Claire

I would say option one is accurate. If there are two results from an action, we'll call them "A" and "B", and you performed the action because you wanted "A" to happen, then "A" is your intent while "B" is a consequence. I'm kind of with Vort from a couple pages back, we do all agree that killing an innocent human being is wrong, and our differences stem from trying to define which instances count. I appreciate that we're all passionate about what we believe here, and that's good in and of itself, but we could probably all stand to take a deep breath. LDS and Catholics can probably agree that abortion, in most instances, is bad. We can also agree that why you do stuff matters, and that you need to balance the good and bad results of actions. Where we disagree is in whether any action is always wrong, or to put it into Catholic parlance, "intrinsically evil." In the Catholic understanding of things, there are actions that you can never perform in any circumstances, because actions themselves can be evil. LDS (if I understand correctly) do not believe that any action is in-and-of itself evil, but becomes evil based on evil intent and/or consequence. Catholics, incidentally, will also say that actions which aren't intrinsically evil can become evil for those same reasons. Now, because Catholics think certain things, like murder, are intrinsically evil, we have to narrow down when specifically "murder" is taking place. In other words, when is it killing somebody, and when is their death an unfortunate side effect. This is not an issue for LDS because killing as-such isn't necessarily evil because you're killing, only because of the consequences and intention (i.e. death and the desire to inflict it). I think this is where a lot of the "hair splitting" comes in, because we are trying to make a distinction that for LDS simply does not need to be made. I still think that the problems are based more on our definitions of good and evil, and more remotely our differences on God's acts of creation. After all, the Augustinian definition of good used by most Catholics (the lack of some good proper to a thing) is largely based on our need to account for evil in a cosmos where everything was created by God. Again, this is not a distinction LDS need to make because God organized the world from pre-existent matter, so any evil would not have had to have been part of God's act of organization. Of course, if I messed anything up on the LDS side of things, I am always open for correction :)

Intent, for the purposes of Catholic moral theology, is "why you are doing the thing." In virtually all the cases where abortion is tolerable for LDS but not Catholics, the abortion is not deemed intolerable on the grounds of intent. It is deemed intolerable on the grounds of it being an intrinsic evil, which near as I can tell is a foreign concept to LDS. Directly killing an innocent is always an intrinsic evil, which is the reason most forms of abortion are not tolerable. In the cases where it is tolerable, it is an because it is an unintended consequence of some other action. In the case of ectopic pregnancies, the condition is caused by a faulty tube. Removing the tube is legal because you are treating the condition, even though the baby's death is inevitable. Again, there are a lot of very good underlying reasons why we disagree. Until those are resolved, we probably aren't going to reach any sort of agreement, only perhaps an understanding.

"She must die to fulfill the will of God" is a bit strong. If people bash down more door tomorrow and demand that I curse Christ's name or they will kill me, and I say no, then I don't think my subsequent getting killed would be the considered "the will of God." It's a bad consequence of a horrible situation. Other than that, yes, you are correct. you cannot abort the baby, because you are murdering the baby. Nobody wants the mother to die, but preemptively killing the baby to save her is not a valid answer. You can, however, try every experimental treatment in the book, even if it seriously risks the baby. Again, for the purposes of moral analysis, "intent" means why we're going it. Back to the medicine, you take it because you're sick. You know full well that it will make you drowsy as well, but it's a side effect you're willing to put up with. The drowsiness is not why you did it though. Is there some hair splitting involved? Absolutely. We're dealing with a very difficult situation, and the margin for error on making the right decision, whatever that is, isn't exactly wide. But no, you cannot ever directly kill an innocent human being, even if you're shortening their life by a few days to increase your own by several years.

