Barbarians Inside the Gate

Sorry I'm late getting back. Dell and Windows put up a bigger fight than I'd counted on. Also, I read your last reply and reevaluated your knowledge. I now doubt if I can convince you of anything. 1: information is material. It is always associated with matter. If you disagree, please give even one example of information that's doesn't come with matter. Remember that energy, such as electromagnetic waves, is a form of matter. In the case of DNA, the order of the base pairs encodes the information. Change the order and you change the information. Tell Dr. Meyer that information on a hard drive is encoded in magnetic polarities - also material. DNA is also a constituent of each of the cells that makes up your flesh. Ditto for bones, blood and all the other things you find in flesh. 2: I wasn't aware that you'd refuted any of my claims. Are you claiming that a material mind can't apprehend the concept of a triangle? If you're talking about Plato and his forms, they appear not to exist. 3: I'm afraid that any attempt I made to explain how a mind works (and how one forms) would be lost on any one who believes DNA is magic. Let's see if you can show me some non-material information first. 4: You said that the anti abortion side had lots of new arguments. Could you favor us with one or two of them please? Frankly, I haven't seen a trace of one. I do notice a constant increase of slander and an escalation of your argument. Did you notice your escalation in your last reply? "... you will use any excuse to defend the killing of innocent, unborn children." That's a two-fer. Increasing the slagging of your opponents and escalating abortion to the killing of children, who everybody agrees have minds. Are these examples of the "new" arguments the anti-abortion side is coming up with? MatSpirit

MatSpirit

Did you just forget that every cell in your flesh contains DNA or is this news to you?

The information in the cell is not flesh nor is not made of matter. Therefore, the baby is not all flesh. Therefore, the argument that we can kill be baby because it is all flesh fails. Also, the baby has a soul that animates the body. There is no good reason to believe that the baby is all flesh.

I realize that the only way I can convince you that the mind is material is if you first realize you’re never going to heaven and I’m not sure if any thing I say can do that.

The best way to convince me that the mind is material is to address my refutation of that same claim. The mind as changing matter cannot produce, or be synonymous with, a fixed and unchanging concept, such as a triangle.

I’ll explain what I can of how the mind works.

I will be happy to correct your perceptions on that matter when you present them. Meanwhile, I am persuaded that you will use any excuse to defend the killing of innocent, unborn children. First, you say that unborn children who are not perfect have no right to live. Then, you say that unborn children who do not have minds do not deserve to live. Then, you imply that late term fetuses who are sliced up and sold like meat do not deserve to live. StephenB

I agree it's getting too wordy. Especially when I'm writing on a tablet and I've just lost a long reply with lots of examples somehow. Meanwhile I notice, "First, you say that the fetus is nothing but flesh and in the very next paragraph, your provide your account about how the non-fleshy DNA molecule operates." and I wonder if we're playing the same game. Did you just forget that every cell in your flesh contains DNA or is this news to you? I also notice, "In fact, we couldn’t go to heaven if our minds were as mortal as our body. Our minds cannot die precisely because they are not made of matter. Only matter can disintegrate and die," and I realize that the only way I can convince you that the mind is material is if you first realize you're never going to heaven and I'm not sure if any thing I say can do that. However, I just bought a new laptop and if I can get it going and get Windows 10 loaded on it, I can retype the message I lost in minutes. Otherwise, see you tomorrow night and I'll explain what I can of how the mind works. MatSpirit

MatSpirit This conversation is getting too wordy. I will focus on the main points:

I don’t think there’s any serious doubt except in some religious and philosophical circles that everything listed above is the product of the brain or embedded in it.

It appears that you have been reading only one side of the argument. The mind cannot be the product of the brain. If it were, it would also be matter in motion. Changing matter cannot produce, or be synonymous with, unchanging principles and concepts. It is a logical impossibility.

If there’s no mind in a fetus then there are no thoughts, will, memories or anything else present and the fetus is spiritless flesh.

The soul is the llfe principle of the body. There can be no life without it. If, therefore, the baby is alive, it automatically has a soul. If you have a better explanation for the life principle, please provide it.

That possibility justifiably scares abortion opponents and you can actually watch them unconsciously twist and turn to avoid confronting it. And it should scare them because most of the anti-abortion movement is religious and if the mind is material then how … ? Fill in your own list here, starting with, “How do we go to heaven if our minds are as mortal as our body?”

It isn't the anti-abortionist movement that is short on arguments, it is the pro-abortion side. In fact, the mind cannot be made of matter as previously indicated. IF you have a counter argument, let's focus on that, since everything else you write depends on that erroneous assumption. In fact, we couldn't go to heaven if our minds were as mortal as our body. Our minds cannot die precisely because they are not made of matter. Only matter can disintegrate and die.

There’s one of the persistent problems for the anti-abortion side: the Fallacy of Equivocation. “Human” can mean “human being”, an animal with a mind or it can just mean of or pertaining to a human like human flesh.

There is no equivocating at all and you are not really advancing a rational argument. Everyone knows the difference between a human being and an animal.

We concede the existence of human flesh in a human fetus.

A fetus is obviously more than human flesh, so that argument fails as well.

DNA is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for a human being. It directs the construction and some of the operation of the human body and brain, but thinking is a dynamic process performed by the brain. DNA is much too slow to have any part in the process.

Please stop contradicting your self. First, you say that the fetus is nothing but flesh and in the very next paragraph, your provide your account about how the non-fleshy DNA molecule operates. In fact, the information contained therein is, itself, not made of matter--or flesh!

You can extract DNA from someone who’s clinically dead and starting to rot. Identical twins have identical DNA but they’re two separate persons. But if an intact brain isn’t producing a mind then flesh is all you have.

Brains do not produce minds. I gather that you are a metaphysical materialist. That philosophy cannot survive scrutiny. StephenB

I think an immaterial soul that's present from conception is an interesting idea. I don't think its correct, but if you have any evidence to support that idea, I'd like to read it. As far as abortion goes, half or more of all conceptions self abort and are never born. I would assume that if there is a God and He is even a little merciful then He has made provisions for those immaterial souls. Perhaps they're recycled into the next conception or something. I leave it in God's capable hands. What is a mind? Well, Wikipedia says "A mind is the set of cognitive faculties that enables  consciousness,  perception, thinking, judgement, and memory — a characteristic of humans, but which also may apply to other life forms." It's all of your thoughts, memories, knowledge, likes, dislikes - everything mental about you. I don't think there's any serious doubt except in some religious and philosophical circles that everything listed above is the product of the brain or embedded in it. If the mind is like that, we don't use our minds to think. Instead, our thoughts, will, memory and everything else mental ARE our mind. That's why the absence or presence of a mind is so important in the abortion debate. If there's no mind in a fetus then there are no thoughts, will, memories or anything else present and the fetus is spiritless flesh. That possibility justifiably scares abortion opponents and you can actually watch them unconsciously twist and turn to avoid confronting it. And it should scare them because most of the anti-abortion movement is religious and if the mind is material then how ... ? Fill in your own list here, starting with, "How do we go to heaven if our minds are as mortal as our body?" SB: "The presence of DNA, on the other hand, is not arbitrary nor is it conjecture. We can determine that the fetus is human based on the facts of science. It is, in part, on that basis, that most of us believe the fetus deserves to live. By virtue of being a member of the human family, the fetus will someday have a mind if it doesn’t have one already. It should not be penalized for the dubious crime of not being fully developed." There's one of the persistent problems for the anti-abortion side: the Fallacy of Equivocation. "Human" can mean "human being", an animal with a mind or it can just mean of or pertaining to a human like human flesh. We concede the existence of human flesh in a human fetus. But we deny the existence of a mind in the fetus and research backs us up. DNA is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for a human being. It directs the construction and some of the operation of the human body and brain, but thinking is a dynamic process performed by the brain. DNA is much too slow to have any part in the process. You can extract DNA from someone who's clinically dead and starting to rot. Identical twins have identical DNA but they're two separate persons. But if an intact brain isn't producing a mind then flesh is all you have. SB: "By virtue of being a member of the human family, the fetus will someday have a mind if it doesn’t have one already. It should not be penalized for the dubious crime of not being fully developed." Every cell in your body can someday have a mind if we only get a little better at IVF and cloning. Until we do, the trillions of babies we could make out of the cells in your body have the same rights as everything else that doesn't exist: none. Now if you intend to make a baby then you have a duty to make that baby as perfect as possible. If you make a baby and it is born with flippers for arms or Downs syndrome then I think that baby should have the right to sue you for knowingly producing him with a severe handicap instead of stopping the pregnancy and starting over. I guess that was another lesson from the Finkbine case. Most of us realized that she was doing the right thing, the moral thing. (And she did have a normal healthy baby a year or two later.) I think such lawsuits would do more to put some sense into the antis than anything else. SB: "According to traditional Christian philosophy, the soul is the animating principle (form) of the body (matter). So it could hardly be the case than a new discovery about the body, however edifying, could change that dynamic. Perhaps the “conservative” Christians that you allude to were not so conservative after all. I don't think much of traditional Christian philosophy. I think that ALL philosophies would benefit from a large dose of reality. "Science pulls the cart of philosophy." I think Daniel Dennett said that. SB  "No one will ever know what the fate of Finkbine’s baby would have been if a natural birth would have been allowed." Unfortunately, we have a very good idea. It would have been born with one arm, no legs and probably dead. Bless Mrs. Finkbine for taking the responsible, moral position and starting over.  SB: "Doctor’s should try to help people, not kill people." But we know that a fetus is not a person. The son Mrs. Finkbine gave birth to on the second try was. SB "Roe vs Wade was not influenced by popular attitude. Quite the contrary. The Supreme Court arrogated unto itself the right to ignore both the natural law and the prevailing popular opinion on abortion to force a minority view on the states." As I said in my last post, they applied new knowledge to the law and prevented the government from forcing people to do terrible, immoral things like give birth to babies with one arm and no legs instead of stopping the pregnancy and starting over. MatSpirit

Hi StevenB. I looked up Sherri Finkbine on Wiki. In 1962 she was a mother of four and hostess of a children's TV show in Phoenix. If you look at Mary Tyler Moore on the old Dick Van Duke show, she's a dead ringer. Her husband bought some tranquilizers on a trip to England and a year later she used the remainder. She was in early pregnancy at the time. Shortly later they learned what Thalidomide did to fetuses. Her doctor "strongly recommended" a therapeutic abortion and one was scheduled in a Pheonix hospital. Sherri told her story to a friend at a local newspaper to warn others, but her name was leaked. Instant nationwide publicity bombshell, complete with total loss of privacy, death threats and loss of her job. The Phoenix hospital asked for a guarantee that they wouldn't be prosecuted and couldn't get one, so they reneged on the abortion. She tried Japan, where abortion was legal, but they wouldn't grant her a visa. Finally Sweden took her in and the abortion was performed on Aug 18, 1962. The single fetus had no legs, only one arm and it was such a malformed mess the doctors couldn't determine its sex. They said it would never have survived. Up until that time nobody was particularly thinking about abortion. If they did think of it, they thought of a dirty back alley operation run by a greedy sleaze ball in soiled clothing who performed his operations mostly on sluts. (In the early 60s, slut was the technical term for an unmarried woman who had sex. Stud was the term for a man who had sex. The obvious imbalance here was not mentioned.) Now it was Laura Petrie in a jam and doctors in clean suits who were being prevented from giving her help she desperately needed by a meddling government. NOBODY wanted that poor fetus to be born. Wiki says a Gallup poll showed that 52% of the country thought she'd done the right thing and 77% wanted abortion legalized to protect the health of the mother. This was a watershed event. It put a new face on people who got abortions. No longer an irresponsible and sinful slut trying to avoid paying for her sins. Now we're looking at a mother of four who was in a catastrophic jam. It gave us a new picture of what was being aborted too. It was no longer a smiling baby just biding its time waiting to be born. Now it was a horrible monster that nobody wanted to be brought to term. Even the people who vehemently opposed abortion were hoping that poor thing would die. The second watershed event came in 1965 when Life magazine published a remarkable series of photographs by Lennart Nilsson of human fetuses in all stages of development from egg to ready to be born. I'm sure everybody has seen them by now. These photos showed us that even a healthy fetus was nothing like a baby during early pregnancy. By then it was obvious to a lot of people that most abortions weren't killing a baby because there was no baby in the womb to kill. Given that and Sherry Finkbine's tragic demonstration that preventing an abortion in early pregnancy could cause horrible evil, the anti-abortion laws began to look unjust and oppressive. A couple of states repealed theirs and a few years later came Roe v Wade. Roe v Wade codified this new knowledge into law. In the 1st trimester, when there was no possibility of a baby being in the womb, the Supreme Court freed the mother and doctor from needless government interference and left all decisions in their hands. In later stages of pregnancy when the fetus was at least starting to get baby shaped and there was a faint possibility of consciousness, they left room for government supervision. Subsequent studies of fetal development and how the mind works has shown that the mind can't really begin to develop until birth because it has to interact with the world to form. More on that and your other points later. It's late MatSpirit

SB: “Inasmuch as the existence of mind is your standard for determining human worth, you must have some idea of exactly when a human being finally acquires one.” MatSpirit

This is the best question I’ve seen asked by any anti-abortionist in this thread and it’s the hardest to answer. We know that a functioning mind is impossible in the early stages of gestation. There’s just not enough brain to possibly support one. 95 percent of all abortions are done before 20 weeks and the chance of a mind at that stage is nil.

First, we have to define what a mind is. You say, for example, that we are our mind. I would argue that we use our mind to think just as we use our will to decide, and I believe that I can defend that claim. If I am right, then who we are cannot be synonymous with a faculty that we use. Some of us hold, for very good reasons, that the mind is an immaterial faculty of an immortal soul, which is present from the moment of conception. In other words, we hold that the mind, unlike the brain, is not a physical organ. If that is true, then the existence of an immaterial mind, as a faculty of an immaterial soul, may well precede the brain. Yes, we know that the mind's operation is, in this life anyway, dependent on the brain, but we do not know that its existence depends on the brain. Indeed, I would argue forcefully that it does not. In any case, you are, it seems to me, granting a right to life based on an arbitrary standard, which itself, is based on a conjecture. In effect, you are saying that you do not value an early fetus because it likely does not have a mind, but you have not explained why your standard of value should prevail or why the fetus should have to clear that bar to have any rights. The presence of DNA, on the other hand, is not arbitrary nor is it conjecture. We can determine that the fetus is human based on the facts of science. It is, in part, on that basis, that most of us believe the fetus deserves to live. By virtue of being a member of the human family, the fetus will someday have a mind if it doesn't have one already. It should not be penalized for the dubious crime of not being fully developed.

I was in high school in the years before Roe v Wade and read about all the new developments in embryology “live” as they happened. I remember believing abortion was murder at one point because, you know, it’s killing a baby. It was just common knowledge.

Yes.

But then I started learning more and more about eggs and embryos and fetuses and brains and minds. I mean, new information just rained on us in those days. It was a wonderful time. I don’t know exactly when I realized that a fetus was just flesh and had no spirit, but I certainly wasn’t alone in my change of beliefs. The whole country was starting to realize that there was no spirit in the womb, even many conservative (Protestant) clergy. And then came Sherri Finkbine and Thalidomide and suddenly things got very serious.

According to traditional Christian philosophy, the soul is the animating principle (form) of the body (matter). So it could hardly be the case than a new discovery about the body, however edifying, could change that dynamic. Perhaps the "conservative" Christians that you allude to were not so conservative after all.

I think most of the country realized that her fetus(s? I can’t remember) was still just flesh, but if she was forced to carry it (them?) to term it would develop a normal mind trapped in a terribly deformed body. I remember widespread relief when she made it to Sweden for an abortion.

Though one could point to many unfortunate examples of potential human suffering, especially those that involve the prospect of a handicapped child, it doesn't really speak to the question of whether or not humans are composed of body and soul. Dr. Ben Carson, the presidential candidate, once separated a pair of twins joined at the skull. Both live and live well. No one will ever know what the fate of Finkbine's baby would have been if a natural birth would have been allowed. Of course, happy endings are not always the result, but the worth of a human being is not determined by his or her ability to function in a normal way. Doctor's should try to help people, not kill people.

