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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (4204)	1/31/2001 4:09:47 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Many religious people consider eating pork a sin. That is an "idea" coming from divine revelation. What if a group wanted a national law against pork eating? With ideas that do not have theological roots we can all look at the idea, and look at the evidence- and the evidence can be looked at somewhat objectively. With theological ideas the evidence is belief- and it cannot be separated from religion, nor can it be separated from the subjective- because you cannot show your belief- you can manifest behaviors because of your belief, but your belief, is within you- just as your God, whoever or whatever it is, is really, ultimately an idea in your own head. I wouldn't want people legislating because of Gaia any more than I would want people legislating on behalf of the Christian God. Evidence- that can be weighed as objectively as possible. Abortion- especially ru486- can be of the "bundle of cells" you seem to divorce from personhood. So when do the cells become a person? When it has a beating heart? When it can function outside the mother's body with heroic technological equipment? When?

To: TimF who wrote (4204)	1/31/2001 5:59:29 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Some things you just feel are true. I can relate to that. There are some things I just feel are true, too. They're a touchstone by which I govern myself. I don't know that I could explain them well enough for someone who did not feel them, too, to understand them let alone be convinced. But I still know they're true. One of the differences I see between our perspectives is our treatment of the distinction between moral and legal. I compartmentalize the two. You recognize the difference, but the difference is just a dotted line. I don't think I have the right to impose my moral truths on anyone else. You're looking to enforce yours with the full force of the government. I don't know if this difference is bridgeable. What's true for me is true for me. What's true for you is true for you. I'm prepared to leave you to follow your compass. I expect to be left alone to follow mine. I get cranky when someone tries to impose their truth on me by law. Are you are asking for my opinion of what should be or what I think would happen if abortion was outlawed. For the second it would largely depend on if the law changed to consider a fetus to be a person or just to outlaw abortion without any being given any legal status as a person. Hmmmm. It didn't occur to me that abortion would ever be outlawed without making a fetus a person. I don't see how else to justify it. Of course, that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be done. We've had some pretty weird laws. Are you are asking for my opinion of what should be or what I think would happen if abortion was outlawed...Either way I would have to give it more thought. That's one thing that bothers me about the movement to outlaw abortions. It would be a big time cultural change. I'd like to think that someone had thought it through. I'm not suggesting that you should have, but I don't know that anyone has. I get nervous about cavalier disregard of consequences. Perhaps folks are just so upset at the though of mass child murder that they don't care about the side effects of outlawing it. Still bothers me. But there is nothing in the constitution that says no religiously inspired ideas can be considered. I think that X covered this very well so I'll be brief. If the religiously inspired idea has some rational basis, as many of them do, then it can be debated. But many are just other people's truths, as I mentioned earlier, or just plain superstition. There just isn't any way for them to prevail in the marketplace of ideas. It's not discrimination against the source of the idea or the person proposing it. It's that ideas without rational basis are just vapor. Usually they are performed on a fetus not an embryo. We never talked about the distinction before so I assumed you were speaking from the position that personhood begins at conception. Now I get the impression you're talking about heartbeat, whenever that is. I think I mentioned viability in an earlier post. When personhood starts makes a difference in the arguments. Which reminds me. One of the anomalies in the personhood argument is the exemption for rape and incest. I don't see how that's logically supportable. Either the fetus is a person or it isn't. A life of the mother exception makes sense because it's self defense, but the other two exemptions contradict the whole premise. They're about compassion for the woman. If some compassion mitigates the murder, I don't see why other compassion, like compassion for a woman with too many kids to care for, doesn't mitigate the murder. And now I'm out of steam. Karen