, albeit in a much more theoretical way than just providing arbitrary definitions (I'm actually trying to find sure relationships between oberved practical phenomenons and how reason should deal with them).

There you go using "should" again. As soon as you start talking about moral obligation, which has an established meaning that is the same for every morality, you are making a synthetic statement.

I don't get your point.

See above, "should" and "right" and "wrong" have meanings that are defined the same for every morality. The dispute is over the connection between those words and various actions, not inherent to the meaning of the terms themselves. If you redefine "should" to mean those various actions you think people should do, then it's now a fundamentally useless term, because when you say "should" all you're actually saying is "the class of actions that I think people ought to do".

Hmmm... NO! Epistemology deals with how empirical knowledge can be classified and organized, and which ones can be safely considered safely true because of a very high likelyness. Self-preservation ranks amongst these.

Self-preservation is "true"?

The belief in an objective world is, ironically, ONE HELL OF A METAPHYSICAL FABRICATION!

Yup.

You do realize that this is sig material?

It just shows how smart I am. Thank you

People sometimes believe they believe things other than what they actually believe. People also say they believe certain things because it sounds better (in fact, they even manage to convince themselves, often, that they believe these things) while holding a completely different and (to many) somewhat less admirable morality.

It's like, say, slavery: many slaveowners said the slaves were better off that way, but most really believed that slaves were morally inferior.

(As to the second part of your argument, i.e. that practical actions don't have any effect on the actual beliefs, it is stronger but still quite weak. For instance, if one had, say, the belief that no one ever lies and that he lied himself, you'd have a strong case of claiming this belief to be self-contradictory, albeit not, I grant you, in a purely non-empirical, non-observational manner).

Just because someone is a hypocrite (follows a morality other than the stated one) doesn't actually indict the morality that person actually follows.

This is what makes the world function, i.e. that engineers, even knowing that nothing about their knowledge is certain, still succesfully build bridges and power plants. There are also such things in all science, including psychology.

Ah, so it means the same thing as empirical?

Your favorite philosopher, Mill, relies exactly on this.

1) Empirically, everyone wants to be happy and has a strong sense of self-preservation
2) Happiness and preservation can be threatened when different moralities collide
3) If people are to follow a moral code consistent with their desires and their reasoning ability, they will want it to be as universal as possible (as to avoid the danger posed by no. 2)
4) For a moral code to be as universal as possible, it has to rely on strong empirical evidence and try to derive conclusions from in the manner that has the highest potention for normativity (thus, logically, using the rules of what are sound arguments)
5) Thus, a good moral code will define as useful what, in its observed practical consequences, goes in accordance with no. 1

All of which already assumes a moral first principle, i.e. that it is good for a moral code to be universal (and if good is defined as universal, then it's a meaningless statement), and that a universal moral code is inherently superior somehow.

btw, I've read his Utilitarianism and I disagree with it, not only on the basis of moral relativity but also because I am not a utilitarian. I do, however, agree in large part with the claim that most moralities are utilitarian (not just consequentialist) at the core or at least partially so.

Which axioms?

Those of rationality (by which I assume you really mean sentience, because you certainly don't advocate killing newborn infants which certainly aren't very rational, or at least any more so than they were a few minutes before birth).

Then, why isn't it a waste of time to claim that moralities are equally false, because clearly everyone acts as if their own wasn't.

Because lots of people claim that a morality is absolute, and then use that as evidence to advance another moral claim, with which I disagree, therefore I must of necessity question the claim of absolute morality.

And everyone doesn't act as if their morality were UNIVERSAL. Everyone acts as if their morality applied to THEM. Some moralities cause people to, in acting as if their morality applied to them, also act as if it were universal.

Of course it is! An atheist can conceivably believe that homosexuality is wrong, independently of religious beliefs. Are you claiming that it's OK to outlaw adultery because some atheists believe it's wrong?

You're missing the other part of my argument, you keep insisting upon them as separate points when they both state they are BOTH necessary conditions. First, that it not ban something based on it being "sinful" (the quotation marks there because I'm stretching the meaning of the term slightly to include things believed by an atheist; were that atheist religious but held the same moral beliefs, he would use the term sin.), and second, that the position (or the practical implementation of it) be one that could be consistently held by an atheist.

Wake up, this is the real world. Religious people are pushing an agenda built on religious beliefs, and that's enough to be careful about it when you deal with the issue (assuming you value the aforementioned principle of separation of Church from State).

See above - whether or not their reasons are religious, it isn't about preventing sin and it isn't something that couldn't be reasonably held by an atheist. Their reasons don't really matter in that case. (Obviously their argument does, but the fact that they believe this because of religion doesn't mean we must believe it from the same source. They can convince us with our own premises.)

WTF? Let's analyse your reasoning.

1) No moral statement is more consistent than another one, because every moral statement relies on unproven arbitrary axioms.
2) Thus, separation of Church and State becomes an unapplicable principle, because any atheist with whatever position can claim that he holds the same values in a consistent manner without believing in God. (!!!)

You keep ignoring the thing about not banning sins!

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Heresson
Who put it there?
Morality isn't a thing that there's from the beginning.
You have to learn it.

Actually, the tendencies towards morality ARE there. It is developed and maintained by society and upbringing.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


They're not forcing religious beliefs or even religious morals on anyone. It's accepted by all the members of the EU that government at least ought to protect innocents. All they are "forcing" on people (by voting, oh horror of horrors) is their view of what constitutes a person by expanding the category. It's no worse than expanding the definition of a person to blacks, which was certainly "forced" on the South (a lot more violently, too).

Are you saying that the Vatican isn't trying to forcing religious beliefs upon the rest of eourope ??? I don't think that it's accepted by any members of EU that the vatican has the right to do that!

I don't understand your "black" argument. It was with the church's (and the vatican's) approval that slavery was implemented - the church actually said that back people wasn't as good as others !!!

Talking about slavery - why don't you mention the widespread slavery in old russia ? A "livegen" (i don't know the english word) had just as little rights as a slave in the southern states of us and the violence was at the same level.

Slavery is an old habit in humankind and seldom based on skin color. Actually many of the mainstream religions have at some point not even accepted this but even condomed is as a natural thing !

I have recived the following in a mail and don't know it's true - that is according to Dr Laura - the references to the (old) bible i assumes is true :

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a US radio personality who dispenses advice to
people who call in to her radio show. Recently, she said that, as an
observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to
Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.

The following is an open letter to Dr. Laura penned by a US resident,
which was posted on the Internet. It's funny, as well as informative.

Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have
learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with
as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual
lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly
states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other
specific laws and how to follow them.

1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odour for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbours. They
claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus
21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for
her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual cleanliness - Lev.15:19-24. The problem is, how do I
tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.

4. Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and
female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend
of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you
clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

5. I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill
him myself?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an
abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I
don't agree. Can you settle this?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a
defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my
vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair
around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.
19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different
crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two
different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse
and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble
of getting the whole town together to stone them? -Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't
we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with
people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev.20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you
can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and
unchanging.

Your devoted disciple and adoring fan,
Jack

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by BlackCat
Are you saying that the Vatican isn't trying to forcing religious beliefs upon the rest of eourope ??? I don't think that it's accepted by any members of EU that the vatican has the right to do that!

I don't understand your "black" argument. It was with the church's (and the vatican's) approval that slavery was implemented - the church actually said that back people wasn't as good as others !!!

My point is that forcing people to stop having abortions is no worse than forcing people to stop holding slaves (I'm referring to the American Civil War here, which, while technically was not fought over the issue of slavery, essentially was).