Disagreeing with Garth George
I have said it before and I say it again: The number one cause of abuse against women and children is abortion.
I disagree.
I think there would be less child abuse if there were more abortions. The would would be a better place if those who are not suited to be parents did not become parents.
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Tags: abortion, child abuse, Garth George
November 27th, 2008 at 8:34 am
I would also like to add voice that there are many people out there desperate to have a child of their own. It seems many don’t want or can’t afford a child are pressured into keeping them.
To give a child up for adoption is the biggest gift a woman can give, and the biggest gift a childless couple could ever receive.
The right to chose is paramount, but I sometimes wish more encouragement of adoption was given.
November 27th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Interesting. Garth might be right. Id need to see his arguement in detail.
However there are other scenarios as well. For example, since corporal punishment was phased out (starting some 30 years ago – yes its that long), society has become more violent. Yet the theorists argue that corporal punishment was the cause of all this violence. The anti-smaking law was passed for this very reason. I went thru school when the can was widely and readily used and i dont know anyone who was in my class who has ever been involved in wife or child beating.
Personally I think – along with a very smart woman in rotorua whose name I cant recall – that maori violence and the haka are much more closely related as cultural parrallels than one might first think.
November 27th, 2008 at 8:42 am
….. abuse against women – that does not make sense. Who is the abuser in such cases???? Just like where a writer indicates any ‘interests’ (eg a financial writer admitting to holding shares in company x or a travel writer admitting to having fares and accommodation paid by some tourism board), I do wonder whether Garth should have stated where he spends his Sunday mornings.
November 27th, 2008 at 8:47 am
disagree…I think there would be less child abuse if there were more abortions. The would would be a better place if those who are not suited to be parents did not become parents.
DPF, that’s a shocking comment!
I think George’s comments are a bit of a stretch, but to say that if you don’t want a child, then abort it is atrocious. I dare you to look into the eyes of all those NZers who have been adopted and tell them clearly that if their parents didn’t want them, then they should have aborted them.
Next DPF will be suggesting that the state insist on giving abortions to women who don’t intend to keep their child.
Your disregard for human life is appalling. Really, DPF, you’re so insulated sometimes.
November 27th, 2008 at 8:48 am
What a bizarre statement, how does Garth George deal with countries that do not or did not have abortions, it’s not like there are no cases of abuse against women & children. As an aside to suggest abuse against women did not occur 50 years ago maybe correct legally ( it was legal or certainly not convicted for ) but realistically it’s bollocks, the same about abuse against children, just look at the Catholic churches child abuse scandals.
I’d add though regarding abortions vs abuse, I actually think more education for parents & support for couples would be the better approach, I would not like abortions to be any more available than already.
November 27th, 2008 at 8:54 am
What Garth is saying is that those women who currently murder their children would make such good parents, if they were forced to be, that child abuse would plummet if they flooded the statistics.
November 27th, 2008 at 8:56 am
“I think there would be less child abuse if there were more abortions”
Is it not child abuse when a live baby is torn apart and pulled from its mothers womb?
http://christianclassicalliberalist.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/abortion-is-an-unwanted-baby-a-trespasser/
Graphic pictures of babies who have been torn apart can be found here:
http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/pictures.html
November 27th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Perhaps what Garth is meaning that 18,000 abortions happen every year, abortion is murder therefore abuse against the child and abuse against a woman who has an abortion as someone is ripped from her instead of being born. If 18,000 children were murdered by their parents or caregivers – nearly 50 a day – in this country, do you think people would sit up and take notice of that?
November 27th, 2008 at 8:58 am
DPF: less child abuse if there were more abortions.
Did anyone the tens of thousands of killed babies for a comment?
November 27th, 2008 at 8:58 am
“The would would be a better place if those who are not suited to be parents did not become parents. [sic]”
Sounds like Tapu Misa:
http://kiwipolemicist.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/tapu-misa-of-the-nz-herald-advocates-forced-sterilisations/
November 27th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Remember when everyone said we must stop smacking children, to send a message that violence against children is not acceptable?
Well what message does it send that to our society that allows babies, (albeit unborn) to be dismembered and thrown away with the dignity of yesterdays rubbish?
Abortion is a human rights issue!
Just because I am a responsible for looking after the baby physically until it is born, does not give me the right to end a babies life.
Many women are responsible for looking after the health and well being of their elderly parents, but we do not give them the right to end their lives, if they become an inconvenience.
We must do a much better job in society of ensuring that we are not encouraging people to become parents who should not be. But you do not do that by abortion.
There are now 18,400 babies murdered by their mothers every year in NZ.
Many of these women are using abortion as a lazy method of birth control.
The average age of abortion for a woman is 25.
Of these abortions 35 per cent are repeat abortions.
Abortion is ugly and unacceptable
Warning graphic images
http://www.100abortionpictures.com/Aborted_Baby_Pictures_Abortion_Photos/
November 27th, 2008 at 9:17 am
DPF: less child abuse if there were more abortions.
Isn’t abortion the ultimate child abuse David?
Thank you for being honest I appreciate it.
I just find it hypocritical that we’re closing schools when as a nation we’re killing 720 classrooms of new entrants EVERY year.
18,000 / 25
If I’m correct Garth George wrote about the moral malaise we are in sometime based on our cheapening human relationship and that when we act and live chastely we affirm the value and worth of those relationships.
But that’s old fashioned isn’t it and we’re a hip, now generation aren’t we?
November 27th, 2008 at 9:21 am
DPF “The would would be a better place if those who are not suited to be parents did not become parents.”
Maybe so, but is the answer really just to advocate people murder innocent children if they don’t think they are fit to be a parent? What about abstenence, contraception, adoption, free parenting courses, educating the “unfit,” a return to the tradition family model etc etc? Why should be be an innocent that is killed just to save society the inconvinence of looking out for them?
It pisses me off the amount of money we spend on keeping rapists, murders etc alive in prision when someone guilty of no crime is dispensed of with hardly a second thought by society.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Democracy Mum , get your petition together to change the law
November 27th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Here’s the problem.
You can’t compellingly argue for abortion by pointing out benefits like reduced child abuse, because people opposed to abortion aren’t saying that it’s not useful, they’re saying that it’s murder. And people will continue to disagree on whether it’s murder until they agree on what counts as a human life.
And they will never agree on what counts as a human life, because everyone’s criteria is different, and there is no authority to whom to appeal for a decision.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:32 am
“and there is no authority to whom to appeal for a decision.”
Oh but there is, and one day everyone will stand before him and give an account, thankfully he left us with an instruction book, ignore at your peril.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:34 am
That actually turned out to be a cookbook.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:37 am
You asked for this, DPF. And I’ll fully in agreement with you. I think most people are, for that matter. But those who disagree do so very strongly. I think this is because their disagreement is founded on principles grounded in faith rather than reason.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:37 am
“Oh but there is, and one day everyone will stand before him and give an account, thankfully he left us with an instruction book, ignore at your peril.”
I am following it now and only taking my slaves from foreign lands.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:37 am
I’m a bear of little brain, but how about the number one cause of child abuse being sadistic animals neglecting, raping and beating children? It’s sad watching people like George and Minto using freshly dug graves as an occasion to push their own political barrows, but I guess if you value a culture of free speech then you’ve got to accept the less savoury aspects of freedoms being exercised by opportunistic fools.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Sorry Hagues – I am an atheist and don’t believe in yoru God or any other Deity who will one day judge me. However, i am opposed, in the main, to abortion. I don’t like it and never will. I think both Garth George and DPF have made spurious claims here.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:40 am
At 53% Europeans are under represented in the abortion stats, at 22% Maori are over represented and at 16% Asians are vastly over represented.
If we take a good old Kiwi view of this, Maori are doing the right thing by killing off potential criminals, but… we are losing those potentially productive Asians at a frightening rate..
About all I can conclude from these figures is that if the Chinese didn’t abort, they would be the worst child abusers in the country.. or that abortion has very little to do with child abuse.
Personally I think Garth and DPF are disputing something unrelated to our child abuse stats.
JC
November 27th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Regarding the cookbook comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man
November 27th, 2008 at 9:46 am
An explanation of the cookbook comment.
Though usually I find my jokes are funniest when only I get them.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Sorry, but your imaginary friend fails to frighten me.
Personally, I dislike abortion intensely, and I would much prefer that people adopted out their children.
I certainly think that aborting beyond the first trimester is murder.
So, those are my views on abortion.
The question now is how on earth abortion relates to child abuse, and the abuse of women.
I have a pretty good way of preventing child abuse. See, when one of these big Maori families systematically abuses their kids, and then all clam up about it so nobody ends up getting prosecuted, i say we take the whole lot of the bastards and do to them what was done to the child.
Then, we cut off their heads and stick them on pikes throughout south auckland.
Pretty good deterrent, I reckon.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I’m a bear of little brain, but how about the number one cause of child abuse being sadistic animals neglecting, raping and beating children? It’s sad watching people like George and Minto using freshly dug graves as an occasion to push their own political barrows, but I guess if you value a culture of free speech then you’ve got to accept the less savoury aspects of freedoms being exercised by opportunistic fools.
This.
As I said yesterday, it’s a little complicated because because criminals are responsible for their crimes but crime rates are clearly influenced by social factors.
With abortion – and Garth seems to be complaining about legal abortion – you need to consider what the other option is: history suggests it’s illegal abortions and post-natal infanticide. Probably fewer of those than there are abortions now, but still. Not exactly civilising.
On the other hand, if you follow the link the abortion assertion is probably the least nutty part of the column.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:52 am
brian smaller
“However, i am opposed, in the main, to abortion. I don’t like it and never will. I think both Garth George and DPF have made spurious claims here”.
I’m probably in agreement with you on the spurious claims.
Why are you opposed in the main to abortion?
November 27th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Ultimately that is true. However, in the formation of laws in our society the authority for the criteria tends to rest with the majority of citizens in a democracy. They are overwhelmingly in favor of abortion.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I know of a case, a few years ago, where a young lass (17 yrs) was pregnant. She had a ‘forced’ visit from the WINZ crowd, who strongly suggested she should have an abortion as her boyfriend and the babes father, had been in trouble with the police a year before. Not that serious a trouble, car theft, but it was still trouble. This young lady was horrified, she was carrying a baby, a life. She went to her Gran to get some advice. Gran and Mum both went to WINZ, to say they were happy to help look after baby, that the girl was not without support, that the father was welcome, or not, to be part of the family, his choice. It turned out all WINZ were interested in, was that they not be responsible for paying DPB to this young lady. I think that is an absolute disgrace. As far as I know now, that child is a productive member of society, doing well at school, making people happy. If she had not been born, that would be one less person to bring a smile to someones face, to make a positive difference. Beware the ‘right to choose’ brigade, one needs to know where their ‘right’ is guiding people.
I have had contact with both sides of the story, having a sister that had a miscarriage the day before she was going to have an abortion, on mental health grounds. She is forever grateful she didn’t actually have the abortion as she doesn’t have to deal with the conscience factor. Now she can’t have any children,s he sure would have been happy to adopt a little one and love it forever.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Thanks for clearing that up.
I was thinking there’s been a lot of flame-grilling done by people who felt they were following the instructions.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:00 am
An absolutely brilliant article by Garth and he’s right on all counts.
Question: how many child murders were there prior to the legalization of abortion? How many are there now?
A society reaps what it sows.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Graphic pictures of babies who have been torn apart can be found here:
http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/pictures.html
ooo emotional shock treatment. Nice.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:07 am
You want to know what my impression is? Of course you do.
My impression is that foetuses are seen as a fraction of a human life. That’s the impression I get. As time goes on in the womb, the percentage of a human life increases – for the purposes of moral questions. All of the disagreements in these threads so far have been based on the idea that a foetus is either one human life or zero human lives. But based on how people approach the matter, it seems to be more a question of fractions.
I’m not saying that’s a particularly sensible way to see things (nor am I saying it’s not), but it’s the best theory to explain people’s behaviour towards it.
1. It explains why opponents of abortion aren’t engaged in armed insurrection against the government for sanctioning murder akin to the Nazi Holocaust.
2. It explains why abortion is a very big decision, even for those to whom it is simply a “procedure”.
3. It explains why people are less accepting of abortion as the gestation goes on. (People fine with first-trimester abortions may be opposed to second-trimester abortions).
4. It explains why some people are in favour of abortion only when taking the pregnancy to term would put the mother’s life in severe danger (weighing up a fraction of a human life against a whole one).
And so on.
I’m not saying it’s the correct way to see it, but it’s a good explanatory way of seeing people’s attitudes towards it. It’s not a question of life/no-life – not binary.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Good question. How many, Lee?
November 27th, 2008 at 10:09 am
DPF, you overlook the fact child abusers want their children as it means they can feed at the never ending trough of benefit entitlements.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:09 am
How many child murders were there prior to CDs replacing vinyl? How many are there now?
I rest my case.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:10 am
I know of a woman who was married and around mid 20′s who got pregnant but decided it wasn’t the right time
to interrupt her career etc
Abortion No. 1
Then a couple of years later had booked a holiday to a well known amusement park, and again fell pregnant.
She decided that she would not be able to go on many of the rides because of her “pregnancy” so had
Abortion No. 2
This woman now early 30′s now has a couple of children, who were within a few months of being born
put into day care, so as not to interfere with the woman’s career.
These ‘parents’ white middle class have never put the needs of their children before their own needs.
Child abuse comes in many forms.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Looks like my kids are safe then, I still have my vinyl collection..
November 27th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Ben Wilson seems to be calling for facts rather than mere “faith”, although I am not sure that principles based on faith, i.e. in a higher order of things, are bad for any society.
