Thursday, October 18, 2012

Collective Wisdom of Catholic Women

 

Colleen Carroll Campbell: A different brand of liberated woman

 
September 13, 2012 12:00 am• By Colleen Carroll Campbell


Thanks to President Barack Obama's contraceptive mandate and Catholic concerns about its impact on religious liberty, Catholic women have emerged as this year's most coveted and scrutinized swing voters. At last week's Democratic National Convention, they heard copious testimonials about Obama's pro-woman credentials. Particularly pointed were the appeals from Caroline Kennedy, who invoked her Catholic faith while slamming abortion restrictions supported by the U.S. bishops, and activist nun Sr. Simone Campbell of NETWORK, who became famous this year for blasting the Vatican in the wake of a doctrinal assessment that faulted her organization for failing to faithfully represent Catholic teaching.
The convention's impact on Catholic women voters remains to be seen. But its constant repetition of righteously indignant references to "women's rights" and "choice" reinforced the dominant cultural narrative that a woman's freedom is defined primarily by what she rejects: unwanted children, outmoded ideas about the importance and meaning of marriage and retrograde religious doctrines that call her to subordinate her desires to the demands of others. Shared sacrifice is fine in the form of a more progressive tax code, it seems; but when applied to decisions such as whether to welcome a baby whose conception was unplanned, calls to self-sacrifice are an invitation to oppression.
To be fair, this negative view of freedom is not only the province of Democratic partisans or abortion-rights activists. It is the default view in America today, one that confronts Catholic women at every turn in their lives. When making decisions about love and sex, marriage and motherhood, careers and care for aging parents, the message we hear from our popular culture is the same one, in muted form, that we heard from the podium in Charlotte. Strong, joyful and liberated Catholic women do exist, we are told, but such women generally achieve freedom in spite of their church and its traditions, not because of them.
For many women in my generation, that message is so familiar that any examples to the contrary are perceived as shocking, scandalous — and more than a little intriguing. That was certainly my reaction during my college days when, bored with the campus party scene and dissatisfied by the stifling materialism of the secular feminist philosophers I was studying, I cracked open a biography of St. Teresa of Avila. The life story of this 16th-century Carmelite mystic, writer and reformer immediately grabbed my attention.
I was struck by the way Teresa combined steadfast fidelity to Catholic teachings with fearless determination to call her fellow Catholics to repentance, despite the personal and political costs. I appreciated that Teresa was no plaster-of-Paris saint: Despite a pious youth, her social-butterfly personality and weakness for status-seeking made her late-in-life conversion an improbable one. Ultimately, the mix of her natural gifts and the grace that led her to use them in service of a cause greater than self-made Teresa one of the greatest saints in church history. For me, Teresa was something more: a model of genuine freedom, the sort found not in isolation from and opposition to others but in connection, commitment and self-giving love.
Teresa was the first woman saint to capture my interest as an adult, but she would not be the last. Over the course of the next 15 years, as I wrestled with everything from my father's battle with Alzheimer's disease to my own trials in the realms of career, marriage and motherhood, I drew strength and inspiration from women saints whose lives and writings challenged me to rethink nearly everything I thought I knew about what it means to be a liberated woman. As I recount in my forthcoming book, "My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir," I discovered that the very saints I once considered irrelevant to my modern struggles could be indispensable guides.
I am not alone. A revival of interest in female saints has begun percolating among Catholic women today. Weary of establishment feminism's emphasis on me-first autonomy and our popular culture's reduction of women to sex objects and shopaholics, many are discovering another, more radical model of women's liberation. In the women who populate the canon of saints — one that will expand again next month, when Pope Benedict XVI canonizes four new female saints, two of whom are Americans — faith and freedom are united, not opposed. Fulfillment comes from embracing one's feminine distinctiveness and equal dignity, not denying either. And fidelity to church teaching coexists with clear-eyed realism about the personal failings of individual church members and leaders, and recognition of our universal need for grace.
Liberated Catholic women were not born yesterday. And they are not found only at the podiums of political conventions or the helm of modern feminist organizations. They can be found in every corner and every era of the Catholic Church, and their centuries of collected wisdom deserve to be rediscovered by a new generation.
Colleen Carroll Campbell is a St. Louis-based author, former presidential speechwriter and television and radio host of "Faith & Culture" on EWTN.

Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.

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Taken from: http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/colleen-carroll-campbell-a-different-brand-of-liberated-woman/article_b36dd32b-fbe8-58a9-be27-976b607280c4.html

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

A wave of secularism erasing the Christian heritage of the West



By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press
VATICAN CITY October 11, 2012 (AP)
 
Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday marked the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council — the church meetings he attended as a young priest that brought the Catholic Church into the modern world but whose true meaning is still hotly debated.
Benedict celebrated Mass in St. Peter's Square, attended by patriarchs, cardinals, bishops and a dozen elderly churchmen who participated in the council, and later will greet the faithful re-enacting the great procession into St. Peter's that launched the council in 1962.
In his homily, Benedict urged the faithful to return to the "letter" and "authentic spirit" of the council found in the Vatican II documents themselves, rather than rely on the distorted spirit promoted by those who saw in Vatican II a radical reform away from the church's tradition.
"The council did not formulate anything new in matters of faith, nor did it wish to replace what was ancient," Benedict said from the steps of St. Peter's. "Rather, it concerned itself with seeing that the same faith might continue to be lived in the present day, that it might remain a living faith in a world of change."
The anniversary comes as the church is fighting what it sees as a wave of secularism erasing the Christian heritage of the West and competition for souls from rival evangelical churches in Latin America and Africa. Clerical sex abuse scandals, debates over celibacy for priests, open dissent among some priests in Europe and a recent Vatican crackdown on liberal nuns in the United States have also contributed to erode the church's place in the world.

