All Religion is Bad.

[qayak]

I had forgotten about that video. Very appropriate to the topic!

 

[ceo_esq]

It is a relevant distinction. The automobile is a false analogy for the reason I cite. That you don't specify anything about the campaigners is immaterial. If we assumed that the campaigners had the ability to make prohibition of driving and seat belt use a sin punishable by eternal damnation to those who bought the codswolop we would significantly change the dynamics.

If one of the specified parameters of the hypothetical scenario were inconsistent with your point about Catholicism, I might agree that it falsified the analogy. But there is no inconsistency on that point, because the hypothetical is silent on that point. The hypothetical sets no restrictions with regard to the type of authority claimed by the campaigners, or the type of outfit they are. Therefore, one could imagine that it was the Catholic Church itself (in some Bizarro-world where the Church disliked automobiles) doing the campaigning, without ever violating or creating an inconsistency with the terms of my hypothetical. Now, can you show me why further hypothesizing that the anti-auto campaigners are a religious institution similar in all material respects to the Catholic Church changes our conclusion about the anti-auto campaigners' ultimate (non-)culpability for additional highway deaths? It doesn't change, in my view.

• We know that people break rules in an inconsistent manner.
• We know that people who plan to follow the church's prohibition of fidelity or chastity DON'T take precautions and keep a condom in their wallet in the event they succumb to temptation.

This may be so, but how does it necessarily shift responsibility for a person's subsequent choices onto a third party who might have a problem with that person keeping a condom in his wallet? "Honey, I know we don't use condoms; I'm only keeping this condom in my wallet in case I succumb to temptation and cheat on you. Don't pressure me to throw it away; if I contract HIV from somebody else, I'd hate for it to be on your conscience."

The term is meaningless in that it assumes that other methods are not comprehensive or that they don't take the whole into account. To use the word is at best to say nothing and at worst to mislead.

If I use any adjective ("Xish") to describe something, does it assume that other things aren't X-ish or that they don't take X into account? Perhaps it weakly presupposes that there are at least some things that aren't and don't. But why is that a problem?

Here, I was distinguishing between two particular ways of critiquing the sexual model (only monogamous married sex with artificial contraception) advocated by the Church. One critique focuses on the AIDs-related impact of following that model as a whole. The second method of critique focuses on the AIDS-related effect of following one part of that model (the "without artificial contraception" part) in isolation from the rest. I think the first can fairly and meaningfully be described as a "holistic" critique with regard to the model, because it emphasizes the whole model (married-monogamy-no-contraception) and the interdependence of its parts. The second critique focuses on one element (no-contraception) in isolation.

Now, you appear to be complaining that I'm "assuming" that the second critique approaches the sexual model in a way that is "not comprehensive" and "doesn't take the whole into account". Well, I think the second critique - which is the one that's dominated this discussion - doesin fact treat the Church's sexual model in a way that is "not comprehensive" and "doesn't take the whole into account" - at least relative to the first critique. Do you really disagree?

 

[RandFan]

If one of the specified parameters of the hypothetical scenario were inconsistent with your point about Catholicism, I might agree that it falsified the analogy. But there is no inconsistency on that point, because the hypothetical is silent on that point.

There in lies the problem. It can't compare. It is a false analogy. It is the moral authority of the Catholic Church that causes the dillemas. At the moment that a person is tempted to violate a sacred rule does that person then violate all rules? That simply does not follow given the dynamics of the relationship of adherent to church authority.

Your example can never adequatly address the issue.

This may be so, but how does it necessarily shift responsibility for a person's subsequent choices onto a third party who might have a problem with that person keeping a condom in his wallet? "Honey, I know we don't use condoms; I'm only keeping this condom in my wallet in case I succumb to temptation and cheat on you. Don't pressure me to throw it away; if I contract HIV from somebody else, I'd hate for it to be on your conscience."

You make my argument for me. Thank you. It is precisely because of this thought process that sincere individuals aren't prepared in the event of weakness. They are not prepared because the church sets them up not to be prepared.

