Akin sticks his foot in it

276 Comments

joe • Aug 20, 2012 @12:43 am

Akin didn't just step in it. He jumped up and down in a puddle of it, then wiped it all over his face and washed his hair in it. I really, really, *really* hope it's at least December before he manages to wash that off. His comments on this topic make Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman look smart.
Random Encounter • Aug 20, 2012 @4:01 am

It's what you get when you let the party drift so far to the extremes that reasonable people don't want to associate with you anymore. At least a few states have alternate old-school conservative parties forming because of this nonsense.
Gal • Aug 20, 2012 @5:13 am

So… This guy publicly stated that he believes that any woman who becomes pregnant due to rape secretly wanted it/enjoyed it, yes?

If he gets voted in they should Nuke Missouri from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Another Gal • Aug 20, 2012 @5:22 am

Senator Tom Harkin (D) – we need Obamacare because women have periods.
VP Joe Biden (D) – we need Obamacare or rapes will increase!
Mayor Bloomberg (I, but really D) – women MUST nurse, lock up the infant formula!
Let's throw these "extremists" out of office for saying stupid things! Oh, wait, they're democrats. Never mind.
Josh C • Aug 20, 2012 @5:46 am

Was that a rondel?!

Now I'm impressed.
AlphaCentauri • Aug 20, 2012 @5:46 am

People are assuming this will cause him to lose support. He didn't make that shit up. That old wives' tale has been a strongly held belief in the prolife movement for decades. It probably was true for reported rapes because women who get ER treatment are offered emergency contraception. Back before it was FDA approved for that use, no one was going to bring it to the attention of people like Akin who could have done something to make it illegal or something.
nlp • Aug 20, 2012 @5:50 am

This is what happens when people allow religion to trump science: they start making up their own weird beliefs.
Random Encounter • Aug 20, 2012 @6:00 am

This isn't anything new. I remember hearing the same bogus crap as a kid. I'd be surprised if this hasn't been used as a justification for centuries.
C. S. P. Schofield • Aug 20, 2012 @6:00 am

OK, most of these comments are at least borderline fair. Now answer me this; in what way do they not also apply to the Democrats?
David • Aug 20, 2012 @6:19 am

@Josh C

A villanelle. Thanks!
Rick Caird • Aug 20, 2012 @6:23 am

All he was trying to say is that if you allow abortion in the case of rape, you will get more claims of rape by people who want abortions. That is not such a horrible thought.
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @6:45 am

@Rick Caird:

Please tell me you are being facetious…
jeremy7600 • Aug 20, 2012 @7:09 am

This article is great:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/a-canard-that-will-not-die-legitimate-rape-doesnt-cause-pregnancy/261303/

The fact "revealed" in the last paragraph is the reality of the situation.
David • Aug 20, 2012 @7:18 am

@jeremy7600 In addition, this note looks into the 18th-century roots of the belief. So no surprise awaits @Random Encounter, and @Gal's inference is on point.
Random Encounter • Aug 20, 2012 @7:43 am

@Rick Caird actually, since it is a justification for rape ("she really wanted it, see she's pregnant!") it really is that awful.
Rick Caird • Aug 20, 2012 @8:31 am

@Random and @Grifter

The topic was abortion not rape. The issue being discussed was if abortion should be allowed in the case of rape. Akin was arguing that if you allowed abortion in the case or rape, you would get additional claims of rape from women who simply wanted an abortion. Do you dispute that claim?
Kinsey • Aug 20, 2012 @8:33 am

I'm pro-choice. My mom and many of the people I go to church with are pro-life, and they all think abortion should be outlawed "except in the case of rape or incest."

Leave aside the fact that, as Rick points out, if those are the only two circumstances under which one could obtain an abortion, reported rape statistics would skyrocket.

My beef with the rape and incest exemption is that it's morally indefensible. If you truly believe that abortion is murder and that the life of the fetus is as important as the life of the mother, then you should object to abortion without qualification. HOW the egg got fertilized has nothing to do with the resulting fetus' right to life. If the egg got fertilized via rape or incest, forcing the mother to carry the baby to term might cause the mother extreme emotional or psychological trauma. But if we're pro-life, then we've already posited that the fetus' rights cannot be subordinate to the mother's, so her emotional or psychological trauma can't trump lil fetus' right to exist.

Want to allow abortion to save the life of the mother? Fine. Then say you oppose abortion except in cases where the mother's life is in danger. But to say that you oppose abortion except in the case of rape or incest is to admit that you just don't think a woman should be allowed an abortion if she had sex willingly. And that's got nothing to do with the life of the fetus.
different Jess • Aug 20, 2012 @8:34 am

Well I've had to revise my estimate of McCaskill's intelligence. She ran more "Akin's the TRUE Conservative" ads than Akin did back in the primary. Now I understand why.

I wouldn't have predicted it, but at this point McCaskill has my vote. She's a Democrat, but she's been saying the some of the right things for a couple of years now. I'm going to have to break my anti-TARP pledge, but I'll take that out on Bond when he comes up.

ps. Gal, I can't really predict the reaction of fellow Missourians, but please don't nuke us from orbit. If you must, try to limit the damage to St. Louis please.
Random Encounter • Aug 20, 2012 @8:36 am

@Rick Caird actually, by using an argument that justifies rape, Mr. Akin made it about rape.

It is only about abortion because that was the context in which he chose to justify rape.
Ae Viescas • Aug 20, 2012 @8:39 am

Remember kids: friends don't let friends practice moralism.
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @8:40 am

@Rick:

No. You are wrong in your assertion, and I refuse to engage your question until you correct yourself, because frankly I find what Akin said reprehensible, and your defense of such is close to, particularly if you are as dishonest as you appear to be.

He was asked "what about in the case of rape", and his response was to imply it was a red herring to even ask, because "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Nothing about rape statistics, only the comment that women can't get pregnant if they're raped, followed by the assertion that even if they are, he doesn't think abortion is okay.

He did not make the claim that rape claims would go up, unless he did it later on in the interview, and if so, you'll need to link to it. Otherwise you're dishonest and a bad person, because you're not just defending a bad person, but you're being disingenuous while doing so.
David • Aug 20, 2012 @8:42 am

@Rick Caird,

Do you dispute that the conditional "If rape, then not pregnant" entails the inference "If pregnant, then not rape"?

Permit me to help you along with a logically equivalent case:

If Bolt stopped short, then he didn't win the race.
Bolt won the race.
Ergo, Bolt didn't stop short.
Rick Caird • Aug 20, 2012 @9:02 am

@Grifter

What do you think he meant by legitimate? Do you think he just threw that word in there because he liked the sound of it? Of course not. You are just trying to avoid the idea that an exception for rape would increase the claims of rape.

Now the full quote is (part of which you purposely omitted):

"It seems to me first of all from what I understand from doctors that's really rare," Akin said. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down..".

The first part of is probably true. Pregnancy from rape is probably somewhat rare just because of the period of fertility during a month.

I have never heard anyone claim before that there was a way to "…. shut that whole thing down". I doubt that is true. However, Akin has said that he misspoke.

If you want to be offended, feel free. But, it is your choice. No one is making you feel offended.
Kinsey • Aug 20, 2012 @9:05 am

I'm almost 50, and I swear I'd never heard the "a woman's body won't let her get pregnant if it was really rape" thing before. Can't believe anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of biology, or anyone who can read, would believe that.

And Rick, the guy clearly was not trying to say that allowing abortion in the case of rape would cause women to claim rape when it hadn't happened. He said, "…the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down" — meaning that a woman's body won't let her get pregnant if she's raped. IOW, he really is as stupid as he sounds.
different Jess • Aug 20, 2012 @9:16 am

…or he's attempting to appeal to voters that stupid. Even in Missouri, I don't think there are that many. Maybe in Kansas…
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @9:16 am

@Rick Caird:

I wouldn't say I purposefully omitted it, considering it bolsters my case.

"It seems to me first of all from what I understand from doctors that's really rare,"

First off, no. I do not believe a real doctor told him that. If so, I'd like to know who, considering all the evidence I have, like this, shows either that the rates are the same, or that they're opposite.

He never made the point you claim he made. He made the point that pregnancy from rape is rare, as though that were 1, in any way true, which it's not and 2, germane to the point, which it's not.

The flow of the conversation was:

"What about abortion in the case of rape?"
"Pregnancy from real rape is rare, and I'm against it anyway"

I am not going to address your question, until you admit that you are not using Akin's points, but rather your own. As soon as you can debate honestly, I will address the question you think I'm dodging.
Kinsey • Aug 20, 2012 @9:17 am

I know a lot of people will now try to do the "See? Republicans are stoopid" thing, conveniently forgetting about the Democratic congress critter who worried out loud about too many people on Guam causing the tiny island to tip over.

This is not a Republican/Democrat thing. This is a "We're being governed by cretins and morons, in case you haven't already noticed" thing.

Yeah. Anyone who can make Clarie McCaskill look like the better candidate is just tragically unfit. For anything at all.
David • Aug 20, 2012 @9:20 am

This is not a Republican/Democrat thing. This is a "We're being governed by cretins and morons, in case you haven't already noticed" thing.

This.
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @9:22 am

@Kinsey:

While, undoubtedly, there have been terrible and stupid things said by Democrats and, undoubtedly, there are assholes in every group large enough, in the case of the Guam comments, the Rep. says he was kidding. And he wasn't talking about rape victims. I don't really think the situations are similar in kind.
David • Aug 20, 2012 @9:34 am

@Grifter, the Rep. says he was kidding. If so he's a master of deadpan!
Random Encounter • Aug 20, 2012 @9:35 am

@Grifter well, Guam is smaller than your typical Walmart, so even if the poor Democrat did really believe what he said I think it could be excused.
[/sarcasm]
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @9:38 am

@David:

I was just sayin' what he said, is all. I still don't think they're similar in kind.
Gavin • Aug 20, 2012 @9:40 am

@nlp and the discussion in general,

Actually, religion doesn't necessarily have to play any role in the abortion argument. There are actually atheist groups specifically against abortion (I was shocked too). The argument is that fetuses are living beings (they grow/consume/produce waste and are organic beings) and human (their DNA is not anything other than human and it's the same code they'll have until their death). So the argument is in favor of human life using a valid scientific definition of life and it is technically flying in the face of science to say it isn't human life. I'd say people are letting their desire for convenience trump science here. And lets face it, pregnancy is INCREDIBLY inconvenient even when you actually want it.

I've given it a lot of thought after learning that my mother-in-law survived an abortion and that the doctor recommended my wife be aborted (despite her being a perfectly normal baby and a very intelligent adult). I have no religious objection to abortion except the objection I have towards murder which is both a religious and moral objection. I do not think believing that fetuses are human life is by any means ignorant or necessarily wrong. However, this means that one side believes that widespread murder is happening and the other side believes that it's just growth removal. That's quite a difference in opinion. Keep in mind during this potentially volitile discussion that I have an unusually strong background in science and agree with topics like evolution and global warning. I understand that this topic means that many of us here have indirectly or directly gotten innocent blood on our hands if true. The incentive then, is strongly to the side of abortion not being murder. Us wanting something not to be so, does not make it not so.

Now, in the case of pregnency caused by rape. If you believe that this is an innocent human life then this becomes the murkiest question to ask. This is the only real dilema in my mind. I do think that rape should be punished harsher than it is in this country and I also think that rape resulting in pregnancy should have an even harsher punishment. But I could not in good conscience agree that ending an innocent human life is justified because an evil act caused it. It is a really shitty situation that will physically impact the individual for nine months and emotionally impact them for any amount of time. However, I would lean on the side of not doing two wrongs to make a right. So, on the one hand I am outraged at the cause of the pregnancy and infuriated at the struggle the woman will have to undergo because of a man's crime. But on the other hand I don't see how we can justify murder of an innocent life (unless we want to make rape a capital offense which I'm not entirely against). If we prohibit abortions in this scenario then we really need to have stronger programs in place for people in this situations to minimize the harm the rapists cause in their lives. Everything from continued eductation, stipends, work programs, etc. Perhaps these could be paid for by large fines imposed on rapists.

As a concession, I would point out where I differ from others. I say that any pregnancy that has a significant chance to kill the mother should be a candidate for abortion as long as they give it every opportunity to live (such as carrying as far to term as possible without seriously endangering the mother). This is because I believe the mother has every bit a right to her own life as the fetus does and I would not demand anyone give up their life for another. Keep in mind, that having a right to your life does not equate to having a right to your desired quality of life.

As far as women who get raped secretly wanting it? That's what we call batshit insane. I can't think of many things that could be more offensive. That's like saying if I got mugged in the street that I secretly didn't want my money or belongings and that I really enjoy getting my ass kicked/stabbed. Only, rapings are SO much worse than a mugging. The psychological distress alone can last the victim the rest of their lives. I would not want anyone who believes that women secretly want to be raped in charge of anything, let alone laws. *sigh*, the tea party and the spirit behind it (rich companies) are truly ruining any hope of a valid alternative to the democratic ticket.
David • Aug 20, 2012 @9:44 am

@Grifter Not disputin' it! He's the new Buster Keaton!
Gavin • Aug 20, 2012 @9:45 am

@Kinsey,

Exactly! We are governed by the worst sort of people. The worst part is that we really don't have the ability to choose our candidates and a third party wouldn't necessarily give us better options (also, a third party would likely be too close to one of the others and cannibalize votes, giving one party an ultimate advantage).

I kinda wish we had the ability to give a negative vote instead of a positive vote. I am tired of just voting for the person I dislike the least. I want to vote against the person I dislike the most or be able to cast a positive vote should I ever see anyone I actually want in office. It should be a surprisingly good indicator of how unhappy we are with our choices.
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @9:48 am

@Gavin:

nlp was remarking on Akin's comments. In his case, it is his (Akin's) religion that's the reason for his belief, and he has likely (in my opinion) never critically analyzed it as you seem to have (although I strenuously disagree with you based on multiple points, but I don't necessarily think this post is the place for a lengthy debate on the humanity of life without a nervous system or the rights of anything over another's body).

Because Akin's never critically analyzed his beliefs, let alone the evidence supporting them, he also never critically analyzes any of the things he hears or makes up if they support his position. Thus, to come back to nlp's point, because he was fostered in a culture that respects religious belief over science, he feels that he can spout whatever made-up, batshit thing he wants.
Gavin • Aug 20, 2012 @9:57 am

@Grifter,

NLP's statement contrasted religion with science. The correct inference seemingly being the statement of whether or not abortion is wrong. I don't know why he'd bring up science with regards to anything else (sounds like your objection to my point deals with humanity or the rights of someone else and not human life itself. Interesting, I should very much like to discuss that line of thinking sometime. I would quickly point out the plight of a person in a coma or being catatonic who does not feel anything. Note also that week 4 is when the nervous system begins to develop. So I don't think a claim can really be made there. As for rights over another person's body. That is the most interesting part in my opinion. We're talking about the right to life vs the right over one's body. Which one trumps the other? Does one siamese twin have a right to life over the other if both could potentially survive?)
Rick Caird • Aug 20, 2012 @10:04 am

@Grifter,

Nice outlier. The last line in your reference:

"The Gottschalls do acknowledge that their study was at odds with previous research, which showed a lower rate of pregnancy among rape victims."

If you want to believe the term "legitimate" had no meaning, I cannot help that, I guess. But, clearly he was differentiating between actual rape and those claiming rape. The very fact he felt he had to differentiate shows his thinking.

But, I do find it amusing that, with no justification at, you claim no doctor told him what he said he was told. Hence, you claim that since you disbelieve that part of the quote, somehow, that "bolsters" your argument.

To summarize, you disbelieve some of what Akin says and so discount it, ignore an important adjective, ignore the implications of the word legitimate, give us a reference which the authors acknowledge is an outlier, but think you have actually provided a sound argument for your opinion. Well, my response is "not really".
Narad • Aug 20, 2012 @10:10 am

The argument is that fetuses are living beings (they grow/consume/produce waste and are organic beings) and human (their DNA is not anything other than human and it's the same code they'll have until their death). So the argument is in favor of human life using a valid scientific definition of life and it is technically flying in the face of science to say it isn't human life.

By this "scientific" definition, a tonsillectomy is murder. Unless, of course, it's just all frosting surround the completely undefined "organic being."
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @10:12 am

@Gavin:

While I would be perfectly happy to continue the parenthetical debate, I don't want to piss off our hosts more than I already undoubtedly do just all the time, so I will hold off addressing anything you said (although that's really hard for me to do, but while I'm pretty dang aspy even I know that if abortion starts being debated there's a >90% chance of things going the way of the previous Thread Which Shall Not Be Named). If you're seriously interested, I'm sure I can figure out a way to get you my email or IM or something. I do love me some debate!

As regards to nlp's point, only nlp can really answer.

I didn't necessarily read what you read into it. I didn't feel that nlp was saying that the abortion debate MUST be about religion, but rather, that when it is about religion, as it is in Akin's case, you wind up with ridiculousness, because by allowing "it's against my religion" to be anything but ignored or soundly insulted in debates about rights and laws, you're allowing "things I believe without any rational basis" to be a legitimate point.

Part of the problem with that thinking is part of the problem with the abortion debate that happens, where people hold self-conflicting views. As Kinsey pointed our earlier, you can say you think abortion is truly murder, yet be okay with abortion in the case of rape. Akin even felt the need to try to say it was a red herring, when really what his true point was that it doesn't matter.
nlp • Aug 20, 2012 @10:27 am

Gavin, my point was made in the context of people who demand that Creationism be taught in schools, and who make other, similar demands regarding what is taught in schools. It had nothing to do with the question regarding abortion, and a lot to do with having a Congressional Representative stand up and say that women don't get pregnant from a real rape.

It was an incredibly demeaning, and remarkably stupid comment, and my real thought was that the education system in this country is getting worse all the time. Having various religious groups inject their beliefs and demands into what is already a bad situation is making a mockery of what education is supposed to be about.
Kinsey • Aug 20, 2012 @10:32 am

I'm about to bug out of this one because it looks like it's going to explode into an Abortion!!!!111 thread, but I did want to mention – I think it's unfair of pro choicers to assume, or to pretend to assume, that all pro lifers want to restrict womens' autonomy. Perhaps some pro lifers would like to see us thrown back to the days of yore when good girls didn't and bad girls could be slut shamed with impunity. However, I think more pro lifers are motivated by a genuine belief that abortion is murder.

Now. Maybe one of our hosts can kick off a less potentially incendiary topic. Like, say, guns.
delurking • Aug 20, 2012 @10:32 am

Gavin,

You have oversimplified life in your desire for a neat way to be against abortion:
"The argument is that fetuses are living beings (they grow/consume/produce waste and are organic beings) and human (their DNA is not anything other than human and it's the same code they'll have until their death). "

My sperm are living beings (they grow/consume/produce waste and are organic beings), they are human (their DNA is not anything other than human and it's the same code they'll have until their death).

Furthermore, every time I spit, I kill lots of human life. Cells from the lining of my mouth also fit all of the criteria you have posited. And think about the annual event where a doctor takes a blood sample to measure my cholesterol, iron, etc. The number of living human cells killed by that process is more than the number of cells in a fetus for the first few weeks of the fetus's life. I suspect you aren't against those blood tests.

I suspect that you actually have some further criterion for concluding that abortion is immoral that is related to the fetus's status as a "separate person".

The problem withe the abortion "debate" is that extremists on one side think there is no moral difference between the 2nd and 38th weeks of a pregnancy, and extremists on the other side think there is no moral difference between the 2nd and 38th weeks of a pregnancy. The vast majority of people recognize the moral greyness inherent in fetal development, but don't want to deal with talking to extremists.
Random Encounter • Aug 20, 2012 @10:32 am

If Akin had said something along the lines of "I don't think rape as the cause of pregnancy is sufficient to justify an abortion" I could at least respect his position. It's a consistent position that I disagree with, but I can understand and respect the logic that leads there.

But he couldn't stop there, could he? He just had to pull out the old "but she was really turned on by it, wasn't she?" canard.
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @10:36 am

@Rick Caird:

Nice outlier. The last line in your reference:

"The Gottschalls do acknowledge that their study was at odds with previous research, which showed a lower rate of pregnancy among rape victims."

There are links in the article. Please follow them, or this one , which is another study whose results led to the conclusion: "Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency. It is a cause of many unwanted pregnancies and is closely linked with family and domestic violence. As we address the epidemic of unintended pregnancies in the United States, greater attention and effort should be aimed at preventing and identifying unwanted pregnancies that result from sexual victimization."

If you want to believe the term "legitimate" had no meaning, I cannot help that, I guess. But, clearly he was differentiating between actual rape and those claiming rape. The very fact he felt he had to differentiate shows his thinking.

Even if he was differentiating, he never made any claim about false reports rising if there is a rape exception. Point to where he made that point, please, or admit that you are wrong when you say he made that point.

But, I do find it amusing that, with no justification at, you claim no doctor told him what he said he was told. Hence, you claim that since you disbelieve that part of the quote, somehow, that "bolsters" your argument.

Actually, I didn't make a claim of my own. Rather, I rejected his claim, based on a lack of evidence for, and examples of evidence against, and also said I'd like to know what doctor told him that, considering I have studies showing it to be untrue. Do you have studies showing it to be true? Does he? Does his hypothetical doctor, whose name has never been mentioned? If there were such studies, I might believe his statement. But in their absence, I'm going to maintain I find it hard to believe that a doctor told him that, and that rather, I find it more likely he said it in the same way someone might say "My cousin's friend knew someone who got pregnant from a toilet seat!".

To summarize, you disbelieve some of what Akin says and so discount it,

Actually, I discount it because even if a doctor said it, that doesn't make it true. I do not believe a real doctor would be stupid enough to say it, which is what I said, but I do concede it is possible. That in no way would necessarily make the doctor right.

ignore an important adjective, ignore the implications of the word legitimate,

You said he was making a point he never made. While that point might follow from his words, he never made the point. I wholly concede that he was claiming that women't don't get pregnant from "real" or "legitimate" rape.

I first repudiate that claim, and second say that it isn't a hypothesis that rape claims would go up if rape were the only reason allowed for aboriton.
You might use that point in your own argument for that hypothesis, but he didn't make that statement, and on its own it doesn't make that point.

give us a reference which the authors acknowledge is an outlier,

Gave you two studies, actually, if you actually read the words of the article.

but think you have actually provided a sound argument for your opinion. Well, my response is "not really".

Which opinion of mine?

The opinion he didn't make the point that you continue to insist on saying he made?

Or that his point about women who are "legitimately raped" not getting pregnant is ridiculous, and based on no science?

(Here's an article that breaks those studies you didn't bother to read down a bit more for ya: here)

And on a final note, I would point out that his "legitimate rape" comments were more likely referring to Forcible vs. Statutory (which is considered "not real rape" by some), as that's been the talking point for quite some time, and was the argument when funding for rape was allowed but statutory rape was excluded.
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @10:39 am

I have a comment awaiting moderation, where I didn't screw up the blockquotes!

But I did, apparently, eff up a link. Stupid html, with your logical and not particularly difficult structure.
David • Aug 20, 2012 @10:42 am

Looks as if you accidentally closed out the front of the anchor with a right paren. Fixed.

Curse HTML's sudden but inevitable betrayal!
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @10:48 am

Thanks David! I swear, I'm going to start typing these in gedit as html documents, just so the stupid tags will be color-coded for me.
delurking • Aug 20, 2012 @11:01 am

David, maybe Grifter is the master of deadpan.
David • Aug 20, 2012 @11:05 am

@delurking How meta! I believe that deadpan begins at the moment of Keatonception.
Gavin • Aug 20, 2012 @12:24 pm

@Narad: There is a difference between a component of an individual and the individual itself. DNA contains within it the code for an entire being by including the components of the individual. A tonsil would correctly be part of human life, but it is not itself a human life. A tonsil will never become a human and has never been one. This is a quibble on my simplification of the topic. I could have constructed a more complex statement but I thought for the sake of argument I could just make it basic and allow others to fill in the logical components that shouldn't warrant mention. Of course I don't think destroying a tonsil is killing a human life.

@NLP: I hardly believe that this dickery comes from any sort of religious tenents. The idea that women don't want to be raped is pretty much as basic as saying water is wet. Raped being, by definition, non-consensual. I see any notion to the contrary as being born out of the same sort of ignorance as superstition and perpetuated by the same dummies to boot. I apologize that I assumed your use of religion in contrast to science was aimed at abortion in particular. Hopefully I've explained why I took it to be along those lines.

