vroom:
Why is it that liberals hate being called liberals? Do you find that word offensive? You vroom, from what I have read on this forum, are a liberal. Don’t run away from it, or attempt to disguise it. Embrace it!
“Let’s not use labels.” John Kerry’s response after President Bush tagged him with that very same “label” in their second debate. Apparently the country agreed!
vroom stated:
“I eat meat. I am personally responsible for the deaths of many cows and pigs. Unless you propose we all need to be vegetarians it is not “life” itself that you are claiming is special. I don’t personally kill these animals, but I hire a surrogate, known as a butcher, to do so for me.”
(shaking head) Now he compares an animals life with that of a human being…oh my.
Freedom of worship…one of the founding principles of this country. Even if that means to not worship at all. Don’t think that means however, that the guys running this country will abandon their religious values so they won’t offend this country. If you don’t like it, tough shit I guess. “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!!” RLTW
rangertab75
[quote]vroom wrote:
All I’m asking for is good arguments that aren’t based on religion. It would be nice of the arguments were consistent though. If you are going to go apeshit over the sanctity of some life, you need to be apeshit over the sanctity of all innocent life.[/quote]
I guess my ape-shitedness is over the fact that the babies being killed via abortion are looked at as a ‘medical procedure’ that is a choice of the mother.
The child in question has no one to defend their right to mature and grow into an Einstein, an Mozart, or a trash collector.
All death is tragic especially when people are being slaughtered - there are means by which the world community deals with them. Milosevic, Rowanda, Sudan, Nazi Germany, and yes even Iraq are examples of someone in the global community standing up and doing something about senseless murder.
But not when it comes to abortion. The unborn have no human rights. They are at the mercy of the mother, and HER right to choose.
Thank God my mom exercised her choice, and chose to keep me.
Whomever,
Have I claimed that life does not begin at conception? No. I don’t think you have been paying attention. Short of religion, morality appears to be based on the precepts of free will and/or suffering.
If an entity does not have free will and is not capable of suffering, then if it ceases to exist, most of us don’t care. A blade of grass is alive. A tree is alive. We generally don’t care. In some vague way we try not to slaughter needlessly, unless it interferes with our desires in some way.
A fish or a cow is alive. We start to care. It’s possible these things have some ability to feel. Perhaps when we slaughter them we might even do so in some type of humane way. Not many people even give the issue that much thought.
When it comes to people, suddenly we all make a large leap. We all know that people have emotions, feelings and potential. Chimps learn sign language and communicate, but don’t qualify. Dolphins, whales, dogs and some other species also show signs of specialness in some way. Sometimes we care and sometimes we don’t.
Entire species of plants and animals routinely become extinct and die – and they could evolve intelligence in millions of years or otherwise prove to harbor cures to diseases, but we generally don’t get our panties in a knot about these issues. Talk about unknown future potential.
What I am looking for is consistency. I am not simply changing the subject when I bring up other issues. I am trying to apply what you propose as moral standards to other issues in the world today, but when I do so, there are incredible inconsistencies.
This leads me to believe that your statements are based on something other than the importance of “life” itself. I suspect it is a religious interpretation, which is fine, I have no desire to deprive you of your own beliefs.
So far I haven’t really seen any good arguments other than “because I say so” or “because I believe so”. I do recognize there is the chance an aborted child could have become a Mozart, a Hitler, or more likely an average nose-picking nobody.
If I played the lottery last week I also could have become a millionaire. I’m not losing sleep about that either. Sure, I am happy that I am alive, but if I was never born I wouldn’t have the ability to feel poorly about it.
Now, I’m not claiming human life is equivalent to other forms of life, but if your answer for it’s importance is “just because” then you are really not saying anything but a belief you don’t have any reason for. That isn’t a criticism, I’m not claiming it is wrong, but be honest, think about where that belief comes from.
There is a phrase out there along the lines of “if you can’t explain something, then you don’t truly understand it”.
I am not asking you to change what you believe. I’m not criticizing what you believe. I’m merely asking you to try to explain to me why you believe as you do without resorting to religion. If it is a religious issue, there is nothing wrong with stating it is so.
