This, seems worth pondering on the state of the US’s ongoing 4th generation civil war as a civilisation level issue:
A draft Supreme Court opinion overruling Roe v. Wade has been leaked to the press in one of the greatest scandals to ever hit the nation’s highest court and a possible attempt to intimidate one or more justices to reverse their vote or to ignite a liberal brushfire to pack the Supreme Court before Democrats lose Congress in November.
“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” the possible draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito reads, making the case that where the Constitution is silent, the American people govern themselves through elections and elected leaders, not federal judges. It quotes the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who said, “The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.” It then adds, “That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand.”
The document published by Politico that claims to be a draft opinion appears to be authentic, but it is not a binding decision of the court unless at least five justices sign it, and this looks like a transparent and unprecedented betrayal by one of the 45 or so people with access to a draft Supreme Court opinion to prevent this decision from becoming law by scaring off moderate justices and attempting to whip the political left into a frenzy.
Of course, the global pattern, with the US as a trend setter, has seen 800+ million [statistically 1.4+ billion] deliberately inflicted deaths on our living posterity in the womb. An associated picture is that in certain asian countries, devaluation of girls has led to widespread sex selection abortions and a preponderance of boys and now young men in population statistics.
To all of this, I make two self-evident assertions. 1: A human child is precisely that, human. 2: The first right is life, without which there are no rights.
Let’s add, 3: there can be no right to take innocent life at will.
Our civilisation is in the dock. END
U/D, Blaze TV discussion:
U/D, May 10, as Vivid has pointed it out, let us embed a video of testimony by a former abortionist regarding second trimester abortions:
F/N May 7: As tangential objections to the design inference have been taken up (in obvious subject switching) I pose p. 5 from Sir Francis Crick’s March 19, 1953 letter to his son:
And, here is the protein synthesis process in outline:
Together with a summary of the information communication system involved, as outlined by Yockey:
F/N, May 8: As the tangent continues, it seems a further illustration is advisable:
It seems more is needed, so here is how this fits into protein synthesis and the metabolic network and how we see prong height coding:
In for a penny, in for a pound, here is a video:
Notice, we are actually dealing with a storage register. Say, each shaft with pins is set for five positions, four elevated, one on the ledge. This is directly comparable to GCAT, and as the video shows there are five digits:
| X1 | X2 | X3 | X4 | X5 |
The key is encoded to the correct string of digits that in combination will open the lock, say 13213. The resting fully locked position is of course 00000.
BREAKING: Leaked US Supreme Court Draft that would overturn the rulings that have led to 63+ million abortion deaths in the US since 1973
This is not a decision but a position based on an expected ruling. The leak is intended to intimidate one of the judges to change position.
If men could control themselves and behave appropriately, abortion would not even be an issue.
FH @ 3
And women, too. Abortions are procured even within the context of marriage.
A child has the right to live, whatever the behavior of the parents is.
Andrew
My mother once told us that when she was growing up, there were plenty of hormones everywhere, but no birth control, no pregnancies and no abortions. It was the norm.
She said something like it takes “Two to Tango.”
Amazing!
Aside: I sat through a presentation about 7 years ago on an abstinence program given to poor girls. The program reduced teen sexual conduct by over 90% but was buried because it didn’t fit the Democratic governor’s agenda.
Jerry, on search:
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473
Text https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21835435/scotus-initial-draft.pdf
Alito has penned an initial draft for the majority. Of course, the lawless and ruthless — who are already enabling killing by the dozens of millions — have acted to intimidate. I trust that the justices will have the gumption to defy such tactics rather than surrender to them.
KF
Jerry, knees together and zippers up, not hard to do. KF
I suspect this was a timed leak to ramp up emotions leading up to a SCOTUS decision this summer.
I don’t think it was intended strictly for the political left, but just to stir the big pot.
Andrew
Jerry says
Amazing the population continued to grow! In some places, there’s a darker history to teenage girls and unwanted pregnancies. I’m thinking of Tuam in Eire.
My comments/positions for many years. Abortion is clearly unconstitutional.
https://ayearningforpublius.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/presumption-of-innocence-vs-assertion-of-ownership/
KF
Really? I’m seeing figures of 69/31% against abolishing Roe vs Wade.
It may turn out to be a good thing for Democrats in the mid-terms. Never seen such a galvanising reaction from women across the board.
If this is true, then it should not be hard to elect people who agree.
It will not affect local laws. I’m sure the Democrats are ecstatic because this could become an election issue. They have nothing positive now.
Yes. But the consequence is that a woman whose is pregnant through no fault of her own, violence, incest, poverty, ignorance, must be forced to remain pregnant against her will.
“Yes. But the consequence is that a woman whose is pregnant through no fault of her own, violence, incest, poverty, ignorance, must be forced to remain pregnant against her will.”
FH,
Yes. But now that she is pregnant there are more people to consider. Do you think the developing child in her womb has the right to live or not? It’s a pretty straightforward question.
Andrew
I bet you’re all salivating at the prospect of the first execution of a woman and doctor convicted of procuring an illegal abortion.
Anyone who thinks the morals of the past were all sweetness and light should look here
or here
or here
There are reports of women in 19th century Ireland who turned to their doctors for abortion because they were afraid they would die if they were forced to bear their 14th or 15th child. At that time, any form of birth control was banned and a woman could not deny her husband his “conjugal rights”. All the doctor could do was beg the man to stop or his wife could die.
If abortion is to be penalized so severely then it’s high time the churches are held to account and made to pay for the literal atrocities committed in the name of their so-called morality in the past.
I think it’s high time women are encouraged to stand up and fight – literally if necessary – to overturn a society dominated by smug, arrogant old white men.
My personal view is a woman has an absolute right to choose whether or not to continue with a pregnancy and deserves support for whichever choice she makes. With proper education, contraception availability, a supportive community, proper provision for childcare, financial support for poor women who cannot afford to care for a child, abortion would hardly be an issue. There is the issue of viability. Before a foetus is capable of independent existence, a woman’s right to choose is paramount.
Asauber/15
So you think that society is entitled compound the trauma of a woman or girl made pregnant through rape or incest by forcing them to carry the child to term? Your only concern is that the child has the right to live and the unwilling mother should just “suck it up”? Is that what you think?
Sev @ 18
You didn’t comprehend what I wrote, apparently.
Andrew
“My personal view is a woman has an absolute right to choose whether or not to continue with a pregnancy and deserves support for whichever choice she makes.”
FH,
This doesn’t exactly address the question I asked.
Andrew
Then ask again.
FH,
“Do you think the developing child in her womb has the right to live or not?” Yes or No.
Andrew
All leaks have a purpose. This leak is probably designed to pressure weak-willed Roberts toward maintaining the “consensus”.
Ah. Either you didn’t understand my answer or it wasn’t the one you wanted.
I have no problem with early abortion. The so-called morning after pill is a safe and simple procedure. I don’t know(and thankfully my opinion counts for nothing) where I would place a limit on late abortion but prior to foetal viability where there are supporting reasons seems reasonable to me.
Andrew
Would you pay more taxes or otherwise financially support women, even poor black women who can’t afford to raise a child? Would you contribute to better education, freely available (free even) contraception or other practical ways to reduce unwanted pregnancies?
The comments here reveal the reaction to the abortion decision has nothing to do with abortion. Just as race has nothing to do with race or gender with gender. Just as being against ID has nothing to do with ID. All are means to an end for those in control of one of the political parties. And we get the knee jerked clichés.
So those who support abortion on demand actually care less about it or the women. They are just advocating for a political position, one they most likely don’t understand the consequences of.
Thus we get all the dribble from the usual suspects who would turn on the dime if the political winds changed. In other words they have no inner logic/ethic for the position they publicly take.
If this is true it will just be a return to back-ally abortions and the unnecessary deaths of thousands of women.
Seversky
Children are dependent on their parents up through teenage years. So yes, I don’t agree with murdering children just because they’re inconvenient to parents. But I can envision a society where there are death-chambers for 12 year olds because the parents don’t want to “suck it up” and care for them any more. We’ve got people already proposing that children can (or even should) be killed after birth. In a godless society, the public can take away the right to life, and establish the maximum age when children can be legally killed.
FH, sadly predictable. You should have read the linked before commenting dismissively. Here is how the draft ruling begins, “JUSTICE ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court.” My bet is 6:3 or possibly 5:4, thus the majority. Where, the actual ruling is that this should be settled by the states and their voters; which is itself a restoration of status quo 1972. I note that all the opinion polls tell me if they are sound, is that we have become benumbed and caught up in crooked yardstick misanthropic thinking. KF
That this rough draft was leaked shows just how diseased our body politic has become here in the U.S.
Leftism is a disease. It is a cancer upon our society, culture and political system. Just like cancer it corrupts everything it touches.
But it is also a psychological illness. It is an OCD. It obsesses about every little thing it perceives as an “injustice” and DEMANDS that something be done about it. And it does this over, and over, and over again.
Liberalism is a variant of Leftism.
This shameless degradation of the Supreme Court is just the latest corruption the Left has spawned.
We need a cure!!! Fast!!!
This should not be about politics. Today, the ‘rights’ of the woman are presented. Is the man not partly responsible? The woman did not get pregnant by herself.
I make a comment about knee jerk clichés and on cue the next comment is one.
All this decision will do if enacted is send it to the states some of which have extremely liberal abortion laws. As I said this is not about abortion. The commenter just showed he is ignorant about what is going on.
Assuming the reason most of you think abortion is wrong is because it’s murder and therefore violates one of the ten commandments. And, no doubt, a lot of other Biblical injunctions. That’s not really my question.
Whatever the reason you think abortion is wrong how does that reason affect your view on armed conflict, i.e. was the the war in Vietnam wrong or evil? The invasion of Iraq in 2003? The UN intervention in Korea in the 1950s?
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to judge those (and other conflicts) on a different standard; I’m just trying to figure out when ‘murder’ is wrong or evil.
Or, indeed, what is murder. It’s easy enough to see self-defence as something different than murder but what about a person who kills their spouse for having cheated on them?
Is there a place for mercy killing, i.e. helping someone end their life on their terms when it’s clear their days are numbered? Is there a case for an abortion when it’s clear that the foetus has a genetic defect which will probably kill it soon after it is born if not before?
I’m not trying to ‘shame’ anyone; if you answer is all abortion is wrong, period, that’s fine. I’m just curious as to why you think so.
Murder is killing that is not clear self-defense. You are defending yourself or your family or your country.
A human being growing in the womb is, by definition, a human being.
F/N: The Court responds:
We shall see.
KF
Marker: Murder is killing that is not clear self-defense. You are defending yourself or your family or your country.
That’s pretty clear. Thank you for responding.
Were the wars in Vietnam or Korea justifiable as self-defence?
Well it’s always a risk when you try to kill other human beings. In this case other defenseless human beings that exist because the criminal accepted to have sex. Some criminals prefer sex without responsibility.
JVL, while I do not agree that the suggested definition is correct — try, willful shedding of innocent blood, I can comment on a geostrategic matter. Korea and Vietnam (alongside a lot of other conflicts c 1946 – 91) were theatres of operation in the real World War III, more typically called the cold war. In both, the US and allies such as Australia etc (and in Vietnam’s case, S Korea) were seeking to block a global geostrategic aggressor. One may challenge particular acts, battles etc but the general frame of the war was that of defence of civilisation from a Jacobin aggression that caused over 100 millions to be killed in territories under its control. Compare, Bomber Harris and Curtis LeMay. For that matter, I lived through a minor theatre, in my native land, which has been permanently damaged. KF
The Korean War was described as a ‘police action’ but against who was not explained. The Russians detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949, and helped with the Korean proxy war in 1950. The U.S., in particular, had to respond since Russia could not be allowed to expand into other territories. A few months after the Russian test, the Chinese Communists took power in China, ending the Chinese Civil War, while the Nationalists fled to Taiwan. The Chinese also committed troops to the Korean War. They were referred to as Red Chinese or Chi-Comms, Chinese Communists.
In 1964, China tested its first atomic bomb. In 1965, the Vietnam War began. The goal was apparently the same as the Korean War, to split the country into two parts, with the U.S. gaining control of a non-existent South Vietnam. This would serve as a staging area for the U.S. military against any attempts by China to use atomic weapons in Asia. The commander of Vietnamese naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin area was asked years later what had happened. His reply: “Absolutely nothing.”
Kairosfocus: One may challenge particular acts, battles etc but the general frame of the war was that of defence of civilisation from a Jacobin aggression that caused over 100 millions to be killed in territories under its control.
So, a kind of self defence? That was some of the opinion at the time.
Marker: The commander of Vietnamese naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin area was asked years later what had happened. His reply: “Absolutely nothing.”
A lot of death for . . . .
But, again, was the attempt justified even if the result was negligible?
M, actually, last I saw suggested, it looks like Stalin ordered the tank-led attack on the much les well armed S, which would have worked but for US intervention and a Dinosaur who was still around, MacArthur. The Vietnam war, phase 2, actually began in 1959, and US sent advisors then Kennedy got involved in a coup against the discredited Diem regime. Escalation came later with a questionable naval incident. However, the North Vietnamese were and are not credible sources. BTW, in 1945, the British, using surrendered Japanese troops, defeated an earlier insurgency push in the S then handed over to the French, who made a hash of it. KF
In all societies, an aggressor must be shown that a country is willing to fight against another who seeks to expand its control over other parts of the world even though they are distant from the defender. In this case, the United States. ICBMs were deployed by the U.S. and Russia. Russia in 1958 and the U.S. in 1959. It was understood that these missiles would travel over the North Pole, giving defenders between 15 and 30 minutes before impact.
Commitments like this involve the loss of life to show the aggressor that the defender will act, not just in Vietnam but in other threatened areas.
Marker: Commitments like this involve the loss of life to show the aggressor that the defender will act, not just in Vietnam but in other threatened areas.
So . . . self defence by threat? If you continue along these lines we will respond?
Kind of like what the US is now doing in Ukraine? Russia pushed and pushed and pushed and then, finally, the West said: that’s enough.
Again, I’m just trying to understand what y’all are thinking. I think we should be helping to defend Ukraine. I’m not so sure about Vietnam. South Korea is . . . pretty complicated. Invading Iraq in 2003, that, I think was not justified in terms of self defence.
Self-defense by action. You do not just issue threats, you show the enemy you are willing to act. You stop him, or attempt to stop him, in one place so he will not invade another. There is nothing complicated about this.
The Ukraine has nothing to do with this. It is a separate situation that has a long history.
Marker: The Ukraine has nothing to do with this. It is a separate situation that has a long history.
The US is providing munitions and ordnance that is killing Russian soldiers. What is the justification for that?
Is that murder by proxy?
Sev:
And right on cue Sev sets up another insipid false binary. It is either allow millions of abortions for any reason or no reason at any time right up to the point of crowning or hunt down and execute women. Black and white. Nothing in between. Stop it Sev. Just stop it. BTW, the US is one of only 8 other countries that has such a radical abortion license. That group includes China and North Korea. Nice company you keep there Sev. Are you also OK with harvesting organs from live “donors” like your friends in China and NK? After all, like the babies that get slaughtered in abortions, those “donors” are just clumps of cells.
The justification? In 1953, the U.S. military decided that there would be no winners in a nuclear war. That holds true till today. The new approach is called “low intensity conflict” or anything short of nuclear war. Both sides would gain nothing in a nuclear war.
After the end of World War II, both Russia and the U.S. have provided weapons and equipment to those they wished to support while leaving their own combat troops out of the conflict. However, both sides did send ‘advisors’ to assist in some cases. So, yes, Russian and U.S. weapons and equipment have been sent to ‘friendly’ countries which resulted in the deaths of the enemy, whoever that happened to be.
“Either you didn’t understand my answer or it wasn’t the one you wanted.”
FH,
The answer is either yes or no, and you seem to be unable to figure out which of the two to choose.
Andrew
@ KF
Yes, I thought you were referring to US opinion in you comment about majorities. No real doubt how the current Supreme Court will line up on the issue, despite the protestations when Trump’s appointees were being considered. I think the court has woken a sleeping tiger.
Marker: The justification? In 1953, the U.S. military decided that there would be no winners in a nuclear war. That holds true till today. The new approach is called “low intensity conflict” or anything short of nuclear war. Both sides would gain nothing in a nuclear war.
Proxy wars. Which support the sponsoring countries’ policies or interests. The cold war solution.
What happens when those policies or interests changes? Like in Vietnam? Did the underlying truth change or the interests?
Is there an objective, unchanging standard behind all of this?
Andrew, the world is not binary. Yes to abortion. With nuance.
If you agree with abortion of a human being then you agree that yourself to be aborted whenever somebody considers that you stay in his/her way.
“Andrew, the world is not binary. Yes to abortion.”
FH,
You just contradicted yourself.
Andrew
LCD, with respect, that is simplistic gobbledygook
I don’t think so Andrew. The world is not binary. Decisions are difficult. Women have the absolute right to choose. Play word games with yourself.
“The world is not binary. Women have the absolute right to choose.”
FH,
You just did it again.
Andrew
The abortion issue is clearly a question of balance. On one side is the very life of the growing child. On the other is the autonomy and convenience of the pregnant woman, who almost always had a choice in the creation of the child, so is not an innocent victim. Yes, there are “hard cases” such as rape and incest, but let’s deal with the 90+ % of cases first.
So: human life vs. convenience – how to balance?
For a secular analysis of how this balance can be resolved logically see the following short book:
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07JM8L4RT/
The farce goes on.
@ Andrew
If you don’t want a discussion, don’t bother addressing comments to me. I just hope that your influence on the lives of others is as limited elsewhere as it is here.
The farce is with you, Jerry! 😉
Women have the right to choose to not have sex with a guy. The guy is also responsible. This is not a women only issue. Until that is understood, then there is no point thinking that the woman is the only one involved – the guy made her pregnant.
And no point thinking that the human being growing in the womb is not a human being. A pregnant woman sees a doctor because she’s going to have a baby – a human baby.
FH, there is a reason why the first right is life, and the worst crime, murder, the shedding of innocent blood. Without life, there are no other rights. And, the undermining of life as a first value, opens the door to corrosion of conscience through the most corrupting of all influences, blood guilt. In short, it is no mere hyperbole to say that mass abortion on demand is a misanthropic, anti civilisational policy, one that one day will be seen as worse than chattel slavery. But in the heat of the moment, it is caught up in the chaos of an ongoing 4th generation, shadows civil war. With statistically 1.4+ billion slaughtered since the early 1970’s and with that number rising at about another million per week, we are all indicted as participants in a dark era that dwarfs the Nazi holocaust and the Communist democide. To crown all, many now turn on a dime after two years of demanding to compel the world to inject themselves with high risk relatively ineffective vaccines, to claiming that to kill an innocent child in the womb is somehow a right to do what one wills with one’s body. The incoherence is manifest, as is the shrillness of rhetoric about imagined executions of women. The number of women executed in the US in each of the decades 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s for abortion was? _____ (I believe, zero.) It is high time that we turned from policies of evil and returned to sound law anchored on recognising first law of justice built into our nature. Life, is the first right. KF
Do the police arrest everyone living in the neighborhood where one crime was committed? I encourage keeping this in perspective.
“I just hope that your influence on the lives of others is as limited elsewhere as it is here.”
FH,
You clearly have been triggered. Sorry for hurting your feelings. 😉
Andrew
Watch and think about . You could have been one of them but because your mom didn’t have your opinion you are alive and instead of being grateful you come here to comment about how virtuous you are because you agree with the killing of innocents (although didn’t happen in YOUR CASE.)
https://rumble.com/v10mc69-viable-babies-found-murdered-at-planned-parenthood.html
Goodness me, KF, I sometimes think I am a bit free with a broad brush approach but…
You are very fond of variations of the slippery slope argument but as I’ve said above, abortion would be a non-issue if US society adopted practical steps to minimise the problem.
FH, and your substantial argument tied to first principles is? ______ Is or is not life the first right? ____ If not, why not? _____ And is or is not murder the willful shedding of innocent blood? _______ If not, why not? _____ [Fair warning, over the past week I have been mourning a fourth death, my first cousin murdered during a robbery in a shop in Cayman, where he had been a superintendent of prisons.] KF
PS, 63+ million of our living posterity in the womb killed in the US and 1.4+ billion globally, this growing at a million more per week cannot be swept away through talk about slippery slopes. This is not a slide to anywhere, it is the bottom of the cliff already. What is now needed is the sort of moral awakening that accompanied the C18 – 19 revivals and energised abolition of first the kidnapping based slave trade then slavery itself.
Which “practical steps”?
I very much appreciate your insincerity, Andrew.
See my comment 25, Marker.
Seen on Twitter
Abortion was never about abortion to the politicos.
“Abortion was never about abortion to the politicos.”
Jerry,
Indeed. Just look at FH’s comments. They are self-contradictory within a sentence or two.
Andrew
F/N: On slippery slopes: https://uncommondescent.com/logic-and-first-principles-of-right-reason/sm-is-the-slippery-slope-argument-always-fallacious/ KF
PS: My key comment:
One may do well to consider Machiavelli on foresight and prudence in the face of a rising danger. In paraphrase, political disorders are like hectic fever; at first easy to cure but hard to diagnose. Then, at length, when the course of the disease is manifest to all, it is then too late to cure.
Something tells me Machiavelli has a deeper insight than ever so many who at convenience dismissively cry slippery slope. Ironically, this is a day when sustainability and the precautionary principle are highly regarded.
So, if you deny a trend or threatened trend show why on evidence instead of playing with dubious rhetorical assertions about slippery slopes.
KF asks:
Not sure how the figures are arrived at but most pregnancies, maybe sixty percent, apparently abort spontaneously. No murder there. Pregnancy for a woman is life-changing, possibly life-threatening. Ectopic pregnancy never results in a live infant, and is life-threatening for the mother. Those who insist there can be no termination of pregnancy, no matter how early or no matter the individual circumstances are just not facing reality and lack compassion.
I’m not in favor of the death penalty at all. Not on religious grounds but because the US legal system is so poor at convicting the guilty and freeing the innocent.
There’s a difference between a human life that can survive independently from the womb and a foetus.
Pick a subject.
FH, maybe you need to know AS is the man who year by year when he could at all do so, went to the annual march for life. He has been our live event correspondent, repeatedly. KF
FH, subject switching distractions and strawmen; wheel and tun and come again, betta dis time_______ . You are using such tactics, while accusing others of insincerity. It is time to again apply the mirror principle through confession by projection analysis. The resulting picture is not pretty. KF
No, it’s time to get my fishing rod. Go in peace.
Fred,
Contraception created this problem. It is not superior to self-control. I and my peers were born before the birth control pill. It was approved by the FDA in 1960 and was available by prescription only. Most women did not want or need it, and the average number of kids in my neighborhood and for miles around was 2, not 10. This disappointed those who wanted to separate sex from true love and marriage.
The April 7, 1967 issue of Time magazine ran a cover story about The Pill. What was it for? The first line at the top of the page inside shows how The Pill was being marketed. “Contraception: Freedom from Fear.” Fear of what? Babies. Prior to that, both men and women knew what to do to prevent pregnancy.
1969. Those who want to separate sex from love start NARAL. The initials first translated as the National Abortion Rights Action League, and later changed to the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. It was a full-blown lobbying effort aimed at citizens and politicians.
“The original NARAL program had six parts:
“Assist in the formation in all states of direct political action groups dedicated to the purpose of NARAL;
Serve as a clearinghouse for activities related to NARAL’s purpose;
Create new materials for mass distribution which tell the repeal story dramatically and succinctly;
Train field workers to organize and stimulate legislative action;
Suggest direct action projects;
Raise funds for the above activities.”
After years of being promoted, too many people think abortion is OK. As if the death of a human being never occurs. Abortion is the ultimate form of contraception.