@delurking: Is it easier to believe that someone disagrees with you only because they "want" to? Why would I "want" to believe in something like that? I'm not a republican. I already believe in evolution, stem cell research, and global warming. I make up my own damn mind and like to view things objectively. It may be easy for you to project some sort of hidden agenda on me but that's no different than this politician pushing the hidden agenda that women actually want rape (except pushing this bias on me clearly isn't evil, it's just wrong). I could just as easily say that the assumption that fetuses (note that I don't call them pre-born babies either) is born out of a desire of not wanting to live with the consequences of one's actions. The thing is, you don't have a motivation for my interpretation whereas I do for yours. The bible certainly doesn't say that wounding a pregnant woman until her unborn baby dies is necessarily murder, it doesn't talk about it at all, so I don't see where people would really specifically tie it to religion except that Christians are typically the ones against it.

Perhaps I did over-simplify the points but all it requires is clarification. For example, your sperm is merely a gamete. It does not contain the DNA required to become a human being, it contains part of the DNA required. Anyone looking at it would call it incomplete, aka less than human genetically. You should understand that most biologically life shares components of DNA, some even share more than a gamete with human life. The entirety of the code is therefore necessary to distinguish between the species.

A gamete is human material, yes, just like a tonsil or a hair root is a product of the human animal, but if nurtured and kept alive it will never grow into a human being. Now, combine the gamete of a man and the gamete of a woman and then you have a zygote. That does have human DNA and not just a half fragment. My original statement that it is nothing other than human DNA is merely to contrast non-human DNA and human DNA, that it is no other form of life other than human. While there is no guarentee that it will survive into adulthood or even be successfully born, there is a guarentee that it won't be born a different animal or be a member of another phylum or any such classification.

As for the 2nd to 38th weeks discussion. You are correct that this is the most heated part of the discussion. I am conflicted on this. On the one hand, I understand that my definition includes a simple zygote as human life. But I simply can't bring myself to completely view a single cell or even just a small collection of cells as human life. I'm not sure if I should just take a strong stance and call conception or the time of implanting it or not. If not, then how the heck do I justify a starting point at which it is ok? Also, how does how I "feel" have any impact on whether or not the human life deserves not to be destroyed? I don't think I can bring my own subjectivity in the discussion as that would be just as bad as people rejecting the notion blindly because they don't want to deal with it. Objectively, if the subjective point of murder is wrong, then killing a zygote is killing a human in the earliest stage of life.

Either way, I can assure you that there's no sort of secret reason why I'd want to have one view or another. I place a premium on not just listening to what I'm told and actually thinking things out.

Though I'd like to end on this, the idea that somehow a woman wanting or not wanting sex can impact the union of gametes is hilariously retarded. Sorry, I guess I mean mongoloidal. Err… dumb. No, mentally challenged…. handicapable?
James Pollock • Aug 20, 2012 @12:26 pm

The fun part of abortion debates is the AMAZING frequency in which it turns out that people on one or both sides can't be bothered to learn what the other people's opinion actually IS, so they just assume everyone who disagrees with them has the exact same opinion and argue the same formula.
To cite an example from upthread, I would be very surprised to find that there is any significant number of people who think that removal of a live fetus is "just growth removal."
Gavin • Aug 20, 2012 @12:29 pm

@Grifter,

It appears you were correct with regards to NLP's statement. Thanks for lending your view.

You'll forgive my ignorance of some other thread on the topic that turned out badly. I assume it took a more personal nature and perhaps someone got insulted in a way that was innappropriate. If it takes that turn then hopefully it won't be by my hands. I have no desire to do anything else than have a civil discussion on the matter. I am by no means militant in my beliefs nor do I actually chastise people for having abortions. Perhaps I should if this is what I really believe, but unless someone believes it is murder and does it any way then I can't really fault anyone for ignorance. Not when the law supports it.

The administrators have my email. I would gladly shut my trap other than offend.
Gavin • Aug 20, 2012 @12:36 pm

@James Polluck: All sides have a range of beliefs. I found this out when I studied the subject to figure out where I stand. You do find everything from "God hates abortion" to the "It's no different than having a colagen injection".

The dividing point I'm interested in where discussion is concerned is simply whether or not it's human life. What I find most surprising is that there are camps on the pro-life side that believe it isn't life and that there are camps on the pro-choice side that believe it is life. What a crazy and divisive topic!
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @12:46 pm

Gavin:

2 things.

One, the bible does mention that specifically: "If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life." Exodus, 21:22,23

(There's contextual arguments about what that means, in that there is a presumption as to what "mischief" means, and some take into account the fact that <1 month old babies weren't even counted in census, etc., but that's not the point, the point is it is totally in there)

Two, and more importantly: "there is a guarentee that it won't be born a different animal or be a member of another phylum or any such classification."

Reminded me of this quote from the internet:

"I love the term 'we're expecting' when talking about pregnancy,
because it makes it sound like there's more than one outcome.

Yeah, we're expecting a baby.

But it could be a velociraptor."

(And, since the abortion debate has begun to boil despite my best efforts, I would like to say this: the relative humanity of the genetic material in question seems, to me, to muddy the water unnecessarily. Humanity is not special, in my mind; consciousness is. If a rat stood on its hind legs tomorrow and said, "Hello, good sir, I know this is odd, but could you spare a smoke? I'm positively jonesing, and that dastardly shop proprietor will not let me into his store. There's nothing better nicotine on this fine summer's day as I contemplate my place in the universe.", I would say that that rat is conscious, and entitled to all the same type of benefits we give to humans. The same, to me, would be said for a Turing-passing AI. And being asleep or unconscious does not negate that essential consciousness (and, indeed, we don't really know where consciousness ends). However, a 2 week old cluster of cells is not conscious, and has not been conscious, yet. It has no central nervous system. In my opinion, its humanity is irrelevant, and its potential is irrelevant, only its actuality is relevant. Once the fetus becomes an actual viable person, with a brain and all, then we start getting into murkier territory for a host of other philosophical, moralistic reasons. I come at it similarly as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion does, but again, that's farther down the philosophical pipeline for me.)
Malc • Aug 20, 2012 @1:01 pm

I find an interesting correlation between the group who vehemently support the "castle doctrine" concept (the right to use deadly against unlawful intruders into one's home/car/wharever) and the group who oppose abortion-in-the-case-of-rape. Cognitive dissonance, anyone?
Narad • Aug 20, 2012 @1:24 pm

I could have constructed a more complex statement but I thought for the sake of argument I could just make it basic and allow others to fill in the logical components that shouldn't warrant mention.

But this is the point: Your putatively scientific definition is a non-definition that simply pushes the matter into the vagary of "organic being" with aimless hand-waving about metabolism and DNA, which are very much components that don't really warrant mention. I'm not trying to pursue a debate about abortion but rather pointing out that nothing particularly follows from this construction.
carnackiArdent • Aug 20, 2012 @1:42 pm

I'm not going to weigh in on the actual topic of abortion or rape at this point (I've already had issues with one discussion involving my state and possibly-religion-linked controversy in the past week), but I will request that somebody please don't even nuke St. Louis if Akin's elected. I live way too close, and I don't think Akin lives anywhere near it.

Besides, as the saying goes, "If you kill him, he won't learn nuthin'." (despite my temptation to assault him and several others involved in the state and federal government with a variety of science textbooks after the past couple of weeks, because Missouri is developing an awful track record just from this and that stupid amendment)
nlp • Aug 20, 2012 @2:06 pm

Gavin, I should probably have been more clear, but the statement Akin made about how pregnancy cannot occur due to rape was such a blindingly stupid comment I thought others would understand. The education level in this country seems to get worse all the time.
Gavin • Aug 20, 2012 @2:06 pm

@Narad: Actually, the use of organic is to exclude technology or certain non-organic forces which may consume energy and grow. A star, for example, or a black hole. We rarely consider inanimate objects alive (per definition) and I wanted to be sure to exclude them. The idea is that organic metabolism is life. A single celled organism that is doing that is still alive. To cease metabolising is to cease to live because energy is no longer being consumed and so energy may only leave the decaying body. The point of DNA is only to express that it is human life. What follows from this is the belief that a fetus is human life at its earliest stage which should not be particularly hard to follow. This came out of an incorrect assessment of what someone here said. I thought they meant that being anti-abortion necessitates putting religion over science, something that isn't even close to being true.

@Malc: Please explain how a child is responsible for its father's sins? Please tell me, if a home invader walks into a home with an infant in his arms, can the home owner shoot the invader and then the child because they both "broke in"? I assume your statement is tongue in cheek, but feel free to correct me if not.

@Grifter:

1. I stand corrected! I guess they do have a biblical reason. I will adjust my opinion of their views accordingly. Thank you.

2. Hah! Dinosaurs trump human babies! As long as it's passive until after the birth…

(So, what is the difference between a two week old baby and a rat?)
delurking • Aug 20, 2012 @2:10 pm

Re: Gavin
What? I basically said what Narad said; you basically conceded my point – that it is a fetus's status as a separate person on which you base your position (a tonsil is a "part of human life", but "not a human life"). You are trying to sound scientific by using words from science but the crux of the argument is not scientific.

It is good that you understand the 2nd/38th week dilemma. Some ethical problems have no clear dividing line. Is it morally acceptable for a poor man to steal some unaffordable life-saving medication for his child? Yes. Is it morally acceptable for a poor man to steal medication that has a 1% chance of saving his child's life? How about a .01% chance? How about a .0001% chance? And so on… Recognize that some other person's livelihood depends on the medication being sold, not stolen. There is no clear line, just as with abortion. Given how many such ethical dilemmas one can easily find in everyday life, it is obvious that neither extreme is the correct one for abortion either.
Gavin • Aug 20, 2012 @2:15 pm

@NLP: I completely agree!
Malc • Aug 20, 2012 @2:26 pm

@Gavin: You need think it through (and read some statutes). If a father breaks into a house with a child in his arms, the home owner (in e.g. Florida) is free to open fire on the father, AND then if the child is killed, the father (not the shooter) becomes guilty of murder, because the homeowner is absolved of both criminal and civil liability for their use of force.

Obviously, if the child breaks in on his own, then homeowners are free to slaughter at will — no questions asked.

And no, it's actually not tongue in cheek.

On your other point: are you talking about a two week old baby or a two week old fetus?
Gavin • Aug 20, 2012 @2:27 pm

@Delurking: Howso? I am establishing that a fetus is a human life albeit at the earliest stage. The value of this human life is then left up to a high degree of subjectivity with the understanding that human life at some point must be held a high value. It is also a distinctly seperate being (as defined in its DNA derived from both parent's gamete). You made a point about various components of human life as if they were themselves a human life. In what way is this conceding some disagreement we're having?

My concern about abortion is that at some point we are killing human life. The fuzziness of it is extremely disconcerting. If there is a fuzzy point, then on one side of it murder is being committed and to be on that side is to have blood on your hands. That weighs heavily on me, especially where infants are concerned. On the other hand, if there is no fuzzy line, if it is wrong to destroy human life at any stage then we have done far more harm than we realize. It would be easy for me to run a pascal's wager and say that it would be better not to risk murder by quibbling over a few months of time, but easy isn't always right. Just how much subjectivity can be allowed here? I don't know and perhaps cannot know. It is a sort of philosophical angst that I can't get away from at the moment nor do I think I ever can. Still, the point of unease is not unfounded. It is a valid stance for me to take even if I can't define the particulars. I know, for example, that partial birth abortions (if the practice has been correctly explained to me) are pretty damn bad. But plan B? I wouldn't bat an eye.
Gavin • Aug 20, 2012 @2:32 pm

@Malc: You made a comparison between a home invader and a rape-derived fetus. I'm stating that the fetus is not the invader. The rapist is.

My statement is this: If a man invades a house with a captive, whom the home owners are aware is a captive, can they shoot the invader and then, after a pause, knowingly shoot the captive in the head? Not on accident. If a loophole allows that to happen, it needs to be closed. Surely you agree such an action would be cold blooded murder. I'm merely pointing out that if someone believes a fetus is an innocent human life, there is no overlap between a home invader and a fetus. The fetus is not committing a crime. So your statement just doesn't follow.
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @2:37 pm

@Gavin:

In all honesty, I wasn't sure if you were somehow being facetious, since I happened to know of such a specific example to exactly what you were saying…I'm glad I didn't just miss the joke!

(Just to clarify, since it seems you jumped to babies…did you mean 2 week old fetuses or are you questioning whether I equate 2 week old babies to rats? If the former I'm confused by the question, if the latter, I'd say we don't know enough about consciousness to say how much the 2 week-old baby has, but it's also outside of the mother's womb, which changes the dynamics of the debate, since it's so very much about the interplay of 2 peoples' rights)
Matthew Cline • Aug 20, 2012 @2:54 pm

If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

What?!
Waldo • Aug 20, 2012 @3:12 pm

@ Rick

"What do you think he meant by legitimate? Do you think he just threw that word in there because he liked the sound of it? Of course not. You are just trying to avoid the idea that an exception for rape would increase the claims of rape."

I think he is distinguishing between rape involving physical force and violence and rape not involving any/much physical force. That's clear from his pseudo science statement that a woman's body precludes pregnancy in some cases ("legitimate" rape) but not others. Thus, if he were including rapes such as consensual statutory rape and rape of an incapacitated woman and perhaps rapes involving some level of coercion short of violent physical assault as part of "legitimate" his statement about a woman's body would not make any sense. He was clearly not making a distinction between rape and a false claim of rape.
Gavin • Aug 20, 2012 @3:20 pm

@Grifter:

I'm actually strongly up to date on most theological discussions. I can talk to you forever on soteriology. But it never occured to me to look in scripture for this topic. I honestly try not to look for things that can be explained with science. But that's just me. I apologize if I seemed to be joking, I do sometimes enjoy a good joke. But in general if I ask a question I'm not trying to waste your time. I'm trying to learn. I am happy to be corrected.

(I did jump to babies. Babies cannot talk either. Frankly, they show less intelligence than a baby rat. The sentience argument has a lot of holes. You mentioned them with coma's, sleep and such. But as such what is the difference between the potential for a coma patient to eventually come out of it and for a fetus to eventually grow into a coherent human? Both may take years. Now you're saying that something as arbitrary as it being on one side of a wall or the other makes a difference. Does the womb have a magic gate? How does that work out with regards to your statement that consciousness is what matters?)
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @3:38 pm

@Gavin:

Oh, no, I wasn't complaining, or trying to give you a hard time. It was just funny that as I was typing the reference I was thinking "Boy, I hope I wasn't missing the point".

I don't think you'd like my positions much in a debate on soteriology.

(My point about consciousness is not as holey as you think. I'm saying that there is a difference between consciousness that has never existed and consciousness that is "on hold". I think there's a qualitative difference between the two, particularly when it is consciousness that existed, and that is guaranteed to exist again (to use sleep as an example). Is that a point you disagree with? And as regards to the rat vs. baby: We don't know enough about consciousness, I think, to be sure that they baby truly is less conscious than the rat. Moreover, at any point, the mother can opt-out of responsibility for the child by placing it up for adoption. While it is inside her, the fetus' supposed "right to life" comes at the expense of the woman's autonomy. I've long held that the "prolifers" would have a better argument if they had artificial wombs, so that the mother's autonomy and control over her own body did not factor in to the equation)
Kelly • Aug 20, 2012 @3:48 pm

I am not jumping into the debate. I will say that I am very, very glad I don't live in Missouri any longer. This idiot is a total tool.
M. • Aug 20, 2012 @4:39 pm

Point of discussion: If it was discovered that being incubated in a woman's body for nine months cured terminal cancer, would you be okay with the government forcing women to serve as incubators despite significant risk to their own health and safety?

If the idea sounds horrific, consider that a simplistic parable like that doesn't have even half the issues inherent in forcing a woman to carry her rapist's baby to term.

All life is precious, but only to a certain point; I'm no one's axlotl tank.
Waldo • Aug 20, 2012 @5:09 pm

@ M, I presume you're referring to Thompson's argument here. http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm

I disagree with Thompson that this argument applies to all pregnancies. But, I do basically agree with this argument when it comes to pregnancies as a result of rape. Anyways, I think someone upthread mentioned you can't logically believe a fetus is a person that should be protected and be in favor of an abortion exception in cases of rape. I completely disagree for the reasons set forth by Thompson. Not that you have to agree with this or you're an idiot. It seems to me that there's lots of room for disagreement for people of good faith when it comes to abortion. I immediately dismiss anyone as worth paying attention to who easily demonizes those whose positions he or she opposes ("they hate women and just want to control them" or "they're baby killers with no respect for human life") when it comes to abortion.
M. • Aug 20, 2012 @5:20 pm

Waldo: Nope, never heard of him. That's just my take on the issue.

I do not consider a fetus a human life; while it's genetically human and alive, I see absolutely no reason it should have sovereign rights until it's born. I consider a fetus akin to my ovaries and uterus: If I want it, you're violating my right to my own body by taking it away; if I don't want it, you're violating my right to my own body by forcing me to carry it around. Of course, that's not even taking into account the fact that one does not give birth to her reproductive organs, which do not then become sapient and have to deal with life in the outside world.

Basically, the point is still that I'm no one's axlotl tank. Unless I want to be, of course. That's the point of choice. Even if I did consider a fetus a human life, it wouldn't change my opinion on being an axlotl tank; to borrow from my parable again, I'll decide for myself if I want to help terminal cancer patients.
M. • Aug 20, 2012 @5:23 pm

*her
M. • Aug 20, 2012 @5:26 pm

I'm reading this now, and I've got to say, Thomson's analogy is a million times more entertaining than mine. I think it's the "in bed with a famous violinist" part.
PLW • Aug 20, 2012 @5:42 pm

I've pretty much held a variant of Thomson's view every since I read it in college.
John Berry • Aug 20, 2012 @6:17 pm

Even if reports of rape would increase if there was an exemption for rape and incest wouldn't you be punishing the victims for what might be crimes (falsely asserting a rape happened) committed by others?
John Berry • Aug 20, 2012 @6:23 pm

@ Gavin: Being related to people and having a number of friends who are against abortion (as I once was) I need to point out one thing. You state: "I do not think believing that fetuses are human life is by any means ignorant or necessarily wrong." But that is NOT what they believe. They believe that a human is created when the egg is fertilized. That would make the use of things like IUD's murder. And that really complicates things (like they weren't all ready).
delurking • Aug 20, 2012 @6:27 pm

And an extremist who can't see a difference between the 2nd week and the 38th week shows up…

OK, M. Let's say its the 38th week of a woman's pregnancy, and she decides she no longer wants the fetus. Is there a moral difference between killing it and taking it out and giving it to someone else?
Grifter • Aug 20, 2012 @6:34 pm

@M:

Bonus points for the axlotl reference!
Narad • Aug 20, 2012 @6:35 pm

The sentience argument has a lot of holes.

It is, nonetheless, the strongest thing going. Otherwise, what's the big deal about "human life" in the first place? I'm willing to argue that it is only projection of one's own experience (and abhorrence at the notion of its extinction) onto others–including animals–that gives rise to any principled interest in the subject whatever.
M. • Aug 20, 2012 @6:51 pm

@delurking: That depends on who she gives it to, obviously.
James Pollock • Aug 20, 2012 @7:14 pm

It seems to me, with the state of the law the way it is, that the rational acts to take to reduce the number of abortions performed in this country would be:
1. Fund medical research that improves the viability of premature fetuses. A fetus which can be transplanted into a willing host(ess) is one that need not trouble (nor be troubled by) its original mother.
2. Fund extensive sex education that includes all available pregnancy-prevention methods. (Abandon "abstinence-only" sex-ed for the crime of not working during any of the last several thousand years. Parents, of course, would remain free to advocate this method… it's cheap and effective for some)
3. Increase the availability of all methods of birth control, so that people who do not want to become parents may select the best, most effective method rather than the one that's cheapest right now.
4. Outreach to women who are carrying a child they would rather not raise with the message that alternatives are available. (Some will be receptive, some not. Focus on the ones who come to agree with you.)
4a. Make resources available to those women to assist with expenses related to carrying a child (medical care, missed work, maternity clothing)
4B make sure there really are enough qualified adoptive parents out there to take on the rearing of those kids.

Taking these steps will reduce the number of abortions performed. It won't reduce the number of abortions to zero (of course, neither will outlawing abortion, anymore than outlawing heroin has reduced the number of heroin addicts to zero.)
M. • Aug 20, 2012 @7:17 pm

There's also not raping people, but good luck with that. I mean, a woman isn't *just* an axlotl tank! She has a Fleshlight attachment!
AlphaCentauri • Aug 20, 2012 @7:26 pm

It's interesting having this discussion, especially with a group of people who are more willing than usual to hear other points of view.

But regardless of how strongly you feel that abortion is murder from the moment of conception, overturning Roe v. Wade is a moot point. The laws against abortion were originally created when we were diagnosing pregnancy by injecting women's urine into rabbits to see if their ovaries enlarged, and when abortions required surgical instruments (even if they were coathangers).

A woman can diagnose her own pregnancy within a week or two of conception now. There are no witnesses and no paper trail. And she can take methotrexate — a drug used for multiple other uses and readily available — to terminate the pregnancy, even before she's missed a period. For practical purposes, you can't outlaw abortion anymore. It isn't possible. That train left the station.

Unfortunately, if you try to outlaw it, you will end up with methotrexate being sold on the street by people who bought it from the spamvertised internet pharmacies in India or stole it from their relatives with rheumatoid arthritis. The quality will be questionable. Women who buy on the internet will have to purchase stock bottles, meaning there will be enough pills left over for two more abortions, all with no counseling. There will be no way to determine if the pills are from a competent pharmaceutical manufacturer or if they are placebo. Weeks or months after the drug is taken, you will get women with aplastic anemia from overdoses and you will get surviving babies with spina bifida from underdoses. You will not be able to determine if those events occurred as a result of the undocumented abortion using the unprescribed pills. And you will never be able to prosecute the successful abortions by women you never knew were pregnant whose pregnancies were terminated before the embryo was macroscopic.

If you want to stop abortions, you're going to have to change hearts, not laws. That's just the way it is. And acting like an asshat when you discuss rape victims isn't going to inspire too many people to take your point of view seriously.
Narad • Aug 20, 2012 @7:37 pm

A fetus which can be transplanted into a willing host(ess) is one that need not trouble (nor be troubled by) its original mother.

To describe this as a "technical challenge" would be to grievously understate the case. One only has so much time to implant an IVF embryo for, say, placental development to occur. Fetuses are pretty much out, not to mention tje question of how one is supposed to move them from uterus A to uterus B.
James Pollock • Aug 20, 2012 @8:25 pm

"To describe this as a "technical challenge" would be to grievously understate the case."

And yet, we've made TREMENDOUS advances in keeping grossly premature babies alive. Is it difficult? Yes. If you want to move the date of viability closer to conception, is it going to be a lot difficult-er? Yes, again. But, UNDER CURRENT LAW, transition to the point where the fetus' rights outweigh the mothers' is at the point of viability outside the womb. Therefore, advances in moving the point of viability forward advance the fetus' rights, which has the net effect of either A) reducing abortions, or B) causing abortions to be performed earlier (or most likely of all, C) both of the above). However, again assuming that reducing the number of actual abortions performed is the goal (not shaming of women or penalizing sexual activity amongst the fertiles) then that's a win. An expensive one, of course, but very likely one that has positive side effects amongst wanted pregnancies as well as unwanted ones.
Waldo • Aug 20, 2012 @8:30 pm

"A woman can diagnose her own pregnancy within a week or two of conception now. There are no witnesses and no paper trail. And she can take methotrexate — a drug used for multiple other uses and readily available — to terminate the pregnancy, even before she's missed a period. For practical purposes, you can't outlaw abortion anymore. It isn't possible. That train left the station."

I'm a little skeptical that outlawing abortion would not have any effect upon the number of abortions. If it's so easy to get an abortion on your own, why do abortion rights advocates so strenuously fight current abortion restrictions like waiting periods, and sonograms? Seems like one side wants to make it more difficult to get an abortion and the other wants to make it easier. I'm kinda skeptical that they're both just wasting their time, money, and effort on things that are meaningless. I suspect that, just like drugs, outlawing abortion will make it more difficult but not completely end it.
Pete • Aug 20, 2012 @8:44 pm

As a person who was given up for adoption as a newborn in the 1960's, I am faced with the reality that it is highly unlikely I would be here to type this comment if Roe v. Wade had been in place when I was conceived. As you might expect, this fact unavoidably colors my perception of the moral value of a fetus, or even a zygote. It follows, in my admittedly biased opinion, that arguments that scientifically attempt to define the morality or immorality of an abortion in terms of when a fetus becomes a viable human being, fail, because the true moment of moral significance is when genetic material exists, which if allowed to develop without interference, will eventually mature into a human being. As such, IMO the best pro-choice arguments are based upon the rights of a woman to govern her own body, and I reluctantly support this position while hoping that most woman will choose to carry the children that they conceive.

