[SPLIT] The "finer" points of apologetics and its rebuttal

[enwiabe]

However, the point I was trying to make is that not ALL the responsibility of the AIDS crisis falls upon the Church. There ARE CONFOUNDING FACTORS, a point that I've made in my first reply and have been consistent with throughout this debate. In this case, the confounding factor is the inability of humanity to avoid temptation. They knew of the consequences of unprotected sex and still went ahead and took the risk.

They were uneducated nomads, most of whom could not communicate with the missionaries. They couldn't even read the damn bibles. So no, the church did nothing to help them. There was no way they were going to 'educate' them in any reasonable way.

There is no confounding factor here. If they'd just given them the condoms and showed them how to use them (much easier than trying to explain "don't have sex or our god will SEND YOU TO THE FIERY PITS OF HELL") then they wouldn't be in this mess. That is NOT a confounding factor. It is a direct cause of the AIDS epidemic.

And you're proving my point. Their dogma prevented them from doing the right thing by these people. They could not hold themselves accountable to other human beings, and sot hey committed a grave atrocity in the name of their god. This is all-too-easy once you have convinced yourself that this action is what your god wants you to do.

This is a fundamental flaw in every single theistic religion and is inescapable and is the reason why religion is so harmful. Once you have convinced yourself taht this is what your god wants, who's going to stop you?

Also pi, I don't know what you think you achieved by playing devil's advocate here, other than making me spell out for you why the catholic church denying condoms to Africans was a terrible thing to do. I'm actually disappointed this was the direction you took the debate. You simply disregarded numerous points I made, asking me several times to stop applying my points to "Just one or two religions" when I had done that numerous times.

You really just narrowed the debate down to one tiny point that no sane person would dispute.

Moderator action: removed real name, sorry for the inconvenience

[pi]

Also pi, I don't know what you think you achieved by playing devil's advocate here, other than making me spell out for you why the catholic church denying condoms to Africans was a terrible thing to do. I'm actually disappointed this was the direction you took the debate. You simply disregarded numerous points I made, asking me several times to stop applying my points to "Just one or two religions" when I had done that numerous times.

You really just narrowed the debate down to one tiny point that no sane person would dispute.

Hang on a minute, the reason this is so is because if you read my first reply to your post, the only part I largely disagreed with you on was your assumption that religion, and SOLELY religion, was the root of the evils you listed. Hence my posts have focused on that aspect of your post, and hence, why I have disregarded the material you have supplied regarding other points on religion. Others such as kp have tackled your other points, but my issue was solely with that one aspect of your first post.

Bit unfair to blame me for the direction of the debate when the debate may not even be over yet, there are a few points on either side that people (including yourself) are yet to address. I just haven't chosen to because 1) I admitted I have not done sufficient readings to tackle those 2) They weren't what I had taken issue with and I thought I had made that very clear throughout this thread.

As for why I played devil's advocate whilst going against my own moral code, I was genuinely interested why someone such as yourself would believe that religion was the sole factor here, a statement which until this thread I felt was intuitively laughable. Another reason (and I seriously NEVER had the intention of typing this up as I hoped it would pass silently and positively such as through Re: [SPLIT] The "finer" points of apologetics and its rebuttal where it was said "Already, I have enjoyed reading this thread much more than previous religion threads, because no ones been criticizing each other", but I will not take an accusation like yours when it isn't called for) I played along (and more importantly, chose to play along early) is to show the people of AN that you and those you support your views (and there are more than just AN admins here) aren't just some bullies who will bag the shit out of your opposition (as was the unfair portrayal of you guys by many in the "AN Culture" thread), but rather ones who could also engage in reasonable debate, especially with someone of significantly less knowledge about the topic on hand (ie. me).

So I'm not at all disappointed with what has culminated in this reply to you, I have learnt a fair bit from both sides (and I'm sure others have too- and hey isn't that what AN is about!) and this has been one of the first religious threads to not be locked due to fruitless name-calling So, thank-you

Moderator action: removed real name, sorry for the inconvenience

[ninwa]

This has a scant level of relevance, but needs to be shared.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRUGqUkZ5Lk&feature=related

Its pretty funny as well that this news channel's fb page was removed by fb admin. Free speech?

Well as long as we're posting vaguely relevant links, I thought this was interesting http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/05/hitchens-201105

[Russ]

There ARE CONFOUNDING FACTORS, a point that I've made in my first reply and have been consistent with throughout this debate.

Your initial point was that the Church had actively protected society from AIDS by preventing spread. Now you're agreeing that they contributed to the spread but they weren't 100% responsible, in order to avoid being disproven. Your position hasn't been consistent at all, logically or otherwise.

