The Philosophy of Tanking!

[SHAQATTACK]

Dumb

[Celtics18]

Dumb

Your frank sense of self-awareness is appreciated. 

[KeepRondo]

Sorry but no abortion is morally ok. And the Catholic church will not use that argument you put forth to support that idea.

That's literally one of the most important/well-known principles of Catholic moral theology, so, yes, they do use that argument to support that idea. It's a way of protecting the actualized life of the mother over the potential life of the fetus when the mother's health is at risk. This argument is also used by the Catholic church to justify an "INDIRECT ABORTION" in most ectopic pregnancies.

It's a pretty radical idea to categorically say no abortion is morally ok, even when the life of the mother is at stake. Even a large majority of the most conservative pro-lifers still allow this exception.

I think you are confusing the meaning of unintended harm to the fetus. This is in no way an abortion. The church is saying that if the woman has surgery to remove cancer, that they will not consider it an evil act if the fetus dies as an unintended consequence. This is in no way an abortion or indirect abortion. And this is even considered a gray subject matter for the church. If you read the first sentence of the answer to the following question, it pretty much says that the church would never consider or support an abortion, no matter the greater good.

Q: Does the Catholic Church oppose abortion if it is needed to save a woman’s life?

A: We may never perform an intrinsically evil act even to bring about a great good. For example, a just society cannot intentionally kill innocent civilians in a war, even for the praiseworthy goal of ending a conflict quickly and saving many lives. Likewise, in the context of pregnancy, a woman may not be killed in order to save the life of her child, and a child may not be killed in order to save the life of his mother. However, the Church does permit morally neutral medical procedures designed to save a pregnant woman’s life that may have an unintended side-effect of causing a child to die in the womb, such as the removal of a cancerous uterus.

All that is is a semantical argument. Sure, some people don't want to label it as "abortion" at all because the term already has a negative connotation in their minds. But virtually every theologian and ethicist that I've read distinguish between the two as direct or indirect. Of course, the Pope won't use that language because most people already have that ideal in their mind, but most experts in the field still label it as abortion. Direct abortions are unjustified, but indirect abortions, i.e. those actions intended to save the mother's life while still passing the PDE, are justified.

We're not disagreeing about anything about the PDE; we just disagree about the meaning of abortion. It's just like the killing/murder distinction. I'm claiming that abortion is similar to the prior term killing where it can be justified or unjustified. You're claiming that abortion, by definition, is unjustified, just like murder. Maybe the more conservative Papal stream of thought harbors that notion of abortion, but most theologians and bioethicists, Catholic or otherwise, don't put it in such narrow terms. In fact, if you denote it the way you are, then the Catholic Church is the only institution in the world that does not believe in any type of "justifiable abortion," but, then again, this is also coming from the religious organization that holds birth control as a sin even though 90% of Catholics disagree with that belief and do not follow it themselves. 

Finally, though your interpretation might work for the case of the cancerous womb, how does it work for ectopic pregnancy, ultimatey the only other case of "abortion" that Catholics allow through the PDE? In the case of the cancerous womb, you can say that the cancerous womb was prior to or unrelated to the fetus, i.e. the cancer had to be removed no matter what. However, in ectopic pregnancy the fetus in the fallopian tube is the direct reason for the need for removal. Though removal of the fetus is UNINTENDED AND NOT THE TRUE INTENTION of the operation, the fetus is the reason the tube needs to be removed, so it doesn't make sense to describe it as some other medical procedure and not call it by its true name, justified abortion. By removing the fallopian tube that the fetus is in, the act passes the PDE and is ultimately an INDIRECT ABORTION since it didn't do anything DIRECTLY to the fetus. DIRECTLY removing the fetus from the womb or fallopian tube doesn't pass the PDE because it is a DIRECT ABORTION performing a morally evil act on the fetus itself.

So this really all boils down to semantics.

I disagree with the idea that we are on the same page.