That said, I admit
Narad • Aug 20, 2012 @8:59 pm

But, UNDER CURRENT LAW, transition to the point where the fetus' rights outweigh the mothers' is at the point of viability outside the womb.

This has nothing to do with the transplants that you posited.
AlphaCentauri • Aug 20, 2012 @9:53 pm

If it's so easy to get an abortion on your own, why do abortion rights advocates so strenuously fight current abortion restrictions like waiting periods, and sonograms?

I think it's a case that the loudest arguments are the people who have camped out on the extremes of the issue and who aren't willing to give an inch. They feel that discussing the limitations of their own position will put them on a slippery slope toward the other side obtaining total victory.

The people who don't want to see women arrested for having an abortion at 4 weeks but who also don't want abortion to be a casual decision at 22 weeks just steer clear of the fray altogether.

There's probably also a component of not wanting to educate the enemy.
AlphaCentauri • Aug 21, 2012 @6:04 am

Several prominent Republicans and Republican lobbying groups are publicly withdrawing support and even asking Akin to withdraw from the race and let another candidate run.

Part of me says, "His views are not unusual in the Prolife movement. You court those people no matter what your personal beliefs and no matter how extreme their beliefs are. As the saying goes, "You lie down with dogs; you get up with fleas."

On the other hand, usually even when there are murders involved, the Prolife movement is content to make terse statements saying they don't support such means and otherwise just staying silent. If people on both sides of the discussion would start publicly criticizing those on their own side who views are so extreme as to undermine everyone else's credibility, it would go a long way to making it possible to have a more civilized discussion.
Gavin • Aug 21, 2012 @6:46 am

Sorry about a delayed response. I work with computers, so when I go home, I'm just home. It looks like all sides have spoken out against this candidate's statement. Even republicans are calling for him to step down. Very good!

@Grifter:

I don't know if I'd dislike your take on soteriology. I find that usually if someone knows what soteriology is that they're on the other side of the fence from me. I've been published as a source against predestination and in favor of free will. Primarily against the Calvinist points of TULIP but also in general against the Westminster confession and Calvin's Institutes.

(The whole I'm presenting with the rat vs baby is that there is not necessarily any significant difference between a baby at day one and a fetus on the last day. Just a few inches one way or the other. A baby may be consciousness "on hold" but a fetus is too, just a little longer. What I am saying is that my position is one that has been rationally thought out and not a wacky "I'm not going to listen" view. You know?)

@M.:
A full grown man dying of cancer is not being murdered by not letting him get into a woman's womb (in your analogy that would clearly result in the woman's death, haha, but besides that point). He's being killed by cancer. The problem here is an innocent life that will die if removed because your essentially cutting off its feeding tube and oxygen supply. Unlike a brain dead person on a feeding tube, this individual will gain conciousness (baring natural complications). Just because it presents a huge inconvenience (and I mean a HUGE inconvenience) does not mean that anyone has a right to kill it. At this moment in time, it is best described as a siamese twin in which both twins can survive their entire life but one would certainly die if removed. The difference is that waiting 9 months will resolve the issue and both parties get to live (keep in mind, if the pregnancy is particularly dangerous to the mother, I do advocate the potential of abortion, one life is not important than another and so a mother should not be forced to risk her life for her child. I do, however, request they carry the fetus to as full a term as possible and do whatever they can to preserve it as is their medical responsibility to do no harm). We must accept that the fetus is not the invader. This being did nothing to harm the recipient and in fact has no concept of malice yet. The innocence is an important concept for me, that a child is not responsible for its parents' actions.

@John Berry:

IUD's prevent fertilization, this is why it's a contraception, because it prevents it from happening. I'm not Catholic. I think the most valid comment here would be plan B's which only prevent implanting of the zygote on the uterine wall. I don't personally have a problem with it. Even though I accept it is a life I simply can't make myself to see a single cell organism the same way as I'd see the 4 week old fetus that already has a nervous system cropping up. Where between those times do I think it matters? I don't know. It's like a tomato plant with a flower on it. That flower eventually produces a bulb and then the bulb slowly grows into a full tomato. I wouldn't call the bulb at it's smallest stage a tomato, even though that's what it is. I do believe it's life but I have trouble really defining what the difference is between the 4 week stages. Perhaps I should take a firm stance somewhere but I am by no means so arrogant as to think that my firm stance would necessarily be correct. I would probably think that by the time one learns that they are pregnant, that it's likely past the point where I would look the other way, so to speak.

@Grifter (second time):
The idea is that if it is human life, then doctors have no business harming it. Just because something happens does not mean we should streamline it to make it easier. Back in the day there was also a stigma about being unmarried and pregnant. Women would be cut off from society and all that. Their lives would essentially be over. There are still some small towns where it's that bad but it isn't easy on them if they go to an abortion clinic either. Today this is a delay, especially with adoption being an option nowadays. I have to weigh my concern carefully, one for the woman who has a difficult number of months ahead of her and one for the life that is about to be snuffed out. I think about people like my mother-in-law who survived an abortion (not entirely rare from what I've heard) or my wife whom the doctor recommended be aborted for reasons that never happened. I wonder about how many scientists or inventors or musicians we've lost. These are inevitable thoughts to run across once one begins to think of this as a human life. That there are real consequences to our actions and that if this is an innocent human life I would not want its blood on my hands.

I am entirely not sympathetic with the couple that just had irresponsible sex and this was the result. My wife and I haven't gotten prego because we've been careful. I am very sympathetic towards the women impregnated via rape. It's like some monster has cut off her arm. The problem or murkiness of the situation comes up when I am also sympathetic for the innocent human life who didn't ask to be there. On the side of life/death vs huge inconvenience I must side with the life/death. Tough decisions are all around us. I would want us to do everything we can to make things easier on that individual, but at the end of the days it's still a 9 month problem.
Gavin • Aug 21, 2012 @6:53 am

@AlphaCentauri:

No, I STRONGLY doubt that many people at all would really think that a woman can magically prevent herself from getting pregnant just by not wanting sex. I don't know anyone personally that wouldn't get offended that if you get pregnant you wanted the rape to happen. They clearly exist, I didn't know they existed, but I seriously doubt they're anything of the norm.

The Republican party is taking offense to that stance. They would agree that rape does not justify murder. But never that rape victims somehow wanted to be raped if they got pregnant. That is as ignorant and as offensive as it gets.
Grifter • Aug 21, 2012 @9:00 am

@Gavin:

On the subject of soteriology, let's just say I approach the subject in the same manner I studied homeopathy.

On the subject of abortion: I do recognize that you've put thought into your position. This is a good thing; I enter most debates with the intention of being willing to be convinced. This doesn't make me any less argumentative, of course.

As I understand it, there are several arguments inherent in the abortion debate.

The first point of contention is the question: When does the mass of cells qualify as human life that has its own rights?

You agreed that there's a qualitative difference between day 2 of the development process and week 4. I am of the opinion that letting a fertilized egg not implant but instead be flushed is not really killing a human, but rather stopping a potential human, in the same way that letting that unactualized potentiality be wasted through masturbation and menstruation stops that potentiality.

Some have equated the fertilized egg to sperm, and the response has been "Well, sperm isn't fully its own organism, and wouldn't develop into one on its own". Technically, that's true. However, sperm and the egg that would be lost during a period are two halves. You wondered how many artists, etc. we might have lost, but I say those never existed in the first place, and had the male "pulled out", then the same amount of waste would have happened. I don't see a difference between wasting them separately or together.

However, at a certain point of development, I do agree that the fetus becomes an actual human. I posit that point is when there is a nervous system, which is around 4-ish weeks. Someone else can posit a different timeline; you said you were unsure of what you believed was the cutoff point, and I'd say you need to figure that out before you start debating the next point of contention. I can find no moral issues with preventing a fertilized egg from implanting, and beleive that until the nervous system develops, the mass of cells has no moral weight whatsoever, and getting rid of it is morally modern Onanism (not as its usually used, but in the literal sense from the story).

The second point of cention is the question: What obligation does one person have towards another person?

Once we've hit that point, which is different for everybody (for some, it's viability, for me it's a nervous system, for the religious who believe souls enter at conception, it's conception), where the mass of cells officially has its own rights, we have to wonder what obligation does the host have towards the thing inside her?

An important point to bear in mind in this debate is, is that abortion is significantly safer than birth.
Therefore, forcing a woman to carry a child to term forces her to take a significantly larger risk with her own life and health.

The thing inside the woman is, on this question and side of the debate, a person, so what are her obligations to it? Bearing in mind the difference between legal and ethical, of course.

There's the old "fat guy on the train tracks" analogy. Are you obliged to attempt a rescue, even though you're at the very least likely to hurt your back, and might even die? Well, while the ethical position is sticky, the legal one is clear: No. You aren't obliged to.

In the same vein, I believe women have total autonomy over their own bodies, and should not be legally required to house anything they don't want to. It's their body, 100%. If they want something out of it, I don't see any legal or even ethical justification for forcing them to continue having it inside them.

I don't, however, think they have the right to kill the thign inside of them per se; that is merely a secondary effect of them asserting their rights.

That's why I've always felt the "prolife" crowd would do well to find legitimate alternatives to abortion, like artificial wombs. If a woman could say "I want this out of me", and achieve that goal without the death of the thing inside of her, I think there would no longer be strong arguments for abortion. Of course, then the folks who took responsibility for that life would be on the hook for it, not the woman. But then I think strong arguments could be made for preserving even potentialities, because it wouldn't be at the expense of anyone else. We don't have that, and we're unlikely to have that.

So I believe that it is 100% okay to abort up to viability outside the womb (which used to be about 28 weeks, but is presently at about 23-ish weeks.

Prior to that point, there is no way for the fetus to survive without curtailing the mother's own autonomous rights to her body. After that point, to me, is where legitimate discussions about limits to aboriton can take place, in part because not only is the thing inside viable outside the womb, but also the woman has usually been aware of it for quite some time, but hasn't exercised her rights to get it out of her. Personally, I am definitely squiggy about it at 39-and-a-half weeks. Less so at 23. I feel that, at that point, I'm not sure what my opinion is. The debate rarely focuses on that point, though, but rather on the concept as a whole. I'm definitely leery of the state taking control of another's body, which is what's happening when the state prevents a woman from exercising control over herself. I'm very curious what M. or someone else who may someday actually have to face the concept of pregnancy, thinks about the 39-and-a-half point, actually. But, in keeping with the Michigan legislature, they aren't allowed to say "vagina" (parum pum pssh).
ktpick • Aug 21, 2012 @10:00 am

In a later interview apologizing for his statement, he confirmed that instead of "legitimate" he meant "forcible". Making this a "rape vs rape-rape" statement. Hard to decide which is more offensive the "real rape" portion, or the idea that women forced physically into having sex can't get pregnant…

Either way, once again, very glad to be Canadian…
Waldo • Aug 21, 2012 @10:03 am

"In the same vein, I believe women have total autonomy over their own bodies, and should not be legally required to house anything they don't want to. It's their body, 100%. If they want something out of it, I don't see any legal or even ethical justification for forcing them to continue having it inside them."

Going back to your fat man on the train tracks analogy, if you are the cause of the fat man being there, then you certainly may have legal obligations to help get him off those tracks. Likewise, if a woman is the cause of her getting pregnant, then the argument that she has the right to do whatever with her body, even if it means the death of another person, is not very persuasive to me. This is why I think exceptions for rape are not inconsistent in the least. A woman who is pregnant as a result of rape has no moral responsibility for the fetus being inside her body, while the woman pregnant as a result of consensual sex does.
Narad • Aug 21, 2012 @11:01 am

We must accept that the fetus is not the invader.

The allograft certainly is an invader, which is why the placenta has to provide an immunologically privileged site (and another reason that the notion of transplanting fetuses from one person to another is science fiction). If you kill a home invader who has a captive, you're not required to allow the captive–whose very presence happens to pose serious risks–to move in with you.
Grifter • Aug 21, 2012 @11:03 am

@Waldo:

But don't confuse "responsibility" here. Not only does the man share equal responsibility (yet, until birth, none of the responsibility…though there's a whole other line of debate on this subject), neither one of them (presumably) wanted that outcome, so it's not quite comparable to, say, purposefully tying the fat man to the tracks, but rather to (if we presume all measures were taken) there being a chance of him being tied to the tracks as a side effect of you doing something else.

But again, that's at the stage where you acknowledge the "personhood" of the thing inside, which in my view is not "immediately upon conception". You have to address that first point before you can start moving on to the second.
Grifter • Aug 21, 2012 @11:07 am

@ktpick:

Thanks for giving more evidence of how very wrong and disingenuous Rick Caird was.

Also, I'm jealous of your Canadian-ness. (Though you guys up north have had your own mess of crazy, what with the recently struck down rules on the relative illegality of being a meanyhead).
Grifter • Aug 21, 2012 @11:11 am

@Gavin:

I just fully noticed this comment: "I am entirely not sympathetic with the couple that just had irresponsible sex and this was the result. My wife and I haven't gotten prego because we've been careful. "

You can still get preggers even if you are careful, an eventuality you didn't seem to cover, but which likely covers many unintended pregnancies despite the best efforts of the "abstinence-only" education pushers to make sure that kids have as many babies as possible as young as possible.
M. • Aug 21, 2012 @12:56 pm

@Gavin: Are you saying that cancer patients are responsible for their having cancer? I'm sure that's true in the case of heavy smokers, for example, but what about a toddler with leukemia?

Your concept of innocence strikes me as arbitrary. At what point does someone stop being innocent and thus worthy of risking someone else's life (yes, pregnancy and childbirth can be dangerous to the mother in ways not anticipated by prenatal screenings, which not everyone can afford anyway)? At birth? The first time they lie? Upon the loss of their virginity? At age 18?

Again, I am not an axlotl tank. If anything (or anyone) I don't want has the misfortune of growing in or on my body, I will remove it posthaste. I'm furthermore unfamiliar with pregnant women being required to take the Hippocratic Oath.

The U.S. foster and adoption system is a whole other bag of something that I don't even want to think about, much less discuss.
Gavin • Aug 21, 2012 @1:39 pm

@Narad:
No, the fetus is not an invader. The zygote was made in the womb by two gametes. If we could stop the sperm gamete from reaching the egg gamete (as this politician would have us believe we could…) then that'd be another story. The fetus is no more responsible for the invasion than the unwilling mother is. It'd be like saying that a hole a buglar punched into the wall was also an invader.

@Ktpick:
The only possible rationale I could think of is if he's contrasting statutory rape which is not based on consent vs rape which is entirely based on consent? I mean, any way you look at it this guy has both feet pretty firmly in his mouth. As was said earlier, this is a pretty good example of the quality of politians we have the "honor" of being able to choose between.

@Grifter:
I don't know what you're getting at with regards to soteriology. Are you saying you approach it atheistically? At which point soteriology is a null point. The only way I'd take offense would be if you held a non-freewill or complete predestination position at which point we'd have a side discussion. Even an atheist would agree with my position: "You say that God didn't predestine everything that could ever happen including those who go to heaven and those who go to Hell? I agree, He didn't!" Of course, their reasoning would then be because "He" doesn't exist . I don't entirely trust athiests though. The idea of believing in a negative which is impossible to prove logically is just as unscientific as faith. A deity is one scientifically acceptable theory on the creation of existence. Though it's once we go towards specific religions that it breaches the area of faith. Of course, if a Deity actually existed it would just be considered an alien of immense power. Agnostics, those guys have the right idea! They'll believe in something when they have evidence.

As far as not letting it implant, I disagree with your reasoning as I still maintain that gametes are not human life as they do not meet the DNA requirements (neither gamete contains a full copy of DNA). That being said, not allowing it to implant is different than removal. That's a good point. I hadn't considered that before this discussion. Thanks, it's a little less murky.

If one believes that a zygote is life, then that life is lost when aborted just as a toddler who dies is a lost life and all the possibilities of the future. In all fairness, the opposite side of the coin (the drug dealers, the hitlers, the snookys) is also lost. For me though, I have this very tangible example in my life. My mother-in-law (whom I love) survived an abortion. In one swoop I would have had a drastically different life.

As for the 4-week mark, I would definitely agree with this number. But I don't know how much before I would likewise agree with. The question is whether or not the implanting is it because the act of removing it would be the act of killing it. The problem I mentioned is that I don't personally feel any sort of sympathy for the zygote or the next few stages of cell multiplication. I know that I philsophically agree that it's life but I admit I don't particularly care in those phases and I don't know if I should. This is me being quite open about the matter. Something I feel that people on my side are hesitant to be. Like vulnerability necessitates wrongness.

The crux of the matter is that the fetus is a life. A woman does have a right to make decisions about her body, but in this event to remove it is to kill something. The best equivalent is what I said. A siamese twin being removed and killed when both could have survived just because one twin. This isn't just a seperate entity, this is now part of her and their lives are intertwined. Why is the right to life superceded by the right to one's body? Who then has the right to kill the life even if we decide that they can remove it? In this scenario, waiting x number of weeks more will result in no murder. It will result in an extreme amount of inconvenience and even pain. But why does that trump the alternative of death? Is it just because the one doesn't have a voice yet?

This is an interesting speech of a woman who survived an abortion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKrW7vP8W00

She has strong Christian values in her speech but the point of the link I'm presenting is just how she feels about the whole thing. A really passionate woman.
Waldo • Aug 21, 2012 @1:41 pm

@ Grifter,

I'm happy to concede that "responsibility" for a pregnancy or whatever you want to call it is a gray area. My point is simply that a reasonable person can draw a distinction between a pregnancy as a result of consensual sex and a pregnancy as a result of rape when it comes to where to draw legal and/or ethical lines regarding a woman's autonomy over a fetus inside her body. I also agree with your point that it may not make any difference depending on how you view a fetus. If you don't think a fetus is a person worth of any legal protection from being killed, then it matters not, for purposes of abortion rights, whether a woman has any responsibility for it being there. Then again, if you do view a fetus as a "person" worthy of legal protection, then you might still recognize that people should generally have a right to control what goes on in their own bodies, but make an exception for pregnancies because you think the pregnant women has some responsibility for the situation in the first place.
Gavin • Aug 21, 2012 @2:21 pm

Fair warning, it's time for me to go home. Have a great evening/rest of your day.

@Grifter:

The point is that I don't feel particularly sympathetic for couples who get a baby from sex. This is the natural conclusion of it. As for carefulness, I'll be sure to speak up if my carefulness ever fails. I do not speak to the inteligence or vigilence of other people who claim to have been "careful". Usually its a "we have always been careful except for that one week in the bahamas" or something along those lines. Thankfully none of my friends have said something like, "but we used the hole in the sheet!" If the condom breaks or something like that, we'll know. Then it's plan B all the way, baby! Sure, there are a few other things I could do to be safer but with proper birth control the odds are in my favor.

M.:

There is a large difference between forcing someone to take action to save a life and taking action to end a life.

The point of innocence is only that the fetus did not ask to be there. The fetus is not the rapist and is not responsible for its father's actions. That is the only point of innocence here. That the fetus isn't committing a crime by existing.

As for the hypocratic oath, that isn't a stake now. The issue is killing/murder. I didn't take a hypocratic oath but that doesn't mean I can just go out in the street and start harming people. Though this does present an interesting case for whether or not doctors can legitimately perform abortions anyways. Again, I'm pointing to the siamese twin concept. These aren't two entirely seperate entities in that way.

The only comparison to make would be if an evil doctor ran up and sewed two people together, without either of their consent, in such a way that removing them would kill one but not the other. How does the one that would survive have the right to sever the other? They both have a right to their body in this outlandish scenario but how would we decide this? Especially in the event that a period of nine months from the sewing would result in neither dying?
AlphaCentauri • Aug 21, 2012 @2:53 pm

@Gavin I wish he were an anomaly, but unfortunately, he is not. See the review at http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/myth-about-rape-and-pregnancy-is-not-new/ Not only have candidates publicly stated such abhorrent views in the past, they retained support of their party even after being slapped down by the voters.

There is a misconception that women "cum" when they have orgasms the same way men ejaculate, and that if a woman doesn't have an orgasm, she can't get pregnant. Most people learn better by the time they get out of middle school, or definitely by the end of high school. But religious fundamentalists go to significant lengths to shelter themselves and their children from people who believe differently from them. You and I don't know any people who think that way, because we wouldn't want to be around them and because they don't want to be around us.
M. • Aug 21, 2012 @2:54 pm

@Gavin: You seem to view pregnancy and childbirth as some peculiar detached process by which a woman notices that she's pregnant, says "oh well," and chills out for nine months. It's definitely not that simple, especially when delivery time rolls around.

You still have not made a coherent argument for the difference between forcing women to bear children and forcing them to risk their lives for the sake of any regular citizen's life, nor have you explained what makes the fetus more innocent than the cancer patient. If the fetus is innocent because it didn't ask to be there, the implication is that the cancer patient is less innocent because he asked to get cancer. Again, what of children with leukemia? Or infants with cancer, for that matter? Also, you're still choosing to ignore the fact that pregnancy can be fatal to the mother. I'll tack onto that the fact that giving birth in a hospital is obscenely expensive, and not everyone is fortunate enough to have insurance.

With all due respect, your view seems to lack critical examination of both the practical and long-reaching societal issues at hand. Or possibly you're just trolling me.
M. • Aug 21, 2012 @2:55 pm

(Oh, and you were the one who quoted the Hippocratic Oath in reference to non-doctors, not me…)
Narad • Aug 21, 2012 @3:39 pm

No, the fetus is not an invader.

To the mother's immune system, it most certainly is, sorry. I will echo M. above: you seem to have a very simple, bun-in-the-oven notion of what pregnancy actually is, viz., a radical remodeling of the mother's physiology.
Narad • Aug 21, 2012 @3:59 pm

The best equivalent is what I said. A siamese twin being removed and killed when both could have survived just because one twin. This isn't just a seperate entity, this is now part of her and their lives are intertwined.

And allow me to deal with this: Conjoined twins are the result incomplete splitting of a fertilized ovum or embryo. So are parasitic twins, including craniopagus parasiticus. Now, was it wrong, in your view, for Manar Maged's parents to have had removed the independent, partially functional, vestigal head fused to the back of her own?
Narad • Aug 21, 2012 @4:09 pm

Rats, I have to revise that: Had the parasitic head not posed a survival risk, would it have been wrong to remove even if it had only the most primitive central nervous system activity?
John Berry • Aug 21, 2012 @5:22 pm

@ Gavin, Thanks for all of your input. I was mostly wrong about the IUD question. However, in the event the egg is fertilized, "an IUD makes it harder for it to implant in the uterus". That quibble aside, thanks for your responses, I am enjoying the conversation everyone is having. Usually these things break out into raging flame wars by this point. Popehat is very unlike the rest of the internet.
Grifter • Aug 21, 2012 @6:49 pm

@Gavin:

First off, at the risk of being snotty, you don't seem to understand the philosophical definitions of atheism and agnosticism. One is a claim about deities, the other is a claim about knowledge regarding deities. I think you were referring to Agnostic Atheists, when you referred to agnostics as folks who'd believe things if there were evidence, but even among those there are some who would say the question is impossible to answer, and therefore meaningless.

Second, "the idea of believing in a negative which is impossible to prove logically is just as unscientific as faith" is absurd. Science says that if something has neither been observed nor inferred, it cannot be said to exist. While it is true that it is nearly impossible to prove something doesn't exist, if there is no evidence that it exists, then there is no more reason to believe in it than there is to believe in unicorns, leprechauns, Ra, Zeus, Zoroaster, Buddha, or anything else. Most atheists take the position that the god presented by believers is either self-contradictory, or has been disproven, or at the very least has no evidence for existence, and so they say "Therefore I don't believe in it".

Third, there is nothing scientific about an untestable theory that cannot be observed or disproven due to its adherents ability to shift the sands of their definitions. This is not to insult the faithful, but it is just the way science works.

Now, back on the main topic:

As far as not letting it implant, I disagree with your reasoning as I still maintain that gametes are not human life as they do not meet the DNA requirements (neither gamete contains a full copy of DNA). That being said, not allowing it to implant is different than removal. That's a good point. I hadn't considered that before this discussion. Thanks, it's a little less murky.