After that, states started relaxing their prohibitions on abortion and even most clergy at least tentatively approved. Roe v Wade came and still there was pretty general approval. But then the barrage of organized fanatical anti-abortion resistance began.

Roe vs Wade was not influenced by popular attitude. Quite the contrary. The Supreme Court arrogated unto itself the right to ignore both the natural law and the prevailing popular opinion on abortion to force a minority view on the states. Thank you for sharing some of your history. I appreciated learning about it. StephenB

StephenB: "Why does the right to life depend on the existence of a mind as opposed to, say, the existence of human DNA?" Youre not DNA. Its an important part of you, but its not you. A hair on your comb has your DNA in it. If I take one of those hairs and burn it, your DNA will be utterly destroyed, but you won't be harmed in any way. If I destroy your brain, your mind is destroyed with it and you're dead. You ARE your mind. That's why your mind has rights - because you have rights and your mind is you. All your knowledge is held in your mind, all your hopes and dreams are in your mind, all your loves, all your hates - you ARE your mind. The rest of your body supports your mind and lets it act in the world. If your mind suddenly stops working, you collapse into utter unconsciousness. If your mind never starts working again, then you are dead. StephenB: "Inasmuch as the existence of mind is your standard for determining human worth, you must have some idea of exactly when a human being finally acquires one." This is the best question I've seen asked by any anti-abortionist in this thread and it's the hardest to answer. We know that a functioning mind is impossible in the early stages of gestation. There's just not enough brain to possibly support one. 95 percent of all abortions are done before 20 weeks and the chance of a mind at that stage is nil. After that, it's harder to guarantee a mind is not present because it's so hard to study an unresponsive subject shrouded in the womb. Most of what we do know is from studying premature babies, but since the mind seems to start developing at birth, they probably aren't representative of a fetus in the womb. Representative or not, there's not much evidence for a pre-natal mind. Maybe some sensitivity to pain, but probably nobody home to experience it. Anyway, you've hit on the hardest question for the pro-spirit side to answer. Certainly no mind before 20 weeks, very probably none before birth. Me: "Remember that the mind plays tricks with us when strongly held beliefs are challenged and we’re liable to make false assumptions (medical doctors at Planned Parenthood are greed crazed monsters who kill babies for Lamborghinis for example) that help us retain those beliefs even when we’re mistaken." StephenB: "That comment seems to describe your own behavior. Your strong beliefs prompted you to make a number of unwarranted assumptions." Not really. I was in high school in the years before Roe v Wade and read about all the new developments in embryology "live" as they happened. I remember believing abortion was murder at one point because, you know, it's killing a baby. It was just common knowledge. But then I started learning more and more about eggs and embryos and fetuses and brains and minds. I mean, new information just rained on us in those days. It was a wonderful time. I don't know exactly when I realized that a fetus was just flesh and had no spirit, but I certainly wasn't alone in my change of beliefs. The whole country was starting to realize that there was no spirit in the womb, even many conservative (Protestant) clergy. And then came Sherri Finkbine and Thalidomide and suddenly things got very serious. I think most of the country realized that her fetus(s? I can't remember) was still just flesh, but if she was forced to carry it (them?) to term it would develop a normal mind trapped in a terribly deformed body. I remember widespread relief when she made it to Sweden for an abortion. After that, states started relaxing their prohibitions on abortion and even most clergy at least tentatively approved. Roe v Wade came and still there was pretty general approval. But then the barrage of organized fanatical anti-abortion resistance began. It's one a.m. and past my bedtime. I'll be happy to continue this conversation tomorrow, but I'm just bushed now. Thanks for the intelligent questions. MatSpirit

Mr Arrington as to:

"What kind of monster values imaginary aliens over live babies? God help us."

Although atheists, many times, protest that they are just as moral as Christians, it is now shown that those who do not believe in a soul tend to be more psychopathic than the majority of people in America who do believe in a soul. This psychopathic characteristic inherent to the atheistic philosophy is born out empirically. You can pick up a psychopathic study that was conducted on atheists around the 14:30 minute mark of this following video:

Anthony Jack, Why Don’t Psychopaths Believe in Dualism? – video - 14:30 minute mark http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUmmObUi8Fq9g1Zcuzqbt0_g&feature=player_detailpage&v=XRGWe-61zOk#t=862s

Here are the papers:

A scientific case for conceptual dualism: The problem of consciousness and the opposing domains hypothesis. - Anthony I. Jack - 2013 Excerpt page 18: we predicted that psychopaths would not be able to perceive the problem of consciousness.,, In a series of five experiments (Jack, in preparation), we found a highly replicable and robust negative correlation (r~-0.34) between belief in dualism and the primary psychopathic trait of callous affect7. Page 24: Clearly these findings fit well with the hypothesis (Robbins and Jack, 2006) that psychopaths can’t see the problem of consciousness8. Taking these finding together with other work on dehumanization and the anti-social effects of denying the soul and free will, they present a powerful picture. When we see persons, that is, when we see others as fellow humans, then our percept is of something essentially non-physical nature. This feature of our psychology appears to be relevant to a number of other philosophical issues, including the tension between utilitarian principles and deontological concerns about harming persons (Jack et al., accepted), the question of whether God exists (Jack et al., under review-b), and the problem of free will9. http://tonyjack.org/files/2013%20Jack%20A%20scientific%20case%20for%20conceptual%20dualism%20%281%29.pdf Anthony Jack is a physicalist. In trying to develop a physical theory of consciousness he proposes that for most people the problem of consciousness, the appearance of dualism, is caused by different brain networks used for thinking about mechanisms (ie how the brain works) and for understanding social situations (ie how people feel). According to Jack, it isn’t a natural gap but a gap due to brain physiology and psychopaths lack social thinking (are callous) so they don’t see the problem. Why Don't Psychopaths Believe in Dualism? The Role of Opposing Brain Networks Anthony Jack (Case Western Reserve University, Cognitive Science, Cleveland, OH In a theoretical paper linking the attribution of phenomenal consciousness to moral cognition, Robbins and Jack (Philosophical Studies, 2006) predicted that psychopaths would not perceive the problem of consciousness. New experimental evidence is presented which supports this claim: in a group of undergraduates it was found that support for a naturalistic view of the mind is positively correlated with the primary psychopathic trait of callousness. http://www.sonoran-sunsets.com/goinggreen.html

Here is a dramatic personal testimony of the psychopathic characteristic inherent to atheism from a former violently psychopathic atheist who is now, thank God, a Christian:

Why I Am a Christian (David Wood, Former Psychopathic Atheist) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DakEcY7Z5GU

The following video is informative for laying out the logic of why atheism necessarily leads to increased immorality

The Inner State of the Non Local Mind - Johanan Raatz - video (Why Atheistic materialism necessarily leads to increased immorality) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtsNVds4XWI

Here are some sobering stats

Compilation of morality statistics that don't bode well for atheists: Section 11. http://creation.com/atheism

Moreover, atheists have more health problems and die sooner than Christian Theists. Here is the stat on the increased mortality of atheists

A meta-analysis of all studies, both published and unpublished, relating to religious involvement and longevity was carried out in 2000. Forty-two studies were included, involving some 126,000 subjects. Active religious involvement increased the chance of living longer by some 29%, and participation in public religious practices, such as church attendance, increased the chance of living longer by 43%.[4][5] http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_health

bornagain77

MatSpirit:

I look at the picture at the beginning of the post and I say, “Ewww! Gross!

Yes, it does appear that your sense impressions rule your faculty of intellect and define its operations.

I look at the picture at the beginning of the post and reflect that it’s human FLESH and its even ickier.

Yep, that would be consistent with your pattern. Feel first, think later.

But I realize that no MINDS were destroyed with relief and I feel the same thing about the MINDS that are not in that dish that I feel for all the babies that BA77 has never brought into the world and their non-existent children and grand children.

You take everything for granted and explain nothing: Why does the right to life depend on the existence of a mind as opposed to, say, the existence of human DNA? Inasmuch as the existence of mind is your standard for determining the value of life, you must have some idea of exactly when a human being finally acquires one. You claim that a fetus does not have a mind, so you must know when a human being finally reaches that threshold. When would that be? How do you know you are correct? For that matter, how do you know that a fetus does not have a mind? Why would you even think such a thing?

Remember that the mind plays tricks with us when strongly held beliefs are challenged and we’re liable to make false assumptions (medical doctors at Planned Parenthood are greed crazed monsters who kill babies for Lamborghinis for example) that help us retain those beliefs even when we’re mistaken.

That comment seems to describe your own behavior. Your strong beliefs prompted you to make a number of unwarranted assumptions. StephenB

What kind of monster values imaginary aliens over live babies? God help us. Barry Arrington

In argumentation, it's called a hypothetical. You pose hypotheticals to help you think about real situations. "Why do we root for the little non-human? What is it about him, as he is portrayed in the movie, that makes it so obviously evil to kill him? After all, he's not a human. Why do I want him to get away?" I think there's a rather obvious reason why an anti-abortionist can't even consider the case of an intelligent alien. He'd have to either say the intelligent alien could be shot with impunity because he's not human or consider the very real possibility that it's the intelligence that counts and the whole anti-abortion movement is wrong. And if that's the case, then the anti-abortionists have done a lot of truly terrible things. MatSpirit

Mat @ 130, If one day I realized that the only way I could make sense of my desire to justify killing certain kinds of humans was to make up imaginary scenarios with absolutely no connection to known reality, I am pretty sure it would give me pause. Mat, you are OK with killing little humans. We get it. You are evil. But don't insult us by trying to justify your evil by saying you wouldn't kill imaginary beings who are unlike the humans you are OK killing. Discussion over. Barry Arrington

I'm going to dinner now. Back in about two hours. MatSpirit

Barry: "You don’t seem to get it. Let me make it as absolutely plain as I can: I am not going to talk about imaginary aliens." I think I do. Remember that warning I gave about how our minds will play tricks on us when deeply held beliefs are attacked. If you let yourself think about ET and the whole question of whether killing an intelligent alien would be murder, it becomes very hard not to conclude it's because they've got minds. Its obvious that they have one. You can talk to them. A mind is the only thing we have in common. They haven't got a human cell in their body. And that's something nobody deeply embedded in the anti abortion moment dares do. Because if abortion ISN'T immoral then the anti-abortion movement looks really, really bad. So the mind concentrates on "They're human!" and avoids thinking about anything that could possibly lead to considering flesh vs mind. MatSpirit

MatSpirit @ 128 Hermann Göring doubtless looked at the piles of Jewish bodies and said "Ewww! Gross!" And he doubtless reflected on the fact they were piles of human FLESH and felt even ickier. But then he comforted himself with the thought that no humans that he believed had lives worth living were destroyed. Mat, you are unspeakably evil. Barry Arrington

I look at the picture at the beginning of the post and I say, "Ewww! Gross!" I look at the picture at the beginning of the post and reflect that it's human FLESH and its even ickier. But I realize that no MINDS were destroyed with relief and I feel the same thing about the MINDS that are not in that dish that I feel for all the babies that BA77 has never brought into the world and their non-existent children and grand children. Nothing, because they don't exist, just like the 53,284 non-existent babies that aren't sitting on your keyboard right now. MatSpirit

Now, if you want to talk about reality I am all for it. For example, if you want to talk about how you can look at the picture at the beginning of this post and say "I'm perfectly OK with that. That little brute's life was unworthy of my notice or protection because he is different from me" then by all means let us do that. Barry Arrington

Mat, You don't seem to get it. Let me make it as absolutely plain as I can: I am not going to talk about imaginary aliens. Barry Arrington

Come on Barry, the logical implication of what you said was that we can kill ET because he doesn't have a human heart. Writing "So are you saying we can kill ET because he doesn’t have a human heart?" Is a standard way of stating that implication in order to respond to it. It's obviously not a quote. Didn't you see the words "So are you saying" at the beginning of the sentence? Or the question mark after it? There's absolutely no excuse for calling me a liar and it makes you look bad. I'll ask the question again. Can we kill ET or would it be murder? If it would be murder, what about ET makes it so. He's definitely not human. What does he have that makes killing him murder? MatSpirit

MatSpirit looks at the picture at the beginning of this post and says "I'm OK with that." Evil is rarely distilled so purely. Barry Arrington

Mat

that’s why killing them was murder.

No, killing them was murder because they were human. Actually, in a purely technical legal sense, it was not "murder" at all, because the Holocaust did not violate any internal laws of the German state. Just as killing unborn babies and chopping them up is not technically "murder" in the United States. That should give you pause Mat. I doubt that it will. Barry Arrington

Mat,

So are you saying we can kill ET because he doesn’t have a human heart?

This is, of course, a deliberate lie on your part. I never said any such thing. I called your ET question a distraction and treated it with contempt. I did not answer it.

Does it bother you to say we can kill something that can talk to us?

If I had said that it probably would. Fortunately, I did not. Does it bother you that you feel compelled to resort to lies, distortions and distractions to support your case? I think it would bother me. Barry Arrington

Let me add a step to my last message. Talking implies a mind. Those Jews the Nazis could talk to had minds and that's why killing them was murder. MatSpirit

So are you saying we can kill ET because he doesn't have a human heart? What do you think he would say about that? Does it bother you to say we can kill something that can talk to us? Like those Jews could talk? MatSpirit

You keep avoiding the key question in abortion: Does a mind exist in the fetus?

The question is not only not the "key question"; it is a totally irrelevant question. The relevant question is “Is there human life?” And the answer to that question is “Yes.” Abortion stops a beating human heart. And that is why it is evil. And that is why you are evil for advocating for it. Your arbitrary demarcation between one stage of human development and another is no different from the arbitrary distinction between “Lebensunwertes Leben” and Lebenswertes Leben.” The only difference between you and a Nazi is the basis upon which you choose who lives and who dies -- i.e., whose life is "worthy" and whose life is "unworthy."

Perhaps we can turn away from some of the hatred that way.

If Hermann Göring had said that in 1943, people would have probably thought he was being intentionally ironical. If not, he certainly would have been unintentionally ironical. I think the same thing about you. MatSpirit: “Turn away from the hatred. Except for those babies who have yet to escape from their mother’s womb. Feel free to hate them enough to butcher them and sell the pieces.”

Here’s a new direction to approach the question from . . .

Translation: Here’s a new way to distract from the fact that I am in favor of butchering unborn humans and selling the parts like pieces of meat. Let's talk about ET. He was cute. Barry Arrington

MatSpirit, nothing to see here, move along, eh? Methinks you are being far to dismissive and flippant to the question at hand, but so be it. It's your choice (as if you even had a choice in atheistic materialism in the first place). bornagain77

Barry: You keep avoiding the key question in abortion: Does a mind exist in the fetus? Remember what I said about the mind playing tricks on us when strongly held beliefs are challenged. It's distracting your attention from the mind question right now. Anybody whose emotions are not involved can see it. If you concentrate your efforts on finding out if a mind exists you will be a long way towards answering the only important question about abortion. Here's a new direction to approach the question from. If the movie character ET was real, would it be murder to kill him? If not, why? He's certainly not human. What does ET have that an adult human being has that makes killing either one murder? The answer is that they both have minds. And a fetus doesn't. MatSpirit

Tell Mr. Talbot that the code and information still exist, at least until decay sets in, but that organisms are dynamic structures and once they've been halted air and nutrients are no longer carried to the cells so the cells can no longer manufacture ATP and everything grinds to a halt. There's more to it, of course, but this should be enough to get him started. I'd suggest he read "How We Die: Reflections of Life's Final Chapter" by Sherwin Nuland for more information. MatSpirit

Barry:

Do you believe it is evil to split a human face in two while the human’s heart is still beating so that you can rip out his brain and sell it like a piece of meat?

MatSpirit

What’s the condition of that brain? If it’s supporting a mind, then yes it’s very evil. But if the brain hasn’t developed enough to support a mind, then we’re just talking about spiritless flesh. In that case, ask the woman what she wants done with it.

