An Agnostic on the Sidewalk
[Today’s guest blog post is by Nick Reynosa.]
One of my first experiences ever at an abortion facility was on March 31, 2011. I arrived early, just as the workers were approaching. I remember thinking of what horrible things were set to occur that day. I was emotional about it and had a strong sense of helplessness. As I left for my early morning classes, I hoped deeply for the sidewalk counselors’ success. Later that day I received an email from my good friend Wynette, who wrote with an elated enthusiasm that not one, not two, but three young women had changed their minds at the sidewalk that day and their babies had been saved!
This is the true face of sidewalk counseling.
Unfortunately, many Americans’ only exposure to sidewalk counseling has been related to the controversies associated with the pro-life movement that have been so copiously covered by the media. The peaceful free speech exercised by nearly all counselors has been deceptively conflated with the rare instances of extremism that these same counselors have consistently decried. For example, NARAL claims that there have been 6,100 acts of violence and over 156,000 acts of disruption at clinics since 1977. I guess we’re supposed to infer from these numbers that the tactics of sidewalk counselors are anything but peaceful, indeed, are quite consistently violent.
In reality, NARAL’s numbers are deliberately misleading; I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s adage, “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” How does NARAL manufacture such a grandiose figure? They key is in the wording in “acts of disruption.” This spin term is subjectively determined by the clinic workers themselves. These so called acts need not be illegal, charges are not filed let alone convictions garnered. A graphic sign, a counselor affirming that a public sidewalk is in fact public, these interfere with business as usual at the clinic and are thus are labeled “disruptive.” The fact that these contentions are perfectly legal and non-violent is intentionally misconstrued. In the 41 years of the pro-life movement there have been eight homicides against abortion facility workers. Major pro-life organizations have repeatedly and consistently denounced such acts of violence. Yet to this day, people use these crimes to poison the well and undermine sidewalk counselors’ compassionate message.
My first exposure to the sidewalk happened over three years ago; since then every experience has made me more pro-life and has proven to me the justness of our cause. Sidewalk counselors have been falsely slandered, and I feel I should use my own experiences to set the record straight.
In many ways the sidewalks outside of abortion facilities have become a microcosm of the larger debate. Not only are the talking
points of both sides well on display, but the truth of their claims is also
played out. What choices do “pro-choice” escorts think pregnant women should be
able to hear about? Is the pro-life movement run by old sexist men? In visiting
the sidewalk, you are confronted with so many realities of abortion. The
marketing and mechanics of the clinic, the employees of the clinic and their
interaction with the counselors. The friends and family that accompany these
women to the clinic. And most graphically, the aftermath and removal of the
remains of these procedures. For anyone who has never read accounts from the
sidewalk or is unsure about abortion in general, I challenge them to venture to
their nearest clinic, where reality will overcome previous perceptions.
Clinic Tactics
One of the first observations one
makes when visiting a clinic is how much thought goes into the design and
marketing of a clinic. Besides the counselors and their signs, there is no overt
evidence that the building is in a fact an abortion clinic. In fact the “A”
word is avoided like the plague. Phrases
like “Women’s Health,” “Reproductive Health,” and “Family Planning” abound. So
I ask: if abortion is a human right, akin to speech or assembly, why don’t
clinics proudly state that they offer the “A” word?
The actual layout of the clinic itself, including the clinic’s neighbors, are considered with the sidewalk counselors in mind. For example, the original Women’s Health Specialist Clinic in Sacramento had an L-shaped design, with its parking lot internalized within the property, to make the distance from the sidewalk to the door as short as possible. When the counselors were still successful, the clinic escorts put sheets over the metal fence on the back side and played loud music through concert speakers to drown out the appeals of the counselors. Eventually a new solid fence was added. Later, Women’s Health Specialists changed locations altogether, moving to a location co-occupied by Woman Infants and Children government assistance program as well as a substance abuse counseling program. The media subsequently criticized those on the sidewalk for making it uncomfortable to access those programs. Thus Women Health Specialists shamelessly used impoverished women and children as well as recovering addicts as human shields against the just cause of these sidewalk counselors
The clinics’ attitude toward the friends and family that accompany these women also speaks volumes. It is rare for a woman to come to a clinic completely alone. Oftentimes they are joined by their mothers, sisters, friends, boyfriends, or husbands, because they have asked for emotional support through this tumultuous time. Yet once arriving at the clinic, the woman is often isolated form her friends and family and instructed to turn off her phone. The clinic thus ensures that any doubts already being experienced by these women are not compounded by the reservations of those who brought them.
In addition to the lack of respect shown to these women’s families, clinic escorts routinely attempt to intimidate those sidewalk counselors exercising their free speech rights. I have personally had escorts come up right in my face and take my picture numerous times without my consent. I’ve had them state that I’ve been cited and served by a court ruling and then have them issue court documents that were several years old dealing with a completely different group. I’m not a lawyer, but I think that constitutes fraud! And I have them lie to me about the borders of the buffer zone. Don’t take my word for it; check out these videos for evidence of this intimidation and lies toward myself and my friends.
The Aftermath of Abortion
One of most compelling events at the sidewalk is watching the fetal remains of these procedures being removed. Once a week, a bio-hazardous waste truck comes and carts away that week’s portion of Women’s Health Specialists’ more than 6,000 annual abortions. Witnessing this, it’s impossible not to marvel at the fact that these atrocities are taking place right in the middle of residential neighborhood of Sacramento. It becomes clear that there are thousands of acts of violence being performed at clinics, but they are not being committed by these peaceful sidewalk counselors.
A Ray of Hope
In the literal shadows of these injustices, a small band of volunteers is all that stands as an appeal for these innocent children and a pro-life resource for these frightened women. These men and women—in my experience, mostly women—selflessly give their time to a ridiculed cause. Often times their compassion is met with profanity and spite, and yet they remain resilient. Outside of their fellow counselors and the women they help, it is unlikely that anyone will ever appreciate their presence, and yet they remain steadfast. So I ask, would you describe a nationwide effort consisting mostly of women offering help to other women as a “War on Women”?
So the next time you read an article about anti-abortion violence and intimidation, ask yourself: why does the media highlight the murders of 8 people, murders that have been condemned by sidewalk counselors, to slander these very sidewalk counselors? And at the same time, the media ignores the countless lives these people have saved through their efforts. Here’s to using this knowledge to support our community’s sidewalk counselors, whether it be with our time, money, or just our encouragement. And here’s to us overcoming our own reservations to join our rightful place beside them on the sidewalk.
It is nice to know that SOME abortion opponents are willing to put their money where their mouths are –except that the Evidence suggests that as soon as an unwanted baby is born, the abortion opponents are no longer interested in putting their money where there mouths are.
So, how about a Contract? Something like,
"I, the undersigned, with address and contact information provided below, promise to provide financial assistance for the currently unborn offspring of ___________, sufficient to cover prenatal care, birthing costs, and the expenses associated with food, clothing, shelter, schooling, medicine, and so on, for 18 years after birth."
If you are an abortion opponent and are willing to sign and fulfill such a Contract, thereby paying for what YOU want, EXCELLENT! I urge you to sign contract after contract, until you are destitute. Then maybe you will understand why overpopulation causes poverty! And why abortion can help prevent poverty.
If you are NOT such a person, but only want others to pay for what YOU want, then you have no business interfering in the slightest way with women seeking an abortion.
As an aside, note that the 8 people murdered by anti-abortion extremists pales in comparison to the violence done in the name of abortion, particularly against pregnant women who refuse to obtain abortions.
The site http://www.prochoiceviolence.com/ documents incidents of pro-abortion violence, and while it is a pro-life site, it's well-documented, and the only pro-choice source I could find that addresses this issue makes no serious disputes of the facts, and instead claims that sidewalk counselors provoke pro-abortion violence by "holding signs with hurtful and inflammatory slogans", among other things.
Oh joy, it's the "if you can't fund all this person's living expenses, you have no right to try to save their life" argument again. This is called contempt for dependency, and it's a core principle of both ageism and ableism.
I thought that the secular anti-abortion movement was wrong, but sane. I did not know that there were members of the secular anti-abortion movement who engage in detaining and harassing women who are on their way to receive medical treatment. That shocks and appalls me. That you stand side by side with the hateful religious right bullies in active opposition to those who are helping women safely receive the medical treatment they have chosen…that you count yourself as part of a movement that includes the assassins of doctors who are performing legal medical procedures…I am sickened and saddened. If you will go this far, you cannot be trusted to take no further steps in the direction of your evangelical comrades. What is next, secular anti-gay discrimination?
Go back to your friends, Nick Reynosa. The secular movement is better off without you.
It's like you didn't even read the article…
"medical treatment" – say it like it is… "those who are helping women kill their unborn children"
I doubt she did.
" I did not know that there were members of the secular anti-abortion movement who engage in detaining and harassing women who are on their way to receive medical treatment."
The first time I was ever on the sidewalk outside the "medical facility" where children were being killed inside, a woman approached me with her 2 year old son in-tow. She hugged me and with tears in her eyes, thanked me for being there because she said people like me were the reason her son was alive today instead of being dead and disposed of as medical waste. Her opinion means far more to me than the silly tantrum you've thrown above.
Umm…I'm an abortion opponent BECAUSE I have been impoverished and pregnant before, and I *still* don't see poverty as a factor that would have somehow legitimized me having my child killed. It doesn't legitimize *anyone* having their child killed, at all. I've already put my money where my mouth is, along with the mouth of my now 11 year old daughter, thanks.
I'm thrilled to know that the clinic workers have come up with ways to keep protestors away from those who seek abortions. I especially like the loud music to drown out the annoying people. Oh, and having the abortion clinics with women and children's government programs is awesome. Women seeing what it will be like for them to have babies they can't financially care for is nothing less than brilliant IMHO.
Wait. She read the name of the author. Isn't that good enough?
You are feebly attempting to LIE about the LIMITED resources of the world. Tsk, tsk! Only so many people can be accommodated, PERIOD. And poverty is what happens when you try to divide that limit among more and more mouths-to-feed.
And the word "triage" exists as even more evidence that Resources Are Limited, and that people can be allowed to die because of that.
Meanwhile, abortion is about PREVENTING people; it has the goal of killing mere-animal organisms before they have a chance of qualifying as persons. As I indicated in the comments of the recent blog on "sex positivity", NO abortion opponent can offer ANY Objective Generic data, regarding the differences between any type of person and any type of animal, anywhere in the Universe, such that unborn humans could even remotely have a chance of qualifying as persons.
So, if YOU want to pay for them to be kept alive long enough to become persons, then YOU should be willing to pay for all the costs that follow. There is NO "contempt for dependency" here, there is only the PROPER assignment of who gets depended-upon!
And you are exhibiting the fallacy of equating an unborn human with "baby" or "child", in spite of the FACTS (not the dictionary) about the Real Differences between unborn humans, which possess placentas as major body-organs, and post-natal humans that don't have placentas as major organs.
You might also be exhibiting the other fallacy described above, regarding equating unborn humans with "persons", but that is not so obvious, nor does it matter so much regarding your choices for YOUR situation. It is the choices you would force upon others, without YOU paying for them, that makes your position despicable.
Straw-man time again. Pro-life organisations such as Life and Good Counsel Network (in the UK; they have countless equivalent organisations in the US and elsewhere) offer material support to women for an unlimited amount of time after a baby's birth. Doesn't everyone know that?
Quote (since you obviously didn't read this blogpost) "there is no overt
evidence that the building is in a fact an abortion clinic. In fact the “A”
word is avoided like the plague. Phrases
like “Women’s Health,” “Reproductive Health,” and “Family Planning” abound. So
I ask: if abortion is a human right, akin to speech or assembly, why don’t
clinics proudly state that they offer the “A” word?"
And no one is pro-abortion?
Nope, not everyone knows it. Nor, I suspect, does everyone who does know about it BELIEVE it. The OFFER of unlimited material support is not the same thing as an actual supplying of unlimited material support, after all!
But here is what will happen once the Word gets out widely enough, assuming such organizations actually follow through with their offer. They Will Be Swamped. The desire to reproduce is very powerful, and any woman who can have a child that OTHERS are willing to pay for is likely to seek them out, using the excuse that "If you pay, then I won't abort".
Look up the definition of "ecological niche" some time. Every such niche is LIMITED in how many organisms it can support –and organisms supported by that niche ALWAYS breed until the limit is reached.
I think it would be better to have a upper age limit of personhood. Older people are a great financial drain on the world and they, unlike children, hold no potential to contribute in the future. Personhood should be revoked at retirement age and it should be up to the persons children to choose whether or not they should be euthanised.
There are no factual differences between the premature babies i saw battling for life in the Special Baby Unit where my son was cared for and the products of conception you advocate dismembering other than location.
Also i am british and left wing and i pay my taxes so the welfare state can help people in poverty.
"The placenta functions as a fetomaternal organ with two components: the fetal placenta (Chorion frondosum), which develops from the same blastocystthat forms the fetus, and the maternal placenta(Decidua basalis), which develops from the maternal uterine tissue."
Mothers and our children/offspring SHARE the placenta. It belongs to BOTH of us as a bodily organ. And, having one doesn't somehow change what kind of organism you are, Even If You Capitalize Every Word You Deem Important In Your Own Mind To Try And Differentiate Organisms With Placentas From Those Without.
And no, you can't just pretend like factual dictionary definitions don't exist because they disagree with your position, either.
"You might also be exhibiting the other fallacy described above, regarding equating unborn humans with "persons", but that is not so obvious, nor does it matter so much regarding your choices for YOUR situation. It is the choices you would force upon others, withoutYOU paying for those choices, that makes your anti-abortion position despicable."
