“The only exception I have to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother. I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”
—–Indiana GOP U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock in Tuesday’s televised debate, in response to a question regarding the candidates’ position on abortion.
“If found, please contact Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who will answer the phone by saying, “URUHHHHGHHAR???”
Ah, so few words, so many options for Ethics Alarms! Should we make Richard Mourdock an Ethics Dunce? The Incompetent Elected Official of the Week, perhaps? Since it is his quote that opened up this cornucopia of possibilities, I decided that it should be the quote that gets nod.
How is Mourdock’s quote unethical? Let me count the ways:
1. It needlessly confuses right and wrong. If God intends that a pregnancy should result from a rape, then one can argue that the rapist is just doing God’s will. I know that people like Mourdock answer that the Lord works in mysterious ways, but this argument does nothing but undermine the victims of rape (“If God wanted this, is it wrong for me to complain? To reject the pregnancy?”) and hands a rationalization to rapists.
2. It minimizes the tragedy of rape, and uses an absurd “the glass is half full” argument to assert that in the end, all is well. All isn’t well. The statement is disrespectful to rape victims, and irresponsible.
3. It is a stupid, stupid thing to say. This is the best Mourdock could come up with after he struggled with the issue “for a long time”? He obviously didn’t struggle long enough. Such a certifiably brain-dead statement has signature significance: it is proof of incompetence. We don’t need another incompetent U.S. Senator. We have Harry Reid, Rand Paul, Jim Inhofe…oh, lots and lots.
And on top of all of that, the statement gives Todd Akin, amazingly still in the Senate race in Missouri, a chance to shout foul if the GOP doesn’t reject Mourdock as it did him for his idiotic rape comment. Will Republicans jettison a second Senate contender? I think Mourdock’s statement is more offensive that Akin’s, though it’s a close call.
They should.
But they won’t.
__________________________________________
Source: Huffington Post
Graphic: My BF Cover
Ethics Alarms 
I don’t find Mourdock’s statement more offensive than Akin’s. Akin’s baby fairy claim logically lead to the conclusion that if a woman became pregnant then by definition it was not rape. His statement was factually wrong and ignorant in a way that Mourdock’s is not.
I view Mourdock’s ‘God intended to happen’ comment as an horrible way to say we must not question the value of life simply because of the circumstances surrounding the conception. He did not in fact say that, but I think it’s as reasonable to assume he meant that as oppose to the ‘rapist is just doing God’s will’.
Akin’s comment on the other hand was an ignorant attempt to justify his position as a point of science instead of a point of faith.
As I said, its a close call. Akin’s is dumber, for sure. But I don’t see how either appealing to science or appealing to faith can be called worse than the other. I’d say appealing to faith is worse, because you can’t argue with faith or prove it wrong. And “I view Mourdock’s ‘God intended to happen’ comment as an horrible way to say we must not question the value of life simply because of the circumstances surrounding the conception” is cutting Mourdock more slack than he deserves. Your statement is true, with or without God.It’s not a child’s fault or sin that he or she is the product of rape. That’s not what Mourdock was saying at all, in my view. He goes far beyond that.
It may be cutting him more slack then he deserves, and his ‘apology’ today is the classic, ‘I’m sorry you misunderstood me’ b.s. But my point was viewing it as justifying rape was a bit much as well.
I agree on your points 2. and 3.
I guess I am interested in a hypothetical. Had the last sentence been, ‘I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is a life my faith instructs me to protect.’, would that be offensive?
Absolutely not.
If you are going to talk about a crime as damaging and intimate as rape, you have an obligation to choose your words carefully.
Thanks.
Still offensive, but for a different reason. The reliance on what faith teaches should be offensive to everyone, otherwise, you can’t take see a problem what a Christian kills an abortion doctor or a Muslim kills a Christian.
Um, killing is inherently “offensive”. The abortion comments are specifically about NOT killing a child conceived under horrible circumstances. Using an appeal to faith against killing to warn of a slippery slope that could lead to an appeal to faith for killing is absurd.
