Fascism Watch

_{Barry Arrington

December 4, 2016

Intelligent Design}

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One would think that the French, having been overrun by a fascist country in 1940, would be especially careful to reign in the fascist impulses of their progressives. But one would be wrong:

In 2014, in conjunction with World Down Syndrome Day (March 21), the Global Down Syndrome Foundation prepared a two-minute video titled “Dear Future Mom” to assuage the anxieties of pregnant women who have learned that they are carrying a Down syndrome baby.

More than 7 million people have seen the video online in which one such woman says, “I’m scared: What kind of life will my child have?” Down syndrome children from many nations tell the woman that her child will hug, speak, go to school, tell you he loves you and “can be happy, just like I am – and you’ll be happy, too.”

The French state is not happy about this. The court has ruled that the video is – wait for it – “inappropriate” for French television. The court upheld a ruling in which the French Broadcasting Council had banned the video as a commercial. The court said the video’s depiction of happy Down syndrome children was “likely to disturb the conscience of women who had lawfully made different personal life choices.”

Comments

Barry @11: I don't know what a metaphysical materialist is, but I don't believe anything remotely like intelligent gods exist. A fetus contains nothing that can care. When you say that atheists believe, "Morality is just an illusion foisted on us by our genes", you are talking straight from the hothouse. Morals are the rules that enable us to live and work in groups and enjoy the astounding advantages we get from society. Today we sit in rooms surrounded by goods we could never make ourselves and often don't even understand. They were all made by others. We live in warm houses we didn't build ourselves and heat them with fuel other people dug up hundreds or thousands of miles away. We use some of those goods to talk to people in different states overy cables installed aND maintained by still others. A few thousand years ago, the groups helped us find food, protected us from enemies and helped us out of holes we fell into. We can't successfully live together if we're constantly killing each other, robbing each other blind or just not doing our share of the work. Group living, and it's enormous benefits, only became possible as we developed inborn tendencies to respect each other's persons and cooperate with each other. We call developing such proclivities becoming social animals. This has occurred to other species, but we are the only species that labels this socialization "morality" and credits it's development to gods instead of evolution. When we contemplate the things that would really make society impossible if widespread, such as killing a (real) baby, most of us feel a deep revulsion. That's our evolved social instincts at work. People who live in the hothouse call it an example of absolute morality. Thanks for leaving my messages up. I hope it's your first step out of the Christian hothouse/echo chamber.MatSpirit_{December 5, 2016
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MatSpirit, not that you care about empirical evidence when it contradicts your atheistic worldview, but that the immaterial mind is real, not illusory as is held in materialism, can be established by a few different methods: For example, In direct contradiction to the atheistic claim that our thoughts are merely the result of whatever state our material brain happens to be in, 'Brain Plasticity', the ability to alter the structure of the brain from a person's focused intention, has now been established by Jeffrey Schwartz, as well as among other researchers.
The Case for the Soul - InspiringPhilosophy - (4:03 minute mark, Brain Plasticity including Schwartz's work) - Oct. 2014 - video The Mind is able to modify the brain (brain plasticity). Moreover, Idealism explains all anomalous evidence of personality changes due to brain injury, whereas physicalism cannot explain mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBsI_ay8K70 The Case for the Soul: Quantum Biology - (7:25 minute mark - Brain Plasticity and Mindfulness control of DNA expression) https://youtu.be/6_xEraQWvgM?t=446
Moreover, as alluded to in the preceding video, and completely contrary to materialistic thought, mind has been now also been shown to be able to reach all the way down and have pronounced, ‘epigenetic’, effects on the gene expression of our bodies:
Scientists Finally Show How Your Thoughts Can Cause Specific Molecular Changes To Your Genes, - December 10, 2013 Excerpt: “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that shows rapid alterations in gene expression within subjects associated with mindfulness meditation practice,” says study author Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Most interestingly, the changes were observed in genes that are the current targets of anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs,” says Perla Kaliman, first author of the article and a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona, Spain (IIBB-CSIC-IDIBAPS), where the molecular analyses were conducted.,,, the researchers say, there was no difference in the tested genes between the two groups of people at the start of the study. The observed effects were seen only in the meditators following mindfulness practice. In addition, several other DNA-modifying genes showed no differences between groups, suggesting that the mindfulness practice specifically affected certain regulatory pathways. http://www.tunedbody.com/scientists-finally-show-thoughts-can-cause-specific-molecular-changes-genes/
Then there is also the well documented placebo effect in which a person’s beliefs have pronounced effects on the physiology of their body
