What if those members are children?
:eek: Wow, that’s a new one.
It just gets better.
Seriously, this guy is the best one yet. Keep the one liners coming.
Hee.
But a sperm and an egg are themselves “life in potentia”. What’s the difference? I imagine that your response will be that we need to do something for that egg and sperm to eventually create a baby, whilst we can just leave the fertilised egg or fetus and it will eventually become one. But I would argue that merely because the aid given is automatic (as with the pregnant woman) that doesn’t make any difference.
The point, at least for me, is that if you have to say “it will be alive soon” or “it will be x soon” or whatever your opinion of abortions hangs on, you recognise that it is not that yet. And if it isn’t that, that it may become that in time does not make it necessarily worth protecting yet (at least on the grounds that x is present).
Intellect isn’t a part of that computer? I would argue that instinct and morals are too, but really, intellect isn’t?
My morals and instincts are different from yours. I disagree that anyone “with any sense” is with you on your position on partial-birth abortion, and I suspect that, like your thread on Bibilical prophecies, you may not actually have read that which you’re certain about.
As for your quote from Pato Benton; I honestly don’t know. The problem is that one person’s religious freedom can be very different from someone else’s. One person’s idea of prejudice can be very different from someone else’s. Look at school prayer; people on both sides of that argument have cited religious free dom as being behind them.
Unbelieveable. Murder for religion is ok, but abortion is wrong. Why don’t we just change the meaning of abortion to religious sacrifice then. Kinda like how Abraham was supposed to kill his son Issac.
When those building blocks are merely a multicellular blob, the ethical implications are the same as destroying any other multicellular blob. Likewise when the developing fetus has the brain the size of a fish, the ethical implications are the same as killing a fish.
(which reminds me, whenever I see the bumper sticker that says “abortion stops a beating heart.” I want to cross out “abortion” and replace it with “fishing.”)
Our values come to us through our upbringing, our culture, an innate tendency to cooperate, and our ability to ponder our existence and our common circumstance. Churches then appropriate what is already there, adding some rules about church attendance and tithing.
I don’t think it’s any of your (or anyone else’s) business whether a woman has an abortion. It doesn’t concern you. And though this may sound contradictory to my first statement, I do agree with you that murdering a pregnant woman should illicit a double murder charge.
- Honesty
I have an issue with this one. There’s nothing special about being pushed through a vagina that suddenly triggers awareness and experience. These things develop gradually, just like every other part of us. A baby isn’t a stupid lump of flesh one day, and a learning growing human the next.
You can’t draw a line and say “once a fetus crosses here, it’s experiencing reality, thinking, and feeling” based on any objective standard. Where we draw that line is arbitrary, and has more to do with our personal philosophy than science.
I’ve experienced the feeling of a fetus reacting as if it could experience reality, think and feel, so I personally can’t draw the humanity line at “birth”. One example is that before my son was born, he would turn in the womb to “face” the direction my voice came from when I talked to him. Music calmed him down when he was squirming uncomfortably. If you pushed against one side of my wife’s tummy, he’d push back at the same spot.
Every human being is offered punishment for doing wrong and reward for doing good. It’s not limited to religion. I’m not calling you a bad person and implying that the only reason you aren’t murdering people is because you’re afraid of jail, so you shouldn’t use this argument against the religious and their concept of Hell. From what I see, most religious people genuinely love their god-concept, and want to please him.
That’s why I oppose third trimesters abortions, except to save the life of the mother. The baby has developed to a point that it’s experiencing what’s going on. You have to draw a line for everything, and I’m okay with the line being there.
I’m not afraid of jail. If I were to kill people who I didn’t know, the chances I would get caught are very small. I don’t do it because I think it’s wrong.
>You can argue for argument’s sake, but you’d be wrong.
Wow! What a dick you are! For someone whose posting title includes “morality” and “welcome”, you have done an amazing job of alienating me. Did you mean to?
Which means you do hold prejudice, btw.
An opinion, and you are welcome to it.
That, AFAIK, is factually incorrect.
Truth is very important to me. That’s why I don’t believe in any religion.
That’s your view. If you are female, no one should force you to have an abortion - even as a religious sacrifice. However, while I hope my daughters will never be in the position to need one, if they do you can butt the fuck out.