This should not be a issue left up to the states. A woman’s rights, or a fetus’ rights, should be independent of the state a person resides.
I just read today that Amazon has approved travel costs for people who must travel for medical reasons, including abortion. So, is a woman who travels from a state that has banned abortions to one that has not breaking the law. Is Amazon breaking the law for subsidizing the abortion?
JH, where was it ever a sound principle of law that there is a right to shed innocent blood? _____________ KF
I hope this pro-abortion guys here will watch this young woman.
Kristan Hawkins
Note the arguments that she is encountering also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAXi14ftYyo&t=574s
Misrepresenting the opposing view is never an honest tactic.
The pro-choice advocates believe that making abortion illegal is counter-productive because it will not stop people getting abortions, it will only stop people getting abortions in the most medically safe means.
The best way to reduce the abortion rate, repeatedly demonstrated, is to provide early and comprehensive sex education, without the puritanical overtones, as well as readily available contraceptives (the pill, IUD, condoms, etc).
Midianites
Amalekites
Canaanites
Sodom and Gomorrah
Pretty much the whole world in the Great Flood.
Anti-semitic riots, pogroms and massacres throughout Europe from the Roman Empire forward.
Weird. SCIENCE says that life starts at conception. Yet it is the alleged promoters of science that are OK with murder.
It is said that a society is judged by how it treats its weak and most vulnerable. We kill ours. I don’t like what that says about us. You have to be sick to think that the wholesale slaughter of our most vulnerable is OK.
That said, MEN need to bear the burden. Men need to be fined, jailed and/or castrated for unwanted pregnancies. Do that, and abortion rates will drop.
Sev, Bible snip and snipe again. Our ontological status is ______ and God’s is_______ . The import of the difference is _______ That’s just an aside to not allow toxic remarks to fester unlanced. I think we both know the issues on the table have to do with self evident first law, here, that the first right is life, that murder is willful shedding of INNOCENT blood, that there can be no right to take another’s life at will. KF
😆 Seversky is probably very old that’s why he “forgot” to mention Jesus: “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them! For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” And after He had placed His hands on them”
F/N: AmHD, for reference:
Wikipedia, just to see what they cannot deny without losing all credibility:
So, now, we can see a first step forward.
LCD, I think Sev was responding to KF’s question to me:
In that, I think he makes a valid point.
Yes!
There is a solution and one mostly adhered to for centuries. Abstinence! See#5
But as I said abortion had nothing to do with abortion. Choice is just an euphemism being employed. It has to do with power/control and desperate women are just one of the many buttons being pushed to get that power.
And there is no shortage of useful idiots helping just remember the Montagnards always eliminate the Girondists.
I prefer not to base policy and law on delusion.
Did it not work for thousands of years?
It has actually worked again when tried in recent years. But the politicians buried the success.
Well, the abortion rates and teen pregnancies have been continuously reducing. So, yes, I think it did.
Maybe a better approach for a discussion here would be for those opposed to pro-choice to come up with a strategy that would prevent abortions.
What does this approach entail? Death sentence for women who have abortions? Jail sentences for women who have abortions? A big letter A embroidered on the clothes of women who have abortions?
OK. Have at it.
It takes two to get pregnant. Saying this is only about women ignores that fact. Two people are required for pregnancy. Many who prefer sex to be separate from love and marriage think that abortion is OK. And those who are married are not told how to control or regulate births. Before 1960, and the approval of the birth control pill, both men and women knew they were responsible for sexual acts resulting in pregnancy. They viewed sex as being for the purpose of having babies. That is the purpose of sex. In many cases, if a man was with a woman he intended to marry and got her pregnant, there was a wedding. He took responsibility.
JH
If you’re not pro-abortion that is good to hear. But that’s not true for all of the people who call themselves pro-choice, so I don’t think you can speak for them.
Planned Parenthood favorably reports:
“Each year on March 10 people from across the country celebrate National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers.”
“Celebrating” the “providers” who kill children? How about a guy like Kermit Gosnell?
There’s a site called “Shout My Abortion” which says “abortion is normal”.
Here’s a pro-choice woman who wants to celebrate her abortion each year:
So, I can see no reason why the term “pro-abortion” doesn’t fit those pro-choice people.
But in your case, again – good to hear. But do you accept that abortion kills a child?
JH:
Observe your language:
This begs a raft of questions, while indulging projection and burden shifting. Such, invites confession by projection, cognitive dissonance based analysis.
First, history has showed over and over that genocidal mass slaughters begin with demonisation or dehumanisation. Indeed, chattel slavery of Africans also dehumanised and demonised through appeal to distinctive genetics as proof of inferiority and this of course was joined to the rapist legend, If you are about to enable treating someone unconscionably, you need to figure out a way to blame or dehumanise the victim. The former seeks to make seemingly just the taking of revenge for imagined or threatened wrongs. The latter, sets out to infer inferior so no rights inhere or attach. Sadly, the horrific history involved is as yet unfinished.
Secondly, there is a calculated and insistent caricaturing misrepresentation.
Anti choice, anti freedom, would be oppressors, fascists, theocrats seeking to reimpose the inquisition etc. When in fact it is trivial to learn that objection to abortion effectively on demand pivots on the first right; right to life. the right without which there can be no other rights, only entitlements held under colour of law but tracing to the nihilist credo, might makes right. Whence, it is trivial to note that once a zygote forms, a genetically unique new individual has begun his or her life. Where as “his” implies, slightly over half the time, the new individual does not even have the same sex as his mother. New life, species human, a species of rational animality. Life is therefore sacred and bearing a peculiar dignity far above rubies. Life, then, is the first right and it is never sound or just to confer on one individual, arbitrary power over the life of another.
Which, is what lurks under that pseudo-innocent word, choice.
Accordingly, the matter is warped from the root and places us under the peculiarly corrupting influence of blood guilt.
From this frame, we may seek reform, first individually but then in our civilisation if we are to be worthy of the name.
For example, the act of union is both an act of soul tying and the biological act of procreation. So, decent civilisation reserves it for a stable context that nurtures new life, given the development needs of the child and the vulnerability of pregnant women and nursing mothers. Marriage makes sense, and the ethical premise that the act of union belongs in the covenant of union is plainly sound. Which deserves to be a linchpin of moral and family life education. Even the biology and social psychology of virginity are confirming the message. Thus, responsible sexual, individual and family conduct supported by sound community make sense.
In short, we see that abortion is a horrific quick fix to a cascade of entrenched moral failures of current civilisation. Which is part of why we find the projection game.
We need to admit and turn from our gross error.
Then, we can set about rebuilding sound civilisation.
Civilisation that starts with recognising that life is the first right; without which, there can be no rights.
more can be said but this is a start.
KF
Until men are held accountable for unwanted pregnancies, the problem will never be resolved.
That’s why it shouldn’t be considered a “women’s issue” since both parents are involved.
PAV re 30
Nailed it.
Vivid
So we have a bunch of commentators that a few weeks back could not tell me what a women is now screaming about women’s rights. The shameless hypocrisy of these people know no bounds,
As to the “slippery slope” criticism yeh it has become very slippery, we have gone from safe legal and rare to infanticide.
One final comment, this leak is beyond the pale. We are witnessing the total destruction of the American experiment. So sad to watch.
Vivid
Nonsense. It is not about people “preferring” that sex is separate from marriage. It is about knowing that you can’t restrict sex to marriage.
Sorry. Going to call BS on this. People have had sex without the purpose of procreation for centuries. All the pill and condoms and IUDs have done is give a higher level of certainty that pregnancy wouldn’t occur.
I am in my mid to late sixties and my wife and I still have sex two to three times per week. And I can say for certain that we are doing it for the simple purpose of pleasure. Should we be stopping this simply because you and others feel that we shouldn’t be doing it for pleasure?
To be honest, I feel sorry for those who have always perceived sex as only being for the purpose of procreation. You are really missing out on one of the biggest joys of life.
Silver Asiatic/28
We are no talking about “murdering children”, we are talking about aborting fetuses.
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human being with premeditation or malice aforethought. Under the provisions of Roe, abortion is lawful and not therefore murder.
We can all envision such abominations but I seriously doubt they will ever happen.
We have people who believe Donald Trump has been anointed by your God to lead the US back to greatness. People can and do believe in all sorts of odd things
According to the Old Testament, your God or his proxies killed large numbers of their fellow human beings with impunity or without even criticism. A significant percentage of those casualties must have been pregnant women. Your God apparently had no problem with that so I’m assuming that you don’t either.
So what are your grounds for opposing abortion?
Also bear in mind that less than 50% of fertilized eggs – zygotes – actually make it to implantation. The remainder are flushed out during menstruation. Of those that do make it to implantation anything up to 60% are lost in spontaneous abortions or miscarriages. If this prodigiously wasteful system was “intelligently” designed then why are you and the other anti-abortionists here not holding that individual responsible for all the uncounted billions of incipient human lives lost.
Again, if your Designer is comfortable with that casualty rate due to his incompetence, what are your grounds for opposing abortion?
Barry Arrington/47
So you are opposed to abortion being made a capital offense? That’s something, I suppose, but you might want to take it up with legislators in Texas and Louisiana who support the idea.
JHolo/83
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Kairosfocus/86
We exist.
There is no credible evidence for the existence of such a being.
We get to decide what is moral and lawful. Why not?
Murder is the unlawful taking of another human life with premeditation or malice aforethought. Roe made abortion lawful so it cannot be murder.
You may consider it immoral on other grounds but you will find scant support in Christianity.
Sev
No one, including Texas and Louisiana, has made abortion a capital offense. You have no evidence that such a thing will happen. Come out of your leftist fever swamp of conspiracy Sev and breath the fresh air of truth.
Marker/95
True, but let’s not ignore the double standard in play here. If a man gets a woman pregnant out of wedlock, there’s a secret admiration of the “Nudge, nudge! Wink, wink!” kind for a guy who was “spreading his seed” around. The woman, on the other hand, is just considered a slut. And it’s mostly old, white men pushing these laws.
Why not? If I kill you, even if you are days away from a natural death, and you beg me to kill you, I am guilty of a capital offence. If a fetus has the same right to life as you or I, why isn’t the woman who procures an abortion also guilty of a capital offence?
Seversky
You just compared abortion to the warfare in Old Testament times so I think we are talking about murdering children.
Abortion in places like NY State is legal up to the moment of birth. Gov. Norquist of Virginia famously stated that children who accidentally survived an abortion attempt should not be given medical care and should be left on the table to die.
The infanticide craze
https://www.aei.org/articles/the-infanticide-craze/
I support an organization called “Abortion Survivors” that represents more than 400 people who have survived attempts to kill them. Would you want to say to any one of those people that they never were a child but only a “fetus” and therefore shouldn’t be alive today? I honestly don’t think you would.
The way you’ve stated this it sounds like “Since Roe states abortion is lawful, it is therefore not murder”. But that’s putting the definition of human life in the hands of the Supreme Court. But I’d also hope then, if Roe was overturned, your view on abortion should change also in that case.
Again you’re comparing abortion with the bloody deaths of human beings in a time of battle and conflict Let’s note that your reference takes us back 5,000 years and you’re accepting the Bible account as accurate and authentic. That’s a good start. So, we have the Jews who miraculously crossed the Red Sea – you’re accepting that right? And they were miraculously fed directly by God in the desert for 40 years, with a mystical cloud following them day and night, and God speaking a sacred Law to them. Still with me?
If so, that’s good – but that makes you a Bible believer and I thought you were an atheist?
If you’re saying, however, that you don’t believe the accounts of the Bible, then why are you bringing it up as evidence to support your case? I’ll just consider that a double standard. Use the Bible as if it is true when you want to attack it, and then claim that it’s just fabricated when you are challenged to believe it. But it can’t work that way. If you don’t believe the Bible account, then you can’t use it as a weapon against God.
Every life on earth will end – even yours. After that, we all have to face God in the judgement. I fully accept God’s authority over the lives He created. It is the second death that we must fear, not the first one. In your scenario, you want justice for every human that has been deprived a continual life on earth – a life that was designed to be temporary. Some live in sin and luxury, others live in virtue and sacrifice.
Abortion is a deliberate act to end an innocent human life. My grounds for opposing it are based on human reason, first. We have the moral responsibility to protect the lives of children. As adults, that’s a measure of our integrity. The man who saves himself and lets the child he could protect die, has revealed his weakness and selfishness. When its his own child that he brings to the abortionist to have killed, he reveals his moral depravity.
It’s not that complicated.
It is the Lord who gives life – and life does not end with the first death. I’m sure you know that by now, so just repeating hostility towards God for having sovereignty over the life He created is not doing anything. Life on earth is temporary. The hedonist thinks it only has value when he is getting everything he wants. But its value comes from its creator. Some people live to be over 100. Others die in the womb. For us, we should treat all sacred to the extent that we can. I know mothers who have given reverent burial to miscarried children. It’s a sign of the appreciation of life.
You’re trying to blame God – the author of life, and the giver of all the meaning and sacredness of life – as if he has the same moral responsibility that you do. That does not make sense.
We are recipients of life – not the authors of it.
The casualty rate for human life is 100%. That includes your own. You’ll have to enter the darkness of death and be judged, just as we all will. Your hostility towards God is noted. But the grounds for opposing abortion come not only from respect for the life that God has given us, but from our duty to protect and defend life as far as it is in our power to do so.
Children in the womb are not the only humans who are vulnerable and need our help.
Why did God create it this way, so that some people need the help and care of others?
It’s to give us an appreciation of the fragility of life, and to enable us to do some good by caring for others and trying to heal them.
Again you seem frustrated that this will inevitably lead to the death of every person.
But that frustration is at the heart of the atheistic view. This life, designed to be temporary as a testing-ground where we can develop virtue and appreciation and love – has to be seen by the atheist as “all there is”.
That’s a radical misunderstanding of what human life is. Without the chance for life-after-death, life on earth would be nothing but frustration and despair — since we are oriented to purpose and meaning. The atheist idea that denies purpose and meaning is therefore in contradiction to our orientation.
SA
“If so, that’s good – but that makes you a Bible believer and I thought you were an atheist?
If you’re saying, however, that you don’t believe the accounts of the Bible, then why are you bringing it up as evidence to support your case? I’ll just consider that a double standard.”
Your to kind, Sev is a shameless hypocrite but what would you expect of someone when asked could not say what a woman is!!
Vivid
Sev,
Dehumanisation by twisted labelling. Denial of humanity to our living posterity in the womb. Just as was noted already.
QED
KF
PS, hyperskeptical dismissiveness to evidence of God on your part does not undermine his reality as necessary being world root. Of course, joined to the just above, we see a very familiar issue of atheism emerge. Will Hawthorne rightly warns, echoing Plato in The Laws Bk X:
JH, 103, I suspect, many of the ills we now face would be a lot better were we — through formal education and informal cultural influence — to instill comprehensive moral education framed on self evident first law, the first duties of reason. Y’know, what begins with say Cicero and self evident first duties:
Duties to neighbour would include those to our living posterity in the womb. Duties to prudence would include recognition of the character and significance of the act of union and where it commonly leads, thence, if I am not ready and willing to sustain a 20+ year project of nurture of my posterity and I am not in the stable marriage that frames that, I should not be engaging in acts, words and thoughts that lead to, or break down rationality regarding, or enable the sort of holocaust that is now in progress.
Not to mention, HIV and what, forty other sexually transmissible diseases, many without effective cure, point to the question, what happens when — yes, when not if — the next epidemiological study reveals another fatal viral STD with a latency of several years has already gone pandemic? If we have refused to learn from HIV, what does that say to/about us?
And more.
KF
,” we are talking about aborting fetuses.”
Better inform Joe Biden who today let the cat out of the bag when he said we are talking about” aborting a child”
Vivid
F/N: Let us hear from John C Wright, first on the breach of professional duty:
https://www.scifiwright.com/2022/05/re-dobbs-v-jwho-et-al/
He also speaks to the draft:
Of course, he then uses but to introduce the issue of the leak.
KF
PS, on the 1466 case, Wikipedia testifies yet again against interest:
If we were to entertain for the moment the notion that abortion on demand was lawful as an expression of rights over one’s body — which conveniently vanished when the push was to force-jab everyone — then the interests of the child that Mr Biden admits is in the womb as living posterity must be recognised.
KF
Susan Collins thinks she was misled. She even seems surprised about it.
Seversky writes
And mostly old white guys posting comments in this thread.
“And mostly old white guys posting comments in this thread.”
Intersectionality at its finest passing as a reasoned argument LOL Perhaps you might actually engage Alito’s alleged opinion or is that above your pay grade?
BTW can you tell me what is a woman?
Vivid
F/N, slander tactics begin
https://twitter.com/repswalwell/status/1521340822989402113
Then, we see:
https://twitter.com/derekjgz/status/1521304911283113986
Let’s see, since Bible snip and snipe patently lurks, Moses being married to an Ethiopian woman doesn’t count?
More to the point, the natural qualification for marriage is, man, one plus woman, one. With certain due limitations. Race is not a due limitation.
Going back to the serial slanderer Mr Swallwell, the actual evidence of an intent to ban marriages such as senior supreme court judge Thomas’ is? ______ Correct answer, nil.
This is a pure invention of shameless malice in disregard to truth in an attempt to gain political advantage through further escalation of racial issues.
So, what are they so afraid of in seeing the Court contemplating returning the matter to the people of the states, especially, if they think by 70% to 30 in favour of such a policy? Would that not decide the issue, never mind to detriment.
Because, more than half the states, likely, would severely restrict abortion in defence of the life interest of what Mr Biden just admitted is the child in the womb. And if a federal republic cannot endure as half slave and half free, it cannot long endure being half respectful of life and half nihilistic in law.
So, we are at kairos.
KF
Unbelievable
https://www.theblaze.com/news/liberal-racist-abortion-roe-wade
Vivid
Vivid, I think we count, both of us, as stand ins for Justice Thomas. Shamelessness. And it is indeed high time to set aside polarising distractors and address substance. KF
Justice Thomas. Fine upstanding man with very supportive wife.
KF
“So, we are at kairos.”
Indeed but we have been there for awhile The one thing you know ( from first hand experience) about the left is that they will employ violence and unleash their brown shirts (Antifa, BLM, etc) to get their way. We have been in a cold civil war for awhile and I expect it to go hot if indeed Roe is ruled unconstitutional. The problem for our side is all the military and police power resides in the hands of the fascist left, we cannot win.
Vivid
Vivid,
updated to embed the vid.
FH,
And blatantly the sort of interracial marriage that irresponsible slanderers are pretending on no evidence, is to be banned. Sitting there on the court.
KF
What is a woman? Biologically someone whose somatic cells contain two sets of X chromosomes.
Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett lied to the judiciary committee.
“What is a woman? Biologically someone whose somatic cells contain two sets of X chromosomes.”
Alleluia!! Which means a biological man cannot be a woman, bravo.
Vivid
Yes biogically men are deficient women. The testosterone just makes things worse. Men fight, men go to war, rape and pillage. Women, not so much.
FH, take that back, now. Justice Alito has laid out what a wrong decision did over half a century. There is a duty of justices to rule aright, and that is what is properly on the table. The accusatory projections underscore the issue of confession by projection, what are you telling us about yourself and what you advocate. KF
I agree that you can’t change your chromosomes. So what?
“Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett lied to the judiciary committee.”
Don’t know so please give us chapter and verse with full context.
Vivid
Well what would you call stating Roe and Wade is settled then voting to repeal it, KF?
@ Vividbleau. Have you not heard of Google? Try Coney Barrett lie. There are videos.
“I agree that you can’t change your chromosomes. So what?”
So a biological man cannot be a woman. This is a question I asked some of the other interlocutors on this thread screaming about women’s rights when they could not answer what a woman is on a different thread a few weeks ago. You were not part of that conversation.
Personally I am thrilled that all of a sudden everyone knows what a woman is.
Vivid
FH, it has been settled by imposition for half a century. As was chattel slavery for centuries. A reflection of the hardness of hearts vs reformation balance. Now, a serious argument is on the table that puts it on the hardness of hearts side of the balance and the justices you smear as liars have a sworn duty to justice to soundly evaluate on merits. Your due grounds for holding that this 1973 ruling is not subject to reformation i/l/o the interests of what Mr Biden admitted is the child in the womb are? A: _______ Your grounds for rejecting stare decis in regards to say Dred Scott, in that light, are? B: _____ The substantial matter on the table is Alito’s draft. Let us know why, informed by first duties, first rights, first built in law, it is wrong: C: ______ I predict, you cannot fill in C especially. KF
From ABC news
“During her confirmation hearings in October 2020, Barrett was careful in her comments but told senators she believed the decision on Roe v. Wade was not a “super-precedent” when asked directly by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.”
She said she did not find the case to be “so well-settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling.”
Where is the lie?
Vivid
FYI: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/dred_scott_v_sandford_%281857%29
This is the territory we are looking at.
KF
A. Because it’s a mockery of democracy. I’m amazed at your views, coming from the Caribbean.
B. Reform your question into something clearer.
C. Alito is an anachronism who could be tolerated until McConnell’s machinations resulted in a Supreme Court so reactionary it is beyond belief. The optimist in me says this will not stand. We’ll see.
Vivid
The lie was in clearly stating she had no plan to subvert Roe vs Wade and now she has signed on with Alito.
FH,
A: Constitutional, lawful democracy is not three wolves and a lamb holding a vote on what is for lunch.
B: We both can see the Dred Scott case as a classic example of precedence as claimed going to absurdity, but so significant that a whole amendment was passed to make sure such would not come up again.
C: Ad hominem, not a substantial answer on merits. With Google a click or two away, we can take it as granted that you could neither compose nor clip nor summarise a cogent and decisive rebuttal to what Mr Alito has put on the table in summary of majority opinion.
KF
“C. Alito is an anachronism who could be tolerated until McConnell’s machinations resulted in a Supreme Court so reactionary it is beyond belief”
Still waiting for your critique of Alto’s opinion and why it is so reactionary FYI I do understand that to the left the constitution itself is reactionary and for a Supreme Court justice to actually base their opinion on the constitution and allow the people to decide is a threat to democracy.
Vivid
Bear with me on Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh. I’m on my phone and it’s late.
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/03/1096108319/roe-v-wade-alito-conservative-justices-confirmation-hearings
Withdraw “lying” explicitly. Just evasion.
“The lie was in clearly stating she had no plan to subvert Roe vs Wade and now she has signed on with Alito”
I did a google search could not find that quote so if you would please let me know where to find it. But let’s assume she said that she had no plan to subvert Roe only a mind reader could say she lied. I have no plan for a lot of things that I later do, that is not subversion.
Vivid.
PS, for record, Justice Alito’s opening remarks on the Constitution and foundations of law question, via OCR:
So, Roe and Casey both overrule and sweep away precedents so the how dare you repudiate precedent argument fails, coming out the starting gates. Then there are issues over quality of its argument.
Vivid
As I conceded earlier, she was evasive in her replies regarding Roe vs Wade, not necessarily lying. I agree that a lie is a statement by someone who knows it to be false at the time they make it. “I am not a murderer” does not necessarily become a lie if you later murder someone, providing the decision to murder post-dates the statement.
Politico on the leaked Alito opinion:
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/03/supreme-court-abortion-privacy-rights-00029871
If Barret, Kavanagh and Gorsuch all had the clearly-formed intention to overturn Roe if the opportunity arose but gave evasive or non-committal answers at their Senate confirmation hearings, then while that may not rise to the level of blatant lies then they were. at the least, dishonest and misleading. It also makes worthless any assurances from Alito that this will not affect any other legislation.
As for not being able to read the minds of the nominees, that is obviously true but abortion has long been a contentious and divisive issue and it is absurd to think that all three nominees had not studied Roe in advance and already formed opinions which they were unwilling to divulge at the Senate hearings.