Uh…that’s a non sequitur to a comment that’s nearly 18 months old.
The belief that an abortion is murder of a child with full rights of the parent, as said here, is based on faith. The faith is what I was finding objectionable. I was not arguing against abortion in this comment.
I see elsewhere that you acknowledged the 18 month old error. Sorry about pointing it out after that. My non sequitur statement stands though.
If the ethical violation is the poor word choice, I concur.
Huh? Saying to rape victims that God intended that they be raped is outrageous. Stupid,too.
I do indeed concur. If he meant something unoffensive, the topic is serious enough that he should say it clearly in a sensible manner.
I also concur with Brian’s point that I don’t believe he meant to say God intended rape, but seriously blew it by phrasing that way.
I was under the mistaken impression that this was a current post, and my mind was blown that there were two outrageous abortion statements is such a short time – my splattered brain could not put together a coherent reply!
If he meant something unoffensive, the topic is serious enough that he should say it clearly in a sensible manner.
The problem is that it’s impossible to say that every child is a gift from God without being offensive and implying that God intends rape. If God wanted you to have this child, and your rape led to the child, then God had to intend for you to be raped. It’s pretty simple logic. This was a case of particularly sloppy phrasing that gave the game up, but the game doesn’t change no matter what phrasing is used.
Attributing the child’s conception directly to God’s will, I suppose, has that problem. I strongly prefer Brian’s alternative phrasing “I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is a life my faith instructs me to protect.”
*Alternative concept, not mere rephrasing.
That does avoid the problem, but it, of course, has the separate problem of not being a valid argument. If relying on “my faith” is a valid argument, then there are all sorts of horribleness that can’t be argued against.
Just the month?
I almost commented on that article with Eva Longoria or whoever who wondered how any woman could vote Republican.
…the truth is, I have occasionally wondered how, assuming everyone was a pragmatist who would only vote for one of the two candidates likely to get enough votes, why Obama isn’t winning with 50% of the votes at least: all the women. Of course, I’m not saying this on Obama’s behalf, and I know it’s not totally true, etc. etc.
In all seriousness, the Republican Party needs to distance themselves from these cloth-eared charlatans, but I fear they won’t because there may not be a strong enough majority who actually disapprove of this sort of nonsense.
Jack: I agree with you on point 3 (it is a stupid thing to say), but unethical? He’s simply stating his personally held beliefs, however wrong they might be. Holding those beliefs might make him unfit as a legislator but not necessarily unethical. This is quite different from Akin who made a demonstrably false and stupid factual statement. I might even go so far to argue that Mourdock’s statement is ethical, in that he stated his backward beliefs honestly in favor of the usual lawyer weasel-speak to which we are so accustomed.
Yes, I really think it is unethical. See Michael’s post. A public figure us duty-bound to realize that his public statements have a bigger megaphone and have expanded affect. I know where it comes from, but the “this is God’s will” applied to tragedies and crimes is always hurtful, come across as callous, and provides a way to duck accountability.
The Red Sox example? Supposed superstar Adrian Gonzalez, after he assisted in the team’s slug-like collapse in 2011, announced that it was “meant to be.” How convenient, Adrian.
Pelagius disagreed. Of course, they made him a heretic for it. Then they didn’t. Then they did….
The problem is that we are bombarded by this in our culture. How many people say things like “I thank God for my good health and my family”, or that “God has kept me in good health my entire life”, or “God gave me the ability to be a good athlete”. That suggests that it is God’s will that 25 year old mothers get brain cancer and die or that I am clumsy, although most of these people would not think that or even think of that implication. I certainly hope Mr. Mourdock didn’t mean that God intended for a woman to be raped and impregnated, although that IS what he said.
Coming to grips with the reality that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people is a tough concept to grasp, let alone accept. The balance between predestination and free will has been debated in theological circles for thousands of years with many intelligent people disagreeing. We can hardly expect every Senate candidate to get it right.
I think Brian is mostly right that Mourdock has tried to think this situation through and reconcile his belief and a just treatment for the mother (which is more than most politicians have done), but he doesn’t have it quite worked out yet in his mind. He definitely shouldn’t be talking in public about it.