Oh, you mean like how an aborting mother forces the "choice" to die in an abortion upon her gestating child, making them pay for that choice with their very life?
My taxes also paid for those premies' care and i am all kinds of fine with that because money is not fucking everything
If you're so worried about the allocation of resources, why not start by removing *yourself* as a resource-hog before deciding to deem an entire group of human beings "non-persons" in order to champion their extermination?
You have it backward. The Burden Of Proof is upon those who make the POSITIVE claim, such as "unborn humans are persons". What I do is show how EVERY reason you can offer, to support that claim, is arrant nonsense (usually based on Stupid Prejudice).
So, I don't "deem" unborn humans to be non-persons, any more than I "deem" that the color of the Sun is yellow. I simply Recognize Existing Fact, while abortion opponents tell Stupid Lies (which are distinguish-able from non-stupid lies by the ease with which they can be proved to be lies).
Nice try, but no cigar. The unborn human cannot survive without the placenta, while the pregnant woman can. To her, the placenta is NOT a vital organ. Meanwhile, you have NOT changed the basic Fact that the overall unborn human organism INCLUDES the placenta (even if not quite all of it). Post-natal humans do NOT include a placenta.
Next, I said nothing about "changing the kind of organism" –didn't you see how often I specify "human" when talking about the unborn? A baby is not a KIND of organism, it is a stage of development, and it is DIFFERENT from the unborn stage, entirely because of the placenta.
Next, I did not pretend that dictionary definitions don't exist. I was indicating that dictionaries only record common usage; they do not enforce Proper usage. The word "ain't" is in dictionaries despite all the efforts of English teachers to diminish its common usage. If you got a million people to start blogging about how "pebbles" can be called "baby rocks", you can bet that eventually the dictionaries will be updated to include a new definition of "pebble". Does that make the definition Proper, even if it exists in Fact? NO!
Likewise, modern Knowledge reveals that it is NOT Proper to call an unborn human a "baby" or "child". Period! (For more info about why it is imProper, see what I wrote to "TooManyJens", in the comment that starts with "That's an odd assertion".
Therefore the last part of what you wrote is Stupid Propaganda, a mis-use of Proper English to call a gestating unborn human a "child". As a mere animal organism, it LACKS any power of making Choices. We could make a comparison to a mosquito, which ALSO lacks the power of choice. It is a mere biological stimulus-response machine, seeking blood. When you swat it, you are making it pay with its life for doing what its Biology programmed it to do. An unborn human is also Natural Mindless Biology doing its thing, nothing more than that. And all your attempts are worthless, To Portray It As Something More Than What It Actually Is.
"Wait. She read the name of the author."
She probably had someone else read it to her.
Yup, we all know saying offensive things means people can beat you without recourse.
Those premature babies no longer had placentas, and they were battling for their lives precisely because of Murphy's Law (something went wrong with the overall construction process, which normally keeps an unborn human associated with a placenta until it is READY to survive without the placenta).
So, you are WRONG to say that "location" is the only difference between humans in wombs and humans in incubators.
Next, I do not "advocate" abortion so much as advocate the ALLOWING of abortion. Big difference!
And as for Britain being a welfare state, It Cannot Stay That Way Forever.
There are more things involved than just Money. What Money is, is a Tool To Represent ALL Kinds Of Resources. You need farmland to grow crops to feed people –except that farms are being turned into housing subdivisions. It Cannot Last. You need petroleum to make fertilizer to grow food –but this is the era of "peak oil", and in the future there will be less oil, less fertilizer, and less food –but abortion opponents idiotically want even MORE mouths-to-feed to be born!
Jeez, the video on the front page of that website is just sad. The sidewalk woman says "You are full of guilt" and the post-abortive woman attacking her says "Yes, I am." I would think that if that women truly, deep down felt that her abortion was nothing more than removing a clump of cells, she wouldn't react with so much anger and hurt. Abortion kills children and often hurts their mothers, which is exactly why sidewalk counselors offering help and options are so necessary.
What are people opinion's on the use of graphic images outside clinics? I've heard people say that they make the counselors look judgmental and turn the clinic into a safe haven. What about pre-natal images though, or info on when the heart beats and whatnot? I've never sidewalk counseled, so I don't really know what's effective. But it seems like there's two important messages to convey: "abortion kills a child" and "you have options and we can help."
Who cares about heartbeats? Every animal has one.
Especially people with dementia. I mean seriously, if you can't even remember who other people are or take basic care of yourself, clearly you don't display the physical or mental abilities to get to qualify as a person like the rest of us. (I'm being sarcastic, if that's not obvious.)
"Overpopulation and poverty are both entirely irrelevant to determining whether abortion ought to be permissible" –FALSE, otherwise the word "triage" would not exist. But it DOES exist, precisely because Resources Are Limited. Abortion is simply another type of triage, regardless of whether or not unborn humans qualify as persons.
And you have likely mis-remembered something. I have stated that the topic of infanticide is NOT the topic of ABORTION, and we are here to Debate ABORTION. There is no need for me to make a statement about infanticide –except I have, somewhere around here recently, said something to the effect that the more abortions are allowed, the less infanticides would be sought, even if they were legal.
Finally, I did NOT say that "no arguments have been presented" that purport to "prove" the personhood of unborn humans. I stated that all such arguments are fatally flawed (or words to that effect), leaving you with no valid arguments supporting the personhood of the unborn.
"Abortion is simply another type of triage."
Um, no. If overpopulation does not justify killing toddlers because toddlers are persons, then the only way it could justify abortion is if preborn human were NOT persons, or were at least morally inferior.
If an argument against fetal personhood also logically excludes newborns from being persons, then infanticide is entirely relevant to the conversation. For instance, if someone says that fetuses aren't people because they're not self-aware, that logically means that newborns are also not people. Infanticide would therefore be justifiable for all reasons that would justify abortion.
The only time the label ''blob of cells'' can be used probably is when the human is at the 1 or 5 cell stage would you agree?
But yeah the pro life movement needs to stop with the ''it's got brain activity'' or ''it has a heart'' or even ''it can feel pain'' because we kill plenty of animals everyday with the three things I just mentioned. The only thing the abortion debate comes down to is about personhood. So if brain activity does it, thenevery animal in the animal kingdom is a person and PETA will be very happy about that. Then I wouldn't be able to go out hunting anymore for deer since they are persons with heartbeats. So I believe that basing personhood around intelligence does the trick as we have to take into account non human entities that would qualify as persons as well as shown in science fiction. Ignorance_Is_ Curable gave 8 items on his website for what we can use at number #100 http://fightforsense.wordpress.com/
If you compared me to say a cow or pig even though I have the samething as they do above, there is still a world of difference between us.
Ever heart of ''utility'' before?
Also, what is your take on personism?
Also, are you a preference utilitarian?
You haven't paid much attention to the definition of "triage" have you? It Involves The Deaths Of Persons, due to limited Resources. So, like I wrote, when an abortion is sought (likely because of limited Resources due to overpopulation and/or poverty), it qualifies as a type of triage, and it doesn't matter in the least if the unborn is a person or not, since triage routinely lets persons die (and sometimes includes suicide or even mercy-killing them).
Infanticide is not about killing unborn humans, while abortion is exactly about that thing. That is why a discussion of infanticide is irrelevant to the Overall Abortion Debate. Feel free to start an Overall Infanticide Debate, if you wish. But don't do it here, because that is not what we are here for.
The Objective Generic Facts about personhood might be very relevant to Both Debates, but I'm only interested in the application of those Facts to the abortion Debate.
The relevance of the placenta is in regard to the application of the word "baby".to an unborn human. It was unknown until modern DNA testing that the placenta was PART of an overall unborn human animal organism. That makes it DIFFERENT from a post-natal baby or child. Different things should have different names, for better and more accurate communications. Is that enough?.
"The only thing the abortion debate comes down to is about personhood."
Yes I know, and I agree. But it's a little hard to make an entire logical case for personhood on a sign. And like it or not, many pro-choice advocates continue sticking to the "blob of cells" type of rhetoric long after the unborn human has a heart and brain and fingers and toes.
The discussion of the inherent conscious, self-aware, rational nature of embryos, fetuses and newborns has been had before on this site. An flea cannot think because of what it is, whereas an embryo cannot think because of how old she is. A cow is not rational or self-aware because of what it is, whereas a fetus or newborn is not rational or self-aware because of how old she is.
And I know you differentiate between "not having a current ability" and "not having a current ability to use an ability" (or some such phrasing, you probably know what I mean), and while I'll concede that while someone who is asleep probably falls into the "doesn't have a current ability to use an ability" (consciousness) category because they can easily wake up, someone who is in a coma decidedly does not have a current ability to be conscious, period. That they have more brain matter and more neural connections than a fetus comes to nothing, as the brain is still incapable of conferring consciousness upon the individual. For instance, if there's swelling in the brain, then the brain cannot provide consciousness until it changes physiologically. So if lacking a current ability to be conscious is one of the things preventing an embryo and some fetuses from being a person, coma patients too ought to be considered non-persons, whether they are expected to recover or not.
However I would say that it is your nature, not your current abilities, that is important. And if I met an alien that had a rational nature, I would consider him/her/it a person whether he/she/it was currently capable of expressing rationality or not.
You may have heard the Polaroid photograph analogy before, but if you haven't here it is. Say that you take a amazing, once-in-a lifetime photograph of something. Whatever you would be really excited to get a picture of. But, before the picture develops completely, someone else snatches it from you, glances at it, tears it into pieces, and throws it away. Would you be angry? Why? What if they said "It was only a potential photograph?" Or "It's just brown smudges."
Really everything about the image you took a picture of was captured in an instant, and inherently contained within the photo. It simply hasn't had enough time to fully express its inherently contained valuable properties. Does that mean it would be reasonable to throw it away?
So with the placenta, you're not arguing that it's not a person, just nit-picking the term baby? "Baby" is just a term of endearment, though people are generally referring to the baby that will be born and not the placenta. But it's all pretty beside the point, as it has no moral relevance. People call unborn humans "babies," refer to their grown children as "their babies," etc. People even refer to their pets as their "babies," or call their romantic partner "baby."
If abortion is simply a type of triage and it doesn't matter in the least if the unborn human is a person, why isn't killing toddlers, or leaving them to die, simply classified as triage?
And as I said, if your reasoning against fetal personhood also excludes newborns from being persons, than the logical extension of that argument is that infanticide ought to be legal. If you're unwilling to accept that infanticide should be permissible, then you are simply unwilling to accept the logical implications of your own pro-choice arguments.
Edit out the parts that were meant for me then and not the other ignorance please. I will then reply
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic here.
Of course there are people who are pro-abortion.
Could you take a guess?
And I think you will find that if I ever use the phrase "blob of cells", it will be in terms of describing a morula or blastocyst, not any other growth-stage of an unborn human.
WOW…
First of all:
___________________
person per·son (pûr'sən)
n.
A living human.
The composite of characteristics that make up an individual personality; the self.
The living body of a human.
Physique and general appearance.
The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
(note that this is from a MEDICAL dictionary.)
______________________
Secondly, how do you feel about firemen? They go to a burning house, they put out the fire… Then they just leave. They don't rebuild the house, they don't replace the lost valuables… They just LEAVE. Do you hate firemen? Secondly, we support Crisis Pregnancy Centers – they help pregnant women with financial aid for education, welfare, safe-haven (from abusive pro-abortion boyfriends and parents) non-abortifacient birth-control, pregnancy tests, and, AFTER the child is born, they help with adoption, child-care, housing, schooling, and welfare. CPCs outnumber abortion mills by nearly 5:1.
Finally, you claim that slaughtering a child in the womb saves him/her from a fate worse than death, correct? Well, what if some horrible fate befalls the child AFTER he/she is born? Would you support killing the child at THAT point? …Or do you only care about fetuses?
I would LOVE for you to cite examples of "stupid lies" that we tell. 🙂
Yeah, what would a medical dictionary know about medical FACTS. Everyone knows that personhood is determined by a government's OPINION.
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"..in the eyes of the law…the slave is not a person." (Bailey/als. v. Poindexter's Ex'or, 1858, Virginia Supreme Court)
"An Indian is not a person within the meaning of the Constitution." (George Canfield, American Law Review, 1881)
"The statutory word ‘person’ did not in these circumstances include women." –British Voting Rights case, 1909
"The Reichsgericht itself refused to recognize Jews…as 'persons' in the legal sense." (1936 German Supreme Court decision)
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You claim to be "pro-choice"? You support the SINGLE choices of depriving a living human being of an entire LIFETIME of choices. If you're "pro-choice", then advocates of slavery are "pro-freedom" because they fought for the "freedom" to own slaves.
Your bumper sticker slogans and diatribe fail.
You're imposing completely arbitrary parameters on "personhood" and human rights. We're going by SCIENCE; a living human being is a living human being from the moment of conception. Find me any embryology/biology book, or medical journal that puts an asterisk next to "human being". You're just not going to find it because reality just doesn't comport to your beliefs.
If YOUR holocaust is just, then ANY holocaust is just. There is no consistency to your claims; all you have here is "Nuh-UH! UR RONG N UR STOOPID!!1"
You're gonna have to do much better than that; we're ending your holocaust. It won't be too much longer until abortion is just another shameful skidmark on the underwear of human history.
''discussion of the inherent conscious, self-aware, rational nature of embryos, fetuses and newborns has been had before on this site. An flea cannot think because of what it is, whereas an embryo cannot think because of how old she is. A cow is not rational or self-aware because of what it is, whereas a fetus or newborn is not rational or self-aware because of how old she is.''