My first thoughts are, I'm very sympathetic to any woman who has a fetus that gets lodged into her fallopian tubes. The fact that the baby has zero chance and poses a threat to the woman is a terrible thing for anyone to go through. I also think it's terrible to use these ectopic pregnancies to say the catholic church supports indirect abortions. That simply is not true. Yes the church supports to remove the impacted tube, as opposed to removing the fetus from the tube. But the baby dying is an unintended consequence and not an indirect abortion. A woman who goes through this procedure, to remove her fallopian tube, makes having future pregnancies very difficult. The only reason a person would choose this operation over removing the fetus, is because the woman could not and did not want to kill her unborn child. I think it's disrespectful to those women who went through this procedure, and lost the ability to have future kids, to label them as women who had abortions. These women made a huge sacrifice to not kill their child. Unfortunately the fetuses will die as an unintended consequence from this procedure but I would in no way call this an indirect abortion. Let's also note that these fetuses would naturally abort or rupture the tube and cause further damage if left alone.

[jpotter33]

So any real basketball-related comments about this? Lol

Congratulations on a thoughtful post.  Unfortunately, the whole premise is thrown off for me by your argument that the Sixers' tank job is "morally wrong" while ours isn't.

Uggghhh. I wrote this at 3 o'clock last night, so I didn't expound as much as I needed to.

This has nothing to do with morality, since basketball is essentially amoral. It was just an attempt at formulating criteria to distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable cases of tanking. Under the premise that this is a fan-driven league, these criteria or conditions would be helpful in categorizing team tank jobs as acceptable or unacceptable based on their motives, intentions, consequences, and results.

Obviously it didn't catch on with this crowd.

[jpotter33]

Sorry but no abortion is morally ok. And the Catholic church will not use that argument you put forth to support that idea.

That's literally one of the most important/well-known principles of Catholic moral theology, so, yes, they do use that argument to support that idea. It's a way of protecting the actualized life of the mother over the potential life of the fetus when the mother's health is at risk. This argument is also used by the Catholic church to justify an "INDIRECT ABORTION" in most ectopic pregnancies.

It's a pretty radical idea to categorically say no abortion is morally ok, even when the life of the mother is at stake. Even a large majority of the most conservative pro-lifers still allow this exception.

I think you are confusing the meaning of unintended harm to the fetus. This is in no way an abortion. The church is saying that if the woman has surgery to remove cancer, that they will not consider it an evil act if the fetus dies as an unintended consequence. This is in no way an abortion or indirect abortion. And this is even considered a gray subject matter for the church. If you read the first sentence of the answer to the following question, it pretty much says that the church would never consider or support an abortion, no matter the greater good.

Q: Does the Catholic Church oppose abortion if it is needed to save a woman’s life?

A: We may never perform an intrinsically evil act even to bring about a great good. For example, a just society cannot intentionally kill innocent civilians in a war, even for the praiseworthy goal of ending a conflict quickly and saving many lives. Likewise, in the context of pregnancy, a woman may not be killed in order to save the life of her child, and a child may not be killed in order to save the life of his mother. However, the Church does permit morally neutral medical procedures designed to save a pregnant woman’s life that may have an unintended side-effect of causing a child to die in the womb, such as the removal of a cancerous uterus.

All that is is a semantical argument. Sure, some people don't want to label it as "abortion" at all because the term already has a negative connotation in their minds. But virtually every theologian and ethicist that I've read distinguish between the two as direct or indirect. Of course, the Pope won't use that language because most people already have that ideal in their mind, but most experts in the field still label it as abortion. Direct abortions are unjustified, but indirect abortions, i.e. those actions intended to save the mother's life while still passing the PDE, are justified.

We're not disagreeing about anything about the PDE; we just disagree about the meaning of abortion. It's just like the killing/murder distinction. I'm claiming that abortion is similar to the prior term killing where it can be justified or unjustified. You're claiming that abortion, by definition, is unjustified, just like murder. Maybe the more conservative Papal stream of thought harbors that notion of abortion, but most theologians and bioethicists, Catholic or otherwise, don't put it in such narrow terms. In fact, if you denote it the way you are, then the Catholic Church is the only institution in the world that does not believe in any type of "justifiable abortion," but, then again, this is also coming from the religious organization that holds birth control as a sin even though 90% of Catholics disagree with that belief and do not follow it themselves. 

