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

Pastor Protection Bill derail

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

  • #91
    Originally posted by Starlight View Post
    Hmm, well this has gone pretty much as I expected and why I stay out of abortion discussions in general. Because anti-abortionists just get really wound-up emotionally and throw out the hate but don't present any logical arguments at all.
    Ending on a nice big moral grand standing, saying how much better you've been acting here. Lets see how you did, I hope you understand that if you'll end on a note saying that you've fought a valiant rational battle, we get to at least defend ourselves from some of the claims made here.

    The anti-abortionist movement in general seems to rely primarily on emotionalism and mass hysteria, with the occasional false biological 'facts' and occasional terrible theology thrown in.
    As do the LGBT and the feminists, if by emotionalism you mean we engage in public discourse, we're passionate about what we believe, we really believe it and we tend to get angry. That's all true, I completely affirm it. If you mean we rely on such arguments, then I'm sorry but you're slandering us. In this thread we've advanced several rational arguments, all of which you've handwaved away. You handwaved the entire field of virtue ethics and scholastic philosophy by saying it was outdated and unpopular. S

    everal have pressed you on what essential features a human must have to be a person, and you've been the one to handwave it away "quality of life... level of cognition"

    We've affirmed that this is either an unintelligible position, or its arbitrary, or its symptomatic of the failings of utilitarian ethics.

    We've also pressured you on the fact that your position affirms something many pro-abortionists don't acknowledge, namely that if you accept the logic of abortion, then infanticide isn't morally wrong, and could in principle be allowed, for instance for suffering babies, or for young women who had a child they think they can't take care of that hampers their chance for education and economic freedom (or other such Social Justice stores). You bit the bullet on that, something that left us flapper gasted. Since this came in the same thread where you asserted several times that Christians literally had nothing to fear about coming social changes, regarding pastors right to affirm the things they do, and therefore they shouldn't engage in such a lawsuit, we did discuss this.

    As I pointed out earlier, biblical law appears to make clear that <1 month-olds are not counted as humans, that fetuses are not legal persons when it comes to murder, and that abortion is a legitimate punishment for infidelity.
    Yes you did, and lilpixieofterror pretty much dealt with it (here and here to a response of yours).

    Nor does there seem to be a basis for an anti-abortion stance in any sort of sound and logical secular reasoning: People tend to take a certain level of awareness and humanness as the cut-off and are okay with abortions occurring prior to that level of awareness developing.
    Okay, I'll be charitable here and interpret this as well and as fair to you as I can. I'll assume you're not making a band wagon fallacy, an interpret the : to mean simple that it leads to the next sentence. In which case I agree, people do take a certain level of awareness of humanness as a cut-off... we're arguing that this is a disastrous approach that will lead to a diminishment of human dignity. There's plenty of cases that strains this logic: people temporarily in coma who can't make medical decisions for themselves, people born with cognitive deficiencies that means they'll mentally never be more one year olds, etc... furthermore we've taken objection to the notion of even being able to talk about degrees of humanness, as if it was something that slowly turns on.

    Most anti-abortionists seems to rely heavily on arguments about the fetus having an immortal soul, which I deconstructed.
    Oddly enough, the only person I've seen in this thread using that argument is you. Can you find me a large pro-life website where the immortality of the soul is the argument advanced in public discourse? The pope in Humane Vitae didn't mention an immortal soul even once, and I happen to know scholastic arguments wouldn't presume an immortal soul to prove the wrongness of abortion either (in as much as scholastic arguments always start by ceding as much ground to the opponent as possible, and arguing for an immortal soul is gratuitous).

    Do I as a Catholic believe that there's an immortal soul present at the point of conception. Yes I do, but I thought this was going to be an ethical discussion not an religious discussion. As such you brought the notion of soul in here, not you, that reflects your biases and expectations of pro-life arguments, and they're not a reflection of actual reality.

    The humans would be self-aware, conscious, sentient beings, so the elves killing them is not okay. My general criteria is quality of life / level of cognitive functioning.
    I do grant you the logic here, your ethical ideas does not commit you to say that immortal elves would be right to kill adult humans.

    I guess I'd describe myself in hindsight as being exceptionally informed in some areas, but pretty naive in others.
    You're going to have an uphill battle if you want to convince the resident exegists that you're as skilled in interpreting the Bible, as I suspect you consider yourself to have been.
    Last edited by Leonhard; 04-27-2015, 01:25 AM.