I will tell you the condition of the brain Mat. It is a human brain. And it is a human heart that is still beating when that human face is ripped in two so that the human brain can be ripped from the human cranium and sold to monsters – monsters like you Mat.

Perhaps we can turn away from some of the hatred that way.

Hatred is as hatred does Mat, and you are one of the most abhorrent haters I have ever seen. The insouciance with which you condemn tiny humans to horrifying deaths at the hands of heartless butchers beggars belief. “It’s a boy” one of butchers in the video said as she was chopping it up. A boy, Mat. Not a lump of inanimate flesh. Barry Arrington

Barry A: "Do you believe it is evil to split a human face in two while the human’s heart is still beating so that you can rip out his brain and sell it like a piece of meat?" What's the condition of that brain? If it's supporting a mind, then yes it's very evil. But if the brain hasn't developed enough to support a mind, then we're just talking about spiritless flesh. In that case, ask the woman what she wants done with it. Let me give you (and everybody else) a piece of general advice that has served me well: Don't automatically assume that everybody who disagrees with you is stupid or evil. Don't call their thinking illogical or ignorant. They might be, but they might not. Read what they say carefully. Try to understand why they might disagree with you if they're not stupid, evil, illogical or ignorant. Remember that the mind plays tricks with us when strongly held beliefs are challenged and we're liable to make false assumptions (medical doctors at Planned Parenthood are greed crazed monsters who kill babies for Lamborghinis for example) that help us retain those beliefs even when we're mistaken. Perhaps we can turn away from some of the hatred that way. MatSpirit

MatSpirit, sad that you did not try to honestly address the question. The answer is quite interesting. A clue to the answer is given in Talbott's note of what goes missing upon death. Specifically, information.

i.e. "But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary." -Talbott

bornagain77

BA77: "A human body conservatively has a billion trillion protein molecules which are all dedicated to the singular task of keeping you alive for precisely a life-time." PRECISELY a life time? I wonder if you could rephrase that question so milk doesn't shoot out people's noses when they read it? Living creatures seem to generally live as long as they possibly can. I guess you can credit evolution for that since you stop reproducing when you die and similar, but longer living organisms will overtake your descendants and crowd them out if you die young. By the way, I don't want to push you, but you still haven't told us how many of your descendants you've destroyed by not having their ancestors. As for the power that holds you together until you die, we call that biology. Please pass that on to Mr. Talbot. He seems confused. As for why everything doesn't fall apart, we call that physics. And physics seems to be pretty simple - just a handful of fairly simple laws and forces. I wonder why so many people think you have to add something much more complex (and thus much more unlikely to exist according to Dr. Demski) to that? Perhaps Mr. Talbot knows. MatSpirit

Cornucopia, you scared me a little with your "I think ISIS deals with gays the right way" comment, since this is a Christian blog and Christians have a long history of dealing with gays, old women and people who worship God in an inappropriate fashion "the right way". But then I realized you were pulling my leg. Hitler is a bit touchier - he was a Christian too, after all, having been confirmed in the Catholic Church, served as an altar boy and desiring to become a priest when he was a youth. Don't feel bad about that if you're Catholic, though. By the time he was an adult he had discovered Martin Luther, "a strong Christian" and read Luther's book, "On the Jews and Their Lies." Did you ever see Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will", the movie about Hitler's Nuremberg rally? You might have noticed that book on the pedestal at stage center. That was "On the Jews and Their Lies." I don't know what part Hitler liked best, burning the Jews homes, temples and holy books or making Jews wear yellow patches on their clothing or what. But I digress. Anyway, when you said we should listen to the spirit of Hitler as revealed in Mein Kampf, did you mean, “I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work.”? No, he said that at a speech at the Reichstag. Maybe you meant, "I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.” or “What we have to fight for…is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator.” or “This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief.” or “And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God.” or “Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another… while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve.”? He said all that in Mein Kampf. If so, I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint you because I'm not a Christian. MatSpirit

MatSpirit, I have a question for you. A human body conservatively has a billion trillion protein molecules which are all dedicated to the singular task of keeping you alive for precisely a life-time. My question is this, "What organizing principle keeps all those billion trillion protein molecules dedicated to that singular task of keeping you alive for precisely a life time?" Or as Talbott put it, "the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?"

picture - "What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?" http://cdn-4.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/harvardd-2.jpg The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings - Stephen L. Talbott Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings

bornagain77

BA77, I'm sorry you've decided to withdraw, but I can understand. I had hoped to ask you about a wife who "has a headache" when her husband wants to have sex. I guess I'll never know how many babies she destroys. I'm curious about this "wait 'till death for your big reward" business. Does it work for more secular rewards? I was going to offer to sell you a gold bar, 10 kilos, 99.99% fine for only $100 dollars, payable in advance, delivery on death. You'll have to sign for it, of course. MatSpirit

Who give a flying f@#$ if the unborn child doesn’t show signs of having a mind???!!!! calm down, steve. we need you to be very quiet. evnfrdrcksn

NO, they are not pieces of flesh. They ARE heads, arms, legs, feet. They are flesh and bones. They are complete body parts. You attempt to whitewash the seriousness of the issue is cowardly!!

No, losing 55 million SPIRITLESS PIECES OF FLESH does not faze me in the least. Unlike you, I know that what counts is the MIND and that flesh is only important when it serves a mind.

Who give a flying f@#$ if the unborn child doesn't show signs of having a mind???!!!! You are a friggin' Neanderthal!!! Keep your knife in your pocket, give the kid a chance, and it will SHOW YOU its mind!!!! What we have all known for 40 years about abortion, is you lame, cowardly attempts to find an out for an "inconvenient", 'uncomfortable" situation. Moral, just, rational people take RESPONSIBILITY for life no matter what the circumstances. There are plenty of social support systems to handle it. Your excuses beg to keep in the dark ages, where brew and potions did the trick. Now you bring a shiny blade. When will YOU put the poisons and the knife away, stand up and be counted on to SUPPORT life in ALL its stages of existence whether foetus, child, adult or old age???!!!! It is astounding that we still have the likes of people like Matspirit and evnfrdrcksn advocating going back in time to the "club your wife" Neanderthal type of solutions to life issues. Now its "club your baby" before it gets too big to club you back!!!!

Here’s the abortion argument in a nutshell. We’ve known for over 40 years that a mind cannot exist in the earliest stages of pregnancy because a mind requires a functioning brain and nothing remotely like that exists until very late in pregnancy. There’s a lot of evidence to show that the brain is not ready to start forming a mind until after birth. Roe v Wade took these facts into account with its graduated increase in protections for the fetus as it develops. In fact, they were overly conservative but you want that in cases of possible human life.

Steve

don't worry, folks (aka onlookers). Barry is the type who spouts garbage that will quickly disappear from the society against which he so strongly rails. seen it before, i'll see it again. evnfrdrcksn

you men are sure worked up about men stuff. so wide eyed and fervent. sex is evil, right? any woman who dares indulge is SADDLED WITH THE FRUIT OF HER CHOICE, right? evil looks itself in the mirror and sees nothing. like vampires. evnfrdrcksn

Matspirit, I think ISIS deals with gays the right way. Gays are not humans. They are simply a blob of tissue developed in the wrong way. Hitler understood this and one of the highlights of the holocaust is how efficiently dealt with this problem.He realized that they are not humans and he finished them in beautiful gas chambers. The Nazis are unfairly demonized. The homosexual (fags) mind is not developed in the right way and therefore, we should cleanse them from this earth. Hitler is one of the unsung heroes of 20th century. We should listen to the spirit of Hitler which is revealed to us in Mein Kampf and get rid of deformed perverts. cornucopian

MatSpirit, Do you believe it is evil to split a human face in two while the human's heart is still beating so that you can rip out his brain and sell it like a piece of meat? Barry Arrington

Matspirit, A new born baby is a clump of cells. It is useless. Can we kill it? It can't think. It really does not have a mind. Your arguments can be used to justify killing a whole lot of people. You are a fanatic. Saying the baby does not have mind so we can kill it is no different than infanticide. homosexual marriage is a joke. It is the easy ticket to get AIDS. We are born that way.... even pedophiles are born that way too. cornucopian

MatSpirit, you are wrong. and I'm willing to wait for you to be corrected by God himself. The question is 'can you afford to wait like I can?' bornagain77

BA77: By all means get upset over web page formatting, since such atrocity as 55 million abortions apparently doesn’t seem to faze you in the least. No, losing 55 million SPIRITLESS PIECES OF FLESH does not faze me in the least. Unlike you, I know that what counts is the MIND and that flesh is only important when it serves a mind. BA77: "Personally, methinks your moral priorities are severely screwed up! But who am I? I am nobody! It is almighty God that each and every one of us will have to give a account to!" That's the fundamentalist attitude in spades! You disagree with me, therefore you have bad morals. We've been seeing it in abortion for the last 40 years. Lately, we've gotten a fresh load of conservative moral arrogance over gay marriage. (And over just plain not harassing or killing gays. You're way behind your Ugandan brothers here and even Vladimir Putin is pulling ahead of you. And you'll never catch up to I.S.I.S. Truly, those are Men of God. You can tell by the body count,) Back in my great grandfather's day the great example of conservative immoral arrogance was slavery. "The Bible says slavery is approved by God, I believe it and therefor we're going to secede from the Union and kill 600,000 Americans and its all because of YOUR bad morals!" And of course, that moral arrogance absolutely permeates this blog. Nobody just disagrees with the blog owner and his supporters, they're evil moral degenerates who are incapable of logical thinking and stupid. I like how you brought so-called near death experiences into this argument. That's one of the best examples of the effects of "framing" you'll ever find. If we called it the "lack of oxygen and buildup of waste products in the brain experience", nobody would be impressed. Of course the brain malfunctions under those conditions and the malfunctions have no meaning beyond "the brain is in trouble". But call it "near-death experience" and people who aren't used to clear thinking are convinced they've found the keys to the universe. Try to mention the Shroud of Turin in your next reply. Here's the abortion argument in a nutshell. We've known for over 40 years that a mind cannot exist in the earliest stages of pregnancy because a mind requires a functioning brain and nothing remotely like that exists until very late in pregnancy. There's a lot of evidence to show that the brain is not ready to start forming a mind until after birth. Roe v Wade took these facts into account with its graduated increase in protections for the fetus as it develops. In fact, they were overly conservative but you want that in cases of possible human life. This was all lost on conservative Christians, of course. It's ironic that they continue to ignore the spirit, including the spirits in the pregnant women involved, and concentrate all their efforts protecting mindless pieces of flesh. MatSpirit

harry: What difference does that make, since abortion is “legal” right up to birth? Roe v. Wade allows restrictions on abortions after viability, and most states have statutes doing exactly that. harry: It wouldn’t have to be restricted after viability if the Supreme Court hadn’t “legalized” it right up to birth. You keep putting "legalized" in scare-quotes, so your comments are unclear. The Courts allow states to restrict post-viability abortion, but don't require it. That was the status before Roe v. Wade. What Roe v. Wade did was prohibit restrictions before viability. Zachriel

Zachriel: The point of viability has decreased somewhat since Roe v. Wade, which was one finding in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. What difference does that make, since abortion is "legal" right up to birth? Zachriel: That is false. Abortion can be restricted after viability. We provided citations. In reply, you make bald claims. It wouldn't have to be restricted after viability if the Supreme Court hadn't "legalized" it right up to birth. In the case of "Partial Birth" abortion, the baby is already born except for part of the child's head. The abortionist then jabs a hole in the child's head and suctions his/her brains out, collapsing it to facilitate the delivery of the head. harry

harry: Even staunch advocates of “legal” abortion place viability somewhere between the 22nd and 24th week of pregnancy. The point of viability has decreased somewhat since Roe v. Wade, which was one finding in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. harry: The Supreme Court “legalized” abortion right up to birth, for any reason whatsoever or for no reason at all. That is false. Abortion can be restricted after viability. We provided citations. In reply, you make bald claims. Zachriel

Zachriel

The U.S. Supreme Court drew the line at viability. Before then, the right to autonomy for the woman prevails. After that, states can legislate more protections for the unborn.

Even staunch advocates of “legal” abortion place viability somewhere between the 22nd and 24th week of pregnancy. Infamous late-term abortionist, the late George Tiller, used to advertise in the newspaper abortion services up to 26 weeks. The Supreme Court “legalized” abortion right up to birth, for any reason whatsoever or for no reason at all. The Supreme Court “legalized” murder. That was over 40 years ago and the opposition to that treasonous act of judicial tyranny began immediately and continues to grow ever stronger. harry

SteRusJon @ 62

Seversky, Suggested reading about republic vs democracy, http://www.lexrex.com/enlighte.....emrep.html

I had, as well as a couple of others making essentially the same argument. But people would be well advised to be wary of articles like this guilty of poor arguments and shoddy scholarship. For example:

It is correct to say that in any Democracy--either a Direct or a Representative type--as a form of government, there can be no legal system which protects The Individual or The Minority (any or all minorities) against unlimited tyranny by The Majority.

No, it is not correct. It is plainly nonsense. There is nothing in the concept of democracy which precludes a majority deciding that, in the interests of all, there should be a written constitution incorporating statutory individual rights and an independent judiciary to administer the laws. This is a transparent attempt to redefine the concept into a form which has never obtained in Europe, not even the Greek city-states. As for this:

The undependable sense of self-restraint of the persons making up The Majority at any particular time offers, of course, no protection whatever. Such a form of government is characterized by The Majority Omnipotent and Unlimited. This is true, for example, of the Representative Democracy of Great Britain; because unlimited government power is possessed by the House of Lords, under an Act of Parliament of 1949--indeed, it has power to abolish anything and everything governmental in Great Britain.

I am a naturalized American citizen but British by birth and I can assure you that that comment about the House of Lords is absolute nonsense. The Upper Chamber has not had unlimited power for hundreds of years, indeed, it is arguable that it never had it to that extent. The Parliament Act of 1911 effectively abolished the power of the Lords to reject legislation sent up from the House of Commons. Thereafter they could only delay it for a maximum of of three Parliamentary sessions or two calendar years. The Parliament Act of 1949 reduced the period for which the Lords could delay legislation to two Parliamentary sessions or one year. The author of that piece frankly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Seversky

Robert Byers: Today only at birth , fully out, is a human being come into existence according to Roe vs Wade. That is incorrect. Roe v. Wade, along with Planned Parenthood v. Casey, recognizes the legitimate interests of the health and life of the fetus from conception, and allows restrictions on abortion after viability as long as there are exceptions to protect the life and health of the mother.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey: It must be stated at the outset and with clarity that Roe's essential holding, the holding we reaffirm, has three parts. First is a recognition of the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State. Before viability, the State's interests are not strong enough to support a prohibition of abortion or the imposition of a substantial obstacle to the woman's effective right to elect the procedure. Second is a confirmation of the State's power to restrict abortions after fetal viability, if the law contains exceptions for pregnancies which endanger the woman's life or health. And third is the principle that the State has legitimate interests from the outset of the pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of the fetus that may become a child. These principles do not contradict one another; and we adhere to each.

Zachriel

Barry: the source of the moral law in whose being that law is grounded (i.e. God). You're just pushing the question back one step. Whose version of God? Which supposed writings from God? What human gets to decide that question in an absolute sense? mike1962

Mike:

when parties or groups disagree on a point of morality, who gets to settle the matter in an absolute sense?

