@PeterTurner Read it now. It's not about the story; it's about the media's reaction to the story, and that's a subject on which I am not qualified to comment. It also makes the deeply ridiculous assertion that the Family "Research" Council are not a hate group. Let's be clear, the FRC and its leader, the liar Tony Perkins, are a hate group.

> Hate exists, and it sometimes has to be named. That an organization exhibits hateful behavior and is, in turn, a victim of hate, only ironic, but nothing more. ... FRC does not exonerate itself now that it is the victim of very same kind of violence that we have experienced. It can only exonerate itself by turning over a new leaf and recognizing its own contribution to the climate that we all have been suffering through. FRC yesterday made it clear that they absolutely will not do that.

And I really could have done without the false equivalence drawn in that article between this event and the shooting of George Tiller. The condemnation of that shooting was shot through with caveats.

Tell me, do you get all your news from sources determined to present the rest of the world in such a negative light? It's not healthy, you know.

@TRiG what I read it's not terribly unhealthy, lots of good Catholic stuff. The most provocative stuff is certainly from lifesitenews.

I really don't mean to rattle your cage or cause you distress. But other people have problems too. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep your kids innocent nowadays? My wife and I try to protect them from all the worlds weirdness.

If the FRC is working against the tide to give me some space to raise my kids to not have to think about sex, that's not hate.

We do give money to the ACLJ which is some James Dobson related organization, so I guess in a circuitous way, I do personally support these folks.

I certainly support Uganda's right to self-determination, and non-intervention by the United Nations, when it comes to considering criminalizing homosexuality. A country should be free to make stupid or evil laws and pay the price for it.

@PeterTurner Why am I not surprised to hear you donate to lying bigots?

@TRiG Because you don't believe in objective truth?

@PeterTurner (a) Who told you that? (b) Why do you think I want to banter with someone as disgusting as you?

@trig because you don't want to be the woman who chants "Hateful Bigot" youtube.com/watch?v=b5ZlUDbBUyQ

You told me that, you said you don't believe in the natural moral law

You ever read George Bernard Shaw?

@PeterTurner Heard Pygmalian and The Devil's Disciple on BBC Radio. Read some.

@waxeagle I try, but I've forgotten a lot.

@TRiG I understand. And we get people who drive by with JW answers, but they are routinely massive copy pasta or just low quality

@PeterTurner "Natural moral law" (whatever that is) != "Objective truth".

It is "objectively true", for example, that the FRC tells outrageous lies in order to support their politics. This is not a matter of opinion.

That makes the FRC bigots. That is a matter of opinion. (But it's my opinion, and is therefore correct.)

It's also true that the SPLC has an objective and clearly laid out definition of "hate group", and that the FRC is a hate group by that definition.

The shooting, of course was not acceptable.

@waxeagle I might be able to pull one or two more in shortly.

For some reason a couple of the elders want to talk to me. I have no idea what about, but I'm willing to meet them, and I think I'll mention this site.

@TRiG it's a group that we can't do justice to and if we had a member or two who could account for their position in some places (and is of course willing to play ball with the site's rules) it would really help

@PeterTurner I never said I was unwilling to talk to you. I said I didn't want to banter with you. I am not exactly in a lighthearted frame of mind at the moment.

@TRiG That's OK, I don't want to banter either, I was out picking tomatoes. I would like to debate you about whether the natural moral law means objective truth or not for a blog thing someday. I asked if you read Shaw because you're Irish and I read a lot of Chesterton and it would be fun to resurrect their amicable yet spirited debates.

@PeterTurner Should probably read more Shaw. I have a copy of Saint Joan lying around somewhere.

@PeterTurner I'm more interested in why you think it's a good use of your money to donate to lying hate-filled charlatans.

I don't give money to them. I get 100 mailings a month from charities. I do like the ACLJ because they stand up for pro-life causes and they're a good bridge between Protestants and Catholics in the fight against abortion.

If you want to know about how natural moral law ties into objective truth ... well, we could have a discussion, but you'd probably get further with someone who's studied that area a bit more than I have.

@trig I don't even really know what the family research council is, other than they have some affiliation with focus on the family.

@TRiG Fair enough. That's why I liked the frame of the Eschewmenical blog, we could talk about what we thought the subject means to us. Sometimes we'd be on the same page, sometimes we weren't.

