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They Think It's Murder

richarddawkins.com

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Re: They Think It's Murder

#141

Post by alexvoda »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #21
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #2

In religions that believe in hell based on life choices, the ultimate smart move would be all fetuses aborted. The chance of heaven is 100% that way. What chance of heaven do we get if we are actually born? Maybe 10% at most? Billions are being condemned to eternal damnation if the fetuses are allowed to be born and live a life for at most about 100 years. That seems incredibly selfish and silly and short-sighted. We…

But in religions that believe in original sin and potentially heaven with life choices as well as conception being the moment of a soul's existence? Because that's the one we're actually dealing with.

Some branches of Christianity argue about this based on baptism or lack of it along the lines of "an unbaptised soul can not go to heaven".

This raises the question, instead of performing baptism soon after birth (and therefore disregarding the child's choice, because of course it wants to be baptized) why not perform baptism immediately after conception?

Also let us remember that the description of heaven resembles the description of a Borg cube. Do we really want to send our children to become part of the Borg?

Re: They Think It's Murder

#142

Post by alexvoda »

9991 wrote: post #36
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary property of a soul is its soulfulness. An egg split into twins because it had too much soulfulness for one person.

By that logic, chimeras and gingers have too little soulfulness?

Is the measurement unit for that metric or otherwise?

Re: They Think It's Murder

#143

Post by alexvoda »

Ekaros wrote: post #60
Jfjfnkdjdj wrote: post #8

Science thinks life begins at fertilization too. https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.ht...

Shouldn't we consider at least sperm to be alive? At least it can move semi-autonomously. Which to me kinda look like being alive. By at least some level of definition of life. Thus life exist before fertilization.

If movement is considered a criterion, do we consider a completely paralyzed person to be not-alive? Do we consider filter feeding animals like sponges to be not-alive? Do we consider plants to be not-alive unless they are carnivorous and capable of movement?

What I am trying to highlight is that life is very broad and it is fuzzily defined.

Both sperm (male gametes) and eggs (female gametes) are alive. Thinking one is more alive than the other due to it's ability to move may or may not reveal a bias you may or may not hold.

The same bias people who use agriculture (planting seed) as an analogy or euphemism for human reproduction may hold.

Re: They Think It's Murder

#144

Post by p1mrx »

alexvoda wrote: post #134
maratc wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also shows how women at that time were treated as "glorified property": > If that woman die, his daughter shall be killed. You damaged my property — your property will be equally damaged. Justice! Women wouldn't be treated as equal to men for another 3,500 years or so.

Also, does that mean that according to the Code of Hammurabi, a man without any daughter, can kill as many free women as he pleases without any consequence?

  283. If a man be an insufferable pedant, he shall be put to death.

Re: They Think It's Murder

#145

Post by alexvoda »

p1mrx wrote: post #144
alexvoda wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, does that mean that according to the Code of Hammurabi, a man without any daughter, can kill as many free women as he pleases without any consequence?

283. If a man be an insufferable pedant, he shall be put to death.

Well played

Re: They Think It's Murder

#146

Post by areyousure »

Calavar wrote: post #96
chungy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

They were talking about being scrutinized as a criminal. You seem to be talking about being tried as a criminal under the law, which is a very different thing. People with miscarriages are already scrutinized as potential criminals. Some examples: * Several pharmacies in Texas refused to fill misoprostol prescriptions because they weren't sure whethet it was being prescribed for a legal abortion or an illegal one. Yo…

In case anyone is curious, pharmacies routinely refuse to fill opiate prescriptions: https://www.practicalpainmanagement.com/resources/ethics/whe...

Walmart is proud that their pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions: https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/12/22/a-misguide...

> Walmart has blocked thousands of questionable doctors from having their opioid prescriptions filled by any of our pharmacists

Re: They Think It's Murder

#147

Post by lamontcg »

maratc wrote: post #108
Balgair wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to wade in on this against my better interests. 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. Sur…

> I'm going to wade in I'm going to roe out then. (I'll see myself out.)

Can we keep the reddit pun threads out of an issue which is going to result in the deaths of thousands of young women?

Re: They Think It's Murder

#148

Post by [deleted] »

maratc wrote: post #129
IncRnd wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today I learned that there are actually six provisions in the Code of Hammurabi for that, covering different effects to the mother and (according that system) standing of the mother! 209. If a man has struck a free woman with child, and has caused her to miscarry, he shall pay ten shekels for her miscarriage. 210. If that woman die, his daughter shall be killed. 211. If by a blow he has caused a plebian's daughter to…

This also shows how women at that time were treated as "glorified property": > If that woman die, his daughter shall be killed. You damaged my property — your property will be equally damaged. Justice! Women wouldn't be treated as equal to men for another 3,500 years or so.

[deleted]

Re: They Think It's Murder

#149

Post by Balgair »

alexvoda wrote: post #137
AstralStorm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the same people use the same argument against use of synthetic wombs for humans. At some point, when they're fully developed to sustain animals, we'll have to move on to human experimentation there.

> Unfortunately the same people use the same argument against use of synthetic wombs for humans. Care to expand on this? I am not aware of any opinion on this other than general undefined revulsion. Has anyone articulated an actual argument?

I'm not very well studied in this area, so bear with.

I'd say it would be a good idea for people with certain diseases, those with high risks of miscarriage, in high risk professions or environments, or other situations where the development of the baby would be hindered or impacted. The only environment I can think of is somewhere that is not Earth though.

In the somewhat far future, I could see it being routine. You'd all but stop miscarriages, accidents, and have a much greater window into development and how to correct things along the way. That said, you'd strip women of an incredible and deeply human/mammalian (?) experience. Also, there's no telling that it would ever actually work. I imagine something so central to species survival has a lot of things that may make artificial wombs functionally impossible.

Re: They Think It's Murder

#150

Post by kcplate »

sofixa wrote: post #126
kcplate wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is one of the new “talking point” but it literally assumes that entire medical teams are going to sit on their hands all across the country and let women die. Let me make my prediction right now that this will never happen.

It's already happened in Poland in basically the same situation (a miscarrying woman was left to die from sepsis because the doctors didn't want to risk being accused of aborting). Many doctors would prefer to not go to jail, even if it means risking a woman's life.

Poland is not the US.
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