Claiming Moral Authority

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
101

[quote]pushharder wrote:
I’m not Adventist but let’s face it, the Sabbath is Saturday. Period.

In other words Sunday is NOT the Sabbath. In fact, Sabbath and Saturday come from the same root word.

Church tradition, not Scripture, metamorphized the Sabbath into Sunday.

The book of Acts issued no official command for the change. It merely states that early believers met (in someone’s home) on the first day of the week, “Domingo,” not Sabato, again with no “instruction” that this was the way it’s supposed to be.[/quote]

I think someone needs to buy you a calendar, push. Lol

According to the Gregorian Calendar (the one we have used since Pope Gregory the Great formulated it and changed from the Julian Calendar), Sunday is the seventh day of the week. There doesn’t need to be a command to change when it’s always been the seventh day (that’s what Shabbat means…seventh day, does it not?..the seventh day was made for man). I’m not sure why we’d celebrate the Sabbath on the sixth day of the week. Where does it say in Acts that it met the first day of the week in Acts?

And, you’ll have to prove to me that Saturn (where we get Saturday) and Shabbat are the same thing. One came from pagans during antiquity and the other came from Moses (I believe).

102

Along the lines of abortion, it’s obvious that we allow a woman’s will to decide whether or not the baby is human yet. That’s why if a man stabs a pregnant woman and the baby dies, he can be charged with murder in some places, even if she lives. Yet if she were to walk into the abortion clinic earlier that day, she could get the baby aborted. That, to me, is insane. That she, alone, is allowed to decide when it is a human.

The argument for “Well what if she’s poor and doesn’t wanna give the child a poor life devoid of opportunity?” is irrelevant, because 1) she should’ve thought about that before having sex (it does tend to make babies, in case you hadn’t heard), and 2) what does that have to do with whether or not it is a human being with human rights?

Are we allowed to kill homeless people, since they often lead lives of misery? Huh, that’s funny, I wonder why? Maybe because they are PEOPLE.

Also, “It becomes a human when it can sustain its own life” is equally ridiculous, IF you are using that to try and say that once it comes out of the womb, it becomes human. Last I checked, a newborn can’t survive without (naturally) being breastfed. So it is still getting all of its sustenance from the mother, just like when it was in her womb. So if that’s the criteria for being human, does a child become “human” around 8-12 years old, or what?

Granted, this isn’t the way I’ve always thought on the topic, but it is now. Perspectives change with time and experience of course. I, myself, can only see two possibilities:

  1. Once the egg is fertilized by the sperm, it is now a human being
  2. Once the fetus gains consciousness, it is a human being

Obviously the 2nd is harder to define, but I think it makes pretty simple sense. Currently, I go with number 1, but I may in the future change my mind to option 2. Time will tell.

103

[quote]pittbulll wrote:
IMO morals are not a concrete thing they are a concept that is shaped by modern pressures .

Maybe there could be laws that people have chose to ignore . Like the one that says no horses on the 13th floor of a building .

I am like every one else on this board only stating my opinion :)[/quote]

Nihilism at its dullest.

106

[quote]hungry4more wrote:

The argument for “Well what if she’s poor and doesn’t wanna give the child a poor life devoid of opportunity?” is irrelevant, [/quote]

Couple years ago I coached my son’s developmental baseball team.

The kids were warming up and I saw one kid throwing curve balls. (Now he was 7 so there wasn’t enough velocity for the ball to curve, but he was putting the spin on it.) I was a little concerned for his arm health so I asked him why he was trying to throw that.

He looked at me, “I don’t have a choice”

“What do you mean”

He held up his hand, and all he had was a thumb and a pinky. Took off his glove and his left hand was the same. The boy only had four fingers, total.

So I said, “I guess you don’t then.”

I spoke with his father after practice, and the Boy loved baseball. He would go home and study it, the history, the players, the stats. He wanted nothing more than to play ball in his life.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and the Boy is pitching in the “allstar” game. (Developmental league here, they didn’t even keep score offically, but the kids did.)

Human will and determination are amazing things. Watching the Boy give everything he had, and his mother choaking back tears in the stands was one of the most inspriational things I’ve ever seen.

I’ll never buy the “lack of opportunity” line again.