The source of the moral law in whose being that law is grounded (i.e. God). Your point that evil people can sometimes prevail over righteous people is true, as when the Seversky's and eigenstate's of the world want to chop up little babies and sell their pieces like meat. The fact that they prevail is irrelevant as to whether they are right or wrong. The Nazis prevailed for a while. They were still unspeakably evil even while they were prevailing. Barry Arrington

Robert @89: If at some point does it not follow they have to be treated like all human beings relative to natural rights? When brain waves begin at about 45 days. At that point I am against abortion. Cessation of brain waves are how we decide when adults are dead so the converse seems right to me. But I would never try to convince anyone of my view on this matter. mike1962

Barry @28: Mike asks if there is a practical alternative. Yes, Mike, let’s not put another person’s status as human or non-human up for vote. But this is what humanity does, explicitly or implicitly, given the tools that it has, whether from the top down, or by democratic consensus, within each culture, regardless of ideologies. Someone or some group defines what is right and wrong in practice in each culture. You never answered my question: when parties or groups disagree on a point of morality, who gets to settle the matter in an absolute sense? Nobody, of course. The only factors available to humanity is cultural consensus and power, based on various ideas floating around humanity. What else is there in the day to day practical sense? Until a Lawgiver from On High shows up, that's all we've got. mike1962

Zachriel and all pro choicers. When is a human being, with natural rights, entered this universe? If at some point does it not follow they have to be treated like all human beings relative to natural rights? Today only at birth , fully out, is a human being come into existence according to Roe vs Wade. Also no one may say otherwise. Its in the constitution eh. I say there is NO difference between a child outside the mother and a child within a mother ten minutes or hours or days (9 months) before birth. A line of reasoning. Not a difficult question. Robert Byers

MatSpirit, Well let's take a closer look shall we?

I think Olson undercounts the number for a variety of reasons: a) Olson relies on the estimate of 50 million abortions. In January, LifeNews reported that more than 54.5 million abortions had been done at that time (which itself is an undercount of the likely number) and the United States has passed 55 million abortions since 1973 since that time. b) The states that legalized abortion prior to Roe included some of the most populated states in the nation (i.e., California and New York) and those states legalized abortion for a few years prior to Roe. As such, the total number of legal abortions is likely well over 60 million when those pre-Roe abortions are added to the 55 million total. c) I would argue the number is likely higher. In 2011, 3,953,593 babies were born in the United States in what reports indicate was an all-time low birth rate. Using that as a conservative estimate and also (conservatively) estimating that people who were killed from abortions (not including those killed in abortions before Roe) didn’t begin having children until age 20, there are roughly 19 childbearing years following Roe (1993-2012). That yields about 75 million grandchildren who are missing who would have been born to people killed in abortions in the first 19 years following Roe. That results in a figure of 130 million missing director or indirectly from abortion — which is admittedly a lowball figure. Regardless of the number, 117 million or 130 million or more, the number of people missing because of abortion is overwhelming. Olson’s analysis follows:,,, http://www.lifenews.com/2012/11/06/abortion-has-destroyed-117-million-people-in-the-united-states/

By all means get upset over web page formatting, since such atrocity as 55 million abortions apparently doesn't seem to faze you in the least. Personally, methinks your moral priorities are severely screwed up! But who am I? I am nobody! It is almighty God that each and every one of us will have to give a account to! At the 17:45 minute mark of the following Near Death Experience documentary, the Life Review portion of the Near Death Experience is highlighted, with several testimonies relating how every word, deed, and action, of a person's life (all the 'information' of a person's life) is gone over in the presence of God:

Near Death Experience Documentary - commonalities of the experience - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTuMYaEB35U Matthew 12:36-37 “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” Words (Official Music Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=26&v=Bf_H7Lwl0FI

bornagain77

BA77 in 3: "When factoring grandchildren missing due to abortion since Roe vs. Wade in 1973, the number escalates dramatically: Abortion Has Destroyed 117 Million People in the United States http://www.lifenews.com ... Abortion Has Killed 1-2 Billion Worldwide in 50 Years – April 21, 2013 http://www.lifenews.com ..." Say, that's a very interesting way to look at the situation. If you abort a fetus, you also destroy all the children that fetus would have had if it had been born and had children of its own. The body count really mounts up, doesn't it? So how are you doing personally in that respect? Your picture makes you look like you're in your thirties. Assuming you're exactly thirty and that you began reproducing when you were twenty, you could easily have ten children by now. That would be hard on your wife, though, but even if you adopted a slower pace that wasn't so dangerous to your wife's health, you could easily have produced five healthy children by now. So how many human beings have you produced so far? More importantly, subtract your total number of babies from five and how many babies have you destroyed? And what will that total be twenty years from now when the babies you've destroyed don't have babies of their own? And what will the body count be twenty years later when the grand children fail to get born? And don't even get me started on celibate priests and nuns! One more thing. Have you ever noticed how important typography and layout are to a web site? Use good looking fonts and layouts, add a few pictures and even the dumbest half baked nonsensical ideas in the world will make some readers say, "Looks pretty good to me! I'd better pass this on." MatSpirit

SteRusJon: I am not saying that representative democracy and (direct) democracy are antithetical. You suggested we read an article, which we did. The article argues based on the claim that "These two forms of government: Democracy and Republic, are not only dissimilar but antithetical”. It's an overstatement based on an equivocation of the term democracy. It's a common right wing meme to claim that the U.S. is not a democracy when that is exactly the term people use to describe the U.S. system of government. We prefer modern democracy to the Founders original republican form of government, with slavery and suffrage restricted to white men of privilege. We don't disagree with your larger point. For instance, Iraq didn't have the necessary social structures, such as an independent judiciary, and a minimal respect for the opposition, that democracy entails, so democracy has thus far failed to take root. Zachriel

Zachriel, You have completely missed the point or are trying to divert the discussion. I am not saying that representative democracy and (direct) democracy are antithetical. It is the difference between a representative republic and a pure democracy, whether representative or direct, that I am drawing attention to. The republican form has as one of its objectives to restrict the possible abusive actions of the majority. It is in that way that a republic and a democracy are antithetical. The majority direct election of representatives to engage in operating the republic on the individual citizens behalf does not make the government itself a democracy. The representatives of the people (are supposed to) operate the government within the strictures of the government's constituting documents and constitutional laws derived therefrom irrespective of the majority's will or whim to the contrary. Stephen SteRusJon

"Not at all" You mean, "no". See how easy it is? Andrew asauber

asauber: Your claim of fondness for homo sapiens is a joke. asauber: Are you retracting/modifying that claim now? Not at all. We are quite fond of Homo sapiens. Consider it a peccadillo, if you like. Zachriel

"claiming that you know who or what we are fond of" You claimed you are fond of homo sapiens (comment #63). Are you retracting/modifying that claim now? Andrew asauber

asauber: It’s not an answer. No, you just don't like the answer. Rejecting our explanation, or claiming that you know who or what we are fond of, is not an effective way to advance your position. We explained our answer in detail @77. Zachriel

"Our answer stands." It's not an answer. It's cowardice in the face of a simple question. Your claim of fondness for homo sapiens is a joke. Andrew asauber

asauber: Is it unfortunate for the aborted human that his/her present and future has been destroyed? The balance of our previous comment discussed this issue. Your question contains the implicit assumption that a blastocyst has the same moral value as a baby. The reason you don't consider it an answer is because you are insisting on a black and white distinction where it may not exist. Our answer stands. It’s unfortunate for the loss of a potential baby. Zachriel

"Thought the answer was clear." If you really thought the answer to my question was clear, you could have answered yes or no to my question as I tried to suggest. We both know the answer is clear, you just choose to obfuscate/evade. Now, if you have a fondness for me as a homo sapien barbarian, you could at least do something not too difficult and answer yes or no to my question repeated here: "Is it unfortunate for the aborted human that his/her present and future has been destroyed?" Andrew asauber

asauber: Is it unfortunate for the aborted human that his/her present and future has been destroyed? Thought the answer was clear. It's unfortunate for the loss of a potential baby. Ultimately, there's no arguing values. If you place a very high value on a fertilized human egg, there's no conclusive argument otherwise. You can show the implications of such a position, such as whether you would preferentially save a human baby, or a vat of human blastocysts from a fire at a fertility clinic. If you consider the value of a fetus on a gray scale, there's no conclusive argument otherwise. You can show the implications of such a position, such as when exactly should rights be accorded, but it's the nature of grays to have no strict dividing line, and lines that are drawn tend to be arbitrary. The U.S. Supreme Court drew the line at viability. Before then, the right to autonomy for the woman prevails. After that, states can legislate more protections for the unborn. Zachriel

"Unfortunate for the woman." Zach, Is it unfortunate for the aborted human that his/her present and future has been destroyed? Can you answer yes or no to my question? Andrew asauber

StephenB: [a] The fact that life begins at cconception is not a dogma, it is a scientific fact. There is no other place that life can begin. Sperm is alive too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk StephenB: [b] A woman’s autonomy over her own body is irrelevant to pregnancy. The baby is not part of her body. It is connected to her body. A woman's autonomy is, of course, important. You may not think it trumps the rights of the unborn, but it is not irrelevant. Otherwise, women are nothing but vessels for reproduction. Keep in mind you want the state to force women to carry babies they may not want, that may actually harm them, that may have been forced upon them. asauber: Why “unfortunate”? And unfortunate for whom? Unfortunate for the woman. Unfortunate for the loss of a potential baby. kairosfocus: Those who emphasise the distinction have a significant point. Emphasizing the distinction is fine, but redefining words is not. All modern democracies are representative systems. Zachriel

eigenstate, I have to admire your fortitude in this comment strand. I hope that you are taking sometime to digest what people are trying to say. Yes, we are all just fallible people, but we just might have an idea that you have not thought about or that you have a false opinion about. Interestingly you use the analogy of two acorns. Contrary to what you say, by choosing one and discarding the other you are not just getting rid of an acorn. You are discarding a tree. By your action that one tree will never exist. I also find your reaction to God interesting. If there is no God then how can He be the greatest abortionist? If He exists, then by definition He knows more than you. Because He knows more than you, the best you can honestly say is, "I do not understand why God acts in a certain way". By arguing that abortion is alright because God allows spontaneous abortions implies that you are on an equal level with God. You are saying that you know and understand everything just as God does. Think of what a wonderful creation you are. It all happened when one egg from your mother was fertilized by one sperm from your father. At that moment you were formed (and since you, not I, mentioned it, God breathed into you your immortal soul!). Do not degrade yourself. You were you from that moment and look how wonderful you have become. You were the acorn that was planted. Now continue to grow up to reach your full potential, a relationship with the One who ultimately created you. Thank You for listening and God Bless. GCS

Zachriel, it is precisely because of the distinction the US founders drew, that we have had the situation of modern constitutional democracies with limits on the majority and their representatives, that there has been the convergence that you point to. Those who emphasise the distinction have a significant point. Rule of the majority without adequate limits and restraints is not good enough by a long shot. KF kairosfocus

"see abortion as an unfortunate choice" Zach, Why "unfortunate"? And unfortunate for whom? Andrew asauber

eigenstate

Behind all that is the gender subjugation imperative, the leverage a “life begins at conception” dogma exerts over females who can be controlled, threatened, shamed, exploited, kept in their submissive and dominated places if they are denied autonomy over their bodies and their choices about their reproduction. That’s a travesty, too, yet another black stain on Christian culture.

Your ignorance, which seems to be willful, astounds me. [a] The fact that life begins at cconception is not a dogma, it is a scientific fact. There is no other place that life can begin. [b] A woman's autonomy over her own body is irrelevant to pregnancy. The baby is not part of her body. It is connected to her body. I don't understand how you can not be embarrassed by the nonsense that you write. StephenB

kairosfocus: In the sense BA spoke, unlimited undefined or unrestrained power of a majority is potentially destructive and abusive. SteRusJon cited an article which made an incorrect distinction. Representative and democratic governance are not antithetical, but have merged into modern representative democracy. Zachriel

Zachriel, You left out the context:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security . . .

In the sense BA spoke, unlimited undefined or unrestrained power of a majority is potentially destructive and abusive. In that sense, republic with consent of the governed and democratic state can be sharply distinct. The above FIRST sets limits to legitimate governance, then in that context envisions the state and its derivation of just powers, built on sound principles and manifesting forms calculated to sustain the prior rights, with legitimacy tracing to both the under God purpose and the consent of the people. In this thread, that speaks to the abuse of judicial and voting power to rob what, half a generation, of its life even while it cannot speak up or fight back, being in the womb. And that we are speaking of distinct individuals and lives can be shown by two indisputable facts: (a) half the time the unborn child is of opposite sex to its mother, (b) the unborn child -- even if female -- can be racially quite diverse from its mother, as is so common in this part of the world and as is increasingly so in the USA. I think that when we speak of limited state power, constitutional democracy (with a bill of rights)-- not just a corpus of laws and precedents -- and democratic leadership . . . notice the three dimensions, we are discussing something that emerged from the process in the US an most often appears in a parliamentary system. In this restricted sense, a Constitutional republic is democratic, with deeply entrenched protection of rights in defence of the civil peace of justice. But in the classic sense, democracy does not necessarily imply that limit. And we are back at the distinction, X . . . -y vs X . . . -ic. And indeed in the UK, in principle any act can have constitutional effect, there is no one definite Constitution. Indeed a GBP 300 book not generally known to the public, Erskine May, has Constitutional power as it regulates Parliament. KF PS: As I have said before, any list that does not address Barbados as a stable full democracy of long standing is flawed. I think there is an omission of the eastern Caribbean zone, leading to a lockout effect. Size should not be a criterion. And yes I agree that Jamaica is flawed. kairosfocus

asauber: Not small and innocent ones, evidently. Actually, we're fond of all of them — even the barbarians —, and see abortion as an unfortunate choice, though sometimes the best among bad options. Zachriel

"We are very fond of Homo sapiens" Not small and innocent ones, evidently. Andrew asauber

SteRusJon, Here's the democracy index from The Economist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Democracy_index_by_country_.282014.29 The U.S. is considered a full democracy, though they do note that "US democracy has been adversely affected since 2008 by the increasing polarisation of the political scene and political brinkmanship; popular faith in political institutions and elites has collapsed." We would add that the influence of money is tending the U.S. towards oligarchy. Zachriel

SteRusJon: "These two forms of government: Democracy and Republic, are not only dissimilar but antithetical" That is incorrect, otherwise there could be no such thing as a democratic republic (ETA: usually called representative democracy). The U.S. was not particularly democratic at its inception. Only white men of property could vote. Over time, the U.S. has extended suffrage to more and more people; first white men without property, then non-whites, then women. Universal suffrage is considered a requisite condition for a modern democracy. While there is no pure democracy, the U.S. is certainly a representative democracy by any reasonable standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy Zachriel

Your #53, eigenstate Well, as you manage to concede, even as you trivialize its significance, eigen, if that saw did not resonate with us all, it would not have taken such a hold on our minds. You have allowed yourself to be duped by the sophistication and subtlety of Eichmann's PR, as a result of your own kind of pedantic Mr Magooism, preventing your being disgusted beyond measure - which is actually the effect of the banality of evil. There is just something 'low rent' about evil (as the American saying goes), whatever form it takes. No need to get caught up in the details, even if you have the stomach for it. That's how I see it anyway. Though I must say your protestations at the wickedness of Eichmann I find difficult to understand. Amounting to vivisection being perpetrated on the most vulnerable human beings, abortion is on a par with the behaviour of the concentration camp guards and doctors (though I know there are substantially innocent girls who are dragooned into it by one means or another). Axel

harry: You have already made it apparent that you placed humanity on a par with the eggs you have for breakfast. Not at all. We are very fond of Homo sapiens, and see no reason why they shouldn't eat chicken eggs. However, your argument that "the technology in this factory is light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch" applies just as well to a chicken egg as to a human egg, yet, like a barbarian, you'll eat the latter. (ETA: Barbarians are humans too, by the way.) Zachriel

Seversky, Suggested reading about republic vs democracy, http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/aspects/demrep.html SteRusJon

Zachriel

So is the egg you had for breakfast.