If you consider the fertilized egg to be exactly as human as a fully developed fetus, there is no difference between not allowing it to implant and removing it. Both result in the death of the "life".

If one believes that a zygote is life, then that life is lost when aborted just as a toddler who dies is a lost life and all the possibilities of the future.

That's a tautology, though. "If one believes X is human, if X is lost a human is lost". I can't disagree with that, but I can disagree with your premise, that a Zygote is as human as a toddler.

I know that I philsophically agree that it's life but I admit I don't particularly care in those phases and I don't know if I should.

The problem is, if all that's required for humanity in your brain is the DNA, you logically must see it as the same whether it's 2 cells or 4 weeks. The fact that you don't says that you see a difference…you need to find out what it is, I think.

This is me being quite open about the matter. Something I feel that people on my side are hesitant to be. Like vulnerability necessitates wrongness.

For the record, I appreciate your honesty.

The crux of the matter is that the fetus is a life. A woman does have a right to make decisions about her body, but in this event to remove it is to kill something. The best equivalent is what I said. A siamese twin being removed and killed when both could have survived just because one twin. This isn't just a seperate entity, this is now part of her and their lives are intertwined. Why is the right to life superceded by the right to one's body?

Did you read that article I and another poster referenced, with the "violinist" example? The argument is that the right to life does not extend to control over another's body. If I flopped to the ground and refused to eat unless I was fed by slaves, no one would have an obligation to do that, even if I let myself starve to death. The fetus has a right to life, the woman has a right to her body. As I said, if the woman could exercise her right without killing the fetus, that would be great! But we don't have that. Instead, we have to pick and choose, and no one has the right to make a slave of another.

Who then has the right to kill the life even if we decide that they can remove it? In this scenario, waiting x number of weeks more will result in no murder. It will result in an extreme amount of inconvenience and even pain. But why does that trump the alternative of death? Is it just because the one doesn't have a voice yet?

First off, you seem to be ignoring the fact that women can and do die in chidlbirth, and that significantly less women die from abortions. So it leads me to believe, as other posters have noted, that you may have an overly rosy picture of fetal development.

The crux of the matter is that the fetus is a life.

It may be a life, but then so is a fly. Or a pig. Or grass. So, what you mean to say is that in your opinion "the crux of the matter is that the fetus is a life equal to a fully developed person, and so therefore killing it is the same as killing a person". I would argue that, for portions of the fetus' development, that is not true, and that for other portions of fetal development, that doesn't matter.
Narad • Aug 21, 2012 @7:51 pm

if there is no evidence that it exists, then there is no more reason to believe in it than there is to believe in unicorns, leprechauns, Ra, Zeus, Zoroaster, Buddha, or anything else.

I think the existence of a real, historical Gautama is largely accepted on textual grounds.
Grifter • Aug 21, 2012 @8:13 pm

@Narad:

Fair enough, though I could quibble if I wanted to be defensive on Gautama the historical figure vs. Buddha the religious concept. But again, fair point.

That's what I get for trying to be balanced, I guess.
James Pollock • Aug 21, 2012 @8:31 pm

Here's a thought that seems not to occur to people who favor outlawing abortion: Once you give the government the power to decide things, you lose the power to make those decisions yourself. Not that big a deal when the government decides things the same way you would, but what happens when the government changes its mind? Once you decide that the government should decide who gets an abortion, you lose the right to complain should they decide that abortions aren't outlawed, but rather now that overpopulation is a problem, abortions (or surgical sterilization) are mandatory for people who already have a child. No way, you say, forced sterilization is a Chinese thing, it couldn't happen in the U.S.! Could, did. (Skinner v. Oklahoma)
M. • Aug 21, 2012 @8:36 pm

Before I forget: The only form of birth control in the United States to which there is entirely unfettered, relatively inexpensive access is condoms (which aren't cheap, but can sometimes be gotten for free). Plan B is expensive and hard to get, especially in areas with a majority of fundamentalist Christians. Everything else is similarly a pain in the ass. I don't wish to insult anyone, but since females are often responsible for birth control in heterosexual relationships, it may be difficult for Gavin to appreciate the difficulty of avoiding pregnancy.

Unless you want to make the argument that only those who can afford at least two forms of birth control and/or Plan B, plus prenatal care and the hospital bills associated with childbirth in case everything does go south, should be having heterosexual sex. That seems profoundly unkind to me.

Oh, and I could go on for a couple pages more about the unpleasantness and danger of hormonal birth control, but I feel like I'm beating the fossil of a Hyracotherium at this point.
Grifter • Aug 21, 2012 @8:59 pm

@M.:

Hyracotherium? Now you're just showing off.
M. • Aug 21, 2012 @9:58 pm

@Grifter: I'm an axlotl tank with a Fleshlight attachment AND all three discs of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Gavin • Aug 22, 2012 @6:45 am

Hello all, thanks for the responses. I'll bold names as usual but because of the ground I need to cover I'll split it into two posts.

AlphaCentauri: Wow, that's messed up. What an idiotic position for people to hold. I wonder if they account for people under the influence of date rape drugs or other such sedatives. It is an outrage to find this sort of ignorant mentality existing in today's age of technology where you're one google search away from knowing that there's no evidence. Thanks for the information, I will now eye my neighbors more suspiciously.

@M. (and Narad's first post) No, I have a "pregnancy is a natural part of life" mentality. You're behaving as if the woman is getting cancer or something. Every living organic thing that we see today was born. It is the only required function for survival of a species. The reason that the body sees it as an "invader" is the same way it views a cold or anything else that does not share the individual's DNA. The fetus is half self and half invader. Even consensual pregnency results in this kind of invader. That being said, the womb is built to handle it. The point of saying the fetus is not an invader was in response to the it being analogous to a real home invader. The fetus is not there forcefully. It was put there by the invader. The fetus did not commit a crime. That's all this was intended to mean. Getting rid of the fetus is not the same as shooting a home invader. Shooting the rapist would be the same.

Having a baby is not necessarily risking your life. Stepping outside is FAR more dangerous than childbearing, especially with today's technology. If memory serves, the chances of dying during birth (for mothers) is around 0.017% or 16.7 out of 100,000. This fluctuates according to year pretty wildly. In 1980, for example, our rate was 11 out of 100,000 and medical tech has only improved since. The current increase has been theorized to work in conjunction with an increase in planned home birthings where something goes wrong and they're not in a place equipped to deal with it. Several other deaths are related to mothers who have been warned about complications but continue to go through with it.

Again, let me be very clear on this. If the mother's life is actually deemed to be in legitimate danger, then I DO advocate the right of abortion. I do NOT believe that we should force a person to risk their lives for another. I have also repeatedly said what a pain and inconvenience child birth is. I don't deny that, but it isn't death. The issue in my mind is a question of life or death and not nine months of lower quality of life.

As for expense, if we are going to hold people to the standard of not having abortions in the case of rape, then we MUST get better at supporting them during the entire 9 months and then pyschologically afterwards and especially financially if they also decide to keep the baby. The rapist, if found, should not only recieve much harsher sentencing but should also have a large fine that goes straight to the victim and to the system in place to support other victims.

I'm not saying that this isn't a bad situation. It is. But two wrongs do not make a right. As cliche as that statement is, it's there because it's true. As for the comment on a doctor's pledge to do no harm, this applies in general abortions because the mother isn't the one that does it. At no point did I intend to apply the do no harm to the general person, I just meant it in conjunction with the idea that this is ending a human life and those who would carry out the proceedure have pledged not to do this sort of thing.

@Narad (other posts):
Interesting comment on the more murky areas of this kind of conjoined twin (I just realized I've been saying siamese twins all this time, a term that has become offensive, I think) issue. In this case the head was not a seperate individual. It was just a head with no functioning brain activity or ability to EVER comprehend anything. My response to you would be this: If it had been a fully functional brain and could express a desire not to die, would it have then been ok to murder it? I would say no. A fetus may not be able to currently express an aversion to pain, but it will eventually be able to do so. In this respect, you are merely killing something that can't speak up for itself. You are killing the man in a 9-month coma before he's supposed to wake up.

As Grifter and I have been talking about, the potential of life is key. Something that will never grow into coherent and sentient life is different from something that will. I do believe that. I would tentatively agree in aborting a fetus that the doctor could absolutely verify would have no brain activity. I do suspect their ability to accurately gauge this though. Because my mother-in-law was mistakingly put on antibiotics while pregnant with my wife, the doctor advised them to abort her because she'd be born severely handicapped. She is not only perfectly healthy, but also quite brilliant in terms of IQ, well above average and not suffering from anything like autism or such. In the case of conjoined twins, they are usually only seperated if both will die without it or if both could fully function after seperation. I agree with this action as it is saving one life instead of letting both die. To save one is better than to save none.
David • Aug 22, 2012 @9:44 am

"… a gutless little twerp…."

At this point, we're just counting hours until his ignominious departure, right?
Gavin • Aug 22, 2012 @10:44 am

John Berry:

Thanks for your input as well. I do not have a problem with preventing a fertilized egg from implanting. My qualm is that the act of removal is an act of killing it. I guess I'd consider the point of implanting more the point of life than conception. Only because it is then "hooked up" to life giving facilities. A zygote that is not implanted cannot grow into a human being so implanting is every bit as important as fertilization.

As for the direction of conversation, I'm also glad that it is an environment that is open to real discourse on the subject. I've learned quite a bit for once.

@Grifter:
I understand that people define themselves as agnostic atheists, but this is… self conflicting… for lack of a better word. It's saying that we can't know if there is or is not a God and then saying, "but I absolutely believe that there's not one." It is just like saying you're an Agnostic Deist/Christian/Muslim/Hindu/[Insert Deistic Religion Here]. With the first term you're admitting that we can't know, then with the next term you're then taking a side. It is not then different from believing in a particular religion. Keep in mind, and I'm sure you already know this, that the term agnostic theists is also a term that is thrown around for others. I would say any time that anyone throws any specific belief after the term agnostic that they are necessitating faith or belief derived without any evidence and perhaps to the contrary of it. So, I repeat my statement that Agnostics are the most honest of the bunch. Note the lack of any terms following it. None of what I said was incorrect.

Being unable to prove a negative, that something does not exist, is a long standing logical conclusion. The idea is that new information could change that at any point whereas proving that something exists only requires the first point of information breaching an acceptable level of certainty. Science does NOT teach that something unobserved does not exist, as you stated, science merely teaches that you can't claim that something does exist if it has not been observed. Objects exist regardless of human perception. If the cat in the box dies, it does so regardless of human perception. The act of opening the box doesn't magically close the wavelength in real life, it just confirms or rejects the hypothesis based on millions of datapoints before. Saying that you do not believe something exists is different from saying something does not exist. I see someone already responded to the semantic error of listing Buddha in that so I'll not go further on the issue.

To the last comment on cosmological beliefs. I think some rational points may be presented to the need of a deity or unmoved mover. I'm not sold on the counterpoints to how the universe could exist without an unmoved mover. Turtles all the way down, while a fun and novel concept, does not smack of truth to me when presented in light of all observed phenomenom having a cause along with the understanding of entropy. This is why I've gone the way of theism with the understanding that a creator or mover actually existing would not technically be "divine" but rather a natural force of immense capabilities and hopefully sentience.

Now, to the topic of abortion:
I consider implanting to be just as necessary to the formation of life as the meeting of two gametes. We have equated sperm to seed and egg to soil. In the same way I equate the uterine wall to sunlight and nutrients without which it would not be able to grow. Not allowing it to gain access to the nutrients is to not allow it to begin living. Am I incorrect in recalling articles about some eggs failing to implant until a much later date than conception and not growing into a fetus until then? If I were given the personal honor of defining the terms. I would call the zygote the seed and the uterine wall/womb the soil. The gametes merely being the components of the seed. Calling the egg soil seems to diminish the genetic contribution of it.

As for the idea of an implanted zygote being as human as a child. This demands a bit of semantics. Human as in humanity or human as in human life? A human expressing emotion and though is expressing more humanity than one in a coma, for example, but is no less a human life. Both a fetus and a toddler a equivalently a human life as far as metabolism and DNA are concerned. But the toddler, barring being in a coma, is indeed expressing more humanity. My point is not that a fetus is expressing humanity, but that it is a stage in the life cycle of a human and is itself a human life. To say that I value that life is to say that I disapprove of murder.

Again, I must insist that a fetus is not just another individual. It is attached to the mother in the same way a conjoined twin is connected to its pair. It is NOT the same as some average joe off the street climbing up into the womb in order to survive. My best example here which appears to have been passed over was that it'd be as if an evil doctor attached two human beings against their will in such a way that one would die if they were removed. If both would live if left alone, why would the one that will live have claim to the convenience of being seperated over the life of the other even if they were the only conscious one of the pair? Especially in the event that waiting 9 months would resolve the issue albeit with continued inconvenience to the other the entire time.

As for the relative safety of abortions over childbearing. The risks are identical to miscarriages at the given time of the abortion in relation to the amount of time before birth. Of course a miscarriage at 2 weeks is less dangerous than a miscarriage at 9 months. As I stated above in response to M., .017% is the likelihood of mortality (99.99% chance of survival). Keep in mind that an abortion at any stage carries with it the exact same risk as a natural miscarriage because that's all abortion is, inducing miscarriage. Are you making a case that the numbers are statistically significant enough to warrant murder? Keep in mind that the chance of the fetus dying is statiscally significant. When I say I advocate for the possibility of abortion in the case of a significant risk to the mother I'm generally talking about numbers that would be considered statistically significant and not numbers comprable to the mortality risk of having a tonsillectomy (1 in 16,000).

What I am saying is that a fetus is a human life, no different from a new born baby. As such, it has no voice or means of protection. But it is a human life and to destroy it is to destroy a human life. This, regardless of the percieved value of that life, is true.

@James Polluck:

Huh? The government already has the power to decide things and has already made choices on abortion (most recently to allow it). The government already has the power to legislate and it uses it on a regular basis. If the government does something wacky with their powers then that's when we deal with it. A slippery slope argument doesn't make this action invalid.

M.:
If a couple has a baby, then that is that consequence of their actions. The idea that it is inconvenient or expensive does not invalidate the principle that it is a human life. Again, you keep pointing out that it is difficult or inconvenient or that it sucks. I don't disagree at all. But my point is that human life is more valuable than being inconvenienced. You can make any point that you want about it being difficult but at the end of the day you're placing a price on human life.

On the flip side, if abortion laws change, so should how we treat mothers who would otherwise have gotten an abortion. There is a whole LOT of crap in our healthcare system that needs to change regardless of this topic. Most of the costs are inflated by the very presence of insurance in the market and the fact that hospitals are not properly exposed to market conditions (prices are not clearly listed and so it isn't easy to shop around). Currently the poor do have access to healthcare via medicare programs. Medicare typically covers the entire cost. They have 9 months to get in the program if they are poor and should they keep the baby, it will automatically qualify for medicare for the first two years, free of charge.

If there are any loopholes I am missing, they should be closed. The easy solution is to just kill them. The right solution is more difficult and as such will have complications. That does not make it any less right.
Gavin • Aug 22, 2012 @10:49 am

"… a gutless little twerp…."

At this point, we're just counting hours until his ignominious departure, right?

Quoting here just so this important article isn't sandwhiched between my two large posts. He really messed up. I doubt he'll recover.
Gavin • Aug 22, 2012 @10:49 am

Darn it, didn't include the hyperlink you listed:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/08/20/akin-a-no-show-on-piers-morgan-tonight/
Grifter • Aug 22, 2012 @11:42 am

@Gavin:

It does not contradict at all. Again, Agnosis vs. Gnosis is a position on knowledge, and Theist vs. Atheist is a position on existence. If you have no faith whatsoever, you are an atheist. If you have faith in something's absence, you are also an atheist. You are confusing what's called "strong atheism", the positive belief that there is no god, with "weak atheism", the lack of belief in a god. Commonly, that's called "agnosticism", but it's imprecise to say that. Rather, to say "we don't know for sure there is no X, but I've found no reason to believe" is an Agnostic Atheist position, and it requires no faith.

As a general rule and going through life, you find reasons to believe in something, not reasons to disbelieve. If you spend your whole life believing everything until it's disproven, no matter how ridiculous, you'll soon find yourself broke (did I mention you owe me $1,000, but must have forgotten?) and probably crazy (Aliens are abducting me, I just can't feel it! And the CIA is broadcasting through my fillings to sub bases in the soviet union, which never fell but is secretly plotting with Al Qaeda…)

science merely teaches that you can't claim that something does exist if it has not been observed.

Yup. And that's the point, isn't it? You can claim anything exists, but without proof, the response "I don't believe you" is perfectly reasonable, and it is disingenuous to claim it requires as much faith as "I believe you". In the case of a God, that statement makes you an atheist.

I'm not sold on the counterpoints to how the universe could exist without an unmoved mover.

That's a position that has been refuted numerous times. There is no logical necessity for an unmoved mover, any more than there is a logical necessity for the universe itself to be that unmoved mover (we don't know everything about the universe), or for there to be a bigger god than god that created god. In the absence of evidence, the simplest explanation is the most defensible one.

Turtles all the way down, while a fun and novel concept, does not smack of truth to me when presented in light of all observed phenomenom having a cause along with the understanding of entropy.

First off: I know it was just a simple typo, but reading "phenomenom" made me immediately say "Do doo do dodo"

Anyway, you're positing something beyond all observed phenomenon. We observed nothing before the universe's creation, and have no data from that time. So we can make no statements about it. The universe could have been spontaneous. It could have been created. It could be almost anything. The response to that from a logical/scientific standpoint should be "Not enough data" (agnostic atheism), not "therefore, God!"

If you have a theory, you must actually back it with something, or you must rely on faith. I myself, don't have much love for faith.

Now, to the topic of abortion:

"I consider implanting to be just as necessary to the formation of life as the meeting of two gametes."

Now you've gone beyond simple genetics in your definition of what makes something a human life worth preserving. That puts you in tricky waters, considering the implantation we're talking about occurs in the mother, and in the case of abortion, she doesn't want it to.

We have equated sperm to seed and egg to soil. In the same way I equate the uterine wall to sunlight and nutrients without which it would not be able to grow. Not allowing it to gain access to the nutrients is to not allow it to begin living.

Your analogy kind of fails. Once the egg is fertilized, it will begin dividing into cells until it runs out of nutrients. It doesn't stay in stasis hoping to implant. It floats in the mother's body down the tube for a week-ish, dividing all the while, prior to implantation.

Am I incorrect in recalling articles about some eggs failing to implant until a much later date than conception and not growing into a fetus until then? If I were given the personal honor of defining the terms. I would call the zygote the seed and the uterine wall/womb the soil.

Again, you are kind of incorrect. Now, the uterine wall does provide a great deal of nutrients, so the growth prior to implantation is slower than the growth after, but again, the cells have already begun dividing. And in this case, the soil doesn't want to provide nutrients to the seed.

As for the idea of an implanted zygote being as human as a child. This demands a bit of semantics. Human as in humanity or human as in human life?

That's your question to answer.

A human expressing emotion and though is expressing more humanity than one in a coma, for example, but is no less a human life.

To you. You have to establish that premise, though, before I'll accept it.

Both a fetus and a toddler a equivalently a human life as far as metabolism and DNA are concerned.

Not at all. For example, a toddler does not require a parasitic lifestyle. And "as far as DNA is concerned" is a bothersome phrase. Dead bodies have the same DNA as live ones, after all. That's why I reject your "DNA" argument.

But the toddler, barring being in a coma, is indeed expressing more humanity. My point is not that a fetus is expressing humanity, but that it is a stage in the life cycle of a human and is itself a human life. To say that I value that life is to say that I disapprove of murder.

I'll try not to take offense at your implication that, by being on the other side of this debate, that I approve of murder. Again, I would say that just as a tadpole is not actually a frog, it is a tadpole, a fetus is not a human, it is a fetus.

Again, I must insist that a fetus is not just another individual. It is attached to the mother in the same way a conjoined twin is connected to its pair.

Except that the woman has had an entire life, and the parasitic "twin" has appeared suddenly, against the mother's wishes, and it is both risking her life and health and draining nutrients from her. You seem to be thinking of two conjoined twins who, for example, share a heart, and that abortion is "picking one". This is not the case at all. The fetus cannot continue to survive without the mother. The mother can survive perfectly well without the fetus.

It is NOT the same as some average joe off the street climbing up into the womb in order to survive. My best example here which appears to have been passed over was that it'd be as if an evil doctor attached two human beings against their will in such a way that one would die if they were removed. If both would live if left alone, why would the one that will live have claim to the convenience of being seperated over the life of the other even if they were the only conscious one of the pair? Especially in the event that waiting 9 months would resolve the issue albeit with continued inconvenience to the other the entire time.

I take it you still haven't read the defense of abortion, mentioned in Wikipedia, and available here.
Please do so, considering that it addresses your argument fairly exactly, and gives you your fetal humanity for the sake of the argument.

As for the relative safety of abortions over childbearing. The risks are identical to miscarriages at the given time of the abortion in relation to the amount of time before birth. Of course a miscarriage at 2 weeks is less dangerous than a miscarriage at 9 months. As I stated above in response to M., .017% is the likelihood of mortality (99.99% chance of survival). Keep in mind that an abortion at any stage carries with it the exact same risk as a natural miscarriage because that's all abortion is, inducing miscarriage. Are you making a case that the numbers are statistically significant enough to warrant murder?

I'm making the case that keeping the baby is inherently more risky than getting rid of it, which is something you must keep in mind when you are in this debate. You are saying the state should step in and force the woman to take that risk, make slaves of women for 9 months at a time, so that they cannot put what they want into their own bodies (risk of harm to the "child"), cannot get rid of the thing that's putting them at risk and sapping their nutrients, and cannot have personal autonomy. Remember that there is a difference between ethics and laws; I would be less strenuous in my argument if you were saying that to you it's unethical to get an abortion. That's fine, and if you should ever get pregnant, you can make that choice. But you're advocating that the choice be stripped away from women, and to advocate that position, you'll need to back it up with some real argument.

Keep in mind that the chance of the fetus dying is statiscally significant. When I say I advocate for the possibility of abortion in the case of a significant risk to the mother I'm generally talking about numbers that would be considered statistically significant and not numbers comprable to the mortality risk of having a tonsillectomy (1 in 16,000).

Irrelevant. You can't say to a woman, "Well, you can't have an abortion, but buck up, the baby might die at some point while it's still up in there!" The fact is that having the baby is more risky than not, and you're saying the state gets to decide the woman must take that risk.

What I am saying is that a fetus is a human life, no different from a new born baby. As such, it has no voice or means of protection. But it is a human life and to destroy it is to destroy a human life. This, regardless of the percieved value of that life, is true.

No, it is not. It is true to you, but you still haven't established it as a point in debate, and you still see a difference that you have failed to establish, in that you've not given any valid criteria for the difference between a fertilized egg and a full human being. Your logic leads inexorably to the idea that we should be mourning the loss of every fertilized egg which is not implanted (Since, as I noted, your soil analogy fails). Further, what you are saying is that hormonal birth control is murder, because it prevents fertillized eggs from implanting. (It also prevents eggs from being released, but sometimes they do anyway, and the hormones make the uterine wall inhospitable).

Lest you think otherwise, I'm not advocating abortion per se, I'm saying that the government doesn't have the right to make anyone a slave, even if it does save someone's life. It is the woman's choice whether she wants to play host or not.
Grifter • Aug 22, 2012 @11:56 am

This is an interesting case relevant to the discussion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication_of_Margaret_McBride
Gavin • Aug 22, 2012 @11:57 am

(my apologies, must test before using)
James Pollock • Aug 22, 2012 @12:24 pm

Gavin says:
"Huh? The government already has the power to decide things and has already made choices on abortion (most recently to allow it).
The government already has the power to legislate and it uses it on a regular basis."

Do you understand how your government works? The government's power to legislate is limited thanks to our Constitution. IF the government wants to legislate, it has to demonstrate that it is legislating in a way permitted by the Constitution which gives it authority.
When the government limits abortion, it does so not by citing its (still non-existent) authority to tell people what to do with their personal autonomy, but by citing its authority to protect citizens from other citizens (yes, the state MAY act to protect the interests of unborn citizens). In the current formulation, the unborn fetus' right to life achieves primacy over the mother's right to select her own medical care occurs when the fetus is viable outside the womb. Both before AND after that point, the state lacks authority to dictate medical options which affect only the mother, including medical options which may (or will) affect future reproductive options. The government does NOT decide. You (with the assistance of your doctor, your insurance representative, and your banker, as needed) decide what medical care you will receive. Your elected representatives and police are left out of the decision-making process entirely.