Again I reference Kant. That humans will fail is a given. It is our nature. Church prohibitions simply set up dillemas that in the event of weakness the adherent is left without a course of action for safety. A lesser evil of sorts. Given that a husband can infect his spouse with a fatal disease a condom would be a lesser evil in this situation but the Church does not allow for that. Which is just another reason why the use of "holistic" is silly and nonsensical.

If I use any adjective ("Xish") to describe something, does it assume that other things aren't X-ish or that they don't take X into account? Perhaps it weakly presupposes that there are at least some things that aren't and don't. But why is that a problem?

The word does not convey any information. It does not advance the discussion. It presumes that which it cannot. It presumes that there is a view that is not taken in other circumstances. Otherwise, why use the word at all?

 

[RandFan]

I had forgotten about that video. Very appropriate to the topic!

It was your "stoneage" thinking that brought it to my mind.

It's easy to see why ancient people thought sperm was sacred. We now know that sperm is just a mass of cells. It doesn't feel or think or have any attributes that we think of as human. Those people who exist deserve more thought and consideration than potential life. Why god would care about a mass of cells is simply beyond me. In some mammals females don't menstruate. Eggs are reabsorbed. If god really cared about sperm he could have had them reabsorbed. If he exists he didn't do that. No, instead they are regularly and frequently expelled from the body and that can't be stopped. Period (see Nocturnal Emissions). And note that in the event of intercourse all but one or a few on rare occasion, sperm die. If god cares so little for these sperm then why should we? Oh, I forgot, one can't question god. Nice out.

This should NOT be controversial in the 21st century. We should not be here excusing stone age sensibilities that lead to the spread of disease and cause unwanted pregnancy. The CDC and the WHO have demonstrated that education that includes comprehensive education about safe sex works. END OF STORY!

 

[Herzblut]

This is such a weasly question. By high risk if you mean

You don't understand my question, but you know it's weasly. Amazing.

Oh:
high-risk sex = sex with prostitutes, drug consumers, homosexuals; promiscuous behaviour in general.

But Trujillo made scientifically innaccuate statements.

You're still beaten a dead horse? What a blatant irrelevance compared to the recent statements the South African health minister made, advocating a diet of garlic, beetroot and lemon to cure AIDS.

he was saying that even if you use condoms correctly, the HIV virus could pass through the latex holes. This is simply wrong.

Even if you use condoms correctly, the risk of HIV transmission is still approximately 15% relative to risk when unprotected. Whether that's caused by holes or not is irrelevant. Comment on the 15%, not on the holes!

ok, it was titled "reflection" - it is still a published document by the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

Your accusation went "it's a vatican misinformation campaign", you have not corrected yourself. Oh, Trujillo isn't even in charge of health issues. That's his mate Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, President of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care. He put together the HIV survey for Benny recently. You won't even now correct yourself, I know. I'm also a mind reader.

*sigh* If one speaks as a moral religious authority then unfortunately people do take you seriously. That is the problem.

Sure. Especially the ignorant Africans. In particular the blacks.

I really don't see the point of continuing to this "debate" - you wish to ..

Andy, the wish master again!

..dismiss every single scientific study or NGO report on the matter, you pretend that Trujillo was misrepresented in his views, you cling to a perfect use strawman even though no one is arguing for it, and you fail to offer anything to support your position despite overwhelming evidence that integrated approaches are the best method for tackling HIV/AIDS.

Hahaha! I told you, wish, don't try to read minds. You fail horribly.

So, where are we? The RCC is a culprid. You don't know for what and in how far, anyways they are guilty. The BBC rediculed a one-hour interview on highly controversial topics, neverthless the interviewee is guilty of spreading a dangerous vatican misinformation campaign. Africans are stupid and believe everything a certain Trujillo tells them (via BBC). Like all primitive people they obey the Pope without any reservation. Ah no, on the contrary, they don't because what the Pope says is unreal.

Excellent, andy, I think we covered it!

Herzblut

 

[qayak]

There in lies the problem. It can't compare. It is a false analogy. It is the moral authority of the Catholic Church that causes the dillemas.

ETA: First line edited to more closely reflect the situation under discussion.