You have already made it apparent that you placed humanity on a par with the eggs you have for breakfast. Use them for your own purposes and run what's left down the garbage disposal. Of course, you would make whatever money you could off of human body parts and then run what was left down the disposal, right? It is not like eggs will ever become rational beings. You are sick, Zachriel. harry

Robert Byers: People think its a mass opf goo almost up to the last months or something. You ignored our comment, so we will repeat it. Most women are quite aware of fetal tissue, as that is something women deal with all the time, such as with miscarriages. Traditionally, abortion would be done until quickening, so the process of development was not a secret to women even in ancient times, but they still had abortions. The Big Secret of Abortion: Women Already Know How It Works: Sixty-one percent of women who seek abortions already have at least one child. More than a third already have at least two children. Women know what pregnancy is and what abortion does. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thecut/the-big-secret-of-abortion_b_7967878.html harry: It is obvious to you that the technology in this factory is light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch. So is the egg you had for breakfast. Zachriel

Barry Arrington @ 36

Are you serious? Don’t you believe in democracy?

No, I don’t,...

That says a lot.

...and neither did the founders...

Didn’t they?

...That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,...

So was Lincoln wrong?

...-- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

They established a constitutional republic.

False distinction. A constitutional republic is a form of democracy. What the founders apparently feared - and it seems to have been a prevalent concern in European societies of that period and later - was mob rule and violent revolution. Democracy, in their minds, was equated with what is sometimes called direct democracy or “mob-ocracy”, in which a majority is able to do whatever it decides by sheer weight of numbers, unchecked by any other considerations, what John Stuart Mill and others called the “tyranny of the majority”. That’s not what we understand by democracy today. UDEditors: "What the founders apparently feared . . . was mob rule" Indeed, like your idea of putting up for a vote who gets to live and who dies. Seversky

eigenstate

Once you get back far enough where there’s not even cognition, there no place to hang this supposed contradiction. At that point, there is nothing lost but potential. And as I pointed out, God (if you believe in a sovereign, immanent God) liquidates 2 out of every three — let’s use Barry’s sleaze and call them “babies” here for emotional tugs! — cute little innocent babies before they even get to 8 weeks development. God is the #1 abortionist in that model, hands down. Planned Parenthood isn’t even with the right order of magnitude.

First of all, lack of cognition does not mean one has no right right to life. If that were the case, if you passed out for some reason others would be free to kill you. While passed out you would have only the potential for cognition in the future. So does a zygote. From conception what we have is a human being with potential, not a potential human being. The nutrition and hydration the newly conceived human life processes do not add “humanity” to it. Neither will anything else. Other life forms process the same kinds of nutrition and hydration and do not become human. Whatever makes the newly conceived human life "human" is already there. It is already as human as it is ever going to be. But you are thinking it isn't a person yet, right? The concept that one's human rights come with one's personhood has a terrible track record. Humans of African descent were denied full legal personhood in the Old South. Jewish humans were denied legal personhood in Nazi Germany. The most egregious crimes against humanity are perpetrated by those claiming their victims are not legal “persons.” This is certainly the case with “legal” child-killing. Your assertion that God is the #1 abortionist reveals an amazing ignorance on your part. From our human perspective, spontaneous abortion happens naturally. Nature is God's creation and is held in existence by Him from instant to instant. A human life only comes into being by God's intention and design. He calls that life back to Himself when He is good and ready to do so. He may want to do that an instant after creating a human being, or in a hundred years. It is up to Him because human life belongs to Him, not us. He told us “You shall do no murder.” When God calls the human life that He brought forth home to Himself by what we call spontaneous abortion, that is not killing, that is God doing what He wants with what belongs to Him. When we decide to “send” someone back to God, that is murder. The above assumes one believes in God. But a rational atheist, assuming there is such a thing, should still come to the conclusion that it is wrong to destroy an innocent human life. There are many way to explain why this is so. I will present only one. Suppose you thought you were in the farthest reaches of the wilderness, yet you come across a completely automated factory filled with computers directing robotic equipment. It steadily drew into itself and processed available raw materials, and as it did it transformed them into even more computers and more robotic equipment. It was developing into something. It is obvious to you that the technology in this factory is light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch. What is its meaning? What is its ultimate purpose? A rational, moral person would have a problem with blowing up that factory without knowing the answers to these questions. What right would one have to do that? None whatsoever. Only a barbarian would destroy it without knowing what it would mean if he did so. Well, a newly conceived human being consists of much more sophisticated technology, and much more of it, than our automated factory. And all that functionality, amazingly, has been miniaturized into microscopic nanotechnology that develops as it processes the raw materials available to it. What is the meaning of this newly conceived human life? What is its ultimate purpose? Only a barbarian would destroy it without knowing what it would mean if he did so. harry

Zachriel. nope. i was consistent. Abortion contention is only a intellectual one for 99%. its not a moral one. if i didn't believe abortion killed a kid THEN i would be pro-choice. likewise proc choicers would become pro life if persuaded the fwtus was a regular child. In fact this thread shows the pro choicers insisting the fetus is NOT YET a child. They are not saying its a child and then okay to kill it. Case in point. The pictures can excite instincts in the intellect about how to see the fetus. People think its a mass opf goo almost up to the last months or something. The pictures work and so , sadly, are real examples of our fellow human beings being slaughtered on eath. However our opponents, thankfully, sincerely think they are not people yet. The people have varrived issue is their intellectual problem and why pro choicers do avoid it as much as possible. They are sure a two day old conception is not yet a kid but they don't know the magic line that turns it into a creature uniquely with inalienable rights. Likewise the stupid roe decision judges had this problem. They still do. They have less excuse. Dumb and possibly bad. Robert Byers

eigenstate rants and raves and spews hundreds of words into this combox to justify his evil. There are, he says, two kinds of beings that are "fully human and fully alive," those that should be killed if they are inconvenient and those that are worthy to have their lives protected by law. He has literately resurrected the Nazi concept of lebensunwertes leben. He acknowledges that the babies he would allow to be killed are fully human and fully alive. They are "life." Yet he says their life is unworthy of our protection and is thus subject to being snuffed out on a whim. If that is not the concept of "life unworthy of life" nothing is. The vile darkness represented by such as he spreads like a hyper-malignant cancer eating through the very soul of this nation. Ideas have consequences, as the picture at the beginning of this OP demonstrates. He who advocates killing is as evil as the killer, and there will be a reckoning eigenstate; of that you can be certain. Barry Arrington

@GCS,

As one former blastocyst to another, I wish to thank you for your thoughtful statements. I tend to disagree with you for one important reason. Your personal experience contradicts most of what you are saying.

No, I don't think it does. I certainly value my life as a person who's conscious and aware enough of my status to make such judgments and commitments. But as a zygote, or an 8-week old fetus, there is nothing of the future-me that has the capacity for such awareness, regret, anticipation, or anything else that we take for granted as "built-in" as functional adults. There is no "expecting" or "wishing" or anything else for the zygote, it's just a glob of cells, with not even a central nervous system, which the lowly mosquito will happily smash against the window of his car without even a thought has. Once you get back far enough where there's not even cognition, there no place to hang this supposed contradiction. At that point, there is nothing lost but potential. And as I pointed out, God (if you believe in a sovereign, immanent God) liquidates 2 out of every three -- let's use Barry's sleaze and call them "babies" here for emotional tugs! -- cute little innocent babies before they even get to 8 weeks development. God is the #1 abortionist in that model, hands down. Planned Parenthood isn't even with the right order of magnitude. All of which just points to fallacy in thinking, that there was an actual loss at the time, when there was nothing there capable of being lost, as we understand it ourselves. The way to reconcile this, and this is why it's no surprise that "protected from conception" advocates are religious, is because they superimpose the imaginary soul, which they feel obligated to protect, along with God's sovereignty of course (as StephenB points out, if there's mass murder to do, mass "life unworthy of life" judgements to be made and acted upon, then Yahweh is the one to pull that maneuver off, not us!). If you can step away, even just momentarily, from the mystical ideas about the soul, there is no "person" there at the zygote level, or at 8 weeks of develop, to realize the loss of a person in the first place. Which is why Barry's putting that zygote on a par with 38 year Jew from Warsaw with three kids to look after is an egregious affront not just to him, but to all of us.

I ask that you consider yourself today and then go back day by day and tell us when whatever you were (adult, adolescent, child, monster [age 2], infant, fetus, blastocyst, fertilized egg) was not you. You were always you, just at different stages of development.

No, at 8 weeks in development, I wasn't "me" or a "person" yet, by any rational standard. An acorn is not an oak tree. It can develop to be an oak tree, but it is not an oak tree. An 8 week fetus that has the potential to become me is NOT me. This is a fundamental point that collapses the "me from conception" argument, or at least reduces it to a naked appeal to religious superstition, detached from reasoning human development, faculties and the capacities that distinguish human persons *as* persons.

The defining point of all your life was when one egg from one woman was fertilized by one sperm from one man.

Please try and separate yourself for just a moment to behold that statement from outside of a religious superstition about "endowment of the soul". There's nothing "defining" about the conception that led to me being me. I have DNA as a blue print, but so does every sperm and ovum, every cell in fact. Unless the acorn is the tree, this point doesn't hold.

How that fertilization occurred does not matter, what was produced was you. All of your potential existed at that point. The rest of your life is a series of challenges, difficulties and opportunities, which determined how much of your potential became actual.

Yes, but the whole idea falls apart and you realize that the same is just as true of the sperm and egg separately before hooking up: the same potential existed in the two organisms. Together, as happened for some pair in my case, and another in yours, the potential was realized. But it's just potential. It's not actual. Potential is not actual, hence the different terms we use! That was a hard point for me to get way back when as a Christian, and I point that out because I think it's important to make an effort to "reasoned for a moment unburdened" by all that to see the salient difference there. When you have this gloss of the divinely endowed immortal soul and all of that stuff it clouds things up in thinking about the practical mechanics of biology and human development.

If you are you from the moment of fertilization, then any rights you have as a person exist from that moment.

But I'm not me at that point. I'm only me-in-potential. Consider an acorn -- does it help to separate this from personal connections, perhaps and emotional strings pulling on you?: if I have two acorns in my hand, and I plant one, and toss the other in the fire, I've not harmed a tree. I've destroyed an acorn. That acorn was EXACTLY as much an acorn-in-potentia as the one I planted (and may become yet a mighty oak tree at length), but Acorn B got tossed in the fire. We can lament unrealized potential if we like, but it's ONLY potential. It never was a tree, it never will be a tree. No tree was harmed in the making of this scenario, not harmed whatsoever. To say the acorn is a tree is to completely to misunderstand both acorn and tree. And to lament the burning of a unicorn in the same way one might lament the frivolous felling of a mighty oak is not even a rough approximation of the degrading of human persons, and their value AS PERSONS in comparing the Holocaust to the practice of abortion. Please be generous enough to give to others the opportunity that you had to live. If anything, I think i'd stand accused of being too generous that way. Someone recently accused me of being a "quiverfull atheist", on learning how many kids my wife and I have. I'm just not a sucker for the cynical propaganda and wicked values that animate the "pro-life" movement, at least in its Christian segments, the kind that Barry proffers here. If you've got the faculties that qualify you as a human person, the fundamental biological developments (even a severely mentally handicapped person is fully a person under this principle for example -- it's a very very low bar, as it should be), then we have a legal and moral obligation to protect that life from unjustified harm or killing. But an 8 week old fetus can't qualify, not nearly, and a zygote! The fact that a zygote is held on par with 38 year old Jew or an infant, or even a fetus at 30 weeks... well that can only come from deeply irrational religious indoctrination, or wicked cultural motives. In Barry's case, like that of much of the movement he is part of, it's both. eigenstate

A few thoughts on the topic addressed to those reading/posting here who see in the brutalized child in the womb the least of the brethren of Christ, Who was once a child in the womb as well. I assume that you take seriously the admonition of Christ that whatever we failed to do for the least of His brethren, we failed to do for Him. And I further assume you also take seriously what He promised He would say on the last day to those who neglected Him in His dire need in His least brethren: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels ... Truly, I say to you, as you did it not for one of the least of these, you did it not for me." (It seems that whenever Christ speaks of the damned, He makes clear they are damned not for the evil they did, but for the good they didn't do. See Mt 25:31-46, Luke 16:19-31) Here are the few thoughts I wanted to present to those who, for the love of Christ, are going to do something about the ongoing holocaust of innocent human life that long ago reached unprecedented proportions: Consider the thought of Horatio R. Storer (1830-1922), who led the physicians’ crusade against abortion, the successful lobbying efforts of which resulted in state and territorial legislatures enacting stringent laws against abortion, most of which remained in effect with little or no change for more than a hundred years. In his book, Criminal Abortion: Its Nature, Its Evidence, and Its Law, Storer argues for the enactment of laws that reflect the intrinsic criminality of abortion:

In the first place the laws do not recognize that … abortion, intrinsically considered, is a crime.

In other words, although everyone already knew that it was criminal to take the life of an innocent human being, state law didn't yet acknowledge this criminality regarding the child in the womb, even though it most certainly was criminal according to “The Laws of Nature and Nature's God,” upon which the Founders based the very legitimacy of their new government, the foundational document of which declares that humans have been “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” the first of which, according to that founding document, is the right to life itself. Storer succeeded in getting state legislators to update/add statutes such that they reflected the inherent criminality of taking the life of the child in the womb. He reminded legislators of what they already knew: that taking the life of the child in the womb was intrinsically illegal and that state law needed to reflect that. Storer succeeded. We haven't. So we should look very carefully at his approach and his assumptions. As Storer points out, taking the life of the child in the womb was, in spite of the law not reflecting it yet, already an offense “of the deepest guilt, a crime SECOND TO NONE.” (Storer's emphasis) He further points out that human life begins at conception and that taking innocent human life is murder:

... if the foetus be already, and from the very outset, a human being alive, however early its stage of development, and existing independently of its mother, though drawing its sustenance from her, the offence becomes, in every stage of pregnancy, MURDER. … Common sense … would lead us to the conclusion that the foetus is from the very outset a living and distinct being. (Storer's emphasis)

The Supreme Court simply had no authority to, in effect, create a new constitutional right to abortion. What is truly a “constitutional right” was defined by “we the people,” whose will was expressed in the text of the ratified Constitution. There is simply no legitimate way to create a new constitutional right other than with a constitutional amendment proposed and ratified according to Article 5. For constitutional government to remain, new constitutional rights must be created the way the Constitution specifies that should be done, not by Supreme Court justices declaring they have discovered them in invisible emanations from constitutional penumbras. Doing this is especially treasonous when based on their alleged discovery they strike down laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people that had been in place for over a hundred years. But that is not all. They also claimed for themselves the authority to withdraw the protection of law from a vast segment of humanity. This is in stark contrast to the plain meaning of our founding document: It is humanity that bestows and withdraws the state's right to exist, not the reverse. (Those who don't understand that the Declaration of Independence is our foundational and primary legal document need to read John Quincy Adams' Jubilee of the Constitution address, and his arguments in the Amistad case.) Illegitimately amending the Constitution the way Roe did was hammering the last nail in the coffin of constitutional government. We – especially the clergy, who are citizens, too – need to state these truths loudly and unrelentingly. Abortion is intrinsically illegal. Roe is illegitimate and unconstitutional. As abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison put it, "I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch. And I will be heard." I will close by pointing out again that Storer begins with the assumption that taking the life of the child in the womb IS illegal, not that it should be outlawed. The law needs to reflect that taking the life of the child in the womb was, is and will always be illegal. The state simply has no authority to sanction the killing of innocent humanity -- to pretend it does is to turn the government established by the Founders on its head. We need to knock Caesar off his high horse and put him back in his place, reminding him that it is his only to protect the inalienable rights of humanity, not to bestow or withdraw them. It is humanity that bestows and withdraws the state's right to exist. harry

@Axel,

‘Eigenstate treats us with an extended treatise that we will file away under “the banality of evil.”’ – Barry Indeed, ‘the banality of evil’ says it all. A strange, weird, creepy truth, and strangely depressing. At the same time, both overwhelming and underwhelming. We were taught by one of our English teachers that, in fiction, the bad characters tended to be have the most interesting personalities, though I have never found that to be the case. Except perhaps as butts of satire.