placebo effect; plural noun: placebo effects a beneficial effect, produced by a placebo drug or treatment, that cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment. Placebos can produce some objective physiological changes, such as changes in heart rate, blood pressure, and chemical activity in the brain, in cases involving pain, depression, anxiety, fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo Human mind: Knowingly taking fake pills actually eases pain - October 17, 2016 Excerpt: Taking a pill in the context of a patient-clinician relationship — even if you know it’s a placebo — is a ritual that changes symptoms,,, https://uncommondescent.com/neuroscience/human-mind-knowingly-taking-fake-pills-actually-eases-pain/
Of supplemental note:
Recognising Top-Down Causation - George Ellis Excerpt: ,, The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities. http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Ellis_FQXI_Essay_Ellis_2012.pdf
bornagain77_{December 5, 2016
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Cable @14: "Interesting subject. Personally, I have often pondered the question, and I can only say I couldn’t care less if I’d never been born regardless of cause. Spontaneous or provocated. I trust I’d have been unaware of the fact." Exactly! What doesn't exist is incapable of caring. There's nothing there to care.MatSpirit_{December 5, 2016
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BA77 in 18: That "there is no self in anyone" theme got started by the philosopher Daniel Dennett in "Consciousness Explained", a book I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone. It will help you escape from the hothouse/echo chamber you're living in. Dennett is arguing against what he calls the "Cartesian Theater" As Wikipedia puts it, "Descartes originally claimed that consciousness requires an immaterial soul, which interacts with the body via the pineal glandof the brain. Dennett says that, when the dualism is removed, what remains of Descartes' original model amounts to imagining a tiny theater in the brain where a homunculus (small person), now physical, performs the task of observing all the sensory data projected on a screen at a particular instant, making the decisions and sending out commands (cf. thehomunculus argument)." (Wikipedia article on Cartesian Theater) Dennett argues that the homunculus does not exist and that the self is constructed on the fly as the various modules in the brain interact with each other. Unfortunately, his awkward phraseology, while it might fly in philosophical circles, was an irresistible invitation to error for hothouse dwellers. Francis Crick and Jerry Coyne are just telling you how the mind works. Like it or not, those signals in your brain create your mind just like the electrons in a microprocessor create Pac-Man. You are material, you live in the material world and its time to remove your goggles. Re. the Nuremberg laws: Yes, in 1935 a group of German Conservative Christians crowned 2000 years of Jew hating (see my quotation from Paul in Titus for a view of earlier Jew hatred) by stripping Jews of all their human rights by ignoring the obvious signs of their intelligence. The Jews had language, feelings, hopes, fears, love, hate (all the things a fetus doesn't have) but the Christians went with their religion and its anti-semitism instead. They permanently shut up about six million of the "circumcision group". Of course, they had been living in their Christian hothouse for several centuries and dissenting voices had been very thoroughly banned. Justice Blackman came to the conclusion that fetuses were not persons within the meaning of the 14th amendment because no fetus has ever been shown to have any of the attributes of a mind.MatSpirit_{December 5, 2016
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MatSpirit, it is not I who is denying you the fact that you have a real mind. It is your atheistic materialistic worldview itself that denies you have a real mind. That you admit for a certain fact that you have a real mind and that you really exist as a real person is quite good since that is the most certain fact you can know about reality, (Decartes, Chalmers). What is not good is that you do not realize, or you will not accept, the fact that your own worldview, i.e. atheistic materialism, denies you that most certain fact that you can possibly know that your mind is real or that you really exist as a real person. In short, in what I consider a shining example of poetic justice, in the Atheistic Materialist's denial of the reality of God, they also end up denying that they really exist as real ‘persons’. See post 18 for a few quotes by leading atheists. As well, here are a few more articles to further drive the point home:
Darwin's Robots: When Evolutionary Materialists Admit that Their Own Worldview Fails - Nancy Pearcey - April 23, 2015 Excerpt: Even materialists often admit that, in practice, it is impossible for humans to live any other way.,, In What Science Offers the Humanities, Edward Slingerland, identifies himself as an unabashed materialist and reductionist. Slingerland argues that Darwinian materialism leads logically to the conclusion that humans are robots -- that our sense of having a will or self or consciousness is an illusion. Yet, he admits, it is an illusion we find impossible to shake. No one "can help acting like and at some level really feeling that he or she is free." We are "constitutionally incapable of experiencing ourselves and other conspecifics [humans] as robots." One section in his book is even titled "We Are Robots Designed Not to Believe That We Are Robots.",,, When I teach these concepts in the classroom, an example my students find especially poignant is Flesh and Machines by Rodney Brooks, professor emeritus at MIT. Brooks writes that a human being is nothing but a machine -- a "big