Fertile Ground: Intelligent Discussion on the RH Bill

Lately, I've been participating, with varying degrees of erudition and grace, on discussions concerning the Reproductive Health bill. Thanks to committed bloggers such as Dean Jorge Bocobo and blackshama, I'm slowly developing a more informed position regarding the RH bill. While I am reluctant to articulate my position against the RH bill, I am certainly not shy about sharing the thoughtful insights that I've come across in the aforementioned blogs. If I happen to offend anyone whose replies I have thoughtlessly absconded with, my apologies in advance.

Allow me to begin with blackshama, who, by writing on the logical fallacies of some parties against the RH bill offers some thoughtful advice to the anti-RH bill groups on how to formulate their arguments:

The proper application of ethics lies in the proper application of reason. Thus your statement that THE END DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS is at best propaganda. What should justify the ends is reason.

Let me give you how the pro argument strategy should be stated. The Catholic Church’s argument that the RH bill is immoral is very much defensible in grounds of morality. Thus Catholic arguments against the RH bill should focus on the weaknesses of moral and cognitive relativism. There are both theological and philosophical ways of demolishing the arguments of the RH bill’s supporters. I will leave that to you. However Catholics who think they are apologists by muddling the argument with faulty thinking by citing half-truths do much damage to the Catholic position. These Catholic apologists fall into the same trap of relativism.

This does no credit to the Catholicism I live for. This is the Catholicism of the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman. Since Newman is a Saint and if he does come down from Heaven, Newman wouldn’t tolerate the kind of arguments I have shown as examples in my post.

Dean Jorge Bocobo raises some interesting points regarding the "superiority" of Science as opposed to "religion and Theology" in the comments section of the debate regarding the Catholic Magisterium on Contraception.

I have never believed that theology is bereft of, or even lacking in Reason. Indeed, the crafts of logic and rhetoric were perfected by theologians, mainly Christian and Jewish theologians.

Many of my own writings express the observation that Science evolved out of Religion.

But what religion and theology are missing which Science has and which made it superior to them, in my opinion is its honest devotion to evidence, observation, experimentation and the scientific method. So even as Science inherits the logical and rhetorical tools of Religion, it evolves to higher state of intelligence by adopting the attitude of accepting only as valid hypotheses those that can be falsified. Whereas Religion has lost its way with such profound vanities and self-aggrandizement as infallibility and dogma.

Evolutionary science is indeed a “religion”–but only in the sense that homo sapiens is also a hominid like Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal.

If you enjoy intelligent discussion, please join the debate and develop an informed understanding of what YOUR position on this very important issue should be.