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'Brain Dead' Child Wakes Day Before Being Removed From Life Support

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  • #31
    Moderated By: DesertBerean

    Moved to Civics as requested.

    ***If you wish to take issue with this notice DO NOT do so in this thread.***
    Contact the forum moderator or an administrator in Private Message or email instead. If you feel you must publicly complain or whine, please take it to the Padded Room unless told otherwise.

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    • #32
      Thank you....



      <crickets>



      "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

      "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

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      • #33
        Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
        I would think that when you don't blink an eye at 45,151,389 unborn babies being killed between 1970 and 2014 in the U.S. alone it would tend to make one callus toward human life in general.
        It seems to have the opposite effect though.

        It is typically the group of people who are not concerned about abortions (because they don't regard the fetus as having a morally relevant status) who are far more concerned than anti-abortionists about:
        - Gun deaths
        - War deaths, war, and militarism
        - Killings by police
        - The death penalty
        - Killings in supposed 'self-defense'
        - Killings of intelligent animals

        I would regard myself, for example, as being orders of magnitude more pro-life in a general and widespread sense than any of the anti-abortionists on this forum, precisely because I have deep concerns about the above listed things to an extent they do not. "Inhumane", "cruel", "heartless" would be words that come to mind when I think of their stances on those issues.

        Apparently because they have fundamental misunderstandings and silly assumptions about what life is morally relevant and why, they focus narrowly on abortions but don't seem to care if those saved fetuses are subsequently slaughtered in wars or executed by the state or shot by police or a gun nut. For some reason they care really really much about fetuses with as-yet-unformed brains, but they don't seem to care about actual people.
        "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
        "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
        "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

        Comment


        • #34
          Originally posted by Starlight View Post
          It seems to have the opposite effect though.

          It is typically the group of people who are not concerned about abortions (because they don't regard the fetus as having a morally relevant status) who are far more concerned than anti-abortionists about:
          - Gun deaths
          - War deaths, war, and militarism
          - Killings by police
          - The death penalty
          - Killings in supposed 'self-defense'
          - Killings of intelligent animals

          I would regard myself, for example, as being orders of magnitude more pro-life in a general and widespread sense than any of the anti-abortionists on this forum, precisely because I have deep concerns about the above listed things to an extent they do not. "Inhumane", "cruel", "heartless" would be words that come to mind when I think of their stances on those issues.

          Apparently because they have fundamental misunderstandings and silly assumptions about what life is morally relevant and why, they focus narrowly on abortions but don't seem to care if those saved fetuses are subsequently slaughtered in wars or executed by the state or shot by police or a gun nut. For some reason they care really really much about fetuses with as-yet-unformed brains, but they don't seem to care about actual people.
          So, killing deer, even for food, is more heinous than killing unborn (or recently born) children. Sure, you're pro-life!
          The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

          Comment


          • #35
            Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
            So, killing deer, even for food, is more heinous than killing unborn (or recently born) children. Sure, you're pro-life!
            IMO killing any life is wrong in proportion to its level of 'mind' - i.e. its sentience / cognition / conscious / comprehension / memory / self-awareness faculties. So rocks aren't on the scale because they don't have minds in any way shape or form, while plants / bacteria are at the absolute minimum of life on up through insects, fetuses, fish, mammals, and finally humans with fully functioning minds which have the maximum mind we have yet to encounter (and any space-faring aliens we encountered in the future would obviously go probably slightly above this category).

            Because I'm pro-all-life I don't have an arbitrary cut off of human vs not human like you guys who seem fine with slaughtering near-human mammals (or humans in all sorts of situations from wars to police to state executions!) but you think that the moment two human cells are combined together in a fetus that it's inviolable even when its got no more brain function than dead skin cells would.

            I am bemused that you happily kill fairly intelligent mammals for food, endorse wars all over the place, don't seem to be particularly concerned about police killings or gun violence, yet pretend to be 'pro-life' just because you get all twisted up about human fetuses whose brains have yet to develop levels of functionality anywhere near the animals you happily kill for food. I miss Rando on this forum - at least he was consistent in his pro-life pacifist Christian views across all those things, and I respected him for that and for his consistency, whereas you guys are just all over the place.
            "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
            "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
            "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

            Comment


            • #36
              Originally posted by Starlight View Post
              IMO killing any life is wrong in proportion to its level of 'mind' - i.e. its sentience / cognition / conscious / comprehension / memory / self-awareness faculties. So rocks aren't on the scale because they don't have minds in any way shape or form, while plants / bacteria are at the absolute minimum of life on up through insects, fetuses, fish, mammals, and finally humans with fully functioning minds which have the maximum mind we have yet to encounter (and any space-faring aliens we encountered in the future would obviously go probably slightly above this category).

              Because I'm pro-all-life I don't have an arbitrary cut off of human vs not human like you guys who seem fine with slaughtering near-human mammals (or humans in all sorts of situations from wars to police to state executions!) but you think that the moment two human cells are combined together in a fetus that it's inviolable even when its got no more brain function than dead skin cells would.

