I recently posted a longer, denser version of this argument in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. I recommend anyone who is a theologian or bioethicist to read it there. This article will try to explain why preventative medicine can be […]
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The Word or the Verb: How Language Affects Theology
A few weeks ago, I was preaching about how we should be cautious about our words, and in so doing I made the analogy between our words and the Word of God, as in Jesus, the Word made flesh. All […]
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Showing How Preventative Medicine Can Be Ordinary Means
I thought it was fairly obvious that preventative measures can be ordinary means, but Daniel O’Connor tried to make the argument online to the contrary. This will include all his original post, and some back and forth. I’ll cover my […]
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Zagano & RNS Get Double Effect Completely Wrong
Phyllis Zagano recently wrote a piece in RNS where the first line is precisely wrong about double-effect. This is not some esoteric point: the first paragraph of Wikipedia on the topic or slides from the introduction to theology class I […]
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What Is Medical Testing? (A Response to Dr. Paul Casey)
Dr. Paul Casey wrote a piece arguing that very few medicines had medical testing on fetal cell lines, specifically HEK-293. The main issue with his argument is that he uses non-standard definitions of terms like medical testing and lying, and […]
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21 of the Most Dynamic Signs at March For Life 2022
The March for Life 2022 happened today and people had plenty of amazing signs. I tried to filter through all of them on the ground for some amazing original signs. 1. Where there is life, there is love. 2. Equality […]
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Catholic Anti-Vax Arguments & Reductio ad Absurdum (2/2)
Yesterday, I posted a piece explaining the structure and possible counterarguments to a reductio ad absurdum. If you haven’t read that, you might want to go and read it. Now we deal with a claim where a reductio ad absurdum […]
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Identifying and Arguing Against Reductio ad Absurdum (1/2)
A common mode of argument is formally called reductio ad absurdum. The point of this is to take your opponents’ arguments and show absurd conclusions that follow from those arguments. The point of the reductio is quite obviously to argue […]
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A Catholic Religious Exemption for Being Muslim?
We need to distinguish between religious and conscience exceptions. They have been confused in the debate about exemptions from vaccine requirements. I think even a brief examination would find this equivocation faulty. This argument is that due to Catholic teaching […]
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