No no. The fact is as follows: that religious people oppose abortion is no reason to outlaw it. Arguments that hang on the existence of a deity have no merit.
You don’t have to be religious to believe abortion is murder. Why religious people commonly hold that life begins at conception I have no idea, but it’s not an illogical position. It’s just arbitrary- as any demarcation of where life begins is.
No, one doesn’t have to be religious to believe such. Nevertheless, such arguments often are based on religious beliefs and I want no part of it. I won’t try to convince people making these arguments otherwise, they can believe what they like. But I won’t accept religious arguments for making something illegal.
You missed my point. They’re explicitly not based on religious beliefs. They simply happen to be common to religious people. So is the idea that charity is good, but that doesn’t mean charity is a religious idea.
I don’t see it as being coincidental at all. Religious people don’t make the argument that abortion violates certain statutes concerning murder, they talk about God’s Will and souls and stuff.
Anyway, you’re free to disagree and I won’t try harder to change your mind, I was just clarifying which fact it was to which I referred. There seemed to be some confusion as to who was calling abortion murder, and I was clearing it up.
Only the ones that matter. They understand that, too.
The UK has its problems:
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6069260
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/more-creationist-schools-revealed-654296.html
That’s of course just a sampling; you can find many more examples via Google. Note that some of the listed schools, while not public, do receive state funding and hence have tacit approval.
Mostly an article about the UK (it’s a couple years old as well), but it mentions other European countries too. I guess a lot of people don’t realize that it’s not just Christians who believe in all this Creationism non-sense…Muslims also have a large non-zero percentage of their population who think Creationism is correct.
Here is a Wiki on Creationism:
It’s got an interesting graph (here), but the thing I’m not sure about is how frequently Europeans are actually polled on this, and how they break down those polls. Still, I’d say that overall it’s true that more Europeans (aside from Turkey) believe in Evolution than Creationism than Americans do (20% vs 40%).
-XT
That brings up a good point. When people talk about the US, they are including the whole 50 states (the South, the Bible Belt, etc.). When they talk about Europe, they generally ignore Poland, Armenia, Romania, Greece, Turkey, etc. Where the US has the South, they have the East. I suspect that if you compared the US to actual as opposed to select Europe, in terms of same sex partnerships, education, etc. the two regions are probably about equal.
But it’s certainly not fair to compare Alabama to France. Georgia to Georgia – that’s probably more even.
Most of the Irish-Americans stayed on and they or their children became citizens and were gradually integrated into American society. Its not really accurate to call them Irish as if they were foreigners.
The Chinese of course suffered from terrible discrimnation. It would be amusing to see all those opponents of Chinese and other Asian immigration to see all those “Asiatics” in America to-day.
As to the abortion question my views are not due to only religious reasons. The Bible’s main indication is a Mosaic law requiring the payment of fines for the death of a fetus. Nonetheless I see that without religious consideration the simple fact that once an egg and sperm are united, it is a straight road to development and birth.
In the case of creationism, the Wiki article we’ve been batting back and forth does mention Turkey, Poland, and Greece. Poland and Greece do much better than the US for acceptance of evolution, Turkey does worse. Bulgaria, Croatia, and Latvia also appear, all do better than the US.
The US state of Georgia has a median income of $50,861 and would be the 28th largest economy in the world if it was a nation. The country ranks 121st in the world for GDP, GDP per capita is $4800 or so, is still making the transition out of a planned economy under an effective dictatorship, and every so often Russia invades. If the country of Georgia is somewhat benighted, IMO it at least has an excuse. Much fairer to compare Alabama to France.
But look at it from a population standpoint. In the EU alone there are over 500 million citizens (and this doesn’t count non-EU countries like Turkey, which has 74 million right there…a quick Google search says that the total population of Europe is closer to 800 million…nearly 3 times that of the US). The US has a total population of just over 300 million. 20 percent of 500 million (just taking the EU alone) is still 100 million, while 40 percent of 300 million is only 120 million. So, even if the numbers are accurate, and not counting non-EU European countries, in absolute terms of how many people believe the non-sense you are talking a relatively small difference. And this assumes that the equal polling methodology, questions, demographics polled and error bars used.
-XT
Do you really not comprehend that anything that says “You should do this” is an opinion, not a fact?
This has nothing at all to do with my making it clear to someone else that it wasn’t me who stated “abortion is murder.” Someone asked if that was the fact to which I referred, and I said it was not.
I think Americans lead the world’s democracies - at least - in contempt for the helpless and unfortunate.
I’d say it’s because our myths matter more to some of us than our realities, and we can be cruel in the extreme when anyone challenges those myths.