When talking about intent for the purposes of moral decisions, we basically mean "why am I doing this." You take the medicine knowing full well you're going to become drowsy, but that's not the reason why you took it. You took it for the pain, and becoming drowsy is a side effect you're willing to endure. On Vort's scenario, I'll start by saying that I honestly think more details are needed on the exact cause of what's killing the mother, but I will try to muck my way through it anyway. First, I'm going to skip intent and weighing the good/bad, because I don't think there's much debate on that part of it. I will move on to the intrinsic evil bit. I'll start by saying that directly killing the child is an intrinsic evil. That means you cannot ever "cut it out", use abortion inducing drugs, ect. You can not do any of those things even if it means the death of the mother is probable. The reason for this is because that baby, even if it isn't viable, is still a human being with every bit as much right to live as the mother. Prolonging one person's life for any number of years does not justify ending another's, even if death is inevitable. Now, as for what treatment options are available, again some of the details here matter. If the uterus was defective and is the reason the mother and baby would die, then removing the defective uterus is licit. If the woman has some sort of condition apart from the uterus that is the reason why she is likely to die, then she can pursue treatment for that condition, but she would not be allowed to cut out the uterus (as in this scenario it has nothing to do with the condition). And there have been three replies since I started typing. When did this thread blow up so much? :)

When it comes to determining how literally to take the Old Testament, I tend to take the same approach as I do with the Gospels. So, we all know that the four Gospels all tell the stories of Jesus' ministry, but there are definitely irreconcilable differences between the three if you want to try to form a coherent timeline that accounts for all of them. I personally think that the reason for this differences is that each Gospel writer, lead by the inspiration of the holy spirit, made alterations to the narrative in order to reflect some greater divine truth. In other words, we can learn more from the Gospels precisely because they deviate from actual events. That being said, there's enough of the actual events in there that we can suppose that we have a pretty good idea of how Jesus' life actually played out. Applying this to the Old Testament, I think that the authors of the various books probably did deviate from how actual events played out in places. After all, I don't think most Christians would say that the Creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 are literal, particularly since they contradict one another in places. That being said, where the scriptures deviate from actual events, they make that deviation in the name of a greater truth. That being said, I do think a plurality of wives existed in the Old Testament, that it was allowed for in the Law of Moses, and it is something we have to account for. From the Catholic view, we have two "versions" of marriage: sacramental and natural. The latter, which would include all those Old Testament examples, is definitely most properly understood in the context of one man and one woman married until death, but allowances can (and often times were) made that deviate from that norm. Sacramental marriage between two Christians is a much less fluid affair, with the rules must more strictly enforced. All that aside, I do think anatess hit this one on the head. If marriage is eternal, then you even in a monogamous society you have to be able to account for polygamy in the afterlife (in the case of marriage after death). If marriage ends at death, then it's kind of a mute point.

Good points, Vort. I'm obviously not an expert in LDS Church administration, so I'm not really familiar with how sins of that nature are actually handled. Thanks for enlightening me!

I agree with both your points, and think that to a certain extent we reached a consensus earlier in this thread about why we differ where we differ. The principle of double effect isn't biblical, granted, but it is a natural consequence of our having to deal with our interpretations of the bible. The big difference between the two views seems to be whether intrinsically evil actions exist, as we all seem to be in agreement as far as intent and balancing consequences goes.

Principle of double effect, take 2 :) Okay, the first thing we need to look at is intent. It goes without saying that if your intent is the kill the other guy and not to kill yourself then it's not okay. That being said, we'll assume the intent is to save yourself, and move on. Next, is the action an intrinsic evil? To answer that, we first need to know if your life is the guy on the bridge is the one threatening your life. Remember, killing is only an intrinsic evil IF you kill an innocent. If he his trying to kill you, then sniping him or using your grenade are not intrinsically evil and may be okay. We will suppose, however, that the guy is not responsible for the predicament, in which case directly killing him would be an intrinsic evil, and then sniping and grenading him are illicit. This brings us to our last criteria, does the good achieved justify the evil consequence. The good achieved, saving your own life, is the same in either case. The evil consequence is where the two scenarios really depart. In the case of removing the tube, the evil done is somewhat mitigated because the baby dies whether or not you do anything. In the case of the bridge, the guy will survive if you don't blow it up. In this regard, it's more akin to a pregnant woman undergoing chemo. She has the choice to either try to save herself but risk the baby, or to save the baby but to die from the cancer. It's a tough scenario and with a ton of variables and the Church will allow for a prudential judgement to be made by the mother. As TFP said, though, in the case of undergoing chemo or blowing up the bridge, there is at least some possibility of survival.

