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The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

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Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

LynahFan said:
Yes, which is why the pro-life crowd always tries to push ultrasounds onto teenagers - to guilt-trip unfit mothers into bringing unwanted children into the world even as our popularion zooms past 7B. Solid plan.
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The problem is they aren't white babies. "Not enough of me; way too many of you." Hence the need to repeal the 20th century and get back to the good old days of girls dropping out of high school to marry and start popping out the first of 12 babies.

This is the apotheosis of the 'Murican family.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

burd said:
Again, FF, do you define "child" as applying immediately upon conception or somewhere along the line of development?
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Or beforehand.

Religious pro-life advocates have no choice: they believe there's a magical spark that occurs at conception (the investing of matter with a soul) and from that point the potentiality of human life has to trump all other considerations. However, there is no coherent argument why this way of thinking can't be as easily extended prior to conception. Virginity: history's greatest mass murderer.

Biological pro-life advocates are... all the rest of us. Every one of us with a non-religious perspective is equally "pro-life" and says after point X a clump of cells has become an inviolate human life. Nobody among us has any claim to a moral higher ground than any other. It's just a question of where on the number line you fall.

(Religious pro-lifers often invoke pseudo-scientific arguments but like Creationism those are specious and merely cloak a religious agenda.)
 
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Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Kepler said:
Or beforehand.

Religious pro-life advocates have no choice: they believe there's a magical spark that occurs at conception (the investing of matter with a soul) and from that point the potentiality of human life has to trump all other considerations. However, there is no coherent argument why this way of thinking can't be as easily extended prior to conception. Virginity: history's greatest mass murderer.

Biological pro-life advocates are... all the rest of us. Every one of us with a non-religious perspective is equally "pro-life" and says after point X a clump of cells has become an inviolate human life. Nobody among us has any claim to a moral higher ground than any other. It's just a question of where on the number line you fall.

The real power of the videos at issue isn't just the content, which can be argued about, but bringing to light the inherent monstrosity of the entire thing. One is really hard pressed to talk about crushing parts on one side to save other parts and other such things without having some registration that this is a human being. Folks who do this stuff don't want to see the light of day.

(Religious pro-lifers often invoke pseudo-scientific arguments but like Creationism those are specious and merely cloak a religious agenda.)
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The real magic here is folks who think that one moment it's just a clump of cells and then presto/chango, the next moment it's a human being, a staggeringly illogical timeline of how a human develops. I don't think most such folks, when really pressed on it would be able to defend such a view given its inherent lack of coherence, but it's a necessary part of the façade for people to do their best to forget about the children being slaughtered on a daily basis. Absent intervention, that "blob of cells" will follow its natural progression and be born and live a human life.
 
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Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

This is piling on, but I saw this quote and it was just too good:

If you kill humans and keep their parts in the fridge, your Jeff Dahmer. When Planned Parenthood does it, it's "healthcare" and it "empowers women."
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Bob Gray said:
but it's a necessary part of the façade for people to do their best to forget about the children being slaughtered on a daily basis.
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So in your world a person either agrees with you or is lying to themselves. That's certainly one way to stop the cognitive dissonance of equally (or more) intelligent people making equally (or more) logical arguments that contradict your opinion.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Bob Gray said:
This is piling on, but I saw this quote and it was just too good:

If you kill humans and keep their parts in the fridge, your Jeff Dahmer. When Planned Parenthood does it, it's "healthcare" and it "empowers women."
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My Jeff Dahmer what?
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Kepler said:
So in your world a person either agrees with you or is lying to themselves. That's certainly one way to stop the cognitive dissonance of equally (or more) intelligent people making equally (or more) logical arguments that contradict your opinion.
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The day someone makes a logical explanation of how someone changes from a blob of cells to a fully human being in an instant will be the first time it happens. It's simply illogical to believe there is some such instantaneous transformation point, and if there were, certainly someone would have nailed down when exactly this magical moment takes place and what happens biologically, etc. when it happens.

People create facades willingly or unknowingly regarding a variety of things that may be unpleasant/uncomfortable/whatever so they don't have to think of the realities of certain things. It's not like the realities of abortion are the only place this happens, but then again, most other places it happens don't cost the lives that are lost in the situation of abortion.