The fact is that abortion in New Zealand is illegal, almost certainly because of what it is and what it entails. That is why so often reference to abortions is clouded behind euphemisms such as “termination of pregnancy”.
It is why also the victims of abortion are dehumanised in speech by being reduced to clinical terms such as “foetus”, unless of course their parents wish to keep them, in which case they mystically take on the status of “baby”.
Abortion is actually only legal in New Zealand if certain legal criteria relating to the pregnancy are met. If they are, then what is unlawful is deemed lawful.
JC’s figures concerning ethnicity in abortion stats raise an interesting issue, something that civil rights groups and such as the Maori Party might be concerned with. They suggest that Maori, and even more, people from the 60 percent of the world that is defined as “Asian”, are over-represented in abortion figures.
We also know that well over 90 percent of abortions in New Zealand are allowed exemption from the law on grounds of mental illness or mental incapacity. What then do JC’s stats say about the judgement of New Zealand doctors on the mental ability of people who are not “European”?
Is this what is sometimes referred to as “institutional racism”, and is there a real issue here? Is the mental capacity of so many non-European New Zelanders truly so bad that it is adjudged by their doctors, who are probably overwhelmingly “European” themselves, that their children should be killed off, or “terminated”, before they have had a chance at life?
November 27th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Well, I can’t be sure. It’s also true that child abuse has increased since personal-computer ownership exploded, so…
Watch out.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:18 am
When a baby is chemically “fried” while still in its mother’s uterus or its limbs pulled apart from its body,
How is this different to the appalling treatment of Nia Glasse, as she was spun in a tumble dryer
or pegged out on the clothes line, or her little body used for wrestling moves?
Morally it is no different, and the age of the baby does not make it any more acceptable.
In fact if society has a duty to protect its most vulnerable then it needs to start
with defending the rights of these smallest of unborn babies.
NZ Yearly Abortions = 18,000 Nia Glasses per year
November 27th, 2008 at 10:19 am
DPF – for what it’s worth, I agree. And, also for what it is worth, the comments you are getting on this thread are probably not that surprising to you.
For me – abortion has nothing to do with abuse, other than, as you note, that abuse is more likely to occur in a home where a child is unwanted. To suggest that allowing abortions is also condoning child abuse is about as stupid as suggesting that allowing use of contraception is condoning child abuse.
As Craig said above – the cause of child abuse is people who beat children. Those people must take primary responsibility. Once we accept that those people and often their families (who don’t dob them in) are animals who won’t take responsibility, we then need to look at what the mitigations are such that:
a) we try to deal with the societal pressures that allow those people to be animals, and
b) we have in place mechanisms that notice it and intervene as soon as possible
Those who come visit here and complain about CYF are also the first to say that these people shouldn’t be allowed children. I also note that many child abusers don’t come from poor economic circumstances – not saying the proportions are even, but just saying that if we only focus on the poor and downtrodden, there are a bunch of abused children we are ignoring.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:24 am
If life begins at conception, and four out of 10 zygotes don’t survive past the first term (and that’s naturally, not counting abortion), then isn’t it kind of murder to try to have unprotected sex at all?
November 27th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Ryan, that’s one way of looking at it, for sure. But I think binary thinking is actually the more common way. Murder is a binary – you either killed a human or you did not. There’s no law about killing half a human. If you want to introduce fractions, probably a better way of doing it is to say that the level of conviction people have that a foetus is worthy of the full suite of human rights increases steadily from conception. There are some periods that are more rapid than others. Birth, for instance, catapults the organism to a new level of conviction. In our culture, that is – there are cultures where infanticide was a common practice for purely practical reasons, like Eskimos. Clearly their idea of rights did not begin upon birth, but formed around a communal requirement for survival. Ancient Spartans left infants exposed to the elements, believing that the right to life had to be earned by displaying considerable innate toughness.
The very idea of rights that adhere to individuals is quite a Western one, and possibly explains the far more blase attitude that Asians have towards abortion. The ‘right to life’ is not primary to all cultures, it can be sublimated to ‘the right to a good life for all concerned’. Or rights are rejected altogether in favor of other moral ideas. I think this kind of thinking permeates Western thinking too, because it is highly practical. It sees the birth of an unwanted child as less desirable than the non-birth, because the life of that child is so hard, and it makes the life of the (usually single mother) parent much, much harder too.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:38 am
lyndon @ 9.51:
If anyone wants to have a civil and thoughtful debate around current abortion law, go to. But I stand by my original comment that I don’t respect people who exploit dead children — let alone those who died after prolonged abuse and neglect that should repulse anyone who isn’t a stone cold sociopath — to push their various political agendas. I can’t, in good conscience, criticise John Minto for doing that and give Garth George a pass.
And George can assert a direct causual link between legal abortion and domestic violence and child abuse until he’s blue in the face, but an assertion isn’t an argument. It’s certainly not a convincing one, however deeply felt and sincere I’m sure George is. A refresher course in the difference between causation and correlation (if it in fact exists) would lift the quality of public policy debate exponentially for a start.
And, FWIW, I’d hold with either extreme of this argument. I don’t support abortion on demand as some form of ‘extreme contraception’; but nor would I glibly say that I’d want to bear a child of rape or incest. Or a child I knew for an absolute certainly would be so severely disabled it’s life would be short and agonisingly painful. Sorry if that makes me a terrible person, but that’s the truth.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:39 am
“If life begins at conception, and four out of 10 zygotes”‘
Zygotes. What colorful language our liberal society uses to maintain its self-delusion and cover its crimes.
“don’t survive past the first term (and that’s naturally, not counting abortion), then isn’t it kind of murder to try to have unprotected sex at all?”
No. By giving birth to a child we know that a certain percentage will die either as children or as adults, from a variety of causes. Death to our children from causes outside our control (wether from “natural” causes or from murder by someone else) does not make the parents morally responsible.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Turpin – opposed in main because in my heart of hearts I know there are times when abortion may be the answer. I just don’t like it as a form of birth control.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:44 am
“How many child murders were there prior to CDs replacing vinyl? How many are there now? I rest my case.”
What case? You have simply shifted the issue from something relevant and actually connected (abortion and how we treat our children) to something totally unconnected.
Its not a case, its a stunningly dishonest bait and switch tactic. My 7 year old niece could formulate a better argument than that.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:44 am
“I think there would be less child abuse if there were more abortions. The would would be a better place if those who are not suited to be parents did not become parents.”
Thats a big call DPF. I have friends who cant have children and are desparate to adopt, but cant unless they go overseas.
There are more options than convenience killing of babies (in the name of making the world(as I presume you mean) a better place) – one to consider before abortion is placing unwanted babies with families who will raise them in a loving environment.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Turlough, by faith I mean religion. I mean that most people arguing that abortion is murder do so on the grounds that they believe their religion requires them to believe it. They think they can find evidence for that in the words of their prophets, or they trust their religious leaders to have done that work for them.
So it doesn’t matter at all to them that abortion was not even possible when their holy books were written. People who follow holy books have never been the least bit concerned that those works might be out of date, since they have faith that in some way a deity spoke through the imperfect writers and voices of the times, right through the ages, to them personally.
For such people, reason just doesn’t come into it, except as maybe a tool for use against unbelievers. People whose beliefs derived from faith see argument as a weapon of the enemy to be mastered and used against them, but they are themselves immune to it. For that reason, I have long since given up attempting to use reason to convince the faithful. They have quite deliberately made that impossible, a waste of time.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Jesus, you move pretty quickly from “science can answer everything” to hassling the use of the scientific term for a fertilised egg cell.
Fair point.
Oh, I wasn’t making a case. I was parodying the flaw in your argument, mocking it through satire. Correlation is not causation, and a great many other things have happened in the world that could (and probably are) responsible for any increase in child abuse, quite separate from abortion. Unless you were suggesting that statistic as a kind of joke, in which case I apologise for thinking you were serious.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:50 am
“I think there would be less child abuse if there were more abortions.”
Given that abortion is child abuse, I dont see how your logic works.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:50 am
“1. It explains why opponents of abortion aren’t engaged in armed insurrection against the government for sanctioning murder akin to the Nazi Holocaust.”
Nope. The reason is that we know that at this point it would not result in the ending of abortion, it would simply result in the pro-life movement being destroyed, leaving unborn children with nobody to defend them or argue for them.
That said, at some point armed insurrection may become a necessary and useful strategy.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Sure, though I think you’ll find that a number of people in this thread would see the actions of the Spartans or Inuit as being wrong in a kind of objective sense, and that Western ideas of individual rights are evidence of the West getting closer to the moral truth of the universe.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:53 am
What a strange strange post David. I can’t believe that after all these comments showing how ridiculous it is you haven’t deleted this post from your blog.
I’m trying to find the logic in what you are saying and all I can uncover is this:
1) David Farrar thinks it is a greater form of abuse to kill a human life than to parent that life with less than perfect parenting skills. He thinks it is better for a person to be dead than to have parents who may or may not abuse them, no matter how well our nation is prized for its justice system and as a land of opporunity for people no matter what their background. How many people do you know with a history as victims of abuse who would rather be dead?
I disagree. Murder is worse than, or at least as bad as, sustained physical and/or emotional abuse. Supporting murder while discouraging “abuse” n.e.c. is simply ludicrous.
2) David Farrar thinks parenting begins at birth. He says “The world would be a better place if those who are not suited to be parents did not become parents”, and uses this statement to justify abortion.
I disagree. Abortion does not stop a person from “becoming” a parent. They become a parent at conception. The only true choice a person has when it comes to parenting is whether or not they have sex. Abortion does not stop a person from becoming a parent. It supports an act of parenting for which inhumane would be a lacklustre descriptor.
Go back to school David.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Fair enough. Must be frustrating.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:59 am
“I mean that most people arguing that abortion is murder do so on the grounds that they believe their religion requires them to believe it.”
I dont think it is most. And I dont think you do your argument any favours by painting religious people as being moral by accident of their choice of religion. Contrary to popular belief, not all religious people are automatons with a programmed moral code transcribed from an ancient technical manual.
Besides, abortion WAS possible back then, but it was a horrific abuse rather than a medical procedure.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Zygotes. What colorful language our liberal society uses to maintain its self-delusion and cover its crimes.Seriously? One cell is a person?
If you think we should generate every potential human then everybody should have unprotected sex at every opportunity.
Anyway.
I distinguish between life and personhood as concepts; whether there’s a practical distinction is part of the point at issue eg what Ryan talked about.
But there is another part – are we familiar with the Violinist analogy?
There are endless variations to suit different circumstances, but the idea is you’re hooked up to somebody, whose life matters, for a period, say, nine months. If you unhook yourself he will die. This may have been as a known possible consequence of something you did, or inflicted on you against your will.
Unless you’ve got something really important to do, you’d pobably be good to stay hooked up. But are you obliged to?
November 27th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Well DPF, isn’t this fun! As Ben points out, the believers are strong. But they are a minority.
I have known a few women who’ve had abortions, and they’ve never done it lightly.
And as the old slogan said, If men could get pregnant abortion would be free.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Ryan, parody only works when the parody is based on an actual argument or point. Your wasn’t. It was based on playing absurdist word games.
Ben,
“So it doesn’t matter at all to them that abortion was not even possible when their holy books were written.”
In fact it was. Abortion and infanticide were common in ancient societies. Various methods were used to kill the unborn child, such as mixtures of poison and herbs. A book called ‘Third Time Around’ by George Grant details the history of abortion and the history of Christian resistance to abortion and infanticide during the Roman Imperial era and right up to today’s pro-life movement.
“For such people, reason just doesn’t come into it,”
Of course it does, as reason is a gift from God. In practice the universal Christian church has always based its teachings on the triple foundation of Scripture, Tradition and Reason.
Reason and faith go hand in hand.
“For that reason, I have long since given up attempting to use reason to convince the faithful. They have quite deliberately made that impossible, a waste of time.”
Try me.
And did you give up because they rejected reason, or because they used reason to blow holes in your faulty logic?
November 27th, 2008 at 11:08 am
It is more that the religious worldview is one of absolutes. Human beings have souls. Spermatazoa and ova do not have souls. At some point between separate sperm/egg cells and birth, the soul must be added to the mix. The point at which the soul is added to the mix is the point at which we are dealing with a human life – the soul is the human life, not the state of the matter it inhabits. The soul is a binary affair – it can’t be only partly there.
Conception is the ideal event to associate with soul-infusing, because late-term unborn babies can survive if delivered by Caesarean section rather than waiting for vaginal birth, so it can’t be birth that does it. Any time before then, the changes in the process are too gradual to be able to associate any one event with soul-infusing. Conception is ideal because it is neat and clean and raises few questions.
The soul inhabits the flesh at the point of conception, at which point you are dealing with a human life.
It’s not that religion tells a person to be opposed to abortion. It’s that the religious worldview in general lends itself to seeing unborn children as having souls, and therefore rights.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:10 am
The use of Nia Glassie for people to justify their political agenda is getting tiresome. I don’t think abortion makes a difference either way, the Catholic Church’s record on Child Abuse is nothing to be proud of…
November 27th, 2008 at 11:10 am
“If you think we should generate every potential human”
I don’t. I think we should not murder actual human beings. As I have said before once conception has taken place, we are daling with an actual human being, not a potential one.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Your argument was “correlation, therefore causation”. Were you not quoting those statistics to make that point?
November 27th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Ryan,
“It is more that the religious worldview is one of absolutes.”
