Announcement

Collapse

Civics 101 Guidelines

Want to argue about politics? Healthcare reform? Taxes? Governments? You've come to the right place!

Try to keep it civil though. The rules still apply here.
See more
See less

O�Rourke: Churches Should Lose Tax-exempt Status

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
    I have never argued that Jewish culture, throughout the centuries, held that abortion was ["not" inserted by Leonhard] wrong.
    Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
    Tassman, you're doing a 180 degree about face. Earlier you made a specific claim, now you're denying it. I'd like to argue a position, but until you state which of these two quotes represent your view, and which one is wrong, we can't proceed.
    You claimed a contradiction based on a "[not]" you inserted yourself.

    Damn, that's bold.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by Juvenal View Post
      You claimed a contradiction based on a "[not]" you inserted yourself.

      Damn, that's bold.
      I did indeed insert [not], with square brackets [], which is the standard way of inserting a word, to indicate how you read the sentence. This is normal, considering people often leave out words.

      If Tassman litterally said

      "I have never argued that Jewish culture, throughout the centuries, held that abortion was wrong."

      Then that would be trivially true, and pointless to state. But he's clearly been arguing the opposite, namely that throughout the centuries abortion has not been considered a sin at all, which is factually wrong. It was considered a sin up until around late 18th century with the appearance of the Reform movement.

      So either he's contradicting himself, or he's stating something trivially true that is not in dispute.

      Comment


      • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
        But that is exactly what it has. Throughout most of Judeo/Christian history, feticide is in fact considered murder by the Jews and Christians were also united against it whenever they wrote on the subject, though they spent more effort on infanticide which was a bigger problem at that time.

        I have demonstrated and shown that to you. Others have as well. Yet you keep bringing myjewishlearning, both in this thread and in others, while seemingly ignoring both the content of the article you link to, or the fact that it only document very recent moral developments in the jewish community.
        Given a modern comprehension of embryology, I suspect most early adherents to Abrahamic religions would have extended their repugnance to abortion to an earlier stage of the pregnancy. But we can't know that. We can and do know, however, that it's not valid to impute our understanding of the process into their writings.

        We also know that they differentiated between early stage pregnancies and pregnancies after fetal movement could be detected, that they didn't judge causing a miscarriage as murder, and that two-thirds of modern abortions occur during a stage of pregnancy modern embryology describes as more reptilian than human.

        During my tartiest foruming days, I posted with the estimable "THHuxley" for years on a wide variety of Islamic sites, debunking topics from creationist arguments imported from YE Christianity to common scientific misconceptions current at the time of Muhammad that found their way into the Qur'an, often elaborated in the Hadith.

        "THHuxley" showed that as late as the 7th century CE, Muhammad, in communication with the two preceding Abrahamic traditions, preserved the contemporary embryology that informed Abrahamists' theological treatment of abortion. This treatment was posted on numerous forums, and can still be (barely) found on Mukto Mona.

        Islamic embryology, T H Huxley

        This misunderstanding still informs Islamic opinion on abortion, bracketing prohibitions on abortion to the period following the Mudghah phase. In much the same sense, misunderstandings about the origin of the human species informs much of evangelical Christianity, today, in their efforts to push biological evolution out of public schools.

        I could get clever here, tracking the curve back into the topic of withholding tax exemptions from churches, but that's not a position I care to defend considering my personal interest in supporting the nascent GBY Pilgrim SBC of the Everglades.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Juvenal View Post
          Given a modern comprehension of embryology, I suspect most early adherents to Abrahamic religions would have extended their repugnance to abortion to an earlier stage of the pregnancy. But we can't know that. We can and do know, however, that it's not valid to impute our understanding of the process into their writings.
          At no point was anyone, that I know of, in this thread, imputing our modern embryology onto the Church Fathers. I was citing one of the most respected Jewish rabbis from the 1st and 2nd Century. Rogue06 put up a wall of citations from all the Church Fathers had written on the subjects. We're not imputing anything here, those were their actual views.

          Rogue06, I think we do need that sticky thread.

          Comment


          • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
            I did indeed insert [not], with square brackets [], which is the standard way of inserting a word, to indicate how you read the sentence. This is normal, considering people often leave out words.

