I "Unfriended" Someone Today - The Failure Of Logic And Reason

About a year ago I reconnected with a high school friend on Facebook.  While we have some common interests, it became quickly apparent that we did not agree on religious, social, and political issues.  The social and political issues which we tended not to agree stemmed from religious beliefs - he is an atheist and I am a Catholic.  I entertained discussions with him because it gave me a chance to grower deeper in my faith.

The discussions would be on the role of religion in the government and moral issues.  We would have a few good exchanges on a topic and then insults were thrown at me because he perceived a comment of mine to patronize him.  He did not like it when I would remind him of something from history in response to his criticism of something the Catholic Church has done.  His response would be something like "don't patronize me, I've studied history for the last 10 years and have a Masters Degree in History" or "I studied the Bible and Church Fathers and learned a lot."  I do not doubt that those statements are true, but that does not excuse his comments or even suffice as a logical response.  Rather than giving me a reasonable or logical argument, he chose to give me his credentials and expected me to give up.  If one really has the credentials the cite, then they should be able to give an answer rather than shoving the credentials in another's face.


For a while I ignored this and tried to continue with the discussions.  He would either drop out of the discussion or come back to the beginning of the discussion.  Either way, the discussion basically came to an end.  Then another topic would come up and we would go through the same discussion points.  I really tired of this as he would continue with the same comments that I already refuted.  Without fail he would bring up  priest sex abuse and make that out to be a problem unique to the Catholic Church.  Despite many refutations regarding the frequency of allegations compared to the general population, the time period from which most of the alleged abuse occurred, and the Church following the norms of society when dealing with abusers, he continued to use this as an argument against the Church (Note that I do not think any actual abuse by anyone is acceptable).  He even went as far as claiming that the real reason the Church opposes abortion is because every abortion is one less child for a priest to molest.


Despite having to restate my arguments, that is not why I chose to "unfriend" him today.  About six weeks ago I was in a political discussion with him and he reminded me that the President of the United States is elected by the people.  I know that is code for some people that believe that Congress should approve anything the POTUS wants simply because he is elected by the people.  I reminded him (and anyone else using that argument) that Congress is also elected by the people and they have a responsibility to their constituents, not the POTUS.  He does not like it when I remind him of that and feels that I patronized him by doing so.  If he really know how the different branches of government work, he would not think that the POTUS should get whatever he wants.  Anyhow, during this particular discussion he chose to deactivate his account.  This is a habit I had noticed of his when he would get upset about a discussion.  Perhaps he has another reason to leave Facebook, but it always seemed to be in the middle of an especially heated discussion, one in which he felt it necessary to throw his credentials at me rather than continuing in discussion.  If you are going to claim there is no God, make attacks against my religion, claim to use logic and reason instead of God, refuse to give logical arguments to defend your beliefs, and even runaway or hide instead of continuing a discussion, then I have no use for you.  This happened too many times and I had decided to "unfriend" him when I realized he deactivated his account.  I could not do this at the time because I cannot "unfriend" someone whose account is not active.  Since I saw some posts from him today, I knew this was my chance to "unfriend" him as I intended.


This is part of what I have noticed with many atheists online, Facebook or elsewhere.  They claim to be the group of people that use logic and reason when it comes to god and morals.  Many of them focus their attacks on Christianity, especially the Catholic Church.  They have canned responses to many issues and I have come across many of them.  When it comes to morals, they will eventually bring up a Levitical law.  They do not understand how certain laws no longer apply because of the new covenant given to us by Jesus Christ.  Any claim to that will question why some laws still apply and they simply will not accept that moral laws from the Old Testament still apply.  They just state that they do not interpret the New Testament that way and will not give a reason why.  If these people are really the people who use logic and reason instead of god, they should be able to give an answer to this.  They would rather point out where they think religious people are not following the teachings of their religion rather than understand the basis for such teachings.  When it comes down to defending their interpretation of the Bible, they fail because their logic and reasoning is wrong.

Is the Mississippi "Anti-Abortion" Law Unfair?

Yesterday we saw that a Federal judge is blocking "a state law that threatens to shut down Mississippi'sonly abortion clinic and make it nearly impossible for women to get the procedure in the state."

As we have heard for a while, the abortion business is about women's health.  If that is really the case, then those supporting the abortion industry should be concerned about what happens to the woman having an abortion and something goes wrong with the procedure.  If one reads the entire article linked above, they will notice "(Clinic owner Diane) Derzis said that since she acquired Jackson Women's Health Organization in 2010, no woman has had to be taken from the clinic by ambulance."  That may be true, but that does not mean that no woman receiving treatment at the clinic needed to be taken to a hospital.

In this article from 2010, we see a variety of issues with clinics that perform abortions.  This includes botched abortions in Columbus, OH, "illegal abortions, unlicensed staff dispensing drugs and performing medical tasks for which they were not qualified" in Nebraska, a doctor "violating the terms of his probation by doing abortions without the required supervision of another physician" in California, and two "forced abortions" in Michigan.  These could very well be exceptions, but let's take a closer look at the issue in Columbus.

Looking deeper into the story of two botched abortions, we see disregard for the woman's health immediately following a botched abortion.  In the first instance "a pro-life sidewalk counselor saw a young woman leaving...an abortion clinic in Columbus, Ohio, after an abortion...the patient swooned, dropped to her knees, and began to vomit as she bled heavily through her clothing."  She was at the clinic for a total of two hours and felt "nauseated and lightheaded" during her visit and when she was discharged."  At the emergency room, she was treated for heavy bleeding, and given medication for her dizziness and nausea. It took emergency medical professionals six hours to stabilize her."  Where was the concern for the woman's health at the clinic?  Were they just trying to get rid of her because they thought something serious might happen to her?  Perhaps even death.  If they clinic staff is concerned about women's health, they would have kept her there or taken her to one of the hospitals at which the doctors have admitting rights.

