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| being pro life outside the political arena | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 12 2008, 06:24 AM (4,746 Views) | |
| JBryan | Nov 14 2008, 08:54 AM Post #76 |
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I am the grey one
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I am not going to jump on this merry-go-round. |
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"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it". Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody. Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore. From The Lion in Winter. | |
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| Moonbat | Nov 14 2008, 08:57 AM Post #77 |
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Pisa-Carp
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The merry-go-round of logical consistency is always a hard sell to the children of muddled thinking. They always choose to play on the swings of ideological bias and in the sand-pit of self-deception. |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Larry | Nov 14 2008, 09:22 AM Post #78 |
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
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You're the one swinging, Moonbat. My point makes sense. I asked about people who are here, what if they had been aborted and weren't here. You're asking us to follow a path of logic where people who never existed ... wouldn't be here... or something. who knows what the hell you're driving at. |
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Of the Pokatwat Tribe | |
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| JBryan | Nov 14 2008, 09:34 AM Post #79 |
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I am the grey one
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Let's all give thanks for the people who are here because of abortion. |
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"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it". Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody. Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore. From The Lion in Winter. | |
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| QuirtEvans | Nov 14 2008, 09:43 AM Post #80 |
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I Owe It All To John D'Oh
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You can squeeze a truck through the wishy-washy way you interpret "deliberately". Let's take a real-life example. You learn that bin Laden is holding a meeting in a small village in Afghanistan. There are about 100 villagers there, and 20 different huts. No way of knowing which hut he's in. Moreover, even if you figure out which hut he's in, he's always near some local villagers. There's no way to take him out without killing an innocent civilian (yes, I'm making an assumption that they are innocent ... if it helps, imagine that he keeps children near him at all times as shields). If you take him out, you know, with certainty, that innocents will be killed as well. So, do you take him out? Depends on how many innocents, the likelihood of success, etc. ... but probably yes. To me, that's deliberately killing innocents. You know that innocents will die as a direct result of your actions. It may be justified, but it's deliberate nonetheless. |
| It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010. | |
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| QuirtEvans | Nov 14 2008, 09:45 AM Post #81 |
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I Owe It All To John D'Oh
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Exactly. Mastectomy, as just one example, leaves lasting physical and emotional scars, but it's better than the alternative. |
| It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010. | |
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| QuirtEvans | Nov 14 2008, 09:46 AM Post #82 |
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I Owe It All To John D'Oh
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It's not a certainty, but it's a reasonable probability. Would every family stop having children? No, of course not. Would some? I think that's a fairly safe assumption. It's a lot of work to deal with a Down's syndrome child. |
| It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010. | |
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| M&M's | Nov 14 2008, 09:59 AM Post #83 |
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Fulla-Carp
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Unbelievable
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| My child shows GOOD CHARACTERIZATION in an ongoing game of D&D | |
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| ivorythumper | Nov 14 2008, 10:06 AM Post #84 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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Your attempts to reduce the human at early stages of development to insignificance cannot succeed. All your language of "blind collections of matter" and that only "thinking feeling people-like things" can be of ethical import are based on purely arbitrary categories. People obviously care deeply about getting pregnant and having a newly formed human being in the womb. No one who is pregnant, or the father who impregnates the woman, is devoid of feelings -- they many welcome the baby or they may loath or be fearful or be upset or what ever, but the human experience shows that it would be very untypical to treat the fetus with the emotional valence accorded a brick. No one but the rapist has no consideration for the baby they engender. The fact that the human undergoes stages of development does not make for a different type of thing, let alone a different thing entirely, which is what you are arguing. By your logic, the thing that contributed the sperm to the thing that contributed the egg that resulted in the thing that is now Moonbat cannot be your father (and the other thing cannot be your mother). Both of those things now have different atoms then they did when they contributed the genetic material. It is the same sort of argument you make that says the conceptus is not the same as the embryo as the fetus as the new born as the toddler as the child as the adolescent as the adult as the geriatric. We have one unique discrete and identifiable thing that can be measured from the blastula onward through all stages of development. Any other attempt to categories this for the purpose of deciding its ethical importance is purely arbitrary. Why thinking-feeling? Why not just thinking and allow for infanticide? Why not "generative" and allow pre-adolescents to be killed? It is also wrong minded to attribute this to some sort of religious position, let alone the polemical "religious right". |
| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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| Mark | Nov 14 2008, 10:09 AM Post #85 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I would do the same if the income tax was done away with. |
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___.___ (_]===* o 0 When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells | |
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| ivorythumper | Nov 14 2008, 10:10 AM Post #86 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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What does it explain? It is a graver injustice to deprive someone of life than to abuse them. Both are evil, but at least the victim can go on living and healing from their trauma in the latter two cases. Edited by ivorythumper, Nov 15 2008, 10:20 AM.
