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At 11/17/10 11:26 PM, The-General-Public wrote: I get the feeling at this point I could ask you "What is your opinion on the legality of abortion"

I'm pro-choice. Does that count as an actual answer?

Different questions warrant different approaches.

At 11/17/10 11:37 PM, Bacchanalian wrote:

At 11/17/10 11:26 PM, The-General-Public wrote: I get the feeling at this point I could ask you "What is your opinion on the legality of abortion"

I'm pro-choice. Does that count as an actual answer?

ok, now explain why. God it's like pulling teeth with you

At 11/17/10 11:59 PM, The-General-Public wrote: ok, now explain why. God it's like pulling teeth with you

Opportunism. It is in my interest to maintain as much control over my way of life as society permits. Wide spread support for abortion legitimizes that interest.

At 11/18/10 12:50 AM, Bacchanalian wrote:

At 11/17/10 11:59 PM, The-General-Public wrote: ok, now explain why. God it's like pulling teeth with you

Opportunism. It is in my interest to maintain as much control over my way of life as society permits. Wide spread support for abortion legitimizes that interest.

Thank You.

A woman's choice is her own. If she feels it is necessary to have the abortion and handles the situation in a well thought responsible manner. I am supportive of woman's rights if these cafeterias are met. What upsets me is people who feel the obligation and the authority to tell a women what she can and can not do with her body. Regardless of whether or not you believe this embryonic life has meaning ( though it is still has no heart beat and it is illegal to go to one after 8 months) what gives any religious or political group any power over a woman's body?

At 11/17/10 02:53 AM, The-General-Public wrote:
Doesn't the fact that the majority of Americans support Roe v Wade being upheld contradict that statement? A fetus is unquestionably biologically human, but it doesn't have the same rights as an adult, or even an infant, why?

I think that a fetus is human, I just don't think it's a person.

Touche - I forgot that there was a differentiation between the two in that trial. My bad.

I actually answered your question earlier, though - the infant has those rights by simple virtue that they are human (and I discussed why in some more detail in my earlier post), which leads us to your skeptical opinion...

And it's also one that I'm skeptical of, as I doubt that there has never existed a person who was pro-choice and a vegetarian, or pro-choice and kept and cared for a pet.

Since you agree that the fetus is a human, this contradiction is actually something I'm not responsible for answering - I don't know why pro-choice people act illogically, nor should I care. The burden of proof is on your table, at this point, and providing an illogical point and implying that 'pro-choice people hafta have SOME reason behind this' isn't going to fly, either. I have no requirement to accept that the pro-choice position is a rational one to hold, at this point (much like you have no obligation to think that the pro-choice position is rational, either), so how does this implication help you?

Explain why this situation exists, for me, or (more likely) at least continue to attack my own reasoning behind why humans have 'natural' rights - otherwise it simply solidifies the fact that the pro-choice position makes little sense.

At 11/16/10 12:57 PM, The-universe wrote: 1. Abortion is generally defined as the termination and/or removal of a fetus by an external party.

Well, abortion has never been defined as the removal of a fetus. As this would make every doctor who delivered a baby before term to save it an abortionist. And we don't consider people who remove dead babies to be abortionists either.

Moreover, punishment is not pro-crime. If one supposrts the death penalty they don't support murder.

Logical problems exist in abundance in your response.

2. As explained in Numbers, if a woman commits adultery her fetus is to be terminated.

Um, I wwent back and reread Numbers and it says no such thing. But hey.Good try?

The only thing you can argue is God supports abortion to a specific degree. But if the religious say that all abortions are murders and/or wrong, then god is (by their own logic) a murderer and/or has done wrong.

Or not. Making someone infertile is not the same as killing a child. Punishing someone for doing wrong is not ever the same as attacking an innocent. You have no point here.

And considering the slave's right's movement is Judeo-Christian, you have nothing.

Then they're not reading their own scripture. The Bible is actually quite an amusing book, if they followed all the rules, then they're psychotic bigots, but if they didn't, then they're cherry picking and not actually following gods law.

Catch-22 FTW!

Um, the Bible is the first book in history that says slavery is wrong, and slaves have rights. It is the first book that claims women have rights. But hey, have fun with your idiocy. I love people who think they're smart failing hard!

At 11/16/10 04:20 PM, lolomfgisuck wrote: Ummm... rape is something you do to somebody elses body.