Finally, though your interpretation might work for the case of the cancerous womb, how does it work for ectopic pregnancy, ultimatey the only other case of "abortion" that Catholics allow through the PDE? In the case of the cancerous womb, you can say that the cancerous womb was prior to or unrelated to the fetus, i.e. the cancer had to be removed no matter what. However, in ectopic pregnancy the fetus in the fallopian tube is the direct reason for the need for removal. Though removal of the fetus is UNINTENDED AND NOT THE TRUE INTENTION of the operation, the fetus is the reason the tube needs to be removed, so it doesn't make sense to describe it as some other medical procedure and not call it by its true name, justified abortion. By removing the fallopian tube that the fetus is in, the act passes the PDE and is ultimately an INDIRECT ABORTION since it didn't do anything DIRECTLY to the fetus. DIRECTLY removing the fetus from the womb or fallopian tube doesn't pass the PDE because it is a DIRECT ABORTION performing a morally evil act on the fetus itself.

So this really all boils down to semantics.

I disagree with the idea that we are on the same page.

My first thoughts are, I'm very sympathetic to any woman who has a fetus that gets lodged into her fallopian tubes. The fact that the baby has zero chance and poses a threat to the woman is a terrible thing for anyone to go through. I also think it's terrible to use these ectopic pregnancies to say the catholic church supports indirect abortions. That simply is not true. Yes the church supports to remove the impacted tube, as opposed to removing the fetus from the tube. But the baby dying is an unintended consequence and not an indirect abortion. A woman who goes through this procedure, to remove her fallopian tube, makes having future pregnancies very difficult. The only reason a person would choose this operation over removing the fetus, is because the woman could not and did not want to kill her unborn child. I think it's disrespectful to those women who went through this procedure, and lost the ability to have future kids, to label them as women who had abortions. These women made a huge sacrifice to not kill their child. Unfortunately the fetuses will die as an unintended consequence from this procedure but I would in no way call this an indirect abortion. Let's also note that these fetuses would naturally abort or rupture the tube and cause further damage if left alone.

An unintended consequence = an indirect abortion. It's as simple as that. I didn't come up with the terminology; quite a few ethicists and theologians did. It's literally just a semantic difference, and it's not a big deal at all. If you want to define abortion as unjustified by definition, that's fine with me. Just know that many other prominent scholars in the field don't label it that narrowly.

And this isn't a problem confined to abortion either. Euthanasia, assisted suicide, and palliative sedation are other similar bioethical terms that also have different semantics behind them respective to who is employing the term.

[LooseCannon]

Let me try to get this stupid thread locked by pointing out an example of tanking that worked.  Republicans tried to tank the economy while Obama has been president, and got rewarded with both houses of Congress in the recent mid-term elections.

[KeepRondo]

Sorry but no abortion is morally ok. And the Catholic church will not use that argument you put forth to support that idea.

That's literally one of the most important/well-known principles of Catholic moral theology, so, yes, they do use that argument to support that idea. It's a way of protecting the actualized life of the mother over the potential life of the fetus when the mother's health is at risk. This argument is also used by the Catholic church to justify an "INDIRECT ABORTION" in most ectopic pregnancies.

It's a pretty radical idea to categorically say no abortion is morally ok, even when the life of the mother is at stake. Even a large majority of the most conservative pro-lifers still allow this exception.

I think you are confusing the meaning of unintended harm to the fetus. This is in no way an abortion. The church is saying that if the woman has surgery to remove cancer, that they will not consider it an evil act if the fetus dies as an unintended consequence. This is in no way an abortion or indirect abortion. And this is even considered a gray subject matter for the church. If you read the first sentence of the answer to the following question, it pretty much says that the church would never consider or support an abortion, no matter the greater good.

Q: Does the Catholic Church oppose abortion if it is needed to save a woman’s life?

A: We may never perform an intrinsically evil act even to bring about a great good. For example, a just society cannot intentionally kill innocent civilians in a war, even for the praiseworthy goal of ending a conflict quickly and saving many lives. Likewise, in the context of pregnancy, a woman may not be killed in order to save the life of her child, and a child may not be killed in order to save the life of his mother. However, the Church does permit morally neutral medical procedures designed to save a pregnant woman’s life that may have an unintended side-effect of causing a child to die in the womb, such as the removal of a cancerous uterus.

