Are You A Good Man....

[Zymologist]

The statistics show that the majority of those who are pro-life are religious. It is therefore reasonable to assume that religious belief plays a part in their attitude towards abortion. Why are you so anxious to deny this?

Because you're either telling me I'm lying when I tell you that's not true of me, or that you know what I believe better than I do.

I am not pro-life for the reasons you say I am. What say you? Am I wrong? Am I lying? Do you understand my mind better than I do?

[Tassman]

Because you're either telling me I'm lying when I tell you that's not true of me, or that you know what I believe better than I do.

I am not pro-life for the reasons you say I am. What say you? Am I wrong? Am I lying? Do you understand my mind better than I do?

No, I'm telling you that the statistics show that the majority of those who are pro-life are religious.

[Zymologist]

No, I'm telling you that the statistics show that the majority of those who are pro-life are religious.

Here are some of your posts from this thread:

The 'elephant in the room' for this lot is that from the moment of conception an entity is a 'child of God' and therefore must be protected. They deny it and try to claim that the real agenda is a purely biological one, but it's obviously not because that argument makes no sense.

Indeed! Statistically, the majority of those who oppose abortion are Christian (i.e. Catholic or Evangelical) and hence they oppose it for presumably religious reasons.

Indeed. But correlation suggests causation in this instance.

No, according to the statistics most support for the pro-life stance comes from Religious groups, which suggests that religious beliefs play a role.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...bout-abortion/



Unlike seer re shunya, I am not laying down the law about what people believe merely suggesting a likely correlation.

"The statistics show that the majority of those who are pro-life are religious" is not all you are saying here. You have repeatedly said that the reasons pro-lifers give you for being pro-life aren't the real reason.

[Starlight]

Your life's experience allows you to tell people that the reasons they have for believing something are wrong?

Sure, in some circumstances. People are regularly mistaken about their reasons for believing things, and there's been lots of psychological studies done on that.

You guys are telling people that they're pro-life for reasons they are explicitly telling you are wrong. Do you seriously not see how arrogant that is?

I think you've got that backward. Tassman, for example, is noting the widespread correlation between religion and pro-life views. I think some conservatives here are being very arrogant by essentially saying "well I personally don't view myself as being pro-life because of my religion, and I'm going to incredibly arrogantly assume that the vast majority of other pro-life people are like me". There's a lot of arrogance coming off the pro-life conservatives here in their wild claims that millions of other people, that they don't know and have never met, all think the way they do.

[Zymologist]

Sure, in some circumstances. People are regularly mistaken about their reasons for believing things, and there's been lots of psychological studies done on that.

I think you've got that backward. Tassman, for example, is noting the widespread correlation between religion and pro-life views. I think some conservatives here are being very arrogant by essentially saying "well I personally don't view myself as being pro-life because of my religion, and I'm going to incredibly arrogantly assume that the vast majority of other pro-life people are like me". There's a lot of arrogance coming off the pro-life conservatives here in their wild claims that millions of other people, that they don't know and have never met, all think the way they do.

So I take it you're going to double down on your claim that you know better than I do what goes on in my own mind.

[Starlight]

I am not pro-life for the reasons you say I am.

Could you link me to a post where you've outlined your reasons for being pro-life? I tried paging through this thread, but it's long and I couldn't find any explanation of your reasoning.

[Sea of red]

Your life's experience allows you to tell people that the reasons they have for believing something are wrong?

You guys are telling people that they're pro-life for reasons they are explicitly telling you are wrong. Do you seriously not see how arrogant that is?

I have no doubt that many pro-life advocates do have sincere philosophical reasons that are unrelated to their religious beliefs - if they have any. That said, many pro-life advocates accuse myself and countless other pro-choices proponents of using 'emotion', and we routinely get our narrative distorted into something we don't even recognize as our own, no matter how clear we try to make ourselves. In my experience this the case in every conversation related to abortion no matter the effort taken to make clear what we believe and why. Sometimes it just feels like pro-life advocates are projecting their own way of thinking about this issue on to our side of - I see conservatives do this routinely in discussions. I'm obviously not the only one that has noticed this pattern.

