Why Democrats Can�t Talk Honestly About Abortion

[lilpixieofterror]

Whatever helps you sleep at night and avoid personal responsibility for your own moral failings. Calling out an alleged twig in my eye to avoid thinking about the branch in your own is a pretty tried and true tactic.

Advocating for infanticide=okay!

Thinking cops should be able to defend themselves, with deadly force, if necessary=evil!

Thus Starlight reveals how screwed up his moral compass truly is...

[Starlight]

Does this count?

I've fixed your link for Carpe.

Also, I'm impressed by what excellent points I make on that page. Obviously I'm a Very Stable Genius^TM.

[Starlight]

Oh, spare me the sanctimony.

That's my usual response to reading most conservative posts on this forum. Given you're a repeat offender in that regard, it's nice to give some back.

[Cow Poke]

That's my general usual to reading most conservative posts on this forum. Given you're a repeat offender in that regard, it's nice to give some back.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

[oxmixmudd]

I live in a different country with different legal terminology. There is no such term as "justifiable homicide" here and personally I find that term morally repugnant.

When I, personally, say the word "murder" I mean nothing less nor more than "intentional killing". For me, personally, those two terms are precisely equivalent.

Source: websters murder

: to kill (a human being) unlawfully and with premeditated malice
2 : to slaughter wantonly

© Copyright Original Source

Murder is more than to kill. You can adopt your own definition if you want to I suppose, but it's not what the word means. More importantly, you'd better be willing to use it in reference to yourself as easily as you are willing to use it against others. There is a very good reason why to Kill and to Murder are different things. Life isn't simple. Sometimes a life has to be taken and it's not the person who takes its choice or desire. And we can't be putting guilt on people who have not done anything wrong.

Secondarily, if you lose the distinction, then you miss a very important distinction between people. A man that kills another man to keep that man from raping his daughter is a very different sort of person than a man that takes a Gun into a McDonald's and kills everyone he can see as fast as he can.

No. Not only do I personally reject that definition as alien to anything I have ever used or would use by the term "murder", even in the immoral context of US law that CP is trying to foist on me, your usage of that term is wrong. So don't start your argument with such obviously false premises please.

To my mind and to my usage the only exception is if the killing is unintentional. I, personally, influenced by legal terminology and culture in my country, categorize killing into two categories: Unintentional = manslaughter, intentional = murder.

That is crazy. It pretends, as I said above, that the two acts are criminal and equivalent. And that is basically just nuts.

I agree the legal system would let you off and not punish you, I agree that most people including me would suggest you perform the action, but I would still describe it as you murdering the person in self-defense who had been trying to murder you. I would describe it as a terrible and horrible outcome and action which under the circumstances you were forced to do.

It is a terrible outcome. But you classing it as murder is also a pretty terrible thing. You are putting blame on a person that does not deserve blame.

Self-evidently the execution of a murderer is an intentional killing. In the way I personally use the word "murder", it is therefore "murder" as obviously as 2+2=4. I also view it as horribly immoral. No actions can possibly justify the death penalty as no human can ever "deserve" death,

Of course they can. Hitler deserved to die. So did Mengele. To name two.

and it is horrible and immoral for a state or society to perform that action (even leaving aside the non-negligible percentage of executed criminals who are later discovered to have been innocent). As such I view the US an immoral society and culture because of the lack of value it places on life, and find its idea that people can "deserve" to be killed morally offensive and horrible.

If a person kills another person, or other people heinously, if they are a serial killer mudering without conscience, you must take their life. Now you can take it by locking them up for the rest of their lives, or you can actually execute them. But you can't ever give them back their lives. Otherwise you are guilty of murdering whoever their next victim is.

It is unclear to me what you mean exactly by 'sacred', whether you are making a religious claim or simply a statement of value. If the latter, I would respond that you're wrong, and that actually it's all intelligent life / beings with cognitive capabilities that is sacred.

Then you should be able to accept that killing an unborn third trimester and viable 'fetus' is murder. Because most of them are more intelligent (in terms of their capacity) than all the other kinds of animals on the face of the Earth.

For the most part intelligent life and human life overlap in our experiences because humans are the only sentient species on our planet. However, in some cases they don't overlap: Higher mammals can exhibit significant cognitive capabilities and therefore ought to be protected IMO, and fetuses lack developed cognition so aren't subject to being valuable in the way developed humans are. I think to some extent you understand that last point because you yourself acknowledge that in the early phases of gestation the undeveloped fetus despite being biologically a member of the human species is not morally as important due to its lack of development.