Care to explain why the unborn human should be allowed to come out of the womb and gain the intelligence for self awareness, processing speed, and rationality? If your trying to base personhood based on what type of entity it is, then you will run into some problems with a alien species that happens to be R-Strategists. Ignorance_Is_Curable has always answered that on his website. At #28 http://fightforsense.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/manyargs/#comments
As for your consciousness talk, a entity need only be conscious to gain stuff like the ability to talk, to write, and gain other things like theory of mind and morality and the ability to manipulate abstractions rationally. Those 3 items I just told you can only be gained if the human in question got the appropriate nurturing if they did not then a feral child is the result.
Most who went into comas like my uncle did came out just fine with everything still intact so I don't see why you made the comparison.
As for your little photograph talk sure I would be mad because the photo was a ''once in a life'' sort of thing. As in the case of unborn humans they ain't a ''once in a life'' time sort of thing as they can easily be made and replaced while my photograph would not have been. Ever heard of law and supply and demand?
Agreed, the placenta has nothing to do with personhood, and much to do with stage-of-growth. I might note that while an unborn human is often called a "baby" or "child", I'm not aware of anyone calling it an "infant".
With respect to "term of endearment", the Problem is "conflation of definition". Another example of such involves the word "being". Abortion opponents are very fond of the phrase "human being" when talking about unborn humans, even though there is no logical reason to do that. "Unborn human" is perfectly adequate a description! HOWEVER, the word "being" also happens to be a synonym for "person". Therefore, by CALLING an unborn human a "human being", they can conflate definitions, and conclude that an unborn human is a person. Tsk, tsk!
Notice how they DON"T ever say something like "fetus being" in casual conversation, when talking about an unborn human! If they really believed unborn humans qualified as persons, they should be as willing to say "fetus being" as "human being". Meanwhile, people DO occasionally use phrases like "intelligent being" and "extraterrestrial being" and "alien being" in ordinary conversations, thereby reinforcing the synonym of "being" with "person".
So, while a "human being" is certainly a person, a "human" –JUST a "human"– is NOT automatically also a person. An example of a human non-person is a brain-dead adult on full life-support; the PERSON is DEAD; only the human ANIMAL body remains, and that human animal is a non-person. But abortion opponents don't care about consistent/accurate communication; all they want is to convince others, no matter how foully they go about it (such as by definition-conflation), that unborn humans are persons. Tsk, tsk!
So, back to "baby". CALLING an unborn human a "baby" (term of endearment) lets them conflate that definition with "newborn baby that has legal personhood rights". Tsk, tsk!
You might take a peek at #103 of the list at fightforsense.wordpress.com
It was sarcasm. She at least mentioned the author so I figured she at least read who wrote the article. I'm not sure if she actually read the article, though.
You need to read this:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq/words_in.htm
All you need is a lot of people using a word a certain way, No Matter How Idiotically, and a description of that "certain way" will eventually end up in a dictionary.
Your dictionary definition of "person" would prevent every member of every nonhuman intelligent species in the Universe from qualifying as a person. That's how idiotic it is.
Meanwhile, there is a definition that is so obsolete it is never got into any dictionary. Anthropologists studying primitive tribes discovered that for them, persons were members of the tribe, and non-persons were everyone else. That sort of Stupid Prejudice is still with us whenever a genocide occurs.
Do You Want Humanity To Be So Stupidly Prejudiced When We Start Exploring The Stars???
If not, then we need a better and more Generic definition of "person", period.
It is the JOB of a fireman to put out a fire, and sometimes to try to figure out how it started. Why should they hang around to do things not in their job description?
DUH, of course CPCs need to outnumber abortion clinics. CPCs have to deal with a much faster-growing population, after all. But it won't last; they will all eventually be saturated with as much as they can handle. Perhaps THEN they will see logic in allowing abortion.
I don't recall claiming that abortion saves an unborn human from a fate worse than death. I'm aware of using words that might be interpreted as saying an abortion saves the pregnant woman from a fate worse than death (#27 at fightforsense.wordpress.com ). If you can find something backing up your interpretation of what I've claimed, I'd like to see it!
Paraphrased Stupid Lie #1: "There is such a thing as Intrinsic Value."
#2: "Human life matters."
#3. "Humans are immune to a Malthusian Catastrophe."
#4. "Unborn humans are people, not mere/only animal organisms."
#5. "Human rights are supremely important."
#6. "Unborn humans are innocent."
#7. "Sex obligates in a particular way."
#8. "Deliberate abortion has no equivalent in Nature."
#9. "Potential persons should be treated like actual persons."
How does not saying "fetus being" somehow mean that I don't really consider unborn humans as persons? I don't say "newborn being" or "toddler being" or "teenager being" either, because those all sound stupid.
I notice you said "newborn baby that has *legal* personhood rights," although, if a newborn isn't morally a person no such legal rights should be recognized.
I'm guessing Yes.
It appears that I was right.
''person per·son (pûr'sən)
n.
A living human.''
So if a group of friendly foreigners from outer space were to land in your country, would you deny them the right to life just because a dictionary said so?
Seriously think with your head for once. Dictionaries only record how words get used and if Americans are smart enough to know the difference between the words 'person'' and ''human,'' you bet any dictionaries definitions related to species membership would be boomed.
Here is an example
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/person
Philosophy . a self-conscious or rational being.
FALSE; you are going by human-centric (and thus ARBITRARY) Dictionary Definitions, not Objective Generic Scientific Facts regarding distinguishing any type of person from any type of ordinary animal, anywhere in the Universe.
As an example of how Stupidly Prejudiced is YOUR dictionary definition, study the history of Koko the Gorilla and explain why she cannot possibly qualify as a person, even though she is every bit as capable as an average human toddler who has no vocal chords. Also, what is your objection to this: europeanlifenetwork.blogspot.com/2012/02/dolphins-are-persons-with-right-to-life.html
"There is no consistency to your claims; all you have here is "Nuh-UH! UR RONG N UR STOOPID!!1" —that looks pretty consistent to me! Even though you are actually lying. Go ahead, find an exact quote where I outright-called someone stupid.
It is not impossible that you will eventually be able to ban abortion; all you have to do is spread your lies faster than the Truth, and the process of democracy lets many unusual things become possible (Rome and Germany were varieties of democracies, until they, respectively, voted to let Julius Caesar and Adolph Hitler become dictators).
But your ban won't last; the Social Pendulum always swings back. And, there is another "strike" looming against abortion opponents. You folks are working toward causing, whether you know it or not, or admit it or not, a Malthusian Catastrophe, a thing for which the TYPICAL death rate is 99% of the total population. When the survivors fully understand that you-all abortion opponents caused it by insisting that ever-more mouths-to-feed must be born, you will DESERVE to become hunted down like any other genocidal maniac.
Failing to call an unborn human a fetus being means you are not being consistent in your claim that unborn humans are persons. Tsk, tsk! If you are not consistent in your claim, why should anyone believe your claim?
Morals are arbitrary and therefore worthless –didn't you know that? If one culture can claim that eating pork is immoral, while another can say it is just fine, we KNOW that morals are arbitrary! Useless for Universal Applicability, therefore.
Meanwhile, "ethics" has a chance of being Universally Applicable. Because every system of ethics always begins with a fundamental Objective foundation-statement, perhaps "persons need to get along with each other". From that one thing you can derive right-to-life, right-to-property, and various other things, equivalent to things typically associated with "morals", but superior because NOT founded on Arbitrariness.
Again, see #103 at the place previously indicated.
Do not confuse a Dictionary-based common-usage definition of "person" with a Legal definition (which allows a corporation to qualify), or with an Objective Generic definition. I'm only interested in the last of the three, because, to qualify as "Objective", it cannot be human-centric. Go ahead, I'd really like to see how a definition of "person" devised BY humans FOR humans is generically applicable to all intelligent species everywhere in the Universe.
As for your worthless blather about "pro-choice", you start by Propagandistically mis-using the phrase "human being", and continue by ignoring the Fact that an unborn human doesn't HAVE the power of choice. Then you compound your errors with an attempt to equate "potential" with "actual", in which case, since YOU have the potential to become a corpse, you should right-now be finding a plot in which to be buried tomorrow, before you rot worse.
It is a Fact that a lot of women who seek abortions are not ready NOW to raise a child, but expect to be ready in the future. What makes their current UNWANTED pregnancies so important that women should be enslaved to the caring-for of mindless animal organisms? Let's see if you have an Answer that doesn't include Stupid Prejudice.
The point is that the word "being" is a synonym for "person". So, no matter what you call an unborn human, you need to as-consistently indicate you consider it to be a person, say by calling it a "fetus being" or "fetus person" as *I* consistently use phrases such as "living unborn human animal organism". Not in the least do I deny it is alive or human; I only deny that it qualifies as a person, because that is what the Objective Generic Facts indicate.
To put this in context, suppose a flying saucer landed and some intelligent beings emerged that happened (convergent evolution, maybe) to look like kangaroos. Would you be willing to call those persons "kangaroo beings", while ordinary Earthly kangaroos are still/only called "kangaroos"?"
So, if you think it sounds stupid to call an unborn human a "fetus being", then that just means to me you are NOT actually 100% convinced it is a person! And when you use it in front of a crowd and get laughed at, that should make it even more obvious that despite all the blather of abortion opponents, very few people are TRULY convinced that unborn humans qualify as persons!
Regarding toddlers, remember what YOU said about "baby" as a term of endearment. Just maybe, if the word can be mis-understood so easily, perhaps it shouldn't be used at all! We still have the perfectly adequate word "infant", after all.
Regarding the Objectivity of "persons need to get along with each other", we have LOTS of Historical data (Objective Facts) showing what happens when they don't. And the word "need" is rather appropriate, because humans are SOCIAL animals –it is irrational to think that the human genetics, associated with social-ness, exist ONLY for detrimental reasons. Any questions on that?
As a result of human social-ness, we developed something that millennia after its development, was called "the Social Contract", and is closely related to things typically called "moral" or "ethical". However, thinking of it as a "Contract" gives us a special viewpoint regarding those who accept it, and those who don't (someone who only looks out for number one). Those who didn't accept the local Social Contract, and didn't move away, tended to get killed. After all, if they don't recognize right-to-life for others, why should others do it for them?
This is what ignorance said on his site,
''You have probably seen the proposed list in #100 of the Refutations document. One of them is about being able to understand and manipulate abstractions; the concept of “rights” is an abstract thing. So, a semi-facetious definition of “person” could start with that and extend it a bit: “Any entity able to understand the concept of ‘rights’ AND claim some rights for self”. Obviously most ordinary animals will fail that test. But most 50-year-old-humans will pass it. Logically, if you make the claim for yourself, but do not respect the equivalent claim made by others, then your claim can also be disrespected, by those others…which leads us back to the Social Contract, and the origin of that abstract concept, “rights”. And there is NO arbitrariness involved here –Logically, any organism unable to understand the concept of “rights” is not going to feel that “rights” are violated if the organism is killed!''
I agree with this do you?
Hey, friends, why are you feeding the troll?
Contraception is a valid way to prevent overpopulation, killing is not. Abortion is simply killing the unwanted people, it isn't keeping them from ever existing. That leads me to wonder, how do you feel about the already-born and impoverished humans that you believe are overpopulating the world right now? If wealth and adequate resources are requirements for a human's life to be considered valuable, then what moral objection should anyone have to me walking up to a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk and shooting him? Would you have any objections to someone dropping a bomb on a village full of starving children in Africa? I would hope so.
Killing people is indeed a bad way to deal with the overpopulation problem, but unborn humans don't qualify as "people" in any manner that would work to distinguish any type of person, anywhere in the Universe, from any type of mere animal organism. That is, unborn humans are only mere animal organisms.
If you have any data showing some manner in which unborn humans are equivalent to any non-human persons who might be living in the Andromeda Galaxy (or living in the Whirlpool Galaxy, or living in the Sombrero Galaxy, or …) let me know!
What troll? Is that your description of someone able to prove you are WRONG?
You seem to want to dodge answering the question fully by bringing up the completely irrelevant topic of beings (persons, whatever you want to call them) that may or may not exist on an alien planet. From what you have posted so far, I gather that you value the lives of fetuses that will be potentially raised in poverty much less than those who will have access to adequate resources. Otherwise you would not relate the subject of poverty to abortion, correct? You speak as if a life of poverty isn't a life worth living, or at least that it is lesser. That is why I ask again, if a human life lived in poverty is somehow less valuable than a life lived with adequate resources, then what is the moral objection to killing the homeless man or the starving child?
What do they call it when they remove a parasite from your body, say, a tapeworm or a guinea worm? What should it be called when they remove an organism that is not a parasite, but acts much worse than a parasite?
1. A parasite and an unborn human both steal nutrients from a body not their own.
2. A parasite and an unborn human both dump toxic biowastes into a body not their own.
3. An unborn human (but not a parasite) infuses addictive substances into a body not its own.
4. An unborn human (but not a parasite) infuses a mind-altering substance into a body not its own.
You are ignoring the Fundamental Distinction between unborn humans, mere animal organisms, and PEOPLE (regardless of their circumstances). That's why I need not respond to your nonsense directly. It would be like trying to answer a loaded question –the only way to deal with such a question is to expose the fundamentally flawed assumptions that that question contains.
And so that is what I did.
