>I think this is wrong. We always recognize that a reckless disregard for the results of our actions needs to be punished if it results in particular outcomes. If I get drunk and kill you while driving my car, I am to be punished. I accept this.<
Again, the philosophical determination as to the morality of an action is an entirely separate matter from the measures a society might take in order to force the offender to pay retribution. Within your murderous drunkard scenario there might exist extenuating circumstances that might allow you enough pity for the offender so as to refuse giving him the death penalty. In other circumstances you may decide only death is sufficient punishment. Nevertheless both circumstances present a breach in morality. In a nutshell, I essentially agree with you here, but am unwilling to attempt assigning punitive measures without having gathered sufficient details of the circumstances surrounding the established immoral act.
>There's many a loon who goes through life committing one bad act after another, claiming that they didn't know, they didn't mean it, they wish they could undo it. This is unacceptable.<
Well. You must understand that the very component of the repetition of the offense presents a detail that reasonably will influence the severity of the punishment. Here again, you confuse the moral determination with the punishment. What if the loon is truly a loon, and yet murders someone. His act was indeed wrong, but his circumstances may disallow our throwing him to the lions. So while the loon's acts are unacceptable, just as you say, our law may in his case act more to protect society and the loon himself, than to merely force the loon to pay retribution.
>They had a motive, and that motive was to go willy-nilly through life avoiding responsibility, with the inevitable consequences.<
And if this was indeed the obvious motive, then perhaps the severest punishment would be in order. But you here have claimed the offender was a loon, and a reasoned determination as to the morality of an offense by a loon must include a consideration of his lunacy.
>Given your philosophy that abortion is murder, why would you rate the reckless act that kills a fetus less important than the reckless act that kills someone in their car, resulting in a manslaughter charge?<
Dear me, you several times have put words into my mouth and I weary of it. You asked my view, and I am laboring with you to explain it. If you want to understand, do not tell me what I believe. Ask me, and I will be as honest with you as I possibly can. If inconsistencies exist in my thinking, you are free to point them out, and if I honestly see them, I will readily concede it and try to firm up my view. But do not try and lead me as is so commonly attempted by liberals. Up to now I have enjoyed this dialogue terribly.
Now then. Contrary to your claim, I do not "rate the reckless act that kills a fetus less important than the reckless act that kills someone in their car." I have first argued the humanity of the conceptus, and then described the general terms that assist me in determining that its willful destruction is murder. Nevertheless the punishments for murder, however it occurs, must correlate with the circumstances surrounding it. This is a separate issue, a matter of law, and we must not confuse them.
>I think I may know why, though I apologize for the presumptuousness.<
You anger me with this stupidity, but I yet hope you are a rarity amongst your comrades.
>These are acts that people you know commit, through smoke, drink, and support of polluters. I believe your posture to be at least partly political, not purely moral, but in any case certainly inconsistent.<
My posture is entirely consistent. It appears inconsistent to you because you obscure and confuse the issues here. This is almost a genetically determined response in liberals. If one rejects homosexuality, the liberal claims one hates homosexuals. The origins of my position is morality that is informed by faith and human reason.
>You seem to be avoiding alienating those conservative elements who would do these things. You will not put a name to it, though you seem overanxious to put a name to the actions of those you disapprove of.<
I do not claim the smoker should be given the death penalty for the same reason I do not claim the mother who murders her child should be given the death penalty. It is a separate matter from the moral analysis of these actions. The mother who bends her will toward the destruction of her child indeed commits murder. She is a murderer. Yet in a judicial system sensitive enough to give attention to this issue, there may be extenuating circumstances in her case that would influence the penalities that would be levied against her. Possibly the system would levy nothing at all against her, but act as our current system sometimes does, to protect or assist the offender to be free of his duress so as to attempt preventing further offense. This is really quite a separate matter from the moral analysis and determination concerning an action.
>Presumably you are not a Catholic, since the Church's position is that even the birth control pill is against life, the Church, and God's Will.<
I am not a Roman Catholic, but I most certainly am giving severe thought to that church's positon on birth control. My own church rejects the alleged appropriateness of the use of birth control. While we find no clear scriptural proscription against it, my wife and I reject it nevertheless. Why we reject it is difficult to explain, though I think I can present a quasi-reasoned argument against it. In large part, I intuitively sense that it is a contradiction of nature. For the last few years I have been in thought on birth control, attempting to develop an explanation as to why I should embrace or reject it.
>Here is my posture: A father who gives his child a birth defect through second hand smoke, though supposedly unwitting, is less worthy than a father who supports a woman's decision to have an abortion, allowing that it is primarily her decision.<
Perhaps, but perhaps not. The father may not have known he could give his child a birth defect via smoking. Or he may simply have discounted and ignored the warnings of health officials because of their oftentimes contradictory warnings in the past. The father who supports abortion may have done so merely because he wanted sex without responsibility. He may simply have used the body of a woman to gratify his lusts, and then when a child resulted of it, callously determined he would kill it, denying it its God-given right to life, so as to be able to frolick and chase other skirts.
>I would not have taken this position 20 years ago, but everyone has seen a story on TV or read in the newspaper about cigarettes and effects on children (like SIDS), and fetuses by now. And I believe that those who purposely stay so unconcious to the media as to have missed this are liable simply for their deliberate ignorance.<
Some people simply have not the literacy or interest to become privy to the latest findings of science or of the medical establishment. It is not that they purposely stay unconcious of anything. Many of them are simply trying to survive, and see no great benefit to reading and plugging in to this aspect of society. In our future dialogue, let us try to stick to principle and not get carried away with circumstances. In this way, we will be able to think in essentials and more efficiently come to a logical conclusion. Then we might venture to put flesh on the thing.
>One other question: Is the bombing of an abortion clinic murder if it kills people inside or nearby?<
Would the bombing of Hitler have been murder? Perhaps so, perhaps not. You think about it (and so will I), and when we next engage, let us discuss the thing on principle, dealing with its essentials, perchance to arrive at a reasoned answer to it.
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