Fortunately most of us don't value life based on what has been accomplished by the specifc living entity. In fact one of the most important value we have is that ALL mankind is created equal before God. Without that, Slavery is ok. various forms of caste is ok. Racism is ok. We value all human life equally. And that has created many changes in human civilization we almost all universally regard as good. And without which has been the justification for almost all forms to truly heinous behavior.

As I said before, that sort of valuation and assessment is the road to a holocaust.

Jim

[Christianbookworm]

If Starlight thinks moral value is correlated to intelligence... he can't complain when God rightly takes human life, because God has infinite intelligence.

[Starlight]

A man that kills another man to keep that man from raping his daughter is a very different sort of person than a man that takes a Gun into a McDonald's and kills everyone he can see as fast as he can.

I never implied otherwise. All I did was to say I used a particular English word with regard to both kinds of acts ("murder"), and you also used a particular English world with regard to both kinds of acts ("kills"). What I mean by my use of the word "murder" seems roughly equivalent to what you mean by your use of the word "kill".

It pretends, as I said above, that the two acts are criminal and equivalent. And that is basically just nuts.

You're reading nuttery into my words. You used the word "kill" for both acts, and that doesn't make them morally equivalent in your mind. I used the word "murder" for both acts, and that doesn't make them morally equivalent in my mind. You are reading your own ideas about what "murder" means to you, into my use of the word "murder", which I have now repeated several times to you doesn't at all mean the same thing to me and I've suggested we stop using the word because of this difference.

You are putting blame on a person that does not deserve blame.

Anyone who deliberately kills someone else deserves blame, IMO. The taking of an intelligent life is an awful act. It is a horrible tragedy regardless of the causes. Again, I find you and your culture's assumption that people can "deserve" death to be incredibly morally repugnant and shows to be a shocking lack of value you people place on life.

Hitler deserved to die.

To me this statement is sheer nonsense: Death cannot be something that is 'deserved', thus the statement does not make sense. It's like saying to me "the wall deserved to be painted". It just causes me to look at you funny. Painting can't be something that the wall can "deserve". You might think it's a 'good idea' to paint it, there might be a court order for it to get painted, it might be your wall and you might have the legal freedom to paint it, it might have graffiti and so you might feel it is better if it is painted over, but the wall itself can never under any circumstances "deserve" to be painted because that's not an attribute the wall is capable of having. Likewise deserving to die is not an attribute that I believe people can have. You might want them to die, a court might have ordered them to die, life might be better for others if they died, they might want to die, but they can't "deserve" to die anymore than the wall can "deserve" to be painted.

Do you think people are conceived because they "deserved" to live in the first place? I presume you would say that no, no one who is currently non-existent did anything to "deserve" to become existent, and that this is a nonsensical type of thing. I would say it is equally nonsensical to attribute a similar characteristic to the end of a person's life: They cannot "deserve" to die anymore than they "deserved" to live in the first place. It's not a characteristic that type of thing can have.

Then you should be able to accept that killing an unborn third trimester and viable 'fetus' is murder. Because most of them are more intelligent (in terms of their capacity) than all the other kinds of animals on the face of the Earth.

It depends on exactly what the criteria of comparison is, but roughly speaking, an average human infant's mental functions are similar to that of an average dog at around age 2, an average dolphin at around age 3, and an average ape at around age 4.

I do not think 'capacity' as you put it, i.e. as yet unrealized potential for future growth, is relevant. Consider, a biologist could theoretically take one of your skin cells, alter its internal settings so it became a stem cell, and then use it to clone a complete human being from that. Thus the skin cell has the 'capacity' to become an intelligent being, but is currently not one. If we were to concern ourselves with possible futures and capacities, we would then have to care about every cell in our bodies as if they were an adult human, and would have to consider ourselves murderers every time we exfoliated. This strikes me as absurd and impractical, and shows why we concern ourselves with what currently has significant mental functions as opposed to whether something has the capacity for future development of those functions or not.

In fact one of the most important value we have is that ALL mankind is created equal before God. Without that, Slavery is ok. various forms of caste is ok. Racism is ok. We value all human life equally. And that has created many changes in human civilization we almost all universally regard as good.

