Fault me for being insular, but Muslims have done more damage inside US borders than Christians in recent history. Even ignoring that, attach some numbers to your "third world african fucks" in comparison to violent fundamentalist Muslims throughout the world. I brand them as "a la carte" followers, mostly harmless but not quite benign.
So, you are comfortable with me, from now on, treating you as someone who treats all 2 billions muslims in the world as fanatics who want to kill you?
If it weren't for mass media and stronger desire to look "good" in the eyes of the general public, most Christians would feel the same because that's the same thing the Bible says.
OK. Then do both if you think it's needed but the format of the rep comment is such that you didn't come across very clearly.
Nice try. No, actually it wasn't. Perhaps those with the most flexible views on abortion (eg no abortion after a latish date in pregnancy) might be able to claim this but certainly not Catholics or anyone with a 'no aborting a fertislised embryo' argument. Because a fertislised embryo is a not a baby and it is not a human being. I have seen NO-ONE challenging very early abortion or the morning after pill except on religious grounds (I'm sure someone can find an example but the point is that the vast majority of opposition comes from religion). Now, clearly being motivated by the desire to save a life is at least more altruistic than wanting to rape your wife (agree?) but the principle of wanting to legislate from your religious belief is the same. Shall we do euthanasia as well?
Talk slowly for me, Capt. How exactly do you know or have the gall what I wanted the thread to be about? The story is about sharia, there is a wider point about religion enshrined in law.
True. Ever see the show Pawn Stars? In this episode a customer sells a signed letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to a Reverend(?) in hopes he'd support, and subsequently the congregation would support his new program, Social Security. Guess it was one of many FDR sent to churches around the country. Can you imagine how outraged some folks would be if a sitting US president did that today, writing church leaders hoping they'll campaign for his legislation from the pulpit?
Are you seriously stating that anyone opposed to abortion after fertilization is doing so on religious grounds? I'm sure that Paladin, despite his atheism, will be very surprised to discover that his position on abortion stems from his belief in God. Perhaps you can explain this to him. This is an unprovable philosophic assumption. You are simply asserting your faith-based belief here, exactly the way religious zealots do. Then you haven't been paying attention. Again, explain that to Paladin, who will be amused to find that his devout atheism is a religion to you. All people vote, campaign and argue on the basis of their beliefs, including you. Why should "religious" beliefs be singled out as off limits? Did the huge number of devout Christians who fought against the slave trade err in doing so? Would you prefer to reinstate the slave trade because the belief of many of those fighting against it was rooted in their religiously-affected care for others? What I'm seeing from you here is almost exact the same thing as the sharia mentality: 1) "My beliefs are superior to yours, so I have the right to have society run according to my beliefs, while your inferior beliefs should be kept very private or even outlawed." 2) "I don't have to give any objective or scientific basis for my beliefs, it is enough that I state them dogmatically. The very fact that they are my beliefs shows them to be superior to your beliefs." I do believe you are as intolerant and as dogmatic as the worst kind of religious zealots here. Like them, it never even occurs to you to wonder if your beliefs are actually so much better than theirs that you have a right to have them encoded as law, while they don't. You are as blindly convinced that your postion alone is Truth as any Imam or Catholic priest could ever be.
Wow, I didn't know what Paladin thinks! I seriously think only someone with a religious angle has any defensible basis for their views. And that's only defensible in the sense that attacking a faith-based argument stalls after the first salvo. No it isn't. Is it a baby? No. Is it a human being. Not if you define a human being and then discover that the embryo lacks those identifiable things - like a nervous system etc. Ridiculous. Just because a religiously motivated view dovetails with a wider moral viewpoint doesn't mean I would disagree with it. And morality does not require religion. People can campaign on whatever they want but I'm talking abotu views being enshrined in law. And I find it hard to ignore than most religious views points are trying to RESTRICT what people can do, so what side of the following arguments do the 'religiously-motivated' find themselves on? Stem cell research? Against that. Gay marriage? Against that. Abortion? Against that. Euthanasia? Against that. No. My views are based on an objective assessment of the morality of an issue or, in the case of things related to science, observable and testable evidence. What they are not based on are the words in an ancient book or the voices in my head. I'll need an example apart from your failed embryo argument above. Very wrong.