107

There’s a man in my church. Our Pastor interviewed him during the service which can be found here: http://gregnmary.gotdns.com/audio/brooks_abortion.mp3 where he shows the devastating effects of abortion on black America.

This man almost aborted his first child, a girl, because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to provide. Today she is an academic powerhouse and witness to the grace of God. They were in the clinic. Twice. And he just couldn’t live with the idea of killing his own baby.

He didn’t even know the Lord yet, but he would. God bless ya brother Jeremi. I know you look at her now and praise God for His work in your heart as he was drawing you home.

108

Some people simply have too much ego.

Some peole have a distinct lack of empathy.

Some people are quite logically adroit, though, they lack the neccessary imagination to really see anyting from another person’s POV.

Some people ignore the obvious fact >>> value gap in ethical debates.

Some people are stifed by their own inarticulacy & or they use a very closed system of language to express moral/ethical opinions/possibilities. Binary analysis, this or that, right OR wrong reasoning etc…no middle ground etc.

You’ll get all the above & much more in pretty much any PWI type forum…sad really.

109

[quote]hungry4more wrote:

  1. Once the fetus gains consciousness, it is a human being
    [/quote]

Around 30?

110

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
I’m not Adventist but let’s face it, the Sabbath is Saturday. Period.

In other words Sunday is NOT the Sabbath. In fact, Sabbath and Saturday come from the same root word.

Church tradition, not Scripture, metamorphized the Sabbath into Sunday.

The book of Acts issued no official command for the change. It merely states that early believers met (in someone’s home) on the first day of the week, “Domingo,” not Sabato, again with no “instruction” that this was the way it’s supposed to be.[/quote]

I think someone needs to buy you a calendar, push. Lol

According to the Gregorian Calendar (the one we have used since Pope Gregory the Great formulated it and changed from the Julian Calendar), Sunday is the seventh day of the week. There doesn’t need to be a command to change when it’s always been the seventh day (that’s what Shabbat means…seventh day, does it not?..the seventh day was made for man).

I’m not sure why we’d celebrate the Sabbath on the sixth day of the week. Where does it say in Acts that it met the first day of the week in Acts?

And, you’ll have to prove to me that Saturn (where we get Saturday) and Shabbat are the same thing. One came from pagans during antiquity and the other came from Moses (I believe). [/quote]

Actually, the Sabbath used to move around depending on the beginning and ending of religious holidays since the high days of those holidays were also considered as Sabbath, marking 6 days after that the next Sabbath, so it wasn’t always Saturday, but it moved around early on.

I am sure KigKai can expound on this in great detail.

111

[quote]hungry4more wrote:
Along the lines of abortion, it’s obvious that we allow a woman’s will to decide whether or not the baby is human yet. That’s why if a man stabs a pregnant woman and the baby dies, he can be charged with murder in some places, even if she lives. Yet if she were to walk into the abortion clinic earlier that day, she could get the baby aborted. That, to me, is insane. That she, alone, is allowed to decide when it is a human.

The argument for “Well what if she’s poor and doesn’t wanna give the child a poor life devoid of opportunity?” is irrelevant, because 1) she should’ve thought about that before having sex (it does tend to make babies, in case you hadn’t heard), and 2) what does that have to do with whether or not it is a human being with human rights?

Are we allowed to kill homeless people, since they often lead lives of misery? Huh, that’s funny, I wonder why? Maybe because they are PEOPLE.

Also, “It becomes a human when it can sustain its own life” is equally ridiculous, IF you are using that to try and say that once it comes out of the womb, it becomes human. Last I checked, a newborn can’t survive without (naturally) being breastfed. So it is still getting all of its sustenance from the mother, just like when it was in her womb. So if that’s the criteria for being human, does a child become “human” around 8-12 years old, or what?

Granted, this isn’t the way I’ve always thought on the topic, but it is now. Perspectives change with time and experience of course. I, myself, can only see two possibilities:

  1. Once the egg is fertilized by the sperm, it is now a human being
  2. Once the fetus gains consciousness, it is a human being

Obviously the 2nd is harder to define, but I think it makes pretty simple sense. Currently, I go with number 1, but I may in the future change my mind to option 2. Time will tell. [/quote]

I don’t think you can go with number 2 because consciousness cannot be defined, much less discerned when in it’s beginning in a human. Most people associate that with cognitive ability, but then we are defining human life on the basis of cognitive ability, which is a slippery slope.