All worldviews are based on absolutes, including yours.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:17 am
“I don’t. I think we should not murder actual human beings. As I have said before once conception has taken place, we are daling with an actual human being, not a potential one.”
Does that mean Lee, that if a pregnant woman were to fall down stairs and unintentionally abort the baby she should be charged with manslaughter?
What if she didn’t realise she was pregnant?
November 27th, 2008 at 11:19 am
And all worldviews include subjectivities. Unless you’d like to suggest that asparagus tastes objectively good or objectively bad.
There is much more room for fuzziness in my worldview, of not being certain of things. But in a soul-human worldview, there is no room for fuzziness on the question of what constitutes a human being. To the soul-human worldview, whether or not a process is a human life is a fact, like how many atoms in a water molecule.. To some other worldviews, whether or not a process is a human life is a matter of consensus, like the meaning of a word or the border between countries.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Kimble makes an important point. I was not brought up religious and was in fact an atheist well into adulthood. I came to the Christian Faith because of arguments based on reason, and after nearly a year of exploring (again through reason) the issues for myself. I did not have a heart based “faith experience” until after I had rationally decided that Christianity made sense.
The often used attack argument that Christians are simply blindly following tradition or their leaders without reason is a false straw-man argument.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:22 am
At some point a collection of cells becomes a person. No need to believe in a soul, no need to believe in god.
A soul does not determine if someone has rights. People have rights, and at some stage the unborn become people. Given the stakes (whether you are removing a cyst-with-potential versus murdering a child) I think it would be prudent to err on the side of caution when figuring when that point of time is.
I am against abortion for the same reasons I am against slavery, and generally oppose governmental interference in peoples lives. I dont like it when one persons life is forfeit to anothers whim.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:24 am
How many of you would agree that it is child abuse to see a pregnant woman,
Smoking?
Taking drugs?
Drinking large amounts of alcohol (in the case of a woman the other day)?
Or a man kicking a pregnant woman’s stomach ?
Leaving religion aside I think even the most liberal of you know intuitively it is wrong to for someone to intentionally harm another.
If these things are unacceptable then, how can abortion be acceptable?
November 27th, 2008 at 11:27 am
How many of the anti-abortionists are pro the death penalty?
November 27th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Kimble
Well so far it’s been 100% of the people I’ve discussed the idea with, and that’s been several dozen. Do you have some other experiences?
I don’t paint religious people as being moral at all. They just think they are the only moral people, on faith.
If it’s a popular belief, that could be because it has a grain of truth. In my personal experience, it’s been damned accurate, that most religious people, when asked for the source of the strength of their belief, talk about their upbringing, rather than the compelling evidence of science and/or reason. The only exceptions are those who have a late conversion, an tiny minority amongst the deeply religious. And yes, the ancient technical manual is always tabled as though it is meant to be incredibly convincing, irrefutable proof of various claims about what the deity is meant to want.
Clearly I meant ‘modern abortions’, which differ from ancient methods in several important ways. The mother is almost certain to survive, without disfigurement, and will recover quickly. She can probably conceive and bear children again. The certainty about the pregnancy comes far more rapidly than it ever did in the ancient world, so most abortions would happen before the ancients would have even had any certainty that the woman was pregnant at all. If they did disapprove of the kind of abortions that would have been possible then, then I have to say, I’d agree with that, it would be an incredibly stupid and dangerous procedure. No one in this day and age advocates an abortion from the ancient world.
Such an abortion is, however, far more likely if the other kind is not available.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:29 am
democracymum,
I think people see those things more as bad because of their future effects on the child (who they see as having rights) rather than presently on the foetus (which they don’t see as having rights).
November 27th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Ryan
I see. We would all feel okay about a pregnant woman, drinking to excess, smoking, doing drugs etc as long
as she had a disclaimer sticker across her abdomen saying
“Please don’t worry about the health of this baby as I intend
to abort it before it has any legal human rights!”
November 27th, 2008 at 11:36 am
“Your argument was “correlation, therefore causation””
Of course.
But you responded with “no correlation (CD’s) therefore causation”, and then tried to claim it was the same thing I had done, when in fact it is blindingly obvious that it was not.
Abortion has SOMETHING to do with issues of morality, children and what are generally called “life” issues.
CD’s have no relationship to those issues at all. Mine was an argument (regardless its right or wrongness). Yours was a bait and switch word game. And I admit that one annoyed me, because your clearly an intelligent and thoughtful person and I think that argument (or parody) was pretty facile.
“There is much more room for fuzziness in my worldview, of not being certain of things.”
Which is a declaration of an absolute. In this case the absolute that a worldview with lots of fuzziness and uncertainty is a good thing, or a superior thing. Even when arguing against absolutes it is impossible to not to resort to using them. The simple version of that is when a person says “There are no absolutes”, which is of course, logically speaking, a declaration of an absolute.
That said, there is fact some room (obviously less than yours) for a degree of fuzziness and uncertainty in my worldview as well. There are things I do not know or understand, in part because God has chosen not to speak to them, and in part because of the natural limitations of the human mind. Being a Christian, even a “conservative” Bible-based one, does not mean having ALL the answers to every potential issue or question.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:36 am
I’d totally be ok with that Democracymum
November 27th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Hypothetical situation to get you all thinking:
Steve goes to their doctor to get a lump on their back checked out. It isnt causing them any discomfort or irritation, they are just curious. The specialists find that the lump is actually a conjoined twin. The twin is still alive and has grown up with Steve but would certainly die if it was removed right now. The twin isnt very advanced but is obviously sentient, and maybe with a decade or so of the right nurturing could become an intelligent person contributing to society.
Naturally Steve is freaked the F out by this, and is dreading spending the rest of his life with his twin still attached. Does Steve have the right to have the twin removed?
If you think he does, would your opinion change if this sort of thing was a common occurence and was a result of a conscious choice or action Steve had knowlingly taken in his adult life?
November 27th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Lee
No thanks. The very fact that you think reason and faith go hand in hand shows me clearly what a waste of time it would be. Faith is believing in the unprovable, and also the undisprovable. Reason beliefs only in the provable, and sees the undisprovable as worthless. The disprovable that has not yet been disproved is not believed on faith, it is simply seen as a hypothesis. No one arguing from faith has ever blown holes in my logic. I’ve seldom met any that even use logic, and when they do, it’s been a pretty amateur affair.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Kimble,
“No need to believe in a soul, no need to believe in god.”
The issue for me is not about need but about truth.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:44 am
“No thanks. The very fact that you think reason and faith go hand in hand shows me clearly what a waste of time it would be. ”
Then why enter the conversation, and draw a verbal sword, if you don’t have the courage and the intellect to use it and defend your statement?
Thats called being coward, or a hypocrite. Take your pick.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:45 am
“How many of the anti-abortionists are pro the death penalty?”
They are two different things that only have mortality in common, so it is completely irrelevant how many people think that unborn children have the right to life and also think that certain actions by adults are only adequately punishable by execution.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I find it interesting that the same people who mock religion because there is an element of faith involved
also make the choice of their life partner, not usually on reason, but blind faith.
Isn’t that what falling in love is?
Otherwise we would all set up decision matrices, to decide who rationally, and logically we are best
suited to “fall in love with”
Having faith, doesn’t mean you are without reason, it just means you are able to believe in something without
having absolute proof. There are plenty of scientists who are also Christians.
For me every time I see a newborn baby I have all the proof I need.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:49 am
There have been so very very many things that have changed in the world and our society that coincide with an increase in child abuse, including both legalised abortion and the replacement of vinyl with CDs. Unless you can provide something more than simply “post hoc ergo propter hoc”, the two arguments are as good as each other (not good at all). You have to add something more than simply “that happened, then this happened, therefore that caused this”.
If you can explain how legalised abortion is responsible for increases in child abuse, that would make it superior to the CDs observation.
I never said it was a good thing. I also never said there are no absolutes in my worldview. You seem to be responding to who you think I am, rather than what I have actually said. My point was simply that the religious worldview is a worldview “of absolutes”. I wasn’t saying that other worldviews have none. But on the matter of human life, there’s no room for fuzziness, because human life in the religious worldview is inextricably linked with the fact of souls. I was defending religious people from the accusation that they oppose abortion out of token submission to religious authorities.
I’m sure that would be terribly relevant if I had said something about there being no absolutes in my worldview.
No, but it does mean believing that there are answers, even if they are inaccessible to you. There may be fuzziness on some things, but on the matter of human life – assuming you believe in souls – there can be no fuzziness. Whether human life begins here or there depends on at which point the fact of ensoulment occurs, and while one may be wrong on the timing, one cannot be wrong in the believe that there is a time when it happens – non-human tissue becomes a human life as a matter of fact.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Lee, I think Ryan is indicating you have both stated your positions clearly – and it’s clear they won’t reconcile so there’s no point continuing.
Since you can’t even agree on the definition of ‘absolute’ or the need for analysis of variance in correlations, I think he’s correct.
For the rest of the group, am I right in thinking we have more of a consensus on Garth George being a wally than on the abortion issue generally?
November 27th, 2008 at 11:52 am
More to the point, could someone photoshop together a combination of these two photos?
http://media.apn.co.nz/webcontent/image/jpg/george_garth16046.jpg
http://www.alexandgregory.com/images/darth%20sidious%205325.jpg
I’m thinking, “Darth George”.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:54 am
“I don’t paint religious people as being moral at all. They just think they are the only moral people, on faith.”
Speaking as a Christian, there are NO moral people, Christian, religious or otherwise. Only God is moral.
“and that’s been several dozen.”
Oooo, dozens!
I’m impressed! Ok, not really.
“The only exceptions are those who have a late conversion, an tiny minority amongst the deeply religious.”
Incorrect. As far as Evangelical/Pentecostal Churches go, the vast majority of believers come to the faith as adults. In my local church, which has a congregation of over five thousand and growing, over three quarters came to the faith as adults. And yes, we do keep track of these things.
We get about ten to fifteen new converts every week. Most were not brought up with any faith.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:57 am
as a parent of 2 wonderful very much wanted children and coming from a similar upbringing as did my wife I find it somewhat bizaare that on the one hand we have women churning out unloved and unwanted children whilst we have couples who desparately want children but cant have them
Given the way governments of all colours take so much delight in interefering in our lives in so many ways yet wont cant do so in this matter.
And yet their non intervention costs the country and society so much in so many ways. Apart from the billions of dollars there is the emotional and human costs of those who suffer as unwanted children and those who suffer not being able to be loving and good parents.
I dont have the answer but just make the observation
Maybe society has got its priorities all wrong
November 27th, 2008 at 11:59 am
“Since you can’t even agree on the definition of ‘absolute’ or the need for analysis of variance in correlations, I think he’s correct.”
Why? If two people are looking at a red bus, and one of them says “yep, thats a red bus”, and one of them says “no, its really blue”, then one of them is right and one wrong. Disagreement does not make Ryan right.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Ryan
I get what you are saying, although it seems you’ve inverted your position, as you were saying earlier that it was about a percentage of human life. I was just trying to say that you can still be binary about life/not life, or soul/not soul, and yet allow for percentages. The percentages just refer to the probability of that binary being in one state or the other.
Personally, I’m undecided about discarding binaries. In the case of abortion I’m not sure it goes to the core of the problem anyway, since even caring about soul/not soul, human/not human, requires further assumptions about the sanctity of that particular binary. Those assumptions can be challenged, and are challenged by other cultures. Rights are not the only way to see morality. They are actually quite a modern idea. The more ancient idea tended to associate morality with religious beliefs, and bugger the rights, it was duties imposed by deities that mattered.
Rights have advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that they can be turned into laws quite readily. The disadvantage is that they can conflict with each other, and require hierarchies to resolve these conflicts, and other more sophisticated methods. What these hierarchies and methods are will define the moral code of any dogma, but they don’t derive from pure reason any more than any other choice of moral code does.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Lee’s right. I’m not saying that disagreement exists, nor is Lee saying it doesn’t. I was saying that religious people’s attitude towards abortion is not blind obedience to their religion, but is intricately linked with the wider net of beliefs that make up their worldview, and in the context of that worldview is natural and inevitable. Lee thought that me referring to the religious worldview as “one of absolutes” was a claim that my own has no absolutes, and that fuzziness in a worldview made it superior. I was saying neither of those things, which I had to explain.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Ryan,
your right about one thing. There is NO fuzziness about this issue, regardless of whether it is approached by faith or by reason. People are just deluding themselves that there is because it suits our societies narcissistic, selfish and amoral liberalism.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
True, though when I was talking about fractions, I was trying to explain how people feel, rather than how it fits into a more conscious expression of their worldview. Also, Lee pointed out that the fraction view was unnecessary to explain the behaviour of anti-abortionists who aren’t taking up arms against the government (it would undermine the cause in the long-term), so it might be wiser to say that the fraction view is the common non-religious view.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
This is where I agree with Tapu Misa
Sterilisation means not having to abort babies
abortion is child abusing torture.
Sterilisation is for abusers who have been proven as torturers
Those Curtis brothers should’ve been transported straight out of court to the hospital for procedures.
No need to murder innocent babies.
A far more impt cause to rally for than Republicanism.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Ok Ryan, just read your last post at 12:02 and I get what your saying now. I retract my accusation with apologies.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
I think the connection between abortion and child abuse is very clear. If you can kill the child in the womb, even in the third trimester, surely you are saying something about its value? Surely you are saying it is not really human?
Now we are in anguish about children being murdered in their third month or third year of life and are deeply outraged. Fair enough. But if you can kill the child before it is born, why can’t you kill the child after it is born? That is the logic of so-called ethicist Peter Singer. He would return us to Roman times when a child could be left outside to die if the father did not accept it. The knee-jerk atheism on this blog really has nothing to say on this matter. Indeed if infants are killed surely that is some kind of Darwinian natural selection and good?