You are entitled to your opinion, but you are wrong. It is in fact much easier to build a rational argument for seriously limiting abortion on considerations that have nothing to do with religion that to do so on the basis of religious considerations. And that's only defensible in the sense that attacking a faith-based argument stalls after the first salvo. You are demonstrating my point here very well. You can "prove" that an embryo is not a human being only by resorting to the petitio principii fallacy: If you start with the definition you want to prove, you can show that that definition implies what you wanted it to prove. But even a first-year logic student knows that you can't actually prove anything with petitio principii. Thus, you are admitting (as I said) that your dogmatic assertion is neither logical nor scientific. It is faith-based, exactly like sharia law. Exactly. So your "all oppostion to abortion is faith-based and thus invalid" strawman is demolished, by your own statement. You are still being dogmatic, wanting to use your unprovable and non-scientific philosophical beliegs as a basis for society, and pretending that though they are not demonstrable, they are superior to the beliefs of others. That is exactly what the religious zealots you denounce do, and you are too dogmatic in your conviction that your own beliefs are superior to see it.
PGT do you really want to argue (again) when life begins? I suspect you know, regardless of belief, that it's an unwinnable argument. Claiming some abortion opinions are exclusive to a particular religion is only so much more silliness.
It is entirely reasonable to decide to define 'humanity' in a particular way and then explore whether those conditions are met by, for example, an embryo. And funnily enough medical professionals have been concerned with just such views for years. Whether we are talking about absolute proof is neither here nor there, frankly. And isn't what I said.
It might be 'unwinnable' if those you are discussing it with are going to start by saying you can never reach an acceptable conclusion. I don't need the logical concept of absolute proof. I'm happy with the pretty cast iron variety that is reachable.
Actually, there is no doubt about when life begins: It begins at fertilization. The big question is about when that living embryo/fetus/baby becomes a human being. And that is the unprovable philosophic assumption that everyone introduces into the argument, because there is no definition of "humanity" that is not the result of the use of that very definition of "humanity" in order to "prove" it. That is why all such arguments must rely on the petitio principii fallacy, and why none of them are or can be based on logic. (It was that point exactly that made the slavery debate so difficult: No one could prove their own position about whether blacks were or were not human beings, because "human" was defined differently, on a priori philosophical grounds, by the various people involved in the debate.) So it is ridiculous to condemn one position for being faith-based, when all positions are necessarily faith-based.
Okay Slick, I'll say it slow for you. If you write a post based on a something that is specific to one religion and then arbitrarily without cause or evidence broaden it to include all religions, it's a mistake or you're either an idiot or stupid. Which is it?
Actually, he does have a cause: his own prejudices against religious beliefs. He holds it as an article of faith (and I use that term very deliberately, without the slightest irony involved) that his own beliefs are superior to the beliefs of those who don't share them. Just like those who want to apply sharia law...
Here's very specifically what I hold to be true. That something like evolution is BETTER than intelligent design, that any of the existing theories about the big bang or otherwise are better than God-driven creation, that medical views on when a human being is a human being are better than the views of someone who believes in the eternal human soul, etc etc etc. And it is nothing but pathetic to compare that to following something like sharia law dictated by a hideously out-of-date, pre-dark ages point of view derived from a supreme being.
Are the sperm cell and the ovum less alive than their union? As you said, this is not the question to ask when debating abortion (which I don't intend to do), I just don't get the distinguished status assigned to that particular moment in time.
That's a strawman argument. Science cannot explain in any scientific way how life began. They can propose theories (faith based ideas, just not called faith) but they cannot scientifically demonstrate any method by which life can start from non-life. They cannot explain how the matter for the Big Bang came into being. They take on faith that it did. I am not saying they are wrong, but scientific theories of life and the universe are as much faith based as religion is. As for human life, ask 4 doctors and get 5 opinions. People's ideas of when life begins are self-serving. While it would be hard pressed to assert that a fertilized ova is the same level as a born human clearly once the fertilization happens there is life and a new entity that is the sum of it's parts. You decide when to call it a life based on your desire to support abortion, nothing more.
I believe Asyncritus was saying that human life begins at fertilization. Obviously not all "life" is worthy of the kind of consideration we're talking about here or we wouldn't mow our grass, wash our hands, etc. If I'm missing your point and/or jumping the gun then forgive me.
If you define life as something that is growing your argument falls apart. A sperm and ova are static, whereas the fertilized union is growing and becoming something more all the time. Growing is the basic definition of life. Even a plant is said to be alive while it is growing, but dead when it is not.