    Comment


    • #92
      Originally posted by hamster View Post
      I'm not sure how a fetus could have limbs and a head and not look like a "small baby."
      Here is a standard picture of an embryo at 6 weeks. It has limbs and a head, but looks like an alien rather than a small baby.



      For most of its time in the womb it literally looks small and like a baby, regardless of whether or not it has a soul or whatever magic trait would stop you from being okay with dismembering them
      I don't think that what it looks like is should be a deciding factor. Lambs look pretty cute, but most people here presumably are quite happy eating lamb meat. Cuteness or lack of it, isn't really a great argument as to why something should be killed or not.

      I do get that there's an emotionalism associated with "it looks just like a small baby!" and so for people who get overly emotional (as a lot of anti-abortionists seem to regularly) that might press their emotional buttons. But equally if those same people were shown picture after picture of animals that had been killed at the meatworks, they might be able to be persuaded to become vegetarian. It seems largely a matter of people preying on their emotions and through that persuading them to hold certain views.
      "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


      • #93
        Originally posted by Starlight View Post
        The bizarre thing about the abortion debate is the widespread tendency of Christians within the US within the last 30-40 years to sign-on to a view that says that the fetus isn't a developing potential human as biology tells us it is, but rather endorse a view that claims it is a full and complete human apparently including a soul. Whereas go back 60 years and such a position was regarded as a weird-Catholic-only viewpoint. Fortunately, the zealousness seems largely confined to the US still.
        A human isn't complete until their teens (at the earliest) when reproductive functions become active.
        "As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah 3:12

        There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.

        Comment


        • #94
          Originally posted by pancreasman View Post
          My answer: I think you're assuming what has yet to be proven, ie, a notion of personhood and to whom it applies. I do not believe a fertilised egg is a 'person'. It exhibits no elements that I would normally associate with a person. When does personhood begin? I have already asserted that for me personhood requires a complex nervous system such that pain and suffering (and possibly self awareness) can be experienced. According to my admittedly quick research, this looks to be somewhere from 8 to 12 weeks. Based on that definition then abortion before this time is not 'killing a person'. There is nothing inherently wrong with 'lines in the sand'. Doctors use them all the time to determine when to shut off machines that sustain life in badly injured patients.
          There is no need for the anti-abortion side to assume a concept of personhood to conclude that killing of one's children is wrong.

          Rather, it is those who support abortion that need to assume 'personhood' to make the distinction so that killing one's children becomes permissible because by some highly arbitrary standard they're fully a 'person' (which is also why Sam went insane last time when Jedidiah and I denied that the concept is needed.[1])

          And also what Teal said.

          [1] starting around this post and subsequently
          Last edited by Paprika; 04-27-2015, 01:35 AM.

          Comment


          • #95
            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
            The OT law is pretty clear that the fetus does not have the value of a human life. If a man punches a woman who's with child and it causes a miscarriage, then there is a financial penalty, but if the woman herself also dies from the blow or suffers any other injuries, there is an eye-for-eye life-for-life punishment that kicks in. (Exodus 21:22-23)
            Not true. Premature birth =/= dead baby. Eye for eye refers to the baby, not the woman, who would already be covered by murder laws.

            Clearly the fetus is valued at less than the woman's life. Likewise, elsewhere it is clear that fetuses and infants under 1 month old were not counted as people (Numbers 3:15-16)
            Numbers 3:15-16 isn't counting people, it's counting males above one month old.

            or as having value (Leviticus 27:6).
            In a particular instance.

            Most interesting is the situation where a man believes his wife has been unfaithful to him. He brings her before a priest, who is to give her an abortn potion to drink. If the potion works successfully and the baby dies, then the woman is judged to be guilty. If the abortion fails and the baby lives, then she is judged to be innocent and the man is to raise the baby as his own. (Numbers 5:21-28)
            It's a truth serum, not an abortion potion. The miscarriage is a side-effect of the woman bringing a curse upon herself.

            The zealousness of the modern anti-abortion movement causes me to roll my eyes. It's not at all well-grounded in the bible.
            Thou shalt not murder is pretty well grounded in the bible.
            "As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah 3:12

            There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.

            Comment


            • #96
              Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
              In this thread we've advanced several rational arguments, all of which you've handwaved away. I started one argument.
              You've vaguely alluded to the idea of there being rational arguments against abortion. Can't say I've ever seen any that progressed much beyond "a fetus is a human because I say so, abortion is murder because I say so."