"If the government does something wacky with their powers then that's when we deal with it."
Actually, thanks to the brilliance of the founders, it isn't.

"A slippery slope argument doesn't make this action invalid."
I, um, didn't make a slippery slope argument. Where did you see one?
Gavin • Aug 22, 2012 @2:17 pm

Please delete the above test if you will.

@Grifter:

If you have no faith whatsoever, you are an atheist.

Not true. I am positing that to take a step away from agnosticism and taking a firm stance on the position of atheism that you are in fact placing faith in the non-existence of God. The only non-faith based stance is the one saying that there is no evidence either way. Agnostic = There is no evidence either way, Atheism = I believe there is no God.

That's a position that has been refuted numerous times.

No, it's a position that has legitimate responses to. Turtles all the way down is no more defendable than one giant baddass turtle on which things start. The idea is that our universe requires causation. All observable events have a cause and since all subsets make up the set itself one could posit that the universe or set itself requires causation. We can discuss particle physics on the concept of randomness if you wish but I assure you I have given it no less thought. We have natural laws and principles the work well except in the very initial point of existence. The conservation laws, concepts of entropy and what an infinite past would mean to it, and even cause and effect principles. The idea that there was a being who created the universe implies its existence before the universe and ergo before our laws/principles. Meaning that the need to be moved in this "pre-universe" is not established as we cannot observe conditions before the big bang. Perhaps cause and effect, conservation of matter/energy, and entropy laws were part of the creation of this universe. Therefore, there is no established need for a turtle before the badass turtle.

That being said, if you accept an atheistic perspective of cosmology, you must accept only one of two possibilities. Please define anything that would fall in another camp if I've missed it. Either the universe has always existed infinitely into the past or that the universe magically (yes, this would be magically, or supernaturally, as it would go against all observable phenomenon anyways) popped into existence with no cause. Nothing was and then something was. An effect with no cause. Both of these concepts fly in the face of current principles and so are perhaps even less defendable than saying that someone or something not tied to these rules started things in motion. I cannot accept something from nothing. I do not believe in magic and with my current understanding of science both explanations would be magic. An infinite past with no homogenization of energy and matter caused by entropy: Magic. A sudden existence of matter, energy and life-supporting physics: Magic.

I apologize for repeatedly mispelling phenomenon. I've had a muppets song stuck in my head for days now. Oh, haha, that's what you mean by "Do doo do dodo". I had noticed a mispelling at some point and thought I'd gotten it fixed.

The response to that from a logical/scientific standpoint should be "Not enough data" (agnostic atheism), not "therefore, God!"

NO, again. Atheism is a stance. It is "therefore, NOT God." You can legitimately say, agnosticism and be correct here. I fully accept that Atheism and Theism require a form of faith. Agnosticism leaves it properly at "we don't know". Given the reason I presented above, I believe my belief in the unmoved mover is at least a valid theory and that the alternatives are contrary to current properties of the universe. That being said, I must also accept a few logical conclusions. That the unmoved mover of this universe may not have been a sentient being let alone not necessarily the particular diety of my Christian faith. I cannot speak, as you said, for the conditions of pre-universe conditions so I could not say that the unmoved mover of this universe necessarily required its own unmoved mover of its own universe.

Perhaps all of this happened as an accident by a kid's science fair project in a previous universe that destroyed everything around. I don't know. But the idea of the stone that caused the ripples is absolutely not to be ruled out and in my opinion should be considered more reasonble than ripples without the stone. There are a lot of unanswered questions even then and it wouldn't be a sentient personal God necessarily as I explained. So unmoved mover doesn't necessarily mean theism unless you consider any cause whatsoever to be "God".

Now, to the important stuff!

Now you've gone beyond simple genetics in your definition of what makes something a human life worth preserving. That puts you in tricky waters, considering the implantation we're talking about occurs in the mother, and in the case of abortion, she doesn't want it to.

What?

Your analogy kind of fails. Once the egg is fertilized, it will begin dividing into cells until it runs out of nutrients. It doesn't stay in stasis hoping to implant. It floats in the mother's body down the tube for a week-ish, dividing all the while, prior to implantation.

The idea is that it would not survive without being implanted or attached to new nutrients. Likewise, the zygote before implanting is not yet part of a the mother and could hypothetically be transfered to any woman at that point, perhaps even to an animal. So I do find the implanting component to be a necessity.

Again, you are kind of incorrect. Now, the uterine wall does provide a great deal of nutrients, so the growth prior to implantation is slower than the growth after, but again, the cells have already begun dividing. And in this case, the soil doesn't want to provide nutrients to the seed.

Again, huh? Are you giving sentience to the uterine wall? If so, the uterine wall can feel fine to stop giving the fetus resources any time it wants. But at this point the baby is attached to the mother and is now part of it. Before this point, there is no connection to the mother other than the fact that it shares half its DNA. After the connection you then enter into the conjoined twin area of discussion.

Not at all. For example, a toddler does not require a parasitic lifestyle. And "as far as DNA is concerned" is a bothersome phrase. Dead bodies have the same DNA as live ones, after all. That's why I reject your "DNA" argument.

What? Yes it does. A toddler cannot survive without a parent. An infant even less-so. It is just external parasitism. Do you advocate not feeding a child as an acceptable thing to do?

I'll try not to take offense at your implication that, by being on the other side of this debate, that I approve of murder. Again, I would say that just as a tadpole is not actually a frog, it is a tadpole, a fetus is not a human, it is a fetus.

I understand that this is a major point of contention in the debate. The idea that killing an innocent human life is to murder an innocent human life. I do not mean it insultingly, I mean it matter-o-factly. The inevitable eventuality of anyone who is being honest about the topic. I suppose it can't help but be offensive. On the flip side, would I call a person performing an abortion an murderer? No, I simply can't make that leap even though it would also be a conclusion. That's just me being honest though.

A tadpole is just a baby frog. It is just an early stage of the frogs life. At no point is the tadpole another species. It is always a frog.

Except that the woman has had an entire life, and the parasitic "twin" has appeared suddenly, against the mother's wishes, and it is both risking her life and health and draining nutrients from her. You seem to be thinking of two conjoined twins who, for example, share a heart, and that abortion is "picking one". This is not the case at all. The fetus cannot continue to survive without the mother. The mother can survive perfectly well without the fetus.

You act like having a baby is the equivalent of being mugged.

Listen, for the sake of shortening discussion I'll bring it to a head here. .0017 is not a significant percentage. It is a non-number, a freak event. It is not a statistically realistic number. Yes, abortion is an even smaller number, but I seriously doubt that the reason they don't want the baby is because they're scared for their life. But even if someone is scared for their life at a 99.99% chance of survival that doesn't warrant killing another life. That is the person being unrealistic. At the very least, carry it to just over 6 months and then induce pregnancy at a time where it has a chance to survive.

Overall, we're talking about what justifies the action of killing. Please explain why .0017% is statistically significant number when the field of statistics rejects it?
Narad • Aug 22, 2012 @3:08 pm

It was just a head with no functioning brain activity or ability to EVER comprehend anything.

This is in fact false, as (at least as far as the popular reports I've looked at) the parasitic twin was able to smile in response to stimuli and make suckling motions when the host twin was feeding.

My response to you would be this: If it had been a fully functional brain and could express a desire not to die, would it have then been ok to murder it?

Remember, it was the head of an infant at the time, so such expressions might not to have been expected from heads with torsos. Moreover, it didn't have a larynx, so outbound communication would not exactly be straightforward. As to your specific question, my answer would be 'yes', and the sooner the better. Referring to it as "murder" is needlessly begging the question.

I would say no. A fetus may not be able to currently express an aversion to pain, but it will eventually be able to do so. In this respect, you are merely killing something that can't speak up for itself.

I don't know why "aversion to pain" enters suddenly here; did you mean "death"? Anyway, I think I have your drift here, but given that you seem to be trying to stake out a pure position based on "human life," the necessity of introducing temporal expectations, which are inherently probabilistic, to cause the whole thing to collapse. You don't know that that guy's going to come out the coma; you don't know that that head's not going to someday reach a level of mental development equivalent, perhaps, to a severely developmentally disabled child, whom nobody sane in modern society would advocate being disconnected from his essential-supply chain to test viability.

I don't think the metric accomplishes its seeming goal of being a simplifying principle, in short.
Narad • Aug 22, 2012 @3:11 pm

^ "to cause the whole thing" should read "would appear to cause the whole thing," sorry.
Grifter • Aug 22, 2012 @3:12 pm

@Grifter:

If you have no faith whatsoever, you are an atheist.

Not true.

Sorry, Gavin, but you are wrong. Agnostic is NOT EQUAL to "There is no evidence either way", and "There is no evidence either way" is NOT EQUAL to "Therefore both positions have equal logic to them.

That's a position that has been refuted numerous times.

No, it's a position that has legitimate responses to. Turtles all the way down is no more defendable than one giant baddass turtle on which things start. The idea is that our universe requires causation.

I'll clarify: The logical necessity of causation for the universe itself has been refuted numerous times. We simply do not know the answer to that; to therefore posit SOMETHING above the universe 1. does not solve the creation of that something, and 2., does not explain why it's not "gods" all the way down. "The conservation laws" refer to the closed system of the universe, not to the "before universe" times.

The idea that there was a being who created the universe implies its existence before the universe and ergo before our laws/principles. Meaning that the need to be moved in this "pre-universe" is not established as we cannot observe conditions before the big bang. Perhaps cause and effect, conservation of matter/energy, and entropy laws were part of the creation of this universe. Therefore, there is no established need for a turtle before the badass turtle.

While you are correct, that it is a logically coherent hypothesis, it is not a logically necessary one. As you admit, our knowledge breaks down at the Universe creation stage.

As regards to your next logical mess: Either the god you posit has always existed infinitely into the past or that the god magically (yes, this would be magically, or supernaturally, as it would go against all observable phenomenon anyways) popped into existence with no cause. Nothing was and then something was. An effect with no cause. Both of these concepts fly in the face of current principles and so are perhaps even less defendable than saying that someone or something not tied to these rules started things in motion.

See how it applies perfectly equally to your "god" concept? Once you accept that all things must have a cause, including the universe (which we have not seen any universes created and so therefore have no concept of what that entails), then to say "therefore god!" is just as unfounded as saying "and therefore the universe!", except it requires a superfluous extra step.

I cannot accept something from nothing.

Yes, you can. You accept "god" from nothing. So obviously, you accept SOMETHING from nothing.

I do not believe in magic and with my current understanding of science both explanations would be magic.

At the risk of sounding insulting, please learn more about science then. In particular, look up "vacuum fluctuations".

An infinite past with no homogenization of energy and matter caused by entropy: Magic. A sudden existence of matter, energy and life-supporting physics: Magic.

If it's all part of a natural process that we do not understand, it wouldn't be magic, nor would it be supernatural. Again, please learn more about science. The god you posit would be just as "magical".

The response to that from a logical/scientific standpoint should be "Not enough data" (agnostic atheism), not "therefore, God!"

NO, again. Atheism is a stance. It is "therefore, NOT God." You can legitimately say, agnosticism and be correct here. I fully accept that Atheism and Theism require a form of faith. Agnosticism leaves it properly at "we don't know".

But if we don't know something exists, and we have no evidence or reason to believe it exists, we are not going to believe in its existence. Again, I feel like you don't understand the terminology here. The term in question is "null hypothesis". If there isn't evidence of something, then the "null hypothesis" is assumed.

Given the reason I presented above, I believe my belief in the unmoved mover is at least a valid theory and that the alternatives are contrary to current properties of the universe.

They are not more contrary than yours, my friend. You posit something outside the universe (which doesn't jive with anything in our universe), that violates all the rules within our universe. It's no different than saying that the universe itself violates those rules in its birth except, again, that it requires and extra step.

That being said, I must also accept a few logical conclusions. That the unmoved mover of this universe may not have been a sentient being let alone not necessarily the particular diety of my Christian faith. I cannot speak, as you said, for the conditions of pre-universe conditions so I could not say that the unmoved mover of this universe necessarily required its own unmoved mover of its own universe.

So, "we don't know how it started, it might not have had a cause" is turtles all the way down, but "we don't know how god started, he might not have had a cause" is not?

Perhaps all of this happened as an accident by a kid's science fair project in a previous universe that destroyed everything around. I don't know. But the idea of the stone that caused the ripples is absolutely not to be ruled out and in my opinion should be considered more reasonble than ripples without the stone.

If the universe were a pond, that analogy would make sense. Because it isn't, it doesn't. BTW, ripples can also come from wind. Or from fish. Or from boats….

You seem to have continued to ignore this point: Without a reason to believe in something, you don't believe in it. That is the case with every other god but the one you believe in, and is the case with every other supernatural phenomenon you have chosen not to believe in. "This could be true" is not the same as "This is true". In any realm of unknown principles, there are an infinite number of possible solutions. We cannot believe them all simultaneously, so therefore what do we do? We pick the one that is the simplest. Since we don't know anything about the birth of universes or beyond, the simplest explanation, for now, is that the universe is its own uncaused cause. To posit some other uncaused cause that can then cause this universe is an additional, unnecessary step. You can think it, that's fine. But that doesn't make it the simplest solution, nor the most likely.

To simplify: if you hear a crash in your house, you think "Oh, that picture I leaned precariously on a ladder must have fallen", not "Oh, Leprechaun Unicorn Alien Ghosts are running wild!" But you know what? It might be Leprechaun Unicorn Alien Ghosts. I'm just not going to think that unless I have a good reason to.

Now, to the important stuff!

What?

You initially posited that all that was necessary for it to be considered a full human life was the DNA. I said that I felt it was not true until the DNA had been expressed to the point of consciousness. Now you say it's not a full human life until it implants. I believe that it's because you don't understand what happens in implantation, but still, it puts you in tricky waters since you're adding another condition to the situation, a condition whose necessity you have not established.

The idea is that it would not survive without being implanted or attached to new nutrients. Likewise, the zygote before implanting is not yet part of a the mother and could hypothetically be transfered to any woman at that point, perhaps even to an animal. So I do find the implanting component to be a necessity.

But you're saying that it doesn't count as life yet, until it implants. That seems nonsensical. Like you said, if it found some other source of nutrients etc., it would develop without implantation. Heck, all life requires nutrients or it dies. So if I'm not eating a sandwich, I don't count as life? Using implantation as a line of demarcation makes little sense in regards to when the life "counts". When using your "soil and seed" analogy, the implication is that the seed is in stasis, is not really alive, until it is activated by the presence of nutrients. That is not how embryonic development works.

Again, huh? Are you giving sentience to the uterine wall? If so, the uterine wall can feel fine to stop giving the fetus resources any time it wants.

Well, the uterine wall is part of the mother, and the mother is sentient, so are you agreeing that the mother, who contains the uterine wall within herself, can feel fine to stop giving the fetus resources? Because that would be abortion: the mother refusing resources to the fetus and ejecting it from her body.

What? Yes it does. A toddler cannot survive without a parent.

That's weird, because kids seem to survive all the time without their parents. They go into orphanages…sometimes they're dropped at fire stations…the parent can absolve themselves of all responsibility, yet the infant won't necessarily die.

Do you advocate not feeding a child as an acceptable thing to do?

Once the parents have put the kid up for adoption (or even dropped the kid off at the nearest safe baby location), they no longer have any responsibility whatsoever for the kid, so at that point, yep, I don't think they have to feed the kid anymore.

I understand that this is a major point of contention in the debate. The idea that killing an innocent human life is to murder an innocent human life. I do not mean it insultingly, I mean it matter-o-factly. The inevitable eventuality of anyone who is being honest about the topic. I suppose it can't help but be offensive. On the flip side, would I call a person performing an abortion an murderer? No, I simply can't make that leap even though it would also be a conclusion. That's just me being honest though.

If you admit to self-contradiction, though, then you should do your best to find out why.

You act like having a baby is the equivalent of being mugged.

For some women, it is.

Listen, for the sake of shortening discussion I'll bring it to a head here. .0017 is not a significant percentage. It is a non-number, a freak event. It is not a statistically realistic number. Yes, abortion is an even smaller number, but I seriously doubt that the reason they don't want the baby is because they're scared for their life. But even if someone is scared for their life at a 99.99% chance of survival that doesn't warrant killing another life. That is the person being unrealistic. At the very least, carry it to just over 6 months and then induce pregnancy at a time where it has a chance to survive.

Please, tell me, at what point to the statistics become significant enough that women are allowed to make their own decisions about their own bodies?

Overall, we're talking about what justifies the action of killing. Please explain why .0017% is statistically significant number when the field of statistics rejects it?

I don't think you understand what statistics are. The field of statistics does not reject any statistic unless it's an invalid one. In terms of statistics, significant means that you may reject the "null hypothesis". In this circumstance, I believe that considering the wealth of data we have, we can reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference at all.

But perhaps the "safety" argument, while 100% valid, has muddied the waters for you. Ultimately, the point is that you think the government should control other peoples' bodies. You haven't addressed that point at all. So, I'll reiterate: I don't believe the government should make anyone else a slave, even to save a life. You believe that people do not have autonomy if it affects another's life. As mentioned in the essay I keep referring you to, "If I am sick unto death, and the only thing that will save my life is the touch of Henry Fonda's cool hand on my fevered brow. then all the same, I have no right to be given the touch of Henry Fonda's cool hand on my fevered brow."
Random Encounter • Aug 22, 2012 @3:27 pm

All that is required to be an atheist is to believe in one less god than most religious people.

Do you actively disbelieve in Thor, or does he simply not matter to you?

Your god does not matter to me. Nor does any other.
Narad • Aug 22, 2012 @3:36 pm

Overall, we're talking about what justifies the action of killing. Please explain why .0017% is statistically significant number when the field of statistics rejects it?

I do not think you understand what "statistically significant" means. One is not comparing whether the evidence for the existence of pregnancy-related death differs from the null hypothesis of "storks are harmless." These are simple tallies. The number of zeros behind the decimal point doesn't matter.
M. • Aug 22, 2012 @4:10 pm

@Gavin: I think we're talking past each other here. I really don't give any sort of a damn whether the fetus is an invader or not. My right to decide what risks I take with my body, as well as my moral reluctance to bring an unwanted child into the world, transcends the fetus' supposed right to life.

Cancer is also a natural part of life, but I'm not going to insult your intelligence by assuming you're not aware of the existence of the sun and rocks.

Even with an ideal medical system (which has only slightly more chance of blossoming into reality as a plush toy unicorn has of becoming a real unicorn), pregnancy still carries risk for the mother. Even after a routine pregnancy and with proper medical care, women have died of DVT, infection, or blood loss after prolonged childbirth. Statistics are interesting, albeit rarely accurate, but when gambling with my life, I'm interested in personal experience first, intuition second, and dodgy statistics third.

That being said, it seems that you're quite decided on this issue in black and white terms – if I ever get pregnant, perhaps you'd be willing to pay for my prenatal care and childbirth expenses? If not, I'll just have to get an abortion.

Just kidding, I'd get an abortion even if there was a fantastic medical system in place. That's because I practice personal eugenics.
John Beaty • Aug 22, 2012 @5:47 pm

I'm surprised that no-one has brought this into the "Life debate", but it sums it up for me:
"What 'right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What 'right' to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of 'right'? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is 'unalienable'? And is it 'right'? " Robert A Heinlein

We have to make choices constantly: who to feed, clothe, how much and for how long to parcel out medical care? Whose streets are patrolled? Who is protected?

You can make the case that the essence of humanness is the ability to make choices. Growing a fetus to term is a choice. It may be the result of a choice (willing sex) or not (rape as commonly understood, meaning not what Akin was saying). And choosing your own life over that of a potential life, however you arrived at that necessity, cannot be gainsaid, else you are arguing that in all cases, innocence trumps independence.

Sorry if I'm not being clear.
John Beaty • Aug 22, 2012 @5:50 pm

"autonomy", not independence. Sorry again.
Grifter • Aug 22, 2012 @6:12 pm

@John Beaty:

Where's that Heinlein quote from? I likes it.
M. • Aug 22, 2012 @11:11 pm

http://www.examiner.com/article/gop-official-says-god-chooses-to-bless-raped-women-with-pregnancy

You heard it here first, boys and girls: rape babies are God's way of blessing us.
Ben • Aug 23, 2012 @2:52 am

John Beaty,

If I follow your reasoning correctly, and I am not certain that I do, it seems you are saying that we may never penalize anyone for making any decision, ever. That, or you are presupposing that the fetus in not human, which is demonstrably untrue. (It possesses the requisite properties of being a living organism and we can be reasonably positive it will not grow into a fruit bat or an orca whale…)

A man in the ocean has a right to life – and a ship passing by has a duty to rescue him, if it does not put more lives in jeopardy. A man has a right to live and his children also have a right to live – if the man can rescue them within some reasonable threshold of risk, he is obligated to do so.

When we say that a right is inalienable, we do not mean that the universe must abide by the right – just that people must (or must at least attempt to do so). If we, as a society, say that you have an inalienable right to cloud cover, it does not change the weather forecast. You could not sue the sky for being clear, or if you could, there would be no point in it.

The most compelling reason, it would seem, for maintaining abortions decriminalized status is not one of moral values (for rules against the deprivation of life where it can be avoided are beneficial to all participants) but of a socioeconomic reality (much like criminalizing drugs and alcohol) … you deter some small fraction of individuals who would otherwise engage in high risk behavior, while increasing the associated risks for the remaining majority. In this case, it would disproportionately afflict the lowest socioeconomic strata, driving them deeper into poverty and disenfranchisement.
Gavin • Aug 23, 2012 @6:59 am

@Narad:
From my understanding these are all functions that a brain dead person can occasionally perform. I'll also mention that the removal eventually killed the child too, with a brain infection caused by complications post surgery. Before this surgery, there had only ever been 9 attempts at the proceedure and all 9 had proven fatal. So at this point in time the risk of this proceedure is apparently 100% fatal.

This growth would never have developed into a human being with legitimate brain activity. I may be advocating life here, but I do not value people without brain activity. They are dead in my opinion. Removing a feeding tube or anything like that is only letting the body follow with. The biggest difference is that while these sorts of growth and brain dead people may be comprable to a fetus temporarily, they will never recover and the fetus will make marked improvements in about 9 months.

In response to you removing the head even had it been conscious, why are you ok with that? What about a 24 year-old Indian man who just wasn't able to afford the surgery. Would you be ok with them sedating the man and his twin screaming not to be killed just so that the head closest to the body may live a normal life? What if in 9 months the head would detach and begin growing into a perfectly normal human being?

As for the knowledge of whether or not a person is going to come out of a coma. Are you ok with killing people who are in a coma just because they haven't woken up for 9 months? People with fully functioning brains with all the brain activity of at least a sleeping individual? This twin head didn't seem to have even that. Again, even a brain dead or lobotomized patient can do that. This is a startling case, yes, but that head and body simply wasn't fully developed. If it was, please show me documentation and I'll agree that in the act of murdering one they accidentally killed the other.

The goal is that the fetus is living and human. This is simply to dismiss any claims that it is not. We should be debating on the point of humanity and not arguing over something that is actually scientifically on the pro-life side. I am regularly shocked if the conservative side ever errs on the side of science but this is that instance.

The legitimate points that pro-choice proponents can make are on the importance of humanity to life and on the obligation or non-obligation to the life their body is supporting. Those are legitimate concepts that can be argued. But the point that it is not a living human at its earliest stage of life is silly, like a tadpole is some other species or is nonliving before it grows into a frog.

You take my point that it is human life to be my silver bullet. It isn't. It is merely reframing the discussion to arrive at the necessary components that are the heart of the matter. This discussion has largely moved past whether or not it is a human life. That seems to have been accepted on face scientific value. But they are correct in moving onto the point that a brain dead living body is no less human life and yet is rightly allowed to die without it being considered murder. So there is yet a little more to a valuable life worth protecting than just DNA and being alive (metabolizing).

My argument is that the idea that 9 months will see the living body achieve that brain activity.
Their argument is that doesn't matter or at least doesn't justify forcing a woman not to remove it.

@grifter I'll respond to you in a followup post.

@Random Encounter
There is a difference between saying that we can't know God exists and therefore I don't believe in God until evidence exists and saying that there IS NO God. One is stating non-belief based on a lack of evidence, the other is stating a fact without evidence.

