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Thank you for your response. You explain why I don't want to accuse any individuals of guilt. Just that it seems that overall, as a group, there seem to be una

Thank you for your response. You explain why I don't want to accuse any individuals of guilt. Just that it seems that overall, as a group, there seem to be unacceptable beliefs held. When I meet Catholics, sometimes I do quiz them on the huge amount of damage the Catholic Church has done to people by fighting birth control (and a good chunk of my family is Catholic). I've been tangentially involved with a medical clinic in Guatemala for years, and have seen how damaging this is to people, firsthand. (And I hear STDs in other countries have done even more damage.) If a country was designing a health system and was facing a bunch of Catholics trying to join the decision board, they'd be perfectly justified in saying "hey, the Catholic church has some harmful views on this health issue; we're not saying you do, but we'd like to make sure we're on the same page before you come onboard". Is this unreasonable?

hackuser 10y ago
> Is this unreasonable? I don't like hypotheticals because we can always construct one to justify anything. Want to justify torture? Invent a hypothetical 'ticking time bomb scenario'. It depends on people's individual beliefs; if you want to restrict the board to certain beliefs, you'd better ask everyone. > You explain why I don't want to accuse any individuals of guilt. Just that it seems that overall, as a group, there seem to be unacceptable beliefs held. I don't understand how a group can hold beliefs. The mechanism doesn't exist; humans are not hive minds. More importantly, you can't accuse the group without accusing all its individual members. Unless you want to unjustly penalize the >1 billion individuals and apply group guilt, there's no application for this 'group belief'. The Catholic Church as an institution, is different from the group of all Catholics.

hackuser 10y ago

> Is this unreasonable? I don't like hypotheticals because we can always construct one to justify anything. Want to justify torture? Invent a hypothetical 'ticking time bomb scenario'. It depends on people's individual beliefs; if you want to restrict the board to certain beliefs, you'd better ask everyone. > You explain why I don't want to accuse any individuals of guilt. Just that it seems that overall, as a group, there seem to be unacceptable beliefs held. I don't understand how a group can hold beliefs. The mechanism doesn't exist; humans are not hive minds. More importantly, you can't accuse the group without accusing all its individual members. Unless you want to unjustly penalize the >1 billion individuals and apply group guilt, there's no application for this 'group belief'. The Catholic Church as an institution, is different from the group of all Catholics.