bag of skin full of biomolecules" interacting by the laws of physics and chemistry. In ordinary life, of course, it is difficult to actually see people that way. But, he says, "When I look at my children, I can, when I force myself, ... see that they are machines." Is that how he treats them, though? Of course not: "That is not how I treat them.... I interact with them on an entirely different level. They have my unconditional love, the furthest one might be able to get from rational analysis." Certainly if what counts as "rational" is a materialist worldview in which humans are machines, then loving your children is irrational. It has no basis within Brooks's worldview. It sticks out of his box. How does he reconcile such a heart-wrenching cognitive dissonance? He doesn't. Brooks ends by saying, "I maintain two sets of inconsistent beliefs." He has given up on any attempt to reconcile his theory with his experience. He has abandoned all hope for a unified, logically consistent worldview. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/04/when_evolutiona095451.html
In the following article, Dawkins himself admits that it would be 'intolerable' for him to live as if his atheistic worldview were actually true:
Who wrote Richard Dawkins's new book? - October 28, 2006 Excerpt: Dawkins: What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don't feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do.,,, Manzari: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views? Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/10/who_wrote_richard_dawkinss_new002783.html
In what should be needless to say, if it is impossible for you to live as if your worldview were actually true then your worldview cannot possibly reflect reality as it really is but your worldview must instead be based on a delusion.
Existential Argument against Atheism - November 1, 2013 by Jason Petersen 1. If a worldview is true then you should be able to live consistently with that worldview. 2. Atheists are unable to live consistently with their worldview. 3. If you can’t live consistently with an atheist worldview then the worldview does not reflect reality. 4. If a worldview does not reflect reality then that worldview is a delusion. 5. If atheism is a delusion then atheism cannot be true. Conclusion: Atheism is false. http://answersforhope.com/existential-argument-atheism/
Thus it is not I who is denying you that most certain fact that you can know that you have a real mind and that you really exist as a real person. It is your own 'intolerable' atheistic worldview that denies you that most certain fact that you can possibly know. Of supplemental note: If the mind of a person were merely the brain, as materialists hold, then if half of a brain were removed then a 'person' should only be ‘half the person’, or at least somewhat less of a 'person', as they were before. But that is not the case, the ‘whole person’ stays intact even though the brain suffers severe impairment:
Removing Half of Brain Improves Young Epileptics' Lives: - 1997 Excerpt: "We are awed by the apparent retention of memory and by the retention of the child's personality and sense of humor,'' Dr. Eileen P. G. Vining,, Dr. John Freeman, the director of the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Epilepsy Center, said he was dumbfounded at the ability of children to regain speech after losing the half of the brain that is supposedly central to language processing. ''It's fascinating,'' Dr. Freeman said. ''The classic lore is that you can't change language after the age of 2 or 3.'' But Dr. Freeman's group has now removed diseased left hemispheres in more than 20 patients, including three 13-year-olds whose ability to speak transferred to the right side of the brain in much the way that Alex's did.,,, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/19/science/removing-half-of-brain-improves-young-epileptics-lives.html
In further comment from the neuro-surgeons in the John Hopkins study:
"Despite removal of one hemisphere, the intellect of all but one of the children seems either unchanged or improved. Intellect was only affected in the one child who had remained in a coma, vigil-like state, attributable to peri-operative complications." Strange but True: When Half a Brain Is Better than a Whole One - May 2007 Excerpt: Most Hopkins hemispherectomy patients are five to 10 years old. Neurosurgeons have performed the operation on children as young as three months old. Astonishingly, memory and personality develop normally. ,,, Another study found that children that underwent hemispherectomies often improved academically once their seizures stopped. "One was champion bowler of her class, one was chess champion of his state, and others are in college doing very nicely," Freeman says. Of course, the operation has its downside: "You can walk, run—some dance or skip—but you lose use of the hand opposite of the hemisphere that was removed. You have little function in that arm and vision on that side is lost," Freeman says. Remarkably, few other impacts are seen. ,,, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-when-half-brain-better-than-whole How Removing Half of Someone's Brain Can Improve Their Life – Oct. 2015 Excerpt: Next spring, del Peral (who has only half a brain) will graduate from Curry College, where she has made the dean’s list every semester since freshman year. http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/70120/how-removing-half-someones-brain-can-improve-their-life
bornagain77_{December 5, 2016
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My grandfather spent several of his most precious years fighting the Nazis in order to destroy the poisonous ideas that MatSpirit holds. It is a real shame when such evil pops up again, and we can only hope that courageous people will be willing to fight this generation of Hitlers, Mengeles, and others who treat human flesh as a disposable good.OldArmy94_{December 5, 2016