However, there is a strange tendency around here to deny that things are the result of a religious interpretation. Morals do not require religion in order to be developed or expressed. They are not co-dependent and neither are they in opposition to one another.
Also, again, relax. There is no need to make wild accusations about my own morals and beliefs because they may not have the same basis as your own.
Zeb,
I was not comparing human life to animals as you mistakenly assumed, but if it will ease your troubled mind I will do so for you:
humans > animals > plants > objects
There, see, humans are at the top of the scale. Phew, what a relief that must be. I know I was shaking the very foundations of existence for a moment.
Silliness!
vroom -
your adherence to relativism at any cost is mind boggling.
Is there anything in this world against which you would take a stand?
Vroom, I can give you an argument that has nothing to do with religion or even murder. It is called responsibility. We are continuing down the path of no responsibility and people are gladly giving it away. Guess what happens when people stop being responsible for themselves? Thats right, someone else will become responsible for them. Ok who? Well lets see how about the government. Ok sounds good, Anything I do is now the governments responsibility. Since the government gets the funds for taking care of me from taxes who is “really” responsible for me now? the taxpayers? Well if being irresponsible is not frowned upon then why wouldn’t more people be irresponsible? It is certainly easier to blame others and get help even if you could probably make due on your own.
The fear for many of us is that more and more and more people are being irresponsible with the way they live thier lives. The REASON is because they know they will be bailed out. IF they knew that they would NOT be bailed out very very very many more people would choose to be more responsible because they would not want to suffer when the don’t have to. we are so dependant on the government programs right now that if we took them all away at once certainly there would be mass suffering. That in and of itself is a huge problem. I do think however that society can and will change to the extent that people who don’t absolutely need help or ‘HELPLESS’ people will not get any help, At least from the government. There will always be churches, groups, human rights groups, red crosses, charities that will help people who are really suffering to live. Other people will have to learn to toughen up and pull themselves up by the bootstraps and take care of themselves. Abortion is a way for people who make bad decisions, erase those decisions in an unmoral but easy way. It does not need to happen. It encourages bad behavior. It is like leaving a loaded gun in a five year olds toy box, and ust telling him he souldn’t play with it.
Vegita ~ Prince of all Sayajins
Rainjack,
I don’t think I qualify as a relativist at all. You continue to misinterpret me.
I’m merely showing what I see as inconsistencies in peoples explanations or reasoning - I am not saying that the conclusions the explanations are supporting are themselves necessarily wrong.
There is a big difference. Anyone jumping all over me for what I am saying needs to look a little deeper.
Try painting me with another brush…
Veg,
Your explanation looks convoluted, and since I’m at work, I’ll have to look deeper at a later point to see what you are saying.
Veg, I’m hearing you, and what you say makes sense. But I’m telling you bro, outlawing abortion is not the answer. The responsibility you talk about is not going to be possessed by some youngsters, and if they are irresponsible enough to get knocked up when abortion is illegal, they are not going to all of a sudden say: “you know what? I fucked up, and I need to pay for it.” Trust me, Veg, this is the girl who’s gonna do something stupid to herself to escape the consequences of her actions, killing the unborn child and maybe herself in the process. I can tell you horror stories from years ago about this sort of thing. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the law only solves so much of our social ill.
Veg,
I’m not sure your argument really does very much. I mean, if someone is willing to be your mommy for you, or heck, even wants to be your mommy, why should I care?
Of course, in general, taking responsibility for your own actions seems like a good thing. I won’t argue that it doesn’t. I’ve argued that the Bush administration should accept responsibility for some of its mistakes, so I certainly don’t see it as a worthless principle.
However, forcing people to suffer the consequences of all their actions, when they could reasonably avoid those consequences, that raises a different set of problems.
Sometimes people make mistakes. Sometimes people are coerced into actions or situations. Sometimes people act on something they believe with good intentions and things go wrong.
Anyone who smokes today knows they run the risk of developing lung cancer. Do we refuse to do anything for them if they actually develop cancer? Ha, ha, too bad! What a cruel and mean little world that would create.