I can’t understand why my (fellow? I don’t know anymore) pro-lifers are constantly talking about conception by rape. I can’t think of any other activists so willing to talk about a point that is both the most challenging and statistically least significant.
I know why these guys are doing it. The set isn’t “pro-life” politicians. The set is “morons.”
Because the goal of the Pro-life movement is to end abortion, and carving out exceptions destroys that goal. If rape were made a legal exception to a general ban, then any women could simply claim to have been raped as a pretense to get an abortion, regardless of circumstances.
Privacy policies would prevent the clinic from reporting or substantiating the claim, except perhaps for minors. Thus the claim of rape would be cheapened, and a hard fought ban would be meaningless. Being up front about wanting to ban abortion even in cases of rape, incest, health, etc, is the only honest approach to avoid a bait and switch scenario if successful.
I agree with that: pro life advocates who make an exception for rape are hypocrites. What does that have to do with Mourdock’s idiotic statement about God intending rape?
Technically possible, but what’s the likelihood? Look at the Americans with Disabilities Act. It states that groups and corporations that are required by law to provide accommodations to disabled people (like restaurants allowing service dogs) can’t question whether someone has a disability or not. How often is that law abused? Not very. Talking about the abuse of rape exceptions is putting the cart before the horse.
Possibly because they write legislation that mentions conception by rape, so the press validly asks them about it.
tgt, I have been gone for several days and will need to catch up on replies you gave on a few older posts but wanted to hit this one real quick.
“Possibly because they write legislation that mentions conception by rape, so the press validly asks them about it.”
I agree 100% with your statement but I think that it becomes such a back and forth because one side believes that to exempt rape is to open the door to non-victims to say that they were raped to facilitate the abortion. I believe so many of the ill phrased and insensitive remarks stem from this idea and I personally believe that there is some concern with that happening. I find the amount of babies being aborted a travesty that needs to be fixed. I don’t know what the solution is but I do know that enablers such as planned parenthood and the like push abortion too much and need to do some reevaluation on their practices.
As for this case of Richard Mourdock’s comment “The only exception I have to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother. I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” I don’t see it as unethical or even really all that poorly phrased on its face. I read that comment as “when life begins that life is a gift, regardless if it were result of a rape or happily married couple. The sentence that was the most questionable was the last and may have been better stated as even though that life began because of a heinous crime the baby itself is a gift from god. I think if you read into it and apply the God logic to each sentence you can then arrive at “it was gods will that she was raped” but I think that is a misrepresentation of the intent of his comment. I will also grant you that the victim may not see it as a gift either so I understand the insistence from many to insure that the inclusion of exemption for pregnancy resulting from a rape be part of any legislation attempting to limit abortion.
Before you jump on my comment “I personally believe that there is some concern with that happening.” I mean that I believe that people would take advantage of such a provision.
Simple responses
1) Everyone wants to lower the number of abortions. Valid information on contraceptives is the greatest limiter of unwanted pregnancies and abortions, not limiting legal abortion.
That you push the problem on Planned Parenthood instead of on the religious right (who are against informing those likely to have unprotected sex about the risks) shows that you have bought into the inaccurate framing.
2) Your comment’s about Mourdock are pure rationalization. He stood by his statements later. He didn’t reword them so that they wouldn’t say the rape was intended by God.
1) Everyone wants to lower the number of abortions. Valid information on contraceptives is the greatest limiter of unwanted pregnancies and abortions, not limiting legal abortion.
This statement is not accurate; there are plenty who do not want to lower the number, PP, Abortion doctors and some feminist to name a few. There is valid information on contraception everywhere; I am not sure how you are coming to such unreasoned conclusion, although we disagree on much your logic usually has something to it and makes me at least reevaluate my position.
That you push the problem on Planned Parenthood instead of on the religious right (who are against informing those likely to have unprotected sex about the risks) shows that you have bought into the inaccurate framing.