As in abortion. It IS another being you're destroying.

Yeah... cause he was Jesus... he was perfect. You're not Jesus. You're not perfect.

No, but we follow his example. And yea, most of the Prophets were pretty judgemental. Including Paul, who was one of the worst people EVER before he became Christian.

Yeah... they're to preach it. Not force their interpritation of Gods word upon the masses.

You're not very bright.

At 11/17/10 02:38 AM, Gario wrote: Why do we care more for something that is human over something that is non-human? Who knows, but you can easily observe that most humans place humans above non-humans, in terms of priority. Perhaps it's for religious reasons, for some. For others, maybe the familiarity a human being provides is much greater than a non-human does, so the person sympathizes with him/her. Whatever the reason, I can't say, but it's easy to show that people care for humans simply by virtue of the fact that they are human.

Except a lot of people don't. Since you don't get this, this is why you're flailing at the air here. A plurality of Americans are pro-Choice. Almost half of those that are pro-life feel that they have no right to force their rights on others. Which means, they believe they have no right to protect one human from another.

You're a good kid I'm sure, but you're a little late and a tad clueless on the debate. However, feel free to keep trying. I won't be the prick you were and tell you you're useless.

At 11/17/10 09:05 PM, KillroyOmega wrote: You really don't understand how things work.

I do actually. As both all of my previous arguments and your lack of arguments show.

It is incredibly easy to explain morality from a logical point of view. Each person is entitled to their own body. Given an acceptable mental state (as in able to think rationally) the persons is able to choose what they wish to do involving themselves. A human does not have the right to do anything to another human without their permission. Therefore, things such as murder and rape are a breech of the basic rights of a sentient species.

It is apparently easy to explain. But you failed. I could point out thousands of laws that contradict you in hundreds of areas. Beyond simply asserting "it is so", you haven't done anything to argue your case.

Taking God out of the equation, I absolutely have the right to do whatever I wish to make my life better. If I want to have sex with a reluctant woman, so be it! It makes me life better. Slaves? AWESOME! Without an absolute set of moral bounds outside of humanity, there is no reason NOT to run wild. Either my rights come from God, in which case they are beyond human touch, or I have whatever privledges that society decides to give me, completely void tomorrow if they so choose. If society decides that rape or slavery is ok again, there is no rational basis we can fight it on. 51% of the public chose and we are on the losing side.

Far from being easy to define why we have rights without a God...it's absolutely impossible.

If we wish to be fully technical and objective, a human is not truly alive until an average of six months. Before this, they are but a mostly blank slate. For all intents and purposes, however, we can assume them as people because they are already 'alive.' It would also be rather useless to terminate the process at this point.

Again, other than simply saying "this is so", you've done absolutely nothing to argue your point. A 9 month old baby is a blank slate. Yet we claim it has rights. Far from refuting anything I've said, you simply backed up something I claimed myself. But um, props on using a lot of words to say absolutely nothing?

A key example of why one does not need to justify morality or a social norm can be to look at creatures in nature. Most have no higher thought, no ability to question why things are the way they are. Yet some birds have been known to care for each other, a young jay feeding an older bird with a broken-off lower beak, for example. Crows have been known to copy human behavior, with one key instance being the burial of their dead. This is interesting in that it leaves the question, "Do they know why they bury the bodies, or do they simply emulate the behavior that they experience?" This question can also be applied to humans. Many cultures have many funeral rituals. Some bury their dead, some burn the corpses, and some go so far as to eat the corpse. This leads you to ask just why they do these things. Do they bury their dead over a fear of loss? Do they burn the corpse to prevent the spread of disease? Do they eat it for there is a scarcity of food?

This doesn't answer anything! Animals often slaughter each other for no reason, and with no purpose. They kill over land, they kill over mates, they kill over food...animals are savage. By your lack of logic we can justify gang warfare, rape, murder, incest, and any other thing we wish to, by noting animals do it too.

The most important question one can ask, however, is why religion A is right and religion B is wrong. Members of both groups are taught from birth that their view is the right view, and that it is the absolute truth. They wage wars, whether violent or not, against the opposing religion. Neither concedes defeat, and both claim that their variant is better. Both religions piggyback on those that came before them, accepting some doctrines while rejecting others. The hatred of the other religion is instilled in the minds of the children on both sides, and the cycle repeats itself for generations until either side conquers the other, or group C takes advantage of the tension and marches their army in.

