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Roe vs Wade overturned

You can justify violence and the taking of life, and you can justify the sanctity of life. But you can’t justify both at the same time.

Religious fundamentalism can justify absolutely anything at any time. Logic need not apply. Any position you could possibly want, no matter how kind, compassionate, left-wing and equality-seeking, or murderously brutal, racist, sexist oppressive and violent, can be found in there.

I’ve mentioned before before my ‘godfather’ was a monk. The type that abandoned all worldly possessions and spent his life trying to make his community a far safer kinder place. Anyone was welcome, they provided a safe place to stay for anyone who needed it. It was pretty much Christian communism in a small scale theoretical way without the inevitable problems of scaling that model up. I’m an atheist but I hugely respected him and his peers (there were about six if them IIRC). He was a kind and honest bloke with none of the hypocrisy and authoritarianism I associate with most religion. He read exactly the same bible as fascist propagandists like Ben Shapiro or any of the multi-millionaire US hate preachers with their huge fire and brimstone arena church scams. It is all in there and it appears Islam is just the same. Religion can always be used as a tool of fascism.
 
Religious fundamentalism can justify absolutely anything at any time. Logic need not apply. Any position you could possibly want, no matter how kind, compassionate, left-wing and equality-seeking, or murderously brutal, racist, sexist oppressive and violent, can be found in there.

I’ve mentioned before before my ‘godfather’ was a monk. The type that abandoned all worldly possessions and spent his life trying to make his community a far safer kinder place. Anyone was welcome, they provided a safe place to stay for anyone who needed it. It was pretty much Christian communism in a small scale theoretical way without the inevitable problems of scaling that model up. He read exactly the same bible as fascist propagandists like Ben Shapiro or any of the multi-millionaire US hate preachers with their huge fire and brimstone arena church scams. It is all in there and it appears Islam is just the same. Religion can always be used as a tool of fascism.
Which is why religion should have no place in politics.
 
Absolutely. There are zero good religious states. The concept is a logical fallacy. It is by definition impossible.
It needs to go further, as we are talking about the US where churches are tax free, any religious organisation that makes a political donation or cannot demonstrate it is politically independent, should lose it’s tax free status.
 
The killing of babies before born is not something i feel comfortable with. It's a good decision.

You aren't supposed to feel comfortable with the killing of babies. You are supposed to weigh the rights, if indeed they are rights, of the unborn and undeveloped foetus, against the rights of women who are pregnant. Hold that thought.

Women who are pregnant may have been raped. They may be at extreme health risk from a full term pregnancy, there may be any number of other risks attached to them giving birth, including risks to both mother and child from an abusive environment in which the child was conceived.

Your simplistic 'one size fits all' 'solution', may salve your conscience, but at huge cost to those women over whom you have appointed yourself their moral and physical judge.
 
Supreme Court's decision on abortion could open the door to overturn same-sex marriage, contraception and other major rulings

The majority opinion from Justice Samuel Alito attempted to wall off its holding in Friday's abortion case from those other rulings, but Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately to call explicitly for those other rulings to be revisited. "In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell," Thomas wrote, referring to decisions on contraception, sodomy and same-sex marriage.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/24/politics/abortion-ruling-gay-rights-contraceptives/index.html

Unbelievable. If I was a queer person living in the US I'd be making plans to move to a liberal state now.

Inter-racial marriage next?
 
I thought so, but no
  • The IUD can be fitted up to 5 days after unprotected sex, or up to 5 days after the earliest time you could have ovulated, for it to be effective.
Here's an illustration of why that might be true - it takes about 8 days for the blastocyst to attach to the uterus wall:
human-fertilization.png
 
It needs to go further, as we are talking about the US where churches are tax free, any religious organisation that makes a political donation or cannot demonstrate it is politically independent, should lose it’s tax free status.

