June 13, 2005
IF THEY'RE TOO LAZY TO HAVE SEX THEY'RE CERTAINLY TOO LAZY TO NOT HAVE IT:
Vatican View Is Victorious in Fertility Vote by Italians (IAN FISHER, 6/14/05, NY Times)
A law that imposes strict rules on assisted fertility will remain on the books, after the failure today of a hard-fought referendum that rubbed into one of Italy's sorest spots: the relationship between church and state.The fight leading up to two days of voting Sunday and Monday mobilized the nation's political and religious establishments like few others, as the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church - including the new pope, Benedict XVI - urged Italians to boycott the referendum.
In the end, the result was not even close: Only 26 percent of eligible Italians cast their votes, meaning that the referendum automatically failed in its attempt to repeal four crucial sections of a restrictive fertility law passed here last year. For the referendum to be valid, 50 percent of eligible voters had to participate.
Sadly this was likely more a function of apathy than faith. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 13, 2005 6:55 PM
Doesn't matter, if the Eurobeast lives, it will be overridden.
Posted by: Sandy P. at June 13, 2005 7:30 PMIf medical care were left up to the religious rather than to the physicians, we'd be reduced to going to the barber for the occasional bleeding. If Italy wishes to be a priest-ridden, backward backwater, that is of course it's prerogative. I'd thought they'd gotten over that with the Risorgimento.
Posted by: bart at June 14, 2005 5:01 PMOf course, all the medical advances were made by religious medicine.
Posted by: oj at June 14, 2005 5:08 PMOJ,
That is a true howler. Buy any halfway decent book on medical history and try again.
Posted by: bart at June 14, 2005 5:46 PMbart:
It's not even a point of controversy. It just so happens that educational institutions and hospitals were often religious during the time the major advances were made, and they generally had to do with nothing more than improving hygeine, as religion had always preached.
Posted by: oj at June 14, 2005 7:18 PMImproving hygiene? You mean like during the Spanish Inquisition when people who didn't have the 'Odour of Sanctity' were executed because they had engaged in the 'Jewish' practice of bathing?
Or when Leonardo da Vinci was prohibited from performing autopsies and human anatomy could not be studied?
The major innovations in medicine are a product of the post WWI secular world for the most part. American life expectancy in 1900 was 46. Even the earlier innovations like those of Jenner and Lister had nothing to do with religion. Even Pasteur benefitted from the secular French medical establishment.
The notion that religion has been anything but a hindrance in the scientific and technological improvement of humanity is a cruel joke that flies in the face of history. But then if there is one thing about history that is always consistent it is that religious institutions will always try to take post hoc credit for any positive innovation that occurs, even if it opposed those innovations tooth-and-nail while they happened.
Posted by: bart at June 14, 2005 7:38 PMbart:
There's been no significant medical improvement since they figured out hygeine in the 19th century. Nearly the entire improvement in longevity comes just from not giving each other diseases so frequently.
Posted by: oj at June 14, 2005 7:50 PMThat whole antibiotics thingee just slipped your notice then, eh?
Posted by: bart at June 15, 2005 4:03 AMAntibiotics are rather minor.
Posted by: oj at June 15, 2005 7:09 AM