When someone says "They wage wars, violent or not...." you know you're dealing with a halfwit. War is violent. Period. If it's not violent, it's not war.

Moreover, this moronic diatribe COMPLETELY illustrates my point. There are two sides and they will always disagree. If there is no objective truth, then both sides are right. So abortion is BOTH no big deal, and at the same time a horrible horrible crime. To even the smallest child this is clearly incorrect, so your logic, if we wish to call it that, is null and void.

I could go off on a tirade on why I believe religion to just be a crutch for humanity in it's infancy, I will not. That would just be me spouting my opinion without any basis in fact.

Given the lack of intelligence you've shown above, I have the funny feeling I could use your tirade as a drinking game and kill multiple people with alcohol poisoning.

At 11/16/10 01:26 PM, Bacchanalian wrote: Wait... so then doesn't that make them God given niceties? Are are you saying God given rights can't be taken away?

Could you list some of these God given rights?

So, you're saying that no one can ever violate rights? Either you're trying to be cute (and failing miseravly) or you're trying to ignore the very clear wording I put forward. Of course society can violate rights. But that doesn't make it right. Quite frankly, unless you admit that you deliberately misunderstood me (you're a rather smart guy), there's not much reason to take you seriously anymore. "It happened, therefore it's both moral and acceptable!"

At 11/18/10 12:56 AM, The-General-Public wrote:

Thank You.

Congrats on going through all that for jack shit.

At 11/18/10 01:30 AM, Gario wrote:

Since you agree that the fetus is a human, this contradiction is actually something I'm not responsible for answering - I don't know why pro-choice people act illogically, nor should I care.

You assume that they're acting illogically when there's no contradiction at all. It's merely a matter of priorities. I think a dog is more similar to a person than a fetus, you don't. I believe that it's a good idea to confer more rights upon beings that can experience pain, pleasure than on beings that can't you don't. You believe in some kind of Platonic ideal of person-hood, I don't. Deciding that person-hood begins at birth is nothing more than a social convention, but so is person-hood. I simply believe that the benefits of saying that a person's life begins at birth rather than conception is better for society, those I care about, and myself.

:The burden of proof is on your table
If I recall correctly, you were saying that humans inherently held that the right to life of all members of their species were more important than personal rights to autonomy, or the rights of animals. I'm still waiting for evidence of that. I don't care if you find it illogical that some people value the lives of animals more than they value the lives of fetuses, I'm asking you to explain how this is possible if your example is true. If you can't explain it, than stop claiming it.

I also remember you saying for some reason that because of the fact that humans naturally treated members of their species as people, regardless of whether they had been born or not(still waiting on proof of that), that it was somehow morally "right" that we protected fetuses. I'd still like to hear your reasoning behind that.

Explain why this situation exists, for me, or (more likely)

I find a dog to be closer to a person than a fetus, simple enough. I find a chimpanzee or a dolphin to be closer to a person than a dog. I use intelligence, ability to communicate and reason, and ability to hold preferences(among many of things) as the criteria to judge person-hood by, you're free to choose your own of course, but stop believing in silly things like that your position is any more logical than mine, or that as a human, I have to necessarily see the life of a fetus as equivalent to the life of an adult.

at least continue to attack my own reasoning behind why humans have 'natural' rights

You have an open invitation to explain why you believe such a thing, please enlighten me.

At 11/18/10 04:14 AM, WolvenBear wrote:

At 11/16/10 12:57 PM, The-universe wrote: 1. Abortion is generally defined as the termination and/or removal of a fetus by an external party.

Well, abortion has never been defined as the removal of a fetus. As this would make every doctor who delivered a baby before term to save it an abortionist. And we don't consider people who remove dead babies to be abortionists either.

Fetus:
-noun, plural -tus·es. Embryology .
the young of an animal in the womb or egg, esp. in the later stages of development when the body structures are in the recognizable form of its kind, in humans after the end of the second month of gestation.

It is impossible to give birth to a 2 month baby. The earliest born was James Elgin Gill and he was 4 months premature.

So yes, my definition still applies.

Moreover, punishment is not pro-crime. If one supposrts the death penalty they don't support murder.