And reason only get you so far. Peter Singer reasonably argues that we should kill infants after they are born if they are not wanted.
It was the Christians who fought against this practice in Roman times and are at the forefront of trying to stop the rising tide of abortion in modern times. We do this because we believe that people are created in the image of God and so human life has value.
This belief in the God-given value of human life is a fundamental bedrock of civilisation.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
From your worldview, yes. From mine, there is fuzziness, because I do not believe in souls, so I cannot define a human life as easily as that, and so the question of what constitutes a human life becomes one of labeling rather than discovery.
For you, whether or not something is a human life is a matter of fact. Even if that fact may be inaccessible to you, it is implicit in your worldview that it is a discoverable fact, known by God if not by anyone else.
For me, whether or not something in a human life is a matter of definition. It is not a discoverable fact, it is an imposed label – reflective of convention, built up from the history of human society – and biology – but a label nonetheless.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
It’s okay, I wasn’t being very clear. Saying that the religious worldview was “one of absolutes” did give an easy impression of me suggesting that others were ones “not of absolutes”, and I should have been more clear that I was referring specifically to absolutes surrounding the definition of human life.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Scott, brilliant post!
You have summed up the issues at stake perfectly.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Numbers 31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones.
Deuteronomy 2:34 utterly destroyed the men and the women and the little ones.
Deuteronomy 28:53 And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters.
I Samuel 15:3 slay both man and woman, infant and suckling.
2 Kings 8:12 dash their children, and rip up their women with child.
2 Kings 15:16 all the women therein that were with child he ripped up.
Isaiah 13:16 Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled and their wives ravished.
Isaiah 13:18 They shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eyes shall not spare children.
Lamentations 2:20 Shall the women eat their fruit, and children.
Ezekiel 9:6 Slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children.
Hosea 9:14 give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.
Hosea 13:16 their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
What fraction of religious people in the world are Evangelical/Pentacostal? Tiny. Can you clarify ‘come to the faith’, too? Do you mean your particular faith, or faith generally? Because most of the born-again types that I have met turned out to have had religious upbringings that they abandoned, but then returned to. Not necessarily Christian, either.
Well sorry that I haven’t wasted more than the 4 years I already spent getting a degree in Philosophy (a great deal of which was wasted on God), and dozens of very long, and quite honest conversations with people who had no intention whatsoever of allowing reason to sway them. These conversations always went in huge circles, wherein they would simply forget the earlier part, and hoped to sway me through sheer frustration and the force of their conviction. It was like teaching mathematics to a poor student, who was really just aiming to give the teacher the shits. The few very honest ones would usually end up with ‘I just don’t know, why don’t you come down to my Church and discuss it with my spiritual guide’. The few times that I did actually do this, the spiritual leader was incredibly hostile to the idea of being questioned, and refused outright. So I think I’ve wasted more than my fair share of time on it, although I will never match the amount of time wasted on God that a true believer will. They make a life out of it.
Wow that sounds deep. Or meaningless, more like.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
DavidC – “How many of the anti-abortionists are pro the death penalty?” Don’t have any idea in general terms, but personally, I am probably more anti the current scenario around abortion than pro. I believe abortion probably does have a place, when the mental or physical health of the mother is such that to have the babe would mean the mother loses her life. I should hate to be in the position of having to make that choice, but unavoidably, some are. I just don’t believe that there are over 18,000 such cases every year in New Zealand. If there is, then what does that say about the mental/physical health of our nation?
The death penalty – I am against it. If it is wrong to kill, then how can it sometimes be right to kill? I know all the stuff about the expense involved in keeping someone in prison etc, but it’s an expense i m prepared to continue to pay taxes for.
Democracy Mum – I agee with pretty much all you have said. I’m not personally religious, although i believe I include christian prinicples in my everyday life, but even atheists seem to believe life is sacrosanct – look how they hate and wish to put to death those who have taken life by murder – so how can they not get angry about wholesale taking of life in the form of abortion?
November 27th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Abortion doctors should be locked up for murder, and the mother as an accomplice to murder. There is never an appropriate moral reason to murder an unborn child. People need to be accountable for their actions. Sometimes, sex leads to pregnancy. Shocking I know.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Ryan,
I see the point your trying to make. Nevertheless, while my belief about the nature of human beings having souls and being icons of God plays a part in my current understanding of the issue, as I have tried to point out, I think it IS possible to come to a purely rational and scientific understanding based on the available evidence that conception creates a human person with all the rights that entails.
I should also point out that I have always been opposed to abortion, even when I was an atheist, for many of the reasons we have been discussing.
For science and rights-based arguments on the issue from a purely secular pov: http://www.l4l.org/
November 27th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Lee,
I think I’ve thought of a way of explaining what I mean about science not being able to answer moral questions.
Tell me, what is a human being? Define the term.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
It is part of Christian civilization. Which is not all of civilization. It is not even our civilization, if you value the secularity of our state. Even Christians value it, because otherwise they could find themselves in the wrong church. That was why freedom of religion found it’s way into the US Constitution, to prevent religious persecution, and why many New World states, including ours, have pretty much accepted it. If you accept that extremely practical idea, you also have to accept that moral society does not base itself around the wishes of the many deities who could be competing to tell us what is moral. Instead it bases itself around our own personal moral choices made for reasons we ourselves as humans come up with. I’m personally quite happy about that, because I can see in the world today what societies based around religion are like, and I don’t like it one little bit.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Ben,
“What fraction of religious people in the world are Evangelical/Pentacostal? Tiny.”
Pentecostal Christians are one of the largest and fastest growing religious groups in the world. Well before the end of this century almost all of Africa and Asia will be Pentecostal. Combining both Africa and Asia, about ten thousand people become Pentecostal Christians every day.
“Can you clarify ‘come to the faith’, too? ”
Come to the faith means when a person freely chooses to believe the Gospel and accepts Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour.
“I think I’ve wasted more than my fair share of time on it’”
Then why are you entering the debate? If its a waste of time, go do something else. Coming into this debate and attacking those who hold religious views then refusing to back up and defend your attacks when asked to is gutless, lazy and dishonest.
“The few times that I did actually do this, the spiritual leader was incredibly hostile to the idea of being questioned, and refused outright.”
I’m trying hard to believe you but as I live and spend a lot of my time in the Christian community its not easy, because I know for a fact that the majority would happily answer your questions and hear your arguments.
Every year hundreds of Churches of many denominations in NZ (and hundreds of thousands around the world) run a program called Alpha which as well as being a basic intro to the Christian Faith creates a forum for people to ask ANY question they like and make ANY challenge to the Christian Faith they like without fear of being put down or attacked. I have participated in many of them and I have never seen anyone turned away or told that their questions were not valid.
http://www.alpha.org.nz/
The Pastor at any Vineyard Church in New Zealand would happily answer your questions and would openly and hear your concerns.
“Wow that sounds deep. Or meaningless, more like.”
Which proves my point that your not relying on reason for your arguments. If it is meaningless, say why, using your reason. Have you ever met a perfectly moral person who has always been morally perfect? I haven’t.
And I don’t care about your past experiences. Either you are up to the challenge right now or your not. Coming here, pissing on people, then running away is cowardly.
I am perfectly prepared to respect people who hold different views than me. I do not respect someone who wants to make accusations and attacks but has not got the guts to defend them to the people being attacked.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
“Tell me, what is a human being? Define the term.”
A human being is what you see sitting beside you on the bus.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
If you ever get a chance to do an Alpha Course – I can highly recommend it.
Nicky Gumble, who is the Pastor on the DVD is highly entertaining, incredibly
funny and very intelligent.
The whole Alpha course is based around asking (and hopefully being able to answer)
some of the bigger questions of life.
It is a course you can do even if you are only a little bit interested in God.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Irrespective of whether God approves or not, I doubt abortion is behind very many instances of domestic violence.
I believe that a significant “cause’ of domestic violence is the scenario where Wifey takes the dole money and uses it to buy food, cleaning products and nappies for the baby before Hubby gets the chance to go to the local and spend it on Lion Red instead….
November 27th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I think that abortion should be safe, legal and rare.
Safe because we know that regardless of what the law says, there will always be abortions and I would much rather that they happened in both a physically and emotionally safe environment than in a back street.
Legal for the reason that prohibition, whether be it of abortion, alcohol, drugs or prostitution, just doesn’t work and tends to make things worse rather than better (organised crimes etc).
And rare because there are better alternatives. One is good sex education and freely available contraception, especially for people likely to engage in risky behaviour.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Good on you DPF, for sticking your neck out and saying what you believe. If I made any such comment, similar or not, it would be taken as Green party policy, so I have kept mum. I think both of your statements can stand either together or separately. It certainly is a topic that needs lots of air, which it is getting plenty of on this thread!
November 27th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I’m in the debate about abortion. The debate about how reasonable your religion is was the waste of time I’m referring to, and fuck you for calling me lazy, gutless and dishonest after the amount of effort I’ve already spent on it. I just don’t want to do it with you, and that rankles with you for some reason that I really don’t care about.
Are you calling me a liar? I don’t know what you consider hostile, but I consider being yelled at by a circle of people, and then told to leave quite hostile. I consider being told to shut up and listen for hours to preaching and then told to leave when I asked a question quite hostile.
Sometimes such things don’t need to be said. Why is ‘aksjf;laksjtgl;kaslkdfgj’ meaningless? But if you must discuss it, then OK, you said: “Speaking as a Christian, there are NO moral people, Christian, religious or otherwise. Only God is moral.”. Which suggests to me that all questions of morality are totally beyond discussion. Yet another reason not to discuss them with you, since you fundamentally believe that only God has the answers. I can’t talk to your God, and I’m not allowed to form my own opinions, so that leaves us bereft of anything to talk about.
“Morally perfect” is an adjectival phrase sorely in need of definition in that question. So is ‘perfectly moral’. Until then, the question is not well formed. I’m not going to suggest any definitions for you, by the way, you can do that work yourself.
If you feel pissed on, that is your problem. And no, I’m not up for the challenge of painstakingly walking you through something that is not the subject of the thread. I’m not attacking you personally, you took the fight to me because you, for some reason, can’t see the obvious difference and conflict between reason and faith, and decided to take that personally.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
“I doubt abortion is behind very many instances of domestic violence.”
Nor do I. Nor do I think that abortion alone is the cause. But in looking at the issue it seems to me that we need to look wider at the cultural/moral “ecosystem” we live in. These things do not happen in a vacuum.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
An interesting question is..
If women thought they might be risking their own lives by having a “back street abortion”
I wonder how quickly you would see them being more responsible in terms of of using contraception?
At the moment 35 percent of women come back for a second abortion, I wonder if this would be the case if DIY abortions were the only type available.
In effect, by making abortion so accessible, we have removed any consequences for the woman and transferred them to the baby, which is after all the innocent party.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I’m looking for a definition here, rather than an instance. If that was the definition of “human being”, they would only occur on buses.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Yesterday, on THIS thread:
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2008/11/minto_blames_goff_et_al_for_nia_glassies_murder.html#comments
I posted a link to an outstanding essay by Francis Fukuyama, called “The Great Disruption”; and a lot of extracts from that essay. I left it to the end of the thread so as not to irritate too many people.
But it’s analysis is relevant here. I won’t quote excerpts now, I will put it in my own words.
Lifestyles of sexual hedonism have become available to all males, not just wealthy ones, due to the “emancipation” of women; and traditional expectations of the responsibility of fatherhood for males, have been abolished. This has bred a generation of predatory, hedonistic young males and left “disadvantaged” young women with an option of solo motherhood as a dependent of the State, as more likely than a stable partnership.
Abortion is a major part of all that broad sweep of “great disruption” to society.
So yes, being familiar with Fukuyama’s cold secular philosophical analysis, I can see a lot in what Garth George has said, quite apart from what my faith holds.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Cha taking the Bible out of context
he needs to read the words around the verses and understand what was happening.
also the age of relevance to Israel at that time.
And why israel had to destroy nation in an age of contagious disease and unsanitary conditions with no medicines or anti biotics.
And why God wept because nations wouldn’t follow his directives for their well being.
Remember, Jesus wept? Islam never did.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Which part of all that causes child abuse? Solo motherhood? Dependence on the state?
November 27th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
“Lifestyles of sexual hedonism have become available to all males, not just wealthy ones, due to the “emancipation” of women; and traditional expectations of the responsibility of fatherhood for males, have been abolished. This has bred a generation of predatory, hedonistic young males and left “disadvantaged” young women with an option of solo motherhood as a dependent of the State, as more likely than a stable partnership. ”
Powerful truth
Esp in the Maori community.
Maori females acept Maori males far too easily. In an immature culture, there is always a pressure to conform and be like the herd. This means accepting an idiot to keep social face. The next step is Nia Glassie.
Since John keys has been elected he hasn’t raised the issue of his boot camps again… Michael Laws didn’t like me raising Winstons proposal of military youth training. I hope Laws has been silenced forever.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Tell me, what is a human being? Define the term
Man is the symbol-using inventor of the negative separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making goaded by the spirit of hierarch and rotten with perfection.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Phil – read any Shakespeare or go and see any opera. You will see we do not have a mere *generation* of predatory, hedonistic young males – we have a history of them that stretches back pretty much to the dawn of civilisation
(And strong, enfranchised women who know what they want, and get it, are just as much a historical constant as those men.)
