If you read just a little Plato (or any contemporary philosophy) you'd realize that understanding of an issue does not come about by a list of examples, even an exhaustive list. I'm not going to summarize all the moral teachings of the Church for you.

What things the Church has taught to be immoral, it has taught consistently. It is simpler to assert that you won't find any counterexamples to this claim than to expect, absurdly, for me to catalog every immoral action.

Do you read entire posts?

Not interested in arguing about relationship of lists and understanding.

Given me an un-exhaustive list "intrinsically immoral" stuff. So far I have homosexual acts on it. What else?

I mean if you get to like more than 10-20 you can probably stop - I just naively don't expect it to be that long.

Yes I do.

Do you care to explain how the other two statements are "approximations"?

Not particularly. That's not the crux of the OP and I don't particularly care about going into a discussion with you of what approximation means, and what's a conclusion, etc. I've done that several times already with you and the end-result seems to normally be an Aaron-declared "impasse", so I prefer not to waste my time.

Okay, quickly off the top of my head:

1. Murder
2. Assault
3. Theft
4. Lying
5. Fornication
6. Adultery
7. Sodomy
8. Masturbation
9. Coveting another's possessions
10. Coveting another's spouse
11. Blasphemy
12. Idolatry
13. Apostasy
14. Heresy
15. Schism
16. Refusal to believe the Gospel
17. Disobedience to legitimate authority
18. Abortion
19. Contraception
20. Sterilization

ty I'll use this in the near future

one quick question - I assume this only applies to people, right, and not to God?

So what is the crux of OP? I think I've very directly addressed a particular claim about the nature of science which shows your description of it is false. Therefore, any comparison you wish to attempt to make is inherently flawed.

I would actually be impressed if you managed to find a way to say that the spontaneous appearance of maggots from rotting meat is approximately the same as maggots not spontaneously forming from rotting meat.

It's because you seem utterly incapable of critically analyzing your own position. And when it is demonstrably shown that your analysis fails, you change the subject or become belligerent. Consider for example:

Which eventually degrades into...

This, despite the simple fact that the definition of slavery you provided is clearly more broad than "Biblical-type slavery" and that "Biblical-type slavery" is not even a well-defined concept. (Are you taking the Bible to be descriptive or prescriptive? Slavery as depicted in Exodus or the forms of slavery during the time of Jesus?)

The impasse repeatedly seems to boil down to your inability to put forth a cognitively coherent position.

OK

Crux of OP is how change happens in religion vs science.

I live to impress, so I can't resist this one.

Spontaneous appearance is a solid approximation, if your time scales and magnification scales are too rough.

Have I not directly addressed one of your claims about how changes happens in science?

Since you seem unwilling to budge from the demonstrable false "never diametrically opposite" stance, this part of your comparison is clearly flawed.


Also,

I've pointed out that changes in society change how science is understood, and this breaks down your dichotomy in another area.

For someone who seems to pride himself of being able to admit when he's wrong, you sure have a hard time doing it.

Well, it's true that God can do things like take goods away from men and kill them, yet God doesn't do any of these things if they are contrary to justice.

But because of sin, God can impose many things as punishment without violating justice. He can take things away from us, He can kill us, etc. But killing a human being as punishment isn't murder, and taking a person's goods away as punishment isn't theft. This of course depends on it being the case that the one doing the punishing is a legitimate authority. We recognize this in human law. So too, when God imposes such things as punishment, He isn't committing murder or theft.

Edit: to be precise, the list does apply to God, insofar as God doesn't do anything contrary to justice. But many of the things on the list describe more generic actions (like killing or the taking of goods) insofar as they are contrary to justice. So God can kill and take goods away, but as punishment.

Again, not main point, as should be signified by me saying "to the best of my memory". Not that interested in taking this any further, for reasons mentioned before.

OP is not about how "science is understood", it's about how "science understands things". Maybe you can try your point again.

It's like you have no idea what you're talking about at all... (FWIW - I've misplaced credit for this particular observation).

Francesco Redi performed an experiment in which some jars of meat were covered, and others were left uncovered. The uncovered jars of meat developed maggots, and the covered jars did not. Before this time, it was assumed that maggots formed spontaneously from the spoiling meat. The maggots eventually turned into flies. This demonstrated a biological connection between the flies and the maggots.

More importantly for this thread, this observation has absolutely nothing to do with approximations due to magnification and time scale.

"Science" doesn't understand anything. "People" understand things. Are you saying that "science" is a disjoint object from the society in which the science is being done?

And what are the rules for this "justice" thingy? Or is it simply - "whatever God does flies"?

fwiw I'd be totally fine if you'd said that those "intrinsically immoral" things don't apply to god

Great, add imperfect isolation and you'll be all set for your approximation for regime of validity.

"how science is understood" I take to mean how people view the discipline of science. "how science understands" I take to mean the predictions and postdictions made using science. These are pretty standard usages afaik.

This is degenerating into the usual Aaron-type discussion and I'm not interested in it. If I ignore your posts that go in this type of a direction it's because of that, just fyi.

The goal:

My observation:

Your response (with clarification):

You seem to be denying a huge subfield of science, which is descriptive observation in the pursuit of correlative data. These studies are not about predicting or postdicting, but rather about taking the time to observe what is actually going on. (For example, history and sociology are both descriptive sciences.)

So your (suddenly) narrow view of science is causing other problems in your claims and observations. There are many areas of science which do not change in the way you've described.

You're welcome to do what you want to do.

Yup, I don't consider description to be science (although you do use science to get those descriptions, so the point is a bit moot). And sociology is not a mere descriptive science btw, you're wrong there.

Despite all that, history still fits in the science category of OP quite neatly.

P.S. "pursuit of correlation" is closely related to pre or post-diction (depending on time-separations of events).

I just realized that this argument about science is pretty funny - it did a good job of distracting me. So let me get this straight, Aaron, you actually agree with how I described change in religion?

U guys sure you're not on the same side here?

new observations are made by someone and it becomes known that maggots don't appear out of nothing.

Is that not exactly what his last line describes?



and lol at you derailing almost every thread you post in with word games.

what are the odds you and I agree on the definition of a cookie jar? i dunno, we could be way off. maybe we should take thirty posts each and hash it it out.

ahhh just noticed his last part in parentheses