Those Crazy Catholics
November 17th 2008 02:35
Ok, the title may be a little unfair. This is really just about one crazy Catholic. Apparently, according to recent yahoo news article, a priest in South Carolina informed his parishioners that if they voted for Obama, they were providing support for "intrinsic evil." In doing so they were jeopardizing their souls to take communion without doing penance for their sins against God.
There's a little part of me that rejoices when some religious figure goes out of their way to do something exceptionally stupid. Mostly due to the fact that it makes fabulous fodder for a blog posting. This particular instance of rampant stupidity just goes to show how far religion has not come in the last few centuries. As someone with a pretty heavy background in critical thinking and logic (can't be a philosophy major without them), I'm forced to analyze the problem with this position.
Basically, this guy is saying that the prohibition against abortion now extends into the realm of voting. It's not enough to abstain from abortion if you get pregnant. It's not enough to try to convince others to abstain from abortion. If you vote for a candidate that supports the right of free citizens to make the moral choice to have an abortion, as the law in America gives them the right to do, you are now supporting "intrinsic evil." Now, I'm not sure just what intrinsic evil is supposed to be. The test for something to be intrinsic is pretty rigorous and the term evil is pretty vacuous. Unless you're buying into some kind of moral intuitionism, it pretty much fails. And, Christianity doesn't leave a lot of room for moral intuitionism. The rules are pretty straightforward. Beyond that, I'm relatively confident that the causal chain breaks down somewhere between voting for a man who may support the rights of pregnant women to make the choice to have an abortion and being personally, morally culpable for intrinsic evil.
Once more, I extend the invitation to all self-righteous, male religious figures (those who lack the physical, emotional, and psychological knowledge to have the right to judge the act of abortion) to shut up and back off. You aren't equipped to speak of the issue, let alone judge it.
There's a little part of me that rejoices when some religious figure goes out of their way to do something exceptionally stupid. Mostly due to the fact that it makes fabulous fodder for a blog posting. This particular instance of rampant stupidity just goes to show how far religion has not come in the last few centuries. As someone with a pretty heavy background in critical thinking and logic (can't be a philosophy major without them), I'm forced to analyze the problem with this position.
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