113

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]hungry4more wrote:

The argument for “Well what if she’s poor and doesn’t wanna give the child a poor life devoid of opportunity?” is irrelevant, [/quote]

Couple years ago I coached my son’s developmental baseball team.

The kids were warming up and I saw one kid throwing curve balls. (Now he was 7 so there wasn’t enough velocity for the ball to curve, but he was putting the spin on it.) I was a little concerned for his arm health so I asked him why he was trying to throw that.

He looked at me, “I don’t have a choice”

“What do you mean”

He held up his hand, and all he had was a thumb and a pinky. Took off his glove and his left hand was the same. The boy only had four fingers, total.

So I said, “I guess you don’t then.”

I spoke with his father after practice, and the Boy loved baseball. He would go home and study it, the history, the players, the stats. He wanted nothing more than to play ball in his life.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and the Boy is pitching in the “allstar” game. (Developmental league here, they didn’t even keep score offically, but the kids did.)

Human will and determination are amazing things. Watching the Boy give everything he had, and his mother choaking back tears in the stands was one of the most inspriational things I’ve ever seen.

I’ll never buy the “lack of opportunity” line again.[/quote]

Forwarding this post to my son who just lost his index, middle and ring fingers on his dominant hand three weeks ago in a workplace accident and who is psychologically struggling with the loss (not to mention the physical pain).

Cool anecdote![/quote]

That sucks for your son, man, but yeah beans sure did provide you with some inspirational stuff to send his way!

About defining “consciousness”, that’s my biggest issue with it…so difficult to define, and certainly a slippery slope. As some would define it, kids don’t have cognitive abilities until a few years old, some argue higher, or lower of course.

That kind of thing is why I stick with option number 1 for now, because it is simple, easy to defend, and does make sense in an obvious way.

An egg and a sperm could theoretically hang around for a million years, and neither of them, by themselves, is going to ever become a human. For this reason, I have no problems with condoms, any pill that PREVENTS fertilization from occurring, etc. But as SOON as they join and become a zygote, barring disaster, all they need is continued nourishment to turn into a person like you or me. Nothing more, just a lack of attempts to kill them. So far, any other way of defining an unborn baby’s humanity that I’ve encountered is inherently a slippery slope.

114

[quote]hungry4more wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]hungry4more wrote:

The argument for “Well what if she’s poor and doesn’t wanna give the child a poor life devoid of opportunity?” is irrelevant, [/quote]

Couple years ago I coached my son’s developmental baseball team.

The kids were warming up and I saw one kid throwing curve balls. (Now he was 7 so there wasn’t enough velocity for the ball to curve, but he was putting the spin on it.) I was a little concerned for his arm health so I asked him why he was trying to throw that.

He looked at me, “I don’t have a choice”

“What do you mean”

He held up his hand, and all he had was a thumb and a pinky. Took off his glove and his left hand was the same. The boy only had four fingers, total.

So I said, “I guess you don’t then.”

I spoke with his father after practice, and the Boy loved baseball. He would go home and study it, the history, the players, the stats. He wanted nothing more than to play ball in his life.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and the Boy is pitching in the “allstar” game. (Developmental league here, they didn’t even keep score offically, but the kids did.)

Human will and determination are amazing things. Watching the Boy give everything he had, and his mother choaking back tears in the stands was one of the most inspriational things I’ve ever seen.

I’ll never buy the “lack of opportunity” line again.[/quote]

Forwarding this post to my son who just lost his index, middle and ring fingers on his dominant hand three weeks ago in a workplace accident and who is psychologically struggling with the loss (not to mention the physical pain).

Cool anecdote![/quote]

That sucks for your son, man, but yeah beans sure did provide you with some inspirational stuff to send his way!

About defining “consciousness”, that’s my biggest issue with it…so difficult to define, and certainly a slippery slope. As some would define it, kids don’t have cognitive abilities until a few years old, some argue higher, or lower of course.

That kind of thing is why I stick with option number 1 for now, because it is simple, easy to defend, and does make sense in an obvious way.

