What Did You Just Say?: The Issue of Swearing

You know i honestly don't know extensively the history behind swear words and the issue of swearing. Nonetheless, I think it's safe to say that we are all roughly on the same page in terms of knowing how people behave and react when it comes to swear words and people who use them.

I felt the need to bring this issue to the surface because it interested me that swearing is looked upon so badly yet there doesn't seem to even be a solid reason to do so. They just condemn it because they were conditioned to do so.

I mean, I'm not really surprised at this, as a vast majority of people see no issue holding certain believes with utter certainty and not even having a convincing reason to do so, but it still upsets me.

At this point, i would like to make note of an article< written by William Esser IV from CatholicCulture.org which addresses this issue.

I've decided that in order to make my points more thorough and to-the-point, i will simply critique this article.

The article divides swear words into three categories. The first category being words that use God's or other sacred names in vain.

When i say that people have little or no reason on which to condemn swearing, this is an easy and obvious exception. It cannot be denied that Using God's name in such a way that is at best, short of meaning, and at worst, foul and degrading, is condemned in the Bible and in the tradition, and is thus immoral.

The second category refers to "excretory" words, whatever that means. Basically most of the commonly known four letter words that are looked down upon. The article states, "As insults, they are forbidden by Christ's commandment to "Love your neighbor as yourself." 

This is easily agreeable. Nobody ought to be subject to insults and to be verbally degraded. However, its important to note that at this point, the issue is no longer about swear words, but about any words that are used with the intent to offend or degrade others. So in this case, swear words aren't really even the problem.

The article then goes on to talk about these words when they are used simply as conversation fillers, and condemns them as "divorced from their meaning and fail to comport with a Christian standard of language."

My response to the comment about them being divorced from their meaning is as follows: "Who cares!?"

We "divorce" words from their meaning all the time other than simply when we use swear words, and use them as fillers and expressions, having no evil intent. For example; "Oh shoot!" is a case of "divorcing" the word "Shoot" from its original meaning. However, i doubt anyone finds a moral issue with this. 
Thus there is no notable moral issue with doing such, and the condemnation of using words away from their meanings is just plain bullshit.

The final category, according to the article, is about words that refer to human sexuality. However, it's unclear as to why he bothered to place these in a unique category when he simply continues with the same reasoning he used against words of the second category.

Once the article finished talking about the three categories, it moved on to address common justifications for swearing in general. One of them being that "I don't mean anything bad by the words."

The article states that speech is our way of communicating as social beings, and that words have meanings. The assumption is made that people like myself who swear believe words do not have to have meanings, but that is not true at all.

Words indeed are filled with meaning, but what people who arbitrarily condemn swearing seem to forget is that mere vocabulary is not the only dimension to human social interaction. There is also Tone, and context, both of which matter greatly.

For example if someone is using what would normally be a derogatory word, but is using it in a tone that is near-universally recognized as sarcasm, and the context is that that someone is directing it towards his close friend, then the nature of the word changes completely from being a negative to an implicit positive gesture. To simply say that all words ought to simply hold on to their surface level meaning is ignorant of those other underlying dimensions of social interaction that i just mentioned above.

For these reasons, so long as you are not sincerely intending offense towards another, I can see no logical moral issue with using words that society has condemned (Arbitrarily) as "swear words."

That said, it is foolish and unjustified for you to call out others in a condescending tone when they use such words in a benign, harmless context, and it just makes you look like an prick.

I'm sure a majority of people who read this will be offended and repulsed that i could actually hold such a logical opinion, but oh well i suppose. Logic is logic. I just hope that society will finally come to recognize that taboo and emotion are both not an actual basis for morality. 

Natural Family Planning: Passive Contraception

Aright. So this issue has been sitting on my conscience forever and i think it's time it gets brought up and dealt with once and for all. i didn't want to bring it up here because i was worried about starting a fight or whatever.

I object morally to the contraceptive aspect of Natural Family Planning; that being that the couple actively determines when they are infertile and has sex only during that time with the clear intent of having relations while avoiding procreation. Which as you might suspect, i see no difference between that and any other method of contracepting.

I suppose it's important to bring up the reason behind why the act/intent of contracepting is wrong in the first place. There are obviously a whole bunch of them:

1-The chemical dangers of the birth control pill or other medical methods

2-The abortive aspect of the pill

3-It takes "Total" out of the equation of free, faithful total fruitful.

4-It subordinates the primary practical purpose of the sexual act (Procreation), necessarily making it into a self-gratifying lustful act.

When i am making my objection to NFP i am doing under reason #4 as to why contracepting
is wrong, because that reason is the most universal and profound, and the one we ought to default to.