I’d personally remove tax-free status from all religion everywhere. It should be classed as an entertainment and if a fairground fortune teller or medium is expected to pay taxes I really don’t see why Westminster Abbey or the local Synagogue or Mosque shouldn’t. I also don’t think the state should have any part in funding religious schools. Brainwashing children is not a good look and if parents want to do that then they should do it on their own time or pay for a private school. As a tax payer I want my money to go on teaching science, arts, history, language etc, not reinforcing the parent’s religious beliefs. I really resent paying for this crap. I’d certainly not ban it, I’m very liberal in these things, I just don’t see why the state should subsidise it at the tax payers expense.

The UK is in a horrible mess conceptually as it is a monarchy, which is obviously preposterous, and there is also a baked-in religious structure to the state. Thankfully the CofE is not a fundamentalist, hard-line, or even especially bigoted entity. I don’t have any issue with its existence, but I still don’t want my tax to fund it (or the monarchy) and, whilst I respect various Archbishops calling out the Conservative Party’s truly hateful far-right brutality towards vulnerable refugees this church/state link shouldn’t really exist. The whole thing needs a ground-up rethink if the UK is ever able to transition into a properly functioning representative democratic state.
 
You aren't supposed to feel comfortable with the killing of babies. You are supposed to weigh the rights, if indeed they are rights, of the unborn and undeveloped foetus, against the rights of women who are pregnant. Hold that thought.

Women who are pregnant may have been raped. They may be at extreme health risk from a full term pregnancy, there may be any number of other risks attached to them giving birth, including risks to both mother and child from an abusive environment in which the child was conceived.

Your simplistic 'one size fits all' 'solution', may salve your conscience, but at huge cost to those women over whom you have appointed yourself their moral and physical judge.
Quite. The pro-life argument, that every collection of cells has a right to life (no matter the circumstances, no matter the rights of the mother, no matter the well-documented and horrendous social consequences of abortion bans) is an example of H.L Mencken's dictum:

'For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.'
 
I also don’t think the state should have any part in funding religious schools. Brainwashing children is not a good look and if parents want to do that then they should do it on their own time or pay for a private school. As a tax payer I want my money to go on teaching science, arts, history, language etc, not reinforcing the parent’s religious beliefs. I really resent paying for this crap. I’d certainly not ban it, I’m very liberal in these things, I just don’t see why the state should subsidise it at the tax payers expense.

Good luck with that. Round here half the parents start attending mass when their kids get to a certain age just so they have a chance of getting them into the one of the local Catholic schools. It's got nothing to do with religious belief - they're just impressed by higher grade averages.
 
Good luck with that. Round here half the parents start attending mass when their kids get to a certain age just so they have a chance of getting them into the one of the local Catholic schools. It's got nothing to do with religious belief - they're just impressed by higher grade averages.

There is no reason grades should be related to religious belief. That is a reflection on school quality. If people were taught to think logically rather than on faith they’d figure that one out and campaign for better education standards!
 
You aren't supposed to feel comfortable with the killing of babies. You are supposed to weigh the rights, if indeed they are rights, of the unborn and undeveloped foetus, against the rights of women who are pregnant. Hold that thought.

Women who are pregnant may have been raped. They may be at extreme health risk from a full term pregnancy, there may be any number of other risks attached to them giving birth, including risks to both mother and child from an abusive environment in which the child was conceived.

Your simplistic 'one size fits all' 'solution', may salve your conscience, but at huge cost to those women over whom you have appointed yourself their moral and physical judge.

Very well put.

It was interesting to see how the journey of decision around the abortion referendum for traditionally conservative, mainly Catholic voters evolved in Ireland.

What really made many of them change their traditional stance and then vote yes was the fact that many desperate women end up chasing “back street” abortion routes if the legal ones are removed. This has catastrophic consequences all-round. Banning legal abortion doesn’t stop abortion it simply makes it follow a different path.
 