People like having sex – that much is universal. As soon as you start putting more complex frames around the argument, like “my god that I believe in does NOT approve of how you live”, you have the recipe for all of the stereotyping, wars, hatred and ethnic cleansing that we see in the world.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I agree with DPF. And I like the way you’ve poked a stick at the god cheerleading squad too. Thankfully they don’t hold much sway in modern NZ.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Other possible explanations include the invention of condoms and the pill. The emancipation of women in large part refer to their freedom from every sexual encounter leading to children, and as such, is a great boon to women and men alike. The hedonism is enjoyed as a good that science has made possible, and society permits. There are still accidents in which the contraceptives did not work, in which case secondary measures are often taken like morning-after pills and abortion. Again, these measures have been a great boon to men and women alike, clouded only by the moral doubt surrounding them. This cloud of moral doubt emanates mainly from those who also oppose contraception, and also hedonistic sex.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Even if one of them has to be wrong (and if the issue is that simple), there comes a point where they have a fair grasp of each other’s position and there’s no benefit in continuing to shout at each other.
All I was saying.
And what if it really is a blue bus?
Please try a little harder. Ryan seems to be trying to have an ethical debate, because that is the realm we’re in, with rigorous arguments. At the moment it’s you that’s not keeping up.
I haven’t been reading carefully, so I’m not sure the following applies:
Personally I can get “rational” morality eg: I think so-and-sos should be treated as full persons, I show there is no morally relevant difference between so-and-sos and such-and-suches, so I accept such-and-suches should be treated as full persons. This may or may not allow them to be killed in particular circumstances.
But “scientific” does not compute. You can’t get from something that is to something that you should do without adding another should.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
“This cloud of moral doubt emanates mainly from those who also oppose contraception, and also hedonistic sex.”
Whoa! Brutal. I like it…
November 27th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I think I speak for everyone when I say, so’s your mum.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
How amusingly Socratic of you. I think you are coming from the wrong direction in asking for a definition of a human being. It’s not necessary, and will not make the debate clearer. You can clearly either choose to include or exclude foetuses from your definition, and by doing so, put yourself in a moral position. But you will not have argued for it, by doing so, you will merely have tried to prove something by playing with words. The same debate will simply rage around the definition of a human being, with both sides dogmatically trying to defend their position on etymological grounds, rather than moral ones.
Hence Danyl’s mockingly concise definition.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Lyndon, that’s a problem, but it’s not necessarily the problem. Look at this.
1. Ending another human life is murder.
2. You should not murder.
3. Human life begins at conception.
4. Abortion is murder.
So… You should not perform abortions.
It’s not an attempt to derive an ought from an is, because everyone agrees on the ought component of the argument – that murder is wrong. What is in disagreement is the “is” component, (3), that human life begins at conception. From the religious perspective, that is a factual question, not a moral one.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Ben,
“I’m in the debate about abortion.”
No, your in a debate thread created by our good host in response to an article by Garth George which raised issues of morality, culture and religion. You cannot come into a debate part way through, attack half the people in the debate, and then demand that we all conform to your debate parameters. Thats arrogant and petulant to say the least.
“The debate about how reasonable your religion is was the waste of time I’m referring to”
Then as I said, move on. If have read Garth’s article as well as looked over the debate on this thread you would see that religion is an issue under debate. You cannot enter that debate but then claim that you want it to conform only to your parameters.
“I just don’t want to do it with you”.
Don’t, or can’t? The point is, as I have said, the issue of religion is already under discussion. You chose freely to enter that discussion. You then chose to publicly attack the input of religious people on this thread. The you refused to back up and defend that attack. Your trying to have your cake and eat it too. Its like going up to a person and slapping their face, them whining when they ask you why you did it.
“Are you calling me a liar?”"
No, I’m suggesting you may be, or that you may be being economical with the truth. But even if you are not, saying “I have talked to religious people and its a waste of time, and I have talked to Pastors and they didn’t want to answer my questions” and then refusing to talk to Christians on this thread who ARE prepared to talk to you rationally and try to honestly answer your questions strikes me as very, very convenient.
“I don’t know what you consider hostile, but I consider being yelled at by a circle of people, and then told to leave quite hostile. I consider being told to shut up and listen for hours to preaching and then told to leave when I asked a question quite hostile.”
A: That wouldn’t happen in most Churches. I know this for a fact. B; Try an Alpha Course, if you have the guts and are genuinely wanting to ask questions. Or C: go to any Vineyard Church nearest to you. They will happily, non-aggressively, and openly talk with you (not at you) and answer honestly and openly any question you have.
http://www.vineyard.org.nz/
You sound to me like a child who claims they want to learn to swim, puts his feet in a pool, finds the water in that pool is cold, then refuses to ever go near water again. Not very rational. And not very open to real questions and debate.
“OK, you said: “Speaking as a Christian, there are NO moral people, Christian, religious or otherwise. Only God is moral.”. Which suggests to me that all questions of morality are totally beyond discussion.”
Then why would I be discussing them? You misunderstand. What I meant was that all people, Christians included, are imperfect and often behave in immoral ways, therefore Christian don’t claim to be the only moral people. But moral issues can and should be discussed and debated. Otherwise I wouldn’t be hear so to speak.
“Yet another reason not to discuss them with you,”
Thats not a reason, its an excuse.
“since you fundamentally believe that only God has the answers.”
No, what I said was that only God is moral, in the sense of being ontologically good. But human beings can come up with answers because we have brains and the ability to reason.
“If you feel pissed on, that is your problem.”
Its not an issue of feelings. You did in fact piss on people, then tried to run away.
“you took the fight to me because you, for some reason, can’t see the obvious difference and conflict between reason and faith, and decided to take that personally.”
Nope. I didn’t take it personally. I simply assume that when someone comes into a debate and makes a point then they are expecting that point to be responded to. I responded to your point, and you thew your toys out of the cot and refused to play solely on the the spurious and frankly laughable reason that you don’t want to “waste your time”. Fine. Then don’t make points in a debate if your too lazy to back them up. And yes, lazy is what it is.
“can’t see the obvious difference and conflict between reason and faith”
Because I do not think there is one. Neither do most human beings. And unlike you, I am prepared to defend my position.
From all of your statements above it is clear that your definition of “debate” is talking only to people who agree with you first. That is to put it mildly, remarkably childish. Although I may be being unfair to children with that.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
“Man is the symbol-using inventor of the negative separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making goaded by the spirit of hierarch and rotten with perfection.”
Fuck me, this place is reading like Not PC.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
“Man is the symbol-using inventor of the negative separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making goaded by the spirit of hierarch and rotten with perfection.”
Bloody hell thats good. I have no idea what it means but it sounds very cool
November 27th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
I am not arguing for a moral position. I am explaining how one cannot derive a morally relevant definition of a human being from science. I don’t need to suggest any competing definition against Lee’s to do that. Whatever definition he comes up with, if it is morally relevant, it will be one that science fails to provide or confirm.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Ryan,
“I’m looking for a definition here, rather than an instance. If that was the definition of “human being”, they would only occur on buses”
Sorry, perhaps too narrow an example. What I meant was that science is about observation, therefore using solely a scientific approach (which is what I think you were asking for) a human being is literally what you can see when you observe a member of your biological species.
If you want my personal faith-based answer a human being is an icon of God created in His image and reflecting His nature.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Probably could have managed something a bit more impressive for 1000th post.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Well, I’m sure you agree that science is silent on the latter definition, so let’s look at the first.
If your definition is that a human being is a member of your species, then certainly science can confirm that. I assume you don’t consider a human corpse to be a human being, for the purposes of morality?
November 27th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
“You will see we do not have a mere *generation* of predatory, hedonistic young males – we have a history of them that stretches back pretty much to the dawn of civilisation”
Correct, although I would say that it stretches back to the very dawn of humanity. A little thing called the Fall.
That said, I think Phil is right in pointing out that the problem has worsened dramatically in recent decades because the moral restraints that kept that problem as small as possible have been removed.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
What a great way of making sure the blog has plenty of traffic, put a post up about abortion then sit back and watch.
It is one subject that is not worth discussing as both side insist on having their say with no intention of EVER listening to the other sides point of view.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
“I assume you don’t consider a human corpse to be a human being, for the purposes of morality?”
No. As a literal definition, yes, but as you say not for the purposes of morality. I assumed you were looking for a literal definition.
For the purposes of morality, a human being is an observable member of our biological species that is alive.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
If you’re looking for a Biblical perspective on the Garth George article (and a break from the abortion angle) try this:
http://christianclassicalliberalist.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/garth-george-on-the-creation-of-eve/
November 27th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I understand these questions may seem pedantic, but I mean them sincerely. What’d the difference between being alive and being dead – for moral purposes.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
How about
a human being is the unseen part of us that exists separate from the body but needs the body to exist in this time/space continuum. The software as you will, to the body’s hardware.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Turpin,
Isn’t that basically the definition of a soul?
November 27th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
a human being is the unseen part of us that exists separate from the body but needs the body to exist in this time/space continuum
How do you tell the difference between an ‘unseen’ part of us and a part that does not actually exist?
November 27th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
“Again, these measures have been a great boon to men and women alike,”
As other here have pointed out, there is growing evidence that in fact it has not been a boon, but a disaster. The Nia Glassie’s of society being one extreme example. The rise of family breakdowns and divorce, the alarming rise in STD’s, the growing violence in society, the advent of mass abortion, the growing rates of child abuse in general, and the huge financial cost of all of this to society (estimated at one billion a year in NZ), would strongly suggest that the boon is becoming a nightmare.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I’m guessing traffic on the site was getting down and DPF knew what he had to do to get it up.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Ryan
“The soul inhabits the flesh at the point of conception, at which point you are dealing with a human life.
It’s not that religion tells a person to be opposed to abortion. It’s that the religious worldview in general lends itself to seeing unborn children as having souls, and therefore rights”.
Scott
“I think the connection between abortion and child abuse is very clear. If you can kill the child in the womb, even in the third trimester, surely you are saying something about its value? Surely you are saying it is not really human?”
That is the crux of the matter, those who want to abort don’t see the child/baby/fetus as human, but a blob of flesh or at least they justify themselves with that.
It’s interesting that so many have depression for years afterwards.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Lee, with the exception of STDs and abortion (where I can see an obvious causation), can you explain to how more people enjoying sex without having children leads to…
The rise of family breakdowns.
Growing violence in society.
Growing rates of child abuse.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
“What’d the difference between being alive and being dead – for moral purposes.”
Purely legal rights can only be attributed to beings that are alive, right?
November 27th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Some do, some don’t. It’s certainly flying in the face of billions of years of evolution to not do the one thing we’ve evolved to do.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
In general, though wills place legal obligations on society after death, so our society makes a few exceptions here and there.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Ryan – further to the question of maral uprisings, you might also consider a dsitinction between fundamentalism and extremism.
I speak theologically rather than in human terms, but on my reading it would be difficult for someone rigorously following the teachings of Christ to ever rise up against the state.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
That is the crux of the matter, those who want to abort don’t see the child/baby/fetus as human, but a blob of flesh or at least they justify themselves with that.
Partly. The hypothetical questions/games about the violinist and the ‘growth’ mentioned up-thread designed were designed to make the point the question might remain open either way.
So there are two parts to the basic moral question, and then there’s the question of whether this is a matter for state prohibition, which is a different matter.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
“can you explain to how more people enjoying sex without having children”
To be clearer I meant people having sex outside of marriage, as well as the modern redefinition of marriage as a lifestyle choice. Using that reference point, I think it can be argued that large scale practice of sex outside marriage and the devaluing of marriage itself leads to more children being born out of wedlock, as well as family breakdown in general, and this in turn leads to a society in which violence within the family (as in Nia Glassie’s case) as well in society in general becomes more prevalent.
Why? Because strong healthy and loving families are the teachers and incubators of good social morals, in part by teaching people love, respect (both for one another and for proper authority) loyalty and compassion.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Lyndon,
True enough. I was going to bring up Christian anarchism, but of course, Christian anarchists are almost uniformly pacifist and wouldn’t take up arms against anyone. What about refusing to pay taxes? Could Christians do that?
November 27th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
And those instances where married male/female couples abuse their kids, and those instances where solo parents or gay couples incubate good social morals, teaching love, respect, loyalty and compassion – those are exceptions which prove the rule?
November 27th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
What about refusing to pay taxes?
Render unto Caesar
November 27th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Caesar wasn’t spending taxes on murdering babies.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Lee, I’m not sure who died and made you adjudicator of the debate. I will debate what I like here, for reasons I’ve given.
Actually I’m a very good swimmer. But don’t let the truth get in the way of your imagination.
In your analogy, I’m actually someone who has tried to swim across an ocean of faith to find the shores of truth, and turned back before they died of starvation, thirst and exhaustion.
Because you are confused? It’s a possibility.
Well I’m glad to hear it, now we can leave God out of it and get on with the job?
Dude, put it this way. If we were to debate I would insist on using reason. I would not accept any evidence I had to take on faith. Since you don’t see any distinction, we couldn’t even agree on the terms of the debate. It would therefore be debate without any terms, one in which no conclusions were possible. A waste of time.
I actually can’t see how any real debate is possible if reason does not take the primary position. That is the only real condition I have, and it is one that you have already stated is impossible for you go along with because you think reason and faith are the same damned thing. You want a shouting contest, or perhaps a boring contest. I don’t. I’ve been shouted at and bored enough. I don’t want such an exchanges of words to even sully the word ‘debate’.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Caesar wasn’t spending taxes on murdering babies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents
November 27th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
“In general, though wills place legal obligations on society after death, so our society makes a few exceptions here and there.”