DuckDuckGo tells me that's the American Centre for Law and Justice.

@TRiG yeah, kind of the counterpoint to the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)

@PeterTurner I've read a certain amount of ethical philosophy (including The Vatican Declaration on Sexual Ethics, which I found deeply absurd), but not much other philosophy.

@PeterTurner So the ACLU stands for religious liberty and freedom of conscience, and will protect everyone's freedom of speech, including Neo-Nazis, and the ACLJ is a counterpoint, standing for the imposition of one religion on everyone and against freedom of speech?

> "Facts provide no norm for judging the morality of human acts." The Vatican Declaration on Sexual Ethics

@TRiG I'm checking that out

> Sociological surveys are able to show the frequency of this disorder according to the places, populations or circumstances studied. In this way facts are discovered, but facts do not constitute a criterion for judging the moral value of human acts

That is to say, "correlation is not causation"

it's talking about masturbation

@PeterTurner Methinks you're missing a space between > and the first word of the quotation.

Thanks, I was wondering how you did that.

Yeah, it's a good while since I read that. h2g2.com/A3342430.

The book it was in was Pojman's The Moral Life: An introductory reader in ethics and literature, which is a brilliant compilation.

My favourite article in it is "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn". From looking at the table of contents online, it looks like that article is missing in later editions. Pity.

It is available online, but there are a bunch of typos in the online version.

@TRiG I think that notion of a "bad morality" is the one that is objected to by someone who thinks that Objective Truth and Natural Moral Law belong together.

If there's one truth and we all have the same human nature, then there's not bad morality, good morality, my morality and your morality.

@PeterTurner Looks like the online version has been improved since last I looked at it. It wasn't in columns before, and it was full of typos looking like a bad OCR job. It's quite readable now.

@PeterTurner Define your terms.

> I think, though, that we must admit that someone who acts in ways which conflict grossly with our morality may nevertheless have a morality of his own—a set of principles of action which he sincerely assents to, so that for him the problem of acting well or rightly or in obedience to conscience is the problem of conforming to those principles. The problem of conscientiousness can arise as acutely for a bad morality as for any other: rotten principles may be as difficult to keep as decent ones.

Morality = an ordered way of living

I think that's morality. If you're going to define the word out from under me, there's nothing we can work on.

@PeterTurner And how does that definition conflict with the quoted description above?

@TRiG That's just "morality" not Natural Moral Law. It's a concept, but not necessarily the truth.

Natural = Common to everyone, but not created by anyone.

Law = Guiding principles.

@PeterTurner Try reading the article. I'd be interested to hear of any substantive disagreements. (I'd also be interested to hear from any of our Calvinists, since he rips into that a bit as a by-the-way. @waxeagle)

Ok, I'll read some more.

(Excellent! Gifs onebox! :P)

@El'endiaStarman Images onebox. Why should GIFs be different?

> But Huck’s morality conflicts with his sympathy, that is, with his unargued, natural feeling for his friend.

All right then, I'll go to Hell.

@TRiG Hmmm, good point.

@TRiG No, it's good stuff. The natural sympathy is the thing written on the human heart. But it's not sympathy, it's morality!

Haven't even gotten to the part about Himmler.

@PeterTurner He doesn't quite define it as such, but he seems to suggest that morality can be thought of as "sympathy in the abstract": the principles developed from how we act when we're at our best. So that when we're run down, tired, pissed off, we still behave as if our sympathies are in good working order, because we've developed principles from them.

Or, at least, that's part of our moral reasoning.

(Neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists would tell us that a lot of morality is post hoc rationalisation of instinctive actions. If Bennet is right and we can train our instincts, that becomes a little less disturbing.)

@El'endiaStarman If you want embedded GIFs, how about British Olympic Diver Tom Daley taking his clothes off?

@TRiG Man, if only I had a trampoline in my room...

> This same division must have been present in some of those officials of the Church who ordered heretics to be tortured so as to change their theological opinions. Along with the brutes and the cold careerists, there must have been some who cared, and who suffered from the conflict between their sympathies and their bad morality.

doesnt do multi-line

@PeterTurner Yep.

10 revisions later, I get my ubiquitous inquisitorial jab referenced

@PeterTurner And what did you expect?