The reason I focus in on the "God given" part is because the origin of the institution is relevant. If it really is something man just made up, even if he originally made it up to be between only a man and a woman, men would still have the authority to change that definition. If it has its origin in some power external to man, then it is what it is and we can't change it. Even if we try to argue that the institution is rooted in nature vice God, and logically there's good reason to say that it is, it could reasonably be argued that we are not necessarily bound by those origins in establishing our civil institutions. I agree that invoking God doesn't carry a lot of weight, but I also think that that is something of a double standard that I don't think we should capitulate to. Truth is truth, whether or not everybody agrees with it, so we should be willing to invoke the truth (at least as we understand it) in the political arena. Others are of course free to disagree, and debating why we disagree is probably more profitable that trying to side-step the issue altogether.

"And now, behold, I speak unto the church. Thou shalt not kill; and he that kills shall not have forgiveness in this world, nor in the world to come." From the looks of it, verses 1-17 were addressed specifically to the elders in the Church, with verse 18 representing a transition to the Church at large (hence saying "And now, behold, I speak unto the church.") I would then say that the commandments as outlined in verses 18+ are directed specifically to the Church, and I'm fairly certain LDS doctrine would not include Catholics in that group. In other words, these commandments don't seem like they would apply to non-LDS. Further, Joseph would still have been talking specifically to the elders at this point, albeit about the church at large. This is significant because it seems to mean that the Church won't forgive murderers. This would seem to have no bearing our individual responsibility to forgive.

I'd agree with the basic definition of discrimination that askandanswer provided, with the caveat that this definition is the "dictionary" definition and not really what people mean when they talk about it in society. I think in that context, you could further add that the characteristic or attribute has no bearing on the difference in treatment. In other words, it would not be discrimination if was not allowed to enter the men's room due to being a woman, since my gender is relevant to that treatment. It would be discrimination if I wasn't allowed to enter a shop for the same reason, since my gender hypothetically shouldn't have any bearing on that. Where things get dicey is when we try to argue which characteristics are relevant to a given situation and which aren't. To invoke TFP's "gay marriage" example, those who are opposed to it typically are on the grounds that the gender of the would-be spouses is relevant to the institution (i.e. it's just impossible for two men or two women to marry), while those who are in favor will typically argue that it's not. In the case of things like marriage, the root cause for the difference of opinion is often a more fundamental belief (i.e. marriage as a God given thing versus marriage as a man-made institution), which can often times be boiled down to even more fundamental differences in opinion (i.e. God as a reality versus God as a man-made myth). The point I think I'm trying to make is that the trick to coming to a consensus on any of these issues is going to have to be identifying and working out the more fundamental issues at their core. We are never going to reach a complete consensus on the majority of social issues (i.e. abortion, gay marriage, euthenasia, ect) until we reach a consensus on the more fundamental issues that our various stances are based upon (i.e. is there a God).

" Nevertheless, he has sinned; but verily I say unto you, I, the Lord, forgive sins unto those who confess their sins before me and ask forgiveness, who have not sinned unto death." God may or may not forgive them. He has more information than we do, and He will make that call. We, you and me and everybody else on this Earth, don't get to make that call. We have to forgive everybody, period. I think at minimum that would include not praying for their damnation. You date an LDS guy long enough, you pick up a few things It's a good quote.

"I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men." - Doctrine & Covenants 64:10 Even murderers, false priests, fornicators, ect.