So, if you are interested in the history of that phrase and the history of Eichmann as arch-demon, you may be familiar with Barbara Stangneth's Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer. As often happens with history analyses, Stangneth has the unfair advantage over Hannah Arendt in writing and analyzing much later, and with many more probative sources in view (see the recorded interviews with Dutch Nazi Sassen after the war, which Arendt did not have full access to at Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, for example). Eichmann was an evil genius, and unfortunately ran circles around Arendt and many of those listening to him during his trial. They bought the propaganda -- that Eichmann's evil was a banal evil, that he was a just a "cog in the wheel" of a much bigger evil enterprise. Arendt's "embodiment of the banality of evil" it turns out, was Eichmann's own propaganda operation. Stangneth compiles a large body of evidence that puts the lie to that bit of deception on Eichmann's part. He was executed, hanged as he ought to have been much earlier than happened, but even to the very end, was clever and cunning enough to pull of some level of rehabilition in the public psyche even as his trial sent him to the gallows. He worked a last con on Arendt and many others. The power and scope of that kind of cunning is evident in a post like Barry's. The "powerful lesson" is a fabrication, Eichmann's last propaganda campaign, and a successful one. This one works because it plays on psychology weak points -- that we are susceptible to lies and distortions that fit what we want to hear or that comfort us. And this is a good example: if fits an anodyne narrative for Barry -- and perhaps for you -- so the con works on him, easy peasy, not one to wield a skeptical or critical eye. It's even better. The power this kind of evil cunning has, truly frightening skill in the service of evil we can examine on the part of Eichmann, is that even if you clear things up for Barry and fellow travelers, even if they read Stangneth's book, Barry will still cling to the meme. It has been lodged in his brain, and he likes it so it stays, defeaters and counter evidence are powerless to dislodge it. He's got what he wants to hear, and that's that. I think Arendt did happen on a social dynamic that is problematic for us, and there is a problem to face in institutions that have people who are all to willing to be a simple "cog in the gears" for an evil machine, but Eichmann is anything but an example of this. It's instructive on how sophisticated duping works, and how hard it or impossible it is to fix even after it has been pointed out as an error. Eichmann as successful in pulling off a last "big lie", as the antithesis of Arendt's imagination-capturing thesis doesn't fit the simplistic, romantic, juvenile narratives and meta-narratives many of us love dearly. So we choose the lie, because it fits what we want the story to be. Another neat little example of the ironies Barry unwittingly bakes into his rants. At any rate, if you want a better perspective into history of Eichmann, I recommend Stangneth's book. It's been out in a pretty good English translation since last year some time. eigenstate

eigenstate is the epitome of execrable! Comparing a cadaver, with all of its potential expended, to an unborn, with none of its potential fulfilled, is so wrong-headed and desperate it makes my head spin. Laws, and the rationalizations that spawn them, have nothing to do with what is just, righteous, before man or God. Execrable, indeed! SteRusJon

@Eugen,

eigenstate, you can drop the “law” excuse

If you read what I wrote upthread, I'm saying the law is the evidence of the reasoning and principled judgment underneath it, valuable because it doesn't brook religious superstitions in its development:

I’m not saying it’s reasonable and grounded because it’s the law, but the reverse: the law is evidence of the reason and grounding of these judgments. The doesn’t accommodate religious superstitions (at least overtly!), so it’s good lens to see what you are not seeing through “dogma glasses”.

The law is the law for the reasoning that gave rise to it, not the other way around. eigenstate

"..Being “alive” does not make it a person — read the law,..." eigenstate, you can drop the "law" excuse Any fool can make a rule And any fool will mind it. -- Henry David Thoreau Eugen

Perhaps eigenstate can tell us when it is during the development of the baby in the womb that the mind first emerges from the brain. Mung

eigenstate

Do you suppose we are committing atrocities when we cremate a cadaver?

You don't seem to understand the difference between a developing living human at the beginning of her life cycle and a dead human at the end of her life cycle. I take comfort that my opponents feel the need to draw batshit crazy comparisons like this one to support their case.

You are busting real human persons, and their tragic loss, down to the level of losing sperm,

When you feel compelled to make idiotic statements like this, it really should make you pause. I doubt that it will.

A zygote is both fully human and full alive.

And therefore we should not kill that fully human living being. Everything else you say after that admission is simply Nazi-style rationalization for why you believe you should be able to kill some beings that are fully alive and human and not others. You really are an evil bastard e. Will you listen to yourself? "She is fully human and alive; let's kill her anyway." If you don't understand why that is evil, I can't help you.

it demolishes one’s integrity, one’s empathy and respect for real human persons

Look at the picture at the start of the OP. You are the one who says the process that led to that picture is good. Now tell me again whose empathy has been demolished.

if they are denied autonomy over their bodies

No one proposes to deny a woman autonomy over her own body. We are just saying she does not have the autonomy to kill another human. This is obvious. That pro-abortion activists such as yourself feel the need to pretend there is not another body at stake should give you pause. I doubt that it will. Barry Arrington

eigenstate has resorted to saying a tiny live person is the same as a dead person; therefore we can kill the tiny live person.

It's not a person in terms of legal protections and rights, Barry, you've missed the whole thrust of the argument. Do you suppose we are committing atrocities when we cremate a cadaver? Or bury it in the ground, or harvest its organs while body is still fresh based on the express wishes on the driver's license of the deceased. No, you know, understand and abide by the distinction just as Stephen does. It's just inconvenient for your religious dogma, and convenient for you to conflate terms and gloss over fundamental differences. So you do it. Over and over and over.

Here’s the difference Eigy old bean: The tiny live person is . . . wait for it . . . alive. If the tiny live person were like the dead person there would be no need to kill it.

A zygote is both fully human and full alive. Being "alive" does not make it a person -- read the law, understand the philosophy and reasoning that ground the jurisprudence there. That's not practical test for personhood. If it was, we could not stop the machines keeping a brain-dead patient's bodily functions going, for it too is -- wait for it, wise guy -- alive. It's also fully human. And yet, even the Catholic Church at the forefront of the crazy on this issue, accepts brain-death as the END OF A PERSON as legal matter, and a moral matter. How can this be, for this living human??? Well it can be because your juvenile approach to the subject has missed the essential discriminating factors regarding personhood. I'm not saying it's reasonable and grounded because it's the law, but the reverse: the law is evidence of the reason and grounding of these judgments. The doesn't accommodate religious superstitions (at least overtly!), so it's good lens to see what you are not seeing through "dogma glasses".

StephenB is correct. ANY attempt to separate humans into “those we do not value and therefore can kill” and “those we value and therefore cannot kill” is indistinguishable from what the Nazis did with the Jews.

Like I said, this is just a contemptible cheapening of the real murders of actual thinking, feeling, sensing, hoping emoting persons. It quite thoroughly debases any moral outrage we can and should have over the Holocaust, and any illicit killing of persons, to the extent this is endorsed and adopted. Ideas have consequences, and this kind of equivalence-making just makes the Holocaust a non-issue, if it's no different than killing zygotes or an 8 week old fetus. If that's all a human person person is, then we've the moral case against murder has been eviscerated. We should be outraged because those Jews had essential personhood qualities that a zygote or a sperm (just as human in terms of DNA, and also living, and therefore, in need of your protections based on your juvenile criteria!). You are busting real human persons, and their tragic loss, down to the level of losing sperm, a zygote or a fetus with ZERO brain activity. That's a bad place to be.

That is a sobering thought that should cause you to reflect on whether you should continue your frenetic efforts to justify just such a division. I doubt that it will. Your conscience is seared.

I used to imbibe the same kool aid you do currently. I've heard all the sermons, I know the verses, I was a child reared in those superstitions. I am fully trained and aware in the methods of emotional manipulation as the propaganda tools used in service to your God. I understand the goal, but it demolishes one's integrity, one's empathy and respect for real human persons to have to take on this position. And that's just focusing on the personhood issue. Behind all that is the gender subjugation imperative, the leverage a "life begins at conception" dogma exerts over females who can be controlled, threatened, shamed, exploited, kept in their submissive and dominated places if they are denied autonomy over their bodies and their choices about their reproduction. That's a travesty, too, yet another black stain on Christian culture. But the Holocaust appeal is damning enough for the OP on personhood. It would be overkill on this thread to even bother with that. eigenstate

29 eigenstate August 17, 2015 at 10:20 pm I was talking about 18 weeks from CONCEPTION, not from BIRTH. Yikes.

Sorry. I had just finished reading an article by Steven Pinker, and your lack of revulsion concerning the PP videos made me interpret your post in that light (or should I say darkness). . cantor

'Eigenstate treats us with an extended treatise that we will file away under “the banality of evil.”' - Barry Indeed, 'the banality of evil' says it all. A strange, weird, creepy truth, and strangely depressing. At the same time, both overwhelming and underwhelming. We were taught by one of our English teachers that, in fiction, the bad characters tended to be have the most interesting personalities, though I have never found that to be the case. Except perhaps as butts of satire. Axel

eigenstate

It’s more a person than a zygote, in that it least has a body, arms, legs, etc. If a zygote qualifies in your view, a cadaver qualifies all the more — it’s much more a person than a dozen cells.

??????In case you hadn't noticed, the right to live is irrelevant to someone who is already dead.

That thing is no “different” than the previously living, thinking, respirating person, after all, yeah?

You are not thinking clearly. I didn't say that a zygote is "no different" from a child or a cadaver. All humans are different in some way, but a zygote is similar to all other humans insofar as it is human, which is the moral standard for deciding on who deserves to live.

It’s more a person than a zygote, in that it least has a body, arms, legs, etc. If a zygote qualifies in your view, a cadaver qualifies all the more — it’s much more a person than a dozen cells.

More bad logic. One person cannot be more of a human than any other. One is either a human or is not a human. A child is no less of a human than an adolescent, even thought the adolescent is more fully developed. Similarly, a fetus is not more of a human than a zygote, even though the fetus is more fully developed. What a thing is has nothing to do with how far it has progressed in the developmental process.

Not is not consistent with its usage, if you look at how and why the terms have been used and since when. I might as well say Barry’s usage is purposed to subjugate women and impose irrational limitations on liberty on the basis of religious superstitions. It’s not even a stalemate, though, as the usage of the terms remains clearly segregated as I pointed out, for medical and biological reasons (which, unsurprisingly, are also the reasons for the jurisprudence).

The history of child murder is replete with progressively morphing language. First, the murder of babies was justified on the grounds that the fetus was not alive. After science refuted that claim, abortionists changed their strategy and insisted that the fetus was not human. After science refuted that claim, they raised the stakes by allowing only "quality" humans to live, at which time they injected the subjective term "person," as if the human's ability to contribute to society has any bearing on it's right to live. It's all about perverting the language in order to justify the murder of babies. SB: This is the Nazi mentality: A Jew is subhuman, therefore, I may kill if it gets in my way; a baby is subhuman, therefore I may kill it if it gets in my way. No difference.

Could not be more different. A zygote is fully human — it’s got human DNA. It’s not a person, which is the principle that underwrites protections and rights.

No, "personhood" is not a moral standard for anything. In the context of abortion, it is an arbitrary legal term calculated to isolate unwanted babies by doing the same thing you just did--to claim that a fetus is not a "person," which is a totally subjective standard. Baby killers cannot refute the scientific fact that a zygote or fetus is human, but they can claim that both are not persons, even thought the term is totally arbitrary and subjective. The moral right to live is based on the baby's humanity, not the baby killer's arbitrary definition of a person.

A cadaver is just as human, its DNA is just as human as the zygote. But it doesn’t have the minimum faculties we identify with personhood.

There you go again with that word "person." Babies deserve to live because they really are humans, not because you are someone else decides to call them a "person."

It’s as clear a distinction as there can be, and conflating them, as I said, is an execrable cheapening and watering-down of the horror visited upon them, actual murders of actual persons, equated with the abortion of a fetus, or, to read you, even a zygote.

On the contrary, I support everyone's right to live, both babies and Jews. For you, only those whom you would prefer to live should live, and your justification for killing everyone else is to say that they are not really "persons." The idea is to downgrade their value by characterizing them as inferior humans. Question: Why do you support the murder of unborn children? StephenB

eigenstate has resorted to saying a tiny live person is the same as a dead person; therefore we can kill the tiny live person. Here's the difference Eigy old bean: The tiny live person is . . . wait for it . . . alive. If the tiny live person were like the dead person there would be no need to kill it. StephenB is correct. ANY attempt to separate humans into "those we do not value and therefore can kill" and "those we value and therefore cannot kill" is indistinguishable from what the Nazis did with the Jews. That is a sobering thought that should cause you to reflect on whether you should continue your frenetic efforts to justify just such a division. I doubt that it will. Your conscience is seared. Barry Arrington

eigenstate, As one former blastocyst to another, I wish to thank you for your thoughtful statements. I tend to disagree with you for one important reason. Your personal experience contradicts most of what you are saying. I ask that you consider yourself today and then go back day by day and tell us when whatever you were (adult, adolescent, child, monster [age 2], infant, fetus, blastocyst, fertilized egg) was not you. You were always you, just at different stages of development. The defining point of all your life was when one egg from one woman was fertilized by one sperm from one man. How that fertilization occurred does not matter, what was produced was you. All of your potential existed at that point. The rest of your life is a series of challenges, difficulties and opportunities, which determined how much of your potential became actual. If you are you from the moment of fertilization, then any rights you have as a person exist from that moment. Please be generous enough to give to others the opportunity that you had to live. God Bless GCS

@StephenB

Bad logic. A baby after birth is not a “different” thing than a fetus, or for that matter, a zygote. All are humans in different stages of development.

But the stages are the essential aspect, here. This is eaily shown by looking at the other end of the timeline, at brain death. By your standards a human body that is brain-dead is no "different" than the living person with a fully functional brain. It's the same person, just in a different stage of life. To make the fail in your claim even more clear, we could say the same thing above the cadaver after respiration and heart function stop to, not just brain death. That thing is no "different" than the previously living, thinking, respirating person, after all, yeah? It's more a person than a zygote, in that it least has a body, arms, legs, etc. If a zygote qualifies in your view, a cadaver qualifies all the more -- it's much more a person than a dozen cells.

As Barry points out, the purpose for trying to make a hard distinction between a “fetus” and a “baby” is to rationalize murder.

Not is not consistent with its usage, if you look at how and why the terms have been used and since when. I might as well say Barry's usage is purposed to subjugate women and impose irrational limitations on liberty on the basis of religious superstitions. It's not even a stalemate, though, as the usage of the terms remains clearly segregated as I pointed out, for medical and biological reasons (which, unsurprisingly, are also the reasons for the jurisprudence).

This is the Nazi mentality: A Jew is subhuman, therefore, I may kill if it gets in my way; a baby is subhuman, therefore I may kill it if it gets in my way. No difference.

Could not be more different. A zygote is fully human -- it's got human DNA. It's not a person, which is the principle that underwrites protections and rights. A cadaver is just as human, its DNA is just as human as the zygote. But it doesn't have the minimum faculties we identify with personhood. Jews had all those faculties, and were classed as subhuman even though they lacked no faculties or developed capacities whatsoever. It's as clear a distinction as there can be, and conflating them, as I said, is an execrable cheapening and watering-down of the horror visited upon them, actual murders of actual persons, equated with the abortion of a fetus, or, to read you, even a zygote. Execrable. ETA: blockquotes, "different" eigenstate

"Recognising unalienable, God given rights" People mired in sin, especially a gravely evil one, surrender their sight for such things. Thus things plainly ugly and abhorrent, like abortions, these people become devoted defenders of. The abortion defenders here need prayer on their behalf, since they refuse to pray themselves. So, you guys are going on my prayer list. Andrew asauber

seversky

Tell that to the Canaanites, Amalekites, Midianites, etc, etc….

It's not the same thing. In order to save humanity, God may decide to destroy a culture that has become so corrupt and depraved that its influence causes everything else around it to rot. Under those circumstances, the Creator must pull it out from the roots in much the same way that a surgeon must destroy bad tissue in order to save the patient. Humans, on the other hand, do not have God's wisdom and are not, therefore, entitled to play God, either by "purifying the race, or "contolling" the population. It is immoral for them to kill other humans unless they are defending their own lives, individually or collectively. StephenB

eigenstate to Barry

not prescriptive so the point here was that the reason the terms are different is because the biology is different, the development is different, the situation in versus of the woman’s body is different. It isn’t the word or the spelling that matters, it’s concepts behind that betray your motive.