Another problem with responsibility is the age factor. Society generally does not consider people to able to be responsible as they are younger. Laws often are not applied the same towards these groups of people. In fact, mental capacity has a lot to do with how a person is held responsible for a crime via sentencing.
Again, I don’t see that this concept as something that is consistently applicable. As such, I think it is just a supporting argument, not a valid underlying basis for your viewpoint.
Awww, man!
I agreed with vroom about something? 
Okeedokee, let’s see here. Harsh punishments won’t accomplish much. Vegita, you said that if the gov’t bans it then it doesn’t happen? I know you are smarter than that. If we attach a life sentence to abortion, we’ll have a whole bunch of teenage girls, rape/incest victims, etc. in prison. Just like with the drug war. Even if it means doing a dangerous back alley procedure, people will seek it out. People do stupid, self-destructive things all the time, BASE jumping, eating at McD’s everyday, alcohol abuse, listening to Toby Keith, I could go on and on (he he). Besides with a legal abortion, one life ends. With an illegal, botched abortion, two lives end.
Recently (in a Discover mag, looking for the issue) medical scientists found that they could predict, with accuracy, whether or not an egg would grow to term if fertilized. The tests involved looking at certain structures in the eggs I believe. Eggs that weren’t formed “correctly” were eventually miscarried. Anyway, if one of these doomed eggs were fertilized and then aborted before God/nature miscarried it, would that be wrong? It’s like shooting a man right before he’s executed.
As of 2003, there are nearly 30,000 “full orphans” in the U.S. There are about 90,000 kids who spend 5 years or more in foster care. How many children have you adopted so far?
I am not “pro-abortion”, I think it’s very sad and would not have my wife get one done (unless it would save her life). That said, having it legal and safe is far better than the alternative.
To-Shin Do
vroom,
It all comes down to this. When there is no objective standard of truth( and I’m not arguing WHAT that actually is at this point)then there can be no truth at all, i.e no right, no wrong
Truth (read right and wrong) is not something that can be decided by each person on each occasion, it is not something that can be decided by a government or a taecher or anyone for that matter. Truth by its very nature is not something to be decided upon.
As soon as you take away the objective and try to make truth subjective then you get yourself into trouble…real trouble.
If you take the stance that you have in a previous post then truth depends on free will and/or suffering… then…What makes me happy might be to kill someone… SO …what makes their suffering more important than my happiness and what right does anyone have to take away my free will to kill someone? Another example: if someone is shot in the head and dies instantly, has anything wrong happened according to your suffering theory? NO I think we both agree there is something inately wrong with murder(and I’m talking about humans)…tell me if you think I’m wrong.
The question then becomes who decides what is right and wrong??? The only way to do this is for someone to arbitrarily choose. You have already expressed your feelings about this situation when you asked…“who made you the arbiter of when it becomes life?” paraphrased.
The Point is: Suffering and free will cannot be the standard of truth and in fact truth can’t be subjective.
To-Shin DO:
That said, having it legal and safe is far better than the alternative.
Let’s go ahead and make drugs and syringes available to drug addicts so that they won’t share needles and risk contract a disease and commit other crimes to obtain their next fix.
Let’s also make murder of an adult legal so that we don’t end two lives in the process by sending one to jail. After all murderers are gonig to kill people whether it is legal or not.
Making something legal so the perpetrators won’t have to pay for their crime is rediculous.
Blakjak,
Interesting points. I don’t exactly agree with you, but at least it’s getting interesting.
When I first mentioned free will, I didn’t suggest that it was okay to do anything based on your own free will. I was suggesting it was not right to interfere with another’s free will. And yes, there are conflicts between people and their rights, free will, laws or whatever else you want to consider.
I will suggest that it is completely possible to come up with a generally agreed upon set of rules or a notion of right and wrong entirely from first principles. Of course, there will always be differences here and there, but society does get along somehow.
Anyway, what I was talking about earlier in no way suggests that you can go around killing people simply because you can do it without causing suffering. Although, I will say, when I die I hope it is without a lot of painful suffering.
As for an objective standard of right and wrong, can you point to one? There are various religions, which all attempt to define right and wrong behaviors, but they are not completely the same, or we would not have the need for multiple religions.