Strictly speaking the will was made (a social contract entered into) while the person was alive.
However your right that our society makes a few exception here and there, but I wonder to what degree that is a vestige of our Christian past.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Psh. That was Herod. Also, it didn’t even happen ; )
November 27th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Interesting point. They probably even predate Christianity. But you can imagine them being informed by the notion that the deceased is somehow able to look in on proceedings and approve or disapprove.
When is a person dead for moral purposes?
November 27th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
“those are exceptions which prove the rule?”
Yes, generally speaking they are exception. Some people by dint of having good hearts and the will to persevere despite whatever limitations they are faced with get it right. But most do not, and the question is, what is the most ideal and generally successful arrangement for bringing up children, and i think the traditional (Mum and Dad) family is clearly the best.
November 27th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Ryan
I think I get you, and I agree. The way I see it, science is not really in the business of definitions anyway. Definitions are useful in science, but science doesn’t provide them. Humans provide them, to clarify what they are talking about. Once the definition is precise enough that all the observers agree, then you can actually experiment, and find out something useful. That’s the science part. And the key to getting good definitions for scientific purposes is to no overload the words you use with too much meaning. Your whole point in using them is to get agreement from the observers, so you choose uncontroversial examples. You want the observations to be of the kind ‘The bar went up at least 1 metre’. Not ‘something that may or may not have been a bar, depending who you asked, went up precisely 1.034524556 metres.
The definition of a human being has the potential to be massively overloaded with meaning. It would therefore not be of much use to science in the kind of cases we are talking about. Scientific questions involving humans would be of the kind ‘The air was pure enough for a human to breathe comfortably’. And the kind of human they’d be thinking of would not be one at the borderline of all definitions, like a foetus, since it probably couldn’t breathe. The question of whether a foetus is human is not a scientific one, unless it is for the purposes of science. If it is for the purposes of a moral decision, then the question is actually mostly irrelevant. What matters is the moral decision, and the definitions are all word play.
November 27th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Ben,
Yes, precisely, thank you.
November 27th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
You don’t think it’s worth looking for some factor that is common to families that raise healthy moral children, regardless of number or sex or parents?
November 27th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
# Ratbiter (262) Vote: Add rating 1 Subtract rating 0 Says:
November 27th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
“Phil – read any Shakespeare or go and see any opera. You will see we do not have a mere *generation* of predatory, hedonistic young males – we have a history of them that stretches back pretty much to the dawn of civilisation
(And strong, enfranchised women who know what they want, and get it, are just as much a historical constant as those men.)
People like having sex – that much is universal. As soon as you start putting more complex frames around the argument, like “my god that I believe in does NOT approve of how you live”, you have the recipe for all of the stereotyping, wars, hatred and ethnic cleansing that we see in the world.”
Unlike “The Savage” in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, Ratbiter, you seem to have made the acquaintance of Shakespeare without actually deriving any of the moral lessons intended from it.
As soon as you adopt “anything goes” as your standard, your civilisation is not going to last.
J. D. Unwin’s “Sex And Culture” is the magnum opus on this subject, of course it is on “the Banned list” as far as our cultural marxist dominated “establishment” is concerned. We are going the same way as the Greeks and the Romans.
Charles Murray points out that minorities that are more susceptible just show the way ahead of time, that society as a whole will go. 70% of African American children born out of wedlock, 1 in 30 African American males in jail – Murray says that society will not survive that becoming the universal “standard”.
November 27th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Philbest,
What would you prefer? People are acting in an environment of liberty. Would you like the state to provide disincentives to direct sexual behaviour in specific ways?
November 27th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Ben,
“Lee, I’m not sure who died and made you adjudicator of the debate”
You were the one trying to do so, not me.
“Actually I’m a very good swimmer.” It was a metaphor. Please don’t tell me I have to explain metaphor to you.
“In your analogy, I’m actually someone who has tried to swim across an ocean of faith to find the shores of truth,”
Not according to your own words. At most you have talked to a few people and possibly gone to one church (maybe two?). Thats not swimming an ocean, its putting your toes in a puddle.
“I’m glad to hear it, now we can leave God out of it and get on with the job?”
No. Again, your trying to force and adjudicate the debate by insisting that we leave God out it. The rest of us ARE getting on with it. Your the one whining that religious people are taking part in it.
As a Christian I cannot leave God out of anything. If you don’t like that, tough.
“if we were to debate I would insist on using reason.”
We are. You insisting, petulantly, on your personal definition of reason, one which most human beings reject. If your only prepared to debate according your very convenient rules and definitions, the truth is that your not prepared to debate at all.
“I actually can’t see how any real debate is possible if reason does not take the primary position.”
Thats called being narrow minded. And its not reason your demanding, but secularism. Which by the way is a religion.
“That is the only real condition I have”
No, you want the condition of being able to debate according to your convenient rules, and to attack religion, but nobody else is allowed to bring the issue up. Again, convenient, petulant, and irrational.
“you think reason and faith are the same damned thing.”
No, I said they go together, like wings on an aircraft. Which is the view held by most humans, as well as the view which was the norm for most of the last two thousand years in the West, and the view held by some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century (not to mention Aquinas, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and hundreds of others).
“You want a shouting contest, or perhaps a boring contest.”
Nope. I want a debate. You want a rigged game that suits your pov, which means your not prepared to debate at all, as I have said.
November 27th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
“When is a person dead for moral purposes?”
By moral purposes I assume you mean legal rights?
November 27th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
# Ryan Sproull (1014) 1 3 Says:
November 27th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
(PhilBest)”Lifestyles of sexual hedonism have become available to all males, not just wealthy ones, due to the “emancipation” of women; and traditional expectations of the responsibility of fatherhood for males, have been abolished. This has bred a generation of predatory, hedonistic young males and left “disadvantaged” young women with an option of solo motherhood as a dependent of the State, as more likely than a stable partnership.
Abortion is a major part of all that broad sweep of “great disruption” to society.
So yes, being familiar with Fukuyama’s cold secular philosophical analysis, I can see a lot in what Garth George has said, quite apart from what my faith holds.”
(Ryan Sproull)”Which part of all that causes child abuse? Solo motherhood? Dependence on the state?”
As Theodore Dalrymple put it, most criminals have tattoos, therefore tattoos cause crime (just as much as most criminals are poor, therefore poverty causes crime).
Most child abuse takes place in solo mother homes through which a series of predatory young men pass. So “what part causes child abuse”?
So what? We once had a society in which both solo motherhood and predatory, irresponsible, masculinity were severely stigmatised, for good reason. We break that down, we end up with lots and lots of child abuse.
Have you bothered to actually read the whole Francis Fukuyama essay, Ryan? It IS possible to come to honest and truthful conclusions without any distasteful concessions to “someone else’s” abstract truth or divine God, although I strongly suspect that Fukuyama and his type might have to keep any weakness on this front strictly in the closet for the sake of their acceptability to “the establishment”.
November 27th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
“People are acting in an environment of liberty. Would you like the state to provide disincentives to direct sexual behaviour in specific ways?”
Although that was directed at Phil, I would answer with a resounding YES.
November 27th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
No, I mean moral purposes. Law changes with government. Morality changes either (my view) slowly or (your view) not at all.
And when you read the words “social engineering”, do you get a good feeling in your tummy or a bad feeling in your tummy?
November 27th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Where do you get that stat from?
You don’t think there’s stigma in our society attached to being a “predatory, irresponsible male”?
November 27th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I’m off. Might be back later. Interesting chatting, all.
November 27th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
# Ryan Sproull (1015) Vote: Add rating 0 Subtract rating 0 Says:
November 27th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
“What would you prefer? People are acting in an environment of liberty. Would you like the state to provide disincentives to direct sexual behaviour in specific ways?”
AH. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Secularism and moral relativism, to be consistent, would have nothing to say to the predominant culture in the land in which their adherents find themselves.
But while insisting that the Taleban, or a Central African Slave culture, is “just as much right” as any other culture, our so called secular, morally relativist leadership insists on negating our own traditional Christian culture, and calling THAT “secularism”. Insists on an assault, by means of State power, on that traditional culture, on the grounds of “right” or “superiority”.
We are now finding out the hard way, the underlying reasons why the culture we are in the process of trashing, gave us the world’s happiest, most prosperous, and most caring people. The most “blessed” people. And you cannot deny me the right of making this judgement on your relativist grounds, seeing you and your type are so willing to make a contrary judgement, to be “judgemental”, if you will.
You SAID too, “…..You don’t think it’s worth looking for some factor that is common to families that raise healthy moral children, regardless of number or sex or parents?….”
Well, our cultural Left political “establishment” has been trying pretty hard for a few decades now, and they are not looking too good, are they? Oh, of course, as well as being forced into a position of “no stigma” for non “traditional 2 parent” families, we are to be told that increasing amounts of the money earned by responsible acting people is to be taken off them and given to the other sort, so that their type of family can be “made to work”, too (assuming that even this would at all make it work)………Roger Douglas pointed out years ago that around 100 grand of taxpayers money provides around a thirty grand lifestyle for a solo mum and 3 kids. So I don’t know what YOU think is an acceptable or even sustainable burden in this respect, not even considering the perverse incentives that will be increased from their current level in the event of even more “wealth redistribution”.
What was it Charles Murray said about this? The solo mother and bastard children since earliest times, have always been a severe drain on the resources of society as well as a disruptive force; hence, these things have been stigmatised.
Sorry I have to go now for a while.
November 27th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I like Turpin’s definition of a human being “a human being is the unseen part of us that exists separate from the body but needs the body to exist in this time/space continuum. ” because now I can go out and kill these bodies and get away with it because no-on will be able to prove the unseen part is dead too, and that apparantly is the only bit that matters.
Kimble
Re your cyst analogy, those moral choices happen all the time with conjoined twins. No-one would consider putting the parents or the doctors on trial if one dies post separation operation.
November 27th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
“And when you read the words “social engineering”, do you get a good feeling in your tummy or a bad feeling in your tummy?”
That depends entirely on who is doing the engineering, what it is based on philosophically and morally, and what its goals are.
It could be argued that ALL forms of social, legal and political arrangements are forms of social engineering. Even Libertarian ones.
Gotta go to. Back later.
November 27th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
It’s more tough for you because you seem to want the debate. Desperately.
So was my response. By swimmer, I meant arguer. I know that you understand the word metaphor, but only when you use it. When I use it, you take it literally. Would this be one of your tricks during our debate that won’t happen?
Much like the trick of forgetting things I’ve already said, for example:
I said a few dozen, actually, and I went on invitation to a discussion to meet various spiritual leaders 2 times. I’ve been to churches waaaay more times than that, but the floor was never opened for questions then any more than it really was the 2 times I was tricked into a confrontation with someone quite hostile on their own turf.
Furthermore, these discussions were extremely lengthy in most cases, going on for hours and hours. Some of them were with people who were quite intelligent and well versed in what they were talking about. But always they fell eventually on ‘you can’t be convinced with reason, you have to have faith’ (the honest ones), or ‘you can be convinced, here’s my evidence, which you must believe on faith’ (the ones like you).
So you are quite right in saying that I don’t want your kind of debate, that I want a rigged game that demands only reason and no faith. It is definitely highly rigged in favour of the rational over the unfortunate faithful, who can’t win using their weapon of choice, and are not proficient with any others. It’s so unfair of me to suggest such a thing. How cowardly. How lazy. Surely we could have a damned good and incredibly long quacking competition where our different faiths simply collide loudly without any rules at all. Wouldn’t that be fun, goodness that’s never been done before. Great things might come of it.
November 27th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
DPF, I think you rather miss the point which is the causal relationship between disregard for the sanctity of the unborn child’s life and disregard for the sanctity of an infant’s life. Once people are conditioned to believe that it’s ‘OK’ or ‘normal’ to kill unborn babies then it’s only a very small step to believe it’s ‘OK’ to bash and kill little kids.
There is a similar phenomenon whereby children who abused, mutilated and killed animals are quite likely to grow up and abuse, mutilate and kill other humans.
You might be aware that our Maori brothers feature in the shameful gallery of child abusers to an extent that is appalling and yet people don’t want to talk about that for fear of being labeled ‘racist.’ I grew up in a Maori community and I don’t recall hearing of any incident of child abuse, nor for that matter of abortion. Unplanned pregnancies were rife but they all went full term and the babies were ‘adopted’ by their young mothers’ mothers and raised, loved and respected by their extended families. That’s what we have lost over this last thirty or forty years. That old fashioned true respect for the sanctity of human life. We have become a selfish society where once we thought about others.
I think Garth George is absolutely right. There is direct correlation between the blaze acceptance of abortion as a convenient form of birth control in the first instance and the extraordinary rise in the incidence of serious child abuse in recent years.
November 27th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
David your argument only works if you assume what you are trying to prove which is a serious flaw in reasoning.
If one assumes that the fetus has no moral status then of course abortion is unproblematic.
If one assumes that the fetus does have moral status then of course abortion is the most prevalent cause of child abuse in our country.
If one wishes to endorse abortion one must be able to point to what, non-abitrary, features a newborn posesses that a fetus does not. I refer your readers to our series on the illiberality of abortion.
Further David you make an erroneous assumption that is not supported by the research. You assume wrongly that unplanned children are the ones that get abused. The statistics state the opposite. Planned children are more likely to be abused than unplanned, the theory being that when one plans a child, one has certain expectations and when parental stresses kick this adds an additional dimension. Google for the studies.
November 27th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Here’s one totally reliable difference. Fetuses occur only inside of wombs, whereas newborns can be found outside of them.
