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> Truth is Truth. Reality is not fluid, our existence is very real, and so are the laws of reality just as real as the laws of physics. But we still learn, rig

> Truth is Truth. Reality is not fluid, our existence is very real, and so are the laws of reality just as real as the laws of physics. But we still learn, right? Some things we once thought to be real turned out to not be. From Wikipedia[1]: > The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture". I believe there are plenty of gaps in human knowledge into which people can pour their faith and turn to religion for answers. Some of those answers may one day prove to be correct and others prove to be wrong. For more than half the existence of the Roman Catholic Church, they believed that the sun went around the Earth. It was a model that seemed plain as day. It was also wrong. I agree with your statement "we can and must judge right and wrong for ourselves". I also believe in being humble with respect to what we "know" to be true. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

sdegutis 7y ago
That's a very complicated subject. Read it from a pro-Catholic perspective if you truly are unbiased, and you will see that it is not as cut and dry as you'd think. Incidentally I was just reading about it again the other day from this Catholic Dictionary printed in 1885: https://archive.org/details/catholicdictiona00addirich/page/360 https://archive.org/details/catholicdictiona00addirich/page/... It starts on the bottom of the right page. Click the right page to go to the next. Archive.org is wonderful.
- dangoor 7y ago
  Thanks for the link, though the exact nature of the inquiry into Galileo was not my point. It was accepted _as truth_ that the sun went around Earth by a great many people back then. Going back up the chain in this thread, pesmhey said: > Gender and sexuality and identity and really all of reality is fluid. To which you replied: > Truth is Truth. Reality is not fluid, our existence is very real, and so are the laws of reality just as real as the laws of physics. I can't speak to what pesmhey intended with "all of reality is fluid", and I don't agree with that as phrased… What we perceive as reality is limited by our understanding of it. If you look up and watch the sun travel across the sky, it's easy to think that the sun goes around the Earth, just as the moon does. It would be folly to say that humanity collectively hasn't learned a ton about human biology over the past 100 years. When it comes to gender, sexuality, and identity, we're continuing to learn and what may be seen as "truth" today may prove to be not quite right with more knowledge. Just this week, in fact, there was the news about Caster Semenya and how the olympic folks think her testosterone levels are too high for her to compete as a woman[1]. 100 years ago, they couldn't have tested for that (testosterone was apparently discovered around 1890[2], so I don't think they would have had tests for levels of the hormone then). To be clear, I'm not trying to make a point about the Catholic Church, but rather about truth and reality. The Catholic Church can move forward with time. I wish more people in this country would get on board with Laudato si[3] and see "climate as a common good" that we need to take seriously. (Of course, most people in the US are already on board with respect to the need to address climate issues, but those holdouts are a problem.) FWIW, I acknowledge that progress is not always forward and that there are, indeed, aspects to our current time that will prove to be objectively problematic when we look back at them from some time in the future (just as there always have been). I don't know how common it is in actual practice, but I think stifling contentious discourse at universities is likely to be harmful for the advancement of knowledge over time. Anyhow, this has become a ramble, and it wasn't really my intention to write an essay. Given that, I'll just stop rather than write a proper conclusion. Sorry :) [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-caster-semenyas-case-could-alter-the-landscape-of-womens-sport https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-caster-semenyas-case-c... [2]: https://youmemindbody.com/reproductive-health/The-Elixir-of-Life-A-Brief-History-of-Testosterone https://youmemindbody.com/reproductive-health/The-Elixir-of-... [3]: https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/docum...
  - sdegutis 7y ago
    It's true that we're learning more about the physical nature of the universe, and that's called science, which the Catholic Church has been a major proponent of all along, as a way to learn more about God's creation. But the physical nature of the universe is only the physical nature. There is another nature of the universe that is above the physical, and that the physical deviates from sometimes due to the corruption brought into the world by the fall of man. That "metaphysical" nature is real, even though you can't experiment on it in a lab, and some examples are sexual identity and gender. These are not fluid, even if sometimes the fallen world deviates from it. There are exactly two genders, man and woman, and we are born into those genders, which nobody chooses except God. Sometimes we may have the wrong hormones, but that's part of the fallen nature of the world, and our job is to correct those hormones through science to match our physical gender. This may seem trivial, but it's a very important example for me because the idea of being a Man and a Woman are very little known or understood by any of us today, whereas centuries ago they were widely understood and accepted, and this plays an integral factor in how I should raise my children as a Father and Man and the Husband of my wife, and the model I should set for these roles, and similarly my wife's roles, what they should be, and the example she ought to give them of a Mother and Wife and Woman. But when we start to teach young people that these roles or even genders are all social constructs instead of roles built into our very nature which we must recognize and learn how to fulfill, we're soon going to have a chaotic world with everyone doing pretty much everything wrong.
    - dangoor 7y ago
      Okay, I see where you're coming from and appreciate you taking the time to clarify. There is evidence that there has always been a homosexual subset of the population. One can say that this is part of the "fallen" nature of the world, or one can say that this just an aspect of nature based on the makeup of the individual. Anyhow, I understand where you're coming from, even if it doesn't match my worldview. This is not the kind of thing that one can easily convince another about given that, as you say, "you can't experiment on it in a lab". At a certain point, we do have to take some things on faith.