I do push it on Planned Parenthood and the like because they do push abortions; it is a big business and one of their primary sources of existence. It is not called planned cancer screenings or planned general health care for a reason. To act as if they are not abortion enablers and advocates is absurd. I do not deny they do not have other functions but to ignore their primary functions, facilitation of contraception and abortions, is to be intellectually dishonest. You blame the religious right for the problem because they don’t support teaching toddlers and up about contraception without taking in account that the “right” have lost that battle and information on contraception is available everywhere already.
2) Your comment’s about Mourdock are pure rationalization. He stood by his statements later. He didn’t reword them so that they wouldn’t say the rape was intended by God.
I think not, I didn’t say his first statement said that rape was intended by god and then rationalize it away. I said if you read into it, as if you have weak reading comprehension or more to the point, improperly place the intent emphasis on the rape instead of baby then you can arrive at “god’s intent was for her to be raped”. I think your being dishonest and unwilling to admit that his point was not to say the rape was the intent of god but the creation of life is. I will even go as far as to say his position was not very well stated and should have been more concise and to the point that the baby, however it was conceived should be protected.
My previous comments in bold.
1. Everyone wants to lower the number of abortions. Valid information on contraceptives is the greatest limiter of unwanted pregnancies and abortions, not limiting legal abortion.
This statement is not accurate; there are plenty who do not want to lower the number, PP, Abortion doctors and some feminist to name a few.
Absolutely false. You’re confusing thinking that abortions should be accessible with wanting abortions to be common. Planned parenthood and gynecologists (the doctors who perform abortions) push for the preventative behaviors that cause abortions to be unnecessary. I haven’t seen anybody in either of those camps actually speak on wanting to keep the level of abortions up.
Feminists, in general, do the same things as above, though there may be a few kooks who are actually for more abortions (just like their are kooks who are for more rapes and murders).
There is valid information on contraception everywhere; I am not sure how you are coming to such unreasoned conclusion, although we disagree on much your logic usually has something to it and makes me at least reevaluate my position.
My point was that valid information is intentionally witheld from kids in favor of abstinence only education, which we know DOES NOT WORK. Many religious groups (and no secular groups that I can think of) intentionally misinform and underinform kids and their flock about birth control. They try to shut down access to free and cheap birth control. They make it both physically and mentally difficult to have birth control available.
Look at evolution. It’s settled science and there’s valid information all over, but relgious people are horribly informed of it. Even the so called believers of evolution tend to go with God guided changed, which is still junk. It’s the same idea, but without the immediate negative consequence.
That you push the problem on Planned Parenthood instead of on the religious right (who are against informing those likely to have unprotected sex about the risks) shows that you have bought into the inaccurate framing.
I do push it on Planned Parenthood and the like because they do push abortions; it is a big business and one of their primary sources of existence.
As noted above, you have deep misconceptions of planned parenthood.
It is not called planned cancer screenings or planned general health care for a reason.
Like birth control and prenatal care…
To act as if they are not abortion enablers and advocates is absurd.
They are advocates of abortion when necessary, but they try to make those abortions as few as possible.
I do not deny they do not have other functions but to ignore their primary functions, facilitation of contraception and abortions, is to be intellectually dishonest.
I am not ignoring anything. You are lying about them.
You blame the religious right for the problem because they don’t support teaching toddlers and up about contraception without taking in account that the “right” have lost that battle and information on contraception is available everywhere already.
Common and horrible Strawman. five year old appropriate sex ed is to report bad touching. Nothing more. For contraception and the like, we’re talking aboutabout tweens and teenagers… those people that are “at risk” to start having sex. As noted, general information available is very different from direct information. I’ve read dozens of former creationists who argued against evolution because they had been told the truth by their family/church/etc… they would ignore the accurate information because their church told them otherwise. It wasn’t until the read the evidence in depth (often years into it), that they realized they’d been taught lies.
Despite not just the accurrate information, but the plentiful evidence for the accurate information, creationist beliefs are still common. The blame here is clearly on religion, and the same pattern goes for contraception, except with the added belief that buying birth control is sinning.