Maybe St. Margaret Clitherow?

@El'endiaStarman But are you as gorgeous as Tom Daley? Mmmm. (Actually, I prefer Matthew Mitcham. drool)

@TRiG I dunno...I've been told that my heterochromia (should) works to my advantage... :P

@El'endiaStarman Eyes?

@TRiG Yup. Blue and green.

@El'endiaStarman Interesting.

> I imagine that we agree in our rejection of slavery, eternal damnation, genocide, and uncritical patriotic self-abnegation.

no, no, yes, no

@PeterTurner Okay, now I'm just going to point and laugh. I have nothing further to say on that subject.

Or perhaps I'll go back to talking about cute boys ....

Nope, feel free to point and laugh. I disagree with the author to some degree in a rejection of slavery, eternal damnation and patriotic self-denial. I don't think that a person who dies because they didn't put their gas mask on quick enough is a rube.

I don't think that slavery, in the Americas and into modern times is the same as slavery in Ancient Rome and Greece, I think it's worse.

@PeterTurner Self-denial is not quite the same as self-abnegation.

I do think genocide is always wrong, as is the killing of a single person

@TRiG well, if it's forgetting your humanity, then yeah, I don't take a fancy to it.

But if it's just used as the strongest form of self-denial then, yeah, in war, it's certainly appropriate.

Meh. Let's change the subject.

Matthew Mitcham or Tom Daley?

Tom Daley is a very graceful man, I'll give him that.

Sources for images: A B.

But I'm glad I don't have to watch diving for another 4 years!

Oh well, back to the cannery.

@PeterTurner :) I think I canned all the veggies I get to can for the summer (and none of them were mine :(), but apple season is upon us so apple butter is coming

@El'endiaStarman What is she doing with that leg? Looks awesome, though.

@TRiG Jumping. She dances while playing the violin.

And on the cartoon side: Toph, from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

atm I'm more into pork:

Isn't that gorgeous? (that's dinner btw)

@waxeagle If I liked charred meat, I'd agree with you. :P

@El'endiaStarman that's not char, that's bark

@waxeagle Eh? Haven't heard of that term before (in connection to meat, that is).

@El'endiaStarman basically you use a rub that has sugar in it, the sugar caramelizes the outside of the meat. Tastes delicious

@waxeagle Oooohh...

@El'endiaStarman What about Katie Taylor, who happens to be an evangelical Christian and an Olympic gold medallist boxer? Some people seem to be fans of her appearance too.

@El'endiaStarman it's a bit crunchy, and a bit spicy (if you use a spicy rub) and doesn't taste at all burnt

@TRiG Hadn't heard of her before. One Google image search later...not bad looking. Speaking of which, how about those Olympic female swimmers? :P

@TRiG the irish girl? I read a couple of stories about her

@TRiG From one of the comments: "Gold for emotional reporting". Sounds about right. :P

@El'endiaStarman She's absolutely massive news here. She was really famous going into the Olympics, and being talked up as one of our main hopes for a gold. And when she got it, the country went completely mad. And the Seán Bán Breathnach commentary then became famous in its own right.

It's not a nudist event. It just looks like one.

@TRiG Bahaha. Have you seen the ones of funny faces, particularly those of divers?

@TRiG I saw that one, that's hilarious.

@waxeagle ...[facepalm] I just thought of something...if you make the rub extremely spicy, then the bark would be worse than the bite...

@El'endiaStarman Diving face is bad, but shot-put face is worse.

Except, I suppose, that no one expects shot putters to look cute in the first place.

@El'endiaStarman groan

@TRiG I like this one more:

@El'endiaStarman That is awesome.

How did we get here? Oh yes, GIFs. It's all your fault.

@TRiG Well, you're the one that switched the subject to an Olympic diver taking off his clothes!

@El'endiaStarman Worth seeing, though, even you agreed.

(It makes sense in context)

@TRiG Well, yes, but then you deliberately switched the topic to which diver was better looking, while providing examples.

@El'endiaStarman True.

Actually, they both seem to be thoroughly nice people too.

And they're obviously capable of amusing each other.

As in, Matthew Mitcham stood on the Olympic Rings so Tom Daley did too. That amused me.

@TRiG Hahaha, nice.