OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
No bio...
User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4d ago
I think it's some kind of mixture of "Evangelical Christians have willingly enslaved themselves to the Israeli agenda due to bad exegesis" and "Israel has blackmail on lots of higher ups in the US."
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3d ago
For secular people, it is largely driven by a dislike of pharmaceuticals. Hormonal contraception can have wacky side effects physically and mentally. IUDs can really hurt during placement and after. Copper IUDs have side effects too, even thought they're technically not hormonal.
People who fall in this bucket might not mind a condom or other barrier-based birth control from time to time, but people seem to like having the option to go au natural. Fertility awareness gives them this option.
Charting also can help diagnose and treat issues with the female reproductive system, if you can find a doctor who is trained to use it (often has the keyword Napro "natural procreation".) Common issues that can be identified and treated through bio-matching hormones that are administered at key phases of the cycle are polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), and other hormonal issues.
From a Catholic perspective (because let's face it, it's pretty much Catholics who see it this way), they look at it deontologically/virtuously versus consequence. If it's a matter of consequences, and Catholics are children-maximizers, the 100% assured way to avoid having kids (abstinence) would be immoral, but it's actually supererogatory.
So a Catholic looks at the actions themselves involved with Fertilty Awareness methods and doesn't see anything wrong with any of them.
Action 1: Know your cycle and communicate it with your husband - I don't see anything contrary to morals here. Self-knowledge is generally considered good, communicating with spouses is good.
Action 2: Have (married) sex on a day you know you are likely to have a kid - Believe it or not, a lot of people use Fertility awareness to increase the likelihood of children. Nothing immoral with that either.
Action 3: Not have sex on a day you know you are likely to have a kid - While there are some activities that are required or else a sin of omission is committed, it is not expected for a couple to have sex every day. Knowing that it is a fertile day doesn't change that. In fact, if someone is life-or-death-should-not-get-pregnant, then the TradCath (prior to Fertility Awareness) recommendation would be to avoid sex entirely.
Action 4: Have sex on a day you know you are unlikely to make a new life - Seems unlikely this action would be bad too. Otherwise there would also be warnings against having sex while pregnant or post-menupause, and there aren't.
I think it's more difficult to explain why hormonal birth control is immoral than it is to explain why Fertility Awareness is moral. But if I had to try to explain it, I would probably point to the reasons why some secular people avoid hormonal birth control - the action itself is purposely damaging the reproductive system, and Catholics are more strict on how much damage you can do to yourself before it becomes immoral.
As far as why barrier methods or pulling out is immoral, it changes the nature of the act, so that an actual act of sexual intercourse isn't happening - instead it's something like mutual masturbation. In Fertility Awareness, an actual act of sexual intercourse is happening.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
I think, no matter what, there will need to be someone who is held accountable for the actions of AI. A human who can be jailed, fined, or fired if something goes wrong. But will that person be in a position to actually tell if the AI is producing bad product if they never gained the "on-the -ground" skills that people earn through practice?
Consider for example a surgery that ends up lethal: what distinguishes accident from murder, and bad luck from negligence? What is the sin of gluttony, if knowing that youre satiated makes no difference?
I think you are saying intent matters. Intent does matter (edit: and i think I made that clear in the above comment when I talked about the subject knowing that they were likely/unlikely to get pregnant that day, and my comparisons were to other situations where it was possible/impossible to be pregnant). Someone having sex when not fertile intends to have sexual intercourse. Someone not having sex while fertile intends to avoid pregnancy by avoiding sex - the most normal way to avoid pregnancy imaginable.
I think there is a conflation between sexual intercourse and the possible results of sexual intercourse - or conception. Sexual intercourse is the ejaculation of a penis in a vagina. A lot of its moral significance comes from what sexual intercourse can do - it can make a new human life. But sexual intercourse is not in itself the making of a new life.
Sexual intercourse between two married people is morally allowed (and considered a fairly good thing) in Catholicism, even if it does not lead to conception. Intending to avoid making a new child is also morally allowed, in the sense that you can choose not to have sex.
You could similarly break the pulling out method down into steps, each of which "surely is allowed": 1) having sex is allowed under the right conditions 2) youre not obligated to keep the penis inside the whole time 3) if you just happen to ejaculate while its outside, thats an involuntary reaction. This assumes you can do it without jerking once outside, but thats possible and I doubt its supposed to make a difference.