As a result of the failure of abortion opponents to recognize that unborn humans are mere animal organisms, they are working toward WORSENING the economic situation for almost everyone. The world has Limited Resources, and the more the total population of people is FORCED to be increased, by banning abortion, the more those Limited Resources have to be divvied-up, leaving less for each person.
And you seem to be so hung up on human vs. person. As I'm sure you you very well know, blacks, fully grown adult blacks, were once known to be humans, but still considered non-persons. So even though they have always been humans, would it have been justifiable to kill them during the period that they didn't have the label of person?
No, it is abortion opponents who are so hung up on equating "human" with "person" that they exhibit Stupid Prejudice about it. NO non-human person-class being can qualify as a person according to the definition that abortion opponents want to use!
Meanwhile, a set of Objective Generic Tests, specifically devised to distinguish any type of person from any type of animal, will NOT categorize any group of person-class beings (such as most adult black humans) as mere animal organisms. If ANY type of person can, by those Tests, be identified as a person, NO person will be excluded. It Is Very Simple!
Wow. Look who is being hateful.
That's a very nice post, but it misses something. The word "animal" includes bacteria. We Cannot Survive Without Killing. Our immune systems are constantly killing invading bacteria. Therefore, if humans claim any degree of "right to life", they are also and automatically also claiming a degree of "right to kill".
The crux therefore appears to be, "Where do you draw the line", between animals that we don't hesitate to kill (like cockroaches and bedbugs and flies and mosquitoes), and animals that one might have a rationale for hesitating to kill?
You might also pay attention to the Fact That Humans Are Omnivores –killing animals to meet nutritional needs has been part of our existence for millions of years. Also note that some animals, like tigers, are Pure Carnivores; they get ALL of their nutrition from killing. Does that mean Nature has granted tigers a "right to kill" animals significantly larger than cockroaches? If we are omnivores, how can we say that Nature has NOT given us at least SOME "right to kill" larger animals?
This has been a quick reply. I will look through your post more thoroughly, and post a more thorough reply later. (And if you can that comment posted as an article somewhere, excellent!)
When we look at the bigger picture here, do you honestly think we will be using skin color to determine if a entity should be a person or not?
Hello Ignorance, can you answer this for me.
You linked this website from your website. http://www.xenology.info/Xeno/26.3.2.htm
I know that symbolic communication are the things we give meaning to and represent ideas we have in place.
Time binding I know is where abstractions are unlimited. So for post natal humans, our level of abstraction can keep going. We can do things differently each generation. While ordinary animals do pretty much the same thing every generation. This is probably the primary reason humans are on ''top'' of the food chain. Though that is a claim a unborn human can't make at all now is it? =) Don't get me wrong though we can become food for a hungry tiger or a crocodile.
Self awareness can obviously be measured objectively. A human doesn't have the brainpower for that mental ability until 18 months of age per the scientific facts.
Now for ethical behavior, care to tell me how you can measure that in a organism? I would like to know your opinion on that. Thanks = )
Wow. What an obnoxious troll.
I finally found someone actually using the phrase ''alien being'' in a interview with someone who claimed to be part of the area 51 scene.
Located at 26:05
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z2327rb7w4
''Can you not agree that sometimes us beings with capability of higher thinking have to create a set of rights to protect the lives of the members of our species.''
A unborn human doesn't have the brainpower for higher level thinking nor capable of agreeing towards the concept of ''rights'' as all since it lacks that higher level abstraction. So really with prejudice unremoved, there should be no reason to apply it to them just like there is no reason to apply it to ticks and such.
You also failed to provide anything that he has asked for in his comments and instead go to something else completely. Care to actually respond to the content in his post this time?
Care to actually answer his post with substance?
See how the "pro-lifer" is perfectly willing to "dehumanize" (trolls are not humans, of course) someone who can prove they are wrong? Yet the one they would dehumanize has NOT done any such thing regarding unborn HUMANS. Tsk, tsk!
Different folks have different Lists of characteristics they would use to Generically define the concept of "a person". It remains to be determined what the Best List is.
Ethical behavior requires certain knowledge. Logically, one cannot act ethically in complete ignorance. And since knowledge can be tested-for…
(details to be worked out by an appropriate expert in the topic, naturally).
Here's something indicating that quite-young children know more than you might expect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FTVn3QyrYo
Another nice long post that will take some time to digest. I notice that no mention was made of WHICH omnivores were the basis of the data provided. There are quite a range –wolves/dogs and bears and rats and pigs are all omnivores –and those are just one ones I can think of without hardly thinking about it. Meanwhile, some animals you normally think of as vegetarians, like hippopotamuses, do occasionally indulge in eating meat.
Another factor, unique to humans, is FIRE. We are adapted to eating cooked food –and heat significantly affects food in a number of ways. It makes meat more chew-able, for example, so we don't NEED carnivore-type teeth so much, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if heat-processing of meat makes it more like eating vegetables in other ways, too. (But veggies are changed, too! The LENGTH of the human digestive tract is significantly shorter than that of similar-body-weight animals that never eat cooked food; cooking makes it easier to get the nutrients out.)
Likewise, we have TOOLS so we don't need sharp claws. And when knives are used to cut meat, obviously human teeth don't need to do the things that other animal teeth do, to rip flesh from a carcass.
You are definitely mistaken regarding the sweat gland adaption. Humans are adapted for "cursorial hunting" –running game to the ground. Take a human marathon runner (who knows how to follow spoor) and have him (or her) chase ANY other land animal that doesn't want to be caught, and the human will win, partly because of things like our sweat-gland system.
It might be noted that between wolves and hippos, there is a RANGE of types of omnivore, from the mostly-carnivore to the mostly-vegetarian, It is my understanding that human health is best served when the diet is MOSTLY vegetarian. But not entirely vegetarian.
And regarding that last thing, there is another factor to consider. Humans evolved in Africa, and therefore human dietary needs reflects the availability of stuff in Africa –and that's why we are omnivores. But then humans started exploring the world, and found lots of nutritious things that were never near Africa. As a result, it certainly is possible for humans to become 100% vegetarians. But that doesn't mean we HAVE to do it. Variety is the spice of life, after all!
This has been a quick answer, and I may extend this after I more-thoroughly study your long comment.
Read #103 (and perhaps some of the other items that are linked inside #103).
SUBJECTIVE valuations can be quite workable, provided you can get enough people to agree on a subjective valuation. See #103.
You have no substance, proof, or ability to make a coherent point.
I will post a lengthier post when I have more time, but before I do, can you clarify a few things for me:
Are ignorance_is_curable and Ignorance_is_not_curable the same person?
Are either posters the author of the fightforsense article?
Are you pro-choice or pro-life?
Ignorance_is_not_curable is a different person than myself. I am the author of the fightforsense blog articles. And I am pro-choice at least partly because it is obvious that abortion opponents have NO valid arguments, applicable to this day-and-age. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. No valid secular arguments, and no valid non-secular arguments. Period.
Another nice long post, some of it saying things that I've already stated in my last replies to you. I did say, for example, that feeding livestock means they are getting food that could feed more humans than can be fed by eating the livestock. I ALSO said, though, that the world is overpopulated with humans (we are neck-and-neck with rats as the second-most-numerous mammal on the planet, after mice), and we don't need ANY excuse (like, "look at all the extra food!") to make more humans, because food is only ONE major resource that humans consume, and NONE of the others get improved by trying to protect animals.
Next, humans can most certainly eat a variety of insects (I'm reminded of a scene in India in the second "Indiana Jones" movie), and some are even considered delicacies.
Next, that Dr. Kellogg is WRONG on an item or two. Humans are superbly adapted for throwing rocks accurately, and you KNOW that various animals can be killed by a thrown rock. Also, while I don't have a link, I've read that about the time humans began eating meat (tool-marks on bones), several varieties of hyena became extinct. The scientists studying the evidence concluded that the humans were scavenging so successfully that the hyenas were out-matched, and starved.
Later on, we became adapted for "cursorial hunting", as I previously noted. We didn't NEED those sharp teeth and claws, because we had sharp rocks and could chase an animal, injure it from a distance, chase it some more, injure it some more, and keep chasing it until it fell over. Just THINK about how many rocks you might pass by while chasing an animal mile after mile after mile….
My other reply to your comment indicated that because humans evolved in Africa, our default diet reflects foods available in Africa. Here's an aspect of that, which I've known about for years:
"It can be difficult for strict vegetarians and vegans to get all their essential amino acids. Most vegetarian protein foods, such as beans and seeds, contain only portions of the essentials."
That's why I wrote about how, when we began exploring the world outside Africa, we found new veggies that could do a better job than the African veggies. But the key point remains: We are adapted for the food-sources of Africa, including meat.
Ignorance_is_curable, There are only four differences between unborn humans and post natal huimans they are:
1. Size
2. Level of Development
3. Environment
4. Degree of Dependency
Care to explain why we can kill the unborn human and not YOU?
You called him a troll without actually challenging what he said in his post. Anyone can say ''you have no substance, proof, or ability to make a coherent point'' and not addressed what was said. Don't bother with the one liner's next time.
They shouldn't really be bothered if you actually did ''dehumanized'' a unborn human. If they bother to know the actual difference between ''human'' and ''person,'' it is quite possible for a entity to be 0% human and 100% percent person. A prime example of this, is a fairy like tinkerbell or even monsters as shown in Monster Inc. You saw that movie correct?
The answer is, You Are Telling A Stupid Lie. There are a lot more than 4 differences between unborn humans, and the average walking adult.
Here are 4 more, for example:
1. An unborn human steals nutrients from a body not its own, just by being alive.
2. An unborn human dumps toxic biowastes into a body not its own, just by being alive.
3. An unborn human infuses addictive substances into a body not its own, just by being alive.
4. An unborn human infuses a mind-altering substance into a body not its own, just by being alive.
Next, there are OTHER problems with your SLED argument, and they are mostly pointed out in #97 at fightforsense.wordpress.com
For example, consider "development". A plot of land might be develop-able to hold a skyscraper. Do you want to EQUATE the undeveloped land with the developed land, such that you should receive a Property Tax on the undeveloped land, as if the skyscraper had already been built?
It Is Fundamentally Stupid To Equate The Potential With The Actual.
So, because you SLED argument is basically utter nonsense, THAT is why the unborn human can be killed, while the average walking human can be spared.
I should mention that while I have focused on the likelihood that nonhuman persons could exist elsewhere in this huge huge Universe, human culture has been VERY willing to accept the notion of nonhuman persons, for a long long time. We might start with God –IF God created humans, then, Logically, God must be nonhuman –and NOBODY claims that God doesn't qualify as a person-class entity! (Plenty claim that God doesn't exist, but that is a different matter altogether.)
Over in China, "dragons" have for centuries been considered to be "wise beings" –person-class entities, that is. In Fantasy we have all sorts of person-class nonhuman entities described, such as satyrs and centaurs.
And modern cartoons have allowed plenty of animals to be portrayed as person-class entities (possibly one reason why PETA is a political force these days). One of the "best" examples of such a portrayal is Bugs Bunny, who outwits just about everyone he encounters, whether human, Martian, or Wile E. Coyote. Here is a description of a cartoon in which Bugs is acknowledged as having Legal Rights, much like the average human person!
So, REGARDLESS of what Dictionaries have to say about "persons", the Culture is quite ready to accept the idea that persons DON'T have to be human.
And that leads us to the Problem of How To Distinguish Any Type Of Person From An Actual Mere Animal. Such as using Tests described elsewhere –Tests that all unborn humans will ALWAYS fail!
You remind me of Lisa Bortolotti who like you most likely say that personhood begins after birth. http://www.academia.edu/163044/Stem_cell_research_personhood_and_sentience
Really now, is your take on personhood linked to intelligence? That reminds me of transhumanist who would like to base personhood around intelligence. So what would you have it at? IQ of 40? 80? 130? or maybe perhaps 200?
As for the things you said about unborn humans, who are you to strip them of their inalienable right to life? All humans should have them and we can only be the only persons in the galaxy. If a grey alien were to land here on Earth, you bet I would blast his head off and mount it on a wall. We're the supreme ultimate species in the whole galaxy and we shall destroy ever sapient species we come across to show them who's boss.
Your developed land anology has nothing to do with human abortions so stay on topic please.
I'm not equating the potential with the actual. The unborn are members of a human species that happens to be sapient and since they have human dna like you and me ignorance, they should have the right to life as well.
All humans are animals ignorance. Are you going to claim your part of the plant species or something.
As for your bigotry of ageism around the bigoted word ''person,'' why not can unborn humans be persons to?
Well, I'm not one of the people doing the feeding, so I can't really speak for them. But my guess is that the answer is boredom.
The latest issue of "Scientific American" has an article you won't like, "How Hunting Made Us Human"
It mentions some of the things I've already stated,such as tool-marks on 2-million-year-old bones, but it also mentions some other stuff. For example (something I knew but didn't think about the other day) a high-meat diet almost certainly allowed human ancestors to develop bigger brains –the veggie diet is not so good at that.
Also, while we probably originally started meat-eating as scavengers, the evidence of actual human hunting can be identified by the types of animals killed. Ordinary predators generally catch the young and the sick and the old, so if we had continued to be scavengers, those types of animal bones would predominate. But instead we find piles of bones of animals that were in the prime of adult health. HUMANS did the hunting of those animals!
For humans, the EVIDENCE is quite clear that, in terms of Objective Generic ways to distinguish ANY type of person from ANY type of ordinary animal, it can take two or three years after birth for humans to FULLY qualify as persons.
Read this for SOME of the evidence!
