Why Democrats Can�t Talk Honestly About Abortion

[Starlight]

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

I guess I should give a less flippant answer to this than I first did, because I wouldn't want you to get the impression that I see the views on morality I've been explaining in this thread as being incompatible with Christianity. I absolutely think that the views I've been explaining in this thread are fully rationally compatible with Christianity and I absolutely think Christians can and should hold the views I have been outlining just as non-Christians should. Though I am no longer a Christian, and no longer view Christianity in the positive light I once did, and hence have made the occasional snide remark about it in this thread, I do not view any of the arguments I have been making as being against Christianity or as being anti-Christian arguments, and I would fully expect that someone who was a Christian could intentionally and rationally "amen" all of my posts.

With regard to your questions about Jesus's death, the theology of most Christians tends to hold that the killing of Jesus was a particularly bad act because he was God. As you have noted in this thread, my assessment of moral value based on the mental attributes of the victim would likewise mean that killing God who had significant/infinite mental attributes would be a particularly bad act. Thus there is no difference in this regard between the statements of my own moral views and of standard Christian belief. With regard to Jesus' forgiving his killers, it is standard practice in our society that the victim is the person who is capable if they wish of offering forgiveness to those who have offended them or harmed them. Jesus, like any victim of any crime, is the person who is then in the position to forgive, or not, those who have wronged and harmed him. If you wished to invoke Christian theology, you could say that Jesus himself due to his divine nature and infinite mental attributes was more capable of extending an offer of forgiveness than any normal human would be.

[Roy]

No file, just memory and use of the search function.

If you provide some extra details that you think show how I misrepresented you, I'll respond.

If you keep providing nothing but spittle and bile, I probably won't.

[rogue06]

It is always fascinating to see someone who supports the outright murder of newborns and infants trying to say that everyone else is immoral compared to him. Gotta wonder who exactly he's trying to convince.

All I see in this post is "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!! "

It is no surprise that when someone points out your repugnant indefensible position that find yourself forced to belittle it. And your nauseating attempts at moral equivalency, trying compare vicious murderers with innocent newborns, just highlights how much of an unrepentant reprobate that you are.

[rogue06]

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.

Very reminiscent of Jorge for him to have his own lexicon of terms in order to prop up an inexcusable position.

[Starlight]

Very reminiscent of Jorge for him to have his own lexicon of terms in order to prop up an inexcusable position.

You anti-abortionists are creating your own lexicon if you speak of abortion as 'murder', since it is clearly not unlawful if the law allows abortion, and thus does not meet your provided dictionary definition of murder. You're trying to accuse me of doing the very thing you yourselves are doing. At least I have the valid excuse that I live in a different country with a different culture that does use words a bit differently, whereas you guys have no excuse because you live in the country that produced the dictionary and you're the ones citing its listing.

[carpedm9587]

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?

Depends on what "valuable" means and where it is being applied:

In an economic think tank: yes
In a governance or leadership position: probably
As a first responder: probably
As a teacher: depends on the school and subject
As an employee: depends on the job
As a human being: absolutely not

Context...

[Christianbookworm]

We Christians speak of God's law. Duh!

[carpedm9587]

We Christians speak of God's law. Duh!

I have no idea if that is a response to what I just posted. If it is, I don't understand the relevance. If it's not, NVM...

(do know you can use the "reply with quote" option and then we'll be able to see what you are responding to?)

[Christianbookworm]

I have no idea if that is a response to what I just posted. If it is, I don't understand the relevance. If it's not, NVM...

(do know you can use the "reply with quote" option and then we'll be able to see what you are responding to?)

Sorry about that! Ninja!

[oxmixmudd]

Just out of curiosity, at what point do you believe the union of sperm and egg results in (or constitutes) "human life"?

I don't know CP, honestly. It is 'human' genetically from fertilization, but it is still just a human cell, not a human being. We don't have laws that consider the killing of a human cell murder. It seems to me it should be somewhere around the time where it clearly is somewhat conscious of its surroundings, one could say when brainwave activity starts or perhaps when it can respond to outside stimulus. That absolute latest would be viability outside the womb. Once you reach that point, you absolutely have a baby and any abortion after that point I would consider murder (although since it is technically legal to do abortions, it could not be considered murder in the legal sense of the word). Why is it clearly murder at that point? Because now we have a choice that allows the mother to be separated from the baby without killing either one. We can induce labor or have a c-section and take the baby out and it will very likely live. Then if the mother doesn't want it, we can adopt it to a good home (in the case of the danger of mortality to the mother, abortion can always be justified as self-preservation or self-defense) . Once the fetus is viable outside the womb, in the case of a healthy mother, abortion is nothing more than convenience killing.