It's more or less obvious that NFP dodges the bullets of those other reasons why contracepting is immoral, but i argue that doesn't really matter given the fact that it fails to overcome the most important reason against contraception.

There are some good counterarguments to my view that i wish to address.

1. "NFP used to contracept is morally exceptional because the fact that there naturally exists an infertile time of the month means that God wants us to make use of that infertile period as a blessing."
This is a rather tempting argument i must say. However i feel one problem with it is that it simply jumps that assumption (God must think it's okay because it naturally occurs that way) without proper warrant. It could be correct but i'm not comfortable with the idea that we can simply on our own assume the reason for why things are they way they are.
In fact I am aware of at least one abuse of this reasoning that atheists often have used against us; "Masturbation must be okay because God gave us a sex drive Plus arms long enough to reach done there." Im sure none of you are convinced by that interpretation, but how is that any different from the one justifying NFP?

Then there's a variation of this argument that says that using NFP to contracept is permissible because the couple is not ACTIVELY going out of their way to prevent pregnancy while having sex. They are simply taking advantage of what was naturally handed to them.
I feel the simple problem with this is that whether something is passive or active doesn't change the good or evil intent behind it.
For Example: I'm sure none of you think that its okay to let your baby starve to death since you didn't ACTIVELY do something to kill it. We all agree that what matters is the INTENT, and that whether passive, or active, it is still the same


The next counterargument Is that taking away the option to contracept by means of NFP would present us with a stressful and impractical situation where couples can't express their marriage vows and enhance their bond very often because they may get pregnant at a time in their lives when they probably shouldn't.
I'm not gonna stand here and deny that this may be the case, i'll simply state the fact that this begs the question; "Does such a tough situation justify what is in fact a contraceptive act?"

Maybe it does justify it and i am wide open to that idea, but just realize that that's necessarily what you are entailing.
Given that that you would in fact be justifying a contraceptive-type act, such as NFP, wouldn't this also simply justify all the other artificial methods of contraception as well?


Lastly some side note clarification about my stance:
I am NOT saying you simply CANT have sex during infertile times, Im simply saying you can't go actively looking for them WHILE bringing with you the intent to have sex yet avoid conception.

I am ALSO NOT saying everyone needs to have 25 kids. You can have few kids as you want, and you can also have as MUCH sex as you want, i am saying you just can't actively do one while dodging the other.

God, Sex and Babies: Critiqued

A few weeks back i was surfing through the Catholic Answers website and discovered that Chastity.com was finally being remodeled.

I decided to skim through some of the new content on the updated site, excited to see some new and more up-to-date commentary on sexual issues.

The first article i came across was one titled God, Sex, and Babies by Christopher West. (I strongly suggest you read through the article before reading the rest of this) 

The purpose of the article was to address confusion in Church teaching on sexual issues, specifically Contraception vs. NFP (Natural Family Planing)

He starts off with his thesis that confusion reigns with regard to responsible parenthood when it comes to the moral question of contraception and NFP. He then continues by quoting Pope Saint John Paul II and comments on things he observed regarding the moral and theological difference between these two things.

However, for today, my critique will be over everything he said following this. (Starting after the subtitle; "Dis-incarnate Love") It's at this point that things start to go wrong.

He starts by quoting something he had received in a letter; 

“To think that constraining the free flow of body fluids impedes me from loving my wife is ludicrous.”

As should be obvious, this quote is simply a meaningfully catchy way of expressing the simple claim that contraception doesn't stop you from loving someone. However, Mr West seems to get caught up in taking it bluntly literal. He goes on to compare it to the free flow of blood from Christ's body at the crucifixion and attempts to use this as some sort of meaningful counterargument. This is my first problem with this article. 

Instead of simply using a simple, direct and practical counterargument, he decides he has to take the long route and make things all meaningful, needlessly paralleling it to Christ's crucifixion. One could even contend that he's implicitly shaming the guy by pitting him against the free flow of Christ's blood on the cross, when all the guy was implying in the first place was claiming that contraception doesn't stop him from loving his wife.

Going along with this, My second issue with this article is that Mr. West seems to be out-right accusing the guy of believing that love is not expressed through the body, when, once again, all the guy was trying to say was that contraception doesn't stop him from loving his wife. 

Not only is his accusation needless, its baseless. He is simply putting words in the guy's mouth. He doesn't actually know what the guy believes, that is unless of course it was explained to him elsewhere in the letter, but my point is that he can't actually know all that just from the one quoted sentence.

In the next section, he starts by clarifying that couples can space their children for serious reasons, eliminating the misconception that couples should just act like rabbits and trust in God. All good here.

However immediately after he addresses the claim that infertile sex is all-around immoral. He starts by stating that elderly couples who are certainly infertile can still make love in good conscience, and with that, so can people using NFP. This is my third problem with this article.