              We've affirmed that this is either an unintelligible position, or its arbitrary, or its symptomatic of the failings of utilitarian ethics.
              You've made some vague and generic digs at utilitarian ethics. Not really a convincing logical argument. I'm not necessarily sure I would even label my ethical views utilitarian anyway.

              We've also pressured you on the fact that your position affirms something many pro-abortionists don't acknowledge, namely that if you accept the logic of abortion, then infanticide isn't morally wrong, and could in principle be allowed, for instance for suffering babies, or for young women who had a child they think they can't take care of that hampers their chance for education and economic freedom (or other such Social Justice stores). You bit the bullet on that, something that left us flapper gasted.
              It obviously depends where a person draws the line. I draw it in a different place to pancreasman.

              Since this came in the same thread where you asserted several times that Christians literally had nothing to fear about coming social changes, regarding pastors right to affirm the things they do, and therefore they shouldn't engage in such a lawsuit, we did discuss this.
              I certainly wouldn't say Christians have nothing to fear about social changes. I mainly said that there's no point in passing a new law that repeats old laws.

              Yes you did, and lilpixieofterror pretty much dealt with it (here and here to a response of yours).
              LPOT just brought out some industrial strength denial. She's free to ignore the bible / my interpretation of it if she likes.

              In which case I agree, people do take a certain level of awareness of humanness as a cut-off... we're arguing that this is a disastrous approach that will lead to a diminishment of human dignity.
              Are you actually making any rational logical argument whose conclusion is that there will be a diminishment of human dignity? If so I haven't seen it. What I've seen is just assertions of the alleged conclusion.

              Oddly enough, the only person I've seen in this thread using that argument is you.
              Yes, because no one on this thread with an anti-abortion stance has provided any argument whatsoever.

              You're going to have an uphill battle if you want to convince the resident exegists that you're as skilled in interpreting the Bible, as I suspect you consider yourself to have been.
              They can think whatever they like.
              "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


              • #97
                Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                Here is a standard picture of an embryo at 6 weeks. It has limbs and a head, but looks like an alien rather than a small baby.
                Yes this is the pharyngula stage of human development. And here's a picture at the 18th week. With 22 weeks to go, it would still be true that for most of the time in pregnancy it looks pretty much like a baby.



                Mind you, you were showing a picture apparently to counter the notion that it looks like a baby most of the time.

                I don't think that what it looks like is should be a deciding factor.
                The wrongness of abortion doesn't come from what the baby looks like. As it is, we do think these pictures are important because they can remind people what it is that's actually occurring in an abortion. Pictures can be powerful in illiciting moral responses in people, which is why we're campaigning to have the freedom to show these pictures where ever we protest as a free speech right.

                I do get that there's an emotionalism associated with "it looks just like a small baby!"
                Emotions are good when they allign with reality. Its good to get angry about issues of unfairness, and moral evil. When you hear about a gender dysphoric kid who got bullied so bad in school, he tried to end his life, I personally get angry, so does feminists and LGBT websites. The fact that humans get emotional, or that we can convey things through emotions, does not take away from the rationality of the matter, so long as the emotions don't cloud judgement.

                You implied that we hadn't interacted with you rationally, we've done that earlier in the thread and we're still doing that now. I have to admit though that you're getting offensive if you want to pretend that you're the cool Spock like rational among the savages. You don't pick up on it when you're accused of logical fallacies, you don't respond to rational counter arguments, but pick the low hanging fruit.
                Last edited by Leonhard; 04-27-2015, 01:47 AM.

                Comment


                • #98
                  Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                  I do get that there's an emotionalism associated with "it looks just like a small baby!" and so for people who get overly emotional (as a lot of anti-abortionists seem to regularly) that might press their emotional buttons. But equally if those same people were shown picture after picture of animals that had been killed at the meatworks, they might be able to be persuaded to become vegetarian. It seems largely a matter of people preying on their emotions and through that persuading them to hold certain views.
                  It's counters the pro-murder emotional rhetoric (eg 'It's just a parasite', 'It's not even fully human yet', and 'It's your body so you should be free to do as you like) on the much deeper and more effective level, by triggering the maternal (and paternal) instinct which progressives have strongly tried to repress.

                  Hence the progressives strongly oppose the use of such photoes because it has the capability to undo the spell they've weaved.