We live in a highly medicated society (hard drugs, pot, prescription drugs, alcohol, etc.) that, among other things, help people escape the realities of life.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Kepler said:
But at the end of the day it's still an argument about when human life begins, and the vast majority of abortions occur well before the vast majority of people would identity a clump of cells as a human being unless they were operating under a theoretical definition of life beginning at conception.
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A clump of human cells isn't a human being? Aren't we all are just clumps of cells in different stages of our human lives?
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Bob Gray said:
how someone changes from a blob of cells to a fully human being in an instant
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You are arguing that since there is no hard line when human life begins then a zygote is the same as a baby. That is a logical fallacy, taking the dichotomy paradox (for space) and translating it to time.

The fact is that for each condition in the definition of "human" there is a discrete instant when the condition is met. Your definition is a perfect example of this, since fertilization is that instant. And in fact your definition is just as vulnerable to your fallacious objection, since fertilization is itself broken down into lots of substeps.

On a football field, right at the very boundary line of the field it becomes very fuzzy whether a foot is on the out of bounds line or not. You are arguing that if we can't know exactly where that transition takes place then ALL PASSES ARE OUT OF BOUNDS. That's ridiculous, because 99.99% of all passes are well within the boundary lines. The ones that are right on the line we estimate -- which is why the line was drawn in the first place.
 
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Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Timothy A said:
A clump of human cells isn't a human being? Aren't we all are just clumps of cells in different stages of our human lives?
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See my response to Bob. A zygote is not a human being.
 
Bob Gray said:
The day someone makes a logical explanation of how someone changes from a blob of cells to a fully human being in an instant will be the first time it happens. It's simply illogical to believe there is some such instantaneous transformation point, and if there were, certainly someone would have nailed down when exactly this magical moment takes place and what happens biologically, etc. when it happens.
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Poppycock. Your argument hinges on there being something real that is hidden from our perception that our decisions are attempting to approximate as accurately as possible with the boundary we are drawing. You might as well ask what is that real, hidden change which occurs the instant of midnight on one's 18th birthday, when he is suddenly allowed to vote. Or 21st, when he is allowed to drink? The only truth is that *all* of these boundaries are human inventions, based on human definitions. If you're going to commit to the position that we, as a species, should not draw arbitrary boundaries, you have a LONG list of laws to repeal, not just those which allow early-term abortions.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

burd said:
Again, FF, do you define "child" as applying immediately upon conception or somewhere along the line of development?
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Is it murder to kill an infant one week after childbirth?

What makes one week before childbirth any different?

Two weeks? A month? How far back do we go until it is no longer unacceptable??













Is it a crime to eject a fertilized egg from the womb before it implants in the uterine wall? after it implants in the uterine wall but before cell division occurs? after the first few rounds of cell division occurs but before any organ differentiation begins? how far forward do we go until it is no longer acceptable?
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

FreshFish said:
Is it murder to kill an infant one week after childbirth?

What makes one week before childbirth any different?

Two weeks? A month? How far back do we go until it is no longer unacceptable??
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According to many states, about six months.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

FreshFish said:
Is it a crime to eject a fertilized egg from the womb before it implants in the uterine wall? after it implants in the uterine wall but before cell division occurs? after the first few rounds of cell division occurs but before any organ differentiation begins? how far forward do we go until it is no longer acceptable?
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Ejecting fertilized eggs happens all the time. It even happened before abortions were legal or even that there was knowledge that they could be performed. It's a natural phenomenon. In fact, only a middling percentage of fertilized eggs ever become people. Either the egg is expelled prior to embedding in the uterine lining, or a miscarriage happens so early in the pregnancy that the woman often doesn't even know she's pregnant. And then there are the miscarriages that the parents know about and become crestfallen.

You're making some bad biological errors in your argument here.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

LynahFan said:
Poppycock. Your argument hinges on there being something real that is hidden from our perception that our decisions are attempting to approximate as accurately as possible with the boundary we are drawing. You might as well ask what is that real, hidden change which occurs the instant of midnight on one's 18th birthday, when he is suddenly allowed to vote. Or 21st, when he is allowed to drink? The only truth is that *all* of these boundaries are human inventions, based on human definitions. If you're going to commit to the position that we, as a species, should not draw arbitrary boundaries, you have a LONG list of laws to repeal, not just those which allow early-term abortions.
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Pretty much this. We draw arbitrary biological lines all the time.
 
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