It is easy to say that Atheism is a non-belief. But it isn't, it's a belief that there is no God. The belief that there may or may not be a God it its own seperate area. The true skeptic.

There are only three categories and they are truly seperate:

1. There is at least one divine being.
2. There may or may not be at least one divine being.
3. There are NO divine beings.

2 and 3 are in no way the same thing, just as 1 and 2 are in no way the same thing. To say they are is to ignore basic components. Agnosticism is the only true form of non-belief. It's belief withheld until further evidence warrants taking a side.

So, again, agnostics have the most ground to stand on.

@M. This is your last post, not the longer one I'm responding to here (I'll make a longer post with you and Grifter in it next).

This is the quote of that republican. Her only failure in this comment is that she tied the statement to God. Such a statement further ties abortion to religion and were it only a religious principle then there would be no justification in making people obey the tenets of someone else's religion (yay, first amendments!).

Other than that, replace God with providence, the randomness of life, nature, or any other deity or non-deity one can think of. Replace bless with chanced, luck, or anything else, even misfortuned. The statement is valid from her perspective, but it's like she assumed that her audience would be necessarily Christian. *sigh* You know, it's funny, I'm a registered republican from my high school days and yet I never seem to vote that way because of the dummies I have to choose from. If it's not trying to put laws in place that harm the poor then it's trying to force their beliefs on people (like gays, seriously, in a religion that believes that God is the one that puts people together why do they think a piece of paper forces His hand?). They have done more to harm the image of Christianity than any atheist could ever do.
Grifter • Aug 23, 2012 @7:01 am

@Ben:

The relative "humanity", for the purposes of "rights" (as opposed to in the purely informational/DNA sense), is one of the subjects up for debate. You cannot declare it true by fiat.

And, for the record, this:

"A man has a right to live and his children also have a right to live – if the man can rescue them within some reasonable threshold of risk, he is obligated to do so."

…is not legally true. The man, in that case, could be brought up on charges, but both "it was too dangerous" and "I didn't think I could do it" would be defenses. The man has certain responsibilities towards the children, which he has accepted by not putting them up for adoption, but even then is not legally obliged to risk his life.

What John Beaty's quote and further statements are saying (IMHO) is more that one has a right over oneself, as that is the only right that doesn't inherently either infringe on another's right, or assert something to which nature will not assent (you can't make demands of the ocean). The fetus' "right to life" in this sense is absolute, but not the fetus' "right to enslave its mother". The fact that if the mother asserts her own rights to autonomy and ejects it, it will die, is simply an unfortunate reality, as much as if a man is drowning in the ocean. The woman is not trying to assert control over the fetus per se, as if it lived she wouldn't care, but she wants it out of her body, and it is her body.
M. • Aug 23, 2012 @7:51 am

@Gavin: "Bless" has distinctly positive connotations.
Random Encounter • Aug 23, 2012 @9:48 am

@Gavin: I don't believe all sorts of things. Not believing in gods in general and yours in specific is no different for me than not believing in Gandalf the Grey.

I ask again, do you actively disbelieve in Thor, or is his existence or lack thereof simply irrelevant to your worldview?

There is no need for me to replace gods with anything, because I do not have a need to believe that there is a purpose behind everything that happens. Life ain't fair, and then you die.
Gavin • Aug 23, 2012 @11:17 am

quick test to see if just quote will work instead of blockquote

@Grifter:
For the sake of page length I'll continue trying to shorten things as best as possible. Let me know if there's a particular point you feel I am just avoiding. I feel that way about my analogy of the evil doctor. Brought up twice but never responded to.

Agnostic is NOT EQUAL to "There is no evidence either way", and "There is no evidence either way" is NOT EQUAL to "Therefore both positions have equal logic to them.

What? I never said that. Agnosticism is that "There is no evidence either way therefore belief or belief against are unfounded. One is true we cannot know which given the current evidence."

I am astounded that this is such a point of contention. Well, not really, it's me saying telling you that you're not agnostic because you're an atheist. But the point is while an Athiest would say there is no God an agnostic would just say they don't believe in God (potentially throwing a "yet" at the end but not necessarily). To not believe in a specific deity and to say there is no deity is different.

It may be subtle, but it is distinct. Atheism and theism is belief. Agnosticism is reserved belief or non-belief. You can believe that something exists or believe that the thing does not exist but to with hold belief until further evidence is not either side. It's an "I don't know". "I don't know" but there is no God doesn't make sense just as "I don't know" but there is a God doesn't make sense. You're stating the impossibility of knowing and then making a claim.

So, to anyone who has adopted "agnostic" in front of their actual belief system just so they can have another big word to say when someone asks what cosmological view they have, no, that's not the proper use of the term.

You: "Gavin, do you believe in my brother?" Me: "I don't know, I've never seen any evidence to confirm or deny his existence. But he doesn't exist!" It's as if you're trying to say you can't know the truth and then insist on taking a stance.

Let's go to Merriam on this, shall we?

1: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly: one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god

2: a person who is unwilling to commit to an opinion about something

So no, you cannot commit to a side and then retain agnosticism. You may have your cake, but not eat it too. I am on the side of theism, you are on the side of atheism. That's ok. But neither of us are agnostic even if further evidence may change our side. That just means we're willing to adjust our beliefs based on new information. Being willing to change your position isn't agnosticism. It's not having a side because there isn't enough information to choose one to begin with. I know I was unaware of one particular verse. But I am quite knowledgeable on the subject of religion. Not from a Christian perspective either. My B.A. is in Religion with a special focus on Christianity, Islam and Tibetan/Himalayan religions (fortunately I got a B.S. too so I could actually be employed in an area that pays moneys). The university I got these from taught it from a subjective scholarly position and not religiously (as a religious college would have). My Christian course professors were often Jewish and my Islam and Jewish course professors were often Christian. Go figure. At least my Tibetan/Himalayan courses were taught by adherrents. But I specifically wanted to study under the visiting professor from Harvard who spent 7 years studying in the areas of that faith. I say this only to explain where I am coming from on this particular discussion. This is not a personal conclusion, this is the result of actual study, not that you have said anything to the contrary. I guess my point is to give a degree of authority or expertise to my claim here.

While you are correct, that it is a logically coherent hypothesis, it is not a logically necessary one. As you admit, our knowledge breaks down at the Universe creation stage.

Oh, I agree completely that it is not a logically necessary one. My entire point is that one may believe in Theism based on rational scientific evidence even if that is not the only necessary conclusion. I assume you'll agree with me in the perception that people of faith are typically quite ignorant and will disagree with science that hits them in the face if they feel it contradicts their blind faith. I believe, given the evidence I have presented that I have enough evidence to choose a side. I likewise understand that this is a subjective choice and why someone might lean the other way.

I'll clarify: The logical necessity of causation for the universe itself has been refuted numerous times. We simply do not know the answer to that; to therefore posit SOMETHING above the universe 1. does not solve the creation of that something, and 2., does not explain why it's not "gods" all the way down. "The conservation laws" refer to the closed system of the universe, not to the "before universe" times.

Again, the idea that something created the universe implies that this something/deity/being also existed before the universe in which the laws are applicable. As you stated, we do not know the laws of any previous universe or whatever would have existed before this one so the need of cause and effect does not necessarily apply to this being. So, again, there is no need to establish the creation of a being existing before the universe we're talking about because the laws He would have created would not necessarily apply to him/it/her/them.

If He was Himself created and if His creator was likewise created all the way forever in the past, that is fine and not of concern to the creation of this Universe. Such things would have happened in a potentially drastically different universe where not even time progresses sequentially. All we can know is what this present universe's laws demand. I have no problem with universes before or coinciding with this one. Perhaps a random universe just bled into this space and that universe would then be our creator. The issue would be with the universe as it is presently understood existing without a cause either infinitely or starting at one point as both ideas are contrary to modern scientific principles, in my opinion.

At the risk of being offensively repetitious so as not to have to repeat this point even one more time, I will spell it out more clearly:

1. This universe has the principle of cause and effect as seen in all observable events.
2. No other universe necessarily has this principle in it or any other principle.
3. The being or object that may have caused this universe would necessarily not have been part of this universe it created and would therefore not be held accountable for the laws or principles which they created after their own existence was already established through whatever means or nonmeans (unless we're stuck in some sort of truly wacky time paradox in which a future element of the universe travels back in time and creates the set/universe in which itself was created).

I likewise take objection to the notion that an infinite number of universes means that an infinite number of conditions also exist. For example, a second universe where "I" exist as a sniper clown bent on avenging the death of my all knowing latino dog. I do not believe that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters and time would necessarily ever produce a work of Shakespeare or perhaps any other work of literature. I believe that certain rules would need to be put in place to generate coherent and significantly complex results or else you could just wind up with an infinite number of duplicates or nonsense. A computer program that is not allowed to generate duplicates, for example, would necessarily eventually produce complex works, but that is a new condition. There being odds that something "can" happen doesn't mean that it will even when exposed to the incomprehensible notion of infinity. This is a reason why I believe some sort of rules have been put in place at least for this universe that can support life and a remarkably complex yet reliable system of laws and principles. Another reason why I would expect a creator or a creator's creator to be sentient at some point. Theory, not fact, I'll admit. But not irrationally concieved.

At the risk of sounding insulting, please learn more about science then. In particular, look up "vacuum fluctuations".

This is why I initially stated that I would be happy to also discuss particle physics. I was ahead of you but I didn't want to assume that you would want to delve into this stuff. I don't presuppose that people have the same education and background that I do so I let them choose whether or not they want to breach this topic for discussion.

See the quote below:

Browne, Malcolm W. (1990-08-21). "New Direction in Physics: Back in Time". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-22. "According to quantum theory, the vacuum contains neither matter nor energy, but it does contain fluctuations, transitions between something and nothing in which potential existence can be transformed into real existence by the addition of energy.(Energy and matter are equivalent, since all matter ultimately consists of packets of energy.) Thus, the vacuum's totally empty space is actually a seething turmoil of creation and annihilation, which to the ordinary world appears calm because the scale of fluctuations in the vacuum is tiny and the fluctuations tend to cancel each other out."

Note that what this is saying is that energy can make matter and matter can make energy. It isn't saying that there is no cause of the transformation, it's a phenomenon that we need to examine and look closer at. This particular quote discusses the need for additional energy to be presented.

There is a problem in quantum physics where they use terms like "random" that are not necessarily random. It'd be like seeing a balloon floating up when everything else you've ever seen has fallen down and calling that balloon's actions a random deviation just because you don't know what helium is. So we have the additional problem of terminology getting in the way of what's actually going on. If we get to a point of technology where we can actually observe that something is being caused by nothing at all then that will be pretty amazing. As is, we're simply beginning to observe forces and fluctuations that we never knew existed before. Once we can truly observe and define them, then you can present them as facts. As is, I am standing on current principles and laws and not theories. But I do accept Einstein's words that all it takes is one result to disprove a previously accepted theory. I do not think any of this will ever be found to be without a cause. All of it will be reduced to some process that we weren't able to see until we developed the right tools to test. I think that because that has been the case with everything else we've ever seen thus far.

You initially posited that all that was necessary for it to be considered a full human life was the DNA. I said that I felt it was not true until the DNA had been expressed to the point of consciousness. Now you say it's not a full human life until it implants. I believe that it's because you don't understand what happens in implantation, but still, it puts you in tricky waters since you're adding another condition to the situation, a condition whose necessity you have not established.

Whoa, a "full" human life? The term "full" is technically a strawman.

That being said, the reason why I find the stage of implanting important is not actually in establishing that it is human life, it's establishing the possibility that if left alone it already has all it needs to grow into a human. A human life that will never develop into a sentient being is not what I'm concerned about. It's a human life that is already connected to everything it needs to develop all the way. The act of preventing the zygote from reaching the necessary uterine wall is not the same of ripping the zygote away from the uterine wall. One is preventing the twin from being conjoined with the other twin, the other is killing a twin that's already conjoined. Once it sticks on the wall, it is then conjoined.

So, while the egg is fertilized, I would not deem the woman pregnant until that point. 30-70% of zygotes never get implanted anyways. Do I think those are miscarriages? Not really. I see it as a seed that never makes it to the soil.

But you're saying that it doesn't count as life yet, until it implants. That seems nonsensical. Like you said, if it found some other source of nutrients etc., it would develop without implantation. Heck, all life requires nutrients or it dies. So if I'm not eating a sandwich, I don't count as life? Using implantation as a line of demarcation makes little sense in regards to when the life "counts". When using your "soil and seed" analogy, the implication is that the seed is in stasis, is not really alive, until it is activated by the presence of nutrients. That is not how embryonic development works.

I'm saying that it counts as a seed and not a plant before it implants. A plant seed (the equivalent to an embryo for animals) has fertilizer in itself too, it's called the endosperm. Would you consider killing a seed the same as killing a plant? It will not grow unless introduced to the nutrient source.

http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/tdc02.sci.life.stru.insideseed/

Do you disagree with me or are you just trying to create an inconsistency? Keep in mind that I am developing my argument as we are discussing this. You are aiding me immensely, iron sharpens iron as they say. I would not have considered the necessity of implanting to human life without this dicussion nor would I have thought of revisiting the claim that a sperm is itself a seed. It's not, it's part of the makeup of a seed that it and the women's gamete make up.

That's weird, because kids seem to survive all the time without their parents. They go into orphanages…sometimes they're dropped at fire stations…the parent can absolve themselves of all responsibility, yet the infant won't necessarily die.

This is just a transfer of the parasite. It does not change that it is parasitic in nature. This is one of the fundamental conflicts of the responsibility of a parent to its child that Ayn Rand was bothered with. If no transfer occured and the guardian just stopped assiting the "parasite", the parasite would die. Do you advocate starving an infant or toddler as an acceptable practice? Or are those parents correctly arrested and convicted for doing so? There is currently no legitimate means of putting up a growing fetus for adoption. It is either letting it grow to be birthed or killing it so that it cannot continue its life cycle. On the day that a fetus may be safely transferred at no cost to the mother we will not have this discussion. This will, of course, cause a myriad of other problems but I am not a utilitarian. At least not with regards to ending innocent human life.

If you admit to self-contradiction, though, then you should do your best to find out why.

Two things:
1. Isn't it far better to admit self conflict than to just stand on a point like it's an unwavering point?
2. I have already explained the why. It's becaues I do not hold people accountable as murderers if they do not consider the fetus a valid human life. If someone, like me, aborted a fetus, I would consider them a murderer because they believed it was life and killed it anyways.

Please, tell me, at what point to the statistics become significant enough that women are allowed to make their own decisions about their own bodies?

This is something that will have to be decided on. Currently, .0017% is not considered to be a statistically significant number. Especially when a percentage of those 17 out of 100,000 are mothers who were warned of complications and went ahead with it anyways. Some also include an unusual increase in home birthing (apparently people think that nothing will ever go wrong so they want to have the child at home with a nurse and no doctor or legitimate emergency medical equipment in sight). With this in mind, I'd put the number even lower to healthy pregnancies that end in the hospital.

There is some threshold at which it is a legitimate threat to another human life. The question really is what that number should be and how it should be decided. What is the threshold where it's ok to seperate two conjoined twins if one is all but certain to die? The number should at least be riskier than that of normal child birth. Remember, we're talking about two lifes. We're seeing at what point optimizing the outcome of life would be necessary.

But perhaps the "safety" argument, while 100% valid, has muddied the waters for you. Ultimately, the point is that you think the government should control other peoples' bodies. You haven't addressed that point at all. So, I'll reiterate: I don't believe the government should make anyone else a slave, even to save a life.

The government prevents people from killing eachother. The government protects the defenseless as best it can. If we are talking about human life then we should have laws in place.

Again, the only possible comparison that can be drawn is with being a conjoined twin in which one would die if removed. If left alone, they both leave and the problem resolves, if dealt with now one dies. This is not an issue of legislating what a woman does with her body, this legislates when it's ok to kill a human life.

@M.:

But see, if you accept that it is personal eugenics (albeit in jest?) and that you are ending an unwanted life, then there's not really an argument here. Just a philosophical difference on the value of human life. I would personally finance and even adopt to my limit but at the end of the day I do not have faith in my fellow man (let alone the republicans who claim to be against it and yet want to diminish medical care to the poor) to step it up and do the same.

All you're confirming is that you believe that your personal lifestyle is more important than another human life. Beyond that there is only ethics to decide who is wrong and who is right and I'd say that currently society (the ultimate decider of ethics in the absence of a common deity) is on your side. So this is the impasse I expected to reach.
Gavin • Aug 23, 2012 @11:40 am

M.:

"Bless" has distinctly positive connotations.

In this context it certainly does. Point conceded.

Random Encounter"

I don't believe all sorts of things. Not believing in gods in general and yours in specific is no different for me than not believing in Gandalf the Grey.

I ask again, do you actively disbelieve in Thor, or is his existence or lack thereof simply irrelevant to your worldview?

There is no need for me to replace gods with anything, because I do not have a need to believe that there is a purpose behind everything that happens. Life ain't fair, and then you die.

What are you trying to argue against? I'm stating that atheism is believing that something does not exist, agnosticism is with-holding judgment until evidence either way is presented, and theism is saying at least one god exists.

How does anything I have said imply that you have to believe in something or replace belief with something? Why does me believing or not believing in Thor have anything to do with any part of the discussion? I don't believe in Thor. Sure, I don't have evidence that he does or does not exist, but I'm also taking the additional step of saying I believe he does not. If belief in Thor was "Thorism", I'd be an Athorist.
M. • Aug 23, 2012 @12:02 pm

@Gavin: I'm entirely serious about personal eugenics. With my genetics, it would be grossly irresponsible and probably cruel for me to have children. That's one area that pro-lifers utterly fail to address – what quality of life will the baby be afforded by not only nurture, but nature? Of course, I don't promote telling people that they can't, or even shouldn't, reproduce due to genetic unfitness; however, the world would be a much happier place if people performed that critical examination for themselves. Of course, sometimes they do and accidents happen. For those of us who don't buy the really naïve idea that life is always worth living just because it's there, abortion becomes not only a freedom, but the ethical solution.

There is still nothing to make me believe an unborn fetus is any more a human life than a cancer cell is. Both are living organisms of human genesis. The argument that a fetus has the potential to become a human being not only chases its own tail, but opens up a vast can of worms as to the significance of potential both before and after birth.
Random Encounter • Aug 23, 2012 @1:29 pm

@Gavin:

It is easy to say that Atheism is a non-belief. But it isn't, it's a belief that there is no God. The belief that there may or may not be a God it its own seperate area. The true skeptic.

I'm saying that in the absence of evidence for gods apart from the writings of man there is no reason to believe in them.

Gods are certainly useful metaphorical devices, but that doesn't make them entities.

I didn't start here. At one point I did believe. Then I noticed that God didn't actually do anything, and the more I dug in, the more I realized that no god was necessary and that the "arguments" for god's existence were all non-falsifiable or easily proven false.

There is only really one position left that holds up, and that is that gods are inventions of men to provide an authority higher than themselves to bully other people into line with. This also explains the abrupt belligerence met when questioning a person's god.
Grifter • Aug 23, 2012 @1:43 pm

@Gavin:

I feel that way about my analogy of the evil doctor. Brought up twice but never responded to.

I did respond to it, though, when I referenced that article that addresses that very concept, so I hope yo ufeel it's been sufficiently responded to now.

What? I never said that. Agnosticism is that "There is no evidence either way therefore belief or belief against are unfounded. One is true we cannot know which given the current evidence." I am astounded that this is such a point of contention. Well, not really, it's me saying telling you that you're not agnostic because you're an atheist. But the point is while an Athiest would say there is no God an agnostic would just say they don't believe in God (potentially throwing a "yet" at the end but not necessarily). To not believe in a specific deity and to say there is no deity is different.

Sorry, Gavin, but you are just wrong with your definition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Definitions_and_distinctions

If you do not assert "At least one deity exists" is a true statement, you are by definition an atheist.

It may be subtle, but it is distinct. Atheism and theism is belief. Agnosticism is reserved belief or non-belief.
So no, you cannot commit to a side and then retain agnosticism.

Yes, you can. For example:

"Hmm, I don't know for sure if Gavin has a brother, but I don't think so" is agnostic. So is "I am not sure, but I think he does".

Again, please look deeper than just to confirm your own preconceptions.

"a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable;" does not necessitate that you not take a position one way or another. Again, in the absence of evidence one generally assumes the null hypothesis.

But I am quite knowledgeable on the subject of religion. Not from a Christian perspective either. My B.A. is in Religion with a special focus on Christianity, Islam and Tibetan/Himalayan religions (fortunately I got a B.S. too so I could actually be employed in an area that pays moneys). The university I got these from taught it from a subjective scholarly position and not religiously (as a religious college would have). My Christian course professors were often Jewish and my Islam and Jewish course professors were often Christian. Go figure. At least my Tibetan/Himalayan courses were taught by adherrents. But I specifically wanted to study under the visiting professor from Harvard who spent 7 years studying in the areas of that faith. I say this only to explain where I am coming from on this particular discussion. This is not a personal conclusion, this is the result of actual study, not that you have said anything to the contrary. I guess my point is to give a degree of authority or expertise to my claim here.

To be snarky, I'm going to say you should ask for a refund.

Philosophical terms generally require a more thorough definition to understand than the 1 line provided by a dictionary. Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism for a detailed explanation.

From Wikipediak:

In some senses, agnosticism is a stance about the difference between belief and knowledge, rather than about any specific claim or belief. In the popular sense, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of a deity or deities, whereas a theist and an atheist believe and disbelieve, respectively.[2] In the strict sense, however, agnosticism is the view that humanity does not currently possess the requisite knowledge and/or reason to provide sufficient rational grounds to justify the belief that deities either do or do not exist.

While the "popular sense" is that an agnostic is someone who neither beleives or disbelieves in a deities' existence, that is not its formal or technical meaning.

If we're going to be specific, I would say I'm an Agnostic Atheist. I believe that there's no way to know if there is a god, and that it is therefore a meaningless question, and as I'm not in the habit of believing in things I don't have rational grounds to believe in, I therefore lack any belief in it.

The issue would be with the universe as it is presently understood existing without a cause either infinitely or starting at one point as both ideas are contrary to modern scientific principles, in my opinion.

Again, it is in no way contrary to modern scientific principles. The laws within the universe do not apply to its birth. Any assertion you make about a god could just as easily be applied to the universe's birth.

Theory, not fact, I'll admit. But not irrationally concieved.

Actually, it's 100% irrationally conceived. You disbelieve something you know to be mathematically true (that given infinity and random chance, every possible scenario will happen). You base that on a feeling. That is by definition irrational.

Note that what this is saying is that energy can make matter and matter can make energy. It isn't saying that there is no cause of the transformation, it's a phenomenon that we need to examine and look closer at. This particular quote discusses the need for additional energy to be presented.

Here. and Here.

A basic principle of vacuum fluctuations is that the net total amount of energy is zero. So, multiple particle-antiparticle pairs get formed. The universe could quite feasibly be the biggest vacuum fluctuation ever. But see, the onus is on the asserter to prove the existence of what they claim, not on the disbeliever to prove a negative. So we all agree that the universe exists; anything beyond that is an assertion that must be defended.

There is a problem in quantum physics where they use terms like "random" that are not necessarily random. It'd be like seeing a balloon floating up when everything else you've ever seen has fallen down and calling that balloon's actions a random deviation just because you don't know what helium is.

No, it would be more like knowing we have a bunch of balloons, and them all being identical as far as we can see, but some float and some don't. While helium could be the cause (and in the case of balloons, it's the most likely one), with the particles in quantum physics, we have no idea what could be the problem. While there may be a good reaosn, it may just as well be that there isn't, and until we can prove otherwise, we call it arbitrary/random.

So we have the additional problem of terminology getting in the way of what's actually going on. If we get to a point of technology where we can actually observe that something is being caused by nothing at all then that will be pretty amazing.

We're already at that point. The only problem is that we are forced to acknowledge that it's always possible we'll find a deeper reason.

As is, we're simply beginning to observe forces and fluctuations that we never knew existed before. Once we can truly observe and define them, then you can present them as facts. As is, I am standing on current principles and laws and not theories. But I do accept Einstein's words that all it takes is one result to disprove a previously accepted theory. I do not think any of this will ever be found to be without a cause. All of it will be reduced to some process that we weren't able to see until we developed the right tools to test. I think that because that has been the case with everything else we've ever seen thus far.

Except the things we haven't, which you've discounted.