            If Tassman litterally said

            "I have never argued that Jewish culture, throughout the centuries, held that abortion was wrong."

            Then that would be trivially true, and pointless to state.
            He did, literally, say that. And you replaced something you acknowledge was trivially true with something that was blatantly contradictory.

            Oh, baby, [don't] tell me more.

            But he's clearly been arguing the opposite, namely that throughout the centuries abortion has not been considered a sin at all, which is factually wrong. It was considered a sin up until around late 18th century with the appearance of the Reform movement.

            So either he's contradicting himself, or he's stating something trivially true that is not in dispute.
            I'd argue abortion after viability has always been considered a sin, making a contrary blanket assertion false, but that would not be a generous reading (except perhaps by comparison to deliberately inserting a contradiction). There's no evidence I'm aware of that most abortion, that is, abortion before eight weeks, has until recently been recognized as involving a human person.

            What's been known of embryology "throughout the centuries" was straight up wrong. It's generally a poor idea to argue from a false premise.

            You should see what folks back when thought about cosmology.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
              At no point was anyone, that I know of, in this thread, imputing our modern embryology onto the Church Fathers.
              Other than continuously.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by Juvenal
                He did, literally, say that.
                If he states, that he indeed did mean to say that, I gotta admit I'm surprised, but I'll admit I got him wrong.

                There's no evidence I'm aware of that most abortion, that is, abortion before eight weeks, has until recently been recognized as involving a human person.
                Whether or not it has, the question as Tassman was putting it, is whether it was considered morally wrong. You can read his own quotes, the your own post, for yourself.

                It is a combination of special pleading, and moving the goal post, to specifically limit the discussion to fetuses beneat the age of eight weeks and whether or not they counted as person. That is not what I was contesting with Tassman, nor is it what Tassman was claiming.

                Originally posted by Juvenal View Post
                Other than continuously.
                Can you give an example. We pretty much only quoted them directly, and we have specifically limited ourself to defending that those Church Fathers who commented on it.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                  If he states, that he indeed did mean to say that, I gotta admit I'm surprised, but I'll admit I got him wrong.
                  He so states.
                  They are both the same statement.

                  Not that I'm interested in playing Tassman apologist. I was bemused by the spectre of your berating an imposed contradiction. It appealed to my love of irony.

                  Of course, if you choose not to own it, I'll have to withdraw my mad props.

                  Whether or not it has, the question as Tassman was putting it, is whether it was considered morally wrong. You can read his own quotes, the your own post, for yourself.
                  I do not credit Tassman with the study necessary to speak cogently of the differences between abortion as understood today and abortion as understood in the 6th century BCE or the 1st century CE or the 7th century CE. It's mere happenstance that I have any familiarity with the differences myself.

                  It started with this post about Islamic embryology ...

                  It is a combination of special pleading, and moving the goal post, to specifically limit the discussion to fetuses beneat the age of eight weeks and whether or not they counted as person. That is not what I was contesting with Tassman, nor is it what Tassman was claiming.
                  If most abortions are to be dismissed as special pleading or moving the goal posts, special pleading and goal post adjustment are unjustly maligned.

                  I am suggesting that Tassman and those responding to Tassman are speaking of abortion in its modern usage, making references to opinions on abortion from church fathers as relevant as their condemnations of mathematicians.

                  Not that I'm the kind of guy who [doesn't] hold a grudge.

                  Can you give an example. We pretty much only quoted them directly, and we have specifically limited ourself to defending that those Church Fathers who commented on it.
                  It's inconceivable, put down that rock, sir, that the church fathers were weighing in on the first trimester abortions which account for better than 90 percent of abortions in the U.S. today.