Vatican Pope.JPEG

AP
Pope Benedict XVI blesses the faithful during the weekly general audience in St. Peter's sqaure at the Vatican, Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2012. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
The pope has spent much of his pontificate seeking to correct what he considers the misinterpretation of Vatican II, insisting that it wasn't a revolutionary break from the past, as liberal Catholics paint it, but rather a renewal and reawakening of the best traditions of the ancient church.
In that vein, he decided to mark the 50th anniversary of the council with the launch of a "Year of Faith," precisely to remind Christians of what the council truly taught and seek to "re-evangelize" those Catholics who have fallen away from their faith in the decades since.
He lamented Thursday that a "spiritual desertification" had advanced where people think they can live without God.
"In the council's time it was already possible from a few tragic pages of history to know what a life or a world without God looked like, but now we see it every day around us," he said, referring to the totalitarian, atheistic regimes of the 20th century. "But it is in starting from the experience of this desert, from this void, that we can again discover the joy of believing, its vital importance for us, men and women."
Benedict was the Rev. Joseph Ratzinger, a young priest and theological consultant to German Cardinal Joseph Frings when Vatican II began, and he has recently reminisced about what the council sought to accomplish, where it succeeded and where it erred.
"It was a splendid day on 11 October, 1962," Benedict wrote in a forward to a commemorative book about the anniversary published this week by the Vatican newspaper. "It was a moment of extraordinary expectation. Great things were about to happen."
Indeed, by its conclusion in 1965, the council had approved documents allowing for the celebration of Mass in the vernacular rather than Latin, and revolutionizing the church's relations with Jews, Muslims and people of other faiths.
Yet as great as that document on relations with other faiths was, Benedict wrote, a "weakness" has emerged in the ensuing years in that "it speaks of religion solely in a positive way and it disregards the sick and distorted forms of religion" that have become all too apparent.
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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
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Taken from: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/pope-marks-50th-anniversary-vatican-ii-17449698

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Vaclav Klaus on Global Warming

 