[Zymologist]

I have no doubt that many pro-life advocates do have sincere philosophical reasons that are unrelated to their religious beliefs - if they have any. That said, many pro-life advocates accuse myself and countless other pro-choices proponents of using 'emotion', and we routinely get our narrative distorted into something we don't even recognize as our own, no matter how clear we try to make ourselves. In my experience this the case in every conversation related to abortion no matter the effort taken to make clear what we believe and why. Sometimes it just feels like pro-life advocates are projecting their own way of thinking about this issue on to our side of - I see conservatives do this routinely in discussions. I'm obviously not the only one that has noticed this pattern.

Yeah, I don't like talking about abortion either. It's always, "Why do you hate women?" or some such. I find it almost impossible to have a discussion on the topic. And yes, I'm happy to admit that people on both sides do this. I try to recognize when I do it and change something.

I should probably care less, but I do get tired of being told that I'm an immoral, bigoted idiot because I'm a Christian (which happens pretty regularly on here), or because I'm not left-wing in my politics (which happens frequently on here and elsewhere--almost inescapable nowadays, in my experience).

Starlight,

I'm pro-life because abortion is an act of violence that destroys a human life--I don't see any way around that.

[Starlight]

I have no doubt that many pro-life advocates do have sincere philosophical reasons that are unrelated to their religious beliefs - if they have any. That said, many pro-life advocates accuse myself and countless other pro-choices proponents of using 'emotion', and we routinely get our narrative distorted into something we don't even recognize as our own, no matter how clear we try to make ourselves. In my experience this the case in every conversation related to abortion no matter the effort taken to make clear what we believe and why. Sometimes it just feels like pro-life advocates are projecting their own way of thinking about this issue on to our side of - I see conservatives do this routinely in discussions. I'm obviously not the only one that has noticed this pattern.

Agreed. My various experiences on this subject, which tend to be like you describe here, have generally led me to have a view of pro-life people that generally they tend toward being (a) not very smart, (b) very emotional, (c) having a strong tendency towards projection, (d) are not very logical, (e) are not very well educated or scientifically knowledgeable.

Many of them don't even seem to understand the issues even after years and years of discussions on the topic of abortion, I mean within the last week or so we've had both Bill the Cat and Mountain Man trying to claim that pro-abortionists are anti-science. Bizarre stuff.

Starlight,

I'm pro-life because abortion is an act of violence that destroys a human life--I don't see any way around that.

I agree that abortion is an act of violence that destroys a human life. That's one of many things that are true about abortion. But I presume you are okay with soldiers killing in wars, and am wondering if you're fine with the death penalty... so I presume that "acts of violence that destroy human life are always wrong under all circumstances" is not a core moral principle of yours. I presume that you hold a variety of moral principles that mean such actions are okay to you in some circumstances (war) but not others (abortion). I likewise, hold a set of moral principles that means there are some cases where violence that destroys human life is appropriate even though I believe it usually isn't, and I am quite strongly against both war and the death penalty and do not generally view those as morally acceptable.

A full explanation of why you (or I) are against abortion (or not) would involve delving more deeply into those various moral principles and why they do or not allow exceptions in some cases but not others, and why it is you (or I) think they shouldn't allow exceptions in the case of abortion, and we would also need to discuss why you (or I) hold those moral principles. I find that many people's moral principles are heavily informed and shaped by their religious views. I suggest to you that if we sat down and discussed your moral views thoroughly we would eventually find that there was some cross-pollination in your religious views and your moral views, and that we could possibly see how your religious views and moral views had interacted to give rise to a situation where your moral views didn't permit abortion. Thus I suspect that even though your moral views are the direct and immediate reason for your opposition to abortion, that your religious views have probably ultimately played a role in shaping your moral views in a way that has led you to think abortion is immoral. Or possibly not, maybe religion actually had nothing at all to do with it, but to establish that for sure we would have to analyse the entire history of your ideas about moral principles and discuss exactly what had led you to each and every moral principle you hold and look at why they weren't just a tiny bit different to what they are or why they didn't allow for just a tiny few more or less exceptions than they currently do.

[Doug Shaver]

It is therefore reasonable to assume that religious belief plays a part in their attitude towards abortion. Why are you so anxious to deny this?

I deny it because I disagree with it.

