Well, for another thing, God – not being real – doesn’t really say much of anything. I’m confident scripture says something along those lines, or at least a sufficiently energetic person could find a passage that could be interpreted such.
The point being that what a religious argument against abortion and Sarah Turzo’s argument against abortion have in common is reliance on a vaguely-defined and unproven premise. Similarly, an argument that doesn’t invoke God or the importance of human life but instead relies on the premise that invisible Martians hate abortion is also unreliable.
Thing is, abortion access isn’t putting human life (as a concept or in reality) at risk. Human life continues regardless. In fact, for a while there it kinda looked like human life was going to be so successful at spreading that it was going to make human life a lot worse, starting with making many forms of nonhuman life extinct and the subsequent effects thereof. It turned out, though, that human population stabilizes when human women have more economic power as well as the power to choose the timing and number of their human children, and safe abortion is an element in this.
Regardless of what the would-be murderer believes (about religion or anything else), I trust we can agree that unchecked murder for financial reasons is a net negative for society. To find a corresponding negative for safe legal abortion requires (as best I can tell) reliance on far less concrete (that is to say, unproven) premises.
If you’re contemplating asking me to cite that murder for profit is bad for society, don’t bother.
But I’m asking you about a specific person. Our impoverished, godless nephew agrees that murder for financial gain is bad for society as a whole, but correctly perceives that his decision to murder auntie will not markedly affect society as a whole. Even in the unlikely event that he’s caught, his case won’t inspire other murderers – indeed, if anything it may discourage them by emphasizing the inability to truly “get away with it.”
So – should our atheist murderer stay his fateful hand? And why?
I don’t get the point of your question. If he doesn’t stay his hand, we have a logical reason for societal condemnation and punishment. If he does… why do we care about his reasons? Hopefully, an existing societal condemnation of murder for profit will have become ingrained in his sense of personal morality and ethics, but if he’s really just hesitant to kill her because she always wears a Hello Kitty necklace and he’s terrified of cats… so be it.
There’s no corresponding reason (by which I mean something of verifiable consequence) for a societal condemnation of abortion. In fact, the motto you quote (“Because life is all there is and all that matters, and abortion destroys the life of an innocent human being”) is very easily picked apart - if human life is important (indeed the only thing of importance), then we should be aware that regardless of what laws we have, the sun is going to continue working its way through its main sequence and eventually become hot enough to exterminate all life on Earth. If human life is to continue past this point, we’ll need sufficient technology to adapt or leave, and to get this we’ll need scientists and engineers. Women are now entering the fields of science and engineering in large numbers in the western democracies, in part because in these countries women are now free to pursue higher education and delay or forego marriage and child-rearing, i.e. the timing of their reproduction (if any) is under their control. Therefore, in order to increase the odds of long-term human survival, we should not erect barriers to prevent women (or anyone, really) from pursuing higher education that may contribute to that survival.
I’m sure it’s possible to refine that argument, but I’m just speaking off the cuff. For potential well-reasoned anti-abortion arguments, I can imagine someone claiming “legal abortion lowers the GNP and here’s the evidence” or “legal abortion lowers literacy and here’s the evidence” or that legal abortion does something bad, followed by evidence.
“Human life is important, therefore it is important to preserve human life” is just too tautological for me.
If his auntie was residing inside his body, subsisting on his blood, and causing a significant deterioration in his quality of life, and if there were no other way to evict her, then, fuck yeah, he might. Of course, it wouldn’t be “murder” in legal terms. And the money is nice, but for most of us wouldn’t be the largest incentive. Being free of the invasive burden would be.
There is a failure, but it’s yours. You fail to comprehend the purpose of the metaphor.
The murder of auntie is not intended to be analogous to the murder of an unborn child. It’s offered to explore what principle it violates for the atheist nephew.
Then it’s an unrelated issue, and should be opened in a new thread. “Why is murder wrong?”
In an abortion thread, it is either a relevant comparison, or meaningless, in which case it doesn’t belong. You might as well have asked about animal rights, since the fetus is “animal” tissue. If I’m not allowed to kill a cat, why am I allowed to kill a fetus? As a metaphor, it fails (the cat isn’t inside my body.) Thus, there is no point in even raising it as a comparison.
Again you’re focusing on the killing of the aunt as an analogy for the killing of the abortion process, even though I have already explained that this is not the reason for the comparison.
Instead, it’s this statement:
While I grant it’s a hijack from the specific subject of Wisconsin ultrasound laws, Trinopus, the initial foray into irrelevancy to the main topic was not mine. It was Lobohan’s attempt in post #332 to dismiss my arguments against abortion as facile because they supposedly arose from my desire to impose a religious system of laws:
This spawned my rebuttal that pro-life life views are held by a number of diverse religious traditions, and even by secular groups; as proof of the latter I linked to several pro-life atheist resources.
In turn, Bryan Ekers advanced the position that in this case, the pro-life atheists, while not literally advancing a religious belief, were nonetheless motivated by a religious-like belief:
So in an attempt to flesh out when ideals cross the line from being based on a “vaguely-defined and unproven premise” to being a solid basis for a system of ethics, I ask about the atheist who contemplates murder. Clearly he is not going to be stopped by fear of insalubrious consequences to his immortal soul. And of course no one (well… no one here, anyway) would seriously argue that since all atheists are unconstrained by fear of God’s punishment, they are teeming hotbeds of crime harnessed only by the yoke of legal and social reprisal.
To the contrary, we know (again, we here know; I realize the previous sentence would be accepted uncritically by more than a few theists) that atheists are not devoid of a sense of morality. So the point of my question is to explore when the atheist construct of morality crosses over from being based on a “vaguely-defined and unproven premise” to being based on some respectable, defensible position.
That outlines the argument as it’s progressed in this thread. If this is a hijack, at what point did it go off the rails and deserve its own thread?
Doesn’t this line of inquiry ignore the possibility that the respondents feel that, while such “religious like” beliefs are perfectly adequate to base a system of personal ethics on, it fails to provide enough reason to inflict your ethics on others through the system of law?
I have and it didn’t help. Your counter to “people who oppose abortion do so without solid reasons” is apparently “consider a hypothetical person who won’t murder his aunt for a non-solid reason.” It’s like meeting “all swans are white” with “some puppies are also white” and thinking you accomplished something, when a useful counter would be presenting a* black* swan, i.e. a tangible reason abortion should be banned or hampered.
Do you know of any atheist pro-lifers who feel that way because of some kind of provable, measurable evidence? I’m not interested in atheist pro-lifers who simply declare that human life is axiomatically special.
I don’t think we’re confused by your argument - possibly we’re confused as to why you seem to think it’s a good argument.
Good point, Cyros. There’s no reason to object to Sarah Turzo’s beliefs, or those of any pro-life atheist, but rather to any attempt to use their beliefs as basis for law in the absence of supporting evidence.
Of course, even a wholly-vapid magical-thinking utterly-nonsensical belief can indeed get turned into a law - if the majority of a legislature vote for it and the executive signs off on it, in case Bricker felt like stating the obvious again.
But even that concession is useful, because it then leads to a discussion of what DOES provide enough reason to inflict your ethics on others through the system of law.
So to be clear: are you making the concession that the impecunious nephew’s hand can be stayed only by a “religious-like” belief, albeit one that suffices only to inform a system of personal ethics?
Correct – but presumably your argument is that this is an unsatisfactory basis for law – that law should have some well-defined, proven premises on which to rely.
Yes?
I’m trying to determine where you draw the line between premises that are “vaguely-defined and unproven premise” and premises that are well-defined and/or proven.