The Global Warming Doctrine is Not a Science: Notes for Cambridge


English Pages, 10. 5. 2011
Not respecting the title of the conference, I will continue using the term global warming, rather than its substitute, retreat already signaling, but in any case misleading term climate change. And I will not concentrate my talk on the current or potentially forthcoming global warming itself because – given the available data and conflicting scientific arguments – I don’t see it as a phenomenon which is threatening us.
I will talk about the Global Warming Doctrine (GWD) because this doctrine, not global warming itself, is the issue of the day and the real danger we face. This set of beliefs is an ideology, if not a religion, which lives more or less independently on the science of climatology. Climate and temperature are used or very often misused in an ideological conflict about human society. It is frustrating that the politicians, the media and the public, misled by the very aggressive propaganda organized by the GWD exponents and all their fellow travelers, do not see this. I hope today’s conference will be a help in this respect.
I have expressed my views about this issue in a number of speeches and articles presented or published in the last couple of years all over the world. My book Blue Planet in Green Shackles[1] has been translated into 17 languages. I spoke about it several times also here in Great Britain, in Chatham House four years ago[2], and most recently in the Global Warming Policy Foundation[3]. Some relevance had my speech at the UN Climate Change Conference in New York in September 2007.[4]
The GWD has not yet presented its authoritative text, it has not yet found its Karl Marx who would write its “Manifesto”. This is partly because no one wants to be explicitly connected with it, and partly because it is not easy to formulate.
The GWD, this new incarnation of environmentalism, is not a monolithic concept that could be easily structured and summarized. It is a flexible, rather inconsistent, loosely connected cascade of arguments, which is why it has been so successfully escaping the scrutiny of science. It comfortably dwells in the easy and self-protecting world of false interdisciplinarity (which is nothing else than the absence of discipline). A similar approach was used by the exponents of one of the forerunners of GWD, of the Limits to Growth Doctrine. Some of its protagonists were the same.
What follows is my attempt to summarize my reading of this doctrine:
1. It starts with the claim that there is an undisputed and undisputable, empirically confirmed, statistically significant, global, not regional or local, warming;
2. It continues with the argument that the time series of global temperature exhibits a growing, non-linear, perhaps exponential trend which dominates over its cyclical and random components;
3. This development is considered dangerous for the people (in the eyes of soft environmentalists) or for the planet (among “deep” environmentalists);
4. The temperature growth is interpreted as a man-made phenomenon which is caused by the growing emissions of CO2. These are considered the consequence of industrial activity and of the use of fossil fuels. The sensitivity of global temperature to even small variations in CO2 concentration is supposed to be high and growing;
5. The GWD exponents promise us, however, that there is a hope: the ongoing temperature increase can be reversed by the reduction of CO2 emissions[5];
6. They also know how to do it. They want to organize the CO2 emissions reduction by means of directives (or commands) issued by the institutions of “global governance”. They forget to tell us that this is not possible without undermining democracy, independence of individual countries, human freedom, economic prosperity and a chance to eliminate poverty in the world. They pretend that the CO2 emissions reduction will bring benefits which will exceed its costs.
This simple scheme can be, undoubtedly, improved, extended, supplemented or perhaps corrected in many ways by the distinguished participants of this conference but I believe that its basic structure is correct. The missing “GWD manifesto” should be built along these lines.
There are many disagreements about this doctrine among the scientists in natural sciences, as was demonstrated here this morning, but I also know the stances of social scientists, especially economists, who do not buy into this doctrine either. These two camps usually do not seriously talk to each other. They only come into contact with the self-proclaimed interdisciplinarists from the other field. The social scientists are taken aback by the authoritative statements that “the science is settled”, the scientists in natural sciences a priori assume that there is nothing “hard” in social sciences.
The politicians – after having lost all other ideologies – welcomed the arrival of this new one. They hope that the global warming card is an easy game to play, at least in the short or medium run. The problem is that they do not take into consideration any long-term consequences of measures proposed by the GWD.
Let me briefly outline what the field of economics has to say to this. It is, of course, only a preliminary scheme, not a statement pretending that “science is settled”.
1. The economists believe in the rationality and efficiency of spontaneous decisions of free individuals rather than in the wisdom of governments and their scientific advisors. They do not deny the occurrence of market failures but their science and their reading of history enables them to argue that government failures are much bigger and much more dangerous. They consider the GWD a case of a grandiose government failure which undermines markets, human freedom and prosperity;
2. The economists, at least since Frederic Bastiat, consider it their duty to warn policymakers against the unintended consequences of their actions and against not differentiating between what is seen and what is not seen;
3. The economists know something about scarcity and about the importance of prices and warn against any attempts to play with them. They believe in the cost-benefit analysis and in the rational risk-aversion, not in the precautionary principle. They have a rather developed subdiscipline called “energy economics” which should not be disregarded;
4. They are aware of externalities because they themselves formulated this concept. They understand its enormous complexity and consider it dangerous in unqualified hands. After decades of studies they do not aprioristically see the world as full of negative externalities;
5. The economists base their thinking about intertemporal events on a rather sophisticated concept of discounting[6] which I will discuss later;
6. The economists have some experience with the analysis of time series. Statistics and econometrics used in economic analysis is full of sophisticated models not used in natural sciences because these are based mostly on the analysis of cross-section data samples. They know something about problems with the imperfect quality of data, about measurement errors, about data mining, about precariousness of all kinds of averages and other statistical characteristics. They also have some experience with computer modelling in complex systems, with pseudo-correlations, with the sensitivity of parameter adjustments, etc. For that reason they are convinced they have the right to comment on the statistical analyses of climatologists.
After this brief outline of the economic way of thinking, let me make three, hopefully explanatory, comments:
1. The economists do not believe in the precautionary principle and do not see the outcome of the cost-benefit comparisons of CO2 emission reductions as favourably as the GWD adherents. They know that energy demand and supply patterns change only slowly and see the very high degree of stability in the relationship between man-made carbon dioxide emissions, economic activity and the emissions intensity. They do not expect a radical shift in this relationship. The emissions intensity (as a macrophenomenon) moves only very slowly and does not make miracles. They are, therefore, convinced that the very robust relationship between CO2 emissions and the rate of economic growth is here and is here to stay.
If someone wants to reduce CO2 emissions, he must either expect a revolution in economic efficiency (which determines emissions intensity) or must start organizing a world-wide economic decline. Revolutions in economic efficiency – at least in relevant and meaningful time horizons – were never realized in the past and will not happen in the future either. It was the recent financial and economic crisis, not a technological miracle (nor preachings by Mr Pachauri) what brought about a slight reduction of CO2 emissions.
The GWD adherents should explain to the people worldwide that they consider the economic decline inevitable and desirable.
2. The relationships studied in natural sciences are not influenced by any rational (or irrational) behaviour, by subjective valuations of the variables in question, nor by the fact that people make choices. In social, or behavioral sciences, it is more difficult. To make a rational choice means to pay attention to intertemporal relationships and to look at the opportunity costs. It is evident that by assuming a very low, close to zero discount rate the proponents of the GWD neglect the issue of time and of alternative opportunities.
Using a low discount rate in global warming models means harming the current generations (vis-à-vis the future generations) and the undermining of current economic development means harming the future generations as well. Economists representing very different schools of thoughts, from W. Nordhaus from Yale[7] to K. M. Murphy from Chicago[8], tell us convincingly that the discount rate – indispensable for any intertemporal calculations – should be around the market rate, around 5%, and that it should be close to the real rate of return on capital because only such a rate is the opportunity cost of climate mitigation.
We should never accept claims that by using low discount rate we “protect the interests of future generations”[9] and that the opportunity costs are irrelevant because in the case of global warming “the problem of choice does not exist” (p. 104). This uneconomic or better to say antieconomic way of thinking must not be accepted.
3. As someone who personally experienced central planning and attempts to organize the whole society from above, I feel obliged to warn against the arguments and ambitions which are very similar to those we had to live with decades ago. The arrogance with which the GWD alarmists and their fellow-travelers in politics and media want to suppress the market, control the society, dictate the prices (directly or indirectly by means of various interventions, including taxes) is something I know well from the past[10]. All the old, already almost forgotten economic arguments against communism should be repeated now. It is our duty to do so.
To conclude, I agree with many serious climatologists who say that the warming we experience or is on the horizon will be very small. Convincing argumentation can be found in Ian Plimer’s recent book.[11] I agree with Bob Carter and others that it is difficult “to prove that the human effect on the climate can be measured” because “this effect is lost in the variability of natural climate changes”[12]. From the economic point of view, in case there will be no irrational interventions against it, the economic losses connected with such a modest warming will be very small. A loss generated as a result of a completely useless fight against global warming would be far greater.
Václav Klaus, “The Science and Economics of Climate Change Conference”, Howard Theatre at Downing College, University of Cambridge, 10 May 2011
[1] Klaus, V.: Modrá, nikoli zelená planeta Co je ohroženo, klima nebo svoboda?, Praha, Dokořán, 2007; English version: Blue Planet in Green Shackles, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Washington DC, 2008.
[2] The Other Side of Global Warming Alarmism, Chatham House, London, November 7, 2007
[3] The Climate Change Doctrine is Part of Environmentalism, Not of Science, The Global Warming Policy Foundation Annual Lecture, London, October 19, 2010
[4] Speech at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, New York, September 24, 2007. All these and many other texts on this topic are available on www.klaus.cz.
[5] This is what Ray Evans calls „The Theory of Climate Control“, Quadrant, No. 3, 2008.
[6] The misunderstanding of it on the side of the environmentalists brought me into the subject of GWD years ago.
[7] A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies, Yale University Press, June 2008
[8] Some Simple Economics of Climate Changes, paper presented to the MPS General Meeting in Tokyo, September 8, 2008
[9] M. Dore: “A Question of Fudge”, World Economics, January–February 2009, p. 100
[10] I agree with Ray Evans that we experience the “Orwellian use of the words market and price to persuade people to accept a control over their lives”, The Chilling Costs of Climate Catastrophism, Quadrant, June 2008
[11] Plimer, I.: Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, The Missing Science. Ballan, Australia, Connor Court Publishing, 2009.
[12] Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, New York City, March 2009, p. 23. Professor Carter’s arguments are more developed in his recent book “Climate: The Counter Consensus”, Stacey International, London, 2010

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Taken from: http://www.klaus.cz/clanky/2830

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Why Scientism is False





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Doug McManaman Reproduced with Permission