2) Your comment’s about Mourdock are pure rationalization. He stood by his statements later. He didn’t reword them so that they wouldn’t say the rape was intended by God.
I think not, I didn’t say his first statement said that rape was intended by god and then rationalize it away. I said if you read into it, as if you have weak reading comprehension or more to the point, improperly place the intent emphasis on the rape instead of baby then you can arrive at “god’s intent was for her to be raped”. I think your being dishonest and unwilling to admit that his point was not to say the rape was the intent of god but the creation of life is. I will even go as far as to say his position was not very well stated and should have been more concise and to the point that the baby, however it was conceived should be protected.
It’s not poor reading comprehension. It’s basic meaning. If God intended the baby to be born, then God is behind the rape or okay with the rape. If this was just a bad choice of words, Mourdock could have cleared it up afterwards. He could have said “My words did not match my meaning. I meant to suggest that after the heinous act that God did not approve of, God decided that the gift of life would lessent the blow” or something like that. Mourdock let his comments stay as they are. You are twisting them to make them not evil.
Why is no one commenting on the logical fallacy of exception for abortion If the life of the mother is at risk?
I’m pro choice, but this is one area where the Catholic Church is at least intellectually and logically consistent. If all life is sacred, then abortion is always wrong regardless of other circumstances.
By extension, so is capital punishment, termination of life support, etc.
I am not a Catholic, but I am fairly certain the Catholic church does allow for abortion in some cases of the health of the mother. This is not logically inconsistent, if the choice is between the mother and the fetus dieing, or the fetus dieing and the mother living, then more life is protected by removing the fetus. Ectopic pregnancies can create these situations, although it’s a fetus it’s never viable and can kill the mother.
You’re wrong. The Church regards them both as lives, and it is not up to man to play God and choose one or the other.
I may have been inaccurate in my choice of words, but I am fairly sure a Catholic woman who has an ectopic pregnancy which endangers her life is not going against Catholic canon by having surgery to save her life. There may be ways to do this surgery, like taking out the fallopian tube which contains the fertilized egg instead of just removing the egg, which differentiate the surgery from an ‘abortion’. But, like I said I am fairly sure there are cases where a fetus can be removed from a woman and not run afoul of Catholic teachings.
You named one of them.
What if the mother was a heretic? The Catholic Church supported burning heretics to death at the stake.
I find this, frankly, to be an extremist position. This is beyond recognizing the unborn’s right to life, but expanding it to a right to commit matricide.
If unborn babies can kill their mommies, why can’t teenage girls do so in retaliation for their mommies refusing to let them go to an unchaperoned coed slumber party with all the cool kids from school?
The Catholic Church would not support burning a heretic at the stake who was also pregnant at the time… :rollseyes:
The Catholic Church holds to a philosophical framework called the Natural Law. It teaches that a child has an absolute natural right to remain in the mother’s uterus. To remove and destroy is an intentional evil, and one must not intentionally commit evil, regardless of circumstances.
A mother dying due to complications, however, is a natural evil. While it is tragic, it is not an intentional act. It is neither the mother’s, the doctor’s, nor the child’s fault. To commit intentional evil to prevent unintentional evil, however, is unacceptable.
Reasons Catholic Morality is Anything But for $200, Alex.
Here is a short proof by contradiction that Rich was wrong.
Suppose it was always wrong to commit abortion. Then it would be always wrong to commit genocide, or there would be a duty to spare the unborn from act of justified genocide.
In 1 Samuel 15, the Bible recounts the story of God commanding Saul to commit genocide against Amalek, to slay them all. Saul spared the Amalek king from the genocide and as such,. God rejected him as king over Israel. In 1 Samuel 28:18, Saul;s’ distrees is revealed to result from disobeying the LORD by refusing to execute His wrath on Amalek,.
If abortion was always wrong, then it would have been wrong for Saul to obey the LORD’s command to utterly slay Amalek. That is a contradiction, because obedience to the LORD God is never evil, and in fact disobedience is always evil.
Therefore, abortion is not always evil.