I suppose there are a few clarifications I should make here on Catholic dogma. First, there actually is some allowance for revelation. Jesus represented the culmination of public revelation, meaning that there would be no more prophets in the Old Testament sense. Private revelation, however, still can occur. There are all sorts of revelations given to certain people since Christ which the faith are allowed to, but not required to, believe in. The Church will even put it's stamp of approval on some of the ones that, after investigation, seem likely to be legitimate. Again though, even if the Church says that a certain bit of revelation probably did happen (i.e. Mary at Lourdes and Fatima or Jesus to St. Bernadette), Catholics are not required to believe in those revelations. We believe Jesus gave us everything necessary for salvation during his earthly ministry, so anything beyond that is just gravy. As for Mary Magdalene, there are some biblical scholars (Catholic, Protestant, and otherwise) out there that equate her to the adulteress from the Gospels, but there certainly isn't any definitive dogma stating that. In fact, I would say that the majority of Catholics would argue that it's unlikely that that was her, mostly due to the lack of anything really indicating that it was. While by "inquisition" I'll assume you're referring to the Spanish inquisition, that's actually a somewhat more generic term in the Church. The main office in the Vatican that deals with questions about doctrine, for most of its history up through the 1960s, was called the "Office of the Holy Inquisition." Further, there were a number of wide scale investigations called "inquisitions," most of which dealt with whether a Church in a given area was accurately promulgating the Faith, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. The Spanish Inquisition specifically did get ugly, but it should be noted that it was also largely driven by Spanish civil authorities and that, to be blunt, any Church that exists for 2000 years is going to have its scandals. As far as "soiling and falsifying Christianity and persecuting prophets," I'll be happy to speak to any particular incident you'd like to address. I'll be the first to admit that the Church has had a few nasty incidents over the millennia, but as a wise LDS person once told me, "the Church is perfect, the people in it aren't." (or something like that)

If the Dakota medicine man blue feather is asking me, should I be converting to some form of Native American spirituality? Mostly because feathers aren't a good look for me

I agree that it's probably impossible to prove that there is such a thing as absolute moral truth, I just think it's something that has to be assumed for any discussion on morality to have meaning. If there is not such thing, then it doesn't matter who wins out because either option is just as good as the other. If there is such a thing, then the discussion very much does matter. The same goes for the assumption that it's knowable. I don't necessarily condone majority rule. I guess what I really meant was, in-so-far as a person has the power to enforce morality, they should enforce what they understand it to mean while making every reasonable effort to ensure that their morality is correct. What this means is that, if for example you were the king of a nation, and you think something like abortion for example is never okay, you should outlaw abortion. At the same time though, you should make reasonable efforts to try to periodically review the issue and do your best to ensure that abortion really is evil. Basically we're each responsible for whatever our sphere of influence is. Honestly, I don't really condone any particular form of government, since they all have their advantages. Heck, there's probably no better form of government than absolute monarchy IF you have a good monarch. There's also probably no worse form if you have a bad one. The reason I don't like advocating one form of government over another is precisely because it's possible to have a populace that generally supports a moral evil ruled by a monarch who doesn't. Then again, the opposite is also true. The best form of government in any given place is the one that gives power to the people who are most likely to enforce moral principles that are objectively true. The trick is figuring out who those people are.

Thanks...I think...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't compressing the air while you fill the football also elevate the temperature of the ball, meaning the ball may reasonably have been at a temperature higher than room temperature when done filling. My boyfriend mentioned a while back that he used to work in a job where he filled tanks with air. If he filled them too fast, they would get hot, and then they would be at too low of a pressure when they cooled back down. Couldn't that also have happened here? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that the effect wouldn't be as significant in a football, but it seems like increasing the pressure in the first place would also have raised the temperature, compounding the effect.

I'd agree that our DNA tends to stay the same throughout our lives, and would even go so far as to say that then general structure of our bodies (i.e. 2 arms, 2 legs, a working heart, ect) stays largely the same. My point really was that the individual atoms that makes those things up do, for the most part, swap out. I think the OP's question was wondering why a new (but otherwise identical) body wasn't given to us instead of the perfected original bodies (if I'm understanding correctly). In other words, if God has to the option to either rebuild and perfect my current body, or to build a new (but otherwise identical) body, why would he choose the former. My point then was that the resurrected body could hypothetically be atom-for-atom different from our original body, but still be the "same" body by virtue of some underlying principle of continuity (whatever makes a thing what it is). From what I know of LDS theology, which is admittedly limited, I think Anatess' spirit body could be that "principle." The new resurrected body could be otherwise entirely new, but it is still "our" body by virtue of the fact that its our spirit body that inhabits/animates it.

Not really, I just read that particular chapter at the time so that I could intelligibly comment on it. I've only just finished 1 Nephi.