Scientism is the view that the only real knowledge that human beings possess is scientific knowledge, that is, knowledge acquired through a method that is empiriometric. The empiriometric sciences resolve their conclusions in a way that is empirical and measurable in some way; anything outside of this is, according to scientism, a matter of belief and opinion, not true knowledge.
But scientism is impossible to maintain with any rational consistency, as I will attempt to explain. Firstly, the scientist cannot even establish, as a scientist employing an empiriometric method, that what he is doing when he does science, is a rational activity. Only as a philosopher is he able to establish that point, and every scientist is a philosopher before ever becoming a scientist.
To grapple with the question of whether science is a rational type of inquiry or not, he has to begin by becoming aware of what it is he is doing when he does science. And he is aware of that, at least vaguely. He is aware that he is thinking, reasoning, formulating hypotheses, making predictions, drawing conclusions on the basis of prior premises, etc.
But if he wants to do science, why doesn't he just go out to the local ice rink and play a game of hockey, or the pool hall and shoot a game of pool? Why doesn't he visit the art museum? The reason is he knows that reasoning is different from playing (hockey or pool) and contemplating beauty (visiting the art museum). But how is reasoning different from play?
To answer that question, he has to reflect upon what it is he is doing when he reasons and what it is he is doing when he plays hockey or pool. He has to determine what his object is when he plays and what his object or purpose is when he formulates a hypothesis, investigates, and reasons. He knows that his purpose in playing hockey or pool is not to possess truth, but to win the game by scoring more goals than the opposing team, or by racking up more points than his opponent in snooker. Why is he playing for such an end as that? To develop his skill, perhaps, or just for its own sake, for the pure enjoyment of the game. But his purpose in pursuing science is to possess truth, or to know the cause of something that tweaks his curiosity.
Furthermore, upon further reflection, he knows, perhaps only implicitly, that the end defines his activity. For example, shooting a gun at a target (i.e., a tree) as a way to improve my skill (that is my end or purpose) is a different kind of act than shooting a gun at a man so that he will die (that is my end or purpose); the former is practice or sport, the latter is murder. An action is determined to be of a specific kind by the end intended. The scientist knows this because he is a man, and a man is a knower. Before he even begins to do science, he knows that the two activities (hockey and science) are essentially different kinds of action.
As a man, he knows that a rational inquiry like science has as its end the possession of truth, the understanding of the cause or causes of a particular phenomenon, i.e., why did the rotors crack, causing the brakes to malfunction? Or, why is John hearing voices and experiencing inordinate anxiety? Why does iron rust?
To understand that scientific activity is rational activity essentially different from play or the contemplation of the beautiful requires no empirical investigation; that is, it did not require a deliberate, planned, devised way of getting data beyond the ordinary experience of human beings. All that is required is reflection upon ordinary experience and reasoning soundly from that point onwards.
Can the scientist empirically verify the premise that the end or purpose defines an action, that is, determines it to be the kind of act it is? No, and that is why he does not try to empirically verify it. He also has no need to; he reasons quite naturally to that conclusion without the need to perform an experiment. In other words, every scientist is a philosopher - at least at a rudimentary level - before becoming a scientist.
There is a mode of knowing that is prior to science, and this pre-scientific mode of knowing is the condition for the possibility of science. In other words, a scientist cannot do science without it. Finally, this mode of knowing is a non-scientific mode of knowing, a philosophical mode of knowing. And so, if all knowledge outside of the empiriometric method of the sciences is invalid or nothing more than opinion, then science is founded upon quicksand.