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Silver Asiatic @ 19: When I use the word "spirit" I mean the mind. Call it the material spirit if you want. SA: "Complexity is not the issue." Complexity is important because the human mind is complex. If you don't have a certain amount of complexity and if it's not ordered in the right way, a mind is impossible. The realization that such complexity and organization are not present in the womb was the impetus behind Roe v Wade. SA: "As evolutionists say, “there is nothing significantly different between a human and a cat” anyway, so this argument isn’t going to work either." Evolutionists say nothing of the sort. That's the conservative Christion hothouse talking. Cats have some of the mental attributes of a human, especially feeling pain and wanting to stay alive and thus are given many of the rights of a human, but if it ever comes down to a human or a cat dying, the cat gets it. (A cat would feel differently, of course.) SA: "The title “Silent Scream” actually tells the real story. In the sixties, when you think people were more enlightened, they didn’t have ultrasound images of babies in development in the womb." "Silent Scream" was made in 1984. In 1979, C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer released, "Whatever Happened to the Human Race" which accelerated the conservative Christian return to anti-abortion politics that was started by the hated and reviled Supreme Court's Roe v Wade decision. SA: “Silent Scream” is what we saw the baby doing when attacked by the abortionist." You'd see the same thing with a cat fetus. Pain avoidance is a very low level function that has nothing to do with minds. SA: "So, it was science that overcame the ignorance of “the sixties”. That was when the religeous right abandoned science once and for all when it came to abortion and started doing what seemed right in their own (goggled) eyes.MatSpirit_{December 5, 2016
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As asauber @ 22: "I would just say to MatSpirit that today would be a great day for him to leave his distorted opinions and illusions about the world behind and start over." I've been doing that for the last fifty + years. "The good news is that he doesn’t have to be captive to nonsense anymore. There is a way out." I say the same thing to those trapped in the conservative Christian hothouse. You live in the world, like it or not. You are morally obligated to keep your eyes open as you navigate the world so you don't inadvertently hurt others as you travel. Conservative religion is like wearing a pair of distorting goghles. It narrows your field of view, hides many of the things around you and obscures the rest. It makes you do bad things that are entirely unnecessary simply because you have an inaccurate and distorted view of the world around you and the people in it. The first step to clearing your vision is to climb out of the hothouse. Instead of reflexively vilifying the world around you, LOOK at it and look at what the hothouse is doing to you..MatSpirit_{December 5, 2016
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BA77 @ 23: "But alas SA, by Mat equating being without soul and mind as a baby not being worthy of life, then Mat himself, since his own atheistic worldview denies the fact that he himself has a soul and mind, admits he is also not worthy of life." By definition, something without a mind is not a person. That is, it has no thoughts, sensations, feelings, memories, knowledge or anything else mental that goes into making up a mind. That's why nobody considers a tree a person. It doesn't have the physical equipment necessary to have a mind. You and I do have the equipment necessary to support a mind, namely a brain. The fact that you think atheists don't believe they have minds is a symptom of the closed, claustrophobic world that conservatives of all religions inhabit, where you talk almost exclusively to each other and reflexively dismiss, villify or outright ban other viewpoints.MatSpirit_{December 5, 2016
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john_a_designer, that passage reads to me like the announcement of an impending pregnancy, not an announcement of personhood. Of course, Luke wasn't there anyway. Goodness knows where he got that story from. Did you notice verse 36? 36 And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath ALSO conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. Elisabeth was ALSO in her old age and considered barren? So Mary was too? I don't remember that in Sunday school! Of course, Luke wasn't there.MatSpirit_{December 5, 2016
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This month Christians celebrate the birth of Christ who we believe is God incarnate. While historically we are not sure when Jesus was born we do know that according to the Luke’s gospel (Luke 1: 26-38) that the incarnation began at the moment of conception. In other words, personhood begins at conception. As a Christian this is something which I believe by faith, therefore, I cannot prove. As far as I can see the naturalist/materialist does not-- indeed cannot-- know when personhood begins. So how can he make the claim that an unborn baby is not a human being without human rights? To believe that he must believe so by “faith”, does he not? Why should we accept his faith over and above the Christian’s faith as morally binding on society as a whole?john_a_designer_{December 5, 2016
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Echoing - TWSYF. Yes, very good asauber! Come on, MatSpirit, why not take a step back and look at what we're saying?Silver Asiatic_{December 5, 2016
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BA,
Thus, I say let’s harvest Mat’s organs right now, without anaesthesia ...