- Correct
- Correct
- Correct, if it is truly an accident. I can go further and say that oral sex can accidentally lead to premature ejaculation and that isn't considered a sin if it is truly an accident - but you do have to take it into account the next time you try that kind of foreplay.
(Edit to add: the reason why this would be wrong is not that there is no likelihood of pregnancy, but because it's not sexual intercourse.)
the selling point of natural family planning is that it doesnt feel like technology.
Perhaps to secular people - but then there are so many smart devices now that will do it for you. To Catholics, the selling point is that you are avoiding having a child by avoiding having sex, which is the most normal way to avoid conception imaginable.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
I think the article describes that Ms. Zito is not a "Normal person" any longer and has gone "crunchy." Crunchy women get into charting for all sorts of health reasons, including mental health awareness, productivity boosting, meal planning and exercising, etc. There are lots of books out there that recommend women do X task on one part of their cycle, eat a specific way on another part, etc.
and you have been arguing that because the "forseen unintended" case is ok, the "forseen intended" case is too.
Can you explain to me where? The forseen intended case of what? I'm worried that you're ascribing to myself a moral belief I do not hold, something like, "Sex is solely for babies" or something like that.
Let me make an analogy:
The point (telos if we're getting fancy) of a gun is to fire small ballistics.
The point of genitals is to have sexual intercourse.
The reason why firing small ballistics has large moral interest is due to its relation to killing people.
The reason why sexual intercourse has large moral interest is due to its relation to making human life.
Guns were made for the purpose of killing people.
Sexual intercourse exists evolutionaryily for the purpose of having babies.
Firing a gun can be done intentionally to kill people and for target practice/sport, etc.
Sexual intercourse can be done for making babies and for pair bonding and pleasure (for example, post menopause or when the woman is already pregnant.)
Using a gun for a reason other than to shoot ballistic missiles is suspect, because that's not what it's there for. Imagine someone trying to use a gun as a utensil, or to fire a wad of chewed bubblegum. It's weird and not quite right. Maybe not immoral, because a gun is just a human artificat made my humans to carry out our will. But it's weird, isn't it?
And perhaps if the gun was made by hand by someone who wanted a work of art at firing ballistics, the maker would weep to see the person they sold it to using it as a prop to keep up their wobbly chair. The maker wouldn't necessarily be upset to see the gun in a holster or on a wall, or to find out it never killed anybody. But they would be upset to find out someone poured maple syrup down the barrel.
Using genitals for reasons that do not end with sexual intercourse is suspect because that's just not what they are there for. The disconnect between a Catholic and some others is that non-Catholics might think of their bodies as their own, like in the sense of an artificat. It's another thing the nebulous "you" can manipulate. Catholics don't see our bodies as artifacts. They are something given to us, the physical expression of our eternal souls, and we can make our creator weep with what we do with ourselves.
If you're wearing a condom, you aren't having sexual intercourse in the sense a Catholic defines it. The penis is not ejaculating in a vagina. It's more like a kind of mutual masturbation. Please notice that I have not once argued that contraceptives are wrong because it avoids conception or that there is anything wrong about intending to avoid conception.
That said, I don't think the Catholic position on sexual morality will necessarily make sense to outsiders, in the sense most will feel they will feel the need to bind their consciences to it. As weird as it is, I have seen more than one person convert specifically because they felt the Catholics were correct on sex so strongly that the Church couldn't help but be correct in other things - but this is not the common path. Most people need to accept the Catholic claim on other things before accepting this one.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
The telos of a flathead screwdriver is to apply force perpendicular to the plane of the screwdriver. This works if you are using it as a pry or to screw in screws.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
No, of course. The telos of genitals and guns are not pair bonding or pleasure or killing people or having babies. The telos of genitals is sexual intercourse, the telos of guns is to fire bullets.
One efficient cause of genitals is the need to generate new life and one efficient cause of guns is the need to kill people more efficiently.
At least, that's how I see it.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
This reads, to me, like youre taking situations where non-conception is forseeable but not intended (pregnant, post-menopause), and arguing that its therefore ok with intent also.
Can you argue that it is not ok to intentionally avoid conception?