I’d personally remove tax-free status from all religion everywhere. It should be classed as an entertainment and if a fairground fortune teller or medium is expected to pay taxes I really don’t see why Westminster Abbey or the local Synagogue or Mosque shouldn’t. I also don’t think the state should have any part in funding religious schools. Brainwashing children is not a good look and if parents want to do that then they should do it on their own time or pay for a private school. As a tax payer I want my money to go on teaching science, arts, history, language etc, not reinforcing the parent’s religious beliefs. I really resent paying for this crap. I’d certainly not ban it, I’m very liberal in these things, I just don’t see why the state should subsidise it at the tax payers expense.

The UK is in a horrible mess conceptually as it is a monarchy, which is obviously preposterous, and there is also a baked-in religious structure to the state. Thankfully the CofE is not a fundamentalist, hard-line, or even especially bigoted entity. I don’t have any issue with its existence, but I still don’t want my tax to fund it (or the monarchy) and, whilst I respect various Archbishops calling out the Conservative Party’s truly hateful far-right brutality towards vulnerable refugees this church/state link shouldn’t really exist. The whole thing needs a ground-up rethink if the UK is ever able to transition into a properly functioning representative democratic state.
I”d make a distinction between earning tax free status for institutions working for the “common good” and government funding to Schools and Westminster Abbey.

Any institution, religious or otherwise, that can demonstrate it is operating for the common good, should be eligible for tax free status. However religious schools, that are by definition selective, should be not be tax free, nor receive state funding.
 
There is no reason grades should be related to religious belief. That is a reflection on school quality. If people were taught to think logically rather than on faith they’d figure that one out and campaign for better education standards!
Religious schools are able to raise grades by being selective. The only way to improve education equatable is by small class sizes.
 
I’d personally remove tax-free status from all religion everywhere. It should be classed as an entertainment and if a fairground fortune teller or medium is expected to pay taxes I really don’t see why Westminster Abbey or the local Synagogue or Mosque shouldn’t. I also don’t think the state should have any part in funding religious schools. Brainwashing children is not a good look and if parents want to do that then they should do it on their own time or pay for a private school. As a tax payer I want my money to go on teaching science, arts, history, language etc, not reinforcing the parent’s religious beliefs. I really resent paying for this crap. I’d certainly not ban it, I’m very liberal in these things, I just don’t see why the state should subsidise it at the tax payers expense.

The UK is in a horrible mess conceptually as it is a monarchy, which is obviously preposterous, and there is also a baked-in religious structure to the state. Thankfully the CofE is not a fundamentalist, hard-line, or even especially bigoted entity. I don’t have any issue with its existence, but I still don’t want my tax to fund it (or the monarchy) and, whilst I respect various Archbishops calling out the Conservative Party’s truly hateful far-right brutality towards vulnerable refugees this church/state link shouldn’t really exist. The whole thing needs a ground-up rethink if the UK is ever able to transition into a properly functioning representative democratic state.
The ex rev Richard Cole would not agree with your view of the C of E.
Their reactionary bigotry has driven him out.
 
I”d make a distinction between earning tax free status for institutions working for the “common good” and government funding to Schools and Westminster Abbey.

Any institution, religious or otherwise, that can demonstrate it is operating for the common good, should be eligible for tax free status. However religious schools, that are by definition selective, should be not be tax free, nor receive state funding.
Agreed, our daughter went to a CofE primary school, where I was Chair of the Governors, after she left. The school taught 'Christian Values' and was all the better for it. The bottom line was be kind to others and respect everyone.
 
Agreed, our daughter went to a CofE primary school, where I was Chair of the Governors, after she left. The school taught 'Christian Values' and was all the better for it. The bottom line was be kind to others and respect everyone.
sorry, but I don’t think that’s the same thing, a school that promotes a constrained set of cultural values fails a definition of common good. Human values, yes. Christian values, no, no because the definition is selective, not universal. If the values are the same, if they are universal, why try to constrain them to a religious setting?
 


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