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| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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| JBryan | Nov 14 2008, 10:17 AM Post #87 |
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I am the grey one
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The difference is that an abortion means the certainty of someone not being born. The concept of people being born because of abortion is highly speculative bordering on the absurd. |
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"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it". Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody. Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore. From The Lion in Winter. | |
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| ivorythumper | Nov 14 2008, 10:32 AM Post #88 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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Kathy: You are INSANE if you think I am saying that child abuse is preferable to abortion-- only in the sense that it is preferable to lose a finger than an arm. Clearly both are terrible losses. Your own straight-jacketed thinking and fatuous polemics shows more why there can be no nuance in the thinking of the hard line proborts-- or anyone who thinks there are acceptable circumstances to intentionally kill innocent human beings. You pretend to abhor something as egregious as the intentional death of innocents, yet attack those who would seek to end that? Color me incredulous that your posturing is anything more than political rhetoric. You are also wrong that pro lifers are rigid in this. I do not think that women who undergo abortions should be criminalized, but the doctors who murder should be considered criminals and prosecuted. |
| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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| ivorythumper | Nov 14 2008, 11:04 AM Post #89 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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Where have I ever said such an action would be justified? And what do you mean by attack? Carpet bombing? Or a special forces strike team that can control events on the ground? You should know what "deliberate" or "intentional" means. There is nothing wishy washy about it. There is a moral difference between intending to do something and intending to not do something. Doing a bad act without intention, or purporting to not care, or being careless, does not necessarily exculpate. Shooting a gun randomly into a dense forest does not excuse someone morally if they inadvertently kill a person. |
| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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| ivorythumper | Nov 14 2008, 11:06 AM Post #90 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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You are both taking this conversation so far afield that it is not even remotely germane.
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| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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| kathyk | Nov 14 2008, 11:16 AM Post #91 |
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Pisa-Carp
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Here's what you said:
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| Blogging in Palestine: http://kksjournal.com/ | |
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| kathyk | Nov 14 2008, 11:20 AM Post #92 |
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Pisa-Carp
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So in IT's thinking, ending this life is much worse than treating a child like this: |
| Blogging in Palestine: http://kksjournal.com/ | |
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| kathyk | Nov 14 2008, 11:25 AM Post #93 |
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Pisa-Carp
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*You* are the one who argued that it's patently inconsistent for pro-choicers to acknowledge that abortion is a horrible option. These examples merely show the fallacy of that logic. To spell it out for you: Sometimes one must make the choice of the lesser of two evils. To take it a step further, it should not be your decision to make for another woman except perhaps your for your own wife. |
| Blogging in Palestine: http://kksjournal.com/ | |
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| QuirtEvans | Nov 14 2008, 11:28 AM Post #94 |
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I Owe It All To John D'Oh
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Highly speculative bordering on the absurd? There you go again. I think it's almost a rock-solid certainty that some people aren't born as a result of abortion, and that your hyerbolic overreaction proves that you know it, but just don't want to admit it. |
| It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010. | |
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| Moonbat | Nov 14 2008, 11:30 AM Post #95 |
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Pisa-Carp
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What is significant or insignificant is up to us. And it's not that people can't feel that blind collections of matter are of ethical import, clearly people claim exactly that (statutes, clothing, holy books, etc. etc.). There are lots of different people with different ethical values both in the past and today so any statment about what can in principle find of ethical importance would have to be massively broad. It's just that many of these ethical values are based on explicit or implicit ideas that can be shown to be contradictory, meaningless or false. As a result if people are honest with themselves, are aware of what has been discovered about the reality we find ourselves and actually think through the ideas in detail then I think most will discover a dawning realisation that ultimately when it comes to questions of what they consider right and wrong they care about thinking feeling things - that it is minds that are of central importance to them. For example the pro-life arguments invariably centre on the notion of a "human being" which is claimed to be the central point of people's ethical concerns but this doesn't work for the people who say it for it is trivial to come up with thought experiments that demonstrate quite clearly that the species category has nothing at all to do with these people's ethical concerns (e.g. intelligent aliens). The only answer to this is to invoke philosophical notions of "being" and "qualities" being in "potentia" etc. which collide head on with evidence based scientific understanding of the world.