November 27th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Garth’s reasoning linking abortions with abuse of children already born is illogical and flawed. It is on the same level as 19th and earlier 20th century reasoning that masturbation caused blindness, hairs to grow on the palms of hands, etc. I am somewhat surprised that the sub-editor concerned did not pick up on that illogical and potentially dangerous reasoning and ask the author to amend his article.
Years ago young man in New York admitted to his doctor that he masturbated. The doctor told him there was no hope for him and the poor young man threw himself on to the Subway tracks. Just how irresponsible can a professional get.
In retrospect I think that Alistair Taylor did young Kiwis a service by publishing his ‘Little Red School Book’ in the early 1970′s.
November 27th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Hmmm, I’d call that an environmental difference, or perhaps a semantic difference … but not a defining difference to the collection of cells that make up the living entity.
November 27th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Abortion – the ultimate child abuse.
I think there would be less child abuse if there were more abortions.
“The impact of the abortion revolution may be too vast to assess immediately. It should usher in an era when every child will be wanted, loved, and properly cared for; when the incidence of infanticides and battered children should be sharply reduced.”
– Larry Lader “The Abortion Revolution” The Humanist, 1973
Get with it and change the tired bullshit already.
“Progressives” are irrational idiots who are blind to the increased abuse and violence in society, and yet think, for example, that banning smacking marks progress being made. (And that’s progress *overall* being made.)
I think this word “progress” doesn’t mean what they think it means.
November 27th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Matt has now responded: Abortion and Child Abuse: Another Response to David Farrar, Matt wrote his PhD on the Ethics of Feticide.
November 27th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
May I take it from that, that you disagree with abortion?
Being inside or not is definitely the defining difference between a fetus and a newborn! But I know Madeleine was after an ‘essential difference’. By which she aimed to assert that there is no difference, and make moral equivalence between abortion and murder. But it’s still wordplay. You can find a lot of differences. How important you think they are will probably be decided by your pre-existing position on abortion.
eg:
The fetus relies on the mother’s umbilical cord for sustenance and oxygen.
The fetus is constantly supported in a warm and stable liquid environment.
The fetus has never smelled anything
Fetuses do not poo or wee
Fetuses can’t cry
These are just differences in full term ones (the kind that can’t be legally aborted) Obviously the further back towards conception you get, the less and less it resembles a newborn. Ultimately, it’s a single celled organism.
But so what, really? Lots of things resemble humans very closely, and yet don’t get human status in our moral codes. Arguments for abortion are always around the practicality of it, not on hairsplitting about whether they are human. At the beginning of the term, when no bond has formed to the potential child, quite the opposite, the mother REALLY doesn’t want it, when there is very little chance of any meaningful sentience, and the procedure is quite safe for the mother, then most people see it as a practical solution to give a woman a choice about a massive life change that she may not be ready for. Her rights are considered important, and the right of the fetus to life, negligible. That is the position of most people on the matter. They don’t need a definition of a human, any more than the Eskimos needed one when they made the even more horrible choice to kill infants for the good of the group. It’s not relevant.
November 27th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
No, I never said there was no difference at all, I asked for a “non-arbitrary” difference, as in a difference that is sufficient to warrant different treatment and none of yours do; apply them to adults and newborns to check them:
Your dependance argument puts anyone who requires assistance to live on par with a fetus, do you support killing those who require dialysis, those under anaesthetic, those in coma’s (including those in temporary ones)? Newborn’s are utterly dependant on adults for their survival, the feature is not unique to fetuses.
Ditto with your environment argument is also arbitary and the smelling argument? So adults who suffer from olfactory impairment have no right to life?
Fetuses do poo and wee before birth but even if they did not the incontinent have no rights.
Fesuses can cry in utero but even if they did not what would that mean for adults with faulty tear ducts.
You need a difference that is significant and even then you have the potentiality argument to overcome.
November 27th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Lee:I think we should not murder actual human beings. As I have said before once conception has taken place, we are daling with an actual human being, not a potential one.
No. A zygote may develop into a person, but it may also develop into two, or sometimes may only contribute to being half a person.
November 27th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Ben,
“Fetuses occur only inside of wombs, whereas newborns can be found outside of them.”
So the “fetus” magically becomes a baby when it leaves the womb. Wow. Stunning reason there.
“It’s more tough for you because you seem to want the debate. Desperately.”
On the contrary, the debate was already taking place. I simply responded to your infantile demand that religious people keep their views out of it.
“I said a few dozen, actually,”
Which is not a lot. There are five thousand people in my local church alone.
So it proves my point.
The rest of your rant is just more dishonest and gutless hiding from any real and open debate. I assert that far from being bored or not wanting to waste time, that your incapable of handling the debate, that your terrified of being shown up or challenged in any real way, and your just using so-called “past experience” as an excuse to hide behind. You don’t waste time with people who have faith? I don’t waste time with hypocritical cowards.
November 27th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
“Your dependance argument puts anyone who requires assistance to live on par with a fetus, do you support killing those who require dialysis, those under anaesthetic, those in coma’s (including those in temporary ones)? Newborn’s are utterly dependant on adults for their survival, the feature is not unique to fetuses.”
Brilliantly put Madeleine. And that is in fact where this “dependency” argument leads, as the so-called ethicist Peter Singer admits.
A baby is essentially dependent on other human beings for its survival, so according to Ben’s argument there would be nothing wrong with killing a three month old.
I’m always a bit wary of using them, but in this case it applies. If you want to see where Ben’s thinking leads, read a book about eugenics in Nazi Germany,
November 27th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Some very good points made by people. Amazing.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Being part barbarian, by self righteous liberal standards, has it’s advantages:
someone much earlier said it best, that abortion can be a solution to a complex problem, but not to be encouraged as birth control.
and again on an earlier thread, perhaps it was Turpin – I too would not force a raped woman to carry the child against her wishes or send her into an alley with a turkey baster and carbolic soap or make her a criminal for ending the pregnancy.
I have no use for fractions of soul, molecules of matter, twisted arguments of gender, theoretical discussion of when exactly the child began to be human. My barbarianism excuses me. I rely only on the real life situation as it happens. Life’s far more easy when you take the matter in hand as it happens – even if it’s painfull. Sometimes imagining endless scenarios and possiblities pushes us further from the truth.
And we need our barbarians, because they do the dirty work that the intellectual theorists do not have the stomach for and that sometimes holds our society together and stops a terminal stall from indecision.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
I’m disappointed. I really wanted someone to tell Ryan that death occurs when brain activity stops. He could then ask when life begins, and draw a parallel with death – i.e. that life begins when brain activity starts. Unfortunately nobody was keen to give the answer. Ah well.
It seems to me that some on this thread (e.g. Madeline) need some defining moment when life begins. Conception is easy, but I’m not sure it is really when life begins other than if you believe in a soul. To me, it seems that a single celled embryo is no more alive than my fingernail clippings (arguably less, since it has fewer cells, arguably more since it has the potential to one day become a new living being).
If we sorted out cloning, such that my fingernail clippings could be turned into a human being, would throwing them away be abortion? Would it be equivalent to murdering a potential human being?
I still see the progression to life as a continuum – starting at the point you choose to have sex (arguably the point you choose not to have sex is killing a potential human being), and progressing through conception, and the growth of the embryo. At some point along the way an embryo becomes a human, and at that point it would be murder to terminate it. Question is where along that continuum it happens. I have some sympathy with the view that it kind of happens incrementally – a foetus at third trimester is more human than a foetus at second trimester. And a foetus at second trimester more than one at first trimester.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Madeleine your choice that the differences I describe are ‘non-arbitrary’ is completely arbitrary. You did not give any criterion in detail, and you still haven’t. What *could* constitute a ‘non-arbitrary’ difference to you? I feel that a human is so different to a single celled organism that I kill those with impunity every time I scratch my ear. I burned off a wart the other day that was even made from my own DNA. You need to say what it is you could possibly accept. You merely asked for differences, and I supplied a list.
Lee, give it a rest, I’m not going to go for your boring old argument and that is final. And since you are proving to be a total dickhead, I don’t think I’m going to bother with any of your other arguments either.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Some have made the point that abortion as we know it today started as a practical exercise in eugenics.
Correct.
So in abortion, are we disposing of a bundle of unnecessary and unwanted cells, or are we disposing of a human being?
With the benefit of ultrasound technology, we are now able to see infants in the womb – or to apply our PC terminology, a foetus – moving, kicking, thumb sucking etc. And what does a – say – 20 week old foetus – look like? Yeah, that’s right, a human baby. Even at 12 weeks, this “bundle of cells” has the appearance of a human baby. At 6 weeks, it has brain activity.
So what we have is a human being in its early development – just as it is at birth, and six months old, and 3 years old, and so on to adulthood. We have a HUMAN BEING.
To wonder why we have child abuse as we have today is to wonder about the value we place on human life. To murder infants in the womb is to show that we do not value human life, and thus the increase in child abuse – we have legalised infanticide under certain curcumstances, which circumstances have been stretched beyond belief and recognition. The effect is subliminal to a degree, but a culture nevertheless that becomes ingrained, and is, frankly, an abomination.
And we are not even discussing here the detrimental affects on the women, the detrimental affects on society, and the degradation of humanity.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
FFS. In this day and age with the availability of multiple methods of birth control, abortions just should not be necessary! Whatever happened to personal responsibility. The time to worry about getting pregnant is prior to the act, or at the very latest on the morning after. As long as we continue to make abortion an easy form of belated birth control, the practice will continue. By the age of 25, you should know what is causing the pregnancy. Education at an early age has to be a priority, as well as the tightening up of criteria required before an abortion is an option. European couples are crying out for babies to adopt, whilst we murder unborn babies in the name of expediency. If abortions were not freely available, different choices would be made by about 50 women on a daily basis. Birth control is basically free in this country – abortions carry a lifetime of guilt and mental anguish. And this is before we get into the moral and theological issues above. The solutions are simple. As usual though, personal responsibility is a basic requirement.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
OK, if the argument is that we are denying a life, try this one on.
Say I have sex, and use a contraceptive. Clearly there is going to be no child. But the contraceptive fails, and conception occurs. We use the morning after pill. What life has been taken here? If there was no contraceptive failure, there was no morning after pill. And no baby.
Sorry, but the “life begins at conception” argument, to me, is playing semantics. The reality for me is that this is gray, not black and white.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
PaulL, I’d expect most people see it a similar way, that abortions way down the track are far harder to accept than early on. A huge part of that feeling no doubt comes from the belief that the more the fetus resembles a newborn, the more human it becomes. But there is also the feeling that if the woman has no feelings towards the fetus, then why did she not terminate earlier? Surely she is conflicted deeply? The fact that it’s also a much bigger deal medically comes into the equation too. All these factors lead people together to the practical conclusion that if termination is allowed, it has to be early. It is not just about the life of the fetus. Well not to all people, anyway.
I wonder personally if people who place primacy on the life of the fetus bundle all of the crimes together mentally. The equating of all social ills to the acceptance of this one procedure seems to take things way too far, as though people who have abortions are extraordinarily sick on account of having committed what they see as murder, rather than simply being frightened women who opt for a treatment for a condition. If God Himself were to speak out and say, “Hell no, life doesn’t begin until the 30th week”, would that really make those women different in any way at all? I don’t think so. The religious ones might feel a little better, but really, the decision to abort a fetus isn’t all about the life of it. It’s about the woman too. That’s always been the biggest argument in it’s favor, that it gives countless women their lives back after a mistake.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Ben
Three points
1. Fetuses are not single celled organisms. You seem to be confusing the zygotic stage with the foetal stage. Most abortions occur at the fetal stage and I assure you that at that stage it is not just a clump of cells.
2. You state “You did not give any criterion in detail, and you still haven’t. What *could* constitute a ‘non-arbitrary’ difference to you?”
Actually that’s fairly straight forward hare is a definition from Harry Genslers introductory text book “ two actions are exactly similar if they have all the same properties, they are relevantly similar if the reasons why one fits a given moral category (good , bad, right wrong) also apply to the other” ( Harry Gensler Ethics a Contemporary Introduction p 93.)
A relevant difference between a fetus and an infant would be a reason for thinking that a fetus is not human which does not apply to an infant. Specifically whats needed is some property that is possesed by an infant, not possesed by a fetus, the presence of which makes something human and the absence of which makes something not human.
3 You state “Madeleine your choice that the differences I describe are ‘non-arbitrary’ is completely arbitrary.”
Actually you are wrong, Madeleine’s did not arbitrarily dismiss the differences you cited she provided reasons why one should not accept them she stated.
“Your dependance argument puts anyone who requires assistance to live on par with a fetus, do you support killing those who require dialysis, those under anaesthetic, those in coma’s (including those in temporary ones)? Newborn’s are utterly dependant on adults for their survival, the feature is not unique to fetuses.
Ditto with your environment argument is also arbitary and the smelling argument? So adults who suffer from olfactory impairment have no right to life?
Fetuses do poo and wee before birth but even if they did not the incontinent have no rights.
Fesuses can cry in utero but even if they did not what would that mean for adults with faulty tear ducts.”
You’ll note that in each case she noted that the differences you point to are such that they apply to post natal beings which are clearly human.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Hi Paul L
You write
“I still see the progression to life as a continuum … [The] question is where along that continuum it happens. I have some sympathy with the view that it kind of happens incrementally – a foetus at third trimester is more human than a foetus at second trimester. And a foetus at second trimester more than one at first trimester.”