That is because murder and execution are differently defined. An abortion is not differently defined REGARDLESS of the cause. It DOES NOT matter if it is punishment or willingness, it is still an abortion nonetheless.

Logical problems exist in abundance in your response.

Maybe because I actually checked the defined terms of things instead of just making stupid comments like "doctors give birth to fetuses".

Um, I wwent back and reread Numbers and it says no such thing. But hey.Good try?

Numbers 5:11-31 It mentions it, TWICE. If you can't read it, then something is seriously wrong with your eyes.

Or not. Making someone infertile is not the same as killing a child. Punishing someone for doing wrong is not ever the same as attacking an innocent. You have no point here.

There is no mention of infertility.

Um, the Bible is the first book in history that says slavery is wrong,

Except for exodus, numbers, Leviticus etc.

and slaves have rights.

Exodus 21:20

Yeah, because apparently killing them over the weekend is less worse than killing them right away.

It is the first book that claims women have rights.

Exodus 21:7-11

But hey, have fun with your idiocy. I love people who think they're smart failing hard!

Other than just saying "you're wrong/idiot" you actually haven't argued anything. But oh wait, saying "I can't find it" is an awesome rebuttal.

You know what else works? Actually debating what I've been saying instead of just plastering a post with ad homs, mkay?

At 11/18/10 06:17 AM, WolvenBear wrote:

It is apparently easy to explain. But you failed. I could point out thousands of laws that contradict you in hundreds of areas. Beyond simply asserting "it is so", you haven't done anything to argue your case.

Taking God out of the equation, I absolutely have the right to do whatever I wish to make my life better. If I want to have sex with a reluctant woman, so be it! It makes me life better. Slaves? AWESOME! Without an absolute set of moral bounds outside of humanity, there is no reason NOT to run wild. Either my rights come from God, in which case they are beyond human touch, or I have whatever privledges that society decides to give me, completely void tomorrow if they so choose. If society decides that rape or slavery is ok again, there is no rational basis we can fight it on. 51% of the public chose and we are on the losing side.

Far from being easy to define why we have rights without a God...it's absolutely impossible.

It's not impossible, you just won't admit that. Slavery and rape are unethical because they involve violating the rights of others. To describe it simply, one can apply a rule to oneself that their body is their own, and if they do they must also apply it to all others. You can think of it as a simple math rule.

Foregoing that route I could simply claim that just as you have faith in your God, we must have faith in the rights of humans as we understand them. Just as your God "simply exists because it does," our reasons exist because they do.

Again, other than simply saying "this is so", you've done absolutely nothing to argue your point. A 9 month old baby is a blank slate. Yet we claim it has rights. Far from refuting anything I've said, you simply backed up something I claimed myself. But um, props on using a lot of words to say absolutely nothing?

I did not say that a nine month old baby was a blank slate, I said that infants are mostly blank slates up until the average age of about six months. Once born a human does have rights, even though it does not yet fully know what it is. It has these rights because of the will of the parents for it to have these rights, for the decision of whether or not it was even formed has been in their hands from the start.

Also, thank you for not actually refuting anything I said and completely avoiding it.

This doesn't answer anything! Animals often slaughter each other for no reason, and with no purpose. They kill over land, they kill over mates, they kill over food...animals are savage. By your lack of logic we can justify gang warfare, rape, murder, incest, and any other thing we wish to, by noting animals do it too.

Replace animal in those sentences with human. Humans have been known through history as savages. Whether described as brutish or noble, always has the title of savagery been ours. Yet at the same time, humans form groups naturally. It is the fighting between groups that gives us our savagery. What do you think would happen if we had only one theoretical group?

When someone says "They wage wars, violent or not...." you know you're dealing with a halfwit. War is violent. Period. If it's not violent, it's not war.

Moreover, this moronic diatribe COMPLETELY illustrates my point. There are two sides and they will always disagree. If there is no objective truth, then both sides are right. So abortion is BOTH no big deal, and at the same time a horrible horrible crime. To even the smallest child this is clearly incorrect, so your logic, if we wish to call it that, is null and void.

You missed my point entirely. Wars rage to this day, and not all of them are violent. Look at the 'Christian Relief Groups' that plague the poorer parts of Europe and offer food and shelter. Some have been known to deny entrance to those who do not accept their doctrines. Even if it is surrounded by good intention, it is still a war.