An egg and a sperm could theoretically hang around for a million years, and neither of them, by themselves, is going to ever become a human. For this reason, I have no problems with condoms, any pill that PREVENTS fertilization from occurring, etc. But as SOON as they join and become a zygote, barring disaster, all they need is continued nourishment to turn into a person like you or me. Nothing more, just a lack of attempts to kill them. So far, any other way of defining an unborn baby’s humanity that I’ve encountered is inherently a slippery slope. [/quote]

Even if you define consciousness, and that is your measure of humanity, your assertion falls apart with an unconscious adult.

115

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]hungry4more wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]hungry4more wrote:

The argument for “Well what if she’s poor and doesn’t wanna give the child a poor life devoid of opportunity?” is irrelevant, [/quote]

Couple years ago I coached my son’s developmental baseball team.

The kids were warming up and I saw one kid throwing curve balls. (Now he was 7 so there wasn’t enough velocity for the ball to curve, but he was putting the spin on it.) I was a little concerned for his arm health so I asked him why he was trying to throw that.

He looked at me, “I don’t have a choice”

“What do you mean”

He held up his hand, and all he had was a thumb and a pinky. Took off his glove and his left hand was the same. The boy only had four fingers, total.

So I said, “I guess you don’t then.”

I spoke with his father after practice, and the Boy loved baseball. He would go home and study it, the history, the players, the stats. He wanted nothing more than to play ball in his life.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and the Boy is pitching in the “allstar” game. (Developmental league here, they didn’t even keep score offically, but the kids did.)

Human will and determination are amazing things. Watching the Boy give everything he had, and his mother choaking back tears in the stands was one of the most inspriational things I’ve ever seen.

I’ll never buy the “lack of opportunity” line again.[/quote]

Forwarding this post to my son who just lost his index, middle and ring fingers on his dominant hand three weeks ago in a workplace accident and who is psychologically struggling with the loss (not to mention the physical pain).

Cool anecdote![/quote]

That sucks for your son, man, but yeah beans sure did provide you with some inspirational stuff to send his way!

About defining “consciousness”, that’s my biggest issue with it…so difficult to define, and certainly a slippery slope. As some would define it, kids don’t have cognitive abilities until a few years old, some argue higher, or lower of course.

That kind of thing is why I stick with option number 1 for now, because it is simple, easy to defend, and does make sense in an obvious way.

An egg and a sperm could theoretically hang around for a million years, and neither of them, by themselves, is going to ever become a human. For this reason, I have no problems with condoms, any pill that PREVENTS fertilization from occurring, etc. But as SOON as they join and become a zygote, barring disaster, all they need is continued nourishment to turn into a person like you or me. Nothing more, just a lack of attempts to kill them. So far, any other way of defining an unborn baby’s humanity that I’ve encountered is inherently a slippery slope. [/quote]

Even if you define consciousness, and that is your measure of humanity, your assertion falls apart with an unconscious adult.[/quote]

Not a bad point. I’m assuming you’re talking about people in a vegetative state, potentially forever, correct? Basically anybody else, like someone getting knocked out, or blacking out, it’s obvious that they’ll generally recover and regain consciousness. Otherwise, it’d be moral to kill people while they’re sleeping.

Before we go on, is that a correct assumption?

117

[quote]hungry4more wrote:
Not a bad point. I’m assuming you’re talking about people in a vegetative state, potentially forever, correct? Basically anybody else, like someone getting knocked out, or blacking out, it’s obvious that they’ll generally recover and regain consciousness. Otherwise, it’d be moral to kill people while they’re sleeping.

Before we go on, is that a correct assumption?[/quote]

I mean both.

If potential for future consciousness is what we are looking at, why doesn’t a fetus count?

118

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]hungry4more wrote:
Not a bad point. I’m assuming you’re talking about people in a vegetative state, potentially forever, correct? Basically anybody else, like someone getting knocked out, or blacking out, it’s obvious that they’ll generally recover and regain consciousness. Otherwise, it’d be moral to kill people while they’re sleeping.

Before we go on, is that a correct assumption?[/quote]

I mean both.

If potential for future consciousness is what we are looking at, why doesn’t a fetus count?[/quote]

If I subscribed to the consciousness thing, I would say a fetus doesn’t count because it never HAS experienced consciousness in the first place, whereas an unconscious person is just temporarily out of order.