The important point you're making is that care and compassion for one another comes from seeing the great value that each human person has. Without that, there would be the brutality that you describe.
But alas SA, by Mat equating being without soul and mind as a baby not being worthy of life, then Mat himself, since his own atheistic worldview denies the fact that he himself has a soul and mind, admits he is also not worthy of life.
It's a frightening worldview, yes, indeed!Silver Asiatic_{December 5, 2016
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asauber @ 22: Well said!Truth Will Set You Free_{December 5, 2016
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But alas SA, by Mat equating being without soul and mind as a baby not being worthy of life, then Mat himself, since his own atheistic worldview denies the fact that he himself has a soul and mind, admits he is also not worthy of life. Thus, I say let's harvest Mat's organs right now, without anaesthesia, since anaesthesia is not necessary for automatons, and give them to someone who can consciously appreciate them. Then at least he would finally contribute something meaningful to the world.
Philosophical Zombies - cartoon http://existentialcomics.com/comic/11 “(Daniel) Dennett concludes, ‘nobody is conscious … we are all zombies’.” J.W. SCHOOLER & C.A. SCHREIBER - Experience, Meta-consciousness, and the Paradox of Introspection - 2004 https://www.scribd.com/document/183053947/Experience-Meta-consciousness-and-the-Paradox-of-Introspection And there you have it folks, absolute proof that when you deny the reality of your own mind you have in fact lost your mind! EXPELLED: In Nazi Germany The Handicapped were considered "Useless Eaters" and exterminated - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mo3VRBHAzo
bornagain77_{December 5, 2016
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I would just say to MatSpirit that today would be a great day for him to leave his distorted opinions and illusions about the world behind and start over. The good news is that he doesn't have to be captive to nonsense anymore. There is a way out. Andrewasauber_{December 5, 2016
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News
But I am not clear we should even tolerate such an openly and lethally bigoted person as MatSpirit on this site. What do readers think?
I fully agree that his views are toxic and evil. But I don't think he should be banned, at least yet. He seems to be responding from profound ignorance and a passionate hatred for life itself (and for God most importantly). That's usually a sign of self-loathing, for whatever reason. But I think it remains possible that he could learn something and begin to change for the better. Time will tell, however, and if it continues long or gets worse I would vote for a ban.Silver Asiatic_{December 5, 2016
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BA77
Actually, I think the world would much better off if dangerous people like Mat, who try to play god over other people’s lives, had never been born.
I know what you mean, but I disagree here. Only God can know if the world would be better off without a certain person. A great sinner can turn around and do even greater good in the end. Yes, Mat's views are abhorrent and disgusting, but No - I would not say that he should never have been born. I strongly disagree with that.Silver Asiatic_{December 5, 2016
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MatSpirit
There’s nobody home in the womb. There’s no spirit in the womb ...
Not sure where you're going with this, but it's good you believe in the existence of a spiritual nature. As for when the spirit arrives in the baby, I don't think you've got the scientific evidence to say that it's not there at that point. It's the old rule for deer hunting - "if you're not sure if its either a man or a deer, then you're not permitted to shoot". In this case, you're not sure - thus, abortion is not justified.
... it had become obvious by the sixties that there was nobody home in the womb,
That became obvious before we had ultrasound imaging?
... nothing more complex than you would find in a cat fetus.