sdegutis 7y ago

That's a very complicated subject. Read it from a pro-Catholic perspective if you truly are unbiased, and you will see that it is not as cut and dry as you'd think. Incidentally I was just reading about it again the other day from this Catholic Dictionary printed in 1885: https://archive.org/details/catholicdictiona00addirich/page/360 https://archive.org/details/catholicdictiona00addirich/page/... It starts on the bottom of the right page. Click the right page to go to the next. Archive.org is wonderful.

dangoor 7y ago
Thanks for the link, though the exact nature of the inquiry into Galileo was not my point. It was accepted _as truth_ that the sun went around Earth by a great many people back then. Going back up the chain in this thread, pesmhey said: > Gender and sexuality and identity and really all of reality is fluid. To which you replied: > Truth is Truth. Reality is not fluid, our existence is very real, and so are the laws of reality just as real as the laws of physics. I can't speak to what pesmhey intended with "all of reality is fluid", and I don't agree with that as phrased… What we perceive as reality is limited by our understanding of it. If you look up and watch the sun travel across the sky, it's easy to think that the sun goes around the Earth, just as the moon does. It would be folly to say that humanity collectively hasn't learned a ton about human biology over the past 100 years. When it comes to gender, sexuality, and identity, we're continuing to learn and what may be seen as "truth" today may prove to be not quite right with more knowledge. Just this week, in fact, there was the news about Caster Semenya and how the olympic folks think her testosterone levels are too high for her to compete as a woman[1]. 100 years ago, they couldn't have tested for that (testosterone was apparently discovered around 1890[2], so I don't think they would have had tests for levels of the hormone then). To be clear, I'm not trying to make a point about the Catholic Church, but rather about truth and reality. The Catholic Church can move forward with time. I wish more people in this country would get on board with Laudato si[3] and see "climate as a common good" that we need to take seriously. (Of course, most people in the US are already on board with respect to the need to address climate issues, but those holdouts are a problem.) FWIW, I acknowledge that progress is not always forward and that there are, indeed, aspects to our current time that will prove to be objectively problematic when we look back at them from some time in the future (just as there always have been). I don't know how common it is in actual practice, but I think stifling contentious discourse at universities is likely to be harmful for the advancement of knowledge over time. Anyhow, this has become a ramble, and it wasn't really my intention to write an essay. Given that, I'll just stop rather than write a proper conclusion. Sorry :) [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-caster-semenyas-case-could-alter-the-landscape-of-womens-sport https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-caster-semenyas-case-c... [2]: https://youmemindbody.com/reproductive-health/The-Elixir-of-Life-A-Brief-History-of-Testosterone https://youmemindbody.com/reproductive-health/The-Elixir-of-... [3]: https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/docum...
- sdegutis 7y ago
  It's true that we're learning more about the physical nature of the universe, and that's called science, which the Catholic Church has been a major proponent of all along, as a way to learn more about God's creation. But the physical nature of the universe is only the physical nature. There is another nature of the universe that is above the physical, and that the physical deviates from sometimes due to the corruption brought into the world by the fall of man. That "metaphysical" nature is real, even though you can't experiment on it in a lab, and some examples are sexual identity and gender. These are not fluid, even if sometimes the fallen world deviates from it. There are exactly two genders, man and woman, and we are born into those genders, which nobody chooses except God. Sometimes we may have the wrong hormones, but that's part of the fallen nature of the world, and our job is to correct those hormones through science to match our physical gender. This may seem trivial, but it's a very important example for me because the idea of being a Man and a Woman are very little known or understood by any of us today, whereas centuries ago they were widely understood and accepted, and this plays an integral factor in how I should raise my children as a Father and Man and the Husband of my wife, and the model I should set for these roles, and similarly my wife's roles, what they should be, and the example she ought to give them of a Mother and Wife and Woman. But when we start to teach young people that these roles or even genders are all social constructs instead of roles built into our very nature which we must recognize and learn how to fulfill, we're soon going to have a chaotic world with everyone doing pretty much everything wrong.
  - dangoor 7y ago
    Okay, I see where you're coming from and appreciate you taking the time to clarify. There is evidence that there has always been a homosexual subset of the population. One can say that this is part of the "fallen" nature of the world, or one can say that this just an aspect of nature based on the makeup of the individual. Anyhow, I understand where you're coming from, even if it doesn't match my worldview. This is not the kind of thing that one can easily convince another about given that, as you say, "you can't experiment on it in a lab". At a certain point, we do have to take some things on faith.