All that is is a semantical argument. Sure, some people don't want to label it as "abortion" at all because the term already has a negative connotation in their minds. But virtually every theologian and ethicist that I've read distinguish between the two as direct or indirect. Of course, the Pope won't use that language because most people already have that ideal in their mind, but most experts in the field still label it as abortion. Direct abortions are unjustified, but indirect abortions, i.e. those actions intended to save the mother's life while still passing the PDE, are justified.

We're not disagreeing about anything about the PDE; we just disagree about the meaning of abortion. It's just like the killing/murder distinction. I'm claiming that abortion is similar to the prior term killing where it can be justified or unjustified. You're claiming that abortion, by definition, is unjustified, just like murder. Maybe the more conservative Papal stream of thought harbors that notion of abortion, but most theologians and bioethicists, Catholic or otherwise, don't put it in such narrow terms. In fact, if you denote it the way you are, then the Catholic Church is the only institution in the world that does not believe in any type of "justifiable abortion," but, then again, this is also coming from the religious organization that holds birth control as a sin even though 90% of Catholics disagree with that belief and do not follow it themselves. 

Finally, though your interpretation might work for the case of the cancerous womb, how does it work for ectopic pregnancy, ultimatey the only other case of "abortion" that Catholics allow through the PDE? In the case of the cancerous womb, you can say that the cancerous womb was prior to or unrelated to the fetus, i.e. the cancer had to be removed no matter what. However, in ectopic pregnancy the fetus in the fallopian tube is the direct reason for the need for removal. Though removal of the fetus is UNINTENDED AND NOT THE TRUE INTENTION of the operation, the fetus is the reason the tube needs to be removed, so it doesn't make sense to describe it as some other medical procedure and not call it by its true name, justified abortion. By removing the fallopian tube that the fetus is in, the act passes the PDE and is ultimately an INDIRECT ABORTION since it didn't do anything DIRECTLY to the fetus. DIRECTLY removing the fetus from the womb or fallopian tube doesn't pass the PDE because it is a DIRECT ABORTION performing a morally evil act on the fetus itself.

So this really all boils down to semantics.

I disagree with the idea that we are on the same page.

My first thoughts are, I'm very sympathetic to any woman who has a fetus that gets lodged into her fallopian tubes. The fact that the baby has zero chance and poses a threat to the woman is a terrible thing for anyone to go through. I also think it's terrible to use these ectopic pregnancies to say the catholic church supports indirect abortions. That simply is not true. Yes the church supports to remove the impacted tube, as opposed to removing the fetus from the tube. But the baby dying is an unintended consequence and not an indirect abortion. A woman who goes through this procedure, to remove her fallopian tube, makes having future pregnancies very difficult. The only reason a person would choose this operation over removing the fetus, is because the woman could not and did not want to kill her unborn child. I think it's disrespectful to those women who went through this procedure, and lost the ability to have future kids, to label them as women who had abortions. These women made a huge sacrifice to not kill their child. Unfortunately the fetuses will die as an unintended consequence from this procedure but I would in no way call this an indirect abortion. Let's also note that these fetuses would naturally abort or rupture the tube and cause further damage if left alone.

An unintended consequence = an indirect abortion. It's as simple as that. I didn't come up with the terminology; quite a few ethicists and theologians did. It's literally just a semantic difference, and it's not a big deal at all. If you want to define abortion as unjustified by definition, that's fine with me. Just know that many other prominent scholars in the field don't label it that narrowly.

And this isn't a problem confined to abortion either. Euthanasia, assisted suicide, and palliative sedation are other similar bioethical terms that also have different semantics behind them respective to who is employing the term.

You have every right to label it how you see it. And you seem very intelligent so I'm not going to argue with you.

But I will never agree that the church will say these are indirect abortions and I agree with the church. So yeah, not every situation has one way to look at something. And I don't think you will find any literature from the catholic church stating this procedure as an indirect abortion.

I'm not sure what you are implying by adding assisted suicide. I know the church does not support this in any way. The thing most bothersome about assisted suicide are the politicians who are trying to force catholic hospitals to perform assisted suicides.

Edit: updated to hospitals. Typo

[Roy H.]

This topic has been off-limits on CelticsBlog for years, and for a reason.

To see it trivialized here, to a mind-numbing degree, is beyond the pale.  Frankly, everyone who participated in this thread should be suspended.  Discipline, as deemed necessary, will be forthcoming.

Locked.