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My blog title, Little Catholic Bubble, is a bit tongue-in-cheek. I love my faithful Catholic friends, but I also enjoy engaging the left, mostly secular humanists, in cultural debates. Three main frustrations, however, make it hard to have a productive discussion.
The first frustration is the tendency by many liberals to duck out early. I take a pseudo-Socratic approach to dialogue, asking a series of questions in an attempt to follow an argument to its logical conclusion, and often my opponent quits right at that threshold. It might look like this:
Me: Do you think the unborn are as human as you are?
Abortion Advocate: No, I dont.
Me: What do you think they are?
AA: They are potential humans.
Me: At what moment do they become fully human?
AA: At viability. {Other answers include: brainwaves, heartbeat, the second trimester, birth, three months after birth, sentience, etc.}
Me: Is that objectively true, or is that simply your opinion?
AA: After deep inquiry and thought, thats my conclusion.
Me: Okay, well, how do you pinpoint the exact second that humanity begins, so that we dont accidentally kill any innocent people?
AA: We cant pinpoint an exact second, but its a good estimate.
Me: Isnt that arbitrary and subjective?
AA: Well, we have to draw the line somewhere.
Me: Why do we have to draw the line anywhere? Death is irrevocable. If we might be killing innocent people, shouldnt we always err on the side of life?
Suddenly, silence. One of numerous unanswered questions on my blog.
If a thread doesnt end in silence, it might end in the next frustration, which is an irrational explosion of raw emotion, either offensive (You racist, sexist, patriarchal, judgmental, pedophile-protecting, bigoted, homophobic fetus-lover! You hate the poor, you rape the earth, and you dont care about children after theyre born!) or defensive (You think Im evil! You dont think I have any morals! You are calling me a monster!). Not to mention myriad other choice phrases and obscenities that cannot be printed here.
Leila Miller said:Some Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole moments:
Many secularists proclaim that, except for genitalia, there is no difference between men and women. At all.
Ive been told often that mothers and fathers are interchangeable to a child, so having both is not needed.
A sex educator informed me that she and her husband leave out judgmental words like marriage when teaching underprivileged school children.
Ive been scolded by a recent college grad who has a big issue with my assumptions about women, that their bodies were made to breed and sustain other people. (Biology, anyone?)
A science major told me that although its true she started life as a single cell, that zygote that I started out as wasnt me.
A college atheist couldnt say whether a fully-formed baby girl aborted in the third trimester deserved love or was literally a piece of trash. She looked at the dead girls photo and said she would need to know the circumstances.
Two undergraduates told me that torturing, raping and killing a six-year-old girl to spare the lives of fifty people would be the only moral thing to do (though moral principles arent necessarily easy to live out).
An abortionist mocked me for imposing my mystical, spiritual beliefs, after I presented strictly secular pro-life arguments based on biology and civil rights.
A homosexual activist and his boyfriend staged a mock civil union on campus to challenge traditional marriage laws, yet when I asked him to define marriage he admitted hed never thought about it.
Leila Miller said:But there is another category of discussion that I can respect, even as I recoil: When a secularist is consistent, willing to push his idea all the way to its logical conclusion.
Take for example the young atheist wife and mother who admits that since love is just a series of random chemical reactions in the brain, she and her (currently beloved) husband should, and will, divorce should those chemicals shift.
Or the academic who conceded when pressed that adult siblings (homosexual or straight) should be allowed to marry: If two siblings really, really want to get married and enjoy a happy relationship then go right ahead.
Or, famously, Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer, a supporter of both abortion and infanticide who rightly argues that the two acts are not different, and that birth is an arbitrary line drawn by abortion proponents to make themselves feel a distinction where none exists. Singer understands that birth does not mark a morally significant dividing line when it comes to killing infants.
I find it hard to believe that so many people can't express their views consistently. Heck, I've been around for a while and I've always asked for people to point out inconsistency in my views.
My views:
Fully human at birth as that is when I believe we receive a soul. However, the process of gestation should not be interrupted except in the case to save the mother's life.
I've stuck to that view on abortion on this forum for as long as I can remember. (The people who like to call me simply pro-choice or assume I believe certain things when I have never expressed them make me laugh at this point.)
I guess people don't think about their views enough to answer the tough questions.
I imagine that if the tables were turned Ms. Miller would have some trouble answering some of the liberals' questions, too.
Dialogue involves active listening with the heart--as opposed to an interrogation, which is what Miller appears to be doing.
So perhaps her statement should be changed to: I enjoy interrogating liberals....
a more accurate accounting, which would leave her time to contemplate why no one wants to be interrogated.
Go ahead, quiz us.
Janice
I don't want to quiz other people and I don't want to be quizzed. I think that the basis of productive dialogue is when the listener can really understand the speaker's point of view. This happens in the therapeutic activity of "active listening" and giving feedback by repeating what was said by the speaker in order to ascertain whether the listener has truly understood the speaker.
By using the Socratic method, she is assuming the role of 'teacher.' She has the unexpressed point-of-view of "I'm going to teach these pro-choicers a thing or two..." I can even picture her scowling and lifting her shoulders as she contemplates trying to beat some sense into the heads of those she imagines are numbskulls.
I, on the other hand, respect your spiritual journey. I recognize that your cultural and spiritual experiences have brought you to the place you are right now, and that mine have brought me to the place I am right now. God isn't finished with either of us yet. If God wants me (or you) to change, He will place experiences on our paths that will change us.
In the first place, I think that God sees us wholistically, whereas Ms. Miller sees people as needing to pass some litmus test.
I personally know both pro-choice and pro-life people who are wonderful, committed, and compassionate, each in their own ways.
I try very hard to see people as God does, wholistically, and, with the exception of gun owners and gun rights activists, I think I succeed.
My extreme aversion to gun ownership helps me to understand the point of view of militant pro-lifers like Ms. Miller better, because I express my love for human life through my desire to have a gun-free nation. And so you see it serves a positive purpose.
I see you're trying to use the Socratic method, like Ms. Miller.
I try not to define members of any groups by their most extreme examples. I wouldn't identify most pro-lifers with people who bomb abortion clinics, either.
There are 4 countries in the world where it is legal to have abortions through out the full term of the pregnancy.
China
North Korea
USA
Canada
peopleYour using obfuscation.
That is a false statement. It is based on a based on an oft-repeated and somewhat factual (if misleading, likely intentionally) statement that only those 4 countries allow abortion-on-demand for any reason at any stage of a pregnancy. What this statement fails to account for is that fact that countless countries allow for what amounts to the same result, though they require the mother to make a statement indicating that she is exhausted or depressed or suffering from financial difficulties. That kind of sounds like every 3rd trimester pregnant woman I've known.
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