The second case is a woman being "admitted to a Columbus hospital after suffering excessive bleeding and pelvic pain after her abortion...According to her transcripts, she suffered from a hematoma, or internal bleeding inside the tissues, and excessive clotting. Efforts by hospital staff to contact the clinic were unsuccessful."  Again we have a woman having to go to the hospital due to complications from an abortion.  The article is not clear on whether she was discharged from the clinic before going to the hospital.  Considering that the hospital was unsuccessful in contacting the clinic, I think it is safe to assume that they discharged her.  Furthermore, the fact that the clinic would not respond to the hospital regarding the treatment of one of their patient's tells me that this is yet another clinic that is not really concerned about the health of the woman.

It is possible that these are isolated cases in one city.  Some would even say that it is likely that these are isolated cases and I will give them that.  However, if you dig around you will see that problems like this are being uncovered across the country.

The fact of the matter with this law is that the State of Mississippi needs assurances that the women receiving abortions in Mississippi is given the proper and necessary care, especially in the events of complications.  While this law may have been drafted with the intent of shutting down the abortion industry in Mississippi, the law does bring abortion clinics to the same standard as all ambulatory surgical centers.  If this law were drafted with any other type of clinic in mind, it would likely be a non-issue.  If this law were really unfair, it would be holding abortion clinics to a higher standard, not bringing them up to the standard of other surgical centers.

Objectifying Professional Athletes

Today, the day after the MLB All Star Game is the most boring day in professional sports in the United States.  It is the one day* of the year where neither MLB, NBA, NFL, or NHL have an on field sporting event.  I am going to take this opportunity to address an issue on professional athletes and their salaries.


A lot of people complain about teams spending a lot of money and having an unfair advantage in being able to sign whoever they want. This is the case in MLB where teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Angels spend money to get the best players to be in contention for the championship. The people complaining here don't like that the players go for the most money instead of sticking with their team. So I ask those complaining if they would stick with their employer if their competition offered them substantially more to do the same thing? 


Secondly, these players want to have a chance to win. Isn't that what playing professional sports is about?


People who do not like the salary structures in MLB (although MLB has added a luxury tax to help curb this) call for salary caps. I am not a fan of this as it keeps teams from using all of their resources to field a competitive team. Also, if the sport is popular elsewhere in the world, you run the risk of having the salary cap keeping the best players in the world from coming to your league. Although the NBA is not quite at a hard salary cap, they are almost there. We see a few teams get more than their share of superstar players like the Celtics, Heat, Lakers, and soon the Nets (no the Knicks are not even close yet). Many of the people who complain about free spending in MLB don't like that these superstars have taken less than they could earn elsewhere in order to pay for a team that can contend for the championship. So I ask these people, which is it that you don't like free spending or salary caps? The fact is that most of best players want to play for championship winning teams.


It seems to me that the people who do not like what is happening with free spending in MLB and players signing for less to play for championship contenders in the NBA want players to stick with the teams that drafted them. I understand the sentiment they have in that they think the players should show some loyalty to the teams that gave them a chance. First of all, we know the draft system is designed to help teams that did not do well in the prior year. If the player were free to sign with whoever they wanted and had to play their way onto the team, instead of just entering a draft there might be something to be said about the team giving them a chance. That is not the case here. In many cases the best players go to bad teams and have to play out their original contract while the team does little to turn themselves into a contender. When the player becomes a free agent, he wants to move to a contender. Forcing a player to stay with the team that drafted him allows teams to underpay their players as there is no market for the talent. Think about what that would mean if it applied to people outside of professional sports. That is not what anyone wants for their own ability to work where they want and negotiate their salary, so why should we expect that with professional athletes?


Some people will argue that because these athletes work in the eye of the public that we should be able to demand certain things of them.  For instance, people think it is appropriate to yell profanities at them for not doing well enough and want them to play for less salary.  It is never appropriate to yell profanities at anyone.  Although I might feel like someone has not done their job, I must remember that I would be yelling at a person and they need to be treated as a person.  To do otherwise would be to objectify them into the service I expect them to do.


As for expecting athletes to play for less salary, we have to remember that economics comes into play here.  So long as people are willing to pay the prices to attend the games and advertisers are willing to keep paying as much as they do to advertise, the players should receive a good chunk of the revenue.  Their playing the games we enjoy watching is the product we are purchasing.  If the athletes did not get a decent portion of the revenue, then we would be complaining about team owners raising prices just to make a larger profit and that is another issue when owners do this rather than trying to field a competitive team.


Players, as do most people, want to make more money.  They also want to play for a champion.  Setting up a system that forces a player to stay with their original team can keep their salaries artificially low.  We would not stand for this if such a system were in place for ordinary people.  Yet many sports fans expect players to stay with the team that gave them a chance for a lower salary.  As previously mentioned, the draft systems are setup so that a player really does not have a choice on which team can sign him so no specific team really gave them a chance to break into the league (yes, there are some exceptions for undrafted players, but even they deserve to be paid appropriately for their work).  When we demand someone to accept a lower salary simply because we want them to be forced to stay with a particular team, we have objectified them.


Just as we are capable of making a sports team into an idol god through the value we place on them, we must be careful not to do the same with professional athletes.  We must respect that every professional athlete is a human being and treat them as such.


*There was recently a change in the scheduling of either the NBA or NHL that caused another such day in the winter, but I do not recall if that was done just once or if it is a permanent change.