What's extraordinary is how you manage to have a career despite your diagnosis. On topic, I used to think Face was a clever troll. A plethora of evidence to the contrary has changed my mind.
Can one of you just be the first to stop being a fucking child, the rest of us were enjoying the thread.
Abortion I'm still stuck on. I wish someone would explain to me how I should be in favour of killing what to me is a human being. Yes I know the whole 'its not a life yet' mantra, but I'm not so sure I agree with it. The only reason I'm not severely opposed to it is because of the whole freedom of personal choice angle. Otherwise....man, its hard to justify.
To me, the fetus becomes a person when its brain begins exhibiting organized neurological activity - recognizable brain waves. Until then it's just a prototype.
I can't sell the whole pro-choice hog to you but i can explain my view: 1. nature aborts most pregnancy before we are even aware of them - but after conception. it defies logic, to me, that 2/3 or more of all human life dies in the first few weeks of existence, particularly if you believe in the Divine origin of humanity. 2. We have very little practical ability to determine what is and is not a natural abortion in the first few weeks after conception 3. we have virtually no way to enforce a prohibition on drug-induced abortion at that stage (particularly given the availability of on-line drug suppliers). 4. We have a fairly standard legal structure in place which designates the end of human life, legally (albeit it may vary some what from jurisdiction to jurisdiction) which cites certain objective medical evidence in order to designate a "legal person" from one who's legally dead. 5. In light of these, it makes - IMO - perfect logical sense to define the beginning of life according to the same standards as one defines the end of it. The only flaw in that reasoning is that the legal end of life defines a point at which there is no longer a potential for human life, while the embryo which has not yet reached that legal point has the potential still to reach it. However, in light of the first three considerations, I still think it is the best, most practical and most logical solution to the dilemma. If the legal definition of death is the cessation of higher brain function, then let us define the commencement of "legal life" as the beginning of detectable higher brain function. This leaves open a window for immediate decisive action in the first few weeks of pregnancy (probably 6-8 weeks at least) which protects the "my body my choice" philosophy, while at the same time limiting the action to those which we can with reasonable confidence say that the embryo is not self-aware or likely to experience trauma. All you are really eliminating here is the right of a mother to piss around in indecision for 3 months or more before deciding to act which (a) she has no business doing; and (b) is relatively rare anyway. Oh, and I do endorse an exception here for medically justifiable intervention to save the life of the mother, or to prevent long-term physical health adversities. Provided that the law allows for the requirement that such a reason be justified in court so that the doctor who certifies such a condition may be held accountable to do so ethically.
Not to hijack the thread, but in its very spirit, let me just say which one argument turned my thinking on this: You know that people disagree about whether or not the fetus is a human being. Now add to that that you're not discussing whether to abort a fetus. Instead, you're discussing whether you should punish a woman because she aborted what she thought wasn't a human. And thus, I oppose abortion (with some exceptions for extreme circumstances) in my own private life and when asked for advice, but staunchly oppose laws against it. What else? Gun control. I almost completely reversed my position on that, ultimately for similar reasons. One thing I did learn discussing the many different definitions of freedom on this board is to distinguish between 'what I think people should do' and 'what I think people should be punished for not doing' more clearly. When you're making a law about X, you're not deciding on X; you're deciding on a law about X. I also learned a lot about how and why people abroad, most of all in the US of course, think the things that seem so strange to us. One example that is still striking to me is reading how utterly mangled the version of the theory of evolution is they're teaching in some US schools. If that was the only version I knew, i'd probably have trouble believing it, and if that was the only version taught at my school, I'd probably homeschool.
Shep could be pretty annoying and aggravating sometimes. I won't say I disliked him, because I don't really dislike anyone here and that is a strong word for a message board... But you've definitely come a long way and you're way more reasonable than he was. I think you've done a pretty good job of forming a whole new persona here. Regarding the topic, I've definitely changed my mind on a lot of stuff due to my time at Wordforge. When I first started hanging out here I was 22 and still in college. I really had no interest in politics or political discussions and had no real viewpoint on any major issues. The only reason I joined up was because all the flaming and trolling was entertaining for me. I almost never participated in Red Room discussions in the first few years because I really didn't have a strong opinion on many topics. Nowadays, I actually have an even lower opinion of politicans than I did before. Before, I just didn't care about politicians or ever even think about them, but now I actively despise most of them! If you ask me where I stand today, I'd say that I am an Independant and Moderate. There are some issue where I agree with conservatives and there are some issues where I agree with liberals. I have much stronger opinions on various issues than I did when I was younger, but I still can't say I lean one way or the other. I might be more likely to vote for Republicans if they would dump all the religious nuts. Hard to take them seriously when they pander to crazies. Neither party really fits me. I probably lean more towards Libertarianism but sometimes I feel like even Libertarians often live in a fantasy world and don't acknowledge certain realities in modern societies.
