SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Greg or e who wrote (5534)2/12/2001 1:15:26 PM
From: epicure  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 82486
 
Birth is the moment when it is no longer legal and ok to kill a child. Partial birth abortion is ok. Why birth? Because it makes the law easy.

There is no ultimate standard of morality (imo)- but the already born had better stick up for the already born, because we ARE already born. And we make the laws. We make them with our own self interest at heart. And it is in at LEAST 1/2 of the world's populations interest to control their own bodies and what humans get to be IN their bodies. Whether in means sex, or in means pregnancy. And if I wanted to slaughter living creatures in my body- via antibiotics, or kill a human pre-infant using my body as a host, I am for my being able to do that.

This is not imposing on people that they kill what is in their body (and let us note- most people don't- which is why there are too many people in the world, and over crowding and famine are such an issue). If YOU want to host a child in yours- go right ahead. I certainly won't stop you. But I wouldn't force anyone to carry one to term either- why? Because I wouldn't want that forced on ME ME ME.



To: Greg or e who wrote (5534)2/13/2001 7:58:49 PM
From: Solon  Respond to of 82486
 
So I talk about a reliable and principled source of morals (what I call RIGHTS). We have principles in Mathematics and in geometry; In physics, chemistry, geology--everywhere we look. The reason we can compartmentalize them as principles is because they are lawful truths that meet consistent requirements of logic and rationality.

In the field of ethics we also have certain principles that are lawful in nature--by the same token as the foregoing. I call these RIGHTS when referring to their lawfulness in nature. Other agreements or declared rights may have little or nothing to do with ethics. These may be termed, "rights".

I call rationality a grand right as it both measures and defines the reliability of principles. Without it we are beasts--attempting to survive with tooth and claw.

My RIGHTS have nothing to do with the "rights" of self interested and partial organizations, and their codified rules; Rather, they are moral principles contemplated and justified by objective reason alone--while subject to its least limitations.

I would not want to derive my moral values from primitive tribes who had minimal capacity to escape the bewilderment of superstition, and the singularity of force. The "principles" they lived by were neither rational nor moral (for the most part).

You don't really require me to "trot out those tired old arguments"--you have seen them. You already know that slaves, women, and foetuses had neither RIGHTS nor "rights" in those days. Well, I would argue that they had RIGHTS, but like gravity and e=mc2, there was no-one to apprehend them.

The supernatural flywheel to the superstitious confusion of these people was an imaginary God, who epitomized all the attributes and characteristics that the modern person of morals has come to detest.. They dressed Him in that which they dreaded most amongst one another: Mercilessness and deadly force. They made him a killer (and a murderer), an abortionist, a deceiver--everything calculated to control others by the fear of deadly force and a pitiless heart. I don't think you want to hear those "tired old arguments" from His own words. Let us just accept this as proven time and time again.

So we look at your psalm where we encounter the strange statement that individual existence begins "in the lowest parts of the earth" where God begins to form the body. This is clearly prior to the sperm meeting the egg--the event we know as conception. The bible doesn't say anything about a sperm fertilizing an egg, preferring to view an unknown process as a supernatural event starting somewhere beneath the earth where God makes him skillfully and secretly, and later "covers" the egoistic and narcissistic speaker in his mother's womb. For the psalm writer, life did not begin at conception, and he is unable to address the issue other than through vague appeals to supernatural mystery.

If the bible does not know when life begins, how are we to know when a human person exists? The only references to abortion in the bible are the threats by God to tear babies out of their mother's wombs and to dash their heads against the rocks, etc., etc.--that sort of thing. Somehow, one senses that the bible is not the most pleasant guide to right behaviour.

I had just finished writing about twice as much again as the foregoing, on my Lotus Pro. But chalk one up to Yahweh; It is all gone. I am more than upset, and I am going to lie down for a nap. I answered your questions, but I will do it again...



To: Greg or e who wrote (5534)2/13/2001 8:55:14 PM
From: Lazarus_Long  Respond to of 82486
 
Tell me: Are only Christians moral?



To: Greg or e who wrote (5534)2/16/2001 11:29:10 AM
From: Solon  Read Replies (4) | Respond to of 82486
 
I am not talking about abortion. I am talking about RIGHTS; In particular the RIGHT to be left alone, the RIGHT to ones own thoughts, and the RIGHT to ones own body.