You're not playing devil's advocate properly, all you're doing is picking a position opposed to dan and desperately trying to defend it despite evidence to the contrary.

So, you're saying that without "the Church" (not religion) this wouldn't be an issue. So we'll play hypotheticals, but surely without the Church preaching against (and I personally do NOT agree with this decision by the Church) homosexuality, AIDS would have had an even more rapid spread initially? In fact, one can argue that the Church has prevented widespread spread of AIDS in much of the world in it's initial stages.

[pi]

There ARE CONFOUNDING FACTORS, a point that I've made in my first reply and have been consistent with throughout this debate.

Your initial point was that the Church had actively protected society from AIDS by preventing spread. Now you're agreeing that they contributed to the spread but they weren't 100% responsible, in order to avoid being disproven. Your position hasn't been consistent at all, logically or otherwise.

No, read my first post again if you want to see my initial point. My original point was religion isn't perfect but it does do some good, and furthermore, what "evils" it does contribute to are only that: contributions, and can not be solely bestowed upon religion.

I've quoted from my first post here:

...religion is not the cause of this hate and that there are other confounding factors that have not been considered.

...

I know religion isn't perfect, and I don't think any reasonable person will say it is. Like everything and everyone, it has faults.

But, is religion responsible for global warming? Is it responsible for the countless murders in our society? Is it responsible for the Chinese Floods of 1931? Is it responsible for the Swine Flu? Is it responsible BoS? Was it responsible for the cancellation of Cheez TV? Not at all.

Alternatively, did it put great thinkers such as Kepler, Einstein and Newton on the right path? Does it continue to provide moral fiber for many in the world? Has religion been linked to less domestic violence and substance abuse? Yes, in fact it does play a role here.

And you have misinterpreted those quotes.

This was the clarification I gave:

However, the point I was trying to make is that not ALL the responsibility of the AIDS crisis falls upon the Church. There ARE CONFOUNDING FACTORS, a point that I've made in my first reply and have been consistent with throughout this debate. In this case, the confounding factor is the inability of humanity to avoid temptation. They knew of the consequences of unprotected sex and still went ahead and took the risk.

So, I'm not saying the Church is infallible. It's not. And in my first reply I said no religious institution is without it's flaws. The Church's ethics are without question horrendous, they have essentially blackmailed the population into their teachings. BUT, had their instruction (and THIS is religion) been followed, none of this would have happened. BUT because humanity isn't like that, and of course it's never going to work out to what the Church simplistically hoped for, the crisis is what is today.

This is from IRC, and clarifies my stance a bit further (I'll leave it as anonymous):

<> i thought his point was that humanity 'let them down' by not being abstinent when they had hiv
<> not by being gay. that's an inference
<> what do you call it when you attribute a position to your opponent which they don't actually hold, in order to make it more easy to refute them? oh yeah, straw man
<>the church was wrong to try to prevent condom use when they knew it would do good. but they were right to advise abstinence for people - of either gender and any sexual orientation - who were hiv positive
<> just because it was ultimately ineffective, doesn't mean it wasn't sound advice

Both are partly at fault and no-one deserved anything. I don't think it's possible to say who's more at fault either unless we go into "what if"s again.

And as for you your bolded part in your post LOLOLOLOL As I've said a few times "one can argue that the Church has prevented widespread spread of AIDS in much of the world in it's initial stages." Furthermore, that was referring to a hypothetical scenario. But even then, it was one that someone else agreed with in principle:

The point i was attempting to make was (largely) to show that if they didn't listen to the church on one of the rulings, they aren't likely to do so for the other. Indeed, in light of this, it seems the amount of people who did not use condoms during pre-maritial sex, soley as a result of religious belief, would be small in comparison to all the other reasons people did not use condoms.

And as per my clarification quote, I have said the ethics were disgusting, but I do agree that the above did contribute to to epidemic (not in terms of the people being homosexuals, but in terms of them being HIV carriers)

I wasn't arguing for now, and if you read my posts I do say the church is to partially blame for the current situation (real life NOT in a hypothetical scenario). And I dunno out you, but that DOES deem consistent with my initial point:

...religion is not the cause of this hate and that there are other confounding factors that have not been considered.

Okay, now for this:

You're not playing devil's advocate properly, all you're doing is picking a position opposed to dan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_advocate

In common parlance, a devil's advocate is someone who, given a certain argument, takes a position he or she does not necessarily agree with, for the sake of argument

I thought I made that pretty obvious, and you've said what position I chose.



I'm not sure why you'd re-open this against me when clearly Dan and I agreed the point was finished... But ok.

[abeybaby]

firstly, sorry, was away from AN for a few days.