FH & Seversky, I have to call red herring. The substantial issue on the table is not personalities but a 50 year old ruling stained with a lot of innocent blood. The question is was it well founded. Clearly, not. So, it is due for reform, not “subver[sion],” and if so the issue is that the reform needs to itself be sound. That change seems to be, restore status quo of 1972, so the political process will decide through legislation and debate. I suspect, that is what is a feasible compromise, not an ideal solution. But, that means we need to address foundational principles of duty, law, rights, freedoms. And, how will we ever address the guilt of the past 50 years that taints so many things. None of this is going to be easy but we can already see that, on the premise that billion dollar pro abortion lobbying and PR etc are a few clicks away, there is a balance on actual merits that does not favour abortion on demand, once it is recognised that right to life is the first right and that we are, painful though this is, dealing with enabling killing at will. Dehumanisation, demonisation, distraction don’t cut it. KF
Is depravity on display here? Is this just a microcosm of the greater world?
If one is anti ID, are they depraved? But I’m seeing an almost 100% correlation.
Why is that so?
Why is that so?
Could it be that you are a bigot?
So old white men didn’t install Roe v Wade as law? And another generation can’t come in and see how wrong the wholesale murder of our most vulnerable really is?
Why are liberals so OK with the wholesale slaughter of our most vulnerable? Why are they so anti-science that they think murder is OK?
Fred Hickson:
Coming to your senses. But you don’t have any.
This thread has proven once again, for the 80 billionth time, that pro-aborts are incapable of having a rational conversation about abortion.
Andrew
Supporting abortion has nothing to do with abortion.
Look elsewhere for the reasons. They are part of the Cathedral and don’t know it.
If there is ever an argument for no free will, look to the left. They do as they are told.
Aside: there is a theory going around that the timing of this release has to do with the introduction of “2000 Mules” this week. Is it an attempt to bury any information about this documentary?
“Supporting abortion has nothing to do with abortion.”
Jerry,
I don’t know if that is universally true, but it sure seems like they can’t be coherent.
Andrew
I took time to put up a core summary argument by Justice Alito. For objectors, what are your objections, why. What else apart from ad homs etc, is there, For supporters, what do you support, what would you say otherwise, why.
Only dishonest or misguided people could ever believe abortion is a good thing . I remember when here in Ireland abortion was made legal ,people were all gathered in the big square in Dublin Castle and the vote came through, and abortion was allowed, people were cheering and hollering and were ecstatic , it just occurred to me that these people are euphoric because they have just been given the legal right to kill their own children , how sad is that , how far we have fallen.
Would anyone here tell a woman who has just miscarried to stop crying , would you cry at the loss of your appendics or tonsils so why are you crying at a loss of a clump of cells from your womb , try it with anyone you know who gets pregnant and wants a child see what response you get .
The same group will applaud the deterioration of the education system that their children will attend.
Want to see this in action, read Denyse’s latest post on what a Catholic college just did to their students. The president, a priest, essentially said we have to prevent you from learning the truth.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/when-universities-no-longer-think-intellectual-freedom-is-important/
“Only dishonest or misguided people could ever believe abortion is a good thing”
Marfin,
There are examples of abortion clinic managers who believed abortions were good until they accidentally actually witnessed what was happening. Amazing but not surprising that people in the next room don’t really know what’s going on.
Andrew
KF/88
You write:
The operative word is “unlawful.” Elective abortion up to the point of viability is legal in the US. Thus, abortion is not murder. While that may change once the final opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson is issued, Casey is still the law of the land……
Fred Hickson said:
The USA is not a democracy, and was never intended to be one. It is a constitutional federal republic, which is not a democracy, although it has democratic aspects to it such as the democratic election of the POTUS/VP and congressional representatives.
Chuckdarwin just confirmed my observation.
————–
And
Not POTUS/VP.
And for congressional representatives there is apparently ways around this too.
————–
For an analysis of the decision
https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/39824/
Easy to talk when you weren’t aborted or you are not in close danger to be aborted. You speak about others to be aborted, right? Darwinists are abortionists of other people than themselves. The true face of darwinists who teach us morality. 🙂
People are putting signs up over roadways “2000 Mules: Game over”.
Trump mentioned this movie in a rally recently and the tv cameras for mainstream media outlets were immediately shut off. Trump pointed to them and rightly called out “Communism”.
The filmmaker had to move the promotional material to Rumble because YouTube would have banned it.
Marfin
It’s hard to imagine that kind of scene in Ireland, but the pressure from demonic-secularism (spread globally by the #1 exporter of abortion) is very difficult to resist, especially by the poorly-educated young.
Fred Hickson
It aligns you with the extreme far-right, if you’re ok with that.
Darwinian “science” comes up with all sorts of things. Why not?
The younger guys I know call that being a ‘cuck’ or ‘white knighting’ .
If you’re a man, you should appreciate that. Don’t damage your integrity.
Sandy
Abortion is good for for the lower classes – that’s the Darwinian morality that Margaret Sanger preached. But it’s ending up wiping out a lot more of the population than she would have desired.
This isn’t about politics. I don’t belong to any political party. This is about the right relationship between men and women. If all of the blame is shifted to men then, yes, no abortions or babies, followed by no human race.
Marker
Patriarchal, anti-feminist societies have low abortion rates. Qatar, United Arab Emirates.
If all the blame is shifted to men, then all responsibility and authority would be shifted to men also and that’s not going to happen in the U.S.
There are too many people walking around with “No Uterus, No Opinion” signs and they’re doing a lot of shrieking about it. If it’s a “women’s issue” then all the blame goes there, as incorrect as that may be.
CD, decrees under colour of law can be most unlawful. Do you want me to call out some cases in point? Lawfulness has to do with justice and good order. KF
SA,
This is not an us versus them situation. Men and women can and should cooperate.
Hey! I resemble that remark.
Some of us be men of colour and diginifide age.
Young men OK?
Old white men bad?
That doesn’t make sense – at all.
Marker @175
Agreed. I think some societies are more successful with that challenge than others.
“Young men OK?
Old white men bad?
That doesn’t make sense – at all.”
It’s called “intersectionality” a subset of Critical Theory.
Vivid
A subset of Critical Nonsense? Quit letting Total Strangers (TM) think for you.
Present rational arguments with rational explanations. That you can show are true.
Marker
Don’t shoot the messenger, I am just pointing out where that type of thinking comes from.
Vivid
The Holocaust wasnt murder?
According to you.
You wrote ”
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ”
And
“The operative word is unlawful”
But the Holocaust WAS lawful, under the Enabling Act of 1933, with all the eyes dotted and tees crossed. So, according to you it wasnt murder, like abortion, becuase it was lawful.
The Enabling Act delegated to the Chancellor (Hitler) the power to rule by decree. Under the provisions of the democratic Weimar Constitution of 1919, the power to rule by decree could be delegated by the Reichstag (Parliment) by 2/3 vote.
It received the required 2/3rd vote by the democraticly elected Reichstag. The NSDAP (Nazi) party had 44% of the Reichstag members. Added support came from local, right wing and centrist parties gaving the measure the votes of 69% of the elected members. (444 voted out of 647 total)
The communits and socialists opposed the Enabling Act, but lacked the numbers to stop it. (Perhaps the communists, normally stong supporters of mass murder, didnt want Stalin’s Holodomor upstaged )
After passage, the Enabling Act was signed into law President Paul Hindenburg.
The lawful murder of 6 million Jews followed. They included millions of children gassed in gas chambers.
Legality-wise it was similar to abortion.
Which, you claim, is not murder because its lawful. Like the Holocaust.
Hope that helps.
M, Vivid is quite right. Critical theories have become the 800 lb Gorilla of too much of the modern academy. They derive from the neo marxism of the Frankfurt School, and are also termed cultural marxism. Critical Race theory is a subset of critical legal theory and of course is the background for project 1619 etc. Many things in literature, history, gender studies and far more are driven by such thinking. And of course, logic, truth, soundness, etc are at steep discount. KF
TLH, lawful is of course not equivalent to under colour of law. KF
Two women are pregnant. Both are going to have a baby, not a fetus. Both are getting health care.
One woman aborts her child. She could have had her baby, but she decided to eliminate it.
Question: Did a human being die in the process?
Silver Asiatic
Nonsense. You ignored or didn’t notice my use of the word biological. You can engage me in discussion and I’ll respond but childish gotchas of the Andrew Sauber level are a bit boring.
FH
I noticed it but I didn’t think you were being serious since you said:
But at least you’re willing to define what a woman is. That’s a lot better than what our newest Supreme Court Justice could do.
FH,
You should just forget about me. I’m nothing but trouble. 😉
Andrew
Querius
I’m perfectly serious about that from a biological perspective. The Y chromosome is a degenerate X chromosome. It has a bit missing.
TLH/183
KF/184
Every first-year law student is quickly disabused of the notion that morality and the law are the same thing. They are also quickly disabused of the notion that the law is always fair or to their liking.
The ironic thing about all the bruhaha surrounding the Alito draft is that the availability of abortion will likely be less restrictive in those states where it remains available because they won’t be subject to federal restrictions. It won’t be a matter of if a woman can get an abortion, it will rather be an issue of where she can have it done. I’d call that a pyrrhic victory for pro-life advocates.
Well at least you have an excuse for degenerate brain.
OK. We won’t say that abortion is murder. We will call it the wholesale slaughter of our most vulnerable.
Fred Hickson:
Maybe genetically. But phenotypically we are the dominant of the two. Well, not you, obviously.
Supreme Court Justices just cannot just step up out of the blue and overturn anything. There has to be a case in front of them involving abortions, for example. And even then, they are limited by that case.
And good for Judge Alito for understanding how wrong it is for us to slaughter our most vulnerable on a wholesale scale. It’s great to have leaders with the spine to stand up to that sickening nonsense.
CD, in recent decades, law students have been indoctrinated in legal positivism, but not in the nihilism it opens the door to. This is part of the problem somehow dressed up and presented as part of the solution. KF
“The danger of lying too much.
Lying is very powerful because you can manipulate the world with your language. And you can get what you want lots of times; or escape from things you don’t want.
Well, there are many reasons, but one of them is that you can’t trust yourself if you lie.
And there are going to be times in your life when you have no one to turn to except you.
So, if you’ve stuffed yourself full of lies, you’re going to be in a crisis one day, and you’re going to have to make a decision, and you’re going to decide wrong, and you’re going to be in real trouble.
You won’t have the clarity of mind necessary to make the proper judgment because you have filled your imagination and perception with rubbish”.
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1522011321075736585
William J Murray/165
Chuckdarwin/191
Given the absurd principle of “vigilante justice” which Texas exploited to outsource enforcement of SB8 to private citizens and protect their officials from prosecution, I would be concerned that anti-abortion states might enact similar legislation to allow private citizens to take legal action against a woman or her doctor for procuring an abortion in a pro-abortion state.
In other words, Alito’s retrogressive opinion could return the country to the absurd position where what is perfectly legal in one state could, in the most extreme case, be punishable by death in a neighboring state. In a nineteenth century context, his position would still allow each state to decide whether or not to practice slavery and the 14th amendment could go hang.
Recent headline:
Amazon employs 85,000+ people in Texas. A state that rewards people for squealing on women obtaining abortions or those helping women obtain abortions. Is Amazon going to be charged?
Have you always had a problem socializing with women or is this something new?
re 199: Sev, if I understand the draft opinion correctly, the same reasoning could be applied to same-sex marriage, inter-racial marriage, and who knows what else, going a long ways to un-doing the united part of the Unites States. I see this as very dangerous.
VL@202, I never thought of it that way, but I think you are correct. But there are also several commenters here who would see the returning to the good old times that never were as a good thing.
Put the gays back in the closet where they belong, cancel transexuals, don’t teach sex education to kids, push Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists back into the hidden cracks of society, restrict women to their traditional housekeeping and motherhood roles, mandate the Lord’s Prayer in school, and ban contraceptives.
JHolo:
Fred Hickson is a woman? I was just correcting Fredette’s misrepresentation of the use of the word biology.
Viola Lee:
Thankfully, it is a given that you don’t.
This whole thing is a media manipulation to further divide the country, rally support for the losing democrats and get us to forget about the outrageous inflation. And people like you are feeding the frenzy. Sick, actually.
RE: seversky/ 198
The key difference between a republic and a democracy is not how power is projected, but the limits to power. Both use the representational system, meaning that the citizenry is represented in the government by elected leaders. In both cases, the majority rule, but in a republic the constitution limits how the government can exercise power. These rights are inalienable and cannot be changed or altered by an elected government. The United States is a typical example of a republic state because the constitution limits the power of the government. Some rights such as the Bill of Rights, the right to vote, and the powers to amend the constitution are limited and cannot be changed by the sitting government without consulting the public directly.
This has more detail
Sev, note that the US framers and other thinkers of their day, commonly viewed democracy as [an invitation to] lawless/arbitrary mob rule. This in key part harked back to the failure of Athens. While there is a democratic, representational, public accountability element, the framers were careful to hedge it around and consciously premised what they did on the cultural buttresses of a lawful state. These of course include the Christian sentiment, the adherence to core natural law rooted in our morally governed nature [and endorsed by the Christian faith], and the rise of a duly informed public tracing to the printing revolution and associated trends that for example include familiarity with the Bible, the decalogue, the Proverbs, the gospel and its integral gospel ethics. The undermining of these opens the way to lawless ideological oligarchy, and that is the discernible intent of the agendas now afoot. Some serious rethinking is in order. KF
“Put the gays back in the closet where they belong, cancel transexuals, don’t teach sex education to kids, push Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists back into the hidden cracks of society, restrict women to their traditional housekeeping and motherhood roles, mandate the Lord’s Prayer in school, and ban contraceptives.”
Two words “emotionally unhinged””
Vivid
Sev,
When you are forced to set up and set afire an absurd strawman caricature, that is a strong sign that you are in the wrong but have an agenda that you are determined to cling to at all costs. Crooked yardstick thinking. And projection of such a lurid nature invites confession by projection analysis, thence the admonition to correct the seething hostility behind such gross projections.
For simple corrective example, cruel and unusual punishments are banned by the Eighth Amendment, also part of the Bill of Rights passed with the Constitution:
Extreme and disproportionate punishment is an affront to justice, an expression of contempt and vindictiveness. Which BTW is the real meaning of the eye for eye principle. Sanctions in law should be proportionate.
So, you should first acknowledge the core concern: the first right, life, without which there are no other lives. And this draft is about restoring due respect for life in the face of patent judicial overreach that justice Alito points to, costing in just the US 63+ million lives. It also enabled the global rise of abortionism, which has cost 1.4+ billion lives, on Guttmacher/UN estimates.
Due balance is in order.
KF
PS, A reminder from Locke and Hooker with a dash of Aristotle:
VL, one distortion and overreach opens the way for the next and the next. Restoring due proportion is not extremism nor reversion to evils such as racist law. And, you still need to show us a nine sided hexagon. The projection of extremism and danger to the other invites confession by projection analysis. Especially, where an obvious aspect of this leak was to call out the red guard mobs to threaten and intimidate. KF
Slippery slopes are slippery, KF.
😆 It’s demo(no)cratic party “move” because the polls show they will be destroyed in nov and want to move the pressure from WH dummy, oil price, Afganistan, vaccine damages to …HATE the pro-life people.
ET actually spots my point about biological sex. Well done, as far as it does. Male dominance is the norm in some social species, though female dominance works in others, hyenas for example. Patriarchy and religious fundamentalism seem to occur together in human society. Do you live in a cave?
ET re 205
Well,sated. Gotta love these defenders of democracy freaking out that the electorate should be able to vote on whether infanticide should be the law of the land, or that abortion should be allowed only in the first trimester.
Roe is bad law based on a “penumbra” not the constitution. Ginsburg thought the law was flawed as did Lawrence Tribe hardly right wingers.
What is sorely lacking in this conversation is not the emotional hysterics , which we have in abundance, rather is Roe constitutional? KF posted some of Alito’s reasoning upthread ( 147) and so far crickets from the emotionally unhinged as to its substance.
For all the weepers and teeth mashers all this is easily resolvable all Congress has to do is pass a law!!! All three branches of government are in the hands of the left just pass a law!! But congress won’t do that , ask yourself ,why have they not done so ? It is not the SC that should be making law but our elected representatives.
Vivid
“Slippery slopes are slippery, KF.”
Four words “safe legal and rare”
Vivid
KF
“Especially, where an obvious aspect of this leak was to call out the red guard mobs to threaten and intimidate. KF”
Yep and their home addresses have been given to those who will threaten and intimidate them. It’s happening as we speak.
Vivid
KF
https://www.dailywire.com/news/leftist-groups-direct-protestors-to-descend-upon-supreme-court-justices-homes
Vivid
Finally the decades long public holocaust will have its end. Will the perpetrators be brought to justice? Will the christian masses be mandatet to visit the murder sites? I suspect not. The slaughtered are just innocent babys, not wealthy jews. The christianists and their fellow travellers will laugh it off and continue to rape and murder children in the dark.
[AC, I must warn you regarding stereotyping of Jews, I let the text stand as an example of language to avoid. Most of the Jews murdered during the Holocaust were ordinary people, as were the 2 million Poles otherwise and the vast majority of 25+ million russians murdered through war of aggression compounded by holocaust. Nor is your projection to :christianists” acceptable language. ED]
FH, a slippery slope depends on a ratchet, as I pointed out years ago and recently linked; your attempted turnabout fails and invites confession by projection analysis . . . it is extremists who try to make others out to be absurdly extreme through projections without pretty solid specific evidence and warrant. In this case gross demonising projections are blatant inflammatory rhetoric that would fail the 8th amdt test. The sole cases where repeal is warranted are themselves overreaches, to which I again say, show me a nine sided hexagon. Back on topic, your answer to the premise that the unborn child — note Mr Biden’s cat out of bag moment — has a right to life is? ________ KF
Vivid, the silence in reply to Justice Alito’s specific opening bat points in a world of instant web search speaks volumes that they cannot be answered on the merits. KF
@kairosfocus:
Jews were and are wealthier than the general population. If you regard facts as stereotypes, so be it.
What are you talking about?
[ AC, first, the Jews of Poland etc 80 years ago are not like Jews in the USA today. Next, it was not wealth but race that was targetted, which includes Poles and Russians; Mein Kampf has a really chilling prospective passage. Third, the issue is needlessly loaded language. ED]
Sev @198,
If the distinction didn’t matter, that would be one thing. If the distinction matters significantly, that’s another. Democracy without being significantly constrained the form of a constitutional republic (I note your quote from your source doesn’t address the constitutional aspect) is just “majority rules.” Our system of government was set up specifically to provide unalienable protections for the minority against the majority.
It’s fine to use the term “democracy” in such discussions as long as you realize it is shorthand for a constitutional federal republic and you understand it does not mean “majority rules.”
You are the one obsessed with slippery slopes but in this case you may have a point. Giving all legislative power back to individual states could lead to a gradual erosion of the union altogether. California and Texas (or at least a significant number of their citizens) already think going it alone would be fun.
First, I have no say at all in the matter and would abstain in any vote that sought my view and that applies to all men. An unfertilized egg has no separate rights, a fertilized egg, neither. A foetus before the development of the nervous system no, again. Up to this point, abortion should be available to anyone who is pregnant and wishes not to be. If you want an arbitrary figure, I’m comfortable with sixteen weeks. Beyond that, there may be circumstances where a later abortion is necessary and the limit for that is where the foetus has the ability to survive outside the womb..
Briefly a foetus acquires the right to life independent from its mother when it is capable of surviving outside the womb.
There’s no magical element to conception.
FH, dehumanisation and cultural marxist intersectionality to lock out stakeholders duly noted. KF
PS, I forgot, science denial. Conception is the moment of formation of new human life. That’s not mere magic but it is momentous.
PS, you still don’t seem to recognise that a slippery slope metaphor alludes to a dangerous trend with signs of trouble ahead and that where patterns and/or dynamics and/or historical exemplars point to a trend, duty of prudence is material. This is simple sustainability thinking, using reasonably current framing. In Machiavelli’s terms, ponder the challenge of political hectic fever. Then there is, a stitch in time saves nine, or fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
F/N: A child of rape speaks out:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/05/05/my-life-has-value-pennsylvania-senate-candidate-kathy-barnette-talks-being-conceived-in-rape/
Click the link, look this lady in the eyes and say she deserved death because of the crime of her father.
KF
🙂 So you agree that people who are not able to survive by themselves ( are coupled to life support machines, have mental , physical disorders, are in coma,etc.) have to be killed also? Because your condition is met and you have to be consistent ( as “consistent” as a darwinist eugenist man can be). 😆
Fred Hickson:
You must live in a cave. We were discussing HUMANS. And you were exposed as being ignorant with respect to biology. With humans, except for people like you, men are the dominant sex. We are bigger, stronger, and faster. Again, not you, though.
It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with biology. But then again, you don’t seem to understand much of anything.
Fred Hickson:
Moron. Babies cannot survive on their own outside of the womb. Clearly, you are just ignorant.
Science says that life starts at conception. Science refutes your ignorance.
Again. With Pro-Aborts you might as well be trying to have a discussion with an pile of sharp sticks.
Andrew
Andrew: This thread has proven once again, for the 80 billionth time, that pro-aborts are incapable of having a rational conversation about abortion.
It is difficult to have a rational argument with those who misrepresent the views and motives of those they oppose.
Consider a couple of hypotheticals with me: First, consider how our perspective might change if we thought that the sexual revolution wasn’t actually a noble attempt to escape the old restrictions people placed on sex and thereby democratize it and allow more of it, but was instead at its core a scam perpetrated by men against women to get them to free themselves up to men for more sex.
Then consider how our perspective might further change if we thought that abortion was not really a noble attempt at letting women have “reproductive freedom”, but was rather a manufactured necessity and side-effect of the first hypothetical above. In other words, what if the men who perpetrated the sexual revolution on women suddenly realized that, due to the inevitable facts of life, abortion was an absolute necessity so that those same men would not have to marry, settle down, and provide for a family. A major tenet of the sexual revolution was, after all, to detach sex from any kind of commitment so that it could be engaged in with complete abandon. Having to marry and raise the kiddos would ruin the “free” part of the sexual revolution. (Of course, men would have to “sell” abortion with noble-sounding language such as “reproductive freedom”.)
Would these two realizations change women’s perspectives—if they realized that the sexual revolution in general and abortion in particular were a racket perpetrated against them, with them as the biggest losers all the way around? (After all, the women who drink most deeply of the sexual revolution most often end up single…and bitter…without really knowing how and why it happened. But the men know exactly what happened.)
I’m not saying this is what actually took place, but would the outcome look any different if it were?
“It is difficult to have a rational argument with those who misrepresent the views and motives of those they oppose.”
JHolo,
I don’t think I specifically spoke to anyone’s motives.
Andrew
The biggest genocide of innocents is the result of “the sexual revolution” . You don’t listen to God ,sooner or later you’ll became openly criminal(they don’t try to dissimulate anymore).
I was witness to a presentation that showed how well abstinence worked when tried with pre-teens. Almost no sexual behavior amongst them in the next few years. These were prime years for begining sexual activity.
A major part of the program was the dignity of the individual and how sexual behavior led to the denigration of this dignity. Nothing religious about it. It led to major attitude changes amongst those in program.
It was mainly directed to girls. But the boys understood and bought into it.
But was buried by the politicians.
Seversky/199
This was exactly my thought. As you observe, this could have immense ramifications for state conflict of laws jurisprudence. Although I don’t think the scenario that you suggest would ultimately stand up to legal challenge, your Texas vigilantes could make life a living hell by forcing women to go through the necessary legal challenges to get the law struck down. In the meantime, I can just see the ghoulish opportunists and their lawyers sitting on the Texas border “taking names and kicking butt” waiting to serve lawsuits as women return from having to travel elsewhere to get legal abortions.