              I am bemused that you happily kill fairly intelligent mammals for food, endorse wars all over the place, don't seem to be particularly concerned about police killings or gun violence, yet pretend to be 'pro-life' just because you get all twisted up about human fetuses whose brains have yet to develop levels of functionality anywhere near the animals you happily kill for food. I miss Rando on this forum - at least he was consistent in his pro-life pacifist Christian views across all those things, and I respected him for that and for his consistency, whereas you guys are just all over the place.
              Would you apply this standard to mentally challenged people, say someone with Down Syndrome?
              I DENOUNCE DONALD J. TRUMP AND ALL HIS IMMORAL ACTS.

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              • #37
                Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                I am bemused that you happily kill fairly intelligent mammals for food,
                I do?

                endorse wars all over the place
                Ya got that one wrong, too.

                don't seem to be particularly concerned about police killings or gun violence,
                None of this is true, but that never seems to matter to you.

                yet pretend to be 'pro-life' just because you get all twisted up about human fetuses whose brains have yet to develop levels of functionality anywhere near the animals you happily kill for food. I miss Rando on this forum - at least he was consistent in his pro-life pacifist Christian views across all those things, and I respected him for that and for his consistency, whereas you guys are just all over the place.
                Yeah, I stay up at night worrying that you don't 'respect' me.

                And, I'm consistent, because I believe in the sanctity of human life - never have said otherwise.
                The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                Comment


                • #38
                  Originally posted by Zymologist View Post
                  Would you apply this standard to mentally challenged people, say someone with Down Syndrome?
                  Yes. They would be wherever on the continuum their mental functions they possessed put them. I'm not familiar with the details of Down Syndrome, but I imagine it's still significantly above non-human animals.
                  "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                  "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                  "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    I think you focus too much on the "mind." A highly intelligent adult man who kidnaps, rapes, tortures and murders women for fun has more "sentience / cognition / conscious / comprehension / memory / self-awareness faculties" than your average two year old, yet no sane human being would argue that because of the man's greater mental faculties, doing harm to him would be a greater moral evil than doing harm to the child.

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                      IMO killing any life is wrong in proportion to its level of 'mind' - i.e. its sentience / cognition / conscious / comprehension / memory / self-awareness faculties. So rocks aren't on the scale because they don't have minds in any way shape or form, while plants / bacteria are at the absolute minimum of life on up through insects, fetuses, fish, mammals, and finally humans with fully functioning minds which have the maximum mind we have yet to encounter (and any space-faring aliens we encountered in the future would obviously go probably slightly above this category).
                      So in your view smart people's lives are more valuable than stupid people?

                      Comment


                      • #41
                        Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                        So in your view smart people's lives are more valuable than stupid people?
                        Theoretically yes (though I would totally reject using IQ as any sort of sole and direct measure of total mental capacities - which includes things as varied as consciousness, intention, memory, self-awareness etc), but in practice the difference in value between two humans is going to be so infinitesimal compared to say, a monkey, or a fish, or an insect, that it's not really worth talking about. It's like saying someone is at 99.999 instead of 100 in value, when we are comparing them to things which are at 0.1 or 0.001 in value (if we stick arbitrary numeric figures on it that I just made up).

                        Amusingly I guess that could make the following sentences coherent:
                        "What's the difference between me and you?"
                        "A fish."
                        "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                        "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                        "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                          ...but in practice the difference in value between two humans is going to be so infinitesimal compared to say, a monkey, or a fish, or an insect,
                          So, you pretty much admit this whole argument is a steaming pile of horsiepoo.

                          that it's not really worth talking about...
                          Yet, talk about it, you do!
                          The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                          Comment


                          • #43
                            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                            Theoretically yes (though I would totally reject using IQ as any sort of sole and direct measure of total mental capacities - which includes things as varied as consciousness, intention, memory, self-awareness etc), but in practice the difference in value between two humans is going to be so infinitesimal compared to say, a monkey, or a fish, or an insect, that it's not really worth talking about. It's like saying someone is at 99.999 instead of 100 in value, when we are comparing them to things which are at 0.1 or 0.001 in value (if we stick arbitrary numeric figures on it that I just made up).

                            Amusingly I guess that could make the following sentences coherent:
                            "What's the difference between me and you?"
                            "A fish."
                            Would you value a smart but immoral person over a stupid but moral person? How do you evaluate how smart a person is?

                            Comment


                            • #44
                              Originally posted by Psychic Missile View Post
                              Would you value a smart but immoral person over a stupid but moral person? How do you evaluate how smart a person is?
                              I can't really imagine a situation in which I would need to try to make nuanced judgments as to the infinitesimal differences in value between different mentally-fully-functional humans.

                              Since all I am saying is that an adult human has more mental functions present than a monkey, or a fetus, and that mental functions exist on a scale (from zero/insect to adult human), I don't see any need to get into really detailed specifics of tiny differences between different fully functional human minds or how those would or should be measured. From a practical perspective, we can consider such differences to be zero.
                              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                Originally posted by Psychic Missile View Post
                                Would you value a smart but immoral person over a stupid but moral person? How do you evaluate how smart a person is?
                                And, what qualifies Starlight to be the one who sets the value on the life of others?
                                The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                                Comment

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