atheism and children

[Catholic_Lady]

Can you explain what that is?

It's when you take a factual statement about how the world is and twist it into a values-laden statement about how the world ought to be when the value-laden statement does not follow from the factual statement.

For example: "GM foods are unnatural, therefore GM foods are bad" commits the naturalistic fallacy in connecting a factual statement about GM foods (that they are artificially produced by humans in labs*) to a moralizing statement about them being bad, or wrong when it doesn't follow, with logical necessity, that because something is altered, developed or invented in a laboratory that it is automatically "bad," "wrong," or "immoral."  After all, vaccines are developed in laboratories and the majority of the world (anti-vax nuts aside) are in agreement that vaccines are a very, very good thing.

*for the sake of simplicity, I'm not including human farming practices and centuries, if not millenia, of artificially selection that have shapes practically all of the food we eat, which are both equally "unnatural"

Though you are cloaking it in terms of "sanctity" and "holiness," it doesn't change the fact that, fundamentally, you are committing the naturalistic fallacy:

Since we think human life is sacred, and thus the creation of human life is sacred, we believe it should remain guarded and protected in the confines of sexual intercourse.

i.e. Sex is the "natural" way to conceive, therefore it's the moral way.

To clarify what I mean, I will define sex and rape as two discreet types of acts;  sex is the consensual act, and rape is the nonconsensual act.  I'm not intending to trick you by using those words interchangeably; my use of the word sex above means "consensual sex" not rape.

We don't think masturbating into a jar and then having a stranger join sperm and egg together on a petri dish in a medical office, is the proper context for such a sacred thing as the beginning of new human life to take place.

Boiled down to its essentials, all you're really saying here is that "IVF is an unnatural way to conceive a child, therefore IVF is immoral."

You are taking a fact about the world (That sex has been the traditional method of conceiving a child/that IVF divorces the sex-act from conception) and twisting it into a value judgement (that sex is the best way to conceive/that IVF is therefore wrong) and using the language of religious sanctity and holiness to cloak the underlying message.

That is why I'm interested in why you draw a line between artificially creating a human life in a laboratory, and artificially saving a life by developing a vaccine in a laboratory.

So I'll ask again: Do you think that dying (and presumably imminently joining God in heaven (if you're lucky)) is a sacred process? [edited for clarity]

You're missing the point. It's not that ______ is unnatural, so ______ is immoral because it is unnatural. It's that _______ is sacred, so taking it out of a sacred context is immoral because it's sacred. Yes, the sacred context in this case is marital sex, which is a "natural" thing. But it's not because it is natural that it's the right venue for creating life. It's the right venue for creating life because it's sacred. (though I should note that for something to be sacred it means it has a supernatural component to it. I'm saying marital sex is natural here for the sake of the discussion, but we believe it to be more than that.)

That's why most other medical procedures (including shots), regardless of how "unnatural" they are, are perfectly moral. They are not thwarting a sacred act.

If everything unnatural was immoral because it was unnatural, then I'd be committing about 300 sins as we speak. I understand why you're struggling with this, and it's because to you the word sacred bears absolutely no significance or meaning whatsoever. I understand that and would never expect you to agree with me. But if you're trying to understand my point of view, then you need to understand that I do believe it's a HUGE deal for something to be sacred. We regard it as being on a supernatural, Godly level, and we take that extremely seriously. It means the world to us.


To answer your question, no, I don't think dying is regarded as a "sacred" act, like creating life is.