The world is a changing place, I’m not sure it makes sense to come up with one single rule set for all time. As far as I know, there isn’t one. We all decide on right and wrong all the time every day.
I don’t kick my pets or throw garbage out my window or piss on other peoples carpets. Well, I never kick my pets and I don’t do the other two very often. 
I don’t recall ever reading a standard rule set that suggested these behaviors were to be done or not done. Oh no, how could I ever make a decision on my own?
I would contend that we all have the ability to make decisions based on our experiences or knowledge. Heck, in some countries animals we consider pets are commonly eaten. Are we right? Are they wrong? Is there a standard objective rule either of us is violating?
Basically, everyone everwhere is applying a set of principles that are either their own or are adopted from religion or other locations. People make decisions based on these principles or beliefs and decide what is right or wrong.
They also decide on the scope of the right or wrong. For example, I can easily describe a situation where most people would not consider it wrong to throw garbage out a window. If I am tossing an apple core into a ditch I am not doing anything that doesn’t happen in nature anyway. Of course, there are also situations in which this act could be very wrong.
I’m really trying to dig and find out what principles people are applying. When they suggest them, I’m trying to see if they are really being applied in other situations or if the principle is just being held up because it works for a particular situation.
I suspect the viewpoint on right and wrong concerning the topic at hand is based on religious belief, but nobody is apparently willing to admit to it. They are searching for other reasons that they should be able to impose their viewpoint on others.
So far, these other reasons have not been very convincing. At least not yet.
[quote]blakjak wrote:
To-Shin DO:
That said, having it legal and safe is far better than the alternative.
Let’s go ahead and make drugs and syringes available to drug addicts so that they won’t share needles and risk contract a disease and commit other crimes to obtain their next fix.[/quote]
Hehehe… this is not even close to a good analogy to abortion. Come on!
Now you’re really going down the slippery slope, buddy. This point you are trying to make is invalid. Sorry.
[quote]Making something legal so the perpetrators won’t have to pay for their crime is rediculous.
[/quote]
Abortion is legal. At least for now. I pose this to you: Why focus so much on this being a crime? Abortion isn’t about the fetus, it’s about the woman. See my post a few posts back. I’m not going to repeat myself, because I’m long-winded enough as it is. And to anybody who might say that the fetus is a human with no advocate: wrong. That life is COMPLETELY dependent on the woman. Whatever she’s going to do to her body is her choice. The government isn’t allowed to claim dominion over the fetus’s rights until it is capable of carrying that fetus to term, plain and simple. Simply put: no uterus, no authority.
This is why I’m asking for you guys to help me with my Human Fetal Environment Pod. We could put this whole thing behind us if I could just get some more funding and a couple of lab assistants.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
That life is COMPLETELY dependent on the woman. Whatever she’s going to do to her body is her choice.
So you concede that it is in fact life?
Either that baby in the womb is a LIFE or it is nothing more than another appendage, i.e. arm, spleen, ear.Also, since that LIFE is dependent on that mother then she has the power and right to end that life? So if a woman delivers her child and then kills it that’s ok? because obviously that baby is totally dependent on that mother. Without that mother to take care of it the baby would certainly die.
And Yes, I know what you’re going to say…It isn’t completely dependent on the mother because someone else could just as easily take care of the baby that has already been birthed. If so, then you have to decide when the fetus can successfully be taken from the womb and survive with the help of someone other than the mother because it would be at that point that the mother no longer has the right to kill it.
[quote]So you concede that it is in fact life?
Either that baby in the womb is a LIFE or it is nothing more than another appendage, i.e. arm, spleen, ear.Also, since that LIFE is dependent on that mother then she has the power and right to end that life? So if a woman delivers her child and then kills it that’s ok? because obviously that baby is totally dependent on that mother. Without that mother to take care of it the baby would certainly die.[/quote]
You didn’t go back and read my other post, did you? Well, that’s okay. But all the points you just raised were addressed already.
Exactly! See, it’s not so complicated, is it? I will one last time call for help in designing, producing and marketing my HFEP idea. Anybody?
sorry about the quote and the text being the same color