Bad logic. A baby after birth is not a "different" thing than a fetus, or for that matter, a zygote. All are humans in different stages of development. As Barry points out, the purpose for trying to make a hard distinction between a "fetus" and a "baby" is to rationalize murder. This is the Nazi mentality: A Jew is subhuman, therefore, I may kill if it gets in my way; a baby is subhuman, therefore I may kill it if it gets in my way. No difference. StephenB

Read: http://nicenesystheol.blogspot.com/2010/11/unit-9-sins-of-christendom.html#u9_intro kairosfocus

Seversky,

Are you serious? Don’t you believe in democracy?

No, I don't, and neither did the founders. They established a constitutional republic. Read a book. Barry Arrington

Barry Arrington @ 24

And Seversky’s take is that matters of life and death are up for grabs depending on what “enough people” think.

Are you serious? Don’t you believe in democracy? Why shouldn’t people have a say in these matters?

If enough Germans think Jews are lebensunwertes leben, then according to Seversky we should crank up the ovens.

In the highly unlikely event that the Nazis had actually explained exactly what was meant by their “Final Solution” - not just to the German people but also to the Jews, gypsies, disabled, mentally ill etc who were to be fed into those ovens - do you really believe that a majority would have voted for it? If you do, you have a much lower opinion of people than I do.

Materialists, they are a bloody lot.

Tell that to the Canaanites, Amalekites, Midianites, etc, etc.... People can be a bloodthirsty lot under the wrong circumstances, especially so when they believe they are justified in spilling that blood by some political ideology or religious belief. For all that, for all our faults, I still seem to have a greater faith in the ultimate decency of ordinary people than you have. Seversky

Robert Byers: I;m very pro-life and agree these pictures should be shown to provoke peoples instincts that abortion kills a kid even if they at first intellectually don’t think it does. Robert Byers: Abortion is a intellectual contention and not a moral one. First, you say you want to provoke instincts, then you say it is intellectual. Most women are quite aware of fetal tissue, as that is something women deal with all the time, such as with miscarriages. Traditionally, abortion would be done until quickening, so the process of development was not a secret to women even in ancient times, but they still had abortions. The Big Secret of Abortion: Women Already Know How It Works: Sixty-one percent of women who seek abortions already have at least one child. More than a third already have at least two children. Women know what pregnancy is and what abortion does. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thecut/the-big-secret-of-abortion_b_7967878.html Zachriel

BA:

let’s not put another person’s status as human or non-human up for vote

US DoI, 1776:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, [ --> As in, true, readily seen to be true by reasonably experienced people, and so seen to be necessarily true on pain of instant patent absurdity on attempted denial or evasion . . . as we can see in this case at awful cost (but bloodguilt, personal, collective or by compromise and enabling increasingly corrupts our ability to think straight) ], that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Our civilisation's problem in a paragraph. Recognising unalienable, God given rights and the duty of bearing the sword of justice in their defence is the premise of legitimate government. Democracy that ignores that foundation becomes oppressive mob rule. KF kairosfocus

The cerebral cortex has ZERO electrical activity??? STFW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your knife is not giving the cebral cortex the time required to achieve electrical activity which without doubt happens every time the knife is put away. It is not optional for a developing feotus to start or stop electrical activity in the brain or to become anything other than a human being. Eigenstates' of this world require an arbitrary demarcation between life and non-life in order to accomodate the mother's desire for an out to a bad decision. Well, there are plenty of social support mechanisms to help mothers with those bad decisions. The knife if what is thoroughly wicked and denigrates, diminishes the real loss of real, sentient, conscious humans persons (to be). The knife represents the artificial demaracation line between sentience and non-sentient. It is only non-sentience in mature, fully formed organisms that allows us the possibility to consider termination of that life form. The supposed non-sentience of foetuses is a temporary phase of a 9 month process. It is not an inherent characteristic of the mature, fully formed human person that is the ultimate and undisputed outcome of that said 9 month process. Eigenstate's objections are simply an exercise in sophisticated barbarism. That all it amounts to.

Eigenstate blurts:This kind of comparison is thoroughly wicked, and denigrates and diminishes the real loss of real, sentient, conscious human persons under the Nazis. To equate them with a fetus that is 10 weeks along and has ZERO electrical activity in its cerebral cortex is execrable

Steve

I;m very pro-life and agree these pictures should be shown to provoke peoples instincts that abortion kills a kid even if they at first intellectually don't think it does. Abortion is a intellectual contention and not a moral one. Pro-choicvers don't believe abortion kills a child. sincerely. Indeed many famous or common pro-lifers were persuaded to the pro-life side by being persuaded the fetus was a child. Not by a moral regeneration. Just a intellectual opinion. They would see early term fetus as not children and so even pictures would fail to convince them. However they should look at the pictures for WHAT THEY CONSENT TO. Test themselves in their conscience. Holocaust comparison is factually true but pro-choicers would see it as not fair play. they , of coarse, hate the holocaust but not abortion. We can't insust acceptance of abortion is acceptance of the holocaust. Yet they shold reflect on these things. also lets remember our people/allies deaths in WW11 was more important then foreigners in the death camps. Unless there is no difference based on identity but no one thinks that way. Robert Byers

@Barry,

eigenstate says someone wrote in a dictionary that you can call an unborn human a “fetus,” and therefore they are not babies and that means you can cut them into little pieces and sell the pieces like meat.

No one here by that name ever said anything like that, Barry. So now, when our common definitions and connotations don't suit you, well, you sing a totally different tune, eh? Color me surprised. The dictionary is descriptive, not prescriptive so the point here was that the reason the terms are different is because the biology is different, the development is different, the situation in versus of the woman's body is different. It isn't the word or the spelling that matters, it's concepts behind that betray your motive.

Wow, there’s some penetrating moral philosophy for you, based on eigenstate’s “solid principles and semantics for good and evil.”

Well, yes, the kind of thinking that distinguish between a fetus and a baby, and, say, understand the physiological differences for the woman involved as well, that is what I'm talking about. The words point at concepts with important legal and moral implications. eigenstate

Cantor, Puzzling. 1) Once the child is born, why does the child have to be killed to preserve the “freedom and self-determination” of the mother? Why not just allow the mother to quitclaim the child to the state? I was talking about 18 weeks from CONCEPTION, not from BIRTH. Yikes.

2) Do you actually see no post-birth paternal rights whatsoever here, or was that simply an oversight?

See above. You misunderstood my recommendations for protection of a fetus from the point where its cerebral cortex becomes active. eigenstate

Mike asks if there is a practical alternative. Yes, Mike, let's not put another person's status as human or non-human up for vote. Barry Arrington

Atheists are inviting us to their macabre party. No, we are not coming! Eugen

BA @ 25: And Seversky’s take is that matters of life and death are up for grabs depending on what “enough people” think. Materialists; they are a bloody lot. Is there a practical alternative in the real world? I mean, unless the Deity shows up and tells us exactly what he expects, how are we to know what the transcendent morality is? Take abortion. I would hazard a guess that most people would be reviled at late term abortions if they knew the details of what occurs. I sure am. However, I have no problem with abortion up until the time brain waves kick in for the foetus. It seems patently reasonable that prior to brainwaves, the brain is not functional, and therefore no supernatural consciousness could possibly be attached to it. I'm sure you have your objections. You and I may reasonably disagree on this issue, but how do we settle the disagreement unless the Deity Himself, if one exists, shows up and settles it? Calling people names sure doesn't seem like a way to settle it. At any rate, regardless of who is right or wrong with respect to any given specific of morality, power and/or consensus is the only practical governor of it at this point in earth's history. mike1962

And Seversky's take is that matters of life and death are up for grabs depending on what "enough people" think. If enough Germans think Jews are lebensunwertes leben, then according to Seversky we should crank up the ovens. Materialists, they are a bloody lot. Barry Arrington

eigenstate says someone wrote in a dictionary that you can call an unborn human a "fetus," and therefore they are not babies and that means you can cut them into little pieces and sell the pieces like meat. Wow, there's some penetrating moral philosophy for you, based on eigenstate's "solid principles and semantics for good and evil." Barry Arrington

16 eigenstate August 17, 2015 at 5:45 pm I’d be fine with some “margin” on that, and agree to say, 15 or 16 weeks, but remember, this is a zero sum equation: every week that I push the cutoff earlier, is that much less freedom and self-determination for the mother

Puzzling. 1) Once the child is born, why does the child have to be killed to preserve the "freedom and self-determination" of the mother? Why not just allow the mother to quitclaim the child to the state? 2) Do you actually see no post-birth paternal rights whatsoever here, or was that simply an oversight? . cantor

So, about these babies with small minds... Mung

All you need to have abortion outlawed is 1) Convince enough people that it is immoral to kill an individual human being at any stage of development without good cause 2) Convince enough people that the concept of personhood is irrelevant to the argument. 3) Convince enough people that it is both irrational and immoral to deny the right to life to an individual human being for the first nine months of their existence. Then the law will be changed.

Hearts and minds, yes. But while the anti-abortion has it wrong on the merits of the question, it's a fundamental issue. For example, I'd be surprised if you would relegate those who were forbidden by law to marry a member of another race to satisfy themselves with "convince the people of 19th century Virginia that anti-miscegenation laws were immoral and unconstittutional". If there is a point on the merits, it warrants interventional by the state, if the state takes its constitutional guarantees seriously. Ownership of slaves is not a matter subject to a public consensus under our Constitution, and it abortion were the unjustified killing of a human person, the same would apply. That should not top advocates from taking their case to the court of public opinion, and doesn't. It's not clear that your suggesting that this is their only recourse, but if so, I'd have to strongly disagree. As I said, they are wrong on the merits, but if they were right, it's not a matter that could be justified as being left until public consensus comes around, any more than it would be justified to wait for the grandkids of George Wallace to "come around" on racial equality or the Bible Belt culture to come around on treating homosexuals as equals under the law. eigenstate

ES, nothing excuses what is before us. Nothing. Our civilisation is putting darkness for light and light for darkness. We know what we have been slaughtering in global numbers that I cannot bring myself to try to address -- our innocent children, in the womb . . . unable to speak for themselves other than maybe in an ultrasound image. We are guilty, guilty, guilty. KF kairosfocus

Why should we expect anything different from those who think we all arrived here by a chaotic and random series of events? Seems to follow that this is not a big deal. scottH

All you need to have abortion outlawed is 1) Convince enough people that it is immoral to kill an individual human being at any stage of development without good cause 2) Convince enough people that the concept of personhood is irrelevant to the argument. 3) Convince enough people that it is both irrational and immoral to deny the right to life to an individual human being for the first nine months of their existence. Then the law will be changed. Seversky

eigenstate, you state:

And the “victims” of abortion are not sentient, have none of the precious faculties the human persons had killed in the Holocaust.

Interesting that used used the term 'human persons'. I have a question for you eigenstate, Since the Nazi’s legally took away the status of person-hood from the Jews in order to make it legal to kill them, and since unborn babies were denied the legal status of person-hood in order to make it legal to kill them, and yet atheistic materialists deny that they are really persons with real morals in the first place, does that then make it legal, and/or perhaps even moral, to kill atheistic materialists? If not why not?

8 Horrific Times People Groups Were Denied Their Humanity – July 02, 2014 Excerpt: According to Ernst Fraenkel, a German legal scholar, the Reichsgericht, the highest court in Germany, was instrumental in depriving Jewish people of their legal rights. In a 1936 Supreme Court decision, “the Reichsgericht refused to recognize Jews living in Germany as persons in the legal sense.” Nazis described Jews as Untermenschen, or subhumans to justify exterminating them. http://www.personhood.com/8_horrific_times_people_groups_were_denied_their_humanity Unborn children as constitutional persons. – 2010 Excerpt: In Roe v. Wade, the state of Texas argued that “the fetus is a ‘person’ within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.” To which Justice Harry Blackmun responded, “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.” However, Justice Blackmun then came to the conclusion “that the word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.” In this article, it is argued that unborn children are indeed “persons” within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendments. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20443281 “The neural circuits in our brain manage the beautifully coordinated and smoothly appropriate behavior of our body. They also produce the entrancing introspective illusion that thoughts really are about stuff in the world. This powerful illusion has been with humanity since language kicked in, as we’ll see. It is the source of at least two other profound myths: that we have purposes that give our actions and lives meaning and that there is a person “in there” steering the body, so to speak.” [A.Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide To Reality, Ch.9] “that “You”, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.” This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing.” Francis Crick – “The Astonishing Hypothesis” 1994 The Confidence of Jerry Coyne - January 6, 2014 Excerpt: But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant: But more on that below.) Prometheus cannot be at once unbound and unreal; the human will cannot be simultaneously triumphant and imaginary. http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/the-confidence-of-jerry-coyne/?_r=0

a few more notes:

"The magic of the mechanisms inside each genetic structure saying exactly where that nerve cell should go, the complexity of these, the mathematical models on how these things are indeed done, are beyond human comprehension. Even though I am a mathematician, I look at this with the marvel of how do these instruction sets not make these mistakes as they build what is us. It's a mystery, it's magic, it's divinity." - Alexander Tsiaras: Conception to birth -- visualized https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKyljukBE70 Duality in the human genome - Nov. 28, 2014 Excerpt: The results show that most genes can occur in many different forms within a population: On average, about 250 different forms of each gene exist. The researchers found around four million different gene forms just in the 400 or so genomes they analysed. This figure is certain to increase as more human genomes are examined. More than 85 percent of all genes have no predominant form which occurs in more than half of all individuals. This enormous diversity means that over half of all genes in an individual, around 9,000 of 17,500, occur uniquely in that one person - and are therefore individual in the truest sense of the word. The gene, as we imagined it, exists only in exceptional cases. "We need to fundamentally rethink the view of genes that every schoolchild has learned since Gregor Mendel's time.,,, According to the researchers, mutations of genes are not randomly distributed between the parental chromosomes. They found that 60 percent of mutations affect the same chromosome set and 40 percent both sets. Scientists refer to these as cis and trans mutations, respectively. Evidently, an organism must have more cis mutations, where the second gene form remains intact. "It's amazing how precisely the 60:40 ratio is maintained. It occurs in the genome of every individual – almost like a magic formula," says Hoehe. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-11-duality-human-genome.html HOW BIOLOGISTS LOST SIGHT OF THE MEANING OF LIFE — AND ARE NOW STARING IT IN THE FACE - Stephen L. Talbott - May 2012 Excerpt: “If you think air traffic controllers have a tough job guiding planes into major airports or across a crowded continental airspace, consider the challenge facing a human cell trying to position its proteins”. A given cell, he notes, may make more than 10,000 different proteins, and typically contains more than a billion protein molecules at any one time. “Somehow a cell must get all its proteins to their correct destinations — and equally important, keep these molecules out of the wrong places”. And further: “It’s almost as if every mRNA [an intermediate between a gene and a corresponding protein] coming out of the nucleus knows where it’s going” (Travis 2011),,, Further, the billion protein molecules in a cell are virtually all capable of interacting with each other to one degree or another; they are subject to getting misfolded or “all balled up with one another”; they are critically modified through the attachment or detachment of molecular subunits, often in rapid order and with immediate implications for changing function; they can wind up inside large-capacity “transport vehicles” headed in any number of directions; they can be sidetracked by diverse processes of degradation and recycling... and so on without end. Yet the coherence of the whole is maintained. The question is indeed, then, “How does the organism meaningfully dispose of all its molecules, getting them to the right places and into the right interactions?” The same sort of question can be asked of cells, for example in the growing embryo, where literal streams of cells are flowing to their appointed places, differentiating themselves into different types as they go, and adjusting themselves to all sorts of unpredictable perturbations — even to the degree of responding appropriately when a lab technician excises a clump of them from one location in a young embryo and puts them in another, where they may proceed to adapt themselves in an entirely different and proper way to the new environment. It is hard to quibble with the immediate impression that form (which is more idea-like than thing-like) is primary, and the material particulars subsidiary. Two systems biologists, one from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Germany and one from Harvard Medical School, frame one part of the problem this way: "The human body is formed by trillions of individual cells. These cells work together with remarkable precision, first forming an adult organism out of a single fertilized egg, and then keeping the organism alive and functional for decades. To achieve this precision, one would assume that each individual cell reacts in a reliable, reproducible way to a given input, faithfully executing the required task. However, a growing number of studies investigating cellular processes on the level of single cells revealed large heterogeneity even among genetically identical cells of the same cell type. (Loewer and Lahav 2011)",,, And then we hear that all this meaningful activity is, somehow, meaningless or a product of meaninglessness. This, I believe, is the real issue troubling the majority of the American populace when they are asked about their belief in evolution. They see one thing and then are told, more or less directly, that they are really seeing its denial. Yet no one has ever explained to them how you get meaning from meaninglessness — a difficult enough task once you realize that we cannot articulate any knowledge of the world at all except in the language of meaning.,,, http://www.netfuture.org/2012/May1012_184.html#2 The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings - Stephen L. Talbott Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings picture - What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? http://cdn-4.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/harvardd-2.jpg

Verses

Psalm 139:15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;

bornagain77

@Cantor,

OK, let’s take your position and run with it and see how your logic plays out. At what point during pregnancy would you accord basic human rights to the developing child? And if not any time during pregnancy, at what point after birth?