Whoa, a "full" human life? The term "full" is technically a strawman.

No, it's not. I am willing to accept it may be poor phrasing, but it's not a strawman. I attempted (and I apologize for being unclear) to use the term to demarcate a human life with rights versus one without rights, because your original argument was that as soon as the DNA is combined, it's human and deserving of rights, but then you qualified it to say that that's not so until it also implants.

That being said, the reason why I find the stage of implanting important is not actually in establishing that it is human life, it's establishing the possibility that if left alone it already has all it needs to grow into a human.

No, it doesn't. It requires to mother's nutrients, and for her to continue to supply it with them, or it will die as surely as if it never implanted.

A human life that will never develop into a sentient being is not what I'm concerned about. It's a human life that is already connected to everything it needs to develop all the way.

Again, no. The woman has to take in extra nutrients to support the child, don't forget. In fact, if she doesn't, the baby is likely to be ejected from the woman spontaneously, as the body preserves itself at the expense of the baby.

The act of preventing the zygote from reaching the necessary uterine wall is not the same of ripping the zygote away from the uterine wall. One is preventing the twin from being conjoined with the other twin, the other is killing a twin that's already conjoined. Once it sticks on the wall, it is then conjoined.

This is where your analogy fails, because conjoined twins are conjoined from birth. They don't just get stuck together randomly.

So, while the egg is fertilized, I would not deem the woman pregnant until that point. 30-70% of zygotes never get implanted anyways. Do I think those are miscarriages? Not really. I see it as a seed that never makes it to the soil.

And, again, the soil analogy fails. Either they are human lives or they are not. If they are not, you need to give a coherent reason they are not.

I'm saying that it counts as a seed and not a plant before it implants. A plant seed (the equivalent to an embryo for animals) has fertilizer in itself too, it's called the endosperm. Would you consider killing a seed the same as killing a plant? It will not grow unless introduced to the nutrient source.

But it's not a seed. It's a dividing organism. And it's not soil, it's part another person. While analogies are very important (and one of my personal favorite rhetorical devices) it's important to remember that analogies are by nature generally imperfect. Yours has particularly glaring failures, that I've already pointed out, such as the "soil" being part of a person, rather than an inanimate object.

This is just a transfer of the parasite. It does not change that it is parasitic in nature. This is one of the fundamental conflicts of the responsibility of a parent to its child that Ayn Rand was bothered with. If no transfer occured and the guardian just stopped assiting the "parasite", the parasite would die. Do you advocate starving an infant or toddler as an acceptable practice? Or are those parents correctly arrested and convicted for doing so?

As I said, there are ways to absolve that responsibility without letting the child die, so therefore doing so is negligence. As you said, there is currently no legitimate means of putting up a growing fetus for adoption. It is either letting it grow to be birthed or killing it so that it cannot continue its life cycle. On the day that a fetus may be safely transferred at no cost to the mother we will not have this discussion. Because at that point, we can allow women to assert the rights of their own bodily autonomy without also killing the growing lifeform. That doesn't mean that, in the absence of that technology, women therefore lose their autonomy.

Two things:
1. Isn't it far better to admit self conflict than to just stand on a point like it's an unwavering point?
2. I have already explained the why. It's becaues I do not hold people accountable as murderers if they do not consider the fetus a valid human life. If someone, like me, aborted a fetus, I would consider them a murderer because they believed it was life and killed it anyways.

It is, indeed, better to acknowledge the self conflict rather than tryign to pretend it's not there. However, the best thing is to admit its existence and try to resolve it.

In this case, I apologize if I misunderstood, but you said you didn't think that an unimplanted embryo that died was a dead human. If you don't believe that, and if you recognize the invalid nature of the line of demarcation you've drawn, then the fact that you do consider an implanted embryo a dead human is a contradiciton.

This is something that will have to be decided on.

Sorry if it wasn't clear, but I was being facetious. I don't believe you have the right to tell a woman "well, this is twice as likely to kill you, but really, it's very unlikely overall, so I won't let you have your own autonomy".

What is the threshold where it's ok to seperate two conjoined twins if one is all but certain to die?

I and others have rejected yoru conjoined twins analogy, so continuing to equate the situations is not a legitimate tactic.

Remember, we're talking about two lifes. We're seeing at what point optimizing the outcome of life would be necessary.

Remember, we're talking about two lives in your opinion.

The government prevents people from killing eachother. The government protects the defenseless as best it can. If we are talking about human life then we should have laws in place.

If someone will starve to death if I don't give them my food, I have no legal obligation to give them my food. Do you think there should be a law to that effect?

This is not an issue of legislating what a woman does with her body, this legislates when it's ok to kill a human life.

Bullshit. It is 100% an issue of legislating what a woman can do with her own body. You are saying "for 9 months, this body is not yours". I reject that.
Ben • Aug 23, 2012 @1:55 pm

Grifter,

I was not attempting to claim it by fiat, but by demonstration. Relative humanity is an interesting concept – are some humans more human than other humans? And some are less human than other humans?

Being "human" is not a continuum – you will not meet someone who is ninety-eight percent human and two percent blowfish (at least not until our genetic engineering takes a few leaps forward). Human is a definition – just as being a living organism is a definition – when a thing meets the criterion, it is human (or alive, respectively).

With regards to: "A man has a right to live and his children also have a right to live – if the man can rescue them within some reasonable threshold of risk, he is obligated to do so."
and your subsequent response:"…is not legally true. The man, in that case, could be brought up on charges, but both "it was too dangerous" and "I didn't think I could do it" would be defenses. The man has certain responsibilities towards the children, which he has accepted by not putting them up for adoption, but even then is not legally obliged to risk his life. "

As I noted, if it is within some reasonable threshold of risk, he is expected to do what he can. You are not legally obligated to enter a burning building to save your child – but you are expected to take reasonable measures to ensure your child does not die. If you fail to do that, to my understanding, you are guilty of criminal negligence/manslaughter.
Gavin • Aug 23, 2012 @2:55 pm

My apologies, but as I do every day, it is time for me to go home. Home where I have computers and internet but choose not to use them like I have to all day at work.

@M.: I understand what you mean. The difference is that people think that the vagina ends in a magic curtain that seperates "the world" from "the not world". I maintain, as I'm sure you understand, that the fetus is already in the world, just in its earliest stage of life. I'll remind you, that the doctor strongly recommended that my mother-in-law abort her daughter because she would be severely mentally handicapped. My wife is not only the smartest of her family but also well above average in IQ. She's extremely capable and has no noticeable defect. Had my mother-in-law listened to her doctor's recommendation the world would now be that much darker. I don't think that a lower quality of life necessarily means we should just get to kill it. The world is not a better place without kids with downsyndrome, for example. They add their own touch to it.

On the flip side, you're right that some people simply shouldn't reproduce. Look at Beethoven's horribly inbred family with everyone having at least one severe disability. Even if people with "bad" genes are personally careful not to do so, things like rape take that control away. This whole situation is made all the shittier because that's what rape does, it makes the woman feel powerless along with so many other things and to then have to carry an unwanted child for 9 months is an atrocity. I understand this. I hate this. My claim that the fetus is a living human being is not to diminish the effect pyschologically and physically on the woman, it's simply to defend what I believe is an innocent, helpless life. The person at fault is the rapist and they should be punished all the more harsher. The person that is not at fault is the life. I get that you don't agree with me and that's completely your prerogative. I'm just trying to illustrate where I'm coming from. It's not "My God doesn't want you doing that".

@Random Encounter:

I'm saying that in the absence of evidence for gods apart from the writings of man there is no reason to believe in them.

Gods are certainly useful metaphorical devices, but that doesn't make them entities.

I didn't start here. At one point I did believe. Then I noticed that God didn't actually do anything, and the more I dug in, the more I realized that no god was necessary and that the "arguments" for god's existence were all non-falsifiable or easily proven false.

There is only really one position left that holds up, and that is that gods are inventions of men to provide an authority higher than themselves to bully other people into line with. This also explains the abrupt belligerence met when questioning a person's god.

Ah, your responses to me are on the topic in general from your own response. My apologies. I thought you were responding to a specific point.

In these comments I have presented adequate reasons to consider the theory of theism. I have also explained why I feel that there is sentience behind God. What I haven't spoken to is the decision of who God is specifically. I can tell you logically why I believe God exists or existed if the term God may be used loosely. What I cannot tell you logically is why I choose Christianity in particular. Well, I can, but it would make no difference to you.

I would posit that religions, even false ones, are typically created for good purposes and later used to oppress. Christianity did not enact the crusades nor the inquisitions. Spain, England, One very corrupt set of leadership in the church did. But not the religion itself. I'm sure you also see a very different lesson being taught in Christianity that you see in the actions of so many of its adherrants. This speaks to dumbassedness of man and not necessarily to any sort of corruption in the religion itself. I'd like to see your general response to this tomorrow so we can discuss it more when I have time.
M. • Aug 23, 2012 @3:57 pm

@Gavin: It would be patently ridiculous to say that the fetus isn't "in the world." Outside of Intro to Philosophy debates and some dodgy theoretical physics, I'm pretty sure anyone would agree that the mother's body is in the world and that the inside of her uterus isn't some alternate dimension.

As to the eugenics discussion, I am not talking about aborting anyone based on what they do or don't have to offer the world. I believe that there's no such thing as a valueless, irredeemable person. To me, there was some shining fragment of good even in Hitler or bin Laden; if something worthwhile was hiding in them, a kid with Down's syndrome is most definitely worthwhile. I don't believe that anyone has to justify their existence, since being born isn't a choice made by the one being born. I don't believe in the validity of vacuous ideas like a "a normal person" or strict definitions of a good person, because to me variety and a certain amount of discord are what make life interesting. When I refer to personal eugenics, I'm talking strictly about choosing not to reproduce for the sake of preventing undue suffering by the individual in question. Preventative euthanasia, if you will. Obviously this isn't a serious consideration for most people, but when it matters, it really matters. My personal bodily integrity aside, that's why my right to abortion matters so much to me.

I would much rather never get an abortion. Not only do I feel a little ill thinking about the procedure itself, but the truth is that I actually really want children on an emotional and visceral level; I'm not sure I would have the fortitude to go through with it, or even put the kid up for adoption afterward. Hence, I am very careful. Doctors won't sterilize me because of my age; I've actually looked into medical tourism to resolve the issue once and for all, and would probably have done it by now if not for being laid off. Speaking frankly, however, sex is one of the few things in life my complement of depression-related disorders lets me enjoy, and I refuse to give it up. If shit happens and our society would really rather I have a half-dozen abortions than one lousy hysterectomy and salpingo-oophorectomy, so be it.
M. • Aug 23, 2012 @3:59 pm

And this has gotten rather personal, so I apologize if anyone feels TMI'd.
Narad • Aug 23, 2012 @5:11 pm

This growth would never have developed into a human being with legitimate brain activity.

At least you've brought it full circle. And you're still misusing "statistically significant."
Jess • Aug 23, 2012 @5:51 pm

Wow I go away for a few weeks of vacation and all sorts of interesting things happen. Since I'm so late to the game I have nothing to add that "M" has not in my opinion already stated perfectly.
Grifter • Aug 23, 2012 @7:29 pm

My stupid comment from earlier is still in moderation because apparently I used too many wikipedia references. But for the record, M., I don't think it was TMI, and I appreciate your perspective.
Ben • Aug 23, 2012 @7:44 pm

M,

My mother (a religious individual) has a church friend whose husband and two of her three children died of Huntington's disease. By all accounts, they each led productive (if brief, when compared to the current average) lives. Yet, she feels guilty for having had children (even though her daughter does not have the mutated gene). Her second son died only two years ago. Neither of her son's had children, though they were both married (one of them twice).

I find that odd. Every human dies. Every human suffers. If someone suffers too greatly and can demonstrate a sane and rational mindset for decision making, I think auto-euthanasia should be medically (and legally) available.

But terminating life because we deem its suffering too great to bear does not seem like a kindness to that life; regardless of my suffering, I would desire to at least retain the illusion of control over whether I live or die.

Anyways, my point is that you do not have some grand obligation to the human gene pool; if you want children, you should have them. Diversity is actually superior to monoculture, in terms of the long-term survival of our (or any) species. Some lethal pandemic that spares only people with your particular malady could manifest itself.
M. • Aug 23, 2012 @8:25 pm

@Ben:

So people who don't have sane and rational mindsets should be forced to live no matter how much they suffer, regardless of their desires otherwise? What of people who can't communicate? Obviously it would be monstrous to assume that they're suffering so much that they wish for death, but after watching others suffer from various chronic and terminal illnesses, I can't imagine not feeling guilty for bringing a life of what appeared to be nothing but suffering into the world, even if there was no way to know beforehand. Yes, everyone dies sooner or later, but when you suffer profoundly in life, sometimes death is no longer the worst thing. However, we must allow people to make that decision for themselves; my argument in favor of abortion (in this context) is simply the desire to not put my hypothetical offspring into that situation to begin with when I know that there's a particularly high risk. Both of my parents were gravely mentally ill, and while I don't regret or resent my entire life by any means, I often wish they had practiced my preaching. For me, the ultimate gift of love for my children is never forcing them to live to begin with, at least until gene therapy or effective treatments for the family ailments exist and are affordable.

I've long been a proponent of a government-funded-and-run auto-euthanasia program, but I believe it should be open to anyone over the age of 25. I do not fit your "sane and rational mindset for decisionmaking" according to many.

@Everyone: Thank you. I usually find myself drowning in the scorn and self-righteous loathing of others when I haul these particular opinions of mine out in public, so this is refreshing!
M. • Aug 23, 2012 @8:33 pm

(The idea of a world populated only by bipolar people gave me a fit of hilarity.)
Ben • Aug 23, 2012 @9:28 pm

M,

Read Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K Dick. It is pretty much just that.
Grifter • Aug 23, 2012 @10:38 pm

@Ben:

+10 for the PKD reference!

I honestly liked "Shell Game" (the short story he expanded and turned into the novel) a little more. But I'm a huge PKD nerd, so there's that.
Gavin • Aug 24, 2012 @8:28 am

M.:
Thank you for making it personal. It's easy to debate things on a macro-philosophical level and forget the struggles of the individuals. Forgetting that people are real and do have shit happen to them or shit to deal with is exactly the sort of mindset that creates asshole comments like what Akin said to start this article. For what it's worth, I do think you should have control of your own body. If you want a sterilization procedure and are a consenting adult, then so be it. It's just after a fetus is attached to your body that your body is technically shared in the same way conjoined twins share organs. As I said before, I do not in any way adhere to the "every sperm is sacred" dogma nor am I a Roman Catholic by any stretch of the imagination (though I suspect many RCCers disagree with that dogma too, if only in practice). So any sort of pregnancy provention is ok in my book.

I find it interesting that you can accept that this is a sort of "Preventative Euthanasia". I hope you can at least understand why someone might be against you choosing death for another person. I understand that the difference in opinion of the value of that life or its right to life isn't really a gulf that we can cross since at this point it reaches an ethical quandary. I could cite the constitution or all that jazz as well as right to life philosophy but at the end of the day the current laws (albeit in conflict with the constitution in my opinion) and societal norms are on your side.

@Narad:
I'm only misusing statistically significant in that statistical significance generally applies to the liklihood something could have occured by chance. I understand that improbable is a more accurate word but I want to say something stronger than just "improbable". 99.99% isn't just overwhelmingly more likely than the .017%. .017% is practically a non-factor. Especially when taking into account that some of those 17 peopler per 10,000 are acting against doctors orders by going ahead with a risky proceedure or being "natural" by having it at home with a midwife nowhere near the life saving medical equipment or expertise of a doctor. This number also fluctuates by year and is usually around .011% with a spike in 2008 (the latest data) that doesn't follow the agreggate trends. The fact is, this isn't enough to warrant killing a life. I do not know what number would be enough, but it should at least be higher than the normal risk of pregnancy which is normally less risky than a tonsillectomy. Let's also not forget that abortion also carries risk, the same amount of risk that having a miscarriage at that stage of pregnancy (whatever stage it happens at).

Keep in mind, this is most nearly equivalent to a conjoined twin scenario. Only the risk to the dominant twin is miniscule whereas the non-dominant twin's (the fetus') risk of dying in the case of seperation is the exact flip side of that. Not only that, but the problem self-resolves after 9 months and neither side has to die.

This isn't a scenario where a perfectly healthy person would have to drag around a brain-dead lump of flesh for the rest of their life.
Grifter • Aug 24, 2012 @8:51 am

@Gavin:

Granted, your last post wasn't directed at me, but I can't help but notice:

You keep pushing the "conjoined twin" scenario… you do realize there's a clear line of demarcation between the mother and the fetus, right?

It seems as you you're saying that (to use a comparable analogy), by being plugged into the electrical outlet of a house, a blender becomes part of the house, and you can't tell which part is house and which is blender.
Random Encounter • Aug 24, 2012 @8:52 am

@Gavin
I see your point.
Actually, put so succinctly, I *remember* your point.

It's just that somewhere along the line I rejected magic and the rest went with it.

Though I do think that the magical viewpoint can inform our thinking in these matters, it still gives contradictory information. Few traditions actually recognize a new life as fully human before birth. Ironically it is modern medicine that has opened up the possibility of being upset about the fate of a fetus only a few weeks old.

From the magical perspective, the important point is when does a person have a soul? Being alive is evidently insufficient or all animals would have souls. Nobody would claim that the life of an Irish Setter was more valuable than even the health of a woman, so is DNA that makes a fetus *potentially* human sufficient to tip that balance?

If that is sufficient, then there are vast swaths of activities short of deliberate abortion that it would be considered seriously immoral for women of childbearing age to participate in, because of the potential for a miscarriage or damage to a fetus she doesn't yet know she is carrying.

So that being the case, I'm of the opinion that there should be no legal restrictions whatsoever on first trimester abortions.

Beyond that point I am willing to accept that there can be reasons sufficient to justify an abortion up to the point of likely viability if birth is given prematurely, though I personally think that no law is needed here and the moral standards of the medical community are up to the task of ensuring that these only happen when necessary.

Should there be a law preventing abortions for all cases, I'd say that for the cases of rape and health risk to the mother the state (by excluding a reasonable choice she could make) has assumed direct responsibility for her costs and for the child once it is born (including therapy for rape victims forced to carry their rapist's child to term).
Random Encounter • Aug 24, 2012 @10:08 am

And almost on queue:
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pregnancy-begins-2-weeks-before-conception-now-the-law-in-arizona/politics/2012/04/13/37993
Narad • Aug 24, 2012 @10:22 am

I'm only misusing statistically significant in that ~~statistical significance generally applies to the liklihood something could have occured by chance~~ I keep pretending that it means something completely different from what it actually means.

FTFY.

I understand that improbable is a more accurate word but I want to say something stronger than just "improbable". 99.99% isn't just overwhelmingly more likely than the .017%. .017% is practically a non-factor.

17 deaths per 100,000 live births is not a "non-factor." Do you know what the number of motor-vehicle fatalities was per 100,000 population in 2009? 11.2. Moreover, it's not even the proper number to use in this regard, as the risk is cumulative. The lifetime risk of maternal death in the U.S. in 2010 was 1 in 2400.

Especially when taking into account that some of those 17 peopler per 10,000 are acting against doctors orders by going ahead with a risky proceedure or being "natural" by having it at home with a midwife nowhere near the life saving medical equipment or expertise of a doctor.

Spare me. Quantify it or drop it.

This number also fluctuates by year and is usually around .011% with a spike in 2008 (the latest data) that doesn't follow the agreggate trends. The fact is, this isn't enough to warrant killing a life. I do not know what number would be enough, but it should at least be higher than the normal risk of pregnancy which is normally less risky than a tonsillectomy.

Once again illustrating that your approach tidies up exactly nothing.
M. • Aug 24, 2012 @11:57 am

@Gavin: I don't know where you're from, but the societal norms around here are resoundingly anti-abortion. And pro-death penalty, funnily enough. "Life is absolutely sacred! Always! Every life is worthwhile! I mean, unless we don't like them."

Again, I don't consider a fetus to be a person, and not as a matter of moral convenience. The pro-life side of the argument I've dealt with has never come up with anything more compelling than "because we said so!", which doesn't do it for me personally.
Gavin • Aug 24, 2012 @2:17 pm

Narad: I forgot to bold your name in my above post. Please look at it for my response.

Grifter:

I would have missed your post if you hadn't said that.

In some senses, agnosticism is a stance about the difference between belief and knowledge, rather than about any specific claim or belief. In the popular sense, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of a deity or deities, whereas a theist and an atheist believe and disbelieve, respectively.[2] In the strict sense, however, agnosticism is the view that humanity does not currently possess the requisite knowledge and/or reason to provide sufficient rational grounds to justify the belief that deities either do or do not exist.
While the "popular sense" is that an agnostic is someone who neither beleives or disbelieves in a deities' existence, that is not its formal or technical meaning.

If we're going to be specific, I would say I'm an Agnostic Atheist. I believe that there's no way to know if there is a god, and that it is therefore a meaningless question, and as I'm not in the habit of believing in things I don't have rational grounds to believe in, I therefore lack any belief in it.

You literally just posted a source saying that agnosticism is the belief that we cannot know if God exists or not. It is directly a source backing everything I have said on this point.

Again, God exists/existed = Theism, God does not exist = Atheism.

God may or may not exist = Agnosticism

Now, this may be the point of contention here. This could be for all the chips on the table:

Do you say you do not believe that God exists.

and/or

Do you believe that God does not exist?

The two seemingly identical sentences have a key difference. One is just a lack of belief, one is a belief in absense.

Traditionally, in broad and narrow senses, and with the etiology of the term, atheism is the rejection of belief in God. As I've stated, more recently people have begun to add the term agnostic in front of their belief and they have done so incorrectly. Again, I'll direct you to the Merriam Webster dictionary:

1 archaic: ungodliness, wickedness

2 a: a disbelief in the existence of deity b: the doctrine that there is no deity

I am bringing this up because the newer tendency to apply it to lack of belief is innaccurate in every way. Atheism is meant to be a direct contrast of Theism. It has always been intended to mean that the individual does not believe a deity exists. It is literally considered to be a doctrine because it is a belief system. Agnosticism is not atheism, it is skepticism.

This is a very important point. Again, I understand that words do evolve and that society may be trending that way to include agnosticism in atheism's ranks, but until the definitions change I will continue to accept the text book definition that Atheism is belief in the non-existence of any deity. That it is the doctrine that no deity exists. Agnoticism is not partial to either side. It may look like atheism but it isn't.

Unless you mean that you're an atheist in the arcaic sense. At which case I must ask, are you coming on to me? Hah.

Again, it is in no way contrary to modern scientific principles. The laws within the universe do not apply to its birth. Any assertion you make about a god could just as easily be applied to the universe's birth.

How convenient. I'll reiterate that I don't believe in magic. There is no reason to believe that cause and effect were magically suspended. Do you expect me to have faith that it was? Were matter and energy conservation laws also thrown out? Am I supposed to have faith that they were?

A basic principle of vacuum fluctuations is that the net total amount of energy is zero. So, multiple particle-antiparticle pairs get formed. The universe could quite feasibly be the biggest vacuum fluctuation ever. But see, the onus is on the asserter to prove the existence of what they claim, not on the disbeliever to prove a negative. So we all agree that the universe exists; anything beyond that is an assertion that must be defended.

No, vacuum energy is the zero-point energy of all the known fields in space. It is not "empty" space, it's just the ground state of the fields. Again, particle physicists really suck at naming things. But there is supposed to be a cosmological constant with positive values thanks to the findings on cosmic acceleration in the late 90's.

You should read the zero-point energy controversy at the bottom of the page. This cannot be used in violation of conservation of energy.

People consistently think it's something from nothing, but it isn't. This is causing a ton of confusion. It is the scientist community's fault for using such misleading terminology because this makes sense to them. Not the layman. Think about this, if you will. Imagine yourself floating at any point in space (within the universe, as if you could be "floating" at a point outside it…). Next, imagine that you're seeing stars and galaxies everywhere you look. Some are bright and near while others are dim and distant. Finally, realize that this means that light particles/waves have actually reached your eyes at that point, not to mention any radiation or other forms of energy. Please, show me an environment that is entirely void, including not expressing the cosmological constant.

There will always at least be energy. Energy can be converted into matter and vice versa. This is the source of the fluctuations and can only account for the creation of matter or energy and not both (without placing you firmly in paradox territory). Please note that vacuum energy is estimated to be at 10^-9 Joules. Other theories require it to be 10^113.