Yay, logic! Now, if we just apply that logic to the entire Bible… oh… oh God no…NO!!!!!!!!!
The Bible trumps natural law all the time.
The Bible does not teach that.
Technically, it’s a safe assumption that “more life” is protected by saving the fetus. It has more years ahead of it than the adult mother.
Yes, and that’s how many societies and religions…not to mention parents…have viewed it.
I agree in the case where the choice is between the mother and the fetus, but not in the case where both the mother and the fetus will die.
And what if the fetus was conceived via rape?
If rape results in death, it is capital murder. So if a girl becomes pregnant from rape and dies from complications resulting from pregnancy or childbirth, then she was murdered.
There can not be a duty to submit to murder.
1. It is inconsistent, from an ethical and moral perspective. I couldn’t care less what the Catholic Church, or any church, says about it.
While I also don’t care about the Catholic Church, it’s NOT inconsistent. When you have an either or choice between two equal lives, you have to pick one. Either way, you’re screwed. That’s also assuming an unnecessary equality in life. One can believe that abortion is wrong while still putting the life of the prospective mother above that of the fetus.
Let me edit. It’s not necessarily inconsistent.
So the Catholic Church opposes the Castle Doctrine?
The firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden?
And yet executing heretics was not wrong?
Point #3 really did make me laugh out loud. Point #1 had me shaking my head and wondering how any human being can claim to know the will of an invisible god in the sky — or worse yet, make moral decisions based on those speculations.
Heading back to “on-topic”…wouldn’t it be better for American society, if we had a 3rd choice for “no-confidence” in the presented options? The way voting is currently structured, we’re racing to the bottom by selecting the “less-bad” option every time. Can’t we get a reform here or there that allows us to say “these are both horrible options, try again.”
(I don’t know if Mourdock’s or Akin’s opponents are horrible choices, but let’s say one was running against Jesse Jackson Jr and the other against Gabby Giffords….cause they all moved to the same state and were co-habitating with silver-back gorillas.)
Oh, Claire McCaskill is pretty horrible. But what’s the point of a non-vote?
The point of a “no-confidence” vote would be to allow the electorate to say “Neither of these choices are representative of us. Give us fresh choices.”
Yes, but is the election the time to make that statement?
There’s no time like the present.
“… I haven’t tried to nail down where the party’s hundreds of House nominees stand. But the Senate numbers are striking. Of the 28 nonincumbent nominees, 12 to 15 share the view of Akin, Mourdock, and the party platform. They believe a rape victim should be forbidden to terminate her pregnancy. This is no longer a fringe position. It isn’t a couple of gaffes by renegade crackpots. It’s the predominant view among Republican nominees for the nation’s highest legislative body. It’s what the Republican Party is.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2012/10/todd_akin_and_richard_mourdock_banning_abortion_for_rape_victims_is_the.html
That is an extreme position. Even people in the Stormfront White Nationalist Community reject it.
Extreme in general doesn’t mean it’s uncommon in any given group of people. Zoe just pointed that out.
It’s not a fringe position and never was. It’s a consistent position for someone who believes that an unborn child at some point has full legal rights. If the child is worthy of legal protection, the manner in which he was conceived shouldn’t diminish his right to live. The obsession with “rape and incest” exceptions only makes sense to those who don’t accept the premise of true anti-abortion advocates. However, God and the Pregnancy Pixies that terminate “bad” pregnancies should not be part of the debate.
Please – let’s call it what it is – a blastocyst.
My position, based on biology, is that there’s nothing magical about birth. That the phrase “unborn child” actually means a child that’s not been born yet. One deserving of the same rights as a born child.
It may be that to continue to bring such a child to term may kill the mother. Then the child has no more rights than a conjoined twin where only the other of the two may be saved, and only if the surgery is performed immediately.
Unborn Child does not mean a living object without a nervous system. Such a thing may be a potential human, but isn’t a child.
For those who believe that something magical and supernatural happens at the moment of conception, that humanity begins then, then having no exceptions for rape or incest is a logical conclusion. For those who believe that eggs and sperm are potential humans, prohibiting any form of contraception at all, including celibacy, is also a logical conclusion.