Abortion is a value judgement. It can be moral or immoral. People seldom use their RIGHTS in the optimum way; They fail to seek value--they abuse their bodies. They KILL themselves prematurely...but this is their RIGHT.

Yes, I support the RIGHT to PBA. And do you understand that that is different than favoring, as you put it?

Do you wish to start fudging RIGHTS, and make it totally a numbers game--or a dice game of snakes and ladders? Do you wish the losers of these games to assist in their own burial, as reason is murdered and bulldozed over with the garbage of mindlessness? Do the concepts of life and freedom have no inherent value to you?

If this is the case, then how dare you object when they come with machetes to take out your family; Because, don't you know; Without REASON as the supreme tool of value--you are only as innocent as the amount of ammunition you can carry.

So you decide that you can enter a woman's body without permission to operate on a foetus; Or you commandeer her body to prevent her taking any substance that might affect the foetus from developing into a human person. Then one day you are told that 25% of all abortions are miscarried. You recognize that much of this is caused by improper habits of eating, drinking, smoking, as well as the stresses of poverty, guilt, fear, etc. You decide (you have already decided it is your "right") to have all pregnant women locked in a pregnant women's compound to protect the RIGHTS to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that you belive are the inalienable RIGHTS of all fertilized eggs (as you have said--from the moment of conception).

This, of course, is not enough; You must also control their sexual behaviour, and have someone from the State present during all occasions of sexual intercourse. You find out that IUD's work by flushing the ovum out of the F Tube preventing it from attaching itself to the uteral lining. You deal with this. As well--You make oral sex a crime once again, and you reassert the penalties of the church for this murder of the human that God is attempting to make.

Do you understand that when you ignore the RIGHT to ones body, you open the door to all these things: to slavery, to torture, to anything? Do you appreciate that when you abandon reason, you embrace mindless power?

I have not been talking about abortion, Greg. I am talking about RIGHTS. I am sure that most mothers value their embryos. But it is their choice, under their circumstances, to make an ethical and pragmatic decision. Do you really think that doctors who agree to assist a women having carried her foetus into the third trimester, are frivolous about the ghastly procedure? Of course, not. These procedures are done to save the life of the woman or to remove a dead or very damaged foetus; In some rare cases for the mental health of a (usually teen-aged) girl in denial and perhaps suicidal. Of course, both sides of this issue invent outrageous lies to make their points, so you will hear from your church or action group--whatever lies they are pushing. For the lies and biases of the other side, you need to get the material of the other side.

I am happy that people like yourself raise their voices and make their points. We all need to be reminded that compassion is what puts the human in human beings, and respect for life in any form should be taught from square one. But there can be no respect for life without respecting reason and RIGHTS.

What is the difference between 7 minutes before birth and 7 minutes after? Well, certainly not as much as 7 months before birth, or seven years, or seven centuries. Once the foetus leaves the mother's body, and becomes a distinct and separate human person, we call it BIRTH. We say that a separate individual has come into existence. We call it being BORN. It happened to you; It happened to me. Almost all human eggs, and almost all human sperm, do not get to become human persons--to not get to be BORN. They have life--just as your hair and your skin has life--and the DNA is human. With modern techniques your skin has the potential to become millions of human beings. The potential: Everything that is not in the present is potential. IS NOT does not equal IS.

I am surprized that you would insist that a human person begins at conception. This is not what society believes. Although this has sometimes been the position of the church, it was more commonly thought (by those who believed in a soul) that the first trimester was a vegetable soul, and the human soul was only formed when the foetus became animated usually synonymous with quickening. Other Christian beliefs used human appearance (limbs, digits, etc.) As an indication of a soul. Plato believed the embryo and soul were formed in the earth. This was a common belief shared by your psalmist (supposedly David, wasn't it?). How many married and unmarried women did he get pregnant?

Greg, your values are far too righteous for the group you profess devotion to. How do you take moral stands before your peers, when the God you follow killed 70,000 people (many of them infants, and many of them pregnant women carrying potential persons)--just to punish David for counting the people in a census...to punish DAVID--who had no more feeling for people than a cat has for a mouse. Oh well, carry on.

Oh, BTW, most of the bible is pro abortion--even leaving aside God's orders to kill foetuses, and so forth. Would you like to share with us what gives you the RIGHT to think for yourself, and to go against the majestic thought of these primitive humans who believed that water was held in the sky by the firmament, and that the windows of heaven were what allowed the rain water to come through??