                  Comment


                  • #99
                    Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                    You've vaguely alluded to the idea of there being rational arguments against abortion. Can't say I've ever seen any that progressed much beyond "a fetus is a human because I say so, abortion is murder because I say so."
                    This thread derail has been based mostly on responding to howlers from you. Everything from proclaiming several times that pro-life arguments presumed a soul, and dragging it into biblical arguments, which none of us did. Really mostly we just tried to keep up with the stream of stuff you said. We responded coherently to it with facts, whether its the simple fact that pro-life arguments basically aren't based on immortal soul arguments and this is a strawman from you... to biblical exegesis you didn't pick up on... to whether abortion protesters are bad guys... to whether a late-term abortion acceptance implies acceptance of infanticide.

                    Were we disgusted as well? You betcha. That doesn't detract from our rationality one iota.

                    But if you want it, then deductive argument against abortion is simple.

                    1) It is wrong to kill innocent human beings. (premise 1)
                    2) A fetus is an innocent human being. (premise 2)
                    3) The act of abortion terminates a fetus, as an end in itself. (premise 3)
                    4) Therefore the act of abortion kills an innocent human being. (2) and (3)
                    5) Therefore abortion is wrong. (2) and (1)

                    Replace 'fetus' with 'child', 'act of abortion' with 'act of child strangling', and you've got the same structure. 1) and 3) are trivially true and there's no need to lay them out to explore and defend them. If you feel like being enough of a contrarian to try to do so go ahead, but I don't see the point in someone attacking the fact that abortion kills a life (whether human or not) as an end in itself (i.e that's the goal of what's happening... I've yet to see abortion mills do extractions of late term babies by Cesarian section and try to keep them alive.), or for you to attack that its wrong to kill an innocent human being. Your contention is when someone becomes a human being, or what is needed for someone to classified as human, which seems to involve a question of their "quality of life" and "sentience/awareness".

                    This has never been a formal discussion, its something derailed a thread. I simple stated that Christians are consistent. They consider infanticide immoral, and so logically abortion is immoral for the same reasons. A womans right to control her body, obviously does not include the right to kill another human being. Though most of the discussion out in the world now has shifted towards women having absolute freedom over anything inside their bodies, even if it is another life. You said you preferred arguments about whether a fetus was a human, but then you failed to give any specifics, saying it was a continuum and arbitrary.

                    You've made some vague and generic digs at utilitarian ethics. Not really a convincing logical argument. I'm not necessarily sure I would even label my ethical views utilitarian anyway.
                    I explained in general some basic things regarding when marriage is invalid. Introduced the notion of final causality. You handwaved it way

                    I certainly wouldn't say Christians have nothing to fear about social changes. I mainly said that there's no point in passing a new law that repeats old laws.
                    "Your whole attitude is an utterly ridiculous instance of a persecution complex. You are part of the majority, you are part of the persecutors. When the minority fights back a little, you don't get to shout "persecution" from the rooftops. Or if you do you look ridiculous."

                    Though to be fair, I also had you mixed up with Sam who was far more trying to reassure us that our fears were unwarrented. Mixing up the two of you was a mistake. I apologize.

                    LPOT just brought out some industrial strength denial. She's free to ignore the bible / my interpretation of it if she likes.


                    Okay, lets call it that.

                    And I was complaining about handwaving earlier... you certainly don't disappoint.

                    Are you actually making any rational logical argument whose conclusion is that there will be a diminishment of human dignity? If so I haven't seen it. What I've seen is just assertions of the alleged conclusion.
                    I did a review of the thread, and you're right on this point I did not offer a specific argument.

                    They can think whatever they like.
                    Yup, that when it comes to what Christians actually think, you're the poster boy for the Dunning-Kruger effect.

                    "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others."
                    Last edited by Leonhard; 04-27-2015, 02:36 AM.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                      But if you want it, then deductive argument against abortion is simple.

                      1) It is wrong to kill innocent human beings. (premise 1)
                      2) A fetus is an innocent human being. (premise 2)
                      3) The act of abortion terminates a fetus, as an end in itself. (premise 3)
                      4) Therefore the act of abortion kills an innocent human being. (2) and (3)
                      5) Therefore abortion is wrong. (2) and (1)

                      Excellent. I'm pleased to see an actual logical argument happening.