ETA 2: Editings in bolding.

How about this one:

A company owns a ship and they decide to use it to pick up refugees and transport them to a country that is willing to accept them. However, in order to save money, the company doesn't supply enough lifejackets for the refugees after all, the refugees didn't have them on their own boats.

Once the refugees are aboard the captain (spokesperson for the company) announces that a mistake has been made and instead of lifejackets the ship only has weightbelts which will cause the refugees to drown should the ship sink. Better to just try and swim. Some refugees do ask for lifejackets and are issued the few available but most take the word of the captain.

Sure enough, the ship sinks and all the refugees drown except some of the ones with lifejackets.

Who is morally responsible? Is it the refugees who drowned because they didn't wear a lifejacket even though some were in fact available? The company for not supplying the lifejackets? The captain for lying to the refugees?

Does the fact that the company was doing some charity work allow them to totally disregard the safety and well being of their charges as some seem to think the RCC is allowed?

 

[RandFan]

How about this one:

A company owns a ship that they know is not seaworth. They decide to use it to pick up refugees and transport them to a country that is willing to accept them. However, in order to save money, the company doesn't supply enough lifejackets for the refugees after all, the refugees didn't have them on their own boats.

Once the refugees are aboard the captain (spokesperson for the company) announces that a mistake has been made and instead of lifejackets the ship only has weightbelts which will cause the refugees to drown should the ship sink. Better to just try and swim. Some refugees do ask for lifejackets and are issued the few available but most take the word of the captain.

Sure enough, the ship sinks and all the refugees drown except the ones with lifejackets.

Who is morally responsible? Is it the refugees who drowned because they didn't wear a lifejacket even though some were in fact available? The company for not supplying the lifejackets? The company for knowingly allowing the ship to sail in poor repair? The captain for lying to the refugees?

Does the fact that the company was doing some charity work allow them to totally disregard the safety and well being of their charges as some seem to think the RCC is allowed?

Very good. I like it.

 

[ceo_esq]

There in lies the problem. It can't compare. It is a false analogy. It is the moral authority of the Catholic Church that causes the dillemas. At the moment that a person is tempted to violate a sacred rule does that person then violate all rules? That simply does not follow given the dynamics of the relationship of adherent to church authority.

If you think that's crucial to the comparison (which, incidentally, allows for it), then please answer my earlier question: if we further hypothesize that the anti-auto campaigners are a religious institution similar in all material respects to the Catholic Church, how and why does it change our conclusion about the anti-auto campaigners' ultimate (non-)culpability for additional highway deaths?

"Honey, I know we don't use condoms; I'm only keeping this condom in my wallet in case I succumb to temptation and cheat on you. Don't pressure me to throw it away; if I contract HIV from somebody else, I'd hate for it to be on your conscience."

You make my argument for me. Thank you. It is precisely because of this thought process that sincere individuals aren't prepared in the event of weakness. They are not prepared because the church sets them up not to be prepared.

But the point of the example is the absurdity of shifting responsibility for the person's choices onto a third party in this context. In the quoted text, the man is being completely unreasonable; obviously if he contracts AIDS through infidelity, that's on his conscience, not his wife's, notwithstanding that she may have given him a piece of her mind for putting a condom in his wallet for business trips, or what have you.

Even if, in a given case, the Church's opposition to condom use is a cause sine qua non of someone's being caught without a condom handy when the decision to be unfaithful is made, it's unreasonable to suggest that it is for that reason a culpable cause of that person's contracting HIV.

Again I reference Kant. That humans will fail is a given. It is our nature. Church prohibitions simply set up dillemas that in the event of weakness the adherent is left without a course of action for safety. A lesser evil of sorts.

It seems to me that you are engaging in the fallacy of limited alternatives. Human fallibility notwithstanding, it is not a given that a person must fail in any particular way or in any particular situation. People do manage, for example, to go through life without engaging in extramarital sex. We know it is extremely unrealistic to expect that everyone will, but it's not clear to me why that removes the fallacy, so long as it remains a bona fide alternative in any given individual instance to act in accordance with the Church's teaching. The "lesser evil" principle is generally invoked in a situation in which there is no course of action available to the individual that does not involve opting for some or other evil. That's not often going to be the case with condom use (though of course you and I don't regard that as even a lesser evil), unless one artificially restricts the alternatives.