Complexity is not the issue. As evolutionists say, "there is nothing significantly different between a human and a cat" anyway, so this argument isn't going to work either.
Conservative religion mostly realized that too. If you can find sixties issues of religious magazines, you’ll see a cautious, somewhat reluctant, agreement that there were times when abortion was at least the lesser of evils, but then a couple of evangelicals brought “Silent Scream” to church basements around the continent and replaced reason and hard won knowledge with the big lie that a fetus is a human being and all the corollaries you can work out from that lie.
That's certainly an interesting historical tale. The title "Silent Scream" actually tells the real story. In the sixties, when you think people were more enlightened, they didn't have ultrasound images of babies in development in the womb. "Silent Scream" is what we saw the baby doing when attacked by the abortionist. So, it was science that overcame the ignorance of "the sixties". The same remains true today. Ultrasound images are so powerful, and they show what the baby suffers in the womb, that pro-abortionists don't want anybody to see them.
If you want to ban me, you would at least be following in the footsteps of St. Paul. “They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach.” Nothing in there about answering them or defending your beliefs, just ban them! The only thing I’d worry about is that although I am circumcised, I’m not Jewish.
Do you want to discuss theology?Silver Asiatic_{December 5, 2016
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Mat states to News:
No! I mean halting the pregnancy before Johnny or Anna ever exists! They don’t exist in the womb. The woman might as well not even be pregnant, as far as their non-existent minds are concerned. There’s nobody home in the womb. There’s no spirit in the womb,
So Mat since, by your very own definition, a 'person' who does not have a mind is not worthy of life, and since atheistic materialists deny that they are persons with minds, then does not that make the killing of atheistic materialists morally right? After all 'there’s nobody home', 'there’s no spirit' in the body, according to the precepts of Atheistic Materialism.
"There is no self in, around, or as part of anyone’s body. There can’t be. So there really isn’t any enduring self that ever could wake up morning after morning worrying about why it should bother getting out of bed. The self is just another illusion, like the illusion that thought is about stuff or that we carry around plans and purposes that give meaning to what our body does." - A.Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, ch.10 "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 What you’re doing is simply instantiating a self: the program run by your neurons which you feel is “you.”" Jerry Coyne The Confidence of Jerry Coyne - Ross Douthat - January 6, 2014 Excerpt: But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession (by Coyne) 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
Of related note to the atheist’s inability to ground ‘personhood’. Both the Jews in Nazi Germany, and humans in their mother’s womb in present day America, are denied the status of ‘personhood’
The introduction of the Nuremberg Race Laws in 1935 saw Jews declared non-persons, stripped of their rights, robbed of their property and isolated. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1399798/Hitlers-murderous-obsession-to-annihilate-the-Jews.html in no case in its history has the Court declared that a fetus—a developing infant in the womb—is a person. Therefore, the fetus cannot be said to have any legal “right to life.” http://www.phschool.com/curriculum_support/interactive_constitution/scc/scc35.htm 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 denial of the legal status of personhood has been used numerous times throughout history to deny people their humanity and to justify killing them:
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
Moreover, contrary to the precepts of atheistic materialism, and as was pointed out to Mat yesterday, "The death of man’s soul, much like Twain’s death, is greatly exaggerated by evolutionary materialists." https://uncommondescent.com/origin-of-life/paul-nelson-discusses-origins-at-trinity-college-florida/#comment-621708 Verse and quote:
Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;",,, "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. —" - from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America
bornagain77_{December 5, 2016
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According to the Catholic News Agency, the advert hasn't been banned from broadcast, only from certain types of broadcast:
On Nov. 10, the French Council of State, a body of the French government, ruled that the short video was inappropriate for broadcast on French television as a commercial. In a decision upholding the French Broadcasting Council’s earlier ban of the video, the Council of State said it failed to meet the criteria for a public service announcement. In its reasoning, it pointed out that the happiness of the children shown in the video was “likely to disturb the conscience of women who had lawfully made different personal life choices.” The Council of State only banned the film as a commercial or announcement, and said it would not ban the video from broadcast in other forms.