The question is, what tells us that the sexual intercourse thats the point is exactly "ejaculation of a penis in a vagina" and not some related different concept with different boundaries? I think that would be very difficult to explain without tying it to the purpose of sexual intercourse. Im expecting something like "the evolutionary purpose of sexual intercourse is making babies, penis ejaculating in vagina is neccesary for that, therefore its nessecary to proper sexual intercourse".
I figure that's the argument that you're used to expecting, so it's throwing you off that I'm not making it. There are lots of people who will use the Aristotelian-Thomistic Perverted Faculty argument, and you can go talk to those people if you like. Other Catholics like Pope St. John Paul II argue from "the personalistic norm" and semiotics. There isn't an official argumentation that Catholics have to use to defend sexual morality.
If you don't think sexual intercourse is the ejaculation of a penis in a vagina, what do you think sexual intercourse is? I think the definition of sexual intercourse is apparent by looking at the genitals and what they do together, just as you can look at a gun, a bullet, and someone firing a bullet and saying, "yeah, this is how they go together." You don't necessarily need someone to shoot and kill another person with the bullet to figure out that guns are for shooting. You don't necessarily need to have sexual intercourse and have a baby to figure out genitals are for sexual intercourse. The knowledge that these things can be consequences of the action might inform your understanding of the action, but the actions can be analyzed separate from their consequences.
Target practice generally still requires firing small ballistics. Pair bonding and pleasure dont require penis ejaculating in vagina.
True, there are cuddles and other things that can make pair bonding happen. In this part of the analogy, I'm just listing things that are known possible consequences of the action in question. Some possible consequences/results of shooting a gun is that it will hit or miss a target and that will create a feedback loop to help the shooter improve their aim. Some possible consequences/results of sexual intercourse is that it will make a baby or improve pair bonding. This is not an exhausted list of possible consequences of shooting a gun or having sexual intercourse.
The examples are Unidirectional and I'm not making the opposite argument that target practice necessitates the shooting of a gun or something like that. I'm not arguing that the consequences of the actions necessitates how the actions happen or anything like that.
I think thats not how people use words, generally. "Penis ejaculating in vagina", as an ordinary english description, does not actually exclude using a condom.
Where does the ejaculate go? A vagina or a condom? If you poke holes in the condom so that ejaculate leaves the condom, then wearing a condom is fine in Catholic ethics.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
It seems like you are conflating things. Why would having sexual intercourse in general be the equivalent of shooting to kill? Where is that even coming from?
For my metaphor, the equivalent of shooting to kill would be having intercourse specifically on a day the woman is expected to be most fertile, in the hopes that it will bring forth new life. In fact, there are supposed tricks to time sexual intercourse to have a male or female baby (male sperm swim faster, so if you abstain from sex up until the moment of ovulation, there's like a 30% higher chance a male sperm will get there first.) Something like that would be shooting to kill. But just any old act of sexual intercourse is not this.
"Fufilling the act's primary purpose" - I'm not talking about the act's purpose. I'm talking about the object's purpose. That's the conflation many people are making on this thread. The object (Genitals, guns and bullets) and the act (firing a gun, engaging in sexual intercourse) are different. Still different are the things that the act can do (have a kid, target practice, etc). I'm not appealing to the Act's purpose at any point to describe what someone should do with the object.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
No, by that logic, it's "using/having a gun for a reason other than shooting to kill [its primary purpose] is suspect" (so 'I'm just here to shoot targets because it's fun' is immoral and weird).
Where is this coming from? I really don't know what you are arguing against.
I worry about the ladder effect. In that, devleopers will be pulling the ladder out behind themselves.
Say you need a low-level coder to help support a more experienced software developer. You might just tell the developer to use AI instead of hire a kid out of college. AI will be better than 80% of kids out of college after all.
But AI can't do what that Software Developer does, and perhaps it never will. Ten years later, you have seasoned developers retiring and who is there to replace them? All the kids with CS degrees had to turn to menial labor and no one got that experience needed to take over the Software Developer's position.
But if you're a future-oriented company who thinks long term, and you say, "I'll hire these CS people so they get trained," you are at a disadvantage against your competitors for years, and there's no guarantee that the guy you hired will stick with you after the job market for seasoned developers tightens.
More options
Context Copy link