The word does not convey any information. It does not advance the discussion. It presumes that which it cannot. It presumes that there is a view that is not taken in other circumstances. Otherwise, why use the word at all?

I used the word to distinguish between (1) evaluating the impact of the Church's promotion of marital-monogamous-no-contraception sex as a whole on the AIDS problem and (2) solely evaluating the impact of the "no-contraception" element on the AIDS problem. I hope you will agree that #1 and #2 are not the same thing, and that they will potentially yield very different discussions and conclusions. The word presumes nothing at all. If you think that in using it to distinguish between #1 and #2, I presumed something I ought not have presumed, please let me know. I don't see how pointing out that #1 and #2 are not identical, or suggesting that we devote more discussion to #2, "presumes that there is a view that is not taken in other circumstances." In fact, I'm not even fully sure what you mean by that.

 

[Fnord]

Politics is the method by which one group oppresses another without resorting to acts of violence.
Repression is bad.
Religion is the politics of faith.
Religion is bad.

Yeah, I know it's flawed, but it works for me.

BTW: I have faith in the existance of God, and I believe in the inherent toxicity of religion. Go figure.

 

[ceo_esq]

ETA: First line edited to more closely reflect the situation under discussion.

ETA 2: Editings in bolding.

How about this one:

A company owns a ship and they decide to use it to pick up refugees and transport them to a country that is willing to accept them. However, in order to save money, the company doesn't supply enough lifejackets for the refugees after all, the refugees didn't have them on their own boats.

Once the refugees are aboard the captain (spokesperson for the company) announces that a mistake has been made and instead of lifejackets the ship only has weightbelts which will cause the refugees to drown should the ship sink. Better to just try and swim. Some refugees do ask for lifejackets and are issued the few available but most take the word of the captain.

Sure enough, the ship sinks and all the refugees drown except some of the ones with lifejackets.

Who is morally responsible? Is it the refugees who drowned because they didn't wear a lifejacket even though some were in fact available? The company for not supplying the lifejackets? The captain for lying to the refugees?

Does the fact that the company was doing some charity work allow them to totally disregard the safety and well being of their charges as some seem to think the RCC is allowed?

I gather that you mean to analogize condoms to lifejackets and the Catholic Church to the ship operator. What is the ship itself supposed to represent?

 

[Faithkills]

You don't understand my question, but you know it's weasly. Amazing.

Oh:
high-risk sex = sex with prostitutes, drug consumers, homosexuals; promiscuous behaviour in general.

And yet it is well known among whoremongers that condoms will indeed reduce your risk to nominal.

You're still beaten a dead horse? What a blatant irrelevance compared to the recent statements the South African health minister made, advocating a diet of garlic, beetroot and lemon to cure AIDS.

Tu Quoque much? You're grasp of fallacy is truly immense.

Even if you use condoms correctly, the risk of HIV transmission is still approximately 15% relative to risk when unprotected. Whether that's caused by holes or not is irrelevant. Comment on the 15%, not on the holes!

Failure rates include lack of use. So the mechanism of failure is very relevant, especially in this case if that actual use rate is being undermined by lies from the church about condoms causing aids.

Your accusation went "it's a vatican misinformation campaign", you have not corrected yourself.

Why would he correct himself? That much is clearly obvious.

Oh, Trujillo isn't even in charge of health issues. That's his mate Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, President of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care. He put together the HIV survey for Benny recently. You won't even now correct yourself, I know. I'm also a mind reader.

How does this bear? The vatican is still not lifting it's ban on condoms. This cannot help but murder believers, who find the church's edicts more compelling than science.

Who will die for that sin.

 

[Faithkills]

I gather that you mean to analogize condoms to lifejackets and the Catholic Church to the ship operator. What is the ship itself supposed to represent?

It's obviously the love boat.