Jim

[Cow Poke]

I don't know CP, honestly. It is 'human' genetically from fertilization, but it is still just a human cell, not a human being. We don't have laws that consider the killing of a human cell murder. It seems to me it should be somewhere around the time where it clearly is somewhat conscious of its surroundings, one could say when brainwave activity starts or perhaps when it can respond to outside stimulus. That absolute latest would be viability outside the womb. Once you reach that point, you absolutely have a baby and any abortion after that point I would consider murder (although since it is technically legal to do abortions, it could not be considered murder in the legal sense of the word). Why is it clearly murder at that point? Because now we have a choice that allows the mother to be separated from the baby without killing either one. We can induce labor or have a c-section and take the baby out and it will very likely live. Then if the mother doesn't want it, we can adopt it to a good home (in the case of the danger of mortality to the mother, abortion can always be justified as self-preservation or self-defense) . Once the fetus is viable outside the womb, in the case of a healthy mother, abortion is nothing more than convenience killing.

Jim

Thanks - I disagree, but I wasn't looking for an argument. Just wanted to know where you stood on that, so we're good!

[Mountain Man]

...it is still just a human cell, not a human being.

It is human life that if allowed to develop as God and nature intended will emerge into the world as a fully functioning human person.

[carpedm9587]

Sorry about that! Ninja!

No need to apologize - was just trying to figure out if I needed to respond...

[Cow Poke]

No need to apologize - was just trying to figure out if I needed to respond...

Aw, heck - go ahead! Verbosity counts!

[oxmixmudd]

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 making a basic logic error Starlight. Kill is a superset of murder. All murder is killing, but not all killing is murder. When I use the word kill to describe both acts, I am using a generic term that encompasses both acts. When you use a specific term (murder) to cover both acts when both acts do NOT meet the specific definition of the word, then you obfuscate the real distinctions that required there to be two words in the first place.

Analogously, all jets are airplanes, but not all airplanes are jets. If I call both a Cessna 172 and a boing 747 'jets', I am WRONG. But if I call both cessna 172 and a Boeing 747 an airplane, then I have used the word correctly, and I am CORRECT.

Language is not something any individual can chose to rework or redefine. Language is a medium of communication between people (plural). Unless common definitions are used and adhered to, communication is impossible. You are incorrect to try to redefine the word murder to meet your own definition.

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.

That is literally insode out Startlight. There are cases when we have no choice. And if we have a good moral compass we will do everything we can to avoid it, but sometimes there is nothing else one can do. And you can't play the hindsight in judgement either. If one is in a position where one must kill, the situation is so desperate at that point there likely will not be time to evaluate all the possible actions or discover the potential alternate route. The BLAME in such a case goes fully onto the perpetrator that has put you in such a position in the first place. They carry the responsibility and the blame for their own death.

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.

(1) Death is deserved when one puts another person in a position where they either kill you or you kill them. (2) Death is deserved in terms of reciprocity. If I steal $10,000 from you, then my minimum restitution is to give you back your $10,000 plus whatever additional cost you incurred as a result of losing that $10,000. If I kill someone, the only equivalent payment for the loss I can make is to give up my own life. (3) Death is deserved when a person has wantonly killed many, many people without conscience or mercy, because by (1) that person IS a mortal danger any person they come into contact with.

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.

We recognize in civilized societies that ANY innocent life has a right to life. The only people that do not have a right to life are those that have lost it through a murderous act per or similar to the above.

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.

That is silly. Those animals have reached most of their potential. A human infant has not. Within those same few years the mental function of a child will exceed all other species on the planet.

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.

One can't compare and complete human system with individual cells. There is a massive difference between talking about the potential of a zygote and the potential of a baby. But if you don't instinctively recognize this, then you are very far down a very dark path and you need to turn from it immediately.

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

No. And neither do I base any of my moral constructs on those parts of the Bible. And for very good reason.

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.

There are some people that would argue all black people should be exterminated. There are people that will argue Mary Poppins covered in soot as she dances with chimney sweeps is 'black face'. There are all sorts of idiots in the world Starlight, and it would be foolish to give them the time of day.


Jim