The “pro-life” contingent has never cared about due process, fairness or the rule of law. To be frank, I don’t think they really care that much about the “unborn.” What they really care about is winning the “culture wars” while dragging the rest of us into their apocalyptic nightmare as we await the Second Coming………
Dear ChuckDarwin and Mr. Severski
You may try to avoid displays of ignorance such as your recent nonsense.
Here it is:
“Given the absurd principle of “vigilante justice” which Texas exploited to outsource enforcement of SB8 to private citizens and protect their officials from prosecution, I would be concerned that anti-abortion states might enact similar legislation to blah blah blah”
Texas did not use an “absurd principle” nor did they use “vigilatte justice”
They used a centuries old feature of established American and English law called a Qui Tam proceeding.
The False Claiums Act of 1863 (also called the Lincoln Act after the President who sighned it) is a such a Qui Tam proceeding. As amended, the False Claims Act is the primary means of enforcing Medicare and Medicaid fraud by providers.
CD
Respect for the lives of children about to be born should be a shared-value for people on both sides of the debate.
SA,
A pregnant woman is going to have a baby. It is a living human being.
The “Sexual Revolution” was about detaching love from sex.
Marker
Agreed. It became “love without responsibility” and then sex is something like a recreational drug.
People addicted to such a thing will place a higher value on their own drive for pleasure than on the life of a child. Someone vulnerable and innocent has to die so people can live the way they want to.
Sandy: So you agree that people who are not able to survive by themselves ( are coupled to life support machines, have mental , physical disorders, are in coma,etc.) have to be killed also?
I am pro-abortion but I think this comparison is excellent; although I would modify to: not necessarily that they ‘have to be killed’ but that then can be.
I would recommend that anyone who is anti-abortion make this argument as I, personally, don’t really have a good response to it. Makes me think about things . . .
@kairosfocus:
Really? You don’t say.
Judaism is not a race. Furthermore wealth was part of their target, since the nazis actively lied and exaggerated the wealth of jews.
Are you talking about my usage of “holocaust”? The slaughter of innocents in the womb IS a holocaust! I stand by the usage of this word!
Maybe that’s the problem. You’re so entrenched in the political correctness propaganda, that you don’t dare to say the truth in order not to insult the snowflakes. Murder is murder, and 3+2=5, my friend.
Sandy
Have to be killed? Who said anyone had to be killed? Possibly half to three quarters of all fertilized eggs fail to nidate or later abort spontaneously. Those that implant successfully depend entirely on sustenance from the mother in order to develop. There is no separate existence for that foetus if there mother dies or has a miscarriage before the foetus is capable of independent existence.
This is not the situation where someone is on life support due to trauma or illness. I’m all in favor of medical intervention that will save and prolong life. I would add I have made clear to my family that I don’t want my life prolonged beyond any useful existence if I succumb to a terminal illness that robs me of mental and physical capacity.
Abortion, as I’ve said several times, need not be an issue if social systems are in place to provide education and contraception, support for women who are in difficult situations, financial support for those unable to afford another child and so on.
I hear little from pro-lifers that sounds like practical concern or offering help to pregnant women.
FH
It’s not surprising that you hear little on it because news covers it up or distorts it, given that national media outlets have a pro-abortion bias.
But there is a lot going on:
Pro-life Pregnancy Centers Served 2 Million People, Saved Communities $161M in 2017
https://lozierinstitute.org/pro-life-pregnancy-centers-served-2-million-people-saved-communities-161m-in-2017/
Pro-life clinics outnumber abortion facilities 2,700 to 739
https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-pregnancy-centers-outnumber-abortion-clinics-across-country/
Prolife centers are heavily supported by unpaid, volunteer help. They also face hostility from the powers-that-be and the media outlets as mentioned. Those items posted go back a few years, but the trend has continued and is even more dramatic as abortion clinics continue to close down.
There’s a national organization designed just to help former Planned Parenthood employees deal with the trauma of what they experienced as abortionists (and helping them get new jobs as they leave that business). There’s another very big organization that helps thousands of people (women and men) who have been wounded by the experience of abortion. Killing one’s own child leaves a lifetime of pain and guilt for many.
So there’s a lot of work being done by pro-lifers to help women.
“I hear little from pro-lifers that sounds like practical concern or offering help to pregnant women.”
FH,
Get a hearing aid.
https://pregnancyhelpnews.com/phc-10-numbers
Andrew
JVL/242
If you haven’t already read it, I would recommend an essay called A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thompson discussed in this Wikipedia article
“people who are not able to survive by themselves”
Sigh… there are very few adults who can survive “by themselves.”
Andrew
Fred Hickson/244
I think there are pro-life groups that do genuinely try to provide comfort and support for woman contemplating abortion.
Against that, there appear to be a lot more who are animated by a kind of sanctimonious, self-righteous misogyny which cast women who became pregnant out-of-wedlock as “sinful” and “fallen” and was behind the atrocious treatment of mothers and babies in a home in Tuam in Ireland run, of all things, by an order of nuns called the Sisters of Bon Secours.
CD,
You really should get out more and listen to a variety of people. That will prevent this sort of gross misunderstanding and fear from getting such a grip on you.
Your statement above indicates that you actually think that those on the right would take us into an “apocalyptic nightmare”. This is the kind of hyperbolic over-generalization that has each side scared to death of the other, each moving farther to their preferred extreme in reaction. Even _if_–and this can’t actually happen for quite a few reasons–the right went reactionary and took the US culturally speaking back to any point 1900-1960, no such point in time would qualify as an “apocalyptic nightmare”.
(I’ll bet the right would like a country/world where human lives are not being terminated on an industrial scale. But a world without that would not be an apocalyptic nightmare.)
Seversky,
Which is better: Random sex with whoever or true love followed by marriage and children?
The “Sexual Revolution” was all about sex without love. In the early 1970s, there was a thick publication that consisted of nothing but small ads featuring nude or partly nude women looking for no strings attached sex. The goal was to get otherwise normal men to give this a try.
In the early 1970s, I heard the following in high school: “Guys don’t gotta use rubbers no more cause women will be on The Pill.”
This group of people were referred to as “swingers” or ‘we want to have sex with whoever.’
Seversky: If you haven’t already read it, I would recommend an essay called A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thompson discussed in this Wikipedia article
Thanks, I will.
“Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thompson discussed in this Wikipedia article”
A complete waste of time. Can I have my 5 minutes back?
Andrew
Jarvis has some good arguments.
“Jarvis has some good arguments.”
No, he doesn’t.
Andrew
Sev,
A quick point that caught my eye:
This fairly reeks of evolutionary materialistic scientism and emergentism, equating the human person with the stage of development of his or her body. In direct correction, as already noted many times, we cannot reduce rational, responsible freedom to computation on a substrate. We have those characteristics, or we are not free enough to reason, warrant and know, which would reduce mindedness to grand delusion. (It also invites implicit reduction of the handicapped to subhuman status with diminished rights, opening the door to the Schaeffer-Koop cascade: abortionism –> infanticide –> eugenics –> euthanasia –> forced euthanasia –> lawless, murderous tyranny.)
So, the argument pivots on a self referentially incoherent, grand delusion triggering error.
Dehumanisation is as ever the gateway to targetted death of those the power wielders deem substandard and in their way. Before we get to actual killing, of course the marginalised become “fair game” for ever further removal beyond protection of principles of justice, respect and fairness. Moral inversion and lawlessness have set in, even when such don the robes of law and act under colour of law.
KF
She.
“She”
FH,
What’s the difference?
Andrew
It is the argument of Ben Shapiro:
https://youtu.be/ZF3cUjl2WG0
🙂 This is the “best” argument pro abortion. Except you missed the point . Do you know what is the difference between intention and an action beyond your control?
F/N: Speaking of targetting:
https://www.wnd.com/2022/05/left-wing-groups-send-protesters-supreme-court-justices-homes/
Slander and intimidation to back ongoing slaughter of our living posterity in the womb.
KF
The data clearly shows this. The lowest abortion rates and unwanted pregnancy rates are always in counties where abortion is readily available and at no cost to the woman, where sex education is early, comprehensive and non-judgemental, where contraceptives are readily available, and where 1+ year paid maternity leave is available.
Or offering to adopt unwanted babies.
Slippery slope:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/05/louisiana-abortion-bill-murder-republicans
Topics
FH, an idiot making a silly assertion does not a trend to significant danger make. People openly planning intimidation of judges . . . KF
But, with respect, you do it all the time with your slippery-slope arguments.
JH, falsehood in dereliction of duty to truth in order to scapegoat the despised other. I suggest you start reprogramming your thinking by studying the life of one William Wilberforce, then go on to a certain General Booth, pass by a certain Mother Theresa of Calcutta and a few others. KF
JH, you have shown to clear conclusion that when it suits you you do not understand trends, signs and substance, much less lessons of history. This inadvertently shows the precise pattern facing the US founders after unresponsiveness to the Olive branch petition. Accordingly, kindly see the PS. KF
PS, US DoI, 1776 after mere remonstrance failed:
Do you begin to understand the matches you are playing with?
I suggest you start addressing the data rather than your emotions.
It is a fact that countries that have access to abortion, early, comprehensive and non judgemental sex education, ready access to birth control and access to long term paid maternity have have much lower abortion rates.
Feel free to present contrary evidence if you can.
Yeah, and if I think robbery is wrong, I should be willing to fork over money to every would-be robber. And if I think statutory murder is wrong, I should be willing to absorb all the anger of everyone who is about to murder someone. And so on. Do people not analyze their arguments before making them?
If pro-lifers offered to adopt every unwanted baby, the conception of unwanted babies probably would not go down. Nor would anyone conceiving a baby who knew they would not want it have any reason to avoid pregnancy in the first place.
I guess it’s just inconceivable to a lot of people out there that taking responsibility for one’s actions and choices might be a good idea. Of course not! The sexual revolution must be defended at all costs, even if the arguments are illogical and poorly thought-out.
re 267: indeed.
When those who want abortion argue that pro-lifers should be willing to adopt all those babies, the pro-abortion people are admitting that the whole goal here is sex without consequences, because the whole thrust of the argument is “get rid of the baby somehow.”
This person justified his tweets as thought experiments.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33f6e2bf-bade-4217-907f-c87d3ce129a7_1170x1362.jpeg
JH [attn, VL], that you think it reasonable to even suggest in a blog that the question of the right to life is a mere matter of emotions shows just how far off kilter the views you have been arguing for are; and that is very deliberate understatement. As for how few abortions are in various jurisdictions, the Guttmacher-UN figures imply about a million per week globally, on a baseline of 1.4+ billion since the early 70’s, with the US stance of 1973 a material factor. No argument on the acceptable rate of mass slaughter can have any merit, it refutes itself. Life is the first right and compromising this undermines civilisation. As to sweeping away 2,000 years of charity and slanderously pretending that Christians are uncaring, that too refutes itself; this time by way of confession by projection. KF
When a baby is aborted does a living human being die?
Fred:
Hi Kevin. All of that exists in the USA. You just can’t cure willful ignorance. You are a prime example of that.
JHolo:
Except for the long term maternity leave, the USA has that. And planning can overcome that issue.
I would propose a billionaire tax to help raise these kids that would have been aborted. The tax could help with maternity leave and healthcare costs. That is how you redistribute the wealth- by investing in the future.
More misrepresentation of the pro-choice opinion. But if that is the only way you can pretend to have a valid argument, who am I to stop you?
Kevin? Don’t you mean Fred?
EDTA writes, “the pro-abortion people are admitting that the whole goal here is sex without consequences, because the whole thrust of the argument is “get rid of the baby somehow.”
That is an extreme mischaracterization, I think. And I don’t think many are “pro-abortion”. It’s not like people people want abortions as positive things. As JHolo said, there are fact-based ways to reduce the number of abortions considerably, and we should support all those. Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion.
Sadly, there are many here who fail to see the difference. Whether intentionally or innocently, I’m not sure. But I am willing to keep an open mind. At least for now.
JHolo:
Kevin, Fred, Acartia, William- the list is long
Viola Lee:’
If there is a difference it is one without a distinction. Being pro-abortion doesn’t mean you want all pregnancies to be aborted. It just means that abortion is a LEGAL option if the woman so CHOOSEs.
Sorry. I didn’t know there was a history.
The pro-life movement is working to help people realize that they don’t have to have an abortion if they don’t want to, especially if they know it is a wrong thing to do to their own child. Abortion is never the right choice – especially for people who say “I don’t support abortion”. There’s no good reason to do it – it’s an irreversible choice and a child has to suffer for it.
The adoption support that the pro-life offers is tremendous and they help thousands of women and thus save the lives of countless children. It’s a positive solution that should be supported by anyone who knows that abortion is not a good thing. Abortionists like Planned Parenthood don’t provide an option – it’s a one-way ticket to death for the child and suffering for the woman (if she allows herself to realize what happened).
If society is serious about preventing abortion it has to first accept that unwanted pregnancies are going to happen. Pretending otherwise is just being delusional.
It then has two parallel tracks:
1) early, comprehensive, non-judgemental sex education and ready availability of contraceptives to reduce unwanted pregnancies.
2) establish a society where it is beneficial to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. And not by threat of prosecution. Financial support during and after the pregnancy. Involvement in selecting adoptive parents if they choose to put the baby up for adoption. Paid long term maternity leave. Job security during maternity leave.
Any society that is not willing to do any of this is not serious about preventing abortion, it is just interested in virtue signalling.
Until we hold men accountable for unwanted pregnancies, we aren’t serious about preventing abortions.
This is the 21st century. Teenagers have access to all of the sex education information they need, and then some.
Tax the billionaires to fund the healthcare and welfare of those saved.
The country of Qatar has the third lowest abortion rate in the world 20 times lower than the USA.
American kids have been getting sex education in school even before they’re teenagers. They have been given free condoms in some cases. In many cases, sex education has served to groom the kids for promiscuity.
SA writes, “The pro-life movement is working to help people realize that they don’t have to have an abortion if they don’t want to, especially if they know it is a wrong thing to do to their own child.”
That’s fine. That’s different than supporting laws which make it illegal for someone who feels differently to choose differently.
And Austria has the fourth lowest abortion rate (1.3/1000 vs Qatar’s 1.2/1000) without making abortion illegal or the threat of jail time and criminal records. I will let the data speak for itself.
JH, the key fact is this, globally, our living posterity in the womb are being snuffed out at a million further victims per week. KF
No, the key fact is that countries that take a rational and well thought out approach to abortion, rather than the knee-jerk reaction of countries dominated by religious influences, have actually made great strides in reducing unwanted pregnancies and abortions.
JH, spin all you want, holocaust is ongoing and apart from zero there is no minimal, acceptable rate of mass slaughter. The current rate is about a million per week. A key factor is not oh hand over to the same indoctrinators who created and foster the situation, but recognising that we are trifling with life and with the moral, legal and governmental fabric of our civilisation; the civil peace of justice expressed as due balance of rights, freedoms and duties . . . where, life is the first right. When you can bring yourself to acknowledge that instead of sneering at people for the thought crime in your mind of trusting God, then there is a basis for responsible conversation. KF
63 million abortions in America since Roe v Wade – over a million a year. That’s a disaster.
NY has the most liberal abortion law in the US. Second highest abortion rate.
JHOLO to KF
Indeed. Hence my gentle mockery of KF’s predeliction. Made me smile that he can dismiss an example so similar to his own style.
PS at Joe, no my name isn’t Kevin. The poster using those aliases really got under your skin but I’m sorry I have to disappoint you there.
KF:
Trusting in God, you may have heard of the parable of the mote and the beam.
SA
“NY has the most liberal abortion law in the US. Second highest abortion rate.”
More black babies are aborted than born in NY, Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood are succeeding via their original goals.
Vivid
FH, it is, sadly, obvious that when it is inconvenient you refuse to recognise signs of trends. Indeed, that is a manifest root of your rejection of the design inference. Selective hyperskepticism on your part does not change the objective force of signs. In this case, globally, a million further deliberate killings of our living posterity in the womb, on a baseline of 1.4+ billions since the early 70s, per Guttmacher-UN statistics. For the US, 63 million to date. Where, again, life is the first right. In the end, if this matter of blood guilt is not settled responsibly and with respect to this right, our civilisation will pay a heavy price for the undermining of first duties. KF
Point of information, KF. I don’t reject the idea of design at all. I’ve proposed my own candidate for designer (the niche environment). Sure, that leaves the opportunity for there to be a universal designer of all niches (this universe) but that involves personal religious faith more than science.
Regarding the enormous number (63 million per year, you say) of extra people that would result if all pregnancies resulted in live births, where will they all fit, not to speak of exponential growth?
FH, a niche environment is incapable of intelligently directed configuration, as you know. Gymnastics with words does not solve the problem. KF
FH, social systems are dynamic, not static. Differing family reproduction patterns would have prevailed and different governance would have prevailed. Right now, cumulative blood guilt is significantly shaping policy and not to the good. KF
Depends what you mean by “intelligence”, KF. Among promoters of “Intelligent Design” the concept of intelligence remains a little vague. Why are designers required to have a certain level of intelligence and how is it measured? IQ? FSC? How?
FH, you have already been directed to the glossary, where Wikipedia acknowledges against interest. Namely, “capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn.” Where, we observe that the cell has in it alphanumeric code [so, language], expressing algorithms [so, goal directed stepwise processes with halting] using molecular nanotech rooted in deep knowledge of polymers. That is more than enough to make the point clear and to further make the selective hyperskepticism and unwillingness to face the grave import of 1.4+ billions dead and mounting at another million or so per week even more starkly clear. KF
🙂 Yes roads are the explanation for evolution of motorcycles. 🙂 Magical thinking is working when ignorance is your best argument.
Do niches explain internal organisation of organisms? Do niches explain how very different types of external stimuli(light,smell,temperature,presence/absence of food / predator,etc.) are coded by organism in an unified type of signal [HOW?] so can be “understood” and processed by brain and brain compute,analyze and send “orders” to cells, but to reach cells the unified electrical neuronal signal is coded in more different types of signals(hormonal and chemical) in order to hit every cell to intelligently adapt .
Explain us how these feedback loops with messages that are of different types( but coding-decoding sistems are in place “to resolve” the problem) appeared? By niches? :))))
How does your designer do things, Sandy?
Cat got your tongue?
“I’ve proposed my own candidate for designer (the niche environment).”
FH,
Your proposal sucks.
Andrew
AS, my official estimate is, sucking chest wound. Prognosis, poor. KF
FH, how were the pyramids and sphinx built? Do we need to know that to recognise their design? KF
FH
No, I didn’t say 63 million per year. Comment 293.
But even with the number I gave, we shouldn’t desire to kill people because they’re considered expendable or as waste products. That’s the Darwinist and atheistic view.
Vivid
True. The black genocide from the progressive, Darwinian left is an ongoing crime against humanity. But it fits among the people who think they’re better than everyone else and who want to reconstruct society into their own image (and dethrone God).
They have been succeeding in eliminating “the unwanted” people in society that way. But I’m also grateful to see many black leaders standing against this and protecting family life and marriage within the black community (which has always been predominantly God-oriented even though Marxist propagandists have tried to tell them and everyone, differently).
“Leaked draft” is a red herring people( like George Floyd) before elections . Focus on “demo(no)cratic party” clowns not on their red herrings.
VL
Good to hear. Your support would be greatly appreciated and useful if ever you consider volunteering at such places. You can contribute to women being helped in difficult situations and witness children’s lives being saved from abortion. It’s a very beautiful chance to do some good. Imagine years later, a teenager comes back to say “thank you” for helping my mother choose life (my own) instead of abortion.
“Failed abortion” is one of those terms.
Abortionist tells the parents: “We tried to kill your child, but we’re sad to say that we failed and the child is now living. We truly apologize. ”
Not their choice: Stories of abortion survivors
Although abortion is meant to end a life, that is not always the case. Terms like ‘failed abortion,’ ‘live birth,’ or even ‘dreaded complication’ …
https://nation.foxnews.com/not-their-choice-stories-of-abortion-survivors/
Woman Who Survived 2 Abortion Attempts Shares Her Message to Pro-Choice Activists
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/05/06/woman-who-survived-2-abortion-attempts-shares-her-message-to-pro-choice-activists/
Senate Democrats Insist Babies Born Alive After Abortions Should Be Left To Die
https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/14/senate-democrats-insist-babies-born-alive-after-abortions-should-be-left-to-die/
KF asks:
I don’t know exactly and archaeology is not my field but there is plenty of information on the internet.
Here is a National Geographic article. Apparently the construction period was quite short and about 4500 years ago.
Here is the Smithsonian on the Sphinx. I was interested to note the Sphinx is a monolith.
It is the first thing I’d ask about any new phenomenon or artefact. How did that get there, when and how did someone or something make it. Our curiosity threshholds are set at a different level perhaps.
Silver Asiatic
I don’t desire to kill people, just the opposite. Birth control is by far preferable to death control, which is what happens when populations outstrip resources.
KF
This is really off the rails, KF. There’s the territory and your map of it.
Sandy:
Not seeing the logic here, Sandy. I ask you a question, you don’t answer, and the cat has my tongue?
🙂 Your answer to a question can’t be another question just because you have no clue how to answer.
FH
That is good. A key point here, as KF has mentioned several times – there’s a dehumanizing process through this, and we should have a greater appreciation of the value of human life.
ET and Silver Asiatic: is there any place in your world view for engaging in sexual behaviour being acceptable just because it’s fun? It’s exciting? And, sometimes, because some people are trying to dictate and define and limit the behaviour? Surely you and your partner sometimes just have sex because it’s pleasurable and it’s fun and you have no intention of creating a new human being. Is that right only limited to heterosexual married couples?
My point is: who are the anti-abortion efforts actually targeting? Not married couples, clearly. Hopefully not rape victims (some of which are married). It seems that the main point is that men and women who engage in penetrative sexual behaviour without using effective birth control methods should be forced to live with their mistake which might have happened late at night, after an office party, without anyone really wanting it to mean anything other than just having a good time.
Is that the really point? That sexual behaviour should be limited to heterosexual married couples who are trying to have children?
If not then how do you propose to manage all the other cases? Do you support wide-spread and available birth control? If not is that because you are, actually, trying to dictate and limit sexual behaviour? Do you support clear and supportive options for rape victims who clearly did not choose to conceive? Do you support married couples who conceive a child who clearly would be born with debilitating and potentially fatal birth defects who don’t want to go through the trauma of having to go through the whole pregnancy?
I think this is a very complicated and difficult issue to deal with. I don’t think there is a black-and-white answer. I think that means that we should listen to the women who are impregnated and find out what they want. I think the rest of us should think about what it is we really want: to help prevent unwanted pregnancies or to dictate sexual behaviour by proxy.
Fred Hickson:
Only to willfully ignorant people, like you, Fred. Weird how archaeologists and forensic scientists can tell when an intelligent agency has acted and left traces of its actions behind. Weird. Science must be magic to dolts like you.
Strange how I never ended up with a girl and an unwanted pregnancy. And it isn’t because I abstained.
Why is it that the left, who insist they are for science, abandon science when it says that life starts at conception? Where is their alleged abundant empathy for the wholesale slaughter of our most vulnerable? Why are they so strained to come up with a logical, coherent argument for anything?
Fred Hickson:
Unlike ID, you have FAILED to provide any evidence for that claim. It’s as if you are embarrassed by your own claim.
EDTA: I guess it’s just inconceivable to a lot of people out there that taking responsibility for one’s actions and choices might be a good idea. Of course not! The sexual revolution must be defended at all costs, even if the arguments are illogical and poorly thought-out.
Are you in favour of easy to access forms of birth control which is taking responsibility to prevent unwanted pregnancies or are you, really, just trying to limit sexual practices?
Let’s be clear: if all women of child-bearing age had free and available ways of choosing when they got pregnant would you still worry about their sexual practices?