If I were to participate in some legislative process on this, I think the best scientific knowledge we have establishes minimal thresholds for cognitive activity at something like 18 weeks. I'd be fine with some "margin" on that, and agree to say, 15 or 16 weeks, but remember, this is a zero sum equation: every week that I push the cutoff earlier, is that much less freedom and self-determination for the mother -- something the pro-life community lamentably either ignores or holds in contempt. So, one can't just "err on the side of caution", because being too cautious -- say at 8 weeks -- and you aren't really protecting fetuses that qualify in principle, and you are necessarily harming the liberty interests of the woman, as well as (unintentionally in my case) aiding in the cause of cultural subjugation of the females, those interested in abortion controls for subjugative cultural purposes. If there were some instrumental, non invasive, passive way to determine this on a case-by-case base through some new technological development, I'd be interested in looking at that as an alternative to a "bright line" cutoff point of 18 weeks (or whatever the scientific data suggests captures the vast majority of cases). eigenstate

This on the same topic at Prager University http://prageruniversity.com/Political-Science/The-Most-Important-Question-About-Abortion.html#.VdJxWbJVhzg SteRusJon

“I do regret that, but have not participated or enabled any abortions, myself.” Why not? You seem to want to defend the practice of them. What would stop you from getting in on the act, if you actually believe your own words? Andrew

Because I value human freedom of course. If I were to understand that a 8 week old fetus had the features we understand as the salient thresholds for human personhood -- say, minimally, at least electrical activity in the cerebral cortex, however rudimentary it may be compared to even an neonate -- I'd be obligated by that principle of liberty and the right to one's one life as a human person to defend that person, legally and otherwise. That ain't the facts of the matter, and thanks to religious irrationality that is pervasive on this issue at least in the US, this cruel and wicked idea of "personhood from zygote" confounds and prevents any reason-based principles obtaining -- and, in yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences in religious practice, endangers and enables killing that is murderous, at late points in the pregnancy, where a 35 week old is not just credentialed with the salient faculties our reasoning requires for personhood (electrical activity in the cerebral cortex, for example), it's viable outside the womb. If religjous crazies like Barry really were interested in preventing abortions of fetuses, they'd not cling to their religious dogma that thwarts their survival. The demand that "life begins at conception" means that reason has been rejected in favor of religious superstition, and in the resulting vacuum, you have WAY more fetuses at risk and killed than you would if your goal was "pro-life" and not "pro-God" and "anti-woman". As it is though, the benefit of the doubt has to go to the mother, at the risk of many late term fetus who reasonably warrant protection. Religious types like Barry can thank their superstitious fervor over principle and reason for that. Their blood is on them, if anyone. As Barry said, apparently unaware of the irony, ideas have consequences. eigenstate

Most North Americans will do nothing about this, and they will do nothing when the same sort of people come for their parents, once euthanasia is legalized. Jesus-hollering notwithstanding, unfortunately. They will wake up one morning and discover that it is no longer even legal to talk about it. Then they will wonder what happened. But one thing they won't do - just for example - is give up the legacy media that are heart and soul fronting it all, as part of a strategy to survive the Internet by becoming the PR for progressive causes - including dismembering babies and killing grannies (neither group matters). If you won't give up Hollywood and legacy media, and find out what is really going on, you can't have respect for life or liberty. But then maybe that is not a priority for you. News

You have a mind, by which you say you mean nothing more than that you have a brain. That's plenty by my lights. It seems like the same equipment everyone else has, too. Nothing more than a human brain, the most sophisticated machine known.

Which amount to “I prefer it” means the same as “good” and “I don’t prefer it” means the same thing as “evil.”

No it doesn't amount to that or equate to that at all. I don't choose my natural, evolved psychology any more than I choose the color of my irises. I've inherited both down a millions-of-years long path of development. My innate sense of empathy, fairness, kindness are just that -- innate, just as innate as my impulse towards greed, selfishness and arrogance. I don't "prefer" these anymore than hazel colored irises. I'm hard with them the same way you are (albeit in slightly different ratios, it seems!). Even as you have it, my 'preferring it' even for more frivolous things like my favorite flavor of ice cream, doesn't work the way you suppose. I don't really choose that in your folk-psychological sense of the term. The point being that the moral distinctions and judgments are ground in, and cannot be independent from, human nature, the way we are wired.

You see, dear readers, eigenstate prefers that doctors should be able to chop babies into little pieces and sell the pieces on the open market like so much meat. The fact that he prefers it for reasons that seem adequate to him means it is “good” under his “solid principles and semantics for good and evil.”

You're confusing "baby" with "fetus". It's an understandable maneuver, but it's transparent, Barry. Again, appealing to your doctrinaire nature with respect to the dictionary:

a very young child, especially one newly or recently born. "his wife's just had a baby" synonyms: infant, newborn, child, tot, little one; More

For fetus:

an unborn offspring of a mammal, in particular an unborn human baby more than eight weeks after conception.

A baby is a human person we accord legal person status and protection to. A fetus is not. Again, the rich irony in your assessment, here, said as you are one "prefers it for reasons that seem adequate to him means it is “good” under his “solid principles and semantics for good and evil" to cheapen the lives of the human persons who were murdered in the Holocaust, and watering down the horror of real murder by trivializing it by comparison to the abortion of a fetus. God help us. He and many others like him walk among us. Who will he decide next is Lebensunwertes Leben. Those religious fanatics he obviously hates so much? The old? The infirm? Well, you can be comforted that when he or those like him come for you, it will be on the basis of “solid principles and semantics for good and evil.” Ahh, Barry, it's so easy to see what really drives your "thinking", here. Do you realize how much mileage one gets out of this kind of rant on ID's flagship blog, from its owner? Carry on, by all means! This was all prophecied in the book of Revelations, and elsewhere in the Bible. Behold, I see a rider on a pale horse... The end is near, Barry. The end is near! eigenstate

"I do regret that, but have not participated or enabled any abortions, myself." Why not? You seem to want to defend the practice of them. What would stop you from getting in on the act, if you actually believe your own words? Andrew asauber

4 eigenstate August 17, 2015 at 3:39 pm And the “victims” of abortion are not sentient,

OK, let's take your position and run with it and see how your logic plays out. At what point during pregnancy would you accord basic human rights to the developing child? And if not any time during pregnancy, at what point after birth? . cantor

Eigenstate treats us with an extended treatise that we will file away under “the banality of evil.” Why, it’s legal to kill the little brutes he says. That settles it doesn’t it? Newsflash eigenstate, not a single German law was broken at Auschwitz.

But the size of the parts does not signal one’s personhood.

Yeah, those little fingers are not human fingers. Those little feet are not human feet. That little heart was not a human heart. Monstrous.

it comes at the cost of liberty and dignity for (would-be) mother

And it comes at the cost of being chopped into little pieces for the baby.

I do have a mind and solid principles and semantics for good and evil.

You have a mind, by which you say you mean nothing more than that you have a brain.

principles and semantics for good and evil

Which amount to “I prefer it” means the same as “good” and “I don’t prefer it” means the same thing as “evil.” You see, dear readers, eigenstate prefers that doctors should be able to chop babies into little pieces and sell the pieces on the open market like so much meat. The fact that he prefers it for reasons that seem adequate to him means it is "good" under his "solid principles and semantics for good and evil." God help us. He and many others like him walk among us. Who will he decide next is Lebensunwertes Leben. Those religious fanatics he obviously hates so much? The old? The infirm? Well, you can be comforted that when he or those like him come for you, it will be on the basis of "solid principles and semantics for good and evil." Barry Arrington

asauber,

Your rant sounds like it has a little abortion-guilt pushing it up the slope. Am I right? Andrew

No, don't have any of that in my history. I'm a guy, so haven't had to deal with the prospect of getting pregnant myself, but have never gotten any fermales pregnant other than my wife, and she's not had any abortions (not would she, per her own choices ). I definitely was part of the same wicked, anti-female, irrational culture growing up. I was definitely guilty of shaming others in my younger, Christian days, having the bad values that go with that, and absorbing subconsciously at least a lot of ant-female animus that drives this issue in American Christian culture. I do regret that, but have not participated or enabled any abortions, myself. eigenstate

@Barry.

eigenstate has arrogated unto himself the Godlike capacity to tell us which human organisms should have the right to live and which do not. He knows Lebensunwertes Leben (German for “life unworthy of life”) when he sees it.

There's nothing god-like about it, it's just reasoning based on the evidence and our experience as humans, reasoning without whatever religious dogma that precludes such reasoning. "Life" and "personhood" are not the same concept in law, something you are certainly aware of if you passed the bar. And the basis for that distinction is grounded in reason, reason on the absurdities which obtain -- and which you are here advancing -- if one simplistically equates "living" in a biological (or metabolizing) sense with "personhood". If you need some review of the jurisprudence on this, and the rational basis and history behind it, I and others here can help you out. That’s not a human hand, he tells you. It is too small. That is not a human foot, he tells you. It is too small. Size of the hand neither affirms or disconfirms our decision about the subject as a human person, accorded the rights and protections of the law. I understand that many Christians (i have people in my extended family who earnest believe this!) a just-fertilized zygote is a human being, being just a few cells. This is religious nuttery, and it comes at the cost of liberty and dignity for (would-be) mother. I also know that's not a high priority are weighty concern in Christian circles, like the one I grew up in, but some basic reasoning has to be done to consider both the interests of the pregnant female AND the interests of any human person, when the developing fetus warrants such protections. I am quite sympathetic to science-and-reason based judgments that identify biological milestones, like electrical activity in the neo-cortex, which can serve as qualifiers for "human personhood". There's no such case for an 8 week old fetus, there is only religious fervor, and levied at the expense of the female. But the size of the parts does not signal one's personhood. The capacities we associate with personhood -- mental autonomy (even for persons who are severely disabled or incapacitated in terms of higher levels of cognition, this autonomy persists as a distinguishing feature of personhood.), sensory integration. What happens on the other end when the body is otherwise fully functional, but the brain has completely stopped functioning (brain death)? The person is LEGALLY DEAD, not accorded the rights and protections we accord to human persons. Why do you think that is, Barry? It's a strong clue, and just an area where the frothing religious didn't happen to go contaminate (for the most part).

That was not a human heart that stopped beating when this child was killed (and most assuredly a heart stopped beating). It is too small.

No, size is not probative here. Fail.

eigenstate insists he has no mind. He insists that there is no such thing as good and evil (ironically enough given the morally outraged tone of his comment). He believes there is no such thing as “beliefs.” And he believes humans are not human until they are born.

I do have a mind and solid principles and semantics for good and evil. They just don't correspond to your invincible incorrigible intuitions. Beliefs are real phenomena, they just aren't at all like what your folk-psychology suggests. You continually bear false witness on these accounts, it's boring and pointless to try and constantly correct you on this -- it's clearly not a matter of correction, but dishonesty you deploy purposefully as a part of your telic design for dealing with critics. Again, I understand incorrigibility when I see it. But for the record, your representations of me are not recognizable by me.

Ideas have consequences.

The irony, Barry. You are such a rich source of irony. eigenstate

eigenstate, Your rant sounds like it has a little abortion-guilt pushing it up the slope. Am I right? Andrew asauber

eigenstate has arrogated unto himself the Godlike capacity to tell us which humans have the right to live and which do not. Like the good little fascist he is, he knows LEBENSUNWERTES LEBEN* when he sees it. That's not a human hand, he tells you. It is too small. That is not a human foot, he tells you. It is too small. That was not a human heart that stopped beating when this child was killed (and most assuredly a heart stopped beating). It is too small. Hitler: "They are Jewish swine." eigenstate: "They are tiny little brutes." eigenstate insists he has no mind. He insists that there is no such thing as good and evil (ironically enough given the morally outraged tone of his comment). He believes there is no such thing as "beliefs." And he believes tiny humans are not human. Ideas have consequences. ______________ *German for "life unworthy of life." Barry Arrington

And the "victims" of abortion are not sentient, have none of the precious faculties the human persons had killed in the Holocaust. This kind of comparison is thoroughly wicked, and denigrates and diminishes the real loss of real, sentient, conscious human persons under the Nazis. To equate them with a fetus that is 10 weeks along and has ZERO electrical activity in its cerebral cortex is execrable. I don't expect more from the sewer of anti-human values that ID advocates often make this site, but it's outrageous to see such depraved thinking parading so proudly on these pages. It doesn't even rise to "barbarian" to make this kind of equation. As for numbers, your God kills WAY more than Hitler ever did, or than all the medical abortions ever performed. In your God's barbaric wisdom, the would be mother's body aborts TWO out of every THREE pregnancies. But it's a human being! Out of 100 pregnancies, just 30 some even make to eight weeks development. Clearly, your God doesn't have a problem with the human persons-in-potential being offed in numbers that make the Holocaust look like a nice lunch in the park, This evil nonsense just cheapens the life of actual, realized human persons. It's beyond condemnation to cheapen the realized persons who really were murdered in the Holocaust, or anywhere else. Would toward religion does become a historic footnote eventually, if this is how it patterns humans to devalue and debase humanity. eigenstate

5. The executioners are far more callous. 6. The victims are far more numerous.

Wilberforce Redux: What the Planned Parenthood Videos Mean - Michael Egnor August 16, 2015 Excerpt: The abortionists in the Planned Parenthood videos candidly admit selling organs of children and haggle over price -- to ensure they get their Lamborghini and a little extra for the clinic. The workers in the clinic acknowledge with levity the humanity of the children they're dissecting -- "It's another boy!" No remotely sensitive human being can remain unmoved by these videos. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/08/wilberforce_red098601.html Abortion Statistics http://www.voiceofrevolution.com/2009/01/18/abortion-statistics/ At 1,200,000, Abortion is the leading cause of deaths each year in the USA - graph http://skepchick.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/10449486_10154444727070445_6800239725838679585_n-e1406834704889.jpg

When factoring grandchildren missing due to abortion since Roe vs. Wade in 1973, the number escalates dramatically:

Abortion Has Destroyed 117 Million People in the United States http://www.lifenews.com/2012/11/06/abortion-has-destroyed-117-million-people-in-the-united-states Abortion Has Killed 1-2 Billion Worldwide in 50 Years - April 21, 2013 http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/21/earth-day-abortion-has-killed-1-2-billion-worldwide-in-50-years/

bornagain77

Yo. And I've got childhood friends who pretend they don't see anything wrong in pictures like the one in the OP. Andrew asauber

Here. OldArmy94