The problem with this claim is that if there is a continuum after birth as well so you would have to say that an infant is less human than a toddler which is less human than a teenager which is less human than an adult. The implication would be that when people abuse little children they are only killing sub human beings of some sort.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Abortion is not a desirable trait of any civilised societey.
It suprises me that as both pro life and pro choice people would likely agree with that statement, that there isn’t more of an effort to at least minimise or even curb the growing abortion statistics.
This leads me to believe that as per usual this issue is more about ideology than about reality, and both sides are often equally guilty.
While I am a christian, I am opposed to abortion because I believe it is not logical, not because of some religious fanaticism. If the aborted babies were left in the womb the vast majority would become perfectly healthy people, and no one has the slightest idea of what that persons value may be in society, adversity can produce some wonderful human beings.
People need to understand what abortion involves to be fully informed, most though will simply put there head in the sand much like the average German citizen did during the holocaust.
Until high school kids are shown what abortion involves as part of sex education, there will be no truly informed decision made on the life of the unborn child.
This video on you tube changed my life, I dare you to watch it………and this is happening on our watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLaai6o0O0A
November 27th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Matthew:
1. Whatever. If you don’t get the drift, you are failing to do so by choice.
2. Can you give me an example of a difference that could be relevant?
3. She gave reasons that were in no way espoused in her definition and therefore completely arbitrary. “Because I felt like it” is also a reason. And, to be honest, as far as abortion goes, I think that pretty much sums up most people’s actual reason. They feel like abortion is wrong, or they don’t. Then they invent reasons why.
Harry Gensler is pretty much right in what he says but it doesn’t help us. The reason why killing a human fits into a moral category (bad) is not immediately evident, nor is it clear that it’s the same reason killing a fetus fits into it’s particular category. Why is killing humans bad? Can you actually answer that question? Does it apply equally to killing fetuses?
Some people think killing is bad because God says so. They also think God also said killing fetuses is the same level of bad. So their reasons are the same both ways, there is some kind of equivalence. But those reasons are not compelling to unbelievers. I could hold that killing an adult is bad because it takes away a productive member of society. Since fetuses are not productive, it couldn’t be the same bad (I don’t hold this view btw, it’s hypothetical to show the complexity of the problem). Do you see how the Gensler definition doesn’t advance anything?
Ethics really is a bitch of a subject. Mostly, I think it’s bunk, and people just go with their gut, what they were brought up with, what others around them are yelling, and really that’s 99% of the story. Ethical reasoning only works to make those gut feelings just that little bit less totally inconsistent with one another. And even then, that’s only needed for people who have a strong gut feeling that ethical consistency is a valuable thing. Hence the widespread total lack of consistency.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Ben, It is simple.
If you wouldn’t like something done to you, that something is usually bad.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:07 am
“The world would be a better place if those who are not suited to be parents did not become parents.”
This was the original argument for abortion and birth control. In fact what has happened is that the people who tend to use these methods (particularly birth control) are middle to upper class, educated people as they strive to maintain their upper status by minimising the drains on their income and time.
These methods are not used as much by those “who are not suited to be parents”. So the effect of these tools has in fact been the opposite of what they were intended to – they have lowered society’s common denominator.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:14 am
GG should read Freakonomics and the chapter on the effect of Roe v Wade on crime levels in NY city 18 years later.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:42 am
As to when a foetus can be considered human is a moot point to me.
Life has to begin at conception when the egg and the sperm join.
You have to ask the question – if this new life is not interrupted in any way, will it be born a human being? If the answer is yes – it will become a child – and you perform an abortion, then you’re ending a life – simple as that. If you kill a tadpole, you’re killing the frog it becomes.
I do agree with Garth – if we can murder children in the womb who have no defense whatsoever, then it’s a dropping of the standards for which children are held in regard as a whole, and a dropping of the regard for the sanctity of life in general.
I think future humans are going to look back at this era in history and regard the practice of abortion with horror – much as we look back and wonder at smoking now.
November 28th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Abortion lowers crime rates. When abortion is permitted (e.g. US 1973), crime rates fall about 18 years later. Where abortion is banned (e.g. Romania 1966) crime rates go up about 18 years later.
Here is US evidence: http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf
Here is further US evidence: http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittReply2004.pdf
And here is a correction to the first paper: http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/ResponseToFooteGoetz2006.pdf
This paper shows the effect of Romania’s ban: http://chw.princeton.edu/chw/lectures-conferences/lectures/past-lectures/spring2005/04-18-06.pdf
In Romania, the incidence of still births and low birth weight children increased substantially.
In short, the evidence is that women who choose to have an abortion have good reason for doing so.
November 28th, 2008 at 7:45 am
A common misconception.
Well, the only thing that secularism could do is not give Christianity (or any other religion) special favourable treatment. If anyone was trying to give Christianity special unfavourable treatment, attempting to lower its status below other religions, that wouldn’t be secularism. You can’t blame secularism for people claiming to be secularists promoting unsecular things, any more than you can blame Christianity for people claiming to be Christians promoting unchristian things.
Can you provide some evidence of how quick I am, and perhaps explain what you mean by “my type”? You’re quite right that I can’t deny you the right of making a judgement on relativistic grounds. You’re weird and mildly manic for suggesting I was going to.
Oh, I was just asking a question. Lee and I were talking about his belief that two-parent-different-sex families are healthier and more loving. I asked if examples to the contrary (both of healthy loving non-traditional families and of abusive traditional families) were the exceptions that proved the rule. He said he thought they were. I asked if it would be worth trying to find elements that make those exceptions more explicable.
In answer to your question, I don’t think that the state, welfare, involuntary redistribution or capitalism should occur.
Well, that’s academics for you. Reducing people to numbers and “resources” instead of seeing them as human beings deserving compassion.
November 28th, 2008 at 7:51 am
PaulL:
I think the best point that can be made by asking those questions is that drawing a line is no simple matter.
The usual argument there would that while something would have to be actively done to turn that clipping into a person, something would have to be actively done to prevent the foetus developing into an adult. Don’t ask me why this makes a difference.
Can you be, then, morally, a partial murderer for ending a partial life?
November 28th, 2008 at 9:07 am
“Some people think killing is bad because God says so.”
If we take the bible as god’s word, and if we accept that god says his word does not change, then god gives specific instruction as to when killing is acceptable and specific rules around who he uses to do it, the atonement for both the killer and the family of the deceased and the role of the priest/elder. It may surprise some that not all killing/murder was punishable by death.
In short, god does not say killing is bad.
November 28th, 2008 at 9:12 am
that’s the christian god I’m refering too there.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:07 am
This side discussion on abortion has been predictable as i am sure it has been before.
Garth also said this within that article.
this is the real discussion for out of this comes the mindset that celebrates abortion by articulating for it and enabling it.
reckon we can go to 500 posts or does it need another thread DPF?
“We have brought it on ourselves. We have bowed to the blandishments of liberalism, immorality, materialism and hedonism and have set aside most of the moral and legal strictures which for centuries formed the mortar which held societies together and kept them from self-destruction.
For nearly 50 years, we have presided over the gradual unravelling of the fabric of our nation through the breakdown of the traditional family unit upon which community cohesion has always depended”.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:09 am
“In short, god does not say killing is bad.”
And that, in a nutshell, is one of the problems in believing in god. God kills a heck of a lot of people in the Old Testament, and Christians will go out of their way to excuse such mindless acts of violence.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:14 am
I have seen a military chaplain justify it on the basis that the biblical prohibition is against murder, which is unlawful killing. As soldiers kill in the course of war it’s not murder, therefore not against “god’s word”.
Much the same case could be made (if you gave a damn about people’s religious views) for the execution of criminals, police killing criminals in the course of their duties and people killing others threatening their families.
The same case can be made for abortion (assuming you think fetuses are alive) as a legal abortion is just that – lawful.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:14 am
All I know is that when my wife said “I am pregnant” there wasn’t a zygote or embryo growing inside her. There was only our child. Likewise when she lost a pregnancy at 13 weeks we didn’t lose a collection of cells but our baby.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Mr Smaller has it in one. Similar experience here.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:09 am
I think it’s more a case of the problem of believing a modern, or conveniently revised, interpretation of christianity. It shouldn’t be so hard to accept a god that kills. Why so difficult to understand? Even if you exclude the concept of christianity, you’d be naieve to suggest that killing is not useful and does not solve some issues. Human nature? Historical accounts? Is that not enough? To accept killing as real does not promote killing. Imagine a world that had to accept that god did allow war, disease and death. No more blame game.
The liberals and their arch-rivals the modern christian have more in common than they think – one argues killing is bad because it’s not nice, they wouldn’t want to be killed and they believe if they can dream utopia, it can be created. The other says killing is bad because their interpretation of god’s word say’s he’s all love and no darkness, and if you pray for it the prayer will be answered. Acceptance of a god that kills changes a modern christian’s approach to god from gimme gimme to a healthy “fear of god”. A “fear of god” instills a sense of responsibility and respect in the follower.
Both groups suffer from an emotional distortion of reality and the more metaphorical and analogical they become in defence of their argument the further from the truth that they seek they get. The liberals sprang from the socailism that was attached to the modern interpretation of god, with emphasis on the new testament. Both groups would like to enforce their view on everyone else.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Brian I felt the same way about my child, my wife and I thought of it as a child from the moment the pregnancy was evident. And the feeling that way about it by the parents made him a child who definitely should not be aborted. But when those feelings are not present, or are reversed?
November 28th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Goodgod, I think most people who point out all the killing that the biblical God does are not saying killing is always bad. They are saying that the professed Christian belief in the sanctity of life is not self-consistent. Clearly most Christians think some killing is OK, that the sanctity of life is sublimated to other concerns. Self-defence might be such a concern. Or the wish not to be enslaved. Christians have fought many wars, killed many people. People who believe in abortion have a similarly pragmatic view, they sublimate life, or the possibility of life, to the welfare of the mother. In some quite specific cases. It does not indicate that they hold life to be cheap, and would murder at whim, any more than people who believe in the death penalty would. There are very specific conditions for the actions, many safeguards, and strong justification.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Goodgod,
In short, god does not say killing is bad.
God repeatedly says people should not kill.
In Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17 God specifically commands, “Thou shalt not kill.”
In Mark 10:19 and Luke 18:20, Jesus says “Do not kill.”
In Matt 19:18 Jesus says, “Thou shalt do no murder.”
In each case these commands come without conditions.
Of course, God also specifically orders massacres, such as in Exodus 32:27, Numbers 15:35 and 1 Samuel 15:2-3 with words like “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side … and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.” “Thus saith the Lord of hosts … go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare him not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. ” “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side … and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.”
Now tell me with a straight face yours is the god of love.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
You missed the second cause of violence against women that he cites. George states that women trying to be like men by engaging in male professions etc causes men to feel frustrated and therefore lash out at women.
Un-fcking-believable.
If only women would stay at home or stick to “female professions” like nursing then there would be no domestic violence. Yeah, right.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
So ben, what you’re saying is that the God of the Bible is immoral, and yet – if you’re an atheist – you don’t actually believe in any Moral Absolutes. So which one is it?
Is taking the life of other human beings always wrong? If so, we have just discovered a moral absolute.
Do you consider the bombing to Hiroshima to be a necessary act? I and a lot of other people thought it was, in order to end the war. God tells us not to kill, yet directly orders Moses to kill. Were the U.S. soldiers murderers? If men can take lives and not be considered immoral, then why can’t God do the same and not be considered immoral?
As far as the 10 Commandments, they are laws that God gave TO US. Are you saying that no authority is above the law that it establishes? Are you saying that there are no reasons that would exclude an authority from adhering to its own laws?
Let us examine parental authority, which divine authority closely resembles. A parent establishes the rule that a child must never cross the street unless that child is holding the hand of another adult. In your thinking, any time the parent needs to go across the street, they, too, must be holding the hand of another adult.
There is a difference between parent and child that gives the parent the right to be an authority over the child, just as there is a difference between God and man that gives God the right to be an authority over man.
If God chooses to wipe out his own creation, he must have his own reasons and who is in a position to tell a creator that he can’t destroy his own work?
November 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Fletch, extremely well said.
I fact the word “kill” that ben is referring to is in Hebrew “murder”.
The Bible defines murder as the deliberate and unjust taking of a human life by another human being. So the Bible forbids murder, but also teaches that sometimes taking a life (or lives) may be just in certain circumstances.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:58 am
There can be no doubt that the ‘unjust taking of a human life’ is unjust. By definition. Green cars are green too, by definition. Knowing that does not help anyone know what green means, or what unjust means. The Bible is making a pretty safe decree in forbidding murder. As far as I know, every society forbids murder. Even samurai Japan, where a samurai could cut your head off with pretty much any excuse whatsoever, that would not be considered murder in all cases, since the samurai had the right to do it. Similar thinking exist in the West today – any time a Western Head of State orders killings, they are never held accountable. Not once that I can think of has it been ruled that an official near to the top of the government has actually been busted for murder, on account of authorizing the killing of anyone. Except for people who have been conquered, and are no longer the heads of state.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Fletch
Coming back to you far too late, but for what its worth:
1. rejecting the existence of moral absolutes does not make one incapable of detecting immorality against a standard – such as one’s personal values (“I believe murder is wrong”) and against social norms or the law.
2. Christians frequently make value judgments of God’s character. God is love. God is merciful. And so on. It is hard to see the principle that allows them to praise God’s values but which prevents me objecting to those values when he orders the murder of infants. I make that judgment only by reference to my own values, the fact that if it were my children he was ordering killed I’d be deeply unhappy about it, and also by reference to those claims that God is loving and merciful, which on its face the murder of infants is inconsistent with.