Pre-Scientific Assumptions

There is a whole universe of pre-scientific knowledge that the scientist possesses as a human being - not as a scientist - without which he cannot even begin doing science. He knows, for example, that there is order to the world around him. He does not expect oranges from an apple tree, nor does he expect fish to beget acorns. He does not attempt to put out fires with gasoline, but with water. In other words, he knows that agents act for determinate ends that are intelligible, meaningful and predictable. This is because he has always known that each being is "what" it is, not what it is not (the principle of identity), and he knows that the activity of each thing or being reveals what it is. Beings act according to their natures. That's why as a scientist, he studies the actions or reactions of things, to better understand their natures.
He knows the world exhibits order and meaning. If it did not, he wouldn't bother trying to understand it. One cannot understand what lacks order and intelligibility. For example, take a word processing program and start pounding the keys with your fingers, any keys, as fast as you can. Do not try to order the letters into intelligible words. Once you have typed out five hundred thousand characters, print it out and hand it to anyone and ask them to spend the next hour or so reading it. They won't. Why? Because there is no intelligible order to the characters; there is nothing for the reader to know or discover. So too, the scientist begins to pursue knowledge of the world because he experiences it as ordered, meaningful, and knowable.
His science, i.e., physics, or biology, does not reveal that order - at least not at that initial level. He experiences it before he begins doing science, which is why he was inspired to engage in scientific inquiry. He wishes to discover the reasons for certain effects that he sees in organisms, or compounds, or metals, etc. His investigative method (scientific method) is employed in order for him to possess knowledge of certain kinds of causes - i.e., what is the cause of this patient's depression and anxiety? Is there a causal connection between the depleted levels of serotonin in his brain and his mood disorder? He will form a hypothesis, make predictions, and test it. He will reason inductively on the basis of those results.
But what counts as sound reasoning? What are the rules of deductive reasoning? And are those rules arbitrary? Or are they established on rational ground? What is an unwarranted conclusion?
Science does not provide answers to these questions. Rather, the scientist needs to know this before he can do science properly. He cannot reason to scientific conclusions if he has no ability to reason validly, and scientists need to know how to reason logically before doing science precisely because logic is the tool of all sciences. But it isn't science that tells us that logic is the tool of all sciences. A pre-scientific knowledge (philosophy) does.
The scientist knows as a philosopher, not as a scientist, that when one event precedes another, it does not necessarily follow that the succeeding event was caused by the preceding event. That distinction, among others, renders it possible for him to do his science logically. If he does not start his science with the ability to distinguish between a cause and a correlation, he cannot hope to determine the proximate causes of anything.
And so, a scientist understands the fallacy of false cause before he begins doing science. Consider the following:
I have been suffering from stomachaches these past few weeks. I've also been eating about 4 bran cookies every day. Therefore, bran cookies are wreaking havoc on the insides of my stomach. I'd better stop buying them.
A scientist can easily test the hypothesis that my stomachaches are caused by bran cookies. To do so, he introduces a controlled experience (an experiment), gets me to stop eating bran cookies and to continue my regular diet unchanged. He observes the results and reasons inductively. But I continue to experience stomach pains weeks after giving up the cookies. So he concludes that perhaps my stomachaches are the result of drinking too much soda pop. And so now he gets me to stop drinking pop for a time.
A pre-condition for his conclusion is an understanding of the difference between cause and correlation. But let's ask the scientist to prove, scientifically (empiriometrically) that there is such a difference between cause and correlation. Let's ask him what it means to be a cause, and to demonstrate his answer empirically. Moreover, we can ask: "Why is it that nothing moves itself from potentiality to actuality, except by something already in act? Or, why is it that every body remains at rest unless it is compelled to change that state by a force acting upon it?" Finally, why does the scientist know that necessity is not the same as possibility? Certain things happen all the time, but what enables us to conclude that these things must necessarily happen?
Science cannot answer these questions, but science needs them - i.e, the rules of deductive and inductive reasoning, the knowledge that potency is not reduced to act except by something in act - as starting points of his scientific endeavor. Scientism's claim to establish all real knowledge places it in a predicament similar to that of the teenager who complains of not being able to get a job: "Nobody will hire me, because I have no experience, but how can I get experience if no one hires me?"
Now, the scientist might not feel a desire to pursue the ultimate causes of rational activity, the ultimate nature of knowing, the nature of logical reasoning, the difference between a necessary conclusion and a probable conclusion, or what makes a cause a cause, etc. He may want to study other causes, such as the cause of depression or schizophrenia, or leukemia, or the causes of planetary motion, or the behavior of light, etc. In that case, he goes on to pursue the sciences.
But as was said, the scientist always begins his scientific endeavors with certain philosophical assumptions. One very important assumption that he cannot establish, as scientist, is that there is a world that exists outside his mind that is meaningful and intelligible. Moreover, he assumes that his senses bring him into contact with the world outside of him and that his mind is able to uncover and accurately describe the laws or regular patterns he encounters in nature. If he did not, he would not begin to do science.
These are real assumptions that are his starting points, but scientism argues that science is the only truly rational mode of inquiry that results in real knowledge. It follows that in order for the scientist to establish that our senses indeed open us up to the world outside the mind and that this world is intelligible and meaningful, and that the intellect can uncover and describe the regularities he observes, he will have to begin with certain assumptions in order to prove those very assumptions.
But that is circular reasoning. To reason in a circle is to assume the point one intends to prove. And, if his science eventually proves that his intellect cannot uncover and accurately describe the regularities he encounters in the world, then we only have to ask: "How was he able to uncover that?" It is like climbing a tree in order to see whether or not trees exist, and having reached the top, concluding that trees do not exist.
But if he sets out to establish that our senses really do open us up to the world outside the mind and that this world is intelligible and meaningful, and that the intellect can uncover and describe the regularities he observes, then no matter what he does, he is inevitably and necessarily led to one conclusion, namely, that they obviously do. So the endeavor is redundant.
But he does not care to preoccupy himself with why it is the case that his intellect can uncover and accurately describe the regularities in the world of nature. He assumes it, and pursues his interests: he is interested in the cause of schizophrenia, or the cause of the expansion of the universe, or the cause of cancer, etc. The philosopher is interested in the causes of knowing in general, the content of consciousness, what it means to be a cause, the ultimate reason why the world is intelligible and behaves in a way that is regular, lawful, and predictable, what being is, etc.
As a philosopher, I experience the world as something that exists outside my mind independently of my knowing it, but I wish to know whether or not that is illusion or real. I experience the order that the scientist experiences as a man, but I wish to account for that order, by coming to understand what order is and what it is we mean by disorder, and whether order can come from disorder, etc. I see that scientists are doing their work, but I wish to know whether what they are doing is possible at all, whether science is a fiction or a real rational endeavor that ends in the knowledge of real causes, etc.
To do all this, I have to go outside of science, that is, I have to adopt a methodology that is not investigative but philosophical. I have to reason to my conclusions on the basis of premises also arrived at through reasoning, and it all began with and was made possible by my ability to know that I know, that is, my ability to reflect upon what I am doing when I know. It all begins on the level of ordinary experience, but it proceeds upwards, beyond the level of ordinary experience, via the "engine" of human reasoning on the basis of first principles.
For example, consider the assertion that absolutely everything in this universe happens by chance, a claim typically made by proponents of scientism. Some who maintain this argue that since we can, regarding any event whatsoever, ask the question 'what are the chances of this or that happening?' and then proceed to calculate the chances, every event is a chance event.
But this confuses "method" with "the real". Method is in me, the real is outside of me. A method, such as a mathematical one, opens us to the measurable aspects of the real, and leaves other non-measurable aspects in the penumbra. Now, when something happens by chance, we are often moved to wonder: "What were the chances of that happening?" That's a natural reaction, because chance is an aberration, a kind of disorder. I receive a call from the President of the United States, but his call was the result of chance - he intended to call the President of France, but misdialed one number on the area code and another number, and so my phone rang. That was a genuine chance event. What are the chances that my phone number would be different from that of the President of France by only two numbers, and that the President of the United States would misdial those two numbers at the exact time when I was at home watching TV?
But I can also ask: "What are the chances that my friend will call me today?" The answer is: a much greater chance than the President. Were my friend to call me, we could not conclude that his call was a chance happening. His call is not a disorder, an aberration or irregularity (from the Latin regulus, or rule). As a rule, my friend calls me; the President of the United States does not.
To argue that all things happen by chance because we can ask the question regarding an event's likelihood is to confuse "being of reason" (what exists in the mind, i.e., questions, equations, methods, etc) with "real being". It is also a syllogism with an undistributed middle term:

Chance events are those of which I can inquire of their probability.
Regular events are those of which I can inquire of their probability.
Therefore, regular events are chance events.
But most importantly, a chance event can only be understood to be so against the backdrop of what is a non-chance event, that is, a regular or ruled event (a governed event). Chance is not governed.
It should be obvious at this point that a method enables us to focus on aspects of the world, leaving other aspects in the dark. Mathematics, for example, abstracts from concrete intentions or purposes, that is, real causes. My typing on this computer at this moment is not a chance event, but mathematical reasoning abstracts from real purposes or causes. Method filters the world. The scientific method as well filters the real world, allowing us to uncover certain aspects, leaving other aspects covered up.
A philosophical method also has its limits. It cannot proceed downwards, below the level of ordinary experience. We need the senses to do that, and a microscope is an extension of our sense of sight. With a microscope, we can see so much more than without one. We now see the membrane and the nucleus in a cell, etc. But we cannot see logical validity, or intelligibility, causality, necessity, law, etc. We have to reason about what it means to reason validly on the basis of first principles. The philosopher, therefore, has to be able to move in the opposite direction of the scientist who moves below the surface of ordinary experience; the philosopher has to be able to stand over and above himself (transcend himself). Although I cannot sense that I sense, see that I hear, or touch my sense of touch touching, I do have to have the ability to know that I know, and know that I sense, and know that I reason, etc.
It is the task of philosophy not only to examine the presuppositions that are the starting point of science, but also to interpret the data provided by science. To interpret what it is that science tells us of the world is to engage in philosophy, not science. For example, after a thorough scientific analysis of the chemical constitution of the inorganic world, one can finally ask: "Is the world comprised of determinate substances? Or is substance but a name for an unintelligible conglomeration of matter that provides us with the illusion of 'thing'? Is a living organism a substance? Is the fertilized ovum a human being?
The scientist can come to understand the behaviour of the cell, the replication of cells, etc. But is the cell a part of a larger substance? Is the organism nothing more than the entire conglomeration of cells? Is the cell merely a name for the entire conglomeration of the parts that constitute it?
These are not questions that the scientist can answer as scientist. What is meant by "thing" is not something science can grapple with. A scientist can acknowledge that a dog is a thing and proceed to examine its anatomy. But he begins with the assumption that it is a thing. But what is "thing"? Is it quantity? Is it a quality? Can a "thing" exist without quantity and quality? To answer these questions requires that we move beyond an empiriometric methodology.
Scientists use concepts such as velocity, electron, element, atom, quark, meson, organism, etc. But these are universal terms. There is no "atom", just atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc. So what is "atom" in general? What is the nature of these universals? Are they just concepts that exist in the mind? Do they have a real reference to some particular thing outside the mind? What is the origin of these universal terms?
The scientist does not answer these questions, but the scientist formulates universal terms nonetheless. It follows that if the proponent of scientism should not admit into the arena of real knowledge whatever he cannot establish through his empiriometric method, he ought not to employ such terms until he can establish their accuracy or validity on scientific grounds. Since proponents of scientism do not do so, they are inconsistent in their approach to science.

The Elimination of the Subject

Scientism is also reductionistic. The problem with reductionism as it is applied to the human mind is that it eliminates the mind. It does this by reducing the qualitative world we experience (the world of color, sound, taste, texture, smell, purpose, and intelligibility, etc.) to what is quantifiable, predictable, and controllable. What is not quantifiable, measurable, and controllable (what is not subject to the scientific methodology) is not real, but appearance, merely subjective, and reducible to the measurable. For example, color is nothing other than the reflection of light photons at particular wavelengths, and sound is nothing but compression waves. The qualitative world of color, smell, taste, hot and cold, is thus a projection of the human mind. The color of the apple is not in the apple, it is in me; it isn't the farmer's field that stinks; rather, you stink (smell is in you, not in the thing).
The realm of the mind is reduced to the realm of the objective, quantifiable, measurable and controllable. In other words, the mind is nothing but brain activity, neural biochemistry, the firing of neurons, that is, the random motion of particles, etc.
But the knower that does the reducing is a subject of knowledge (i.e., scientific knowledge). Moreover, there is no "object" of thought without a subject. For the very concept of "object" is correlative to the concept of "subject". Reduce the mind to something purely objective, like a computer, and there is no "subject" that possesses any knowledge.
A computer, for example, is an object. It is not a subject that knows. Although we speak of a computer as having memory, there really is no memory of past events, for there is no single subject that remembers all that has happened to it since it came into being, i.e., that it has travelled from one city to another, that it has often been carried across the border, that it has been repaired, has had a "transplant" (i.e., an additional hard drive installed), etc. The computer is not a single subject that is conscious of itself, much less transcends itself or teaches itself, nor does it build other computers, or prescribe its own remedies in order to function better, heal itself, etc. It is simply an object, an artefact, a product of technology. It has no interior that it chooses to reveal or conceal; it is an ordered conglomeration of other substances manufactured to function in a way that serves a human need. But the computer that I am working on does not understand any of the ideas contained in this essay; it is not part of the debate. The hard drive that contains the essay is not a mind (a power that possesses ideas).
Only a single subject capable of perfect self-reflection (i.e., one who knows that he is knowing) can make himself an object of knowledge. If there were no subject irreducible to an object, the proponent of scientism could not embrace scientism or reductionism. In other words, reducing myself to nothing more than an object pure and simple would not be possible unless I were more than an object pure and simple. And so the only way a reductionist can actually be a reductionist is if he is wrong. If he is right (i.e., if reductionism is correct), he could not be a reductionist; for he wouldn't be a subject in relation to which he could grasp what it means to be an object, and thus what it means to be "objective" phenomena.
Reduce the mind to an object so that it is nothing other than a pile of neurons firing at random and it ceases to be a single subject of knowing; the entire scientific endeavour collapses with it.
Now if the entire scientific endeavour is a product of meaningless and purposeless neural biochemistry - since the mind has been reduced to biochemical activity lacking final cause or purpose - , the debate that proponents of scientism have with their opponents is ultimately meaningless. It has no more reality than color, smell, taste, sound, etc. And that is why honest and consistent proponents of scientism acknowledge that all human activity, including scientific activity, is nothing but a fiction (a human construct). Of course, ultimately there is no man to do the constructing!
One has to wonder why proponents of scientism bother debating at all. In fact, one has to wonder why they bother voicing their opinions. Why not save one's breath, open a bottle of wine and drink? It's much easier and far more enjoyable. After all, there is no objective meaning to anything we do.
A final difficulty with reductionistic scientism is the following: I perceive an apple, and I see that it is large, solid, of a certain size, weight, and position in space, etc. But the apple's quantifiable aspects - which alone are objective and real, according to scientism - are perceived by me through my perception of the apple's qualities, that is, its color, texture, in short, sense qualities. If my perception of these qualities is mere projection, thus appearance, that is, if the qualities are nothing other than objective neurological activity, then my perception of the thing's quantifiable aspects (size, shape, position in space, weight, etc.) is mere appearance as well. Hence, there is no objective world at all. To be is to be perceived. The world exists only when I perceive it.
And so, reductionistic scientism leads to the conclusion that there is ultimately no mind, and at the same time, there is no objective world outside the mind. The world is inside the mind, and yet there is no mind in which the world can exist. Ultimately, nothing exists.
  