My point in putting the two groups was simply to illustrate how it didn't matter what they believed. They could have argued on whether Jimmy Carter would rise from the grave to deliver a zombie army into a space ship. It really doesn't matter what they believed. The point is that whoever was stronger would prevail, else both would die.

Given the lack of intelligence you've shown above, I have the funny feeling I could use your tirade as a drinking game and kill multiple people with alcohol poisoning.

Maybe I can wright up a book of magic while I am high on shrooms, too! I know the perfect name; Genesis!

I tried to avoid insulting your intelligence (I knew you would anyway, but I at least tried,) but it doesn't look like you can say the same here.

Tell me simply this; Why do you believe that you have God given rights?

At 11/18/10 04:14 AM, WolvenBear wrote:

Um, the Bible is the first book in history that says slavery is wrong, and slaves have rights. It is the first book that claims women have rights. But hey, have fun with your idiocy. I love people who think they're smart failing hard!

The Bible actually originally claimed slavery to be morally acceptable (Or a pope did, whichever one doesn't really matter. Both are claimed to be direct words of God.) It also said that women were lesser than men.

The first instances of the rights of slavery and women came before Catholicism and Christianity were even thoughts.

At 11/18/10 07:00 AM, The-General-Public wrote:

At 11/18/10 01:30 AM, Gario wrote:

Since you agree that the fetus is a human, this contradiction is actually something I'm not responsible for answering - I don't know why pro-choice people act illogically, nor should I care.

You assume that they're acting illogically when there's no contradiction at all. It's merely a matter of priorities. I think a dog is more similar to a person than a fetus, you don't. I believe that it's a good idea to confer more rights upon beings that can experience pain, pleasure than on beings that can't you don't. You believe in some kind of Platonic ideal of person-hood, I don't. Deciding that person-hood begins at birth is nothing more than a social convention, but so is person-hood. I simply believe that the benefits of saying that a person's life begins at birth rather than conception is better for society, those I care about, and myself.

Right, right, I got that. I understand the argument up to this point - no need to repeat it all, there.

The burden of proof is on your table

If I recall correctly, you were saying that humans inherently held that the right to life of all members of their species were more important than personal rights to autonomy, or the rights of animals. I'm still waiting for evidence of that. I don't care if you find it illogical that some people value the lives of animals more than they value the lives of fetuses, I'm asking you to explain how this is possible if your example is true. If you can't explain it, than stop claiming it.

Evidence? Oh boy, that's something I can't provide. I can provide empirical observation and show that humans tend to be more protective of other humans than of other non-human animals, but that's it. What, you thought I had deductive 'proof' of this phenomena? Nope, it's inductive - feel free to attack it at will.

Beware, though, that if you don't agree with it your basically saying that people as a collective whole care as much if not more for non-humans than for humans, which doesn't sound correct. I can't (or, more accurately, won't) argue against your argument, but I probably won't agree with you, either.

I also remember you saying for some reason that because of the fact that humans naturally treated members of their species as people, regardless of whether they had been born or not(still waiting on proof of that), that it was somehow morally "right" that we protected fetuses. I'd still like to hear your reasoning behind that.

You're taking my statement too far. First, I never said people universally treated anyone or anything as a 'person'. I said that the fetus is considered 'human' (which you agreed with, if I recall). I then said that there is a tendency for people to treat humans as 'persons', due to the sole fact that they share a common species. Not everyone shares the idea of how far this should be taken, though.

Second, I purposely avoided morality altogether, so you're misreading my posts if you think I'm claiming that it's morally 'right' to do anything. You're likely mixing up Wolvenbear's posts with mine.

Don't do that, please.

I find a dog to be closer to a person than a fetus, simple enough. I find a chimpanzee or a dolphin to be closer to a person than a dog. I use intelligence, ability to communicate and reason, and ability to hold preferences(among many of things) as the criteria to judge person-hood by, you're free to choose your own of course...

... Well, frankly that's where your argument has it's flaws. The problem is that humanity doesn't reach a level that is uniquely 'human' until the person reaches an age of close to two years. By definition of intelligence, most pigs are considerably more intelligent that an infant, so by that logic the pig should have more rights than a human infant (which is not functionally true). In terms of communication the honey bee is far more advanced in open language than a very young child that cannot use syntax (yet they don't have rights, either). Hell, nearly all animals can feel pain, but that doesn't give them any sort of right to personhood (for those people that feel that the abortion should only be allowed as long as there isn't any pain involved). Most animals hold preferences (since, for the most part that develops through basic classical or operant conditioning, and all animals are susceptible to that), and chimps, dogs and dolphins have shown a great deal of reasoning behind their decisions (Humans aren't at their level until well after birth).