You are absolutely correct, many people can remember when they were in the womb. Just put “womb memories” into Gooogle and start reading.
When fundamentalism and libertarianism collide!
So, you believe that abortion is murder, right? Does that mean that you would be in favor of imposing the death penalty on women who have abortions? If not, why not?
He does. The great majority of believers hate atheists.
Nonsense. Religion corrodes compassion, just as it corrodes everything else of value. It’s easy to ignore other’s suffering and death when you can say it’s all God’s Will, or that they will be rewarded in the afterlife.
Love for God tends to amount to hatred or indifference towards everyone and everything else.
Barbaric - and proof of what I just said about religion and it’s effects on compassion, and goodness in general.
Just like the folks who flew planes into the WTC, right ? The willingness to sacrifice one’s life for God produces that sort of behavior.
And the wise know that there is no evidence for God, that what evidence there is militates against his existance, and that there’s no reason to believe in him. You’d be better off believing in unicorns or goblins.
It depends of the mental sophistication of the animal. Slugs < Lizards < mice < dogs < apes, morally speaking.
Nothing, really, as far as morality goes. Life began billions of years ago, not in anyone’s womb, or testicles for that matter. And every cell in our body is just as alive as that tiny blob of a fetus; if killing ten cells is murder, then it’s murder if I scratch myself.
I think that it’s true some places; I do know that the anti-abortionists push for it. Just another attempt to wedge the idea that killing a fetus is murder into the law. An attempt to kill abortion rights with the death of a thousand cuts.
Others have responded to most of your points, but I did want to ask about this one. This attitude could be called “honorable” or many other things, but I can’t think of how it’s wise. Valuing honor and reputation more than your own life, when they’re of no value to you after you’re dead, is in a lot of ways a dumb move. And I’m not sure how it squares with your religious views.
Living means you get to have kids who’ll gain honour of their own, and you’ll be able to teach them about honour in turn.
I suspect that the wise probably don’t sum up a world of that is not clear-cut in a fixed standard. But it’s only a guess.
I’m so in.
The Forum for personal insults is The BBQ Pit.
Do not repeat this in this Forum.
[ /Moderating ]
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
He does. The great majority of believers hate atheists.
I am a believer, infact I am a youth pastor. I understand where this comment comes form, I think, and it hurts me to see and hear it said so often. I think, often times when someone who is a christian tries to share their faith with a non believer that it often results in a debate/argument. Sometimes, it is the christians fault because we can be too harsh in the way we whitness to people. Othertimes it is the non believers fault because they dont want to hear what they precieve to be a bunch of “crap”. Because both people feel pationalty about their beliefs, feelings hang in the ballance when these arguments get started and often result in someone being hurt. At my church, we love everyone, we may not agree with your life style but non the less we love everyone . We believe that if you truly submit to the Lord that He will transform you into the likeness of Christ more and more every day. I dont think it is that Believers hate athiests I think it is that we often times done know how to relate to them and talk to them. It is not aginst the flesh that we ballte, it is aginst the prince of the power of the air. Its saten not people.
The procedure you’re referring to, intact dilation and extraction (so-called “partial-birth” abortions) is rarely performed in the third trimester. I know there is a great great deal of ignorance about this, but the procedure is almost always performed in the 2nd trimester, not the third. Despite the pamphlets and the hysterical propaganda you’ve no doubt been exposed to, the notion that “partial-birth” abortions (or any abortions at all) are performed on healthy, full term babies is a complete canard. Only a tiny fraction of 1% of all abortions are performed in the third trimester and when it does happen, it’s only for compelling medical reasons (often after the fetus is already dead). Purely elective 3rd trimester abortions are already illegal in most states.
Contrary to pro-life propaganda, “partial-birth” abortion is not synonomous with 3rd term abortion (although pro-lifers love to blur the distinction by using the medically meaningless phrase, “late-term abortion” to refer to both 2nd and trimester abortions as a deliberate tactic to create a perception that the procedure is commonly being used in the 3rd trimester). Not only that, but IDX is not even the only method of performing a 2nd term abortion. It’s just the safest. Why do you think that one particular method of abortion (which is safer for the patient) is any more “immoral” than any other method of abortion?