Chapter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26

Philosophy For The Young




"An Introduction to Philosophy for Young People"
Doug McManaman
Copyright 2007
Reproduced with Permission
Synopsis: The typical university philosophy course today often gives students the impression that philosophical knowledge is radically inconclusive. But philosophy has a very important place in Catholic theological tradition. St. Thomas Aquinas calls philosophy the handmaiden of theology. This Online Introduction to Philosophy is designed to provide young people with a foundation that will allow them to become familiar with some of the most basic concepts that one finds within the tradition of Catholic philosophy, thus enabling them to navigate slowly through the murky waters of our post-modern culture without sinking.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 01: What in the World is Philosophy?
Chapter 02: Some Points on Knowledge and Opinion
Chapter 03: A Note on Holding Truth in Common
Chapter 04: The First Three Self-Evident Principles
Chapter 05: Change, Principles, and the Absurd
Chapter 06: Ideological versus Philosophical Thinking
Chapter 07: An Introduction to Logic
Chapter 08: An Introduction to Universals
Chapter 09: An Introduction to Definitions
Chapter 10: An Introduction to the Idea of Happiness
Chapter 11: An Introduction to the Idea of the Soul
Chapter 12: Some Points on the Powers of the Soul
Chapter 13: Aristotle and the Good Life.
Chapter 14: More First Principles of Speculative Reason
Chapter 15: The Ten Categories of Being
Chapter 16: The Hylomorphic Doctrine
Chapter 17: A Brief Glance at Reductionism
Chapter 18: Essence and Existence
Chapter 19: The Existence of God
Chapter 20: Some Implications of God as Ipsum Esse Subsistens
Chapter 21: Is God the First Cause of Evil?
Chapter 22: The Immortality of the Soul
Chapter 23: The Purpose of Human Life
Chapter 24: Personhood, Integrity, and the Virtues
Chapter 25: The First Principles of Practical Reason
Chapter 26: A Note on the Difference Between Man and Brute

APPENDIX

Appendix 01: What is wrong with Reductionism?
Appendix 02: Why Scientism is False
Appendix 03: Chance and Spontaneity
Appendix 04: Reductionism in Biology
Appendix 05: Reductionism and the Priority of Being
Appendix 06: Scientism, Assumption, and the Real
Appendix 07: An Analysis of Free Choice
Appendix 08: Truth in Perspective

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Taken from: http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/ph/ph_01philosophyyouth1.html

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Biblical Natural Law




All Together Now

Biblical Natural Law:
A Theocentric and Teleological Approach

by Matthew Levering
Oxford, 260 pages, $110

The Dominican philosopher Fergus Kerr observes that natural law is “currently perhaps the most contested topic in Thomas Aquinas’ work.” In recent years, scholars have proficiently expounded Thomas’ natural law doctrine in terms of moral epistemology, moral virtue, philosophy of nature, or metaphysics of the good. Yet there is no consensus on how these themes are to be weighed and woven together. Why?

Despite first appearances, in which it seems to be a rather serene and simple doctrine, natural law is a rather complicated and difficult subject in Thomas’ work. Beyond its inherent difficulty also stands the fact that Thomas investigated natural law in his dual role as philosopher and theologian, for which there is no equivalent office or craft in our academic institutions, secular or ecclesiastical. The division of labor in our institutions practically guarantees that only a few theologians have any reason to take responsibility for adapting natural law to sacred theology, and that even fewer philosophers are apt to worry how natural law might be integrated into a theological system.

We should not be surprised, then, that Thomas’ multifaceted account of natural law has devolved into badly integrated partial perspectives. The subject lacks what Benedict XVI calls “breathing room,” which is a point the theologian Matthew Levering proves he understands when, in his new book Biblical Natural Law, he urges theologians to take a more active interest in the doctrine of natural law. He offers his work as a “first step toward reclaiming natural-law doctrine as an exegetical, and not solely philosophical, project—that is, ‘natural law’ as understood by the Christian tradition prior to the modern reconfiguration of natural law.”

Levering distinguishes anthropologies that are “self-giving” from those that are “self-cleaving.” “Biblical natural law,” he argues, “avoids the self-cleaving tendency in anthropocentric natural-law doctrine and instead recognizes human fulfillment as achieved through imitation of the divine ecstasis.” Working in light of the redemption and the revelation of Trinitarian communion, a biblical theologian can affirm both a natural created and graced participation in what Thomas called the eternal law.

Does Levering set the bar impossibly high? Not for a Christian theologian. Any truth about the created order must be integrated within a proper theological account of Christ. Just as the old Adam is understood more clearly in the face of Christ, natural law has a kind of brilliance in the light of the New Covenant. This is precisely why Levering wants to shift the burden of natural-law thinking back to the theologians.

This move does not imply that “natural law, as such, depends upon revelation,” Levering insists. “To imply this would be to deny the workings of the very ‘nature’ that natural-law doctrine defends.” Ralph McInerny puts the point well: “The natural law, as St. Paul remarks, is inscribed in our hearts. But knowing natural law does not entail knowing St. Paul.”