The last paragraph is undeniably correct.
“It’s not a fringe position and never was. It’s a consistent position for someone who believes that an unborn child at some point has full legal rights. If the child is worthy of legal protection, the manner in which he was conceived shouldn’t diminish his right to live. The obsession with “rape and incest” exceptions only makes sense to those who don’t accept the premise of true anti-abortion advocates. However, God and the Pregnancy Pixies that terminate “bad” pregnancies should not be part of the debate.”
I am with you on this for the most part but I don’t have such a problem with the god part (other then Akin “bad” pregnancies). If someone based on their religious beliefs believe that all life should be protected to include the unborn then what is the problem? It can be both a personal belief and a religious belief and many times it is, because someone invokes god does not mean their point is invalid.
Because someone invokes God doesn’t make their conclusion invalid, but it does make their argument invalid.
That is where I think you and I differ as to religion, I can see beyond its flawed and inconsistent teachings to it moral codes, which on the whole are sound, where I think any argument which utilizes religious assumptions instantly nullifies the argument for you without any consideration. For me the fact that someone relies on religious moral codes as a basis for their personally held beliefs does not make them evil or even ignorant, especially when they can just as easily base their conclusions on any number of other principles. Religious zealots or science deniers tend to invoke harsher responses from me.
As in this case the fact that he relies and utilizes his religion invalidates neither the argument nor conclusion.
By definition, relying on faith invalidates the argument. Someone can say they like a particular religious moral code, but if they can’t defend that code separate from their faith, then it’s bunk.
I’d also like to note that while some of the underlying principles in religious teachings are good, your comment that religious moral codes, on the whole, are sound? That’s bunk. You have to pick and choose to get there. It’s not on the whole.
tgt, I will absolutely grant you your point; I should not have gone as far as to say on the whole and that was poor phrasing on my part. As for taking each code individually and seeing if it stands up beyond the context of religion I agree and for many I believe they do. I generally don’t rail against religion unless the point being made can only be made due to faith. I don’t cringe when God is mentioned as I don’t find it threatening nor do I think the majority of religious are backward or stupid, although some are. But I still believe it takes a bit of twisting to make his comments to mean “god will was that the women was to be raped” and not that all life should be protect regardless of how it came to be.
As for taking each code individually and seeing if it stands up beyond the context of religion I agree and for many I believe they do.
On occasion they do, but most (if not nearly all) religion backed systems of morals include subservience to God’s will in some way.
I generally don’t rail against religion unless the point being made can only be made due to faith.
That’s silly. If I say it’s going to rain in Maryland Wednesday because it’s rained every First Wednesday in November in Years divisible by 12, The fact that we’re expecting a noreaster Wednesday should not let my argument off the hook. Bad arguments are bad arguments even if there are valid arguments for the same result.
I don’t cringe when God is mentioned as I don’t find it threatening nor do I think the majority of religious are backward or stupid, although some are.
Any system of belief that’s based on faith is backward and stupid.
But I still believe it takes a bit of twisting to make his comments to mean “god will was that the women was to be raped” and not that all life should be protect regardless of how it came to be.
This is just flat out denial of what was said. If it was God’s will that she get pregnant from the rape, then it was God’s will that she be raped. This isn’t a difficult inference, and it’s inherent to all God’s will arguments. If it was God’s will that you survived the hurricane, then it was God’s will that you were hit by the hurricane and that others died. If you claim that the hurricane and the death’s were not backed by God, then how can you say your survival was? How can you say the baby was backed by God if the rape wasn’t?
Tiggerish logic!
That was a year and a half ago. As always, The general statement suggests you don’t actually have a valid reply.
Actually, it was meant to convey that your entire wordy ramble through dislogic was worthy of no more comment than that. And it isn’t, either!
He just mangled his words, Jack. This happens to politicians during a high pressure campaign. When it does, you look for their explanation and see if it jives with their previous statements. I grant that courtesy to both Democrats and Republicans.