Natural Rights

Free discussion of anything human or divine ~ Philosophy, Religion and Spirituality

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Vraith
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Post by Vraith »

First, Zahir: do you really live in LA? I want to get back there someday to live again, hopefully while I'm young enough to enjoy things in addition to all the sunshine.

Second: I think I agree with much of what you said, if I get it properly. [which is a bit quirky, but IIRC you're among the orthodox crowd and they're more science-friendly than the more common U.S. structures]
I'm playing with an idea I had not long ago, inspired by something in the "orthodoxy" thread I think...that morality, like many human endeavors, and ALL aesthetic ones, is "musical." Large numbers of things most people can agree on, rational and irrational input from the sound and output from the brain, both a result of our biology and a construct of those parts of us that are "excess capacity" for survival needs.
Because, let's face it: nothing we've produced since we've been smarter than other animals [except maybe sharp sticks to poke things with] is demonstrably necessary for human survival. It's all a bonus!
Maybe that's how peeps should start thinking about it for us to progress...not as the minimum requirement to stop murdering each other, and not as something pure and absolute required by something beyond us [god, or whatever], just stuff we explore and discover and display and create with...we don't need to rule and destroy with it, and for god's sake we should know that by now. Ideology=Evil.
Why don't we have flexibility like with math?
We have no problem saying a triangle in euclidean space has certain absolute features...but we know there are other spaces where those are purely false. Even confined to one kind of space...euclidean, just for fun...we have no problem solving complex problems AS IF they were just a bunch of regular shapes [like triangles] hooked together, yet admitting that they are NOT just a bunch of triangles and have their own inherent properties [as long as they stay euclidean and don't slip into spaces where they don't belong]
[spoiler]Sig-man, Libtard, Stupid piece of shit. change your text color to brown. Mr. Reliable, bullshit-slinging liarFucker-user.[/spoiler]
the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass.
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the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
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Post by Avatar »

Good posts both of you.

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Post by paulcoz »

Fist and Faith wrote: The point isn't that we should respect and tolerate different, even opposing, morals of other individuals and cultures. The point is that there are different, even opposing, morals between individuals and cultures.
Hi Fist. :D Isn't saying that different individuals and cultures have different moral beliefs (which is indisputably true) different from asserting that noone can say that their beliefs (including moral ones) are superior to those of anyone else? I thought we were discussing the latter.

To illustrate, imagine I claim that 'asians can be exploited because a pink bunny lives on the moon'. If it is accepted that people's beliefs are justified merely by their having them, then you must automatically accept that my beliefs are equal to those of anyone else. If my reasons for having beliefs should be judged as sound before their acceptance, then I not only have to explain why I think the presence of a pink bunny on the moon should determine what is acceptable treatment of asians. I must account for any differential treatment of other races on my part. Also, present evidence that a pink bunny does in fact live on the moon. Failing to do so would indicate irrationality on my part and undermine my stated beliefs.
Fist and Faith wrote: CS Lewis and rus have said there is a universal moral compass, and you recently called it "an ethical sense which is either followed or ignored." I say respect and tolerance are required if no harm is being caused. That's my morality.
In other words, you believe that doing something 'wrong' (a moral claim) implies causing unjustified harm to another. I agree with you. The question becomes, whether the previous action(s) of a harmed individual infringed on others or other mitigating circumstances apply (?).
Last edited by paulcoz on Sun Dec 11, 2011 12:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by paulcoz »

A friend sent me these links:

en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough/Sympathetic_Magic
en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough/Magic_and_Religion

It's interesting to read about the beliefs and habits of past generations. To our more modern sense of reasoning, they seem quite nonsensical and unscientific. I think this shows how much education, scepticism and inquiry can influence our thoughts.
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Zahir
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Post by Zahir »

Vraith, I do indeed live in LA. Not my favorite city. Actually it isn't really a city at all, just an ENORMOUS small town.
"O let my name be in the Book of Love!
It be there, I care not of the other great book Above.
Strike it out! Or, write it in anew. But
Let my name be in the Book of Love!" --Omar Khayam
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The Right to Migrate

Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+

On Guadalupe feast, El Paso bishop calls immigrants ‘signs of Christ among us’
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Migrants released from U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Del Rio, Texas, wait in line to board a bus to Houston Sept. 24, 2021. (Marco Bello/Reuters, via CNS)


NEW YORK — Marking the annual celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12, the U.S. Bishops’ Conference Migration Chair said immigrants are “visible signs of Christ among us,� and called on federal authorities to work towards essential policy and infrastructure changes at the southern border.

This year’s Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe came at a time of record migration all along the U.S.–Mexico border that is only expected to grow before the new year.

“When we speak about the issue of immigration, we are fundamentally addressing the movement of people — human persons created in the image and likeness of God, each one of them a brother or sister to us all,� Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso said in a statement. “Unfortunately this truth is often obscured by political rhetoric, fearmongering, and hyperbole.�

“Our Lady of Guadalupe points us towards a better way, one that ultimately leads to reconciliation.�

[…]

At this time of crisis at the border Seitz said that the U.S. bishops continue to affirm the natural right for people to migrate that must be balanced with the right that countries have to uphold their borders, as well as the obligation they have to provide humane processes for newcomers.