If:

(a) Someone tells me that they have non-religious reasons for opposing abortion, and
(b) they tell me what those non-religious reasons are, and
(c) I have no clear evidence that they are lying to me,

then: I think I'm obliged to take their word for it that they oppose abortion for non-religious reasons.

[Starlight]

I deny it because I disagree with it.

If:

(a) Someone tells me that they have non-religious reasons for opposing abortion, and
(b) they tell me what those non-religious reasons are, and
(c) I have no clear evidence that they are lying to me,

then: I think I'm obliged to take their word for it that they oppose abortion for non-religious reasons.

Let's say you'd encountered someone before who'd said that. If:

You sat down and talked to them and found:
(d) Their opposition to abortion was for 'moral' reasons, based on various moral principles they held.
(e) Further conversations about morality and religion with them had led you both to agree that their religious views and their moral views were intimately intertwined, and that their religious beliefs had informed and shaped their moral principles.
(f) You had both eventually reached the conclusion together that while their immediate and direct opposition to abortion was a product of their moral views (e.g. a view that the killing of any human life was inappropriate behavior) rather than their religious views (e.g. they didn't feel any specific verses in the bible had any direct bearing on abortion), that nonetheless you had both come to agree after discussion that their religious views were the ultimate and indirect cause of their opposition to abortion (e.g. because their religious views were leading them to hold certain moral views about the wrongness of killing human beings that were impacting their stance on abortion) because of the way their religious views were affecting their moral views.

then: would you reasonably wonder if the next person who you talked to whom (a), (b) and (c) applied to, might also have (d), (e), and (f) be applicable?

[Tassman]

I deny it because I disagree with it.

If:

(a) Someone tells me that they have non-religious reasons for opposing abortion, and
(b) they tell me what those non-religious reasons are, and
(c) I have no clear evidence that they are lying to me,

then: I think I'm obliged to take their word for it that they oppose abortion for non-religious reasons.

That's not the argument. I was speaking generally that, based upon the statistics, the majority of those who are pro-life are religious. Zymologist may well be an exception. But given the statistics it is reasonable to assume that, in many cases, religious belief plays a part in the attitude of religious people towards abortion.

[Sea of red]

I deny it because I disagree with it.

If:

(a) Someone tells me that they have non-religious reasons for opposing abortion, and
(b) they tell me what those non-religious reasons are, and
(c) I have no clear evidence that they are lying to me,

then: I think I'm obliged to take their word for it that they oppose abortion for non-religious reasons.

I know you're trying to be charitable right now, but let's be real. Almost every single last Christian in the long history of this forum has identified as pro-life, and it's not coincidence. I can only think of one pro-choice Christian that ever came to this forum, and that's was Sam (before he left after years of abuse on here), whom was the sole liberal Christian as well. Maybe there were others that I never saw, but I tend to doubt it - they certainly weren't regulars. Same thing on the nontheistic side. BP is the only person I can recall that is a pro-life atheist, and he is a former fundamentalist. The reality is that when someone becomes a Christian it is almost universally expected by others Christians for them to be pro-life as well -- which proves my point.

It's not just the stats either. I'm sorry to be blunt, but most philosophical arguments for pro-life positions are just drivel. When I've argued with pro-life advocates the majority of the responses are full of pejorative uses of the word "life", and pointless semantics games of what words mean, clearly trying to smuggle in metaphysical presuppositions that's origins are clear. It's really hard to miss the religious diction that seems to lace every single pro-life debate. There just tends to be nothing secular about the pro-life movement that isn't a theological Trojan horse. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing 'Password' and there's a word (God) that my opponent is trying to 'say' without saying it in the game to me.

I wouldn't bring this up if they weren't constantly projecting their own motives and actions on to us, and calling us "emotional", "anti-science", and all the things that... seem to describe them perfectly.

This is why most nontheists that have come to this forum discuss the topic of abortion once.

[Roy]

I sure wouldn't defend a Christian that came out in support of killing kids.

You would. You did.

[Roy]

I'm pro-life because abortion is an act of violence that destroys a human life--I don't see any way around that.

I've seen lots of people object to abortion on those grounds - but I've never seen anyone object to IVF treatment on the same grounds. Will you be the first?