He explains clearly that couples who chose (for a good reason) not to be open to life (for a period of time) can still have sex simply during the infertile time. This claim is in fact my biggest issue and objection to what Mr. West has said.

To clarify,  I am not objecting to NFP. 

I'm not even objecting to having sex during the infertile time periods.

What i am ultimately lead to object to is having sex at all during a time frame when you are (for a noble reason) not being open to life. The two are logically counterintuitive.

You cannot sneak sex into a period of time when (for a noble reason) you are temporally being not open to life. Doing such would inevitably constitute sexual activity that is not open to life, thus, logically,  making it synonymous with contraception.

Mr. West attempts to address objections to the difference between the two. rebutting the argument that "the end result of the two things are the same," by paralleling it to abortion and miscarriage, saying that these two things are the same ending result, but that doesn't mean they are ethically the same.

He's correct. Those who object to the difference between NFP and contraception by saying they have the same outcome are using bad logic.

However, my objection to the difference between the two has nothing to with the fact that the outcome the same, it has to do with the fact that their intent ends up being the same. (Again, not NFP in general, just in the particular case which i previously objected to.)

Ethics is mostly if not completely about intent. Supposedly, contraception is logically immoral because of it's intent to make sex solely for the purpose of pleasure by effectively dodging its only other practical purpose; openness to life. 

He concludes this subsection by stating that the difference between the two is that one is an act of God while the other is taking matters into our own hands. However, he never goes on to explain how exactly this makes one wrong and the other not.

Obviously something that has naturally occurred is intended by God and is thus good, but just because something is "taken into our own hands" doesn't automatically render it wrong. In order for something to be wrong, it must actually be an ultimate negative, and be driven by a selfish but also negative intent. Thus my fourth and finally issue with this article.

Overall, Mr West has a fair amount of accurate and clear information to offer, but overall, i was disappointed by much of the ambiguity and lack of persistent logic in this article.

Regarding my objection to the particular use of NFP, (Having sex regardless of fertility when one is supposedly avoiding children for a period of time for a serious reason) If my objection is logically incoherent, then i am ultimately left in the dark as of the logical reason why contraception is unethical in the first place.

I wish to end with clarifying that i mean no offense to Mr. West himself, but i felt the need to call out and object to the way he was explaining many things in this article.

-Nate Kezer

8/12/14

My favorite (Most hated) Logical fallacies

I enjoy the intellectual life like nothing else and love to engage in discussions and even sometimes debates with others about important issues (Rather than just not care like most people do).

But what really makes me regret getting involved with this type of stuff is the way most people argue. They will do whatever it takes to sound like they won and to make sure the other person is in the wrong. Such intellectual sins occur when people use Logical Fallacies.

Logical Fallacies are when people make arguments that aren't actually logical to begin with or are just plain irrelevant. I'll go ahead and just list some of my "favorites" of these:


Hypocrisy: Like it or not people, hypocrisy isn't even a real thing, much less an actual argument. It's just the concept of inconsistency with someone in what they say verses what they do.

But what reasonable person cares what someone does, when in the middle of a debate? Just because someone doesn't live up to their own rules doesn't magically refute the rules.

In fact, Adolf Hitler can say that stealing is evil, and it still would be.

So bottom line, try actually listening to the substance of the argument, and set aside the arguer's moral state. That involves a separate discussion for another time.

This should be obvious to people, but it isn't.

Fallacy of Origin: Similar to hypocrisy, the origin of something, especially an idea, doesn't magically discredit the said thing.

for example, (and this could be really bad history but just bare with me) Hitler supposedly was the first to conceive of the idea of interstate highways.

So interstate highways must be evil, because they came from Hitler...

I need not say more.

Fallacy of Personal Experience: Now for this one i'll give people a break. The issue with this argument is much less obvious, as it certainly was for myself for the longest time.

It's basically the whole "You've never known what it's like to '....' so you don't have a say in this issue."

But lets sit back and consistently follow all the way through with this idea...

In the end, we're are left with nobody being able to speak about anything that they aren't involved in whatsoever, and the whole idea of discussion and debate can basically be forgotten.

However, it's not simply that this way of thinking is a bad idea... It's a contradiction to begin with.

Think about it; the whole "you haven't walked in my shoes, so you don't know what '....' is like!" trips on its own foot, by saying that someone hasn't walked in your shoes, you've put yourself in that same position, because you haven't walked in their shoes. If you haven't walked in their shoes, how can you possibly know that they haven't walked in yours?



Bottom line; people on both sides really need to stop referring to these logical fallacies, as do myself. Lets get to actually settling the issues themselves. That my friends, is logical...

...So please, STAHP!!!