Also abes22, stop claiming the New Testament doesn't have any of the barbarity of the old testament.
Romans 1:26
" Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. (27) In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion."

I'd like to draw your attention to leviticus 20, the chapter which bans homosexuality in christianity. in this chapter, the following things are punishable by death:
1 marrying into the family of Molech
2 having sex with anyone from Molech's family
3 having sex with anyone from your immediate family
4 cursing your father or mother
5 adultery with a married woman
6 having sex with your fathers wife (whether shes your mother or not)
7 having sex with your daughter-in-law
8 homosexuality
9 having a woman and her mother as your wives
10 bestiality
11 having sex on your period/with someone on their period

whilst a lot that sounds crazy and certainly not deserving of death, the reason is in this chapter:
v.3 I will set My face against that man, and will cut him off from his people, because he has given some of his descendants to Molech, to defile My sanctuary and profane My holy name.
v.23 And you shall not walk in the statutes of the nation which I am casting out before you; for they commit all these things, and therefore I abhor them.
 v.24: I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples
v.26 And you shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be Mine.

so all these things are to make a distinction between God's people (Israel), and everyone else.

now look at who is God's people in the new testament:
John 1:11-13
He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.  But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

i.e., anyone who wants to. so you dont have to make that distinction anymore. sure, all those things listed in leviticus are bad in the sight of god, but the punishment isnt death anymore:
acts 28:28
"Therefore let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it!"
now that theres salvation, sin doesnt equal death anymore. now when you get to romans, and it says that gay people have received the due penalty (which was death in the OT), it doesnt make sense to say that must mean kill them. the important words in there were "in themselves". that idea is echoed in leviticus, after each offence is says "their blood is upon themselves". it means that homosexuality is an individual choice, but by doing so, you are choosing for yourself to be cut off from God's people, and if Christ is the way, truth and life, and you choose to cut yourself off from him, what must you be? spiritually dead.

It's also an interesting argument, isn't it? "Oh no no, the old testament was wrong!"
How could god get it all so wrong? And if you're going to claim that we have free will, why did god have to interfere twice in the first place?

the OT is not "wrong", it applies to a time where there was no salvation, and in turn, no forgiveness. humanity sinned by its own free will, so god came to save it. in the NT, there is salvation, so there is forgiveness, so theres no place for the strict law in the OT. and interfere? if youre talking about christ, i think ive already answered that. what do you mean by twice?

That's some free will, isn't it? Obey me or go to hell.

     
that sure is, humanity stuffs up, god pays the price, and you can choose to  accept or reject it at your own will.

Also, it does seem that your quarrel isnt exactly with religion,  its with the church - and i would agree with that.  but if im not wrong, youre against religion in the sense that it can validate organisations like the church which are then given some kind of moral blank cheque?  i think pretty much everybody would agree with you in that respect - it shouldnt have happened,  and it should never happen again,  which is precisely why i said it would be wrong of me to impose my religious beliefs on the rest of society.

[Russ]

No, read my first post again if you want to see my initial point. My original point was religion isn't perfect but it does do some good, and furthermore, what "evils" it does contribute to are only that: contributions, and can not be solely bestowed upon religion.

I don't care about your post about religion, that's a separate issue. You said that your first post on the subject of AIDS acknowledged that there were confounding factors. I reread your first post on that subject and it didn't say that. I haven't contributed to the religion aspect of the debate, I only care about the stance you took on HIV, which you then reversed when people pointed it out.

I've quoted from my first post here:

<snip>

And you have misinterpreted those quotes.

How? That first post never addressed HIV at all. It wasn't relevant.

And as for you your bolded part in your post LOLOLOLOL As I've said a few times "one can argue that the Church has prevented widespread spread of AIDS in much of the world in it's initial stages." Furthermore, that was referring to a hypothetical scenario. But even then, it was one that someone else agreed with in principle:

This was the part I took issue with (initial stages) a few pages back, that you never responded to. If you feel like responding then PM me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_advocate

In common parlance, a devil's advocate is someone who, given a certain argument, takes a position he or she does not necessarily agree with, for the sake of argument

I thought I made that pretty obvious, and you've said what position I chose.

I am aware of the definition thanks. My point was that you weren't doing it properly. You picked an argument that was fundamentally broken and refused to acknowledge that. I have no problem with you arguing something you disagree with or that is fringe or whatever, but I don't see the value in the argument you made.

I'm not sure why you'd re-open this against me when clearly Dan and I agreed the point was finished... But ok.

Because that's what we do..?

[pi]

Ok, you care only about my stance on HIV, AIDS and the Church. Right. I interpreted "Your initial point was..." as my initial point in this whole thread. Sorry, my apologies.