“We maintain that time, resources, and political will are best spent making structural improvements to our broken immigration system,� Seitz said. “At the moment when we are witnessing the arrival of greater numbers of families and individuals at our border with Mexico, we call on federal authorities to stand up critical infrastructure to meet their humanitarian needs.�

“Especially during this advent season, these newcomers are visible signs of Christ among us,� Seitz continued. “Let us meet this moment not with policies of exclusion and indifference but with a spirit of compassion and generosity.�

“We pledge our support and cooperation in meeting these challenges,� he said.

The bishop also invited Catholics, and all people of faith, “to pray that through the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe we may give comfort to those forced to leave their homes, and may Our Lady be a guide to all those entrusted with the responsibility of leadership.�


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Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+

Srsly?

Catholic Institutions being accused of violating the law (regardless of whether it is "Left" or "Right" doing the accusing) in exercising their charitable ministries is supposed to be — not only "political" — but "purely political"?

If Morals/Justice are part of the Close and if the attempt to criminalize Catholic moral imperatives is, itself, a moral question, then please explain how Catholic identity could ever hope to defend Justice, condemn unjust structures, and defend itself against accusations/insinuations without running afoul of the aforementioned "pure politics" metric.

And if that's still held to be the deciding metric, then please explain how the imminently-transpiring events (the detentions, the harassment, the insinuations, the forced transports, the confinements, etc.) culminating in the Shoah could ever escape being similarly labeled as "pure politics". Or would they only be discussable after-the-fact — in the history books, when the real-time events have long-since reached their tragic finale and the major players have long-since left the stage?


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Post by Fist and Faith »

Srsly. Not gonna have posts of what bad things the Republicans are doing or saying. Not even when it's against the CC. I don't know how you do not see that that opens the door to rebuttals of a political nature. But it does.
The Watch does not currently have a place for such discussions, and it's not going to happen in the Close. Surely, you can discuss Catholic moral imperatives without mentioning Republicans?
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Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+
Fist and Faith wrote:Srsly. Not gonna have posts of what bad things the Republicans are doing or saying. Not even when it's against the CC. I don't know how you do not see that that opens the door to rebuttals of a political nature. But it does.
The Watch does not currently have a place for such discussions, and it's not going to happen in the Close. Surely, you can discuss Catholic moral imperatives without mentioning Republicans?
Can I take it that yer rethinking the wisdom of the "purely" in "purely political" as applied to my article?


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Post by Fist and Faith »

I'm not thinking about it at all.
All lies and jest
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And disregards the rest
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Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+
Fist and Faith wrote:I'm not thinking about it at all.
It certainly seems yer rethinking as such, since yer suggesting the moral content be extracted from the ostensible political content in order to pass Close muster. Cuz if there's moral content to be extracted, then it doesn't seem that the political nature of the article can be all-that-"pure".

Be that as it may, the deciding metric of "open[ing] the door to rebuttals of a political nature" seems wide-enough to drive a truck through.

Cuz if Catholics staying-the-course in their charitable ministry to migrants and in morally affirming the Right to Migrate invites certain politicians or political parties to rebut, "We'll investigate you for that!", then removing the former content from the latter doesn't seem to solve the problem.

For example, if one were to simply post about how Catholics are Gospel-impelled to see to the needs of migrants and to protect their Universal Human Rights, then why wouldn't the door be similarly open for Tank-inflected posters to rebut, "My party (or Us, God-fearing people) will investigate you for that!"?


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Post by Fist and Faith »

I didn't say there was moral content to be extracted. I suggested you could post about moral imperatives without talking about Republicans.

Certainly, most any discussion can be twisted into politics. It won't always be easy to say when a line has been crossed. But sometimes it's easy.
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Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+
Fist and Faith wrote:I didn't say there was moral content to be extracted. …

[…]
Well, unless one wants to maintain that the question of Universal Human Rights is a "purely political" issue — which, most ironically, would itself be a politicization (i.e. Political Reductionism) of an issue historically considered to be fundamentally moral (i.e. prepolitical) and from which, only derivatively, do political implications flow — then, unless I'm misreading you, I'm not sure how such an assertion is sustainable.

Just sayin'.

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Post by Fist and Faith »

Universal human rights is not a purely political issue. Feel free to give your views on what they are. Don't feel free to tell us what a political party thinks about them.
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Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+
Fist and Faith wrote:Universal human rights is not a purely political issue. …
Good to see we're apparently on the same page in this.

I'd call that a win–win.