“if all women of child-bearing age had free and available ways of choosing when they got pregnant”
To all lobotomized pro-aborts—>
they can already choose when to try and get pregnant.
Andrew
Seversky
I thought you might find this interesting. It’s an excerpt from the op-ed page of today’s NYT by Michelle Goldberg:
In light of medical confidentiality under HIPAA, one question I have is how will, for example, Missouri authorities find out about a Missouri woman going somewhere else to have an abortion. Assumably, her medical records would be privileged and not admissible in court, even if Missouri officials managed to obtain them………
Sadly, most of those opposed to a woman’s choice are also opposed to steps that have proven effective in significantly reducing unwanted pregnancies.
ET
Never heard archaeologists referring to intelligent agencies before. Seems to me they refer to species such early modern humans, Neandertals, H. erectus.
ET
Sorry about that but judging by how you behave here, I’m not surprised.
Asauber: they can already choose when to try and get pregnant.
Do you support easily available birth control? Or are you more interested in dictating sexual behaviour?
JVL,
“Do you support easily available birth control?”
No.
“Or are you more interested in dictating sexual behaviour?”
Not.
I’m interested in helping innocent little humans live a life that has been gifted to them, a life that others (like you?) want to end prematurely.
Andrew
Sexual ethics in the world of Darwinian-atheism is exactly what one would expect it to be. Mindless and amoral.
Dawkins says we should rethink our ‘taboo’ on cannibalism:
One reason we don’t eat other human beings, according to Dawkins, is that we think too highly of humans. After all, chimpanzees are cannibalistic so what is the problem? We’re only separated from monkeys by some mutations:
Abortionists can benefit from all of this. So far, they’re only content to extract body parts from children they’ve killed in the womb (those go for a good price and one abortionist was looking forward to driving a Lamborghini on the profits of baby-parts sales) but perhaps they’re missing out on Dawkins’ grisly suggestion. Nothing is too horrific for Darwin’s followers, as is obvious by the ideology itself.
FH, you can deny what you wish, there are several Nobel prizes behind what I said. Hint, go read Crick’s letter to his son Mar 19, 1953, esp. p. 5. You have inadvertently underscored my point. KF
FH, just for fun, go watch some Time Team. What do you think, Archaeology vs natural is? KF
AS
All the empty rhetoric and attempts to redirect guilt never move us past that point.
FH/330
Ouch….
“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.”
— Methodist Pastor David Barnhart
Asauber: No.
That’s clear. Thank you.
I’m interested in helping innocent little humans live a life that has been gifted to them, a life that others (like you?) want to end prematurely.
I’m most interested in preventing that kind of situation arising in the first place. So, do we provide easily available birth control, do we support sex education, do we make abortion in the early stages of pregnancy available, do we provide a lot of support for unwanted children born of pregnancies and their parents?
It seems to me that widely available birth control is the first and most easy way of preventing abortions. Yes?
“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for.
Sev,
So is any other group.
Andrew
“I’m most interested in preventing that kind of situation arising in the first place.”
JVL,
In the meantime, the situation arises, anyway.
Andrew
Asauber: In the meantime, the situation arises, anyway.
So, what is the best way to avoid unwanted pregnancies? What is your vote?
“So, what is the best way to avoid unwanted pregnancies?”
JVL,
The obvious (maybe not to you as a pro-abort) is to practice respectfully and prudently THE ***ONE AND ONLY*** THING that causes pregnancy.
Andrew
Asauber: The obvious (maybe not to you as a pro-abort) is to practice respectfully and prudently THE ***ONE AND ONLY*** THING that causes pregnancy.
So you vote for abstinence.
Here’s the question: is promoting abstinence the best way, based on evidence and surveys, to prevent unwanted pregnancies?
We both want to avoid unwanted pregnancies and abortions. The only question is: what is the most effective way of doing that.
“So you vote for abstinence.”
JVL,
Did you read what I wrote?
Andrew
Asauber: Did you read what I wrote?
Yes, I did.
I want to know is are you willing to take into account the best data and science in order to solve whatever you think is the primary problem. So, we have to start with what you think is the primary issue to be solved. Is it unwanted pregnancies or sexual behaviour?
Sev, strawman, Christian charity has a 2,000 year track record that exposes the emptiness of the rhetoric. KF
“So, we have to start with what you think is the primary issue to be solved.”
JVL,
The Primary Issue To Be Solved Is: People killing their babies in an attempt to deny what the sexual act is and does and how it should be practiced.
Andrew
Asauber: The Primary Issue To Be Solved Is: People killing their babies in an attempt to deny what the sexual act is and does and how it should be practiced.
So, you and I both want the same thing: preventing abortions. Now, what is the best way to do that. Is it promoting abstinence or providing easily obtainable birth control?
The best way based what actually works.
Chuckdarwin/327
Thanks for the reference, CD, I hadn’t seen that piece.
One piece that caught my eye was Tucker Carlson allegedly exclaiming, when he heard about the leaked opinion, “Next stop Brown v Board!”
I think that, if this draft becomes the opinion of the majority, we would be unwise to rely on any guarantees of privacy, legal or otherwise. The evasions of the nominees at their Senate hearings, the connivance of the Federalist Society with Trump’s plan to pack the Supreme Court with conservative nominees and Mitch McConnell’s maneuvers to block any others means that, for me, the Court has forfeited any trust I might have in their honesty and impartiality.
I think it’s high time that those most likely to be affected by this opinion took to the streets to make their displeasure known in no uncertain terms.
“Now, what is the best way to do that.”
JVL,
We can start at the beginning and teach people that sex is not a free-for-all inconsequential recreation. But of course, your camp doesn’t want this. Your camp is diametrically opposed to this. This is why our dialogue is ultimately an exercise in futility. One group (yours) is going to have to change in some way. Not going to happen, bar a miracle.
Andrew
China’s Forced Sterilization of Uighur Women …
The communist government found a very effective way to prevent abortions.
So, it’s not simply “whatever works” but to help people live by an ethical standard.
Mr. Darwin made a big mess of all of that for everyone.
AS
Exactly. Training and discipline in the meaning of human life and sexuality – within the right context. Putting kids into an atheistic-animalistic environment, promoting “safe promiscuity” through condoms and pills is corruption.
Seversky
No. You bought-into the deceptive quote, just as they planned for you to do. It wasn’t Tucker Carlson. It was some unknown guy “linked” supposedly (how does one get “linked” like that?) to Tucker Carlson.
And just as the manipulative press designed it, very many people like yourself will think it was Tucker Carlson saying it.
Asauber: We can start at the beginning and teach people that sex is not a free-for-all inconsequential recreation. But of course, your camp doesn’t want this. Your camp is diametrically opposed to this. This is why our dialogue is ultimately an exercise in futility. One group (yours) is going to have to change in some way. Not going to happen, bar a miracle.
I’m interested, like you, in preventing unwanted pregnancy. People seemed bound and determined to have sex and have done over the ages. What is the best way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and thus abortions? That is the question.
Over and over and over again promoting abstinence has not helped prevent unwanted pregnancies. Nor has it helped the women who get raped. What does help is educating women and providing them with guilt-free birth control.
It’s all a matter of what you are most interested in affecting: unwanted pregnancies or sexual behaviour.
You’ve made your preference very clear. I’ve made my preference very clear. Which approach is the most effective as far as preventing unwanted pregnancies is concerned can be judged based on the evidence.
I have no illusions or views of how people should or should not behave. I prefer to solve problems with the best approach based on actual data. I thought we both agreed on the problem: how to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But your replies seem to indicate that you are much more interested in influencing sexual behaviour. Good luck with that.
Silver Asiatic: Exactly. Training and discipline in the meaning of human life and sexuality – within the right context. Putting kids into an atheistic-animalistic environment, promoting “safe promiscuity” through condoms and pills is corruption.
People have been pushing the boundaries of sexual practices for as long as human beings have been around. I don’t see that you are going to change that based on some training and discipline.
Again, my view is: what is the best way, based on evidence, to prevent unwanted pregnancies? If the basic question for you is different then we should be looking at different data, if it exists.
What is the basic problem you think needs solving?
“People have been pushing the boundaries of sexual practices for as long as human beings have been around. ”
JVL,
So what. People have been stealing from, lying to, and killing each other from the dawn of history and we can’t stop that, either. What we can do is learn to do better than killing our own children.
Andrew
Asauber: So what. People have been stealing from, lying to, and killing each other from the dawn of history and we can’t stop that, either. What we can do is learn to do better than killing our own children.
The question is: what is the best way to achieve that goal? Do you have an example or data which suggests your approach will work? What is your approach in practice?
JVL
Poor thinking leads to poor behavior. Atheistic nihilism is one example. So, we can seek to educate people about the value of God, and therefore the value of human life.
If a person denies that human beings are ultimately accountable for their ethical behaviors, then it’s very difficult to communicate anything with them.
ID is one step on the pathway to try to build a common ground for communication and education in values.
This may help put things in perspective.
That’s ten times higher than some countries where abortion is strictly punished as a crime and contraceptives are not prevalent.
NY State has the most liberal abortion laws in the USA and the 2nd highest abortion rate.
I think I said that already.
SA
“No. You bought-into the deceptive quote, just as they planned for you to do”
What do you expect from Pavlov’s dog who will shamelessly promote any lie in pursuit of his/ her cause.
Vivid
Fred Hickson:
Yes, you are.
Fred Hickson:
Your ignorance is not an argument.
Archaeologists find artifacts. Artifacts indicate an artisan. Artisans are intelligent agencies.
@ JVL
You seem to be putting Andrew into some difficulty. Excellent approach.
ET
Give me an example of a non-human artisan or intelligent agent.
The Intelligent Designer(s) of the universe and living organisms. Humans are also intelligent agencies. And the FACT remains we can determine when intelligent agencies have acted. So, we know the definition of intelligence. And that refutes your asinine claim. Get over it and stop trying to change the subject.
Folks, what is on trial is our civilisation, and particularly our living generations: weighed in the balances and found sadly wanting. If, in pursuit of hedonistic sexual gratification, it smashes family stability, personal identity, self discipline, virtue, honour, and the first right, life, it is committing suicide. And, if it cannot even defend innocent life then it fails in the first duty of human civilisation, promotion of human thriving in community, for a race that is obligate social. In that light, it will alienate the people it most needs to police its streets, defend its borders and provide sound leadership. This is fatal disaffection. A sufficiently failed civilisation will therefore collapse, and in the ensuing chaos — on history — a lot will be lost as population collapses and people desperately try to survive. Right now, it is clear that anticivilisational misanthropes have been running riot and setting up collapse. Of course, they will deny it and will pretend that things are progressing nicely. Well, the year of the worst terror in the French Revolution, we are told, was an excellent wine year, i.e. one with very good weather. That made not a difference to the murderous horror in full swing, and it opened the door to Napoleon’s fundamentally lawless tyranny and a generation of war. Those are the matches we are heedlessly playing with. And, for those who imagine that these are the silly ravings of a Christofascist, right wing would be inquisitor — look at the utterly indefensible mud slinging and incendiary rhetoric and invitations to red guard intimidation being put up — FYI what I actually am is a civilisationist with enough knowledge of the history of what has gone wrong enough times to show a classic political hectic fever pattern, who therefore reads our time as one of horrific peril with nukes etc in play. Of course, Machiavelli’s warning was that by the time the course of the disease becomes undeniably obvious to all and sundry, it would be too late: consider how France was goaded into war against Prussia in 1870 and the result. It is not for nothing that 30+ years before the fatal uprising against Rome that wrecked Israel, Jesus warned smugly complacent leaders, that they could read signs of the weather but failed to read the signs of the times. J’accuse . . . ! KF
PS, We would profit from reading Plato’s parable of the mutinous ship of state and its real world, microcosm echo in Ac 27.
PPS, the Letter https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:J%27Accuse…!
FH, at this point, I need to be direct: your purblind resistance to correction that as contingent designers we exemplify but do not exhaust designers as a class, speaks volumes about the fallacy of the ideologically closed, crooked yardstick mind. How many times have you been pointed to beavers who, with limited intelligence, design dams? How many times do you need to be reminded that until yesterday, no one with education would confine induction so crudely? Especially, given a whole literary genre, science fiction, that is avidly read by so many enamoured by scientism? And which has often been turned into blockbuster films? No, it is not the possibility of other designers that you fallaciously cut off. instead, you want to score cheap points against the force of signs that point to intelligently directed configuration, because of Lewontinian a prioris and fellow traveller thinking. To such, I point to the known alphanumeric code in the heart of the cell, from Crick and Watson on . . . language. Where language is there used to express algorithms used in protein synthesis, i.e. goal directed stepwise process. Algorithms given automated effect using molecular nanotech based on sophisticated highly informational polymers. Language, goal directed stepwise process, technology, sophisticated mastery of organic chemistry. All, individually and collectively, strong signs of design. Where, frankly, if our intellectual culture had been healthy, after the 50’s and 60’s we would not be polarised over whether life is designed. And by the 80’s we would take it for granted that the cosmos shows fine tuning pointing to design setting up C-chem, aqueous medium cell based life. But, alas, we are in the grips of crooked yardstick ideological captivity. Which, of course then comes out in our failure since — tada — the same 70’s, to protect life, the first right. Guilty, guilty, guilty are we. KF
Silver Asiatic: ID is one step on the pathway to try to build a common ground for communication and education in values.
I’ve been told over and over that ID is JUST about detecting design and nothing more. IF it turns out that the ‘designer’ was a member of an alien species would that change your view?
Silver Asiatic: That’s ten times higher than some countries where abortion is strictly punished as a crime and contraceptives are not prevalent.
If abortion is punishable as a crime you would expect to the reported cases to be a severe underestimate. And you would expect women to sometimes attempt to take matters into their own hands as has been widely documented.
If you really care about preventing unwanted pregnancies then you have to look at all the data not just what supports your view.
ET: Archaeologists find artifacts. Artifacts indicate an artisan. Artisans are intelligent agencies.
Archaeology, by definition, is the study of human artefacts and constructions. The first question is: was this object/structure/artefact created or adapted by humans? Does it show signs of being worked for example when considering a possible pebble hand axe.
ET: The Intelligent Designer(s) of the universe and living organisms.
The trouble is we have none of the other supporting evidence we expect to see when design is implemented. For all the artefacts determined to have been created by humans we have tools, detritus, sometimes documentation, sometimes sources of energy, sometimes living quarters and, frequently, human remains that can be dated to the same period as the artefact in question.
ID provides none of that regarding the hypothesised designer. Which is part of the reason why the notion hasn’t gained more traction in the scientific community. There’s just nothing to study or examine or measure. Except the proposed designed things. But there are alternative explanations for how those things came about, explanations you disagree with but are simpler because they do not require the assumption of a being for which there is no other supporting evidence. Also, we are gathering more and more evidence that unguided processes are powerful and most likely up to the task.
And the FACT remains we can determine when intelligent agencies have acted.
We certainly are good at determining when humans have acted. And, so far, humans are the only highly intelligent designers we know of for sure. Some animals species also exhibit some design capacities as well but at a much more rudimentary and limited level. A bird’s nest is a clear indication of design (and we have observed that design being implemented by a know creature).
I asked you a question and depending of your answer that would prove your credibility or would show your credulity. If you answer to a question with another question that is the admission of the fact you don’t have the answer and you are on your limit. How darwinists get out of this situation? Put another question or just ignore it because they don’t have the scientific evidences only the belief in the supranatural power of atoms and molecules that get together by chance to form a brain, a very complex system inside of the very complex system of organism that is inside of very complex system of ecology. And your answer is : I believe that to be the case even I don’t have evidences. Yes, you are a believer in a religious sense ( believe in singular /nonrepeatable events that science can’t verify )but why in the world you play the role of the objective one ? 😆
What atheists do ? Shift the burden of proof to others to explain how exactly was created life . I thought you already knew otherwise why would believe in darwinism? I know why because you are also religious except you have a different god.
JVL,
I already gave you the answer. You are opposed to the answer.
Andrew
JVL:
Then you are willfully ignorant as you have been told that ID is about the detection and STUDY of design in nature.
JVL:
So, they start with a conclusion? Or are you just ignorant? And guess what? Humans are intelligent agencies. Which means that we can and do determine what intelligent agencies can do with nature.
JVL:
You don’t have any idea what we expect to see. And ID is supported by biology, cosmology, physics and chemistry.
ID isn’t about the designer.
That alleged scientific community doesn’t have a scientific explanation for our existence. They can’t even formulate a scientific theory of evolution!
Without Intelligent Design all you have to try to explain our existence is sheer dumb luck. And that is the antithesis of science
You are a gullible fool who is unable to assess any evidence. There aren’t even any testable hypotheses for unguided processes, unless you are discussing genetic diseases and deformities.
ET, please tone down language, we do not need to invite polarising rhetoric. KF
JVL, I recently took out time to identify, characterise and distinguish: the design inference, design theory, and the ID movement. I find that ET is quite right that having the freedom and capability of mind to be language using designers, we have demonstrated ability to detect intelligently directed configuration as key cause. This pivots on recognisable, reliable signs. There is a theoretical programme that has explored this. There are many who support it, in the main because — though locked out and sometimes ruthlessly attacked by ideologues — it makes good sense. If our intellectual culture were healthy, by the 1950’s to 70’s it would have been widely acknowledged that the cell has alphanumeric code expressing algorithms that exploit polymer chemistry using molecular nanotech. That points to language, goal directed stepwise process, sophisticated technology and Chemistry. However, our intellectual culture is in ideological captivity. KF
Apologies for the language. Just a little sick of the willful ignorance and lies.
ET, understandable. But, broken window theory. The cross cutting issue is, ideological agendas. KF
The track of this thread makes me laugh. The general trend of many threads at UD is to start with ID and then split off into one about abortion, gay marriage or transgendered rights. This one has broken the mould. It started out as a thread about abortion and has tangented off to one about ID. I will be keeping a close eye out for air born Sus domesticus.
I apologize if I missed it but has anyone here who oppose a woman’s choice expressed their opinions on the following:
1) early and comprehensive sex education. Including risks of promiscuity.
2) removing the stigma around self-gratification.
3) ready availability of contraceptives (pill, condoms, diaphragms, IUDs).
4) 12-18 month paid maternity leave.
5) job protection during maternity leave.
6) financial and other support for women who have an unwanted pregnancy and are willing to carry to term and give it up for adoption.
On the flip side, what are your opinions on the following if we make abortion illegal:
1) what charges should be laid against a woman who has an abortion?
2) what punishment should be imposed of a woman found guilty of illegal abortion?
3) if a woman travels to another country to have an abortion, should she be charged?
3) if someone else helps a woman to go to another country for the purpose of an abortion, should he/she be charged?
And, finally, should a teen who becomes pregnant be allowed to continue their classes in high school or should she be removed to another school restricted to pregnant teens?
I think getting an understanding on where people stand on these issues will make for a less polarizing discussion.
JVL
You’ve got a massive problem that UprightBiPed has presented in quoted texts several times (a couple last week) so I’d suggest that you should try to sort that out. Have you done so?
JVL
Your position is that there is no design, no purpose and no rational cause – only blind, mindless ignorance. You can’t go anywhere with that idea. Your first task is to recognize intelligent design in nature.
If abortion does get struck down at the federal level, all chaos will break loose for a while. The rules will again have changed, and it will be painful as things shake out. That is to be expected when something as fundamental as the definition of life itself was allowed to go off the rails. Putting it back on the rails will be painful. But you don’t fix a fundamental wrong by acquiescing to it. (Of course the smoothest way to put it back on the rails would be if the people as a whole turned against abortion. Then the laws could adapt painlessly. Of course we’re doing it backwards because we’re culturally screwed up in so many other ways.)
This is the error JH and others are making: They trying to wend their way through the maze of stupidity we’ve created, rather than just going back to the fundamentals. Any course we take now will be a painful one; always is once you’ve gone off the rails.
The problem with the sexual revolution (the 1960s one) is that it’s a train that clearly has no brakes. Sure it’s consistent, in that it’s all about the pure enjoyment of sex with no adverse/unwanted consequences. (“Just the purest dopamine hits we can get! Nothing deeper than that! But we’re OK!”) But that leaves a lot of things wide open. Where might it stop? What behaviors would be going “too far”? Nobody knows and half of us don’t care where it stops.
Consider one example of people not knowing where this train is headed:
From the 60s to the early 2000s, it was every woman for herself. Since they’re equal to men, why not? If a woman doesn’t want sex, she has to say so with enough force to get the man to accept it. Because after all, women are just as dominating as men. So if a male could cajole sex from a woman then he had earned it. All part of the new game with the new rules. (Of course a gentleman would not obtain sex that way, but the idea of the gentleman has been dead for quite a while.)
But recently (early 2000s), someone realized we needed to have “consent culture”. Why was that needed? Because someone finally realized (after how long???) that men were getting what they wanted far more often than women. Turns out that women are not equally dominant as men! No kidding! Who knew??? First time in human history anyone ever figured that out!! So now one has to obtain “consent” from someone else before engaging in sex. The people who started the sexual revolution didn’t even realize that such a thing would be necessary; otherwise they would have instituted it right from the start. Total lack of foresight on their part.
But anybody who cares about women will have to ask this: how many women did they allow to be hurt by the absence of a “consent culture” for the first 40 years of the sexual revolution? I’ve never heard anyone ask that. It’s almost as if nobody pushing the sexual revolution even cares. (This goes back to my earlier point that the sexual revolution is a scam perpetrated on women by hedonistic liberal men…THEY knew what they were doing. And it took feminists 40 years to catch up and ask for consent culture.)
But at least consent culture has finally solved a problem. Lots of other ones remain, but at least consent has fixed something. Right? Right?
Um, who is policing this “consent” thing, especially since it matter most when it’s just a man and a woman (or boy and girl) ALONE? How is that working out? I’ll tell you how: males are still doing what they do, being more dominant than females (on average—not always), with the females more likely than not being hurt by the whole process. Oh, a male may occasionally be held to account for his actions now who wouldn’t have been held accountable back in the 90s. But for the most part, “consent” hasn’t changed a thing. So it this particular problem has actually not been addressed.
Obvious question for anyone who cares about humanity’s future: where will the sexual revolution stop? (Or is it actually designed to be permanent anarchy?) Well, what are the things on the fringes that are being advocated for? What sexual practices have internet groups that share ideas on how to advance their agenda? What things are currently illegal that people are pushing to legalize? Which of those things will be accepted next? (Which one(s) will Hollywood begin depicting, carefully at first, then via humor, then full acceptance?) And what problems will they generate? And how will you solve them? You don’t know.
The sexual revolution clearly has no brakes on it, and everyone pushing it along is entirely clueless. Ask any of them, and they will not be able to tell you what problems will exist a generation hence, nor what they are going to do to solve them (except to keep playing armchair sociologist with little hope of success).
In contrast, the Judeo-Christian ethic surrounding sex/marriage has been the same boring thing for millennia now. No variety! No fun! (“Everyone else’s wife is off limits??!?!?! Dammit! Always hated that one!”)
This is why we often ask where people are coming from here, i.e., what are their core beliefs. If we understand someone’s foundational beliefs, then it is easier to see what boundaries they may have (if any). If their only core beliefs are trying to solve the most recent or most visible problem, with no clue about the big picture, than we have little confidence that they are capable of solving anything at all.
The sexual revolution folks decided to turn human nature completely loose. Christianity says that we should try to rein in human nature and align it with our maker’s wishes for us. There couldn’t be a more stark difference in approaches.
“gone off the rails”
EDTA,
This is a good way to put it. Like a motorist who denies or is ignorant of what responsible and prudent driving is, soon wrecks himself and others, possibly in deadly fashion. The freewheeling driver may get away with it for awhile, but the rules of the road are there for a reason.