The problem with your position is that the things you look for mean nothing on their own. The only way you can attribute any sort of ability/reasoning marker to personhood and 'rights' and NOT include animals that we butcher for our own satisfaction is to make that mark later in the human's life. If you really want me to back this up, take it one point at a time. I'm not going to go through every single point in a single sitting, since that would take too much of my time (I have other things to do than argue, y'know).

but stop believing in silly things like that your position is any more logical than mine, or that as a human, I have to necessarily see the life of a fetus as equivalent to the life of an adult.

What's the point of an argument if I immediately sided with your position? You're trying to take the fun out of this, you big sourpuss.

at least continue to attack my own reasoning behind why humans have 'natural' rights

You have an open invitation to explain why you believe such a thing, please enlighten me.

I already... fine. A quick explanation.

Humans are given rights because of their association to their own species - it is beneficial to give people more rights than an animal since giving animals equal rights restricts people from exploiting them for their own gain.

This is well beyond the thread, though (as you pointed out, whether or not the fetus is human isn't even the argument, which I now acknowledge). The question is actually why I would consider the fetus a 'person' worthy of rights. My reasoning for this (which I discussed earlier, before the General-Public/Bacch debate) is simply because using any other method to define personhood makes very little sense (as explained above). I don't think it's really been explained properly why beginning personhood rights at the fetus is a bad thing (all I hear so far is the clamoring of pro-choice people saying it's TERRIBLE... then failing to provide any sound reasoning behind it).

Except a lot of people don't. Since you don't get this, this is why you're flailing at the air here. A plurality of Americans are pro-Choice. Almost half of those that are pro-life feel that they have no right to force their rights on others. Which means, they believe they have no right to protect one human from another.

You're a silly person, Wolvenbear - you realize what you're claiming, right? You're saying that pro-choice people would rather save a drowning dog/cat/non-human of your choice than a drowning human, or at the very least have a ambiguity problem when trying to chose. That's simply ridiculous - of course people will save another human over a non-human, if all other factors are equal.

Besides, those 'pro-life' people that claim it's not their right to force rights on others are actually not listed as 'pro-life'. That's called 'pro-choice', by definition.

However, feel free to keep trying. I won't be the prick you were and tell you you're useless.

As to why I'm calling you 'useless', you're throwing the Bible at a bunch of atheists (and even misquoting it, for good measure). Why are you even bothering with that? All that's going to do is make Christians look stupid (for committing the Psychologists fallacy repeatedly) and make all pro-lifers look like they have to be Christian (which they don't). So again, if you don't have anything to contribute that doesn't make Christians and pro-lifers (and therefore, me, by association to both) look like belligerent morons then stop posting.

Thank you for your consideration.

Well that's definitely bullshit. People have the right to their opinions, whether someone else agrees with it or not. Plain and simple. Those are just a few ignorant assholes. There's plenty more of that wherever you go.

Personally, since I am mostly democratic-oriented, I'm pro choice. I personally don't think abortion kills, and of course there's the issue or rape or whatnot. That just proves it even more that it is up to the woman for what she wants to do.

At 11/18/10 06:17 AM, WolvenBear wrote: So, you're saying that no one can ever violate rights?

"We either have God given rights (I believe we do) or we have no rights at all. "Rights" that can be taken away are not rights. They're nicities. Society can vote them away tomorrow. Something that society can take away is not a right. It's a privledge or grant."

1. You're the one saying that it's not a right if it can be taken away, describing a dichotomy by which a right may only be considered a right if it cannot be taken away.

2. You're the one saying we have rights.

Either you're trying to be cute (and failing miseravly) or you're trying to ignore the very clear wording I put forward. Of course society can violate rights. But that doesn't make it right.

Don't tout clear wording if you're not going to distinguish between "can" and "should" in a discussion heavily entrenched in morality.

You said, ""Rights" that can be taken away are not rights."

"It happened, therefore it's both moral and acceptable!"

That would be the logical implication of what I'm objecting to, not a position I'm in favor of.