Oh i certainly agree that people have an emotional attachment to their future child, and i don't doubt that a miscarriage can be devastating but i don't think that doesn't alters what i've said: People can have emotional attachments to all kinds of paraphernalia from rings to cars to walking sticks. Indeed in terms of the kind of personifying emotional connection that people might have with an embryo or a foetus there are very nice psychology experiments that show people have emotional reactions to a robotic face. But i don't think many people consider simply being able to incites an emotional response as a basis for their ethical ideas. (Though they may derive an attitude towards things that generate an emotional response in others as a result of caring about other people).
This brings me back to my earlier point about ethical ideas being eliminated by recognising simple falsehoods that are implict in those ideas. The statements you make that place emphasis on "types of being" are confusions that do not survive critical analysis. We are free to label objects as we see fit, I can label the entire universe minus my speakers an "X" and the speakers a "Y", i can split reality up into as many or as few chunks as i wish using any logically possible criteria. I can claim any two distinguishable phenomena are "different kind of things" by claiming one is an "X" and the other is a "Y" under some classification scheme. For example we can divide the world up as you do and say look both an fertilised egg and a adult fall into my "human being category" but one can just as easily divide the world up by those systems that contain a functioning nervous system which means the two systems specified fall into different categories. I can call my father, "my father" all the way through the evolution of his life because how we label stuff is up to us. It's certainly very intuitive to do so and i think it's fairly clear we're wired up to think that way. However it certainly is true to say that the atoms are different and the pattern of atoms are different, the structure is different so i think one can claim that it would perhaps make more sense to think of a 'person' as a continuous evolution of 'people' stretched over a life time.
Well you can classify things as you like them, you call the reality you have specified as "conceptus", "fetus", "embryo" etc. as X and hence label them the same thing - that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that but you could also classify reality in different ways e.g. we could easily add in the collection of sperm at the point of ejaculation and the egg - lets call it a "spetus" to the classification and call that the "the same thing too if you so desired. You could even use a completely random classification scheme if you so desired - though it would incredibly unintuitive and difficult for us to use. All classifications are "arbitrary" in the sense that none are more true than the others, any answer that can be deduced from one set of classifications can be deduced from other sets of classifications that span the same phenomena as the first. We find some much more intuitive, some are certainly more useful in various scenarios to others (and useful classifications can be deeply unintuitive), but none are more true than others. The central error you make in your ethical debates on this topic (and some others) is the implicit claim that one particular classification scheme is somehow more physically real, more true (not simply more intuitive or more useful in certain scenarios) than the others.
Well because i feel empathy for thinking-feeling things, I see that they feel and are minds like I am. The fact that I have the faculty of empathy implicitly connects me to thinking-feeling things in a way that it doesn't to bricks that's why I care about them. Ultimately I think that the empathy imperative is the only subset of people's core ethical drives that survives understanding ourselves and the universe around us. |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| ivorythumper | Nov 14 2008, 11:32 AM Post #96 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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Since you want to play the graphics game, http://rottenamerica.net/images/Abortion/abortion06.jpg Yes, Kathy it is worse to kill someone than to beat them up. Both are terrible, but one is worse than the other. Our legal system recognizes the same principle. You should have learned that in law school. (images changed to links - Riley) Edited by Riley, Nov 15 2008, 04:47 PM.
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| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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| M&M's | Nov 14 2008, 11:35 AM Post #97 |
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Fulla-Carp
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Ok guys. Could you delete the pics. You can have a conversation with out being nasty |
| My child shows GOOD CHARACTERIZATION in an ongoing game of D&D | |
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| ivorythumper | Nov 14 2008, 11:38 AM Post #98 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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I am not interested in making a decision for the woman. I am interested in making a decision for the voiceless and defenseless human being in the womb. I am against intentionally killing innocent people and I think that the government has an obligation to protect innocent human beings. You apparently think that as long as the human being is in a particular place (the womb) that they are outside sphere of the moral/ethical/legal consideration. That is an absurd point of view -- that morality can change due to location based on common consent. |
| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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| M&M's | Nov 14 2008, 11:40 AM Post #99 |
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Fulla-Carp
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DELETE THE PICTURES!!!!! |
| My child shows GOOD CHARACTERIZATION in an ongoing game of D&D | |
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| ivorythumper | Nov 14 2008, 11:40 AM Post #100 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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No M&M, I am not going to delete it unless Kathy deletes hers. She tries to argue emotionally that an abused child is worse than a dead fetus? I will show her the graphic impact of her views. |
| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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