Andrew
JH, I’ve actually noticed that many objectors plainly want to pull discussions off track and engage in contexts where a weight of evidence is not on the table from the OP. There is a push to poison threads on design related topics or just to side track on various tangents. Deal with such issues or report on a key news item, and commonly, the line will be taken that tries to imply that a Christofascist, right wing theocratic suspect agenda is at stake and design theory is somehow part of that toxic brew. In the case of this thread, the issue is branch on which we all sit first duties and first law rooted in our evident nature. Life is the first right, without which there are no other rights, and from conception on we have a unique individual, a bit more than half the time the opposite sex to his mother. I get a sneaking feeling from some of the arguments as to how a zygote evolves stage by imperceptibly bordered stage into a human individual, that we are dealing with an echo of the now discredited recapitulationism. And BTW, archaeologists routinely distinguish archaeology from natural, highlighting artifacts as identified. I pointed to a fun watch online, Time Team. KF
Asauber: I already gave you the answer. You are opposed to the answer.
I’m not ‘opposed’ to your answer, I just wanted to make sure I was clear about and that you could support it with data.
I’ll just leave it now then.
ET: Then you are willfully ignorant as you have been told that ID is about the detection and STUDY of design in nature.
Okay. Can you point me to a site or source which summarises what has been discerned so far in the study of design in nature?
So, they start with a conclusion? Or are you just ignorant? And guess what? Humans are intelligent agencies. Which means that we can and do determine what intelligent agencies can do with nature.
Of course they don’t start with a conclusion. The point is that if it is determined that the phenomena being investigated is not due to human cause then it’s not archaeology. It’s some other category of historical science.
Humans have become very good at discerning what other humans have created or modified or adapted. Not sure that says anything about our ability to discern or detect intelligent activity from other sources since we’ve never found another source of intelligence.
You don’t have any idea what we expect to see. And ID is supported by biology, cosmology, physics and chemistry.
Well, your interpretation of the data supports your hypothesis.
Without Intelligent Design all you have to try to explain our existence is sheer dumb luck. And that is the antithesis of science
But it’s not dumb luck is it. Environmental conditions favour certain kinds of variation. That’s not random or dumb luck.
There aren’t even any testable hypotheses for unguided processes, unless you are discussing genetic diseases and deformities.
Well, there is unless you can provide a clear and unambiguous way to determine which mutations are guided and which are not.
Can you do that?
Kairosfocus: I recently took out time to identify, characterise and distinguish: the design inference, design theory, and the ID movement.
With respect, I have interacted with you regarding these topics for a long time now. I know what you think and why. There is no reason to be condescending when repeating your views, again.
You and I disagree about the interpretation of the data. Why not just leave it at that?
Silver Asiatic: You’ve got a massive problem that UprightBiPed has presented in quoted texts several times (a couple last week) so I’d suggest that you should try to sort that out. Have you done so?
I think so. But Upright BiPed and you might think otherwise.
Your position is that there is no design, no purpose and no rational cause – only blind, mindless ignorance. You can’t go anywhere with that idea. Your first task is to recognize intelligent design in nature.
Hang on, I thought we were talking about the science. But you tell me I first have to recognise that intelligent design exists!!
Do we have anything left to discuss? If you’re just going to insist I first accept your basic premise then can we have a real discussion between intelligent people who disagree?
Good summary of the issues. As I’ve remarked upthread, there are practical ways to help people in difficulty without posturing on a soapbox.
.)
KF calls this being direct. I call it waffling.
394
JVLMay 7, 2022 at 1:56 pm
@ JVL
One reason I delurked here recently is your being accosted recently by the inimitable Upright Bpied armed with his Semiotic Theory with which he has attempted to beat you into submission. Oddly he has been completely unsuccessful in getting anyone to take him seriously elsewhere. I’d be very happy to act as your proxy in further discussion as biochemistry was my field of expertise.
@ Upright Biped
Not sure what your status is here. Can you author a thread?
JVL:
Just read peer-reviewed papers.
What? Archaeologists study artifacts. Regardless of their origin.
Dense. It’s called knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships. That means that every time we observe some object, phenomena or system X, and knew the cause, it was ALWAYS via intelligent agency volition. And we have NEVER observed nature producing X. So, when we observe X and don’t know the cause, Newton’s four rules of scientific reasoning guides us. And to refute that inference all one has to do is step up and demonstrate another cause exists for X that doesn’t require intelligent agency volition. Until then we use our knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships. Science 101.
Considering the alternative is sheer dumb luck, and that is the antithesis of science, logic and reason, I feel comfortable with it. No one has an alternative scientific explanation for our existence.
Wow. Sheer dumb luck. Pure chance. Abiogenesis, our planet, this solar system, the laws that govern nature-> all via sheer dumb luck. Natural selection is a process of elimination. It is nothing more than contingent serendipity. Favored variations are often those from a loss of function. And you can’t even say, specifically, what gets varied!
That isn’t how it works. You can’t provide a clear and unambiguous way to determine anything. Your methodology is to deny reality.
The book “Not By Chance” did what you ask. I have told you that for years and you still refuse to read it. Your willful ignorance is not an argument. Your attempt to shift the burden is an embarrassment.
JVL, you are, on clear documentation going back to the origins, ideologically distorting. That is not mere disagreement, it is slander. KF
In case I miss a comment by Upright Biped, anyone can email me a headsup at:
fredhickson [at] protonmail.com
[To save you harassing from searches, what you invite from readers is your own business — ED]
FH, your quarrel is not with me but with the likes of Crick, as I noted on the letter to his son. As it is necessary I will put up an off topic f/n in the OP, p. 5 from that letter. The Nobel Prize winner, in his own handwriting, and making sketches too, explaining the epochal significance of that work. There is much more but it obviously does not accord with your preferred, but crooked, yardsticks. KF
Fred Hickson:
And even more odd is that no one can demonstrate that the genetic code arose spontaneously! You and yours have nothing but to deny the semiotic argument like a bunch of infants. But you don’t have anything to offer beyond your denial! That is why no one takes you and yours seriously. You people are a bunch of pathological liars, deniers, strawman stuffers, bluffers and equivocators.
Great. We await your answer to the question of the origin of the genetic code via biochemistry. At least you can tell us of the biochemistry that determined the codon-to-amino acid correspondence.
ET at 403
You keep beating up those strawmen, Joe! 🙂
FH, I have footnoted the OP. KF
JHolo:
1-3 already exist in the USA, anyway.
4-6 billionaire tax
1- Same charges as those against the man involved. The man gets a fine, prison or castration.
2- If killing the most vulnerable is legal there, then the law can’t do anything. But the male involved would be fined, jailed or castrated.
3- The male who got the female pregnant would be fined, jailed or castrated
Stay in school. The father has to be considered, too. He has to share the burdens, as much as he can.
Until the men are held accountable, this is all just huffing and puffing. Short-sighted, male-privilege BS. Just sayin’
No idea why you think Crick’s 1953 letter to his son is anything I’d need to argue with. It’s charming and apparently someone thought it worth 6 million dollars a while ago but other than that…
Fred Hickson:
Really? And yet all you have is a false accusation, as usual. Are you still too afraid to make an actual case?
@ KF, protonmail is very good at sifting spam. No need to worry.
F/N: Some weekend commentary:
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/05/07/brooks-roe-was-fragile-and-ginsburg-warned-about-that/
Notice, the huge begged question, that life is the first right.
All of this talk of rights while undermining the root right invites confession by projection, cognitive dissonance analysis. There can be no right to take innocent life at will so we see advocates forced to dehumanise and pretend that their rights are being threatened. But what they claim as a right cannot be a right.
BTW, why was this ruling so “fragile” and why was Justice Alito therefore able to “just r[u]n through it”? ANS: It was ill founded and known to be ill founded for decades. But it was protected in place by an ideologically distorted court.
And more.
KF
FH, I doubt you understand just how dangerous a corner of the web this is. KF
FH, you clearly refuse to acknowledge what Crick knew from the outset. Alphanumerical code, so, language and text, that is, writing. This is literally the first piece of history, to see that computer machine code text expressing algorithms is found in the heart of cell based life. Algorithms are goal directed stepwise process and so are demonstrative of purposeful, intelligently directed configuration. Design, using polymer nanotech and expressing deep knowledge of polymers. Quite literally, our first artifacts, our first record, our first line of history. History begins where written record begins and that is found in the cell; that is decisive in interpreting all that follows. But, we are ideologically blinded to it and its import, cell based life is designed, designed with purpose built in. KF
I’m old, KF. You’ve no idea the risks I’ve confronted in my life. Pixels don’t scare me.
You’re falling into that territory/map trap again. How thing are and how we explain them are not the same.
Out of curiosity, KF, as you mention language, do you think that how we spoeak is governed by rules of grammar?
Fred Hickson: I’d be very happy to act as your proxy in further discussion as biochemistry was my field of expertise.
I’d rather not behave in a fashion which might be interpreted as collusion. However, if you have any opinion on semiotics or whether or not the genetic ‘code’ is an actual ‘code’ then please chime in!!
What I have said to Upright BiPed over and over again is: the experts in the field (of semiotics) have failed to agree with you professionally about your interpretation of their work regarding intelligent design. In fact, I have found material written by Dr Pattee criticising Intelligent Design. Needless to say, Upright BiPed has not been pleased with my pointing such things out.
In many cases, humans aren’t even good at that. I was told of an instance where archaeologist had concluded that a local feature was a shell midden. A professor at the local university would routinely take his students to this location and assign the students a project to identify what the feature was.
Most students, because they did their homework, would conclude that the feature was a shell midden, as the professor was expecting.
However, there was one student who spent more time in the pub than in the library, and wasn’t aware that archaeologists had already concluded that the feature was a shell midden. He only spent a couple hours at the site but noticed that shells in the “midden” only consisted of the left hand valve. Because of this he concluded that the feature was caused by the sorting effect of flowing water. When his professor read his report he went to the site and did a more thorough examination of the shells. He helped the student draft a paper for peer-review. The student eventually became a palaeontology professor.
I don’t know if this story is true but it was told to my class by our palaeontology professor, the pub-crawling student in the story.
ET: Just read peer-reviewed papers.
Which ones?
That means that every time we observe some object, phenomena or system X, and knew the cause, it was ALWAYS via intelligent agency volition.
Well, no, sometimes it’s clear that natural causes were the cause!
Considering the alternative is sheer dumb luck, and that is the antithesis of science, logic and reason, I feel comfortable with it.
Again, no. Because natural ‘selection’ is not random then it’s not down to sheer dumb luck.
Wow. Sheer dumb luck. Pure chance. Abiogenesis, our planet, this solar system, the laws that govern nature-> all via sheer dumb luck. Natural selection is a process of elimination. It is nothing more than contingent serendipity. Favored variations are often those from a loss of function. And you can’t even say, specifically, what gets varied!
Not at all. Even the language you use (‘favoured’) point out that the process is not random. What is varied is genetics. Clearly.
That isn’t how it works. You can’t provide a clear and unambiguous way to determine anything. Your methodology is to deny reality.
You think mutations, or some mutations at least, are directed. Please provide a clear and unambiguous way to determine which mutations are directed and which aren’t.
The book “Not By Chance” did what you ask. I have told you that for years and you still refuse to read it. Your willful ignorance is not an argument. Your attempt to shift the burden is an embarrassment.
Well then it should be easy for you to give us the answer: which mutations are directed and which aren’t?
JVL
I’m not suggesting collusion. Upright Biped seems obsessed with you. I’m just offering to engage with him as an alternative to his verbally bludgeoning you. It would leave you free to pursue more profitable ventures.
Kairosfocus: JVL, you are, on clear documentation going back to the origins, ideologically distorting. That is not mere disagreement, it is slander.
Disagreement is not slander.
JVL
Indeed. But it’s the biochemistry where he (UB) really come adrift.
ET: And even more odd is that no one can demonstrate that the genetic code arose spontaneously! You and yours have nothing but to deny the semiotic argument like a bunch of infants. But you don’t have anything to offer beyond your denial! That is why no one takes you and yours seriously. You people are a bunch of pathological liars, deniers, strawman stuffers, bluffers and equivocators.
Actually, we have some of the significant members of the semiotic community criticising Intelligent Design. AND there is no example of any serious semiotic researcher supporting Intelligent Design.
Great. We await your answer to the question of the origin of the genetic code via biochemistry. At least you can tell us of the biochemistry that determined the codon-to-amino acid correspondence.
There is research looking into that. As I have pointed out on this forum many times.
JHolo:: I don’t know if this story is true but it was told to my class by our palaeontology professor, the pub-crawling student in the story.
It probably is true. People tend to get stuck into an ideological rut and see what they want to see.
JVL, between your quote-mines, inability to read for comprehension and blatant hypocrisy, you just aren’t worth the effort. You are beyond pathetic.
Fred Hickson: I’m not suggesting collusion. Upright Biped seems obsessed with you. I’m just offering to engage with him as an alternative to his verbally bludgeoning you. It would leave you free to pursue more profitable ventures.
He is a bit obsessed with the fact that I have actually questioned his long held and mostly uncontested statements. Please engage at will. I’m no biochemist or chemist.
Indeed. But it’s the biochemistry where he (UB) really come adrift.
I defer to your greater knowledge and expertise.
JVL:
Actually, they don’t have a naturalistic explanation for the genetic code. You lose.
There was research looking into the natural formation of Stonehenge. How did it do?
The only reason there are people researching it is because they NEED a naturalistic explanation.
Fred Hickson:
That is your unsupported opinion, anyway. The Nobel Prize awaits.
JVL:
AND there is no example of any serious semiotic researcher supporting evolution by means of blind and mindless processes.
ET: Actually, they don’t have a naturalistic explanation for the genetic code. You lose.
It’s not up to members of the semiotic community to come up with a naturalistic explanation for the origin of the genetic ‘code’. But they can and do comment cogently about the interpretation of their research.
There was research looking into the natural formation of Stonehenge. How did it do?
Not really the point is it?
The only reason there are people researching it is because they NEED a naturalistic explanation.
No, they are researching that because there is a good indication that the genetic ‘code’ arose from basic chemical affinities.
Anyway, it’s always good to check out all possibilities. Why are you disparaging certain kinds of scientific research? Is closing off certain areas of research scientific?
ET: AND there is no example of any serious semiotic researcher supporting evolution by means of blind and mindless processes.
Are you sure about that? Perhaps you’d best check to see if that is actually true.
JVL
I’ll have to find (or if someone could assist?) the dialogue. You mentioned the movie Contact as an example of inferring design from coded language observed in space. Designer in the case is unknown, but you infer design. You then said it was not the same inference in finding coded language in nature because “we don’t know the designer”. So yes, we think otherwise. You have not sorted out this contradiction.
You affirm it with an unknown designer in one case, then reject it because the designer is unknown in the other. You cannot go forward until you accept the logical inference of your own statements. You have to deal with the contradiction which has been posted to you several times, and no you haven’t dealt with it yet.
AND there is no example of any serious semiotic researcher supporting evolution by means of blind and mindless processes.
JVL:
Absolutely. Peer-review is devoid of any papers that support the claim the genetic code evolved by means of blind and mindless processes. So, what are they doing? Supporting it with their lies?
JVL:
Why not? And why the scare quotes around code? Are you also ignorant as to what a code is? Figures.
Of course it’s the point. It shows that desperate people will do anything to save their biased agenda.
The scare quotes just prove that you are ignorant of the subject. There isn’t any such evidence. You are just desperate and gullible.
Upright BiPed’s post
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/lfp-55-defining-clarifying-intelligent-design-as-inference-as-theory-as-a-movement/#comment-753025
From Biology textbooks:
Biosemiotics is closer to truth than darwinism . If you study their work you realize what a joke is this mechanicist reductionist atomist perspective of darwinists. Everything(100% of all the substances in the cell represent code/sign inside a code system and NOT CHEMISTRY ) . Chemicals are just mules(carriers) of codes . Ex: There is no chemical causal relation between codons (DNA functional liniar code) and proteins(functional 3D code) but codons carried code is the cause of proteins carried code.
(Jakob von Uexküll ,Charles Sanders Peirce,Thomas A. Sebeok ,Marcello Barbieri, David L Abel, Michael Polanyi )
https://www.davidabel.us/
It would certainly have been safer if the right to elect an abortion under certain carefully-defined circumstances had been established on firmer grounds.
That’s an interesting question, given that there is no constitutional guarantee of a right to life.
What makes you think Alito’s case is any stronger? That his opinion may command the support of the majority is because the Court has been “ideologically distorted” by Trump, with the connivance of the Federalist Society, packing it with conservative judges and backstopped by Mitch McConnell refusing to even consider any others.
LCD
Thanks for the David Abel site. Tremendous resource.
JVL, when there is false, implicitly or explicitly accusatory inference or statement, that is slander. I refer you again to the UD resources tab, at the top of this and every UD page. KF
Silver Asiatic: You mentioned the movie Contact as an example of inferring design from coded language observed in space. Designer in the case is unknown, but you infer design.
It MAY indicate design! Then you smoke test that possibility including considering if there are any possible designers. The reason for that is that some suspect signals turned out to have originated from earth! So, yes, there were designers around. Us.
You and Upright BiPed just love bringing up an old conversation which I have qualified and explained and discussed many times.
It’s quite reasonable, in both cases, to take a suspected designed signal or object and scrutinise it extensively along with considering if there is any other evidence of possible designers. If the design inference is ambiguous then what else have you got? That’s why you consider any other evidence.
But, of course, you will continue to parade a cherry-picked version of a lengthy exploration because you think you’ve won some kind of contest. See, JVL is disingenuous, he contradicted himself and can’t admit it. Well, I’ve explained my view over and over and over again because you keep bringing it up without admitting that I have clarified things. Who’s being disingenuous?
FH,
I draw your attention to the emphatic boxed statement by Crick and others, first. Those have been abundantly substantiated across 70 years, complete with our understanding of something like 2 dozen variants or dialects.
Further, for eukaryotes, the executed code for protein synthesis is the result of editing; note, the chart for synthesis in the F/N to OP is also from Wikipedis, which is far better for useful charts than for reliable text. Let’s use Wikipedia’s admissions against interest to provide context for onlookers (I am pretty sure you full well know the substantial matters involved):
I illustrate with a further addition.
We have here instantiation of machine code and associated functional units, using a 4-state digital technology based on molecules and ultimately using prong height along a string, in effect a digital form of the prong height pattern for a Yale type lock and key.
Exemplification — better, instantiation — of string data structures transcription, editing,codes + algorithms, translation [not least, to functional protein fold domains in AA sequence space] is not a distorted mapping. Instead we see a familiar Tanenbaum layer cake architecture pattern, where we have a physical/hardware layer at base and a digital information layer [here, 4-state using G-C-A-T/U], with the executable machine code layer above. I would love to see the original OS, molecular nanotech hardware and apps for this!
Such a layer cake architectural pattern is a powerful strategy for modularisation, encapsulation and management of complexity.
In any case, over this century we are going to reverse engineer and create our own mature gene and metabolic nanotech engineering tech. (One hopes such will not lead to nanotech driven weaponry.)
So, this is a case of hyperskeptical denial, not a substantial objection.
KF
PS, in communication theory we tend to talk of protocols. Without mutual agreements regarding distinct patterns of symbols, modulations etc, communication of substantial content becomes impossible. In linguistics, there is a lot of discussion on deeply embedded grammatical patterns, structures and protocols. In any case, distractive as we have a clear case of layer cake architecture in action. Let’s illustrate:
In short, the map accurately represents the territory.
ET: Absolutely. Peer-review is devoid of any papers that support the claim the genetic code evolved by means of blind and mindless processes. So, what are they doing? Supporting it with their lies?
Please note that I have provided such examples many times before. I don’t know why you cannot admit that such things exist. Anyone call look at Wikipedia and find some:
I suspect I will have to point this out again and again and again since you refuse to admit that some research actually exists.
KF, you are trapped in layers of bad analogy. Living organisms are based on chemistry. Processes therein are biophysical, biochemical and biomechanical. Biosemiotics is a real subject but some here seem to have a mistaken idea of what it is about.
Locks and keys! 🙂
Sev,
a key admission that first misunderstands the history involved [US DoI, 1776 –> revolution and Confederation 1775 – 83 or so –> constitution, 1787] AND is driven by the gap between understanding built in first law of our morally governed nature [e.g. there are things that are inherently crimes] and the fatally flawed legal positivism of our time that — as in this case — issues an invitation to nihilism.
In essence, the DoI, especially in its second paragraph, is a highly successful, sound natural law presentation, the charter of modern lawful government with transparency and accountability to the people under God, with particular reference to the rise of modern constitutional, lawful government of democratic character. Where, the first self evident right it lists is, life. Self evident as, if one’s life is subject to removal at will of another without due and just process and trial, one has no rights at all. If one is inconvenient to the powerful, bye bye. That is the sort of nihilistic chaos Plato warned against in both The Laws Bk X and in his Parable of the Ship of State in The Republic.
Let me add, successful natural law argument is of literally universal jurisdiction, jurisdiction confirmed by the informed consent of humanity. Notice the decent respect phrase in the DoI. The founders understood that they were marking a new epoch. Had the French Revolution’s leaders heeded it, the past 250 years would have been drastically different. Sadly, the Louis kings did not become as the House of Windsor now is, and Lafayette did not become Prime Minister under a reformed state.
This is not new.
So, as the Nuremberg Court responded to defendants pretending to be acting under legitimate law in carrying out genocide, you don’t need courts or parliaments to know murder is a crime.
Next, as to the strength of Justice Alito’s case as conceded implicitly by Brooks, I was aware from the 70’s that the case was flawed substantially. Alito summarises as I cited at 147 above. If you think he is wrong, provide substantial correction: https://uncommondescent.com/legal/breaking-leaked-us-supreme-court-draft-that-would-overturn-the-rulings-that-have-led-to-63-million-abortion-deaths-in-the-us-since-1973/#comment-753506
As to oh, why didn’t they pass legislation or a Constitutional Amendment over the past 49 years, first, obviously, the needed supermajority support to act under colour of law was not there and doubtless a constitutional amendment was infeasible. Ordinary law probably was not passed as that would be far more exposed to test cases and the Supreme Court had long become a nine member monarchy with de facto constitutional amendment powers.
(We just saw the like in Cayman, where the Chief Justice tried to amend their constitution single handedly from the bench. That’s where this stuff heads.)
So, the issue is substantial, not rhetorical.
KF
One fun fact. The genetic code, where any triplet of nucleotides, during the process of protein synthesis, will result in the same amino acid being incorporated in the corresponding position in the protein in all known species, is an indicator of common origin and descent.
Yes, Querius, there are exceptions. Important and significant ones.
Stereochemistry! Why are amino acids in proteins L-enantiomers?
FH, you are trying to hyperskeptically dismiss what does not fit with ideological a prioris. I think you pretty well understand the layer cake archi, and that this is a powerful design pattern for computers, embedded systems [which we are dealing with here, protein synthesis being a tiny corner of the cellular metabolic process-flow network] and networks including the Internet. Where, yes, though technically analogue, a Yale type lock is a prong height modulation or encoding and von Neumann proposed a digital system based on prong height for his 1948 kinematic self replicator. I guess I have a couple of further additions to make . . .
That crooked yardstick mindset is why I have for years now declared intellectual independence.
KF
PS: Lewontin’s cat out of the bag moment that lets us see some of the crooked yardsticks at work:
Or, you may prefer Monod’s statement: https://uncommondescent.com/atheism/monods-objectivity-naturalistic-scientism-and-begging-big-questions/ — which boils down to much the same.
Johnson’s well deserved rebuttal is:
KF, it’s no big deal and your obsessions are different from mine. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel in comments here. If you want to discuss a particular topic that we are both familiar with, pick one. Talking past one another is pointless.