My take on personhood is certainly RELATED to "intelligence", enough that the word can do "in a pinch", but the situation is more complicated. Here is a proposed list (others have different lists, and the best list remains to be determined)
100.1 Persons are self-aware.
100.2 Persons have Free Will.
100.3 Persons can do "time binding".
100.4 Persons are able to understand the concept of "the future".
100.5 Persons are able to manipulate abstractions rationally.
100.6 Persons can exhibit conscious creativity.
100.7 Persons are able to mentally place themselves into the situations of other entities.
100.8 Persons are individuals who transcend their organic individuality in conscious social participation. (Sir Julian Huxley)
Vic Sussman, in his 1978 book, The Vegetarian Alternative, refers to a similar theory like the one you mentioned, that hunting animals gave rise not necessarily to "bigger brains" but to an awareness of death, mortality, etc. He called it "a delicious piece of irony": humans killing animals for food gave rise to compassion and empathy for animals. At any rate, all you have is a theory. Our anatomy clearly shows we're ill equipped to function as predators.
You mention Scientific American. Vegan author John Robbins, in his 1987 Pulitzer Prize nominated Diet for a New America, quotes Scientific American as having admitted the trends in meat consumption and energy consumption are on a collision course.
Vic Sussman noted that the lifestyle of modern man is largely sedentary, yet he gobbles meat as if he were living in the Pleistone era.
If you're going to cite Scientific American, you must realize we're not living in caves. We've developed agriculture, civilization, technology, cookery, refrigeration, transportation, a sense of compassion, ethics, etc.
Vegan psychology professor Dr. Paul Amato made a similar statement in the fall of 1987: when persons say to him we *have* to eat meat, it's the "law of the jungle," he says in response. "So what? We're not *in* the jungle!"
It can be hard for vegetarians and vegans to get all their essential amino acids? Not true!
The idea of combining proteins, or protein complimenting, was first advocated by Frances Moore Lappe in her 1971 bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet, which advocated eating lower on the food chain to make grain available for the hungry. Her words really resonated with progressives. Frances Moore Lappe's book sold over three million copies.
Lappe was delighted to discover that almost all the traditional societies had independently evolved diets that combined vegetable proteins in a way that brought their combined amino acid patterns closer to that of the egg. And since she accepted the egg as the ideal pattern, she saw the workings of a deep inherent wisdom in these traditional diet-styles.
In Latin America, it was corn tortillas with beans, or rice with beans. In the Middle East, it was bulgar wheat with garbanzo beans (chickpeas), or pita bread with hummus (made from garbanzo beans and sesame seeds). In India, it was rice or wheat chapatis with dahl (lentils). In southern China, Japan, and much of Indonesia, it was soy products (tofu, tempeh, etc.) with rice. In northern China, it was soy products with wheat or millet. In Korea, it was soyfoods with barley.
Protein complementing has since been proven unnecessary. Frances Moore Lappe acknowledged it as unnecessary in the tenth anniversary edition to Diet for a Small Planet, in 1981.
In his 1983 book, A Vegetarian Sourcebook, Keith Akers similarly notes that protein is one of the easiest nutrients to obtain on a vegetarian diet: one need only eat enough to maintain one's body weight, and one automatically receives enough protein. A diet of beer and oatmeal would be an incredibly poor diet, lacking in nutrients like Vitamin A and Vitamin C, but it would still provide enough protein. To try and avoid getting protein would be hard: a diet of sugar and alcohol, for example, would not provide enough protein.
Now you are ignoring what I wrote, and have not dented the Basic Fact, at all, regarding human evolution in Africa. We became meat-eaters partly because it was an easy way to get "complete protein" IN AFRICA. Yes, I agree that today, with access to plants that evolved on several more continents than only Africa, we can have an easier time obtaining the essential amino acids. But that was not how we evolved.
You seem to be missing a key point. Humans Evolved As Tool-Using And Fire-Wielding Predators. That's why we don't need the physical adaptations of other predators. We have other adaptations, instead. Like the ability to throw rocks accurately, And the ability to run other animals into exhaustion.
I do not deny that Times Have Changed, and there is no need for humans to eat as much meat today as in ancient history. I simply deny that any notion that we MUST STOP eating meat. Instead, what we actually must do, is solve the human overpopulation problem.
I didn't say anything about Kellogg's credentials; I stated he was "WRONG on an item or two", and offered evidence in support of what I wrote. (Other credentialed folks have been wrong about various things, too, don't you know –including Einstein.)
Next, while the Australopithicenes were almost certainly mostly herbivores, they may also have been insectivores. Edible insects are typically 50% protein –and if you use the word "bug" instead of "insect", then an even wider range of arthropods can be referenced. Shrimp and lobsters are arthropods, after all! Anyway, we are talking about a time-period about 4 million years ago, while direct evidence of meat-eating, in human ancestors, doesn't go back that far.
Desmond Morris appears to be agreeing with what I wrote –we evolved to use the food-sources of Africa, including meat.
Oh, another thing Dr. Kellogg is wrong about –living to a ripe old age appears to be more related to "telomeres" than to a vegetarian diet.
You can convince me that humans mostly don't need a lot of meat in their diet. You will NEVER convince me that we MUST live without it.
OK, far enough you got me fair and square. I will look at this more open mindedly.
As for your list of ''persons,'' are you QUITE sure whatever list we could use to determine if human made biological life (shown in the pokemon movie mewtwo returns I suggest you look into that.) Or artificial intelligences as advanced as shown in star wars or astro boy (2003) Or extraterrestrial life like gray aliens will exclude unborn humans? What about those who say all of the above can be included with unborn humans because they have the inherent capacity for sapience or rational nature? How would you respond to that? Some pro lifers like Clinton and Scott Klusendorf go off of what I said above to include unborn humans and everything else to still make their case?
Yes about feral children, I agree. Stuff like the ability to mentally place one self into someone else's shoes (theory of mind) or the ability to manipulate abstractions rationally can be only obtained if the brain ITSELF has received the appropriate mental stimulation from when they were younger. I know that theory of mind comes around 3 or 4 years of age while the abstraction part comes in around that time to I believe.
He is probably one of the best pro choicers I saw so far. Very sensible in my opinion
Well, everybody's entitled to their own opinion, I suppose.
When humanity decides on an appropriate Objective Generic set of Tests for personhood, such that we would expect ANY type of person to pass those tests, while ANY type of mere animal would fail, then the entities you described would pass or fail based on those Tests, and humanity should be willing to accept the results.
The main flaw in the "inherent capacity" argument is the failure to fully understand what "capacity" actually is. Take an empty jar, and note that it has a certain capacity. It RIGHT NOW has that capacity. If an unborn human actually had capacity (whether inherent or not) to become a person, then it could become a person right now.
Since the FACT is, it cannot do any such thing, because it LACKS the actual brain/mind-capacity associated with the Testable characteristics of personhood, the abortion opponent making that argument is actually talking about "potential", not "capacity". And, therefore, what I previously wrote, regarding equating the potential with the actual, comes into full force, showing their "capacity" argument to be more of the same typical absurd nonsense –like all other anti-abortion arguments presented in this day-and-age.
Going to term is more dangerous.
You have ignored a key thing that I previously wrote: Humans consume more things than food! Our overpopulation problem means that petroleum supplies are now at their peak and will begin an inevitable and relentless decline. Other things are already in decline, like copper production. Underground aquifers are being drained faster than Nature can replenish them. I recognize that some of the non-food resources we consume are used to support livestock. Nevertheless, the ROOT problem is Too Many Humans, Breeding Like Mindless Animals. All the blather in the world about "sustainable resources" is utterly worthless as long as human population keeps growing. The world is FINITE, and It Is Mathematically Impossible For Endless Growth To Be Compatible With Finite Resources.
We are not our ancestors. That is, just because cousin-species like chimps and gorillas are mostly vegetarian, and ancient ancestors like australopithecus were mostly vegetarian (there is no evidence they never ate any insects), that does not mean that H. Sapiens is inherently a vegetarian. H Erectus tamed fire perhaps as far back as 1.5 million years ago, and humans have as a result adapted to eating cooked food. INCLUDING meat. That is a fact that is addressed by NONE of the other facts you have presented. We had cutting-tools for perhaps a million years before taming fire; we did not need carnivore teeth to turn huge hunks of animal flesh into bite-sized bits.
I don't mind agreeing that modern humans probably eat more meat than is good for them. But you are not going to convince me that eating zero meat is NECESSARY for good health and a longish life.
Hey, here's a Bible verse for you to think about:
Psalm 90:10 KJV – "The days of our years are threescore years and ten" –implying that anyone over 70 is experiencing "bonus" life-span …and that is a LOT of people these days, most of whom are NOT vegetarians.
For the millionth time, my source is a MEDICAL dictionary.
So, by your arbitrary standards, a newborn doesn't qualify as a person? So, you support infanticide?
Also, we're not imposing any genocide; we're not forcing anyone to conceive children. Do you see how that completely debunks your stupid little diatribe and drivel? YOU are the one who is imposing conveniently self-serving parameters fighting to disqualify certain human beings from "personhood" in order to satisfy a eugenical agenda.
You're fighting for the brutal, senseless slaughter of 1.2 million innocent children every year. You're a real humanitarian.
Face it; you're a speaker-box for corrupt, stupid people. Get over your stilted hubris, and admit that you've made a mistake.
Hey, friends, why are you not challenging the points ignorance is making? No need for comments like this if they're not fruitful in a discussion.
Stop telling us stuff we know already. It's a waste of space and time on your part.
So, wait a second You think you need to apply even more ARBITRARY conveniently self-serving parameters around personhood based purely on species membership? Sure looks like it!! I posted a definition of the word person which came exactly from a dictionary which was to show there are a variety of definitions to that word and it doesn't have to get used one particular way. Rather or not it came from a medical dictionary or not doesn't really matter at all as that was to make a point.
Ignorance has already told you about dictionaries and even gave you a comment on it just an hour ago. Dictionaries only record how words get used commonly. That doesn't mean they're 100% accurate either. Your only using them as an attempt to block any type of intellectual talk on the matter which doesn't work especially with those like myself and the other ignorance here.
It has nothing to do with being ''worried'' about space-aliens either. It all has to do with preparing for the future and being ready for if and when this does happen.
You're a moron who doesn't want to deal with the long term consequences of your position and it will be exposed for what it is in the future. The centric prejudice specieist definition of the word ''person'' is coming to an end. And a more accurate and better definition of that word is needed. MOST pro lifer's like yourself don't want to provide a definition that is NOT based on membership to one particular species because you KNOW for a fact unborn humans would be excluded from it.
In other words, you CAN'T offer a reason to oppose abortion that is not fundamentally based on Stupid Prejudice and Lies. Tsk, tsk.
Also, you need to keep in mind the difference between being in favor of "abortion should be legal" and "someone should get an abortion". Only the second statement qualifies as "pro-abortion". The first merely qualifies as "pro abortion rights". If you can't keep such simple things straight, then no wonder all your anti-abortion arguments are such arrant nonsense!
As I pointed out in another comment, your "medical" dictionary was assembled by the editors of a regular dictionary. That means all they did, in essence, was take their largest UnAbridged dictionary and remove all the definitions that had nothing to do with medicine. Obviously, since human medicine is about humans, definitions associated with humans could easily be left intact.
But "common usage" means squat, in terms of Objective Reality. "Common usage" once included the notion that the Earth was flat. "Common usage" declares that the ancient Philistines were brutes, but archaeologists proved otherwise, by finding all sorts of artistic stuff in their cities. And "common usage" got the word "ain't" included in many dictionaries, despite the strenuous objections of hordes of English teachers.
In the long run, definitions that can be affected by Facts will be affected by Facts. For centuries the primary definition of "arsenic" was a particular poisonous substance, but NOW the primary definition relates to Chemical Element #33, and the old definition has taken second place (the poison is a chemical compound that contains arsenic).
One of the characteristics of persons is that they can understand the concept of "the future" and can make plans accordingly. In this case, the Future could include humans exploring the Universe and encountering intelligent alien beings in many many places. The Universe is far too large, and Life is far too tenacious for us to be the only entities with more brainpower than the ordinary animal. In That Future the word "person" is most certainly going to become nonPrejudiced. The sooner we accept that, the better —already some dictionaries include "a rational being" in their definition of "person". An Objective Generic Definition Exists! And, guess what? Unborn humans are NOT rational beings!!!
So, I don't dare in the slightest how many people you can line up to use "person" in a Stupidly Prejudiced way. It simply shows that a lot of humans are either Stupidly Prejudiced, OR they haven't actually carefully thought about the words they are using.
There is absolutely no doubt, in terms of Science Facts, that an unborn human is a 100% alive ANIMAL organism, and nothing more than that. Plenty of ordinary animals, like pigs, are MUCH more mentally capable than unborn humans. So, to CALL unborn humans persons, "rational beings", is to tell a Stupid Lie based on Stupid Prejudice, plain and simple..
And for as many times as it takes, your dictionary is derived from ordinary dictionaries. It's definitions are still based on "common usage".
Next, why is it that abortion opponents can't tell the difference between "lack of right to life" and "automatic death penalty"??? (Are they THAT ignorant or mentally incompetent?)
LOGICALLY, due to the Measurable Facts that infant humans are incapable of passing Objective Generic Science Tests for personhood, they would not qualify as persons according to Science. HOWEVER, Science does not rule the Law, and the Law grants person status to newborn humans. Net result, infanticide is forbidden, regardless of the Science.
DO NOTE, however, that even if infanticide was legal, that doesn't mean it can be expected to be common, so long as abortion (especially late-term abortion) is legal. OBVIOUSLY, the more that unwanted unborn humans can be killed, the fewer unwanted humans will be born to become victims of infanticide!