 

[Herzblut]

And yet it is well known among whoremongers that condoms will indeed reduce your risk to nominal.

How do you know what others know? Your crystal sphere, probably.

Failure rates include lack of use.

Says who?

According to a 2000 report by the National Institutes of Health, correct and consistent use of latex condoms reduces the risk of HIV/AIDS transmission by approximately 85% relative to risk when unprotected

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condom

Your ignorance is paramount. You should better care about what you know, instead of using your clearvoyant capabilities to speculate about other people's knowledge.

How does this bear? The vatican is still not lifting it's ban on condoms. This cannot help but murder believers, who find the church's edicts more compelling than science.

Prove that catholic countries are impacted by HIV/AIDS to a higher degree than non-catholic countries. #yaaaaaaaaaawn#

You're boring.

Herzblut

 

[Faithkills]

How do you know what others know? Your crystal sphere, probably.

Browsing hobbyist forums is fun sometimes. I know what they know.

According to a 2000 report by the National Institutes of Health, correct and consistent use of latex condoms reduces the risk of HIV/AIDS transmission by approximately 85% relative to risk when unprotected

Those are typical use numbers which include people who don't use them every time.

I find it fascinating how you religious types love to bandy about typical use failure rates for condoms but you never want to talk about typical use failure rates for abstinence. Why is this do you think?

Your ignorance is paramount. You should better care about what you know, instead of using your clearvoyant capabilities to speculate about other people's knowledge.

My knowledge of what they know is from reading what they write. I don't think they could possibly say things they don't know. But maybe you could explain this. Hobbyists do know condoms work and do use them regularly. Many do however think that a BBBJ (bare back bj, bj with no condom) is relatively safe and it seems they may be correct.

You're boring.

And you're lying. I don't believe you are ignorant of the difference between typical use and perfect use failure rates. That you present typical use failure rates for condoms but not for abstinence is a lie.

These are real data:

"In a two-year study of sero-discordant couples (in which one partner was HIV-positive and one was HIV-negative), no uninfected partner became infected among couples using condoms correctly and consistently at every act of vaginal or anal sex versus 10 percent of those using condoms inconsistently."

Read it all here
https://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/331/6/341

Then make up some more lies. I'll be ready for them.

 

[qayak]

I gather that you mean to analogize condoms to lifejackets and the Catholic Church to the ship operator. What is the ship itself supposed to represent?

The ocean would represent the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the ship the "A, B" part of the prevention program. The "C" (condom) part is indeed the lifejacket.

But it is an analogy, so it is only to illustrate a point.

 

[qayak]

Then make up some more lies.

That's the Vatican/Pope/Herzblut model of disease control.

 

[ceo_esq]

The ocean would represent the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the ship the "A, B" part of the prevention program. The "C" (condom) part is indeed the lifejacket.

But it is an analogy, so it is only to illustrate a point.

OK, it's a start. It do think that the analogy could be tweaked to work a little better. For example, taking a boat of questionable seaworthiness seems to work well as a parallel to engaging in "un-Catholic" sex. It presents intrinsically greater risks of drowning than staying ashore does, but most of the time wearing a lifejacket could still save you if the ship capsizes, unless you haven't put yours on properly, or it fails, or it's just your unlucky day. We might analogize the RCC to a group urging everyone, for whatever reasons, to just stay ashore. Just about everyone can follow that advice, and if followed it will, incidentally, greatly reduce one's chance of drowning. However, we can predict that many people will, in practice, take at least one trip on the boat, because sometimes a boat trip can seem very appealing.

 

[Herzblut]

I know what they know.

Go here, psychic:

Million Dollar Challenge
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=8

Those are typical use numbers which include people who don't use them every time.

This is obivously wrong, visible for every unblinded, literate person:

correct and consistent use of latex condoms reduces the risk of HIV/AIDS transmission by approximately 85% relative to risk when unprotected

You ignore evidence in good old psychic manner.

These are real data:

You fail to understand this data, psychic. No specification is given neither about the number of couples, nor about the size of the two cohorts. What you cite is at best meaningless and looks deliberately distorted for the sake of agitation.


