81–90 of 170 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, argument over I guess. You don't get to play the fallacy card when you start off stating your premises is irrefutable. All you've manage to argue here is "it's murder because I say so."
Then I'll make it really simple for you. Human life begins at conception. Deliberately killing other humans is murder. Killing a human being in the womb is thus murder.
Ah Richard Dawkins... there's no such thing as a soul, but all human life has value, but not until they exit the birth canal. At some point the secular humanists are going to realize that without any metaphysical / religious justification the notions of human equality and their moral and ethical framework become completely arbitrary. The "cut flower thesis" that we're basically just running on steam as we've severed…
Given that the early Ancient Greeks were not Jews or Christians, and that most medieval theology heavily rehashes Plato and Epictetus, I'm not sure why anyone would suggest the Bible, rather than classical Greek thought, is the foundation of the West's beliefs. Furthermore, even if there are no serious defenses of moral realism without a mystical metaphysics, that doesn't entail anything. These values were around in…
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I think the main argument that Dawkins wanted to make is that many pro-choice arguments are completely missing the point and don't engage with the pro-life arguments at all, rather than try to engage with all pro-life arguments, and do a full exploration of them.
> I think the main argument that Dawkins wanted to make is that many pro-choice arguments are completely missing the point and don't engage with the pro-life arguments at all I agree, but I think Dawkins fell prey to the exact same problem. He ignored the religion behind the pro-life movement and tried to break it down into biological terms. Is that really engaging?
And in general, I actually avoid the "soul argument" as well, even when engaging with pro-life people. First, I know several pro-life people who are not religious or even atheists, secondly I have no good arguments to counter a faith-based belief, and thirdly I think that for many religious pro-life people it's not even that important of an argument (for example many – though not all – pro-life advocates will allow room for nuance in cases of medical issues or rape).
The two groups disagree as to when a human life begins.
People who call themselves "pro-life" sincerely believe life begins at the moment of conception. For example, most people in this camp believe the cells at all stages of human embryonic development constitute a human life.[a] Alas, there is a large subgroup of people in this camp whose rationale for these beliefs is religious and absolutist, and therefore non-negotiable.
People who call themselves "pro-choice" have differing views as to when a human life begins. Most people in this camp think that cells at all stages of human embryonic development are just... cells, incapable of suffering because they lack a brain.[a] However, as an embryo gradually starts becoming a fetus, people in this camp often disagree with each other as to when those cells start becoming a human being. And then there's a large subgroup of people in this camp whose rationale is ideological and absolutist, and therefore non-negotiable.
IMHO the religious and ideological people on both sides are unlikely ever to come to agreement.
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[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_embryonic_development#/m...
Not only "They" think it's murder, we as a society tend to think it's murder too. Here's my argument: in most jurisdictions, a killing of a pregnant woman brings harsher sentence than a killing of non-pregnant woman. In some, it just doubles the crime (double homicide, double manslaughter, etc.) Judging from this, we as a society see at least some value in the life of a foetus. The issue is a complicated one. We seem…
To me, the debate seems to have a paradox that can't be resolved using the logic we've inherited from the Enlightenment (mostly). Namely: People have rights to their bodies.
Yes, it's super-duper more complicated than just that, I know. But, to my brain, it seems to boil mostly down to that.
We have to define rights, people, bodies, what 'have' means, etc. Sure, yeah, I know.
But Nature, she don't care about the Enlightenment and all our attempts at reasoning. Nature cares about making babies.
We're mammals. This is how we reproduce, how all mammals do it. We raise our young inside of our bodies until a time comes that they can survive. Then (most) mammals feed our young with our bodies for a while more. Mammals take a long time to get to be totally self-sufficient. We're not fish or crickets. This is the 'tech-debt' that Nature gave us.
If we were dinosaur-people that laid eggs, we would not have these issues between rights and bodies and mammalian reproduction.
We'll see what this debate is like in the future when we have babies born from artificial wombs.
My only issue with the staunch anti-abortion stance is that there have been women who have died because the doctors couldn't decide quickly enough whether an abortion was medically necessary, or outright refused anyway. There have been politicians who have espoused the opinion that ectopic pregnancies also have a "right to life" even though it is physically impossible for them to be viable, and cannot be implanted in…
> It also opens the possibility that women who have a legitimate miscarriage may be scrutinized as if they were criminals, adding to their trauma. That has literally never been a thing considered by anyone outside the pro-abortion circles. Miscarriages are clearly not the intention of anybody. It may be ending a life, but without the intent and without any act of killing it, it definitionally cannot be murder (the de…
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What is the drug designed for and why was it taken? There are drugs designed to cause a miscarriage and commonly called "abortion pills." That would be intentful. But, say, a woman takes ibuprofen for a headache and it happens to have nasty side effects. That would not be intentful. (I don't know if ibuprofen can do this, but feel free to slot in nearly any other drug.)
Ok, let's say a woman takes an abortion pill and then has a miscarriage. How will you determine that she should be prosecuted?
Ah Richard Dawkins... there's no such thing as a soul, but all human life has value, but not until they exit the birth canal. At some point the secular humanists are going to realize that without any metaphysical / religious justification the notions of human equality and their moral and ethical framework become completely arbitrary. The "cut flower thesis" that we're basically just running on steam as we've severed…
The cut flower thesis is hilariously ignorant. The flowers of empiricism have finally grown too widely for the ignorant to stamp them out.