Did the bits where God instituted slavery, and instructed the Israelites to do genocide against other races, fall out of your bible?

As I said before, that sort of valuation and assessment is the road to a holocaust.

Some people would argue that the mass slaughter of intelligent animals for human food consumption currently constitutes a holocaust. Personally I think it's only a matter of time until the human race consumes lab-grown meat and dairy products and looks back on our current mass-murder of animals for food as utterly barbaric in a way similar to how we now look back at slavery.

[Starlight]

If Starlight thinks moral value is correlated to intelligence... he can't complain when God rightly takes human life, because God has infinite intelligence.

I am saying the moral wrong done by killing something is correlated to the intelligence of the victim - but you're talking about the killer's intelligence not the victim.

I'm saying killing a rock is not at all wrong, killing a worm is a tiny bit wrong, killing a fetus more wrong, killing a cow more wrong, and killing an adult human the most wrong, because there is a continuum of intelligence / mental faculties there. If God were infinitely intelligent, then killing God would be the most wrong, as he would be at one end of the continuum of intelligence of which rocks are at the other end.

[Christianbookworm]

Well, since Jesus forgave His killers... that's still makes no sense. What is so special about intelligence? Is a genius more valuable than a person with a profound intellectual disability?

[Starlight]

Well, since Jesus forgave His killers... that's still makes no sense.

Well much of the bible makes little sense, so no reason for that bit to be different I guess.

What is so special about intelligence?

As I have tried to make clear I am using the word "intelligence" as a shorthand for mental functioning in general, including but not limited to: Consciousness, ability to remember, ability to plan for the future and to have goals and work toward achievements, ability to speak and understand language, ability to recognize oneself in a mirror, ability to have a conception of yourself, ability to have social relationships with others and social interactions with them, ability to hold beliefs about the world, ability to mourn for lost loved ones, ability to love, ability to imagine alternatives and hypotheticals, ability to draw logical conclusions from premises, general intelligence, ability to experience emotions and pleasure and pain etc.

To me your question is thus "what is so special about the property of 'mind' that makes beings who have it meaningfully different to non-mind beings that don't have it, like rocks"? I kind of feel like that is a thing that is self-evident, or requires inspiring poetry to answer (and I'm not a poet, so can't). I would say the mind is the greatest mystery of the universe, and the only thing in which I truly stand in awe of.

Is a genius more valuable than a person with a profound intellectual disability?

To a small extent yes. However the differences between most adult humans are minimal when contrasted to, say, the difference between an adult human and a fish, or a fish and an earthworm.

[lilpixieofterror]

I am saying the moral wrong done by killing something is correlated to the intelligence of the victim - but you're talking about the killer's intelligence not the victim.

I'm saying killing a rock is not at all wrong, killing a worm is a tiny bit wrong, killing a fetus more wrong, killing a cow more wrong, and killing an adult human the most wrong, because there is a continuum of intelligence / mental faculties there. If God were infinitely intelligent, then killing God would be the most wrong, as he would be at one end of the continuum of intelligence of which rocks are at the other end.

[Christianbookworm]

It has value when those minds are going to exist forever, but how can they have value in an atheistic worldview? Stop copying! If you don't turn to God for salvation, you won't get to see if animals get brought back to life to live forever. Where the children play with all kinds of animals in harmony. Now that is a playdat! The wolf, lamb, lion, kid, leopard, cow, and bear following a little child.

[lilpixieofterror]

It has value when those minds are going to exist forever, but how can they have value in an atheistic worldview? Stop copying! If you don't turn to God for salvation, you won't get to see if animals get brought back to life to live forever. Where the children play with all kinds of animals in harmony. Now that is a playdat! The wolf, lamb, lion, kid, leopard, cow, and bear following a little child.

[Starlight]

It has value when those minds are going to exist forever, but how can they have value in an atheistic worldview?

Attributing value to something is one of the abilities a mind has - that one belongs in my list. Any person is capable of finding something valuable or meaningful to them - e.g. most of us see our family, our friendships, our lives, etc as having great value to us.

Thus the sum total of value in the universe is the sum of all the things that any mind attributes value to or see value in. Nothing has value in and of itself outside of a mind attributing value to it. For some reason conservatives in this forum seem to commonly make that error and imagine that things ought to somehow have value/meaning in and of themselves outside of a mind finding them valuable/meaningful.

[Starlight]

Smart aliens?

Most of the 7 billion humans on this planet?