FH, I am sure you understand exactly what I have raised and why. I have now added another graphic by way of illustration for onlookers, not you. The reason why I used the familiar case of the Yale type pin tumbler lock and key with its zig-zag prongs, is due to a direct comparability with the complementarity of D/RNA bases as they are chained. KF
PS, As you well know, the Chemistry is in the physical layer, along with transport processes etc. And the codon triplets across a couple of dozen dialects, are a mark of a design pattern with linked protocols. You know you have absolutely no empirically warranted account for origin of a c-chem, aqueous medium, metabolic, information using, encapsulated cell with smart gating. Such reeks of FSCO/I, and therefore shows strong signs of design. the presence of language, algorithms, coding, execution machinery using molecular nanotech and based on sophisticated polymer chemistry and physics, is decisive.
PPS: The handedness — chirality — of molecules is relevant to correct fit via folding to functional form. Of course there are a few oddball cases of R-hand AAs. Chirality is most easily seen with optical rotation of plane of polarisation. And as it is geometry, in synthesis in the test tube, racemic mixes tend to form.
U/D: Intimidatory protests at the residences of Justices
https://www.breitbart.com/podcast/2022/05/07/radical-abortion-activists-gather-outside-supreme-court-justices-homes/
We may freely note:
1: Mob rule is not justice, and intimidation of Justices is flagrant disrespect for rule of law.
2: 49 years ago, the justices were all male so no uterus no opinion is self refuting as well as misanthropic. Care to interview Justice Barrett for her opinion and its rationale? justice Thomas, husband in an inter racial marriage?
3: Manifestly, in 1776 the whole world was watching and came to agree that life is the first right.
4: Attacking churches is a further disregard for rights and for conscience, in the face of blood guilt.
5: Accusation that standing on life as first right is lying invites confession by projection analysis. That will rapidly show that there being no ability to defend a claimed right to take another’s life at will, projection is used to confuse the issue.
KF
Kairosfocus: JVL, when there is false, implicitly or explicitly accusatory inference or statement, that is slander. I refer you again to the UD resources tab, at the top of this and every UD page. KF
Looking back over the thread I actually have no idea what I said that could even remotely be considered slanderous. If I think you’re being condescending that’s just my opinion.
I, once again, assert my right to disagree with some of the conclusions you draw from the data we both see.
.
🙂 One fun fact there is a decoder/adaptor between codons and proteins which is an indicator of intelligence involved and prove a common designer not a common descent. Unless you can prove chemistry evolve codes that are more complex than computer codes. 🙂
PS: you said you know chemistry? Could you tell us how many letters have the sugar code. I hope you knew there is a code more complex than DNA code(4 letters)
🙂 JVL is strange your examples prove that you don’t know what a code is . Hint: it’s impossible for a code to appear by chance because a code carry meaning which is not a material attribute.(a flag of a country => flag is not the country but is the symbol of the country ,same with genetic code a codon is a symbol of a protein )
Sandy: JVL is strange your examples prove that you don’t know what a code is . Hint: it’s impossible for a code to appear by chance because a code carry meaning which is not a material attribute.(a flag of a country => flag is not the country but is the symbol of the country ,same with genetic code a codon is a symbol of a protein )
Firstly, I do know what a code is. Secondly, it is not me saying that possibly the genetic ‘code’ arose through unguided, natural processes which does imply that, strictly speaking, the genetic ‘code’ is not a purely abstract construction and, therefore, may not be a true code.
Perhaps you should read some of the research before making assumptions about my level of understanding.
Hmmm. I’d check with Upright Biped and his take on the role of aminoacyl transferase and aminoacyl tRNA synthetases.
What I said was I took a degree course in biochemistry many years ago and did not pursue an academic career in that field though I have tried to keep up with developments.
I presume you are talking about glycan pathways? Incidentally, there are no letters in DNA, just nucleotides.
JVL, good point about ‘codes’. Notwithstanding Crick’s use of the word, DNA sequences store information which, when and if it is read physically (by molecular interactions) results in production of RNA sequences which then (by further physical and chemical interactions) may result in production of proteins. Code is an analogy, useful or obfuscatory, depending on the motive of the person using the word.
JVL, you and others know what you have been doing and frankly insisting on enabling and continuing the spreading of slanderous falsehoods on the nature of the design inference [not to mention its soundness], design theory and thus the wider movement is speaking with disregard to truth, fairness and basic respect for the integrity of others. If you don’t know what was publicly stated and has continued to be the case right from Thaxton et al in TMLO, 1984, it is not for want of opportunity to know the truth; but from unwillingness to surrender a deliberately toxic ideological assertion — the same pushed by the likes of Barbara Forrest, ACLU, etc for many years: the nefarious religious agenda under guise of counterfeit science agit prop narrative that has been used to do much harm. And, standing up in the face of persistent slander is anything but being condescending, indeed that suggestion on your part invites confession by projection analysis pivoting on cognitive dissonance. In reply to such, I challenge you to show a single observed case where FSCO/I beyond 500 – 1,000 bits has been observed as coming from blind chance and/or mechanical necessity; there are trillions of cases of FSCO/I by intelligently directed configuration. Second, to show where the genetic code is not actually in the computation and communication sense just so, a code. Third, that codes are not expressions of language [consider here, computer languages]. Fourth, that the start-add Meth, extend . . . stop sequence of three letter codons executed by Ribosomes does not constitute a finite, goal-directed, stepwise sequence of actions with halting — i.e. an algorithm; note the presence of three stop codons. Fifth, that it was not understood from 1953 as shown in the Crick letter, that this is the same fundamental communication process as is expressed through a string of alphanumerical characters. UB is quite right, and you cannot refute any of the five points. KF
Who said that a code is purely abstract?
A flag is a real object ,a country is a real object . What is abstract is the rule to link together 2 different worlds( that don’t belong together) by an abstract rule with the help of a decoder (the decoder is mind in case of flag-country example and rybozime in DNA-protein case) . The rule of associating a certain codon to a certain amino-acid is not under control of physical laws but on the contrary control the physical laws in a way in which the abstract rule is accomplished.
I presume you have no clue how many letters have the sugar code. So much with your knowledge in biochemistry of 1900. 😆
PS: To make things perfectly clear, I use a handy definition and accompanying examples:
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/computer%20code
Merriam Webster:
The genetic code, manifestly is just that — a code — and you have been present in the room many times when the point has been made. The attempt to suggest a loose analogy at this point is hyperskeptical dismissiveness to what would otherwise be utterly unexceptional because of an ideological commitment.
That is, crooked yardstick thinking.
Fred Hickson: Code is an analogy, useful or obfuscatory, depending on the motive of the person using the word.
Yes. And, just because ‘code’ means something in one discipline does not mean it means the same thing in another field. For example: in graph theory (an area of discrete mathematics) a tree means a particular kind of graph.
Kairosfocus: you and others know what you have been doing and frankly insisting on enabling and continuing the spreading of slanderous falsehoods on the nature of the design inference [not to mention its soundness], design theory and thus the wider movement is speaking with disregard to truth, fairness and basic respect for the integrity of others.
So, we’re not allowed to disagree with you regarding the design inference? That disagreeing with you is slanderous?
JVL, FH, if you do not retract your current claims about codes, for cause I will have to regard both of you as barefaced liars ideologically committed to promotion of falsehood. JVL, what has come over you to go along with such? KF
Sandy: Who said that a code is purely abstract?
Abstract in that there is no natural relationship between the symbol and the object. The association is arbitrary.
The rule of associating a certain codon to a certain amino-acid is not under control of physical laws but on the contrary control the physical laws in a way in which the abstract rule is accomplished.
But, that not actually be the case. As I pointed out.
JVL, refusal of duty to truth and basic fairness is culpable behaviour, it is not mere innocent disagreement especially when people have been harmed thereby. KF
Kairosfocus: JVL, FH, if you do not retract your current claims about codes, for cause I will have to regard both of you as barefaced liars ideologically committed to promotion of falsehood. JVL, what has come over you to go along with such?
I just looked up genetic code in Wikipedia and scrolled down to the origin sections. I then copy-and-pasted a section with gave three examples (with references) regarding how the genetic ‘code’ came into being via blind and naturalistic processes.
What are you objecting to? What have I said that is not true? That kind of speculation is happening and that kind of research is going on. I’m just repeating common and easily accessible knowledge. It has nothing to do with my ideology; it’s just a true indication of some ongoing speculation and research.
By the way, I have brought up the exact same passage from Wikipedia several times before and you said nothing about my slanderous behaviour.
The genetic code, manifestly is just that — a code — and you have been present in the room many times when the point has been made. The attempt to suggest a loose analogy at this point is hyperskeptical dismissiveness to what would otherwise be utterly unexceptional because of an ideological commitment.
So, you disagree with us. I can live with that. I don’t think you’re being slanderous regarding me just because you disagree with me.
From Dictionary.com:
Reporting on actual research cannot be slanderous.
JVL, refusal of duty to truth and basic fairness is culpable behaviour, it is not mere innocent disagreement especially when people have been harmed thereby.
I’m supposed to ignore current research because you think it’s wrong or unfair to bring it up? Because you think some people might get harmed by that research? Harmed in what way exactly?
I thought we all were interested in the practice and furthering of science which requires that new data and results should be examined and considered and, perhaps eventually, incorporated into the canon.
If you have a problem with the science then please, spell that out. Read the pertinent papers and respond. That’s what you should do. Don’t shoot the messenger.
JVL, the chaining chemistry for both proteins and D/RNA is at right angles to the relevant side branches. There is no phisical/chemical force that prevents any base or AA from following any other in the chain, as Crick noted on p. 5 of the letter as is now in the OP, so you know or should know that before proceeding to arguing. Next, kindly observe the annotated communication network chart by Yockey. That chart shows where the coding happens in protein synthesis. tRNA have anticodons at one end when they are folded and are then loaded with a particular AA at the tip, a tip that has a CCA sequence universal joint. Normally, this is loaded through enzymes that detect the configuration of the particular tRNA and attach to the COOH end of the AA. This has been reprogrammed in the lab, allowing for two additional codings, IIRC called X and Y so that extra AAs can be used in chains. Through this point, there is chemical freedom, thus the code is not of mechanical necessity. Instead it is a communication protocol that is of linguistic character. You came right up to the edge of acknowledging it then ran away. Code is not an empty analogy and you should acknowledge it. KF
JVL:
Again, as I have told you many times before- that is all SPECULATION based on the NEED. The3y have as much going for them as the people who think Stonehenge is a natural formation.
The problem is you are so gullible that you will accept anything that you thinks supports your asinine position.
Stolen election: 2000 Mules documentary provides compelling evidence that the 2020 election was stolen via massive, organized fraud.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/NDtBoPTjfw4X/
JVL:
All evidence to the contrary, of course.
People, the ribosome is a genetic compiler, complete with error detection. Only fools think that blind and mindless processes can produce error detection.
ET: Again, as I have told you many times before- that is all SPECULATION based on the NEED. The3y have as much going for them as the people who think Stonehenge is a natural formation.
Have you read the actual research? Can you point to a mistake made by the researchers?
The problem is you are so gullible that you will accept anything that you thinks supports your asinine position.
If there is some peer-reviewed research which seems to be supported by other peer-reviewed research then it should be taken seriously. Alternatively, you can examine the work and find what flaws may exist; that is your prerogative. Dismissing it out of hand is refusing to accept anything that might contradict your position isn’t it?
Why not just look at the research and see what it has to say? What is there to lose or be afraid of?
Fred Hickson:
Nope. Living organisms are based on information. Living organisms are not reducible to physics and chemistry. Physics and chemistry cannot account for error detection and error correction. Physics and chemistry cannot account for editing and splicing. All of those require knowledge.
Larry Moran disagrees. The genetic code is a real code. It fits the definition of a code. That mRNA codons REPRESENT amino acids is the epitome of a code. You have to be desperate or willfully ignorant to say it is an analogy or metaphor.
JVL:
Yes, I have read it. You have not. And learn how to read. It is all speculation. What part of that are you too stupid to understand?
And stop being such a quote-mining prick
Kairosfocus:
If you disagree with the research done, peer-reviewed and published regarding whether or not the genetic code arose through blind and unguided chemical affinities then please, by all means, examine that research and point out where you think the researchers made their mistakes.
Science moves on as new data is discovered and new results are arrived at. Some speculative work is eventually left by the wayside, some is eventually incorporated into the canon of knowledge. This is the way things should be. If you want to see if the work I cited is plausible or laughable then I suggest you look at the actual work instead of accusing me of being mean or slanderous.
Newton was right, uncontrovertibly right, until he was wrong. Not because he tried to hoodwink humanity but because he didn’t have access to data and research which came along later. He would have absolutely wanted to keep up with the latest and greatest knowledge. He was driven to get things right. We should all aspire to the same stance.
Evolution by means of blind and mindless processes cannot account for error detection and error correction. And those processes are what keeps DNA as a viable information carrier.
ET: Yes, I have read it. You have not. And learn how to read. It is all speculation. What part of that are you too stupid to understand?
Where did they researchers make a mistake then? Where is it that their speculations are not applicable to the real world?
Kairosfocus: if you want to have a standard of respect and intelligent conversation then please do try and apply it consistently.
JVL:
It is all pure speculation. Read the papers and stop with the literature bluffing.
JVL:
You have to show their speculation is applicable. What is wrong with you? You are a coward who ALWAYS has to shift the burden.
The ribosome is a genetic compiler complete with error detection. You lose.
The Origin of the Genetic Code: Matter of Metabolism or Physicochemical Determinism?
From: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Origin-of-the-Genetic-Code%3A-Matter-of-or-Giulio/3872beb15db9f8068481fc5a683ab6ec77fd9411
(Please note: the above reference is from 2013 so this isn’t even new speculation or work.)
Like I said, there is ongoing research about these topics. If anyone would like to point out faults or flaws made in any papers along these lines then please, by all means, do so.
JVL,
You claim to have cited Wikipedia, why then did you skip over how the article begins? With some telling admissions against known interest:
Now, you allude to speculation — not actual observation on the origin of codes as described at the outset, and as I have also separately described. I look and clip how that section begins, adding highlights and notes on key points you should have disclosed:
So, whatever further speculation on origins of an exceedingly complex integrated system may occur onward we can see here that you failed to frankly acknowledge speculative character and viability of other alternatives.
In that context, further spreading or enabling of arguments rooted in or associated with the Forrest-ACLU-NSTA false accusations that have harmed people is rightly regarded as persistent slander. Recall, you are talking here to someone who has been stalked and harassed online and on the ground for the thought crime of thinking Thaxton et al make good thermodynamic sense.
KF
ET: It is all pure speculation. Read the papers and stop with the literature bluffing.
Find a mistake. Point out where their conclusions are incorrect.
The ribosome is a genetic compiler complete with error detection. You lose.
And the evidence is mounting that it arose via natural, unguided processes. It’s pretty clear where the research is leading. You can either keep up with it or . . .
Again, the only reason people are looking into it is because they NEED the genetic code to be reducible to physics and chemistry. Yet, in all these years, all they have is speculations based on that need.
The HUGE problem is that DNA based life is impossible without existing, specific, specialized proteins and a specific coded information processing system. DNA is very unstable and couldn’t exist as a viable information carrier without the existing error detection and error correction machinery already in place.
JVL:
No one has demonstrated that nature can produce coded information processing systems and living organisms are ruled by them.
The ribosome is a genetic compiler complete with error detection. You lose.
Nope. You are just a gullible fool. As if blind and mindless processes care about errors. You are obviously just desperate to believe.
Kairosfocus: You claim to have cited Wikipedia, why then did you skip over how the article begins? With some telling admissions against known interest:
Because the point I was discussing was how the genetic code came into being and that, if it arose because of chemical affinities, then it’s not a purely abstract or arbitrary code. That would say it is the way it is because of the chemistry instead of by some intelligent design. So I didn’t think I had to rehash all the material describing what the code does; that wasn’t my point.
Like I said, discussing ongoing and published research is not slanderous or lying. It’s just pointing out that there is speculation and work being done addressing the issue.
ET: No one has demonstrated that nature can produce coded information processing systems and living organisms are ruled by them.
Not quite yet. But the evidence is mounting up.
Nope. You are just a gullible fool. As if blind and mindless processes care about errors. You are obviously just desperate to believe.
Keep up with the research or don’t. It’s up to you.
JVL:
Against you. The evidence is mounting up against you.
And I have forgotten ore about this research than you know. You are a headline hunter. And you definitely aren’t fit to assess any evidence.
It is beyond desperation to think that blind and mindless processes can produce error detection and error correction.
“Each day our DNA is damaged by UV radiation, free radicals and other carcinogenic
substances, but even without such external attacks, a DNA molecule is inherently unstable.
Thousands of spontaneous changes to a cell’s genome occur on a daily basis. Furthermore,
defects can also arise when DNA is copied during cell division, a process that occurs several
million times every day in the human body.
The reason our genetic material does not disintegrate into complete chemical chaos is that a
host of molecular systems continuously monitor and repair DNA. The Nobel Prize in
Chemistry 2015 awards three pioneering scientists who have mapped how several of these
repair systems function at a detailed molecular level.
In the early 1970s, scientists believed that DNA was an extremely stable molecule, but Tomas
Lindahl demonstrated that DNA decays at a rate that ought to have made the development of
life on Earth impossible. This insight led him to discover a molecular machinery, base
excision repair, which constantly counteracts the collapse of our DNA.”
(The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2015/press.html )
Got that? DNA based life is impossible without existing error detection and error correction machinery. It has to be there from the get-go. You lose.
NOTICE,
this exchange of course tends to lose the theme of the OP in distractive commentary. There being another still open thread on what ID is, i will further respond there. Beyond a certain point, I will remove further comments from here to there. That way we can return this thread to its serious focal point.
KF
The other thread:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/lfp-55-defining-clarifying-intelligent-design-as-inference-as-theory-as-a-movement/
JVL, I have responded to 484 here https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/lfp-55-defining-clarifying-intelligent-design-as-inference-as-theory-as-a-movement/#comment-754039 KF
F/N: This would be funny if it were not so sadly revealing by way of confession by projection:
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/05/06/cnn-capitol-police-warning-the-far-right-is-calling-for-violence-after-scotus-leak/
And the actual ongoing red guards intimidatory push?
What is today’s update on the investigation of the gross violation of ethics involved in the “leak”? Do we have daily briefings or reports or panels?
KF
KF, there is such a thing as a right to petition for redress of grievances.
I have been doing some research (OK, googling) and can’t find any law that was broken by the leaking of SCOTUS documents. I am sure that SCOTUS staff must sign confidentiality and other terms of employment documents that list restricted behaviors, but I couldn’t discover if the justices sign the same documents.
JH, petition does not translate into intimidatory assembly — thus, riot — at private homes and circulation of addresses etc in a day where there are violent loonies of every stripe who could kidnap or worse. And you know it. KF
PS, confidentiality is central to legal professional conduct. This is unheard of hitherto for precisely that reason. Even that is meant to have a chilling effect.
KF, your interpretation of the right to petition for redress of grievances appears to be dependent on whether or not you agree with the cause. I seem to remember when mob rule in Ottawa and at border crossings involved a blatant disregard for the rule of law (violating court orders) and protesting outside people’s homes, you whole-heartedly defended these tactics.
JH, nonsense and accusatory projection. Public protest or rally is fine [especially with proper police escort], preferably with a delegation sent with an actual petition passed by representatives or based on a signing campaign; publishing the petition is also relevant. Going to somebody’s house like a bunch of vigilantes is another matter, especially if addresses etc are made broadcast to the public by doxxing. There is a world of difference between public and private space; perhaps, you have heard of the Castle doctrine. Your mischaracterisation of events in Ottawa [I cross checked] and likely, blowing off of police misuse of horses, is duly noted. KF
F/N: Firebombing:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/pro-life-groups-office-firebombed-madison-wisconsin/
This is threat to life, not merely property. And lawless threat to property is not to be excused.
KF
It is not accusatory projection when it is an easily confirmed observation. We may disagree on our interpretations of your comments, but the comments are there for everyone to see.
Now you are adding qualifications to the right to petition for redress of grievances that you didn’t apply to the trucker protest in Ottawa.
I agree that people shouldn’t be protesting in front of a person’s house, but, using your own arguments with respect to the truckers, this is an acceptable form of protest as long as they remain on public property.
Agreed. But none of this has anything to do with the arguments by either the pro-choice or anti-choice sides.
JH, doubling down on false projections. Truckers in Canada were not forming vigilante mobs going to people’s houses [notice that, next door to lynch mobs], were not organising such. Public protest is fine and if Mr Trudeau had simply received a petition I suspect we would have been in a very different space. The resort to red guard mob intimidation is a further step in the breakdown of lawfulness, here compounded by arson, next to murder given how dangerous fires are. KF
Your mischaracterization of the protests in front of the justices’ houses is duly noted. It amounted to about 100 protesters who protested outside one house, walked to another house, were asked to disperse, and they did. How is that unacceptable but the occupation of several blocks for several weeks and harassing the residents and businesses is acceptable.
Totally off topic, but happy Mother’s Day to all mothers here, your mothers and the mothers of your children.
Happy Primary Caregiver Of Unspecified Gender Who Decided Not To Terminate Their Pregnancy (Which Would Have Been Totally Morally Fine And Perhaps Even Praiseworthy) Day!
Vivid
Sorry, but are you always a dick? Or do you have to work hard at it?
KF – is there some way for me to ping Barry? I’ve got a question for him. Thanks.
VB @ 502,
At least _some_ of us appreciate good sarcasm.
EDTA
I just thought Jholo’s comment was so non inclusive and insensitive to the other 71 genders.
Vivid
SA, I don’t know of a public way to reach him. KF
FH, you obviously refuse to acknowledge a huge difference between living in a close neighbourhood of “Government Hill,” which is prone to have protests marching by . . . BTW, factored into market prices . . . and being targetted in a toxic red guards haunted environment, doxxed and having intimidatory gatherings at one’s private residence. There is a thin, ill defined line between such and vigilantism or even lynching or assassination. Where, we have seen an arson attack already. Noted for record. KF
PS, it seems, there is specific law on this matter, regarding protection of courts and judges:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1507
Ponder why, across decades, it has been thought advisable to have such law regarding Courts.
In short, such assemblies — as opposed to public protests or rallies that specifically are not “interfering with, obstructing, or impeding . . . ” [cf. here the annual March for Life] — are regarded as riots. In addition, such may be subject to contempt of court proceedings.
PPS, thinking on it, the unauthorised disclosure, patently organised circulation and linked doxxing may well be Contempt.
Ask Google. A click or two will get you there.
Silver Asiatic,
I sent you an email at the address associated with your UD account.
Thanks, Barry — sorry could you do it again, I had to change the email.
Silver, my law firm website is arringtonpc.com. My contact info is there.
Thank you
F/N: Sen Hawley on intimidatory behaviour:
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/05/10/hawley-on-abortion-activists-targeting-scotus-justices-homes-you-cannot-give-an-inch/
Note, the law cited at 509 above.
KF
Oh, by the way, I heard an interesting solution to the abortion issue: give all young males a reversible vasectomy which they can reverse when they are in a stable relationship.
What do you think? It would be effective and just might solve the problem.
You could probably sell Trekkies on plumbing in the Bionyx Phaser.
JVL@516, unfortunately, most of the people who oppose a woman’s choice also oppose birth control. Many oppose the pill and the IUD because, heaven forbid, a few hundred undifferentiated cells be prevented from implanting in the uterus.
JVL
Being able to clearly identify and describe the problem is the first step. One should not propose a solution before he has done that.
“Modern liberals hate Christianity, not because it’s repressive, but because they are”
And I have been noting, for the last few years at least, the obvious hostility towards Christians by some commenters at UD. None of said commenters will address this issue, so the axe keeps grinding.