Both of those numbers are decidedly still numbers and not 0's. It's this energy that is fluctuating.

Please also understand that every element of this current area of study is still under intense scrutiny. Even the only reproduceable element (the Casimir effect) is not necessary since vacuum energy can be explained without it. This is an exciting field but VERY new. I expect amazing things to come out of it.

No, it would be more like knowing we have a bunch of balloons, and them all being identical as far as we can see, but some float and some don't. While helium could be the cause (and in the case of balloons, it's the most likely one), with the particles in quantum physics, we have no idea what could be the problem. While there may be a good reaosn, it may just as well be that there isn't, and until we can prove otherwise, we call it arbitrary/random.

I agree with the general statement but not your conclusion. We have never, in the history of mankind, accepted this notion of random. Not unless we were under the threat of death from some meniacal government body (perhaps religious). It is not random, there is a reason, we just don't know what it is yet. The burden of proof on proving random should be MUCH higher than almost anything else. Because they would be claiming for the first time that there is no deeper level to go, no actual cause. This would be the end of scientific discovery in this area (very exciting, but unlikely).

We're already at that point. The only problem is that we are forced to acknowledge that it's always possible we'll find a deeper reason.

That's because this has ALWAYS been the case. What's that definition of insanity? You're pointing at an incredibly new area of science that people are still hammering out and that people still disagree firmly on all sides. There are a ton of other theories that are also still considered valid that need to be either torn down or combined with this. It's a moving target right now. It'd be as if we'd thrown everything we ever believed away with that one group thought they'd made particles travel faster than the speed of light. No, wait until things are settled or at least finally accepted. Check out consistency with the Lorentz covariance and the magnitude of the planck constant. It mentions it in the first paragraph of the link you cited to vacuum energy. They need the vacuum energy to be much higher than the 10^-9 joules.

No, it doesn't. It requires to mother's nutrients, and for her to continue to supply it with them, or it will die as surely as if it never implanted.

There is a significant difference in my position between saving a life and killing a life. Hooking a life up to the nutrients would be saving it. Cutting it off from them would be killing it. Clear?

Again, no. The woman has to take in extra nutrients to support the child, don't forget. In fact, if she doesn't, the baby is likely to be ejected from the woman spontaneously, as the body preserves itself at the expense of the baby.

Well then, that sounds like convenient knowledge for people to know. A passive form of abortion. Like not opening a door when you know someone has been trapped on the other side. Not strictly ethical, but not murder.

This is where your analogy fails, because conjoined twins are conjoined from birth. They don't just get stuck together randomly.

This is your least sensical statement so far. Randomly? Connected from birth?

No, it is exactly like a conjoined twin. The fetus is connected to the mother's life supporting organs in much the same way a conjoined twin is. It not having been from birth only speaks to the term twin, not the situation.

But it's not a seed. It's a dividing organism. And it's not soil, it's part another person. While analogies are very important (and one of my personal favorite rhetorical devices) it's important to remember that analogies are by nature generally imperfect. Yours has particularly glaring failures, that I've already pointed out, such as the "soil" being part of a person, rather than an inanimate object.

A zygote is exactly like a seed. Even the terms are analogous. A seed, for all intents and purposes, is a plant embryo. Follow that link I posted earlier. I'm not saying it's an analogy, I'm saying it directly. A zygote or embryo is the animal-celled version of the plant-celled seed.

In this case, I apologize if I misunderstood, but you said you didn't think that an unimplanted embryo that died was a dead human. If you don't believe that, and if you recognize the invalid nature of the line of demarcation you've drawn, then the fact that you do consider an implanted embryo a dead human is a contradiciton.

I'm saying that the zygote, without further fertilization supplied by the uterine wall (until technology gives an alternative, imagine a world where no one has to be pregnant and it just happens in artificial wombs!), is just a seed that will never grow into a human. It is only the planted seed that becomes a plant. The components of a seed directly correspond with the components of an embryo so this is by no means a stretch. Even the act of pollination that results in seeds is equivalent to sex or DNA combining. For me to say that the resulting zygote is a human being would be for me to call a seed a plant. Do you personally consider a tomato seed to be a tomato plant? Keep in mind, the tomato seed does have fertilizer in it (endosperm) just like the zygote. The Zygote is still human just as a tomato seed is still… um… a plant? But it can't go anywhere until implanted just like a seed can't and just like a plant seed eventually runs out of its own stock of fertilizer and dies, so will a zygote. This discussion has helped me flesh out why I can't quite see a zygote as life yet. For that I am truly grateful to you.

Bullshit. It is 100% an issue of legislating what a woman can do with her own body. You are saying "for 9 months, this body is not yours". I reject that.

And I reject your dismissal of the conjoined twin comparison. It is stroke for stroke identical except in the "twin" part. These are conjoined human beings. For 9 months, you are conjoined.

Does a conjoined twin not have a right to their own body? If one conjoined twin kills him/herself and the other dies, have they merely committed suicide or suicide and murder?

We do not kill one twin at the request of the other if both could live. Not unless the proceedure is relatively safe for BOTH parties.

So, I emphatically disagree with your refusal to accept the conjoined twin comparison. If you cannot agree that they are similar, almost to a T except for them not being siblings, then we cannot progress further.
Gavin • Aug 24, 2012 @2:20 pm

Aw man, a lot of responses during that post's composition.

I'm late to pick up my wife from her job already with my last response. Very productive work day for me too. I'll even be traveling out of town today so I can't post more this weekend even if I wanted to.
AlphaCentauri • Aug 24, 2012 @2:57 pm

I think the difference in the conjoined twin analogy is that conjoined twins are extremely rare and always unique. Ethical decisions must be made on an individual basis. No one is talking about creating legislation governing how they should be managed.

The abortion issue would be much less acrimonious if no one were trying to come up with laws to cover all women and all fetuses at all stages of pregnancy, in all states of health, under all circumstances of conception and facing all possible social situations for the mother and child.

I'm impressed that as much as people here in this thread disagree, they are presenting substantive arguments and reading/responding to each other's tl;dr posts.

It isn't actually practical to try to stop women from having medical abortions by passing laws — especially since we can't seem to stop the spamvertised viagra pouring over our borders. I wish the ProLife movement leaders would get their heads out of their butts and see that. If they really want to prevent abortions, rather than just pass meaningless laws, they should be trying to get people to stop thinking of being for or against abortion as a knee-jerk position, and try to get them to seriously consider it as an ethical decision requiring personal reflection.
Grifter • Aug 24, 2012 @3:49 pm

@Gavin:

You put a bit at the end of your last reply that I feel should be dealt with separately, and before the rest of my response.

We do not kill one twin at the request of the other if both could live. Not unless the proceedure is relatively safe for BOTH parties.

So, I emphatically disagree with your refusal to accept the conjoined twin comparison. If you cannot agree that they are similar, almost to a T except for them not being siblings, then we cannot progress further.

Okay. The first thing required for me to accept your analogy is to accept the equal humanity of the fetus and the mother. As DNA is nothing but code, I do not. We don't give dead bodies the same rights as live ones, despite having identical DNA. I still believe consciousness is the first requirement of "humanity" in the sense we're using it here, which is to say the sense that it gets the rights we think of as inherent in "humanity". As such, I reject your argument on its merits for certainly the first several weeks of development, as there is no nervous system that could possibly possess consciousness. I do believe there is a qualitative difference between "never awake" and "asleep for now", particularly since the "never awake" doesn't possess the ability to possibly be awake, until further along in development, so that it's not even a question (as opposed to a debate about how much consciousness is present in sleeping or comatose patients, considering we know there there's at least something going on in the ol' brainbuckets).

But let's say I do accept your hypothesis, or that we're talking about a fetus more fully developed, with an actual brain. We don't know that there's no consciousness, so I'm willing to err on the side of assuming, for argument's sake, that there might be some and that therefore there IS some.

I still disagree with your conjoined twins analogy because, in the case of conjoined twins, they have identical DNA, so we don't know which parts of whose bodies are whose, a point I'll mention again in the longer post to the rest of your post (I wrote that bit first, before noticing this section of yours at the end where you said we "cannot progress further" until this is settled). Thus, if we say they share a heart, and that one of them has it in his chest, it's only a quirk of development that it ended up there, there's no certainty "whose it is".

But you love your analogy, so I will try to address my own arguments against it and rephrase the analogy:

Let's pretend, for the moment, that there are a set of conjoined twins with different DNA, which would therefore remove one objection to your analogy. One of the twins (we'll call him Hedwig) is just a head on the other twin (we'll call him Arnold)'s back, with a placenta-type connection. Hedwig somehow remained in a strange stasis until Arnold was 18, then grew (bear with me, of course, for the implausible bits).

Let's say Hedwig has vocal cords, but no esophagus. He cannot eat or fend for itself in any way, and he relies on Arnold for mobility, since he can never be joined with the nervous system of Arnold. In fact, he doesn't even have real lungs, so while he can talk with his vocal cords, he can't even metabolize oxygen without Arnold doing the work. I think that is a less arguable analogy (though it doesn't address the 9month timeline part of the argument, but…one step at time, neh? I just wanted to point out I'm aware my analogy still isn't perfect).

Now we have a clear line of demarcation for whose body is whose. And since he can talk (with an undoubtedly creaky/froggy voice) we know that Hedwig is conscious, which is one step above our knowledge of a fetus!

We know that Hedwig cannot be saved at Arnold's expense, but Arnold can easily live without Hedwig.

To keep Hedwig alive and not "murder" him, Arnold must be a slave to Hedwig.

However, he could starve himself almost unto death, which would kill Hedwig, or he could have Hedwig removed by a surgeon. Both solutions kill Hedwig. There is no way to change the situation except through the death of Hedwig.

If that's not an acceptable analogy, please explain why.

Is the Arnold I've conjured obliged to be Hedwig's slave, in your worldview, since anything else would kill Hedwig? To repeat but rephrase: Because anything that Arnold does that prevents slavery would kill Hedwig, is Arnold required to keep him alive, even if it's incredibly painful, even if there's an increased risk of Arnold dying, and even if Arnold feels tortured by the situation?
Grifter • Aug 24, 2012 @3:51 pm

@Gavin:

And here's the wall-o-text response to the rest of your post. Hope you have a good weekend and return with sharp wits!

You have to read the whole source, not just the parts that reinforce your preconceived notion.

For example:

"Atheism has sometimes been defined to include the simple absence of belief that any deities exist. This broad definition would include newborns and other people who have not been exposed to theistic ideas. As far back as 1772, Baron d'Holbach said that "All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God."

…

"Philosophers such as Antony Flew[41] and Michael Martin[36] have contrasted positive (strong/hard) atheism with negative (weak/soft) atheism. Positive atheism is the explicit affirmation that gods do not exist. Negative atheism includes all other forms of non-theism. According to this categorization, anyone who is not a theist is either a negative or a positive atheist. The terms weak and strong are relatively recent, while the terms negative and positive atheism are of older origin, having been used (in slightly different ways) in the philosophical literature[41] and in Catholic apologetics.[42] Under this demarcation of atheism, most agnostics qualify as negative atheists."

…

"While Martin, for example, asserts that agnosticism entails negative atheism,[29] most agnostics see their view as distinct from atheism,[citation needed] which they may consider no more justified than theism or requiring an equal conviction.[43] The assertion of unattainability of knowledge for or against the existence of gods is sometimes seen as indication that atheism requires a leap of faith.[44][unreliable source?] Common atheist responses to this argument include that unproven religious propositions deserve as much disbelief as all other unproven propositions,[45] and that the unprovability of a god's existence does not imply equal probability of either possibility.[46] Scottish philosopher J. J. C. Smart even argues that "sometimes a person who is really an atheist may describe herself, even passionately, as an agnostic because of unreasonable generalised philosophical skepticism which would preclude us from saying that we know anything whatever, except perhaps the truths of mathematics and formal logic."[47] Consequently, some atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins prefer distinguishing theist, agnostic and atheist positions along a spectrum of theistic probability—the likelihood that each assigns to the statement "God exists".

Perhaps you would prefer "non-theist", a term absolutely no-one uses? If that would make you feel better, we can do it, but then, the majority of atheists would then be simple "non-theists", considering almost all agree that it's impossible to prove a negative. In fact, I don't know a single one ever that has tried to say "yes, you can prove a negative". If you can give a reference, that would be great!

Again, agnosticism is a statement of knowledge. Rejecting a positive belief for lack of evidence does not mean that you say it's impossible, only that not enough information has come along to make that positive position tenable.

I'm not going to post the entire article every time, it's just going to make every post twelve pages long, but if you read the whole thing you will see that while some people use the terms as you do, from a technical standpoint it lacks precision, as you can still have an opinion even if you also agree that we cannot know one way or another.

Traditionally, in broad and narrow senses, and with the etiology of the term, a-theism is the rejection of statement "there is a god", whether because you can make the converse statement "There is no god", or "There is no evidence to indicate a god". It doesn't mean that you are making an assertion of whether you can know there's a god, which is an entirely different question, and as you said it's impossible to prove a negative. You requested to be told if I felt you were ignoring a point in your attempt to prevent these posts from becoming walls-o-text: Please refer to my "Alien Ghost Leprechaun" example.

And please stop posting dictionary definitions, particularly when they already include a meaning that agrees with my position.

2 a: a disbelief in the existence of deity

A disbelief is not its own positive belief in the opposite.

I am bringing this up because the newer tendency to apply it to lack of belief is innaccurate in every way.

If by "newer" you mean "since the 1700s", then I will concede your point.

To be fair, of course, "agnostic" wasn't around in the 1700s as a term, my 1700s reference was in in reference to the above quote that "all children are born atheists" which, of course, is not a "positive disbelief", but rather a "lack of belief" situation.

If you want to know the origins of the term "agnostic", look it up on the googles, where you see the original definition was, again, one of a lack of knowledge, which is where it comes from etymologically speaking. (Huxley invented it in 1869).

Atheism is meant to be a direct contrast of Theism. It has always been intended to mean that the individual does not believe a deity exists. It is literally considered to be a doctrine because it is a belief system. Agnosticism is not atheism, it is skepticism.

It is not a "belief system" to say "I won't believe you unless you give me reason to". Again, the burden of proof is always on the person making the assertion, considering it's impossible to prove a negative.

This is a very important point. Again, I understand that words do evolve and that society may be trending that way to include agnosticism in atheism's ranks, but until the definitions change I will continue to accept the text book definition that Atheism is belief in the non-existence of any deity. That it is the doctrine that no deity exists. Agnoticism is not partial to either side. It may look like atheism but it isn't.

Again, read your own definition.

How convenient. I'll reiterate that I don't believe in magic. There is no reason to believe that cause and effect were magically suspended. Do you expect me to have faith that it was? Were matter and energy conservation laws also thrown out? Am I supposed to have faith that they were?

You already have faith that matter and energy conservation laws were thrown out, and that cause and effect are suspended, you just believe they were thrown out by a god before the birth of the universe, rather than by the universe's birth. Again, I know the universe exists. And I know that at present we do not know any of the conditions pre-universe, nor what the physical laws were pre-universe. Until that changes, I'm going to say that it seems more likely that the thing I know created itself, than that there was something else that violates all those laws instead, then created this universe.

People consistently think it's something from nothing, but it isn't. This is causing a ton of confusion. It is the scientist community's fault for using such misleading terminology because this makes sense to them. Not the layman. Think about this, if you will. Imagine yourself floating at any point in space (within the universe, as if you could be "floating" at a point outside it…). Next, imagine that you're seeing stars and galaxies everywhere you look. Some are bright and near while others are dim and distant. Finally, realize that this means that light particles/waves have actually reached your eyes at that point, not to mention any radiation or other forms of energy. Please, show me an environment that is entirely void, including not expressing the cosmological constant.

There will always at least be energy. Energy can be converted into matter and vice versa. This is the source of the fluctuations and can only account for the creation of matter or energy and not both (without placing you firmly in paradox territory). Please note that vacuum energy is estimated to be at 10^-9 Joules. Other theories require it to be 10^113.

Both of those numbers are decidedly still numbers and not 0's. It's this energy that is fluctuating.

Please also understand that every element of this current area of study is still under intense scrutiny. Even the only reproduceable element (the Casimir effect) is not necessary since vacuum energy can be explained without it. This is an exciting field but VERY new. I expect amazing things to come out of it.

As do I! But it does prove that "something can come from nothing" as part of the natural world, with no need for "magic". So…therefore your argument, that we "never" see this, is invalid.

I agree with the general statement but not your conclusion. We have never, in the history of mankind, accepted this notion of random. Not unless we were under the threat of death from some meniacal government body (perhaps religious). It is not random, there is a reason, we just don't know what it is yet.

Because they would be claiming for the first time that there is no deeper level to go, no actual cause. This would be the end of scientific discovery in this area (very exciting, but unlikely).

Double-slit experiment, Wikipedia. Heisenberg uncertainty principle (which, while it doesn't confirm randomness, it does show there's sometimes we can't go any deeper) I'm not linking because I don't want to be trapped in moderation limbo.

What's that definition of insanity? You're pointing at an incredibly new area of science that people are still hammering out and that people still disagree firmly on all sides. There are a ton of other theories that are also still considered valid that need to be either torn down or combined with this. It's a moving target right now. It'd be as if we'd thrown everything we ever believed away with that one group thought they'd made particles travel faster than the speed of light.

Actually, as regards to wave/particle duality and other weird, nonsensical elements of Quantum theory, it's more like if "every group who repeated the experiment for the last 60 years" made the particles travel faster than light, and it was easily replicable, and no one had come up with an alternative satisfactory solution yet, despite years of effort. Einstein spent his last years futilely seeking a unified field theory that didn't differentiate between the Quantum level and the Classical. He failed. So, while I of course cannot prove a negative (there will be no better explanation) any more than you can prove that no one will ever spontaneously become an anti-gravity node, I can say that until there's a reason to believe it will happen, I'll go with the math that makes sense and describes what I see (that of probability). You can't say it's wrong "just because", or even "just because it violates what we've seen previously". As is often said, it only takes 1 opposite reaction to disprove a theory.

But really, the only point of that was to disprove your assertions regarding "magic". We have seen "something" come from "nothing". And we've seen other "magical" things on the Quantum scale. We know that we presently know nothing about the pre-universe conditions of reality. So to posit a whole extra being that spontaneously generates violates the principle of parsimony, when instead we can simply posit the universe spontaneously generated. This does not mean that I say "there's definitely no god", I'm a fairly strict agnostic in that I don't think it's even possible to prove the positive (I call it the Q hypothesis, and I can explain further if you're curious…suffice to say that yes, it is a Star Trek reference).

Back on the original topic:

There is a significant difference in my position between saving a life and killing a life. Hooking a life up to the nutrients would be saving it. Cutting it off from them would be killing it. Clear?

Clear.

Well then, that sounds like convenient knowledge for people to know. A passive form of abortion. Like not opening a door when you know someone has been trapped on the other side. Not strictly ethical, but not murder.

No, it would be murder just the same, if we followed your logic. Because it would be removing the fetus from nutrients just as assuredly as removing it from the uterus.

No, it is exactly like a conjoined twin. The fetus is connected to the mother's life supporting organs in much the same way a conjoined twin is. It not having been from birth only speaks to the term twin, not the situation.

The other inherent problem in your analogy is that we can't be sure where oen twin ends and the other begins, due to their identical DNA. So, again, your analogy fails.

A zygote is exactly like a seed. Even the terms are analogous. A seed, for all intents and purposes, is a plant embryo. Follow that link I posted earlier. I'm not saying it's an analogy, I'm saying it directly. A zygote or embryo is the animal-celled version of the plant-celled seed.

I agree with that, to a certain extent. And if that was your whole analogy, you'd be golden. But it isn't. You equated a woman's body to inanimate soil. I apologize if I was'nt clear in where, precisely, the analogy breaks down. Allow me to clarify:

While a seed and a zygote are analogous, zygotes are not what are implanted in the uterus, as I pointed out. Further, the other side of the equation is not an inanimate object, as it is in your analogy, but rather a sentient being who you say does not control her own body.

I'm saying that the zygote, without further fertilization supplied by the uterine wall (until technology gives an alternative, imagine a world where no one has to be pregnant and it just happens in artificial wombs!), is just a seed that will never grow into a human.

Except, again, it is never the zygote which implants. It's the "Morula", which would be more analogous to a sproutling of a plant.

It is only the planted seed that becomes a plant. The components of a seed directly correspond with the components of an embryo so this is by no means a stretch. Even the act of pollination that results in seeds is equivalent to sex or DNA combining. For me to say that the resulting zygote is a human being would be for me to call a seed a plant.

Let me clarify a little, perhaps, for you.

Is it a plant the instant you put it in the soil? No? It's still a seed. It doesn't become a "plant" vs. a "seed" until it begins to sprout. In the case of fetuses, they sprout before they implant.

And I reject your dismissal of the conjoined twin comparison. It is stroke for stroke identical except in the "twin" part. These are conjoined human beings. For 9 months, you are conjoined.

You ignored my call of bullshit on your claim that it has nothing to do with legislating what a woman can do with her own body. Please either concede that point or argue it, lest I assume wrongly.

Does a conjoined twin not have a right to their own body? If one conjoined twin kills him/herself and the other dies, have they merely committed suicide or suicide and murder?

Conjoined twins have identical DNA. It is difficult to prove one way or the other whose parts are whose, which is why it becomes morally problematic when they want to be separated, however they want that (as in your suicide example, or in the case of simple separation) and one of them will die as a result; we have no idea who has the greater claim.

In the case of the woman's body, we know quite well whose parts are whose, and who can survive without whom. Your position is that the woman is enslaved to the fetus, because you have decided that the emotional and physical risks don't justify her freedom if they result in the death of something you consider (but she might not) a person.

You base this slavery claim on DNA alone, a logical position I still don't think you or Ben have established. (Again, DNA is just a code. If you remove the concept of "soul" from the equation, what makes a human a human for the purposes of rights etc. as opposed to the technical jargon standpoint that makes dead bodies also "human" is its consciousness. If it hasn't had consciousness yet, it's not human yet from a moral standpoint. Just as we don't think of dead bodies as human because their consciousness has permanently ceased.)
Grifter • Aug 24, 2012 @4:12 pm

@Alpha Centauri:

I agree; it's nice this debate hasn't broken down as much as others do!
Narad • Aug 24, 2012 @6:28 pm

Double-slit experiment, Wikipedia. Heisenberg uncertainty principle (which, while it doesn't confirm randomness, it does show there's sometimes we can't go any deeper)

There's no reason to invoke either (the latter, I'd say, is properly viewed as an epistemological statement) as a response to "[w]e have never, in the history of mankind, accepted this notion of random"; radioactive decay is a purely stochastic phenomenon. There is no reason whatever to think this is going to be reduced to a clockwork. Moreover, this digression into pseudophysics is even worse than the pseudobiology already on the table.
Grifter • Aug 24, 2012 @6:36 pm

@Narad:

Thank you for the better example.

And I do apologize about the physics…I'm definitely no Neal deGrasse Tyson, so my version of "simplifying to prevent the wall-o-text from getting even bigger than its already unwieldy nature" leaves a great deal to be desired.
Narad • Aug 24, 2012 @6:56 pm

And I do apologize about the physics…

No, it was fine, I was more referring to Gavin. I should emphasize that I do think he is arguing in good faith and that I'm not arguing abortion or (now) the existence of G-d. It is the ever-widening spiral of what, as far as I can tell, is still supposed to be a simplifying framework that strikes me as a practical failure.
Random Encounter • Aug 24, 2012 @7:20 pm

@Gavin: When you get back, if you are so inclined, the point I would most like you to address is:

Should there be a law preventing abortions for all cases, I'd say that for the cases of rape and health risk to the mother the state (by excluding a reasonable choice she could make) has assumed direct responsibility for her costs and for the child once it is born (including therapy for rape victims forced to carry their rapist's child to term).
Ben • Aug 24, 2012 @8:37 pm

Narad,

On the subject of using terms for meanings well outside the definitions of those terms; stochastic, mathematically non-deterministic algorithms and subsequent use of 'randomness' do not equate with the philosophical notion of non-determinism.

They deal only with systems and the illusion of 'randomness' as it is popularly conceived (that things 'happen' free from a chain of causality). Randomness, as such, refers only to the state informational completeness (and subsequent permutations) which we cannot observe, sometimes only within a certain time frame

So, in the case of radioactive decay, it is still 'clockwork' – if we were ever able to gain perfect knowledge of an atom's state (