                  Early Israelite sensibilities are treated in Isser, 1990, cited earlier, arguing for two traditions based respectively on the MT and the LXX, that the harm of Exodus 21:22-23 could be seen as visited upon either the woman, or the fetus. In the MT tradition, the harm is judged only against the woman, with the harm against the fetus judged as a civil wrong, accountable by fines, corresponding to the rabbinic position, tracing back to the Assyrians.
                  b. Yebam. 78a; b. Nazirm. Ohol. 7:6). If a pregnant woman is condemned to death, she is executed before giving birth unless she is already sitting on the birth stool; then she is killed after giving birth (m. Arak. 1:4). No stages in fetal development before the actual event of birth change the status of the unborn child with regard to its being considered a human being. Neither these passages nor the ones concerning the forty-one day period help us in establishing the value of an aborted fetus.

                  Isser tracks the two MT and LXX traditions respectively to Hammurabi with its Mesopotamian heirs and antecedents; and to the Hittite laws, also from the Bronze age.

                  Following Philo and the LXX, there is room to see abortion as murder, but again, not at all stages of development, and excluding either most (fully formed at 40 days) or nearly all (fully formed at 80 days) of modern day abortions. I'm not aware of any positions more generous to the pro-life camp than these, and they remain minority positions.

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                    Since I didn't do that, its not a an argument from ignorance. We know that most of our features aren't selected for by natural selection. Many are left to freely change over the years due to neutral genetic drift.
                    Well you did inasmuch as you said https://www.nature.com/scitable/topi...lineage-12397/

                    See, what I'm trying to get at here, is that you're using philosophy, whether you like it or not. And you need to do that, even to answer basic questions, such as questions about what science is and what science is actually doing. Science, ironically, can't answer those questions
                    I will, once you start to show that you have intellectual integrity,

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                      If he states, that he indeed did mean to say that, I gotta admit I'm surprised, but I'll admit I got him wrong.



                      Whether or not it has, the question as Tassman was putting it, is whether it was considered morally wrong. You can read his own quotes, the your own post, for yourself.

                      It is a combination of special pleading, and moving the goal post, to specifically limit the discussion to fetuses beneat the age of eight weeks and whether or not they counted as person. That is not what I was contesting with Tassman, nor is it what Tassman was claiming.



                      Can you give an example. We pretty much only quoted them directly, and we have specifically limited ourself to defending that those Church Fathers who commented on it.
                      In case you're interested, I've covered ancient Jewish thought on abortion on TWeb a little bit, with some of the more in-depth study coming from Michael Gorman's "Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World." You can find some snippets here (though I've discussed other portions of it throughout TWeb over the years): http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...l=1#post506802

                      Great volume if you're interested in the subject.

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Tassman View Post

                        Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace (1858) famously proposed that positive selection could explain the many marvelous adaptations that suit organisms to their environments and lifestyles, and this simple process remains the central explanation for all evolutionary adaptation yet today.

                        https://www.nature.com/scitable/topi...lineage-12397/
                        While random mutation + natural selection still appears to be the primary engine driving evolutionary change even Darwin recognized it was far from the only one. Something like half of his second major book[1], The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex is devoted to it. As the full title indicates, it is sexual selection. And sexual selection can make it harder to survive (antlers too big and bulky or like a male peacock's tail feathers making for a longer more energy consuming takeoff for flight -- and I wonder if they create a drag while flying), but easier to mate.







                        1. I think that a strong case can be made for his oft overlooked The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, published in 1868, three years before Descent was his second important work with Descent being the third.

                        I'm always still in trouble again

                        "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                        "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                        "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                        Comment

                        Related Threads

                        Collapse

                        Topics Statistics Last Post
                        Started by CivilDiscourse, Today, 12:07 PM
                        2 responses
                        13 views
                        0 likes
                        Last Post tabibito  
                        Started by Cow Poke, Yesterday, 03:46 PM
                        19 responses
                        126 views
                        0 likes
                        Last Post Sparko
                        by Sparko
                         
                        Started by Ronson, Yesterday, 01:52 PM
                        3 responses
                        37 views
                        0 likes
                        Last Post rogue06
                        by rogue06
                         
                        Started by Cow Poke, Yesterday, 09:08 AM
                        6 responses
                        59 views
                        0 likes
                        Last Post RumTumTugger  
                        Started by CivilDiscourse, Yesterday, 07:44 AM
                        0 responses
                        22 views
                        0 likes
                        Last Post CivilDiscourse  
                        Working...
                        X