Andrew
JVL
Fit them with the male equivalent of chastity belts (not sure what that is, a challenge for our ID engineers perhaps) and make sure only women have the keys.
JVL & FH, “a woman’s choice . . . ” to do what, pray, tell us? The gap is of essence here. The omitted material truth, to kill at will a living member of our posterity for his/her crime of being seen as a trespasser in his or her mother’s body. This carries us right back to the core issue that life is the first right. The strategic omission is telling. KF
Schumer has a bill that is currently scheduled for vote tomorrow that will Federalize abortions up to the time of birth. Sick and incredibly evil. How evil see below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0tQZhEisaE
Vivid
Vivid, the clip of testimony by a former abortionist, on 2nd trimester D & E abortions, has been added to the OP. KF
F/N: While I do not equate personhood with bodily maturity, let us note the following admissions:
https://www.womenshealth.gov/pregnancy/youre-pregnant-now-what/stages-pregnancy
It seems that women typically become aware of pregnancy at about 5.5 weeks.
KF
PS, for those open to it, observe the recorded testimony of Mary regarding her pregnancy with Jesus:
One may deride and dismiss but given this further bit of evidence, one cannot say our civilisation has not been duly warned on record celebrated every year.
KF
No. To remove an undifferentiated mass of a few hundred cells from her body. No brain, no nervous tissue.
Nobody is encouraging this, or even enjoys this, but if you are not going to allow the pill, IUD or condom, due to your religious beliefs..,
JH,
the just above and the video now in the OP correct your false assertion.
And even that is talking about what is visible.
Going further, there is good reason to see that our rational, responsible, morally governed minds and intelligent behaviour cannot be adequately accounted for on GIGO- constrained computation on a wetware substrate.
For, as Haldane pointed out:
The evolutionary materialist and fellow traveller computationalism thesis collapses in self referential absurdity. Where, too, as even to form their flawed theories such rely on the credibility of mind we can take that credibility as more certain than any theorising that would undermine it. Yes, this is another branch on which we all sit case, much as Haldane pointed out.
In that context, we have a fund of in common experience to hold as valid empirical evidence, evidence of shared introspection on experience of being intelligent, rational, knowing, morally governed creatures.
A model for embodied intelligence can be taken from Eng Derek Smith’s two tier controller cybernetic loop. Here, a controller in the loop is influenced by and influences a supervisory controller, which brings to bear non algorithmic oracular judgement; effecting an oracle machine. Such transforms the possibilities.
Again, Wiki compelled to acknowledge, against ideological interest:
In short, we have ways to explore other possibilities, if we are willing rather than locked into crooked yardstick thinking.
Such exploration puts on the table a whole new world of self concept and implies serious questions regarding our attitude to our living posterity in the womb which has led to the ongoing slaughter of about a million per week on a baseline of 1.4+ billions.
Truly, this is a dark age.
KF
PS, predictably, you project, but as you raise the issues, I think there are serious questions indeed to be asked about contraceptives that do not block zygote formation but cause or may cause implicit early abortions.
PPS, more on oracle machines https://notendur.hi.is/hh/kennsla/rrr/Oracle%20machines.pdf Note, Turing’s comment: “We shall not go any further into the nature of this oracle apart from saying that it cannot be a machine. Alan Turing, 1939 [=> PhD Dissertation].” Yes, this was there all along as modern computing theory and AI etc emerged.
“Nobody is encouraging this, or even enjoys this, but if you are not going to allow the pill, IUD or condom, due to your religious beliefs..,”
What a crock of [SNIP] KF is not Chuck Schumer or in Congress.
Vivid
Vivid, notice the snide use of religious, as though there is no rational basis and we are showing sheeplike blind conformity to oppressive priestcraft? [BTW, the actual priests I dealt with on a daily basis for several years, I came to deeply respect, including intellectually. Jesuits are smart and well educated.] The first context of serious discussion is philosophical-logical-ethical. This context frames science and mathematics, e.g. mathematics is extensive study of an aspect of logic of being, logic of structure and quantity. The sciences address issues of warrant and knowledge of the world of observables. We can take it to the bank that this is projection of their own crooked yardstick, ideological thinking to try to discredit other views without actually addressing and engaging fairly on merits. KF
KF
“We can take it to the bank that this is projection of their own crooked yardstick, ideological thinking to try to discredit other views without actually addressing and engaging fairly on merits. KF”
Exactly! The baby killers advocates will do anything in their power to distract and obfuscate from the core issue on the table. “Hey look at this shiny object over here “ We are talking about ripping babies out of the womb minutes away from being born and we get “ Oh what about the pill and IUD’s” as if your some kind of king of the world.
As to religious beliefs only a fool doesn’t recognize that they too are operating under their own worldview ie religious beliefs which leads them to promote a culture of death.
Vivid
KF
Thinking more about things, honestly I never thought that in my lifetime that I would see a major political party put forth a bill to kill babies even if the mother is dilating.. words fail me. A country cannot last long that allows abortion up to the time of birth, up until the baby starts to crown. This a wicked evil, pure evil. A society that traffics in this is a society that is evil, a society that is barreling down the highway of disintegration. A nation that promotes infanticide is a wicked and perverse country. Our leaders are wickedly evil yet they were voted in by the voters. What does that say about the voters? I have my own opinion on that.
Anyway I am saddened by the moral decay my country has embraced because no Constitutional Republic can survive very long reveling in the culture of death. History is replete with mighty Empire’s sinking into the cesspool of evil and then drinking.the the sludge of the night soil, then they are no more a whole only fragments.
I fear for my children and grandchildren. A hot civil war is coming, my side will lose, totalitarianism will be the winner.
Vivid
Vivid, historically, lawless oligarchy is the natural state of government. In our time, hereditary nobility being dead that will be ideological; doubtless a form of socialistic statist, politically messianistic utopianism, which will predictably fail . . . never mind the self promotion of those with an over inflated view of their wisdom and capability, an occupational hazard of the credentialled but indoctrinated rather than soundly educated. . However, perhaps we can sufficiently renew the understanding and recognition of built in intelligible law of our nature that we can reform before it is too late. The US DoI, 1776 and the US Constitution understood in that light are actually good but not perfect places to begin. But for such to work there has to be much soul searching of a type that is unlikely to be indulged at large absent serious pain and loss. KF
.
I see now that I have been mentioned several times on this thread.
JVL, this is not a television drama, and you are not some sympathetic figure being hounded by the powerful — all for the sin of merely disagreeing with them. If it were a television drama, you would be the cat on the corner, running the same hustle day after day, pretending the shopkeepers don’t know who you are or what you’re doing. Instead, you are here on the web, in this particular audience, almost solely to engage in political and social disagreements, and you want to have the imprimatur of science on your side in order to bolster your comments along. You simply want it to be a given that this is the case, and you’ll say anything to make it so. Unfortunately, over the past three years you’ve become acquainted with a particular design inference in biology, taken directly from the recorded history of science — an uncontroversial history to which you could not disagree, and cannot now un-know.
Yes, JVL, you have responded to your predicament. But let us be completely candid about your predicament; you were never asked to believe in ID. I clearly never asked you to ascend to any social, moral, or political position as a result of explaining the design inference to you. Instead, you were asked — specifically without committing to any belief whatsoever — to acknowledge the standing validity of the documented science and history. You simply could not do it, and you cannot do it now. So, what you’ve said to me (“over and over again”) is the resulting patchwork of fallacies you’ve strung together in order to obfuscate your abandonment of documented physical evidence. You have three or four of these fallacies that you shuffle around, rotating them in and out, just to stay one step ahead of the game. And again, just to be clear, these are not things you say to “clarify” some position or correct some misunderstanding; they are the things you say to keep your fallacious reasoning alive. They don’t make the fallacies go away, they are the fallacies. And you keep repeating them to me.
We have been all the way through the evidence, JVL, from the fact and necessity of symbolic memory, to the organizational and physical requirements of semantic closure and self-reference; through Peirce, and Turing, and Von Neumann, and Crick, and Hoagland, and Zamecnik, and Nirenberg, and others — through the key predictions that were made along the way, as well as their subsequent confirmations via experimental result. We’ve been through all the dates, one by one. When asked to acknowledge the validity of these facts, you first stumbled, then introduced your primary defensive fallacy (which you now repeat over and over again, including in this very thread). You take the position that the design inference is rendered invalid because others (semiotic experts) simply don’t believe it. And then, apparently unable to stop yourself from demonstrating the problem, you post snippets to articles that go through the many competing ideas under research as to how purely unguided (non-intelligent) causes might be able to create the system we find today. What does it mean if there are many competing theories as to how non-intelligent causes could establish what we see? It means that no one has established that non-intelligent forces are even capable of it, despite decades of motivated research, piles of cash, and an open door at every suitable research institution on the surface of the planet. Thus, our shared universal experience (that intelligence is the only cause known to be capable of physically establishing the gene system) remains universal, and in full force. The idea that this universally observed fact is invalidated by the undemonstrated words of authority figures is preposterous. That kind of thinking may have been prevalent in the pre-scientific era, but we are not living in an age of alchemy. Undemonstrated beliefs (particularly those made one-hundred percent contrary to the universal evidence) do not invalidate scientific observations. Which brings us to the next stitch in your patchwork of fallacies.
You are recorded on these very pages making a clear distinction between what a researcher might believe personally and what that same researcher is actually able to demonstrate in the proper practice of science. Once, when you were here promoting how even-handed you are, you found the opportunity to tell us that you would have no compunction about accepting the properly-conducted science of a person who believed differently than you (say, a religious person). The point you were raising, so bravely, is that it is the science, when done properly, that has the higher and more important role to play in reasoning and knowledge. I remember years ago, when a certain cadre of scientists and science popularizers were making the rounds on the interview circuit to denigrate ID. I happen to be sweeping my porch one afternoon, and I actually heard a promo for an upcoming appearance on one of the radio shows back then. The tape of the interview had already been cut, and they had b-roll of it within the promo. One of the clips they used had the guest Professor Whomever warning the audience that “if this is not stopped” then our “medical sciences” would certainly fall into ruin. In an effort to make his point more immediate, he said something to the effect of “the reason Uncle Bob has cancer is because he lived wrong and is being punished for his sins” and “there would no longer be any point in trying to figure out how disease works”. With that warning in mind, it is certainly admirable of you to take such a risk. In any case, you now know of a particular inference to design, and you also know that this inference is based on nothing but universal evidence, experimental result, and broadly-accepted scientific reasoning. And as it turns out, you don’t like the result. So now you suddenly want to reverse the roles between science and belief, and have the science take a backseat this time around. Clearly another fallacy is called for — another contradiction — for the guy (gal) who knows full well that science is based on what can be demonstrated and documented. And when science is properly conducted, it is certainly not invalidated by the undemonstrated personal beliefs of anyone (including “experts”) that are wholly contradictory to it. What all this means, of course, is that your primary reasoning is a logical fallacy, and your defense of it is a contradiction of your own reasoning.
I’ll tell you something JVL. I would bet my last dollar that if someone was to sit down with you for a long open conversation, I think they would come away thinking that you are a person who is truly and genuinely concerned about your fellow man. I suspect you know very well that people with financial and social resources can certainly make a hell of a mess of themselves and the things around them, but they do however have means. They are in a vastly different place than those who have very little, or nothing at all. I suspect you are keenly aware of these kinds of things. I am glad you are. I am too. It is something we share in common, and it is important.
Unfortunately , we now have to move on to your next patch.
After weeks and months of talking, when our long walk through the evidence was as complete as it was going to be, you stated your fallacies and then jumped out of the conversation. You then did something that looked a lot like a slapstick comedy moment — within the blink of an eye, you enthusiastically blurted out the exact same design inference you had just refused to acknowledge. It was yet another real-time contradiction, but this one had a special twist. You already had all the facts, and dates, and people, and observations that make up the design inference, but then you took the exact reasoning behind the design inference (i.e. something not made by humankind that contains encoded symbolic content is a valid inference to a previously unknown intelligence) and you enthusiastically held it up as completely obvious. In other words, you accept the exact same thing you deny. It’s a brain cramp. And when called out on it, you injected a completely ad hoc double-standard in order to make it all go away. The hits just keep on coming.
Here is the special twist. SETI seeks a sign of intelligence from interstellar space. The primary operational definition of “intelligence” used by SETI in this pursuit is “the physical capacity to transmit a narrow-band radio signal detectable from earth”. SETI explains “Narrow-band signals – perhaps only a few Hertz wide or less – are the mark of a purposely built transmitter. Natural cosmic noisemakers, such as pulsars, quasars, and the turbulent, thin interstellar gas of our own Milky Way, do not make radio signals that are this narrow.” So, if such a signal was received, SETI would infer that the signal was a product of a previously unknown intelligence based solely on their operational definition. The signal would mean that there was a purposely built transmitter out there somewhere, and that fact would require an intelligence to build it. If SETI received such a signal they would first verify that the signal was not mistakenly of terrestrial origin, and then, as SETI has promised, they would immediately announce the discovery throughout the world. Undoubtedly, one can be sure, there would still be nay-sayers among the crowd. After all, how do we know for certain there is not some unknown natural condition out there that can create what otherwise appears to us to be a short-wave carrier signal? At this point, SETI would have begun to study the received signal for any indications of semiotic content (that is, the use of structure, symbol strings, encoding), and if found, they would immediately seek to develop the set of constraints required to interpret those symbols. It would no doubt be an all-hands-on-deck effort across the globe. And if, incredibly, they were able to actually accomplish this second more rigorous task, then any doubts that might linger regarding the unknown intelligent origin of the signal would be forever answered. Indeed, a finding of encoded symbolic content would immediately erase any rational doubts whatsoever. Only the irrational and the obstinate would remain.
With this in mind, lets look once again at how you positioned your design inference:
You hit the nail on the head, my friend. And following the patchwork of fallacies listed above, all of your subsequent attacks on me that stem from these exchanges, are a glowing residual marker of just how hard you hit that nail. This includes comments like: “I also said there would have to be some kind of design candidate around at the time”. This statement isn’t so much as another fallacy, it’s just straight out dishonest on your part. You need this statement in order to pretend that you’ve answered the double standard. Unfortunately, as these ad hoc attempts inevitably do, it leads elsewhere.
Earlier in this response I used the word “preposterous” to describe your insufferable insistence that the undocumented beliefs of someone (anyone) can invalidate universal evidence in science. It is the year 2022. Your insistence is indeed preposterous. But it is no less preposterous than the comical idea that — if we received a radio signal from space that was shown to contain encoded symbolic content — you would first need to know that there was “a design candidate around at the time” before you would believe it came from an intelligent source. That’s just plain ole bullshit. And you know it.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
JVL … science and logic and history have beaten you around the head and neck on this deal for months. All you were asked to do is to simply acknowledge the validity of the recorded facts, but you could not do it. Now you signal, over and over again, for me to “just drop it”. This is certainly not a surprising or unexpected request on your part. After all, you want to go on haunting the UD regulars over politics and morality, and want the imprimatur of science and reason on your side while you do it. To that end, you’d like me to “just drop it” with the obvious reason being that I had failed to make my case, or that I had overstepped my pursuit of the matter, or that we had simply “agreed just to disagree” — anything but the blatantly obvious fact that you intend to keep your preferred beliefs over the documented science and history at all costs. Well. There is a somewhat common notion around here that it is just so much easier for people like you to say irrational or false statements, than it is to muster all the effort sometimes required to refute those comments with detail.
Long ago, (after you had bombed out) I mentioned to you that if you intended to stay here and drill people over socio-political yadda yadda, then I would reserve the right to occasionally remind you of your glowing string of logical fallacies. Perhaps this could be the last of those exchanges.
** I see a potential sock name Fred who appears to want to defend your fallacies for you. If you are waiting on me, you are backing up (although I can’t guarantee my participation at this time). Let us hope you can do something better than “RNA!!”
Upright BiPed: Instead, you were asked — specifically without committing to any belief whatsoever — to acknowledge the standing validity of the documented science and history. You simply could not do it, and you cannot do it now
I did agree with the work done by Dr Pattee and said so. However, Dr Pattee himself does not extend his work to the inference that life on earth was designed. This is quite true. None of his compatriots do so either. This is also true.
You’re interpreting the work of the semiotic community in a way that they themselves do not do. And I pointed that out. You may think there are reasons why they have not agreed with your interpretation but the truth is that not one of them has publicly offered support for your interpretation. Not that I have been able to find anyway; if I am wrong about that then I will change my tune.
So, from my point of view, I am agreeing with the accepted science. Which does not include the design hypothesis.
As far as signal detection goes regarding SETI we have not yet found a signal that is unambiguously and clearly NOT formed by natural processes with the exception of some signals that turned out to have originated from Earth, generated by human beings! I would expect any candidate signal to be heavily and exhaustively checked before anyone would ever come to the conclusion that it was the result of some kind of alien intelligence. Of course I would love to have such a thing occur but, to be honest, I’m starting to ask myself the question Dr Fermi posed: if there are alien intelligences then where are they? I have no problem with money being spent on trying to find signals from other lifeforms but I don’t financially support the effort because I’m beginning to suspect it’s not going to be successful. If a somewhat ambiguous signal was detected that’s when I would to look for other evidence. That seems a reasonable and sensible approach.
I don’t think there is an unambiguous and smoking gun reason to believe there are aliens out there. We don’t have a signal which would indicate they are there and we have no other evidence they exist.
I don’t think there is an unambiguous and smoking gun reason to believe that an intelligent designer affected the development of life on Earth. I don’t think we have a clear signal that they are there (you disagree) and I don’t think we have any other evidence they exists (and, again, you would disagree).
You disagree with me. Fair enough. We have been over and over this. I’m happy to agree to disagree and leave it at that. I’m not asking you to drop the issue because I’m afraid of scrutiny or questions; I just think we have had our say, many times, and there doesn’t seem to be any good reason to keeping going over it.
I’ll tell you something JVL. I would bet my last dollar that if someone was to sit down with you for a long open conversation, I think they would come away thinking that you are a person who is truly and genuinely concerned about your fellow man. I suspect you know very well that people with financial and social resources can certainly make a hell of a mess of themselves and the things around them, but they do however have means. They are in a vastly different place than those who have very little, or nothing at all. I suspect you are keenly aware of these kinds of things. I am glad you are. I am too. It is something we share in common, and it is important.
Thank you for that. I hope that I can live up to your impressions as they are gallant and caring. I strongly suspect if we were neighbours we would get along very well. I think the same about ET and I have told him so. The truth is we have a lot more in common than we tend to focus on.
Long ago, (after you had bombed out) I mentioned to you that if you intended to stay here and drill people over socio-political yadda yadda, then I would reserve the right to occasionally remind you of your glowing string of logical fallacies. Perhaps this could be the last of those exchanges.
That would probably be best. For everyone else at least. This last incident was raised by Silver Asiatic (I think) and I prefer not ignoring comments from serious contributors. When I’m allowed.
Anyway, I’ll leave any further discussions up to you. I respect the work you’ve done, I respect your deeply held and, clearly, sustaining faith and I believe you might not have made it through your life without that faith. There is no way I want to dissuade you from that as it clearly is part of you, right down to the core. As I have mentioned, in some way, I am . . . jealous? . . . deprived? . . . not having that faith because I don’t have a belief that someday I might get rewarded for the way I’ve tried to treat people well and help them. Also, I understand (even if I don’t share it) the feeling that there is a love, a caring that is unconditional, eternal, there to catch you when you fall. You are lucky, in my eyes. I can’t share that with you but I promise you I respect it.
Okay?
JVL
I agree with Upright BiPed about your underlying sincerity and character – and care for other people. Yes, I also think that if you continue that way, there is a reward attached. At the same time, it’s frustrating to see your good desire to take the leap of faith but then feel your blocked on that path. It’s also a good reminder for those of us that have faith, not to take it for granted or to think that we’re better than anyone else for having it – since it’s a gift and not an achievement.
To me, what you express of faith seems that you already know it well. I’ve praised that in you before — your expressions that were soaring upwards with the knowledge of the hope and destiny and strength that faith gives.
At moments like that, it seems that you’re just an arm’s length away.
But then I think you just circle back into yourself and you’ll get impetuous or resistant. The “Contact” dialogue just struck me as crystal-clear.
But at the same time, there’s no sense in forcing an issue.
I brought that dialogue up again to see if you’d deal with it differently.
Maybe the fact is, that the ID inference is logically simple to accept, but at the personal level it’s not that simple to deal with. We might even say that it takes faith — and if so, then that’s different than just logic or a mathematical formula.
In that case, it takes some time to contemplate what it means and try to sort it out.
With that, I agree also to just drop the reminders on the Contact dialogue.
Silver Asiatic: Maybe the fact is, that the ID inference is logically simple to accept, but at the personal level it’s not that simple to deal with. We might even say that it takes faith — and if so, then that’s different than just logic or a mathematical formula.
Thank you for your kind comments.
I think the design inference is logically simple to accept; I just don’t happen to think that the science supports it. I don’t think I’m making that decision based on any personal issues.
I think (i.e. my own personal opinion) acceptance of the design inference is partially dependent on the emphasis given to various threads of evidence or arguments. We all see and accept the same data; we disagree on the interpretation of that data.
Anyway, I hope you have a nice weekend! The weather where I live is supposed to be lovely . . . we’ll see. Here, it’s always best to be skeptical regarding weather reports!!
Upright Biped
Why yes, yes you have been, Upright Biped.
First question, why are you picking on JVL?
Next: history! No need to reinvent the wheel here.
It’s the weekend starting, the sun is shining, I’m feeling guilty about Ukraine…
But I’ll try and find time to chip in.
RNA World.
FH, turnabout projection. UB has spent time and effort on evidence and sees Wilsonian sidesteps and strawman fallacies. That speaks, speaks to the true balance on merits and to the determination of adherents of evolutionary materialism and fellow travellers to not go there. The reality is SETI success has happened but the messages are in the cells in our bodies. KF
Projection? I assume everyone else here is able to decide for themselves whether to comment here or not. If Upright Biped decides to comment again promoting his semiotic theory, I hope to raise some points with him…
If I’m spared.
.
Briefly checking back in.
JVL, I thought you might be a bit smarter, or perhaps a bit more clever, in your response. Attempting to position me as a person who is speaking from some overpowering “faith” is patently dishonest on your part. It is a lie, and you know it. It is a lie, and you knew it when you wrote it. Your position (that there is no evidence of design in biology) has been repeatedly decimated by the recorded history of science. While it requires no faith on my part to recount that history, you’ve been forced to answer that history with logical fallacies, ad hoc double-standards, and deception. To make matters worse, your fallacies and deceptive tactics are of the type that are blatantly obvious to anyone with a pulse. It should not require me to say this, but once you’ve stated a logical fallacy in the defense of your position, repeating that fallacy does not constitute a further defense. Yet it is quite amazing to see you, as an educated person, do just exactly that … while continuously preening and positioning yourself as a person of science and reason. Clearly, being an educated person doesn’t make you a person of reason, any more than standing in a barn makes you a horse. You cannot blatantly and knowingly violate logic and reason with fallacies and deception while selling yourself as a rational person. It is incredible that you need this fact to be pointed out to you again and again. You simply cannot acknowledge physical evidence that contradicts your personal beliefs — and whether or not your denial is riddled with fallacies, or is even coherent, is of no concern to you in any way whatsoever (i.e. the ends justify the means). Clearly, the idea of integrating your beliefs with science is appealing to you at a personal self-image level, but as you have repeatedly demonstrated, if hard science and documented history contradict your preferred worldview, then acknowledging it is just not something you can do. You fail at your own standards. You are then forced by that failure to repeat the same fallacies over and over again, and you will continue to do so. I suppose I could have pity for your position, but you don’t seem to have enough sense to walk away.
Fred at 540,
As I indicated in my previous comment to you, if you have something to say, then say it.