The resource below explains how condom effectiveness is studied, how the results look like and how they have to be valued.

The WHO Reproductive Health Library (RHL)

http://www.rhlibrary.com/Commentaries/htm/Dwcom.htm

Condom effectiveness in reducing heterosexual HIV transmission

It is logistically and ethically impossible to conduct randomized controlled trials to find out whether condom use reduces the risk of HIV transmission. Hence, we have to rely on observational studies, which inherently carry a risk of bias. In such studies, consistent use of condoms has been found to result in an 80% reduction in HIV incidence.

RHL Commentary by David Wilkinson

EVIDENCE SUMMARY

This Cochrane review is an excellent attempt to estimate the effectiveness of condom use in reducing heterosexual transmission of HIV. While several studies have looked at this issue, many of these have been small, and the reviews done to date have had a number of methodological problems associated with them.

The authors of the Cochrane review identified and selected 14 studies involving discordant couples (i.e. couples in which one of the partners is HIV-positive and the other free from HIV). A total of 587 people who reported "always" using condoms during sexual intercourse, and 276 people who reported "never" using condoms were included in these studies.

The incidence* of HIV infection among those who reported always using condoms was 1.14 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval 0.56-2.04), while it was 5.75 per 100 person-years (95% CI 3.16-9.66) among those who never used them. This gave an 80% reduction in the incidence of infection with condom use.

It is important to note, however, two important limitations: (a) the meta-analysis was done using data from observational studies; and (b) the authors did not provide confidence intervals for their estimated effect of 80%.

This is a well done review. As the authors correctly point out, it is logistically and ethically impossible to do randomized controlled trials to find out whether condom use reduces the risk of HIV transmission. As such, we have to rely on observational studies. The studies used in this review typically compare rates of HIV infection in groups of people who report always or never using condoms. Observational studies inherently carry a risk of bias as people make choices for reasons, and if the choice about using condoms or not is related to other risk factors for HIV, then the estimate of effect that we get will be inaccurate.

So, in this study, in spite of the best efforts of the authors, we can’t be sure that condoms really reduce HIV incidence by 80%. It may be, for example, that people who use condoms always also practice safe sex and have fewer partners, thereby reducing their HIV risk irrespective of condom use. It might also be that some people who report always using condoms do not actually do so but tell the researchers that they do in order to “look good”. Similar points could be made about people reporting not using condoms. Self-reported data always have the risk of being unreliable; and in this case there is no other means of confirming the findings.

If we take the extreme values from the 95% confidence intervals of the HIV incidence rates reported in the two cohorts, we find that condom use may be associated with reduced HIV incidence of between 94% and 35%. The wide range of values is explained by the small numbers of people (863) and HIV infections (51) in the studies. Concurrent use of other measures could also contribute to this variation. As a result, the estimate of the incidence of HIV in the two groups is fairly imprecise (between 0.56 and 2.04 per 100 person-years for users, and between 3.16 and 9.66 per 100 person-years for non-users).

This lack of precision is not the fault of the authors and their review. It is an inherent feature of the available studies. As such, it is not really appropriate to estimate condom effectiveness at 80%. While 80% is the best single estimate of effectiveness, it is also fair to say that the true measure of the effect could be as low as 35% or as high as 94%, as the authors state in the review.

* incidence = number of new cases

Hobbyists do know ... Many do however think ...

Better go for the mio, psychic, instead of spreading dangerous nonsense.

Herzblut

 

[RandFan]

If you think that's crucial to the comparison (which, incidentally, allows for it), then please answer my earlier question: if we further hypothesize that the anti-auto campaigners are a religious institution similar in all material respects to the Catholic Church, how and why does it change our conclusion about the anti-auto campaigners' ultimate (non-)culpability for additional highway deaths?

I've already stated that it wouldn't then change anything.

But the point of the example is the absurdity of shifting responsibility for the person's choices onto a third party in this context. In the quoted text, the man is being completely unreasonable; obviously if he contracts AIDS through infidelity, that's on his conscience, not his wife's, notwithstanding that she may have given him a piece of her mind for putting a condom in his wallet for business trips, or what have you.