I'm assuming the post of yours I have not referred to is this one? Re: [SPLIT] The "finer" points of apologetics and its rebuttal Might have missed it among the mass posting.

This is spurious logic to the extreme. The issue with AIDS initially was not rate of spread, but knowledge. Nobody knew what GRID was, because it was presenting as a diffuse collection of different diseases, that we now know are a result of AIDS. Your argument that the church, by suppressing homosexuality, was suppressing the spread of AIDS doesn't hold water because it would still have reached the same endpoint of global epidemic. There were no drugs to treat it until 5 years later (and even then they cost $10,000 a patient, a year) and whether it spread quickly or slowly didn't matter, because it was still going to become an epidemic.

I agree it would have eventually become a global epidemic anyway, my point was that it would have become so faster, and hence, could potentially have become a much serious epidemic as more people would have been exposed to the virus. I'm not clear why you don't think that wouldn't happen, there are various severities of epidemics, and if there was faster spread in the same time period, surely there would have been a worse present day scenario.

There are also the obvious social factors, where the attitude towards homosexuality in the mid 1900s was "it's a disease", meaning that if you were gay you didn't really care about what the Church said. I fail to see how the Church promoting it's anti-gay message could have had a substantial impact on HIV transmission in a segment of society that was being oppressed and thus didn't particularly care.

Substantial or not, there would be an effect. And that effect would be to reduce the spread.

With respect to condoms in Africa, which is what we're actually talking about, I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that the Church was correct. Uganda generally gets mentioned as the model for AIDS in Africa, since they're one of the few countries that have (previously) had a decrease in incidence. There's a lot of political debate about why, but there's a pretty strong correlation between that and the fact that back in the '90s they were very big on sexual education, condom usage etc. In contrast, they've recently swung the other way and HIV rates are unfortunately going back up (relevant)

I believe I've addressed that:

This was the clarification I gave:

However, the point I was trying to make is that not ALL the responsibility of the AIDS crisis falls upon the Church. There ARE CONFOUNDING FACTORS, a point that I've made in my first reply and have been consistent with throughout this debate. In this case, the confounding factor is the inability of humanity to avoid temptation. They knew of the consequences of unprotected sex and still went ahead and took the risk.

So, I'm not saying the Church is infallible. It's not. And in my first reply I said no religious institution is without it's flaws. The Church's ethics are without question horrendous, they have essentially blackmailed the population into their teachings. BUT, had their instruction (and THIS is religion) been followed, none of this would have happened. BUT because humanity isn't like that, and of course it's never going to work out to what the Church simplistically hoped for, the crisis is what is today.

This is from IRC, and clarifies my stance a bit further (I'll leave it as anonymous):

<> i thought his point was that humanity 'let them down' by not being abstinent when they had hiv
<> not by being gay. that's an inference
<> what do you call it when you attribute a position to your opponent which they don't actually hold, in order to make it more easy to refute them? oh yeah, straw man
<>the church was wrong to try to prevent condom use when they knew it would do good. but they were right to advise abstinence for people - of either gender and any sexual orientation - who were hiv positive
<> just because it was ultimately ineffective, doesn't mean it wasn't sound advice

Both are partly at fault and no-one deserved anything. I don't think it's possible to say who's more at fault either unless we go into "what if"s again.

Sure sex ed would have worked well and I'm honestly glad it has, but the point I was making about the Church is that it isn't solely to blame in the countries it got to first (for the above reasons).

there would have been more unsafe homosexual practice during that INITIAL period (especially given the quality of contraception at the time - 1960s).

What, latex condoms and the pill?

Well, firstly the pill wasn't what I was referring to in terms of homosexual practices. But in terms of condoms, yes you are correct. But condoms itself are not a solution, and there was a severe backlash against their use by the homosexual community during this time for a large number of reasons. To take a quote from one homosexual HIV male carrier Gaėtan Dugas (one of the more prominent during the initial period we're discussing):
"Of course I'm going to have sex. Nobody's proven to me that you can spread cancer"
"It's their duty to protect themselves. They know what's going on out there. They've heard about this disease"
"I've got gay cancer. I'm going to die and so are you"

The fact is that they didn't think about it as something that can be passed, so they went for it with or without condoms. Having them or not having didn't matter to everyone. And if the Church could reduce a few of such people by campaigning against them, then that would have helped to reduce the spread and speed of the epidemic.

No of course we all agree that it's morally wrong to run such campaigns, but the point is that morals aside (I've said numerous times the ethic of the Church is a huge problem), it would have helped.

I'm not sure why you'd re-open this against me when clearly Dan and I agreed the point was finished... But ok.

Because that's what we do..?

Yeah, didn't realise you weren't talking about my initial point of the thread. Sorry again.