I won't go into too many particulars since Catholics and LDS tend to differ a bit on some of these things, but I do think either camp can probably admit to there being some "principle of continuity." Obviously we all have standard issue "mortal" bodies right now. Throughout our lives, from conception to birth to adulthood to old age and death, those bodies change in a pretty radical way. The physical matter that makes up my body right now is probably 99+% different from the physical matter that made it up when I was first born, but we still consider it to be the "same" body. What this means is that, over and apart from the physical stuff making us up, there has to be some underlying unchanging thing that makes us up. For a Catholic, this would be the soul which orders and gives form to the body. For LDS, I think anatess was probably on the right track with your spirit bodies (I'll leave it to other LDS to determine if that's accurate or not). Regardless, we know from observing our physical bodies that there's some unperceived principle of continuity at work. I think that whatever that principle is, it will likely be present in your resurrected body as well.

The biggest problem as I see it is that there are always going to be certain moral codes that are mutually exclusive. For example, there are certain types of atheists that would never accept a moral code that factors in religious principles, and there are certain types of religious folks who would never accept a moral code that doesn't. I personally believe that we have to operate under the assumption that (moral) truths exist and that we can reasonably know what they are. That may or may not be true, but operating under any other assumption would seem to render this or any other discourse on the topic pointless. That being such as it were, public moral policy should conform to whatever objective moral truth is. That all being said, its obvious that even if there is an objective moral truth, it isn't universally recognized. Typically it seems like the moral code established in a society then is determined (or at least influenced by) by the subjective moral truths held to by whoever happens to be in power. In effect we end up with a sort of de facto Nietzchian "will to power." So where does all that leave us? I think what it amounts to is this: on an individual basis, we need to push for our society to embrace the moral truth as best we know it while continuing to refine our beliefs. Basically this amounts to trying to push whatever we happen to believe is truth onto society while working with one another to try to determine whatever actually is truth. Ideally, this could eventually result in a society that embraces objective moral truths. More realistically, we'll probably end up with a society that's legislated moral standards shift with broader shifts in cultural beliefs in what is moral (i.e. pretty much what happens now anyway). My biggest problem with the particular examples you provided is that they are all based on philosophical models of what's "good" that I generally don't ascribe to. My problem with non-aggression principle in particular is twofold: it presumes that people are "islands," and defining what constitutes "harm to another" is going to vary depending on which of the other standards you hold to. To the first point, I don't really ascribe to the concept that I CAN do anything that doesn't have an impact beyond just myself. If I were to, for example, kill myself, it would probably have a significant negative impact on my friends, family, employer, ect. As far as harming another goes, abortion and euthenasia seem like the most obvious examples of categories where we simply don't agree. As far as American representative democracy goes, I think it's certainly enjoyed a certain degree of success here, but I don't know that it's a universal panacea. We have certainly attempted to force it on radically different cultures (i.e. Iraq and Afghanistan) in the past, and I wouldn't really count those as success stories. It just doesn't work in a society where the majority of the populace believes in restricting individual freedoms, as opposed to maximizing them. Anyway, I know my response put forward a fairly vague course of action and then concentrated on critiquing others. The main reason for that in my mind is because I think the appropriate public policy with regards to morality is going to vary greatly depending on where that particular society is in their search for objective truth.

I don't really expect the LDS Church to have any particular stance on this guy, nor would I expect you to care. I guess my point in the debate with the Traveler is that he's citing as an authority on biblical scholarship a guy who's theories seem, at least on their surface, to be contradictory to what his own Church teaches. Not being LDS myself, I'm trying to get second opinions on that. I'm not necessarily saying that Eisenman is corrupt or anything like that, but I am saying that, from what I know if his writings, his theories seem contradictory to those held by most Christian groups, Catholic, LDS, or otherwise.

Interesting. I'm somewhat inclined to put this in the "not something that has to be believed" category. I wish the guy in that article quoted something when he made that claim vice just stating it so matter-of-factly

I don't think I've ever heard the whole thing about original sin being inherited through one's father. After some bouts with Google on the subject, I haven't found anything authoritative on the subject (or from any Catholic source for that matter). Mostly this seems to be a theory proposed to explain why Jesus didn't inherit original sin, which becomes somewhat unnecessary if you assume the immaculate conception. Do you have any reference for this one that I'm missing?