Even when I moved cleanly away from literalist creationism the main stumbling block for me was that there seemd to be a very binary format for the debate. either creationism accounted for everything, or evolution accounted for everything. Yes, there are Christians who believe in "divine evolution" or whatever, but it always struck me that the "Darwinist" often painted themselves into the corner of having to credit ALL the progression of life to the Darwinistic process. IMO, the whole business of natural selection is inadequate to that task and that the more thoughtful proponent of evolutionary thinking readily acknowledges this, BUT the typical American internet debater does not. Which leads me to conclude that - as you suggest - there is some "paint-by-numbers" slipshod version of evolution being taught in our education system...deriving from an all or nothing mindset. That's not to start with the premise that "God did X and then nature did Y" position, I understand and agree that's not the role of education. but i do believe that some are afraid to acknowledge that some process we do not yet fully understand preceded that whole natural selection business, or at least acted in tandem, so to speak, with it. And obviously, all this reflects a considerable move on my part away from strict Creationism (albeit I was never completely literalist on that, I did try quite hard to reconcile Scripture with science to get as close to it as possible). Which in turn reflects a pretty dramatic shift in my views toward Scripture overall. During that part of my life when I NEEDED traditionalist Christianity to be true, I would have never trifled with any of the basic assumptions lest the whole structure come into question. conversely when i did recognize the flaws in the Traditional teachings, it naturally gave me the liberty to re-examine many other Traditional positions.
I would agree that a lot of big "L" libertarians are so married to the theories that they are blind to the reality that, sort of an entire collapse of Western civilization, there's no way to practically implement them. for me libertarianism is simply moving - gently but purposefully - in the direction of those theories. Understanding you will never achieve the "libra-topia" of the theories (and that, indeed, some of them are likely not compatible with human nature) but that acting and adjusting in that direction is a good thing.
I was a liberal democrat when I registered here and over at tbbs. When you're black you're born a democrat, that's just how it is. You're taught that rich white people, i.e. republicans, hate you and want to keep you poor. I never even met a republican or anyone who ever admitted to being a republican until one of my uncles married a white woman from West Virginia. I was probably 15/16 at the time. That was a big scandal. Everyone wanted to hate her but she's actually a sweetheart. The weekend of their wedding was the first time I remember questioning all those things I was told about racist republicans from parents and teachers because I got to spend a lot of time with her family and they were some of the nicest people I've ever met. Anyway eventually Sandbagger introduced me to Frederic Bastiat over at tbbs and I've been a libertarian ever since.
Why don't you just put her on ignore like you do the right leaning half of the board? Really, I wonder why...
Not all US schools teach/taught a "mangled" version of evolution. For me, all throughout school from elementary to college, it was evolution just as Richard Dawkins explains it. We were only "taught the controversy" in History classes learning about the Scopes "Monkey Trial", where Creationism seemed to us to be just another one of those quaint lapses of judgement our forefathers had as with slavery or WWI.
I try to reason with the unreasonable by saying "Evolution is, yes, absolutely, positively the way things work, but think of it as the way God designed things to work."
That is another thing. Used to not really believe evolution was anything but hocus pocus. Now I pretty much agree with what Forbin says. Basically, I changed from the small town redneck hardcore conservative to a small town redneck libertarian.
You'd think that would work for the creationists, wouldn't you? If God is omnipotent, why can't he tinker with his own designs?
...course, that kills any notion of a loving caring God, because...evolution takes a loooot of friggin' death to get to the current state of things. 99% of everything that ever lived is fucking dead!
It may give the lie to the whole "lilies of the field" argument, or not. If you discard God, you discard anything other than this life. If, OTOH, you posit something more evolved than yourself, you've got things like afterlives and reincarnation to play with.
:headhurts: You could replace "afterlives and reincarnation", with "Voltron lions and the A-Team van", or "a chocolate factory run by hookers", and it means as much. It's a facile answer. You've gotta know that.