                      As to the argument, I am skeptical of both (1) and (2). As far as (2) goes, the question of what constitutes a 'human being' has been discussed on this thread, and it should be clear that I don't think a fetus has the level of cognition that characterizes human beings. If all you mean by the premise is that 'human being' refers to simply 'of the human species' then okay, premise 2 is fine, and my issue is only with premise (1).

                      With premise 1, I have the following problems:
                      a) implied "always": The premise is really implying, but not explicitly stating, that "it is always wrong, under every possible circumstance to kill innocent human beings". The premise, as you stated it, is a decent heuristic rule: Yes, it is indeed usually wrong to kill innocent people. Barring exceptional circumstances, that's a good rule for people to follow. But there are obvious exceptional circumstances: What if the person wants to die and has asked for your help? What if killing the one person can save 1000? What if the person has serious brain damage and is in a coma and isn't going to recover? What if the person isn't really yet a "person" and hasn't developed any of rational thought, memory, cognition etc that we associated with being person? A lot of people who would naively endorse your stated premise would be brought up short upon hitting many of those exceptional situations. The premise as stated works fine as a heuristic for snap judgments in most situations, but it doesn't serve as a foundational moral principle that's capable of dealing with edge-cases - or if that is what it is supposed to be then you'll need to defend it as such, and you'll need an entire additional argument to validate that premise.

                      b) "It is wrong": I suspect from the way this is phrased and from the way (5) is phrased you're intending to assert some kind of moral absolute here. However, I believe actions can be both right and wrong for different reasons at the same time. I wouldn't go as far as full utilitarianism and claim that what matters is merely whether there's more right or more wrong as if they can easily be measured against each other and cancelled out, although I would regard this as often being a useful heuristic. Instead I would say that there are shades of gray in our complex social world and that something like stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's starving family can be a good action insofar as it helps the family and a bad action insofar as it harms the baker, and as such the overall action may not necessarily be subjected to any clear moral labeling.

                      I think that abortion is a harmful act toward the fetus, and therefore carries some harm, but equally it is done for a reason - the parents do not want the child or cannot support it. The positive motivation for the act of abortion coexists with the harm done by the abortion rendering the overall act sufficiently morally gray in my view that the act seems rather morally neutral to me rather than overall 'wrong'. It's very similar in my mind to killing an animal for meat in order to eat it - the harm done to the animal is balanced by the good of eating it. If you'd written the premise as "It is wrong to kill an innocent baby lamb" then I'd have had the same objection.

                      c) "innocent": I don't support the death penalty, and I don't really think that innocence or guilt makes a whole lot of difference as to whether it is okay to kill someone.

                      d) "human beings": I feel there is a bit of vagueness happening in this term. I'm not really satisfied that you and I have the same definition of "human being".

                      I explained in general some basic things regarding when marriage is invalid. Introduced the notion of final causality. You handwaved it way
                      You have a Roman Catholic view about the nature of marriage, and think that Aristotelian logic is a great idea. I, like most people, think both are completely bogus - that Aristotelian logic is gobbledygook and Roman Catholic views about marriage are arbitrary and ridiculous. Unless you want to give some sort of argument to convince me you're right about either, then there's not much further to be said. You can have your own weird views, that's fine with me, a lot of people do and Catholics in general tend to have weird views about so many things that I didn't bother arguing with them even when I was a Christian.

                      Yup, that when it comes to what Christians actually think, you're the poster boy for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
                      Yes, I hadn't heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect until Sparko mentioned it a while back. I think it explains a huge amount about the interactions here, and I guess more importantly explains why I really ought not to be bothering to post here at all.
                      "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


                      • Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                        I think that abortion is a harmful act toward the fetus, and therefore carries some harm, but equally it is done for a reason - the parents do not want the child or cannot support it. The positive motivation for the act of abortion coexists with the harm done by the abortion rendering the overall act sufficiently morally gray


                        Seriously? The 'motivations' do not balance out actual harm.

                        Suppose you want to kill an stranger to take his money. The positive motivation for the act of killing coexists with the harm done by the harm done by the killing...

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Paprika View Post
                          The 'motivations' do not balance out actual harm.
                          Sometimes harm balances out and sometimes it doesn't. Stealing a loaf of bread to feed starving family is considered overall a moral positive by most people, but killing a stranger for his money is considered a definite negative (adding theft to murder hardly makes murder better!). Killing a lamb for meat is generally considered justified, although some people consider it unjustified.