They are not mutually contradictory. Physical evolution seems to be fairly well established science, but its epistemological limitations constitute a very serious flaw as far as explaining the human mind. Again, they are not mutually contradictory. In fact, the big bang theory is a pretty good scientific explanation of what Genesis presents in a somewhat more poetic form. And again, the physical evolution of the universe has serious epistemological limitations as far as explaining the human mind. As far as I can see, the question of an eternal soul is pretty much irrelevant to the abortion debate, because there are very contradictory opinions among theologians concerning the origin of the soul. Thus, any attempt to pretend that all opposition to abortion has to do with the existance or lack thereof of the "soul" is off topic. As for "medical views" on when a human being is a human being: Which medical views? Those who argue that a fertilized egg is human because from that point on it is a living (though far from fully grown) organism with human DNA? There are a very large number of people in the medical field who hold very clearly to that opinion. Or are the only "medical" opinions that are valid those that happen to be in agreement with your own? Call it pathetic, but you are still advancing your own opinions, without scientific proof, and pretending that they are necessarily superior to others and therefore should be the basis for society, which is exactly what theologians in almost all religions tend to do. Stating your opinions as facts and wanting to use them as the basis for a life-and-death decision concerning (what could be, if your unprovable opinions are wrong) millions of people is pretty much what religions have always done. As for the temporal parochialism of condemning a teaching simply because it is old, I have never understood that. Julius Ceasar's de Bello Gallico is "pre-dark ages" too. Does that have any bearing on whether or not it is true? If old writings stand up to rigorous scrutiny, then they are valid despite their age. If they do not, then what makes them fallacious is their failure to stand up to rigorous scrutiny, not their age. Either way, the "pre-dark ages" complaint is simply a pathetic attempt to introduce an emotional and extraneous element to a discussion where it has no place. My whole point is that if you want to condemn the thinking of religious people, you better have a more rigorous epistemology than they do in order to demonstrate the failings of that thinking without simply advancing your own opinions dogmatically. If you use the same epistemology as that which formed religious opinions, you lose all credibility. Unfortunately, most of those who proclaim the most arrogantly that they are right and those who disagree with them are wrong could not teach a course on epistemology if their life depended on it...
I think he said explicitly that there is no consensus as to when it can be considered human, but that it is clear when it can be considered life. Well, I've never heard "it grows" as a scientifc definition of life. I don't grow anymore (I'm quite happy being 6 feet tall, so no loss), yet I'm pretty much alive. If you want to change the definition to "some parts grow", like hair that grows, eventually falls off (unless we cut it first, of course) and is replaced by new hair, then you're already pretty close to what is in fact the most common definition of life: it has a metabolism. That, however, is true for living cells as well: they constantly exchange material with their environment, transform it, rebuild parts of themselves etc. This is just as true for the sperm and ovum before fertilization as it is for the zygote. As I said, this is really not the question to ask, because pretty much everyone will agree that we don't value life as such (no one talks about the genocide committed against bacteria), but only certain forms of it. I just wanted to 1) be nitpicky 2) point out that I don't understand why the moment of conception should be singled out per se (I know, Async has not done this, but it often happens in such debates)
1) Most of the common definitions of life (able to ingest energy in order to sustain their existence) do not apply to the sperm and egg cells. There is room for debate on this point, but the difference between them and the cells that make up organisms is fairly objective. 2) In any case, they could not constitute human life, since they do not contain human DNA. (They each contain only half the code.) So it really isn't that hard to figure out why the union of the two constitutes an important point in the development of life.
It's not merely reasonable "to decide to define 'humanity' in a particular way and then explore whether those conditions are met by, for example, an embryo;" it's absolutely necessary to do so if one is to have some credible nonreligious explanation of why one believes abortion to be wrong. Taking human life is inherently serious business that should be strictly regulated by the state because things like intelligence, sentience, the ability to form complex relationships, the ability to participate in society as an individual member thereof, and free will matter. Human cells in a petri dish, cancerous tumor, blastocyte, or fetus don't exhibit, either individually or in concert, any of the properties that make human life meaningfully different from any other life. Without addressing the question of why taking human life is wrong, saying that abortion is wrong because it involves taking a human life is no logically different than saying abortion is wrong because god said so. It is a fundamentally religious argument, even if it doesn't invoke a soul or a god. It is an argument that demands fuzzy or totally opaque understanding of what it means to be human and why being human matters, no different than arguments that justify slavery, sexism, and all kinds of other persecutions that have plagued mankind forever.
Now that statement is a lot more modest than "there is no doubt about when life begins", and I actually agree with it.