Stating that it is absurd does not make it absurd. When an institution has such moral authority and can direct human behavior they must take responsibility for their actions.

Even if, in a given case, the Church's opposition to condom use is a cause sine qua non of someone's being caught without a condom handy when the decision to be unfaithful is made, it's unreasonable to suggest that it is for that reason a culpable cause of that person's contracting HIV.

To the extent that the Church's rules and ability to alter behavior due to moral authority then it absolutely renders them some degree of culpability. Simply asserting that there is no responsibility is not argument.

It seems to me that you are engaging in the fallacy of limited alternatives. Human fallibility notwithstanding, it is not a given that a person must fail in any particular way or in any particular situation. People do manage, for example, to go through life without engaging in extramarital sex. We know it is extremely unrealistic to expect that everyone will, but it's not clear to me why that removes the fallacy, so long as it remains a bona fide alternative in any given individual instance to act in accordance with the Church's teaching. The "lesser evil" principle is generally invoked in a situation in which there is no course of action available to the individual that does not involve opting for some or other evil. That's not often going to be the case with condom use (though of course you and I don't regard that as even a lesser evil), unless one artificially restricts the alternatives.

• We know that the Church intents to alter behavior.
• We know the Church takes steps to alter behavior.
• We know that the Church uses its moral authority to direct that behavior.
• Given human nature and no alternate recourse by the Church in the event of failure the Church sets up people to fail.
• There is no fallacy.

I used the word to distinguish between (1) evaluating the impact of the Church's promotion of marital-monogamous-no-contraception sex as a whole on the AIDS problem and (2) solely evaluating the impact of the "no-contraception" element on the AIDS problem. I hope you will agree that #1 and #2 are not the same thing, and that they will potentially yield very different discussions and conclusions. The word presumes nothing at all. If you think that in using it to distinguish between #1 and #2, I presumed something I ought not have presumed, please let me know. I don't see how pointing out that #1 and #2 are not identical, or suggesting that we devote more discussion to #2, "presumes that there is a view that is not taken in other circumstances." In fact, I'm not even fully sure what you mean by that.

Assuming 1 & 2 are different or the same won't resolve the issue as it concerns the term "holistic". You might as well call #1 "XYZ" and #2 "STP". It is arbitrary and conveys no useful information. Declaring that 1 is holistic and 2 isn't, is just silly and does not advance any argument. Using the word "holistic" tells us nothing. Given the baggage that is associated with the word it is at worst misleading. I'm sorry but that isn't going to change.

CEO, at the end of the day the statistics demonstrate that abstinence only programs cause increased sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancies. Calling such a program holistic is empty and very potentially misleading.

 

[qayak]

OK, it's a start. It do think that the analogy could be tweaked to work a little better. For example, taking a boat of questionable seaworthiness seems to work well as a parallel to engaging in "un-Catholic" sex.

But that would be wrong because the model for everyone except the catholic church is: Abstinence, Be faithful (to your monogamous partner) and Condoms. So the boats are all equally seaworthy.

It presents intrinsically greater risks of drowning than staying ashore does, but most of the time wearing a lifejacket could still save you if the ship capsizes, unless you haven't put yours on properly, or it fails, or it's just your unlucky day. We might analogize the RCC to a group urging everyone, for whatever reasons, to just stay ashore.

In what sense would the cathoilic church ask Africans to stay ashore, they are floating in a sea of Hiv/AIDS?

Just about everyone can follow that advice, and if followed it will, incidentally, greatly reduce one's chance of drowning. However, we can predict that many people will, in practice, take at least one trip on the boat, because sometimes a boat trip can seem very appealing.

No, no, no! The catholic church says no one needs to take a boat trip and so they shouldn't EVER. All the other agencies admit that not only WILL they take the trip but that they will sometimes NEED/HAVE to.

It is at this point that the catholic church falls down because their response is, "Well, if you do, don't wear a lifejacket because it will cause you to drown!" The other agencies say, "Well, we advise against it but if you have to, here's a lifejacket, here's how to use it properly, please wear it."