                          Whether people consider killing a fetus in order to not have to bear and raise the child to be justified or unjustified largely depends on how they think about the fetus and what level of value they assign it. Some people assign it a very high level of value, such that the harm clearly does not balance, while others assign it an extremely low level of value, meaning that the harm is negligibly small, and others assign it a medium level of value such that they would only want an abortion under extreme circumstances (such as rape) and might consider it "the hardest decision I've ever made in my life" or somesuch. As I've made clear, the level of value I assign to animals is based on cognitive ability, and as such a fetus ranks pretty low - significantly below a lot of the more intelligent 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


                          • Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                            Sometimes harm balances out and sometimes it doesn't.
                            Not wanting the child because one wants to have sex without responsibilities is not harm.

                            As I've made clear, the level of value I assign to animals is based on cognitive ability
                            Which is a completely arbitrary criterion.

                            and as such a fetus ranks pretty low - significantly below a lot of the more intelligent animals.
                            Yes, it's pretty clear that you would kill infants with low cognitive ability given the right 'motivation'.
                            Last edited by Paprika; 04-27-2015, 04:20 AM.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                              Well I'd say all Christians are extremely naive...
                              Sounds like you were chief among them then.

                              I guess I'd describe myself in hindsight as being exceptionally informed in some areas, but pretty naive in others. I tended toward book-learning and was exceptionally well-read in biblical scholarship, but didn't necessarily pay much attention to social issues.
                              You...didn't pay attention to the social issues? After the death and resurrection of Jesus and the Kingdom of Heaven, the social issues are arguably the most central aspect of the Gospels. How did you miss that?

                              Baptist. I guess I was maybe around 28 when I stopped attending church.
                              Very strange. You were definitely old enough to know better. Maybe it was just your specific church.

                              These were not issues at the time. During the ~25 years I attended churches and Christian organisations I don't recall any positions on gay rights or abortion issues being advocated. This country had legal and regulated abortion, and gay non-discrimination business laws, and they were taken for granted by everyone and I don't recall them being discussed. I do recall knowing that there existed some Christians that were anti-abortion, but I don't recall ever having that view advocated to me as being the 'correct' position. Civil-unions for same-sex couples caused a bit of a disturbance, because an extremist Christian sect did a public march in protest of it, and got soundly mocked by most Christians I knew who were all in favor of civil-unions.
                              I've been to dozens of orthodox churches in my lifetime across several nations. I've rarely heard any teaching that was specifically about same-sex unions or abortion, but while I've been an orthodox Christian, the Bible and the church's stance on the subject was never a mystery. Ever. It can't simply be that you don't live in the US, and the topic was never broached. It sounds like you were willfully ignorant on the subject. You don't go 25 years as a Christian without at least cracking open the Bible to see what it says about sexual immorality and harm to children. I grew up in a cult that taught that abortion was acceptable, and even I suspected that there was more to the story from reading my Bible, and seeing what mainstream Christians said on the subject.

                              I don't recall where I first heard the idea from. In Wright's book Surprised by Hope he writes "the idea that every human possesses an immortal soul, which is the ‘real’ part of them, finds little support in the Bible.”" He has quite a complex view which he expounds on here.
                              I have Surprised by Hope. I think you're misreading Wright a bit, and his view isn't really that complex. What he's against is the idea of a Platonic/Neoplatonic pre-existing soul (like you might find in Mormonism, or in certain religions that believe in reincarnation), and an immortal disembodied soul that finds itself floating around heaven after the death of the physical body. He does assert that immortality is a view supported in the Bible, but that its an embodied immortality.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Darth Executor View Post
                                A human isn't complete until their teens (at the earliest) when reproductive functions become active.
                                Considering that science has recently showed that the human brain isn't done developing until someone reaches 25 therefore, using starlight logic,™ that they aren't human yet and can be disposed of until then.

                                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 little_monkey, Yesterday, 04:19 PM
                                16 responses
                                106 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post One Bad Pig  
                                Started by whag, 03-26-2024, 04:38 PM
                                53 responses
                                306 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post Mountain Man  
                                Started by rogue06, 03-26-2024, 11:45 AM
                                25 responses
                                109 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post rogue06
                                by rogue06
                                 
                                Started by Hypatia_Alexandria, 03-26-2024, 09:21 AM
                                33 responses
                                196 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post Roy
                                by Roy
                                 
                                Started by Hypatia_Alexandria, 03-26-2024, 08:34 AM
                                84 responses
                                357 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post JimL
                                by JimL
                                 
                                Working...
                                X