At 11/18/10 09:24 PM, Gario wrote:

Beware, though, that if you don't agree with it your basically saying that people as a collective whole care as much if not more for non-humans than for humans, which doesn't sound correct. I can't (or, more accurately, won't) argue against your argument, but I probably won't agree with you, either.

People as a collective whole care far more about persons than non-persons. We care more for children and adults than animals. And there are far more laws on the books about animal cruelty than fetal cruelty.

:there is a tendency for people to treat humans as 'persons', due to the sole fact that they share a common species.

If you're extending that to fetuses, you're really gonna need to back that up.

... Well, frankly that's where your argument has it's flaws. The problem is that humanity doesn't reach a level that is uniquely 'human' until the person reaches an age of close to two years. By definition of intelligence, most pigs are considerably more intelligent that an infant, so by that logic the pig should have more rights than a human infant

I certainly don't expect anyone here to agree with me when I say that pigs should have rights, or that infants aren't equal to an adult person in terms of personhood, but while I guess that believing those things would be a logical implication of my personal beliefs about abortion/fetal rights, they're not required to be pro-choice.

If you really want me to back this up, take it one point at a time. I'm not going to go through every single point in a single sitting, since that would take too much of my time (I have other things to do than argue, y'know).

I really don't want to get into a discussion on vegetarianism on here of all places. So I pass.

Humans are given rights because of their association to their own species - it is beneficial to give people more rights than an animal since giving animals equal rights restricts people from exploiting them for their own gain.

it's beneficial to give adults more rights than fetuses because giving fetuses rights restricts women from aborting them for their own gain.

using any other method to define personhood makes very little sense (as explained above). I don't think it's really been explained properly why beginning personhood rights at the fetus is a bad thing (all I hear so far is the clamoring of pro-choice people saying it's TERRIBLE... then failing to provide any sound reasoning behind it).

Using any method to define personhood makes little sense(not that I don't see the virtue in trying). Personhood is an arbitrary concept with arbitrary borders, the question that we need to concern ourselves with is how the legality of abortion affects our society.

At 11/19/10 07:54 PM, The-General-Public wrote: they're not required to be pro-choice.

Oh come on!

At 11/19/10 08:21 PM, Bacchanalian wrote:
Oh come on!

What?

At 11/20/10 04:45 AM, The-General-Public wrote: What?

You really don't realize that's the argument that drove you nuts when you were dealing with me - the approach you thought was evasive, that you thought proved that I just didn't think through anything?

You really don't realize that you came from... { criticizing my alleged pro-life philosophy as incoherent without even knowing what explicitly was incoherent about it } to { essentially acknowledging that pro-choice philosophy is not a monolithic thing, not implicating, without a doubt, a particular premise }.

And even more of a slap-in-the-face to this debate, you actually use the 'that's not essential to being x' argument to actually dance around the discussion of a potential flaw pointed out in YOUR philosophy (an individual philosophy, something that was apparently of utmost importance when talking to me). You actually get past the point where someone says, "that premise is problematic," to say, "oh but that's not always the case (so we don't need to talk about it)."

Icing on the cake. You deflect with, "I don't expect anyone to agree with me." So fucking what?

Jesus.

Cliffsnotes...

You spend pages essentially making the argument that everything I say is off topic unless it's explicitly divulging my personal position, and then after all that make the argument that a personal position is not essential to discussing the philosophy.

At 11/20/10 12:43 PM, Bacchanalian wrote:

At 11/20/10 04:45 AM, The-General-Public wrote:

You really don't realize that's the argument that drove you nuts when you were dealing with me - the approach you thought was evasive, that you thought proved that I just didn't think through anything?

Jesus.

What drove me nuts was that you were wasting my time with a high school lesson on logic when all I was interested in was how you felt about abortion. Fortunately, I've learned to only skim your posts instead of actually wasting even more time reading them all the way through. You and I are in complete agreement on nearly every issue in this topic. I can just explain my reasoning without coming across as a pseudo-intellectual pedant.

At 11/20/10 12:54 PM, Bacchanalian wrote:

You spend pages essentially making the argument that everything I say is off topic unless it's explicitly divulging my personal position, and then after all that make the argument that a personal position is not essential to discussing the philosophy.

For somebody who enjoys writing so much text, your certainly lack for reading comprehension.