NEXT, your misinterpretation of what I wrote gets you nowhere. By definition, genocidal maniacs work to cause vast numbers of deaths. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT OVERPOPULATION WILL BRING IN THE LONG RUN, and so long as abortion opponents want all pregnancies to be carried to term, they are working to cause overpopulation and its consequences of vast numbers of deaths.
I, on the other hand, am working to present FACTS about unborn humans. Your mere CLAIMS, unsupported by anything other than Stupidly Prejudiced dictionary definitions, do not in the slightest prove that unborn humans have any degree of personhood whatsoever, to say nothing of matching the abilities of, say, dolphins to pass some of the Objective Generic Science Tests for personhood.
And you are telling Stupid Lies, too. Exactly where have I expressed a "eugenical agenda"???
Not to mention the Other Standard Stupid Lies of abortion opponents that you have been consistently spouting ("innocent children", HAH! –they are NEITHER innocent nor children!).
And you are apparently totally ignorant of what a "real humanitarian" is. Does the phrase "tough love" mean anything to you? Well, it is a Fact that the world IS overpopulated, and There Are Consequences. The ONLY way for humanity as a whole to be healthy and prosperous is to NOT be reproducing like a bunch of mindless animals. Abortion can HELP the population become less –and, fortunately, it only involves killing mere animals, not actual people!
In closing this message, so far I have not made any serious mistake in gathering Facts and presenting Logic. But those who deny Facts and Logic, which includes almost all abortion opponents, are making a mistake.
"f you count fire and toolmaking as allowing us to transcend our physical limitations, you're acknowledging that we're not natural predators, or that we're ill-suited to be predators.
————
FALSE. There is a fundamental point of misunderstanding on your part here. Let me start with an analogy of a "cyborg", short for "cybernetic organism". There was an actual novel by that title, which possibly popularized the word. The novel was the basis for the TV series "The Six Million Dollar Man" and its spin-off, "The Bionic Woman".
It happens that the thrust of the novel was more about the mental state of the protagonist (Steve Austin) than the missions his bosses wanted him to do. To what extent had be become less of a human being, by having become partly cybernetic?
To me, the Answer is obvious: Zero. Austin is still a BEING, a person, regardless of a partially mechanized body. The body doesn't matter at all, as far as personhood is concerned. (Now think about another TV series, "The Ghost Whisperer", featuring lots of persons with no bodies.)
Anyway, there is a semi-facetious definition of a cyborg: If You Are Wearing A Digital Watch, You Qualify!
THE POINT IS, humans and their tools are intertwined, and we have been that way for many thousands of years. Our CLOTHES are tools, after all!
There is a new-ish TV show on the Discovery Channel, "Naked and Afraid" –and just about the very first thing anyone in that show does, after taking clothes off, is start making tools.
We Who Have The Power Of Choice Almost Always Choose To Be Carrying Tools, One Way Or Another. The best race-car drivers and fighter-plane pilots tend to see their vehicles as extensions of their own bodies. In that mental mode they are utterly equivalent to Steve Austin.
So, you can bet just about anything that a caveman who had a good stone knife kept it close and handy at all times. THEREFORE he was as well-equipped as a predator with sharp teeth, see? COUNTING our tools, we have indeed been as thoroughly predatious as lions and wolves, for many thousands of years.
==========
Would it not logically follow, then, that the optimum diet for man would be within our natural physical limitations?"
——-
Only in a world in which humans choose to almost never be intimately associated with tools! Which is most certainly NOT this world!
See my other comment below for the first part of my reply.
Regarding "natural" things like napalm, it has been pointed out by Robert A Heinlein, "There are hidden contradictions within the minds of people who “love nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled ‘Nature.” The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of “Nature”–but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beaver’s purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purpose of men) the “Naturist” reveals his hatred for his own race–i.e., his own self-hatred. In the case of “Naturists” such self—hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate. As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. Sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women– it strikes me as a fine arrangement and perfectly “natural.” Believe it or not, there were “Naturists” who opposed the first flight to old Earth’s Moon as being “unnatural” and a “despoiling of nature.”"
Regarding Abraham and two wives, it might be noted that the Jews instituted a thousand-year ban on polygamy, which expired a few years ago. And we all know the Mormons are Christians who support polygamy.
Regarding "Saying, "the Bible permits us to kill animals" isn't convincing." –I specifically indicated that I was fighting fire with fire. The Bible has been used on both sides of many different debates for a long long time, and you started it here, by using it to support vegetarianism. If you can't take it, don't dish it out (and especially don't change the subject!)!
Regarding the Exodus verses about the miscarriage, you aren't quoting from the same source (KJV) I have here: "(22) If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow, he shall surely be punished, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine." –While I agree this is talking about the woman being unharmed, it ALSO is about a penalty for causing the miscarriage. The key thing that I see here is that the penalty is ARBITRARY –the husband is free to assign ZERO penalty if he chooses. And that is almost completely consistent with the modern era of legal abortions (except today the woman gets to make the valuation).
Regarding slavery, if you are against it as much as you say, then you should be against enslaving pregnant women to servicing unwanted animal organisms. Tsk, tsk!
Part of what you wrote is something of a repeat of your last post. I was writing a second reply to that post but experienced a hardware communications glitch, and so I was delayed in getting it posted. See above, though, for something that is at least a partial reply to this post.
(more to be added to this later)
I basically agree with your post, in terms of the uselessness of the Bible in debates.
For the millionth time, you been repeatedly told over and over again that dictionaries only record how words get used no matter how idiotic the public wants to use that word. You think that just because that one definition of person is more valid then the rest of the dictionaries just because it so happens to be a medical dictionary. Failing to realize that the one's who made the other dictionaries also made the medical dictionary and just simply putted the word person into their as well based on common usage also. In the future, when we start exploring the stars more, a more better definition of that word is needed and the one I listed you before will be more valid then the species definition you gave out earlier.
Whining about the 1.2 million in your country? lol The rest of the world does the other 48.8 million a year as well.
I still see your whining about 'arbitraryness'' but your doing the same thing as well by restricting the whole concept of personhood down to membership while the other ignorance down below is actually expanding it. You have no case my friend and I suggest you stop wasting our time if your not welling to engage Ignorance_Is_Curable in a meaningful and intellectual conversation.
Thanks
Regarding the Proverbs quote, a wrong vision can be just as dangerous as no vision. And in this case abortion opponents absolutely have a WRONG vision; the biggest threat to humanity is overpopulation –and they are working to make it worse!
Spiritual inspiration can be misdirected, too. See the Reverend Jim Jones, for example, or the Heaven's Gate group.
I don't know why you keep repeating stuff I already know about and agree with, the fact that a reduction in meat-eating frees up more veggies for human consumption. That has NOTHING to do with making OTHER crucial resources available to the overall population! (Like tantalum, indium, tin, gold, etc.) That is, the availability of food is not the only factor in determining whether or not the world is overpopulated! (Do you have any idea how much carbon dioxide, CO2, is released while processing limestone for making concrete? A smaller population needs less concrete, and so there would be less CO2 produced from that rather significant source.)
Regarding the improbability of life, in one sense it may not matter, thanks to evidence suggesting it may exist widely WITHOUT needing to separately originate in multiple locations.
In another sense, though, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe may have focused their calculations on the wrong thing. In life-forms proteins are constructed according to DNA and RNA, and while proteins are made up of 20-odd amino acids, DNA and RNA are made up of only 4 nucleic acids. The number of possible combinations goes way down, and researchers appear to have focused on "self-replicating RNA" as a likely Origin Point, for life.
So, Do Not Confuse "Mysterious" With "Sacred". Look up "vitalism" some time, and see how the notion was disproved by the advent of modern Chemistry, and is now utterly destroyed in terms of knowledge about "molecular biology", a kind of key-in-lock MECHANICAL explanation for life-processes. That is, there is NO difference between molecular biology and "nanotechnology", except that Nature beat us humans to it, first.
Regarding marijuana legalization, I'm generally in favor of it, along with legalizing all those other addictive drugs. Let the idiots of the world poison themselves! (Just let them do it where they won't hurt anyone else while under the influence.)
IN GENERAL, when you look at American History and Political Scandals, you will find that when Democrat-type politicians get elected, the scandals tend to involve sex and drugs and hurt themselves and a few other people, while Republican-type scandals tend to involve money and power and hurt millions of people besides themselves. Thus we can interpret Nixon's Vietnam War as a scandal feeding money to the military-industrial complex, and a mis-use of that power.
Much the same happened after Bush got into office (2001). EVEN BEFORE SEPT 11 OF THAT YEAR, the Republicans had destroyed Clinton's budget surplus partly by pumping up the money-flow into the military…and then they LIED about why we needed to go to war against Iraq.
Regarding the Flateau argument against abortion, it first makes the FALSE assumption that an unborn human qualifies as a person. Society tends to obligate persons to look out for each other, but not-so-much to look out for mere animals, like unborn humans. The argument fails, therefore, just like all those other anti-abortion arguments.
I stated "IN GENERAL" and that is what I meant, although I was also talking about "top" politicians, Presidents, like Grant and Taft and Harding and so on. The types of policies promoted today by Republicans are the same types of policies that, in the mid-to-late 1800s, stripped Montana of its forests and turned its geological resources (like copper) into "Superfund" toxic wastes dumps. And they want to do the same everywhere/anywhere such resources exist.
With respect to the abortion issue, they are a bunch of Hypocrites, since their "care for human life" stops at birth, when Welfare might be required to PAY for human lives that THEY, the Republicans, wanted to be born.
They are also Hypocrites whenever they qualify as "hawks", militarily speaking. "Pro-life" and "war" are mutually incompatible!
When you tell lies, and swallow them yourself, of course you can end up believing all sorts of nonsense. For example, the Fact is, unborn human are NOT the same thing as "children". Children you can hold in your arms; any OVERALL unborn human animal organism includes an attached placenta as a Vital Organ, Children do not have attached placentas as Vital Organs.
Unborn humans are actually only potential children, therefore; they are "children under construction", and the construction process typically ends when the placenta is no longer needed as a Vital Organ. To call an unborn human a "child" is like calling the FRAMEWORK of a house a "house", as if you could right-now move into it and be sheltered from the elements. A LIE, that is.
Next, the focus on "human rights" is Fundamentally Prejudiced Against All NonHuman Persons. We have far too many Historical examples of one group of PEOPLE declaring it is more important than other groups, based on frivolous characteristics, with horrible consequences, to associate ANY degree of intelligence with the notion that "human rights" is more important than the concept of "PERSON rights".
Basically too much of a good thing is ALWAYS a bad thing! "Human rights" is a very useful concept with respect to human PERSONS, but it becomes utter nonsense when you try to apply it to human NONpersons, such as the brain-dead on full-life-support. And to unborn humans.
I want to ask you some things.
Why do most pro choicers deny the species the unborn belong to? Because it takes quite a bit of willpower in my opinion for someone of your caliber to completely admit the unborn are indeed humans but be fully ok with killing them. The problem with pro choicers is that most of them don't know the difference between ''human'' and ''person'' and don't bother spending the time like you have to gather up the information that you have done. From most of the debates I saw they don't even mention it and the debate is solely based around ''humanness'' the whole time.
Another question, from your identity argument you had addressed on your website, it seems you are completely dualistic about it. I mean, am I a person while unconscious? sleeping? In a coma?
Next of all, how would you measure something like 'rationality'' in a organism?
Final of all your familiar with ''self concepts'' correct? If not here is a wiki on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-concept
I wonder if it could be tied to theory of mind which is why I brought it up. What's your take on it?
Also to, can you take a look at this and add anything to your site that could be worth it? http://www.angelfire.com/linux/vjtorley/prolife.html
Why should "species" have anything whatsoever to do with personhood? See #27 and #28 for some specific reasons why "species" can be entirely irrelevant. Abortion targets ANIMALS, just like a fly swatter targets animals. Anyone who thinks the species matters is exhibiting Stupid Prejudice.
I'm thoroughly aware that many abortion opponents can somehow enjoy a movie like "Star Wars" or "Avatar" and come away still thinking that "person" automatically equals "human". NOPE. Different concepts they most certainly are!
And THEREFORE it becomes Perfectly Logical to seek Objective Generic ways to distinguish ANY type of person from ANY type of mere animal organism. ACTUAL abilities can be Tested. Those who claim that abilities are lost during sleep or an ordinary coma simply don't know what they are talking about. If the abilities were actually lost, they could not be present once a person wakes up again. The person would have to go to considerable trouble to re-acquire those abilities. Even an amnesia victim still has the abilities associated with personhood! So, regardless of whether or not abilities can be used during sleep or coma, they still exist and that suffices for an entity to continue to qualify as a person.
That self-knowledge stuff appears to be at least partly related to a variety of abstract concepts. Person can process abstractions. Unborn humans cannot.
At the moment I am reminded of #13. But I'll take a closer look later, thanks.
Most of your post is about a topic that has been called "vitalism" (the notion that living things are fundamentally different from non-living things), and variations on that Idea are thousands of years old.
ALL OF THEM ARE WRONG.
Modern chemists began proving they were wrong in the 1800s, when they began synthesizing organic molecules. Nowadays we know that ALL of biochemistry is just complicated chemistry, with occasional fancy applications of certain phenomena found in Physics and Quantum Mechanics. Living things are extremely comparable to machines –just smaller and more intricate than those we ordinarily construct, the way an integrated electronic circuit is vastly smaller and more intricate than a populated printed-circuit board (try to imagine such a board with 10 billion discrete transistors on it!).