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Post by Fist and Faith »

That doesn't mean somebody can't write an article about universal human rights for purely political reasons.
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Post by Zarathustra »

The idea of universal human rights is most certainly a political issue, and not part of any religion on the face of the Earth. You will not find it mentioned in any of the religious texts of the world’s major religions. Religion is about control, and conformity, not about rights and freedom. Religion is literally a way to tell people how to think and how they should behave. The political issue of human rights has been hijacked by the Catholic Church in order to push one-sided political agendas, in the disguise of religion, hoping to convey the same sense of authority as a religious decree. It is interesting seeing this disingenuous ploy being played out as a justification to get around this site’s ban on political issues. I think the irony is hilarious. The strategy of ‘My posts are political!’ in order to spam the Tank with religion has now been conveniently reversed to ‘ My posts are religious !’ in order to justify making nearly identical posts. This exhibits the disingenuous and deceptive nature of the tactic in both cases. Good work moderating, Fist.

The concept of universal human rights is an extremely recent development in history . The idea that this is pre-political is ridiculous. It coincided with the enlightenment’s rejection of authority figures, including the church. The church (especially the Catholic Church) has been one of the biggest violators of human rights in our history. Certainly more totalitarian than the political party/alignment they criticize nowadays. The church has historically sought to control not only your thoughts and beliefs, but also science and the state. No one is impressed or convinced by this ploy of pretending to be for human rights, much less the absurd idea that they somehow invented it. The Catholic Church is an elitist authoritarian organization dressing up a political ideology as gospel.
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Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+
Fist and Faith wrote:That doesn't mean somebody can't write an article about universal human rights for purely political reasons.
Judging the depths of the author's heart-motivations is above my pay-grade and is irrelevant to me in this context. For, even knowing the Traitor's heart-secrets, Jesus gave Judas free-reign until — the Devil entering into him upon his realization that he couldn't co-opt the Kingdom for purely political ends — made his perfidy a public matter. Rather, my only metric of Catholicity is whether or not the article's narrative comports with Catholic limitations (and to which a frank admission of the political irreducibility of the Gospel is always a welcome addendum.)

Regardless, the mere fact that you reject Political Reductionism vis-à-vis Universal Human Rights speaks well and puts you a quantum-leap ahead of the dominant view in the Tank which asserted the purely political character of said Rights (a view from which SB was a notable dissenter, IIRC).

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Zarathustra wrote:[…]

… The strategy of ‘My posts are political!’ in order to spam the Tank with religion has now been conveniently reversed to ‘ My posts are religious !’ in order to justify making nearly identical posts. …

[…]
So, Catholicism is too religious for the Tank and too political for the Close?

Catholics need-not-apply unless they conform to one's prefabbed boxes?

There's a word for that.*




*HINT: It starts with an Anti- and ends with an -ism.


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Post by Fist and Faith »

Wosbald wrote:So, Catholicism is too religious for the Tank and too political for the Close?
Feel free to speak of Catholicism. Or quote others speaking about Catholicism. But, as was said in The Outlaw Josey Wales, don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining. A post like
The Republicans said A. The Republicans did B. The Republicans don't like C. God is love.
ain't about God's love.
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Post by Zarathustra »

Wos, you don't have to put it in tiny letters, I'm proudly anti-religion. I think it's a mish-mash of superstition, irrationality, authoritarianism, and inauthenticity.
Wos wrote: So, Catholicism is too religious for the Tank and too political for the Close?
Let's approach that in steps. Step 1: Was what the church did to Galileo science or religion? I would argue that it was neither. It was control of beliefs that threatened their power, power which they wielded by controlling people's conception of reality. But this had nothing to do with getting people into heaven, so it wasn't religion. And it was a position not based on science, so it wasn't science.

Step 2: What does the U.S. border and the flow of illegal immigrants have to do with getting into heaven? Nothing. It's not religion. And yet the idea that 'universal human rights' includes the right to ignore nations' borders because the Pope says so isn't really a political position, either. It's a ploy of the Catholic Church to undermine the power of nation states relative to the waning power of the Catholic Church. They used to be the biggest power on the planet. They are no longer. But they continue to undermine these entities which supplanted them. So it's quasi-political in the sense that the Church is advocating anarchy that weakens the political power of nation states (your current signature is another example, equating 'nationalism' with 'totalitarianism.' We get it: the Church doesn't like nations).

Is any of this "Catholicism?" Well, you conveniently participate in a cult that recognizes the personal opinions of one guy as 'The Truth' (what was that about totalitarianism, again?). So technically, whatever he says is "Catholicism." But that's only a technicality. It's all bullshit deception.

It's the combination of, "This political opinion is true because of this religious tenet" that gets you into trouble. In the Tank, we couldn't argue against that justification without debating religion, which no one wants to do in the Tank [you realize this is what killed the Tank, right? The frustration one member had with your trolling insistence of forcing religion where no one wanted it provoking behavior that was deemed "an embarrassment." Just sayin.]. Or we can simply dismiss and ignore the justification because it is "religion, not politics." But neither of those strategies addressed the root problem, which was your flagrant disregard for the structure of the discussion forum. It doesn't matter that the content of your propositions tread upon the same ground as political issues, if the justification for the proposition is "Pope says." You can go to the Loresraat and post geocentric theories based on "Pope says" and it won't be science. Or you can try to post them here, but the rebuttal is science.

Don't you get tired of being a mouthpiece for another man you don't know? Why don't you ever just post your own opinions?
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