At 11/20/10 04:50 PM, The-General-Public wrote: For somebody who enjoys writing so much text, your certainly lack for reading comprehension.

The former is apparent in your revisionism of "your position (by this time supposed to be pro-life) would be coherent if you stopped using mouth wash" to "all I wanted was for you to tell me what you thought about abortion."

The latter is apparent in the following: "while I guess that believing those things would be a logical implication of my personal beliefs about abortion/fetal rights, they're not required to be pro-choice."

At 11/20/10 05:54 PM, Bacchanalian wrote:

Well, first of all, it is telling that you're were so incompetent at getting your point across that I thought you were pro-life. Secondly, I just wanted to see you elaborate on your position, not have some autistic meltdown about logic.

The latter is apparent in the following: "while I guess that believing those things would be a logical implication of my personal beliefs about abortion/fetal rights, they're not required to be pro-choice."

I never thought they were, interestingly enough I waste 2 pages failing to explain that like you did.

At 11/21/10 07:51 PM, The-General-Public wrote:

I never thought they were, interestingly enough I waste 2 pages failing to explain that like you did.

..didn't waste, even

At 11/21/10 07:51 PM, The-General-Public wrote: Well, first of all, it is telling that you're were so incompetent at getting your point across that I thought you were pro-life.

Neither the point I was making, nor the elaboration of it, lent itself explicitly to either side. You're telling me something to the effect of, "You're so bad at communicating. I mean, your explanation of addition gives me no information about what you think of alligators."

And, for good measure, it's your presumption that I was pro-life, that introduced the dilemma on which my point centered from then on. I had a very different point prior to that - one which also did not lend itself to either side. The way you phrase it, one would think it happened the other way around.

Secondly, I just wanted to see you elaborate on your position, not have some autistic meltdown about logic.

I was elaborating on my position. It just wasn't the position you wanted me to elaborate on.

I never thought they were

So what?

interestingly enough I waste 2 pages failing to explain that like you did.

Failing to explain? I was under the impression that you supposedly understood what I was explaining, but considered it an elementary (well... high school level) waste of time. I thought, according to you, it wasn't a failure to explain anything that took two pages, but a failure to tell you why I was pro-whatever.

At 11/21/10 11:45 PM, Bacchanalian wrote:

Neither the point I was making, nor the elaboration of it, lent itself explicitly to either side. You're telling me something to the effect of, "You're so bad at communicating. I mean, your explanation of addition gives me no information about what you think of alligators."

In case you didn't notice, this is a topic about abortion, not alligators. Seriously, I'm really not sure you noticed.

Secondly, I just wanted to see you elaborate on your position

I was elaborating on my position. It just wasn't the position you wanted me to elaborate on.

or the one the topic creator asked people to elaborate on in the OP

Failing to explain? I was under the impression that you supposedly understood what I was explaining,

I understood perfectly from the beginning, but the fact is you still flailed around like a fish with Parkinsons's trying to explain it anyway.

At 11/22/10 01:16 AM, The-General-Public wrote: In case you didn't notice, this is a topic about abortion, not alligators. Seriously, I'm really not sure you noticed.

Right. It's about pro-life vs pro-choice. And my point was with regard to pro-life philosophy - a refutation of an argument YOU made, which seemed well within the scope of the topic.

or the one the topic creator asked people to elaborate on in the OP

Because the dilemma of what is or isn't essential to pro-life/choice philosophy is outside the scope of the topic. That is of course, unless you're the one making the distinction between what is or isn't essential to pro-choice philosophy. And elaboration of such an issue must certainly be off topic, especially considering that anything not elaborated on is deemed by you to be ill conceived.

Questions from you like, "Well what else is there [besides moral justification] when we're discussing morals?" is just the sort of thing you'd rail against as off topic if answered - despite its importance to the duality of the question "why", and the loose treatment you've given it. And then just the sort of thing you'd call high-school logic, something you knew all along, while demonstrating otherwise in application, after allegedly having feigned ignorance.

I understood perfectly from the beginning, but the fact is you still flailed around like a fish with Parkinsons's trying to explain it anyway.

So you understanding what I was trying to explain doesn't mean I succeeded in explaining it. Fair enough.

You still haven't answered why it matters that you "never thought they were." It's kind of odd that you should drop the tangent most related to the thread while berating me for going off topic and turning essentially anything you can into an insult.