Bob O'H_{December 5, 2016
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Cabal, ponder this: war on posterity. KFkairosfocus_{December 5, 2016
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Mat, your post with corrections:
MatSpirit, If I was talking to the atheistic materialists, I would tell them that I’m sorry that they were born. I’d tell them that they did nothing to deserve their mental affliction of atheism, that it was visited upon them before they even existed. I’d also tell them that they do exist today and they are therefore under the same responsibility as everybody else to live their lives so as not to harm others and that some people are using them to try to make a woman do something that is very very bad and murder her unborn child: They are trying to persuade a woman who knows her fetus has the mental affliction of atheism to carry it to term so it will eventually produce a human being with retarded mental development instead of starting over and producing a normal baby who believes in God. Some of those kids who are mentally afflicted atheists obviously have some idea of how bad this would be, but I don’t think most of them do yet. I doubt if they've even listened about some of the horrendous atrocities committed by other atheists, like the wholesale killing of the young and weak. (Of course, the atheists rocking back and forth crying and drooling on the internet about how bad God is haven’t listened either, but they weren’t ever going to listen anyway.) I guess I’d finish up by warning atheists that even the most loving and well meaning atheists can do horribly evil things if they’ve got their facts wrong and to watch out because those atheists will try to use them in their plans to murder everyone whom they deem unworthy of life which, hypocritically, never includes themselves personally.
Verse:
Deuteronomy 30:19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live
bornagain77_{December 5, 2016
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Interesting subject. Personally, I have often pondered the question, and I can only say I couldn't care less if I'd never been born regardless of cause. Spontaneous or provocated. I trust I'd have been unaware of the fact.Cabal_{December 5, 2016
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And the ghosts of 800+ million unborn children slain in the womb cry out against the worst holocaust in history; one that currently mounts up at a shocking rate: about 1 million more per week, per Guttmacher and the UN. This is a generation tainted by the most widespread blood guilt in all history, and that blood guilt warps thought, reasoning, conscience and speech alike. Innocent blood cries up from the ground against us, and it will be heard. I shudder to think of the consequences.kairosfocus_{December 4, 2016
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+1 to MatSpirit. Very well said, albeit in an echo chamber. ID is a very reasonable and attractive hypothesis given our current knowledge about the world, too bad it is also so incredibly appealing to the religious folks.Eugene_{December 4, 2016
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News, MatSprit is a metaphyscial materialist. So to him, killing an unborn baby is morally meaningless. Because his philosophy entails that morality is just an illusion foisted on us by our genes. Of such, monsters are made, as the hundred million dead in the 20th century (not counting those slaughtered in their mother's wombs) bear witness to. In his world there is no ultimate right or wrong. There is only strong and weak. And unborn babies are weakest of all. He is a fascist progressive, and I hear in his posts echos of his fascist predecessors. Downs babies are, to him, lebensunwertes leben (life unworthy of life). I leave his fascist spewings up for all to see in its vast terrifying ugliness -- as a reminder that he -- and the evil spirit of death that animates him -- must be resisted. At least until he and his friends warm the ovens back up and toss us in.Barry Arrington_{December 4, 2016
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'"Pay no attention to that man, he’s evil and depraved!” Above all, don’t consider what is actually said or try to refute it.' I dare you to address my words.MatSpirit_{December 4, 2016
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MatSpirit has some personal ideas, contrary to evidence, about the origin and development of human beings. However, it is our OWN fault if we let such people occupy medical and judicial positions. We cannot escape the judgment on people who should have worked harder to keep them out and known better what to do when they had developed any authority or sense of entitlement to aggress against the public, starting with its weaker members. Or is he just a troll, seeing what kind of prejudice he can get away with expressing here?News_{December 4, 2016
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bornagain77, If I was talking to the people in that commerciel, I would tell them that I'm sorry that they were born with Down syndrome. I'd tell them that they did nothing to deserve their affliction, that it was visited upon them before they even existed. I'd also tell them that they do exist today and they are therefore under the same responsibility as everybody else to live their lives so as not to harm others and that some people are using them to try to make a woman do something that is very very bad: They are trying to persuade a woman who knows her fetus has Down syndrome to carry it to term so it will eventually produce a human being with Down syndrome instead of starting over and producing a normal baby. Many of those kids obviously have some idea of how bad this would be, but I don't think a couple of them do yet. I doubt if theyve been told about some things, like dying young. (Of course, the kids in crash helmets rocking back and forth crying and drooling haven't been told either, but they weren't invited to contribute to this commercial.) I guess I'd finish up by warning them that even the most loving and well meaning people can do horribly evil things if they've got their facts wrong and to watch out because they will try to use them in their plans.MatSpirit_{December 4, 2016
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