Natural Law And Something Being Unnatural

[Fidei Defensor]

As to avoid hijacking the homosexuality thread.

Please explain anything you want to clarify about any of the questions.

[StColette]

Just for clarification sake, what do you define here as life support?

[Fidei Defensor]

[quote name='StColette' post='1637934' date='Aug 25 2008, 03:58 PM']Just for clarification sake, what do you define here as life support?[/quote]
Any extra-ordinary means of keeping a person alive or anything outside of normal medical care

Edited August 25, 2008 by fidei defensor

[havok579257]

[quote name='fidei defensor' post='1637935' date='Aug 25 2008, 06:00 PM']Any extra-ordinary means of keeping a person alive or anything outside of normal medical care[/quote]

Here's a question. Are you defining life support as 0.0% chance of survival on ones own or are you talking about anything less than 1% chance of survival on ones own? Meaning what % chance of survival are you putting here?

[MakeYouThink]

I don't get this post at all.

Please give us your argument so we can read it, and then we can then argue your points okay.

As far as I can see, you are trolling for people to be unwise and make statements without explaining your POV.

You make me laugh.

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='fidei defensor' post='1637935' date='Aug 25 2008, 07:00 PM']Any extra-ordinary means of keeping a person alive or anything outside of normal medical care[/quote]
Define "extra-ordinary".

[HisChildForever]

Maybe you could give us a situation (whether real or hypothetical) and we can go from there?

[Fidei Defensor]

Alright, here is the situation:

Some have argued that if something is against natural law, it is unnatural. And if something is unnatural, it is wrong or bad.

Through the process of discussion, life support was mentioned as something unnatural - aka, it keeps a person alive when naturally or without the life support, they would die.

Thus, my question: if life support is unnatural, does that make it wrong.

Some have asked me to define what I mean by life support. Well, I'll let you do that, if you choose to join this discussion. However, when I think of life support, i think of cases like Terri Schiavo, where she was a "vegetable" or whatever you want to say, but she remained fed and alive due to life support. Life support to me means that without out it, a person would otherwise die from whatever their condition is.

Or, for a more specific definition, I refer you to wikipedia: "Life support, in the medical field, refers to a set of therapies for preserving a patient's life when essential body systems are not functioning sufficiently to sustain life unaided. Life support therapies utilize some combination of several techniques: feeding tubes, intravenous drips, total parenteral nutrition, mechanical respiration, heart/lung bypass, urinary catheterization and dialysis. "

In other words, taking the place of natural body processes that are not functioning to preserve life.

So back to my questions, is life support unnatural? And if something that is unnatural is wrong, then is it wrong to keep someone on life support?

[HisChildForever]

Well, usually life support is the result of the efforts of doctors trying to resuscitate a severely injured person. The person comes into the ER, for example, and the doctors scramble to save this person's life. They may bring a person back, i.e., use the shock paddles, and manage to keep that person alive, but part of this is hooking them up to the life support "machines" to keep them breathing and such.

I wanted to say all that in order to point out that a dying person does not run into the hospital demanding immediate life support. It doesn't "happen" that way.

In this sense - life support the "result", not the "means" - it is not unnatural. What's unnatural about wanting to save a human being? Sometimes there's hope that a person will regain functioning. It may be a very slight chance, but the chance is still there.

[dairygirl4u2c]

some people might argue that homosexual tendencies are natural, and the resulting acts are natural,,, and that life support, glasses etc, are even more unnatural.

but with that said,,,, someone else might say homosexual tendencies are natural only insofar as a disease is natural,,, and the resulting acts such that they are then immoral

[Socrates]

The problem here is an equivocation of terms.
"Unnatural" in the sense of sins against nature, has a specific meaning: it means something directly [i]contrary[/i] to the natural order - in this case acts which are contrary to the natural intended purpose of sexuality.
Unnatural means "contrary to nature" - it doesn't mean merely something artificial - such as glasses or a wheelchair, or clothes, for that matter. Such things are not contrary to nature, but help make up for defects in nature.