Of course, the theologian will respond that what St. Paul knew of the Christian mysteries can cast a helpful light not only on natural law but also on its situation in the hearts of the sons and daughters of Adam. The doctrine needs historical grit and context supplied by theology. We need to understand how knowledge can go right or wrong in the actual lives of men, beginning with our estimation of what it means to be human. The default options of modern anthropocentrism are to interpret human moral experience as the constructions either of the self or society. “Outside of the framework of revelation, and particularly when one has deliberately rejected the biblical framework,” Levering writes, “it becomes difficult to conceive of an ordering in human beings that is not ultimately a human construction.” While this darkness does not obliterate altogether the grounds for knowing natural law, it surely begets some very strange understandings of it. Christian theologians need to take responsibility for exposing the fruitless antagonism between self and society that dominates contemporary discourse about natural law and natural rights. If Levering is correct, we shouldn’t expect this problem to be understood adequately by the philosophers and social scientists.

Along the way, Levering surveys the history of anthropocentric theories after the Enlightenment rejection of the biblical framework. Scholars of modern natural law and natural rights may justly complain that the survey in Biblical Natural Law is too fast and loose to help us distinguish what is merely incomplete from what is truly a dead end. Is there no “gold of Egypt,” as Origen described Greek learning, to be purloined and rendered amenable to proper use by the faithful? Or does Levering think that modern thought is irredeemably apostate? A more searching treatment of these questions would be welcome.

About the larger issue, however, Levering is surely right. The orthodox theologian is faced with a quandary: To accede to modern anthropocentrisms causes scandal and a flight from natural law by theologians, while to toss out natural law cripples the theology of creation and providence.

This helps explain the cautious approach to natural law by key figures in the early days of the Protestant Reformation and the more severe reaction of Karl Barth and his followers in the twentieth century. These theologians believed that natural law, if understood as the assertion of either self or society, should be rejected as sin rather than folded into a Christian account of creation. Levering is also correct to suggest that a similar reaction to modern natural-law doctrines, if somewhat less prickly than the Protestant version, was more than a little influential in twentieth-century Catholic theology. Although the story remains to be told in adequate detail, Catholic neo-orthodoxy can push natural law to the remote boundaries of theology where it can do no work.

Levering advocates “biblical natural law” as a remedy to these problems. If there is a theory of natural law that will actually help us do theological work, then it must meet two main criteria: It should be strongly teleological, affirming that the human good includes our being ordered to God and neighbor. And it should be theocentric, capable of taking a place within the doctrine of divine providence. Levering puts these together to yield a vision that is very similar to that of Thomas’ doctrine of participation. For Levering, what we share is a two-fold gift, given to us by both creation and grace. “The pattern of ecstasis, made manifest in the natural law and elevated by grace into a personal communion with the Trinity, unifies law and love.” In effect, Levering is arguing that the best natural-law doctrine for theologians is the one found in John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993), where the idea of “participated theonomy” bridges law and love.

Levering’s Thomism is broad and ecumenical. He makes generous use of contemporary Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox thinkers. He also gives due recognition to Rabbi David Novak’s important work on natural law within the context of covenantal theology. Having different functions in Jewish and Christian theology, covenant and natural law are not a perfect fit, but the notion that participation is what God and men do together throws interesting light on the idea of covenant.

For Levering’s Protestants, the doctrine of participation might alleviate the suspicion that the creature dictates the terms of God’s gifts. For his Catholic readers, it could provide a useful matrix not only for bridging the gap between law and love but also for reaching across the chasm between moral theology and sacramental ­theology. Benedict XVI has been calling attention to all this for many years, notably in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est (2005).

Of course, even after we finish there remains a nagging practical question. Whatever the strengths of the book’s theory as theology, can it really provide common ground in a pluralistic culture? Only “over the long term,” Matthew Levering answers, and even then only with “bold Christian witness in leading sacrificial lives, lives of ecstatic love.”

Not a bad answer, all in all.

Russell Hittinger is the William K. Warren Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa.

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Taken from: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/12/all-together-now

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

There is Life in the Womb

 
 
 
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was one of the best-loved and most influential preachers of the 20th century and author of over 90 books. He reached nearly 30 million people through his weekly program, Life is Worth Living, and his Cause for Canonization was officially opened in 2002. He explains the Church's teaching on life from a philosophical and historical perspective.
 
....
 
 
  


Marriage Breakdown Greatest Threat To Western World: Liberal MP Kevin Andrews



MARRIAGE may help prevent cancer, is the best chance of fulfillment in life and divorcing parents should get better assistance to reconcile, says the MP who could become Australia's next Families Minister.

Senior Liberal MP Kevin Andrews has rated the breakdown of marriage and the family a greater threat to the Western world than climate change, the financial crisis and radical Islam.
The Opposition families spokesman is today launching his book, Maybe 'I do' - Modern Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness, which says more needs to be done to protect and support marriage and family because "stable families are also the bedrock of successful societies".
The book is based on thousands of social science studies that detail the importance of marriage for adults, children and society, and proposes policy responses.
Mr Andrews argues it is the Government's business to promote marriage, which is the "best source of physical and mental health, emotional stability, and prosperity for adults and children. It is also the best bet for attaining happiness and fulfilment".
Married men and women lead more healthy lives than unmarried and are more likely to be richer, own a home and be successful in employment, the provocative book says.
"Marriage seems to protect from contracting cancer and offers a better chance of survival after diagnosis."
It argues growing up with married parents gives kids the best chance of learning "virtues, based on respect for human life and dignity".
"The recent retreat from marriage that was meant to free individuals from economic and emotional constraints has failed many people."
The ideal of "marital permanence" needs to be entrenched in a national family and marriage policy, affirming marriage as the best environment for raising children, the Catholic MP and married father-of-five writes.
While not advocating people stay in destructive marriages, research shows up to 37 per cent of couples regret divorcing, the book says.
It says studies have found couples who cohabit before marriage appear to have higher risks of divorce.
And it encourages young people to think about what they want in a relationship and the consequences of multiple partners.
"By moving from one relationship to another, many young people may be undermining their understanding of how to live a committed, faithful relationship," Mr Andrews writes.

elissa.doherty@news.com.au

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Taken from: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/liberal-mp-kevin-andrews-book-says-marriage-best-for-you-and-the-kids/story-e6frf7kx-1226487704486