In Religion, though, a soul is typically described as being able to survive death. This means it CANNOT have a physical existence, because everything that is physical can be destroyed. There are various Logical arguments as to why such souls cannot be associated with human life at conception, but this comment forum is not the place for them. See #8, #23, #27, #29, #30, and #32 at fightforsense.wordpress.com
I agree that plenty of animals are far smarter than unborn humans. Obviously we should consider granting them rights BEFORE EVEN THINKING about granting rights to unborn humans.
Keep in mind One Significant Difference: Unborn humans are physically connected to pregnant women, Who Have Full Rights. You cannot arbitrarily turn them into slaves, JUST because you want unborn humans to have some rights.
And for thousands of years another "THE dominiant paradigm in scientific thought" was the notion that the Universe revolved around the Earth. DATA ALWAYS TRUMPS THEORY. You can "beg to differ" with DATA only by looking like an idiot, so I suggest you don't.
By the way, what I previously wrote about souls was not to imply that they cannot exist; I merely stated they cannot have any PHYSICAL existence if certain standard claims made about them are to be consistent. Perhaps you could go to fightforsense.wordpress.com and read the other article there, about Defending God's Reputation, sections 1, 4, 5 and 8.
I don't consider Science and Religion to be incompatible. I do consider that various brainwashed idiots believe utter nonsense, which interferes with finding/acknowledging the compatibilities between Science and Religion. See the "Defending God's Reputation" article at fightforsense.wordpress.com
Why are you repeating stuff that is irrelevant? I pointed out before that humans mostly eat COOKED meat, and we've been doing it for more than a million years –plenty of time for at least a few physical adaptations to occur. One such is that we DO have somewhat shorter intestines than most herbivores of equivalent body mass. Cooking makes meat easier to digest, and solves the "rotting meat" problem.
And remember that we would NOT be able to run other animals to the ground (cursorial hunting) if we had not been active predators for most of those million-plus years.
Nothing in that post appears to be worthy of comment, except for the part that FALSELY implies that just because SOME animals, like chimps, have a sense of the future, all of them do. Tsk, tsk!
I think you indicated elsewhere that you subscribe to the idiocy called "Intelligent Design", and thereby fail to understand just how powerful Evolution can be.
So, here is a Conundrum for you: What Is The Purpose Of God's Existence? Anyone believing in "Intelligent Design" is forced to conclude (A) everything exists for a reason/purpose, and (B) EVERYTHING was Designed. So, what is your Answer to my Question at the start of this paragraph?
See The Logic: No matter what Purpose animals may have, as far as God is concerned, if GOD'S existence has no Purpose, then, OBJECTIVELY speaking, neither do the animals! They only have a SUBJECTIVE purpose for existing, which therefore is basically Arbitrary/Worthless. (Consider that something like 99% of inventions flop because most people don't agree with the inventor, that the invention's Purpose is worth anything.)
You really need to stop using the Bible as a source. Haven't you seen the DATA indicating that Life may have existed before the Earth?
Your mere CLAIMS are worthless, that Evolution Theory lacks support. Once upon a time opponents said, OK, where are the fossils of whales with legs?
Then they were FOUND….
You are making the totally unwarranted assumption that just because certain data has not yet be found, you think it can never be found. Tsk, tsk!
You are STILL making the totally unwarranted assumption that just because certain data has not yet been found, you think it can never be found. Tsk, tsk!
Currently, the longest-running science experiments are less than a century old. You are in-essence claiming that if we set up an abiogenesis experiment and let it run for 500 million years, nothing interesting would happen. But You Cannot Prove The Claim Without Running The Experiment!
Personally, I suspect that LONG LONG before then, we will have computer simulations of such an experiment set up accurately enough (and running in fast-enough speeded-up-time), that we will be able to show by that method EXACTLY how abiogenesis can happen.
The Real Problem Is Human Overpopulation, and How We Are Invading The Habitats of All Other Creatures. Stop that, and the animals will mostly be just fine. If we can arbitrarily declare that human persons are more important than ordinary animals, we can equally arbitrarily declare that most ordinary animals are more important than unborn human non-persons.
"As I said before, the real problem ISN'T "overpopulation" but rather overconsumption: our meat-centered diet."
And as I said before, YOU ARE WRONG, because the human population consumes more things than stuff associated with meat production. Like copper for electrical wiring of houses and motors and generators and transformers.
Reducing meat consumption can HELP, but only for a short time. After all, if the population eats 20% less meat, BUT increases its numbers by 50%, then the total amount of meat consumed goes up, regardless.
So, The REAL Fundamental Problem Is Human Overpopulation, Period.
You REALLY don't know what you are talking about. The Universe can MOSTLY be described as a cause-and-effect sequence of events. At this time we have no reason to think that abiogenesis is impossible.
However, Quantum Mechanics introduces Pure Randomness.here and there. Free Will is possible because of that–neurons in the brain have physical structures fine enough to be directly affected by Quantum Randomness. NOW will you stop spouting vast amounts of useless blather?
"I think population control organizations like Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth) should, at the very least, as good public relations, embrace veganism and animal rights in response to the threat of "overpopulation" rather than promoting abortion as birth control and population control."
There is no "threat" of overpopulation. IT EXISTS NOW, as proved whenever someone starves to death. You need a lesson in The Law of Supply and Demand.
Start with a simple stable economy, with everyone adequately employed and producing enough goods to meet the needs of everyone in that economy.
Now add some more people, WITHOUT increasing anything else. The immediate result is, Greater Demand For Goods Causes Prices To Go Up.
In a Perfect system, one might expect that someone will see an opportunity to start another business, to convert more resources into goods, thereby meeting the increased demand. HOWEVER, In The Real World, existing businesses KNOW all about the Law of Supply and Demand, If they can RESTRICT resource-production, they can increase profits! So, you can expect existing businesses in that initial economy to work against anyone starting up a new business.
Not to mention, what if the Resources, to supply a brand-new business, simply don't exist? Maybe the existing businesses have cornered the market! Keep that in mind, for later.
Back to the scenario, where extra people mean extra Demand, and higher prices. There is MORE bad news. See, those extra people need jobs to earn the money to pay for those now-more-expensive goods. They have to compete with the workers in already-existing jobs. And the business-owners won't mind one bit, if someone comes up and says, Hire me, because I'm willing to work for less than you are paying someone now, to do that job." The business gets to profit AGAIN (from lower wages, as previously from higher sales-prices).
In The Real World We Have Inflation Of Wages And Prices. This makes it difficult to be sure if both happen to inflate at the same rate, maintaining a sort of balance (as if no inflation at all happened). The above scenario clearly indicates that the average wage can be expected to go down, even as the average price goes up. In an inflating economy, we would expect to see prices rise faster than wages, IF people are added to an economy faster than Resources are extracted and converted into goods.
Now look at History: In the USA in the 1950s, it was normal for one man's wage to be sufficient to support a family. Nowadays it seems that many families can only make ends meet if both parents work, sometimes two jobs each. That clearly indicates that Resource-production has NOT kept pace with population growth.
The Preceding Is The Fundamental Cause Of Two Different Things: The Rich Getting Richer (since they own the businesses making profits from higher prices and relatively lower wages) and Growth Of Abject Poverty (by those who lose out in the competition for jobs and can't afford adequate goods). NOTE THAT IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT KIND OF FOOD GETS EATEN IN THAT ECONOMY. If population rises faster than production, there WILL be starvation.
NOW do you see why you are WRONG to even hint that some form of population control (like legal abortion) is undesirable? We Need EVERY Method Possible To Ensure Population Does NOT Grow Faster Than Resource-Production!!!
In fact, if everyone deserves a decent Standard of Living, we need Resource production to go up lots faster than population –OR for population to actually go down significantly, while Resource production stays the same. I note that some of what you wrote indicates that Existing Resource Production Rates CANNOT LAST –and I totally agree, because the world actually is, right now, overpopulated.
Hey, I'm in favor of legalizing all drugs, so long as safe venues are provided for their consumption. We already have enough alcohol-caused accidental deaths, that we don't need more caused by heroin, angel dust, crack cocaine, etc. And since the world is overpopulated, we can let the most-stupid of us kill themselves with drug overdoses, thereby raising the average intelligence of the rest of humanity. AND the crime rate would go down, because legal drugs would cost less (not enough profit for the "drug cartels" continue to exist), and be affordable so that addicts need not commit so much theft to get their "fix". Win, Win, Win!
The first part of your post is irrelevant to my last post. But those secular anti-abortion arguments are worthy of a reply, so: When someone gets a manicure or pedicure, "human life" gets killed each time a cuticle is trimmed, but nobody complains about THAT. Every cell that possess a full set of human DNA (such as cuticle cells) has the exact same potential as a zygote, to convert biological resources into an overall human body. Neither can do it without help. (The first sort of help needed by a cuticle cell can be called "activation of totipotency".)
Abortion opponents irrationally want help to be provided to a zygote, but not to an equally-full-of-human-life cuticle cell. Tsk, tsk!
Doctors are in a position of taking an Oath, but depending exactly on how the Oath is worded, abortions are still possible. After all, if a doctor swears to assist PERSONS, he is not obligated to assist a mere animal organism, a non-person such as an unborn human.
So, the secular arguments against abortion can be exposed as being founded on Stupid Prejudice when they assign great importance to "human life" without being specific about it –and even so those foundations include Stupid Hypocrisy, for not even considering all the human life that dies whenever a manicure or pedicure is done. Tsk, tsk!
Regarding the drug stuff, this is not the place to discuss it, so I'm done commenting on that.
"You can't address the population crisis without acknowledging the economic and ecological realities of a meat-centered diet"
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FALSE. I CAN, I DO, AND I DID (in my post above). I specifically stated that it doesn't matter WHAT kind of diet those in that "model" economic system have; increasing population without also increasing resources leads to starvation, and other aspects of a lowered standard of living.
Nor do I for a moment "accept the premise that a child exists at fertilization", because that is a LIE. What exists is a single cell. A child is far more than that. What MIGHT exist in a few weeks will include a placenta. A CHILD DOES NOT HAVE A PLACENTA.
The FACT is, unborn humans are DIFFERENT from post-natal humans, and words that are applied to post-natal humans should not be applied to the unborn. Would you call an amphibious car a "boat"? No, you call it what it is. You don't call it what it isn't.
When only secular arguments about abortion are presented, the Logical conclusion is that it should stay legal. I've gone into that in great detail at fightforsense.wordpress.com so I need not repeat it all hers. You have NO valid anti-abortion argument. Period.
You started posting here because you took that tactic that animals animals should have rights, meaning you ACCEPTED the fact that unborn humans only qualify as animals, not persons. In the post above you wasted effort posting nonsense based on the WRONG assumption that unborn humans were persons I ignore the blather, therefore.
Abortion CAN be viewed as a consequence of a conflict between a woman, a Full Person Under The Law, and a mere animal that is sucking her blood for nutrients, dumping toxic biowastes into her blood, and worse. If the woman deems the actions of the animal to be intolerable, well, that is why she might get an abortion. Just like she might have a guinea worm removed.
"If abortion was a moral wrong", then someone would be able to use Objective Fact and PROVE it. So far, nobody has. Logical Conclusion: Abortion Is Not A Moral Wrong. End of argument.
I don't know why you keep repeating stuff. I'm not impressed by it now, any more than it impressed me the first time I saw it. The FACT is, humans claim to be superior to animals, because of our mental capabilities. Physically, other animals are as special in certain ways as humans are special in certain ways –NONE of those "certain ways" is inherently superior to all the others of those "certain ways, except perhaps the overall human life-span. In terms of total heartbeats in a lifetime, humans often live 3-times and sometimes even 4-times longer than any other animal. Unlike other animals, we can be mostly healthy for a very significant number of years past the reproductive years (most other animals simply die when they are done reproducing, after roughly 1 billion heartbeats). But the advantage we get from it is more mental than physical –older humans can help educate younger humans, while the middle-age group, in the prime of physical ability (humans hit the 1-billion-heartbeat mark at about age 25), does the main work of "bread-winning" (or equivalent).
Anyway, partly because we not only have excellent mental capabilities, and partly because of our "training advantage" in terms of using those capabilities, no other animal on the planet can stand against us. I once read a science-fantasy story that had dragons in it –in the story they were an endangered species because of human hunters using bazookas! So, whether or not our CLAIM of superiority has an merit, we certainly have the equivalent of "the teeth to support that claim." Cave bears larger than Kodiaks went extinct because humans wanted those caves!
And because of that CLAIM of superiority, we distinguish ourselves as "persons", while relegating all those other creatures as "mere animals". That's Just The Way It Is. Furthermore, in terms of mental capabilities, we can manage things no other animal is known to be able to match. For example, many animals can count a little (uaually up to some rather low number, like three) –but humans can count indefinitely. Some of our mental abilities are simply a matter of degree beyond those of ordinary animals –but some are "beyond" to the extent that a whole new level of capability has opened. In this case an example starts by noting that many animals can exhibit empathy –but humans can take that to the level of being able to imagine themselves as directly experiencing the situations of others. You are of course encouraging such imaginings when you describe slaughterhouses!
Nevertheless, NOTHING gives those other animals the degree of capabilities that humans possess. And therefore most humans will consider humans to be persons, while other animals are not.
I see the flood of worthless blather continues. The fundamental problem for anti-evolutionists is that you have only DOUBTS, no actual refutation DATA. That's not good enough! One thing to keep in mind is this: The Simplest Life-Form We Know Might Not Be The Simplest Life-Form Possible. Consider THIS, for example!
Meanwhile, those who think evoultion makes sense, even with respect to abiogenesis, Continue To Find Supporting Data. Here and here and here, for example.
And just in case the preceding links don't happen to mention two other factors, here: (1) Chemical reactions take place faster in hot water than in cold water, and the early Earth had hot-water oceans. Remember the whole planet was highly molten for quite a while after it condensed from the solar nebula. When the rains first started, they boiled away at once. When they cooled enough of the planetary crust to start pooling into lakes and seas, they were definitely HOT lakes and seas.
(2) A somewhat energetic environment favors the formation of increasingly complex molecules. It is common for anti-evolutionists to point at Entropy and say, "Things go DOWNhill; things become more chaotic, not more complex, with time." While certainly GENERALLY true, there IS an exception –the "energy-rich environment". Water definitely flows uphill in such an environment –else ordinary rainclouds could never form; all the water in those clouds would be "stuck" in the lakes and rivers and oceans! So, if one can ask, "OK, so we have some simple self-replicating molecules; where did all the complexity we see today come from?" –the Answer is, "The environment was rich-enough in energy to favor the formation of more-complex molecules. Natural selection, regarding the most successful ways for replication to be accomplished, did the rest."
Getting back to the fundamentals, there is the opposite problem: IF evolution can somehow be disproved, what can you replace it with? Elsewhere you proposed "Intelligent Design", but that just begs the question. Where did the Design for the Intelligent Designer come from? I think it would be easier to prove that God EVOLVED into existence, than it would be to prove that evolution doesn't adequately explain biological life.
============
Regarding your other post, it is full of blather you have posted before. NONE of it changes the fundamental Fact that it is impossible to survive without killing. Remember your immune system and invading bacteria? If you are so sure that humans should not kill, then you might as well commit suicide, to stop your body from killing invading microbes.
OR, (and I would prefer you do this) STOP POSTING ALL THAT WORTHLESS BLATHER, UNTIL YOU CAN RESOLVE THE ABOVE DILEMMA.
So, what you're doing here is rejecting reality, substituting it with your own, and ASSERTING that your is correct??? So, if I rape a woman, and say that I don't FEEL that women are persons… What crime am I guilty of? Who are YOU to say that women are persons? To assert that women are persons is homophobic and racist against male unicorns because they don't have vaginae. You're a hateful bigot, therefore everything you believe and stand for is invalid.
…And again, creatures can have the rights OF personhood without actually BEING persons.
The fact that you just keep piggy-backing on your little pro-abort cohort's rhetoric shows that you just can't think for yourself, and you're incapable of intelligent conversation.
Again, you guys are fighting a losing battle. Trolling your enemy's page is not going to save your failed holocaust.
First, I will say the exact same thing to you that I have said to your pro-abort cohort (since he seems to be your little parrot):
So, what you're doing here is rejecting reality, substituting it with
your own, and ASSERTING that your is correct??? So, if I rape a woman,
and say that I don't FEEL that women are persons… What crime am I
guilty of? Who are YOU to say that women are persons? To assert that
women are persons is homophobic and racist against male unicorns because
they don't have vaginae. You're a hateful bigot, therefore everything
you believe and stand for is invalid.
…And again, creatures can have the rights OF personhood without actually BEING persons.
____________________
Secondly, HA! They ARE innocent children!
(once again, "nuh-UH! DIKSHUNARY IZ RONG CUZ ITZ NOT PROABORSHIN!!1" is not a valid argument. You need to cite REPUTABLE sources to support your claims.)
______________
in·no·cent [in-uh-suhnt] adjective
1. free from moral wrong; without sin; pure: innocent children.
2. free from legal or specific wrong; guiltless: innocent of the crime.
3. not involving evil intent or motive: an innocent misrepresentation.
4. not causing physical or moral injury; harmless: innocent fun.
5. devoid (usually followed by of ): a law innocent of merit.
===
Main Entry: child
Pronunciation: ch()ld
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural chil·dren /chil-drn, -drn/
1 : an unborn or recently born person
2 : a young person especially between infancy and youth
___________________
Again, I'm pointing out that you're imposing ARBITRARY parameters on personhood to justify a holocaust. Your perceived "overpopulation woes" could just as easily be solved by selecting weak/unfit human beings and simply putting a bullet between their eyes. Do you object to that idea? Why? All we have to do is declare them as "non-persons". If they don't qualify by certain parameters, there is absolutely nothing wrong with killing them. It's for the good of the planet.
You are so self-righteous, pedantic, and stupid, it just boggles my mind. You have NO facts or logic whatsoever – you disavow "inconvenient" facts, and commit one ridiculous fallacy after another.
I know you've been amped up on pro-abortion juices from that little blog of yours, but there's a good reason your cause is failing.
Your whole argument here can be debunked with one simple fact: cannibalism happens in nature. Is cannibalism legal? Why not?
Furthermore, you're committing the "begging the question" fallacy – you're positing your own beliefs as facts. No one is talking about "potential persons". I'm going by FACTS from reputable sources. Not liking these facts doesn't make them untrue.
If YOUR holocaust is acceptable, then ANY holocaust is acceptable.
When you stoop to childish insults, you've lost any credibility.
AGAIN & ALWAYS !
Post a complete thought, and I will address you.
"I see you ignored what I wrote: We Cannot Survive Without Killing. So independent of the population issue, why should it matter if we kill plants, or kill animals?"
Here we go again!
Plants are insentient.
————
Oh? There was a book I read, a bunch of years ago (not sure of the title), about a psychic named Edgar Cayce (his heyday was the 1930s and '40s). According to the book, he once won a $50 bet (quite a bit for those days) with someone, regarding tree sentience. I can't say I believe it –but I also can't say I disbelieve it. I'd like to see some additional evidence….
=======
Animals are sentient, which is arguably the only valid criterion for personhood.
————-
The second part of that sentence is the sort of "positive" claim for which the Burden of Proof falls upon the claimant. You would make persons of houseflies, garden caterpillars, cockroaches, hookworms, bedbugs, mosquitoes, tsetse flies, ringworms, spiders, fleas, ticks, tapeworms, gnats, horseflies, rats, mice, bacteria, scorpions, guinea worms, and trees, too, all because they have some awareness of the environment in which they dwell?
Humans evolved in the midst of the Law of the Jungle ("might makes right"), and prevailed, by becoming killers unmatched by any other species in the history of Planet Earth. It is certainly reasonable to understand that too much of a good thing is always a bad thing, but that doesn't mean that ALL of our killer instincts/traditions must be discarded –we might as well commit mass suicide, and let all the other organisms have the planet back.
We set ourselves above other living things on Earth for a reason –we earned it! And we earned it by using mental abilities that none of our competition could match. THAT'S why –because of those mental abilities– we call ourselves "persons", and we call other organisms "mere animals".
Meanwhile, It Is A Big Universe Out There, and it is perfectly reasonable to think that there can exist organisms with mental abilities that DO match ours (and maybe even exceed ours). We should be willing to consider them to be quite-equivalent to ourselves, as far as the concept of "personhood" is concerned.
You want to say that sentience is the ONLY valid criterion for personhood? And, after you PROVE it, please explain what we should do (besides "suffer") about diseases, and insects that spread disease, and rats and mice that eat our food, and so on.
''It is a Fact that dictionaries include certain meanings for certain words. It is ALSO a Fact that those definitions derive from "common usage", not from Objective Truth.''
I think a more accurate definition of the word person is from the oxford dictionary which defined a person as a ''self conscious or rational being.'' A unborn human clearly doesn't have the mental requirement for that yet since a newborn human doesn't either.
For abortion opponents in the abortion debate to keep using the dictionary argument clearly shows that they don't want to actually talk about the topic of personhood at all and try to relay on the idiocy of the public to get away with the dictionary argument. For those like you and GEIxBattleRifle, none of you would let them get away with that lazy argument like I try to do to you a few days ago.
WOW you just trashed him in debate like you did to me. Keep up the work!
Thank you, but I can't really take all the credit. The basic fact is, most anti-abortion arguments are derived from Stupid Prejudice. They are inherently destructable.
The movie "Avatar" introduced to widely-popular knowledge something I hadn't really considered before, in terms of arguing about "person". Jake, the guy in the wheelchair who put a lot of time into controlling an alien body remotely, obviously qualifies as a person according to any abortion opponent.
At the end of the movie, though, his personality is completely moved from his human body to that alien body –and abortion opponents would, per Stupid Prejudice, have us believe that Jake has just become a non-person. Tsk, tsk!
You failed to address the point I raised at the end of my last post. I'm getting tired of doing my best to answer questions of abortion opponents, but to have my questions ignored. Good bye.
WOW he wrote a essay kind of. Anyways, I am not a advocate of animal rights so I want to know why your against them? You stated before you have no problem with giving legal rights to endangered species but to declare them actual persons you have problems with. Care to explain why?
Just about all of his posts have been like that, full of blather (mostly other folks agreeing with him) that does not include much in the way of relevant facts. For example, he is correct that if everyone became a vegetarian, the world could feed more people with less trouble. He is wrong to think that ALL of our problems would be solved –and yet he goes on and on and on about how we could feed more people, when those other problems, associated with overpopulation, cannot be resolved by adding more people.
His anti-abortion argument is based on animal rights, which is clever (and one I shall have to address at the fightforsense blog). After all, if one can generally grant animals right-to-life, then everyone would have to become a vegetarian (we could feed more people!) and unborn human animals would get right-to-life by inclusion, and abortion would become ban-able.
The answer to your question should be somewhere around here in other posts I've written. Read them, and let me know if it isn't.
A comment (above) that I wrote here about a month ago begins, "Before beginning this extension of my previous comment, I'd like to make it clear that, in general, I don't really care about the reasons why a pro-choicer supports abortion."
If you expand that message, you will find MY list of reasons to allow abortion, which was created kind-of as a logical consequence of spending years trashing anti-abortion arguments. Note that the recipient of the message failed to respond to even ONE of those reasons.
Wouldn't you think that if there actually was a valid reason to ban abortion, no reason to allow it could withstand scrutiny? But there the list has been for a month, with nobody pointing out any flaws in it….
I FUCKING hate this site for it's extreme laggyness. Typed a whole message to you and then the tab which I had this site on collapsed. Anyways,
You said on this article,
''
1. An unborn human steals nutrients from a body not its own, just by being alive.
2. An unborn human dumps toxic biowastes into a body not its own, just by being alive.
3. An unborn human infuses addictive substances into a body not its own, just by being alive.
4. An unborn human infuses a mind-altering substance into a body not its own, just by being alive
The unborn human CAN still be killed for what it does in the womb, If I left my door open KNOWING beforehand a dog can come in and it started to do the actions unborn humans do and or attempted to rip my arm apart, I can kill it despite that it doesn't know exactly what it was doing.
If I had my neighbors tell me that the hole I have in my house could lead to the possibility of mice infestation, and I decided to ignore it and it happened, I can still sit traps up to get rid of them if they don't decide to leave my house and would most likely be spreading diseases around.
Also there are other problems with declaring all animals persons.
A orca decides to kill a seal for food and now technically the orca should be charged with murder so the problem is, how are we going to find the culprit out in the huge ocean? If we don't know what type of orca it was, the search would be even more harder then it is. This would be a problem and we would have to make our police forces even more bigger to handle all the murder going on from animals killing each other for food.
The only thing I like about animal rights activists like peter singer is that they point out the inconsistencies with the pro life movement. Most I know of oppose giving animals person status. When pressed on it and asked what they lack that would make a entity a person, the animal rights activists can then remove the artificial barrier put around our species and then go on to say these humans also to lack what constitutes a person under your view. The pro lifer will then most likely say ''well they are a part of a species where there are members who have what I said so they're persons because of that.'' You pointed out the problem before with this claim to me before ignorance since this would also apply to R-Strategist aliens and thus most pro life arguments go down the drain.
Also, something on the side. It seems some have no problem accepting Optimus Prime as a person! https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090718010401AA2vL2y
You don't seem to be asking me anything here, so I'll keep this short. I'm pretty sure the lag is due to the number of comments on the page (time to stop adding them, basically).
We do generally kill various ordinary animals because we don't like what they DO. It is Hypocrisy to say such reasoning cannot apply to unborn humans.
Nature is full of too many predators for it to make sense to grant personhood status to all entities that have sentience and nothing more. Especially, anyone who believes in a Loving God that Created this situation must be willing to explain how it would make sense for all those prey-animals to be persons.
Optimus Prime is described as being a True Artificial Intelligence. Why shouldn't we consider such entities to qualify as persons? Stupid Prejudice? Tsk, tsk!
I suggest your movement lays off of the species membership. I been debating personhood now for about 5 years now into ET and AI's with some notebooks going into them. How do you think those like myself feel? Your movement in my mind is playing a much more dangerous game with our society then pro choicers.
For example I'm sure you watched Avatar right? Everyone I talked to about it and even wrote a paper on it noting similaries to the humans to the Navi did say killing them off was murder and I even did a poll on it and I got back with all a yes on it. Your movement would of told them indirectly it wasn't because of this stupid fucking person=human shit your movement keeps on doing.
If your movement does not stop what they're doing, then I have no problem going to my uncles radio station and exposing your movement. I'm not about ready to let those who been debating that word beyond the species down because your movement can't dip themselves into philosophy and not learn what words mean before hoping in.
Sorry if I am being hostile but something has to be done.
You're a sociopath.
So you aren't secular then. Without flexibility and open mindedness, you worship the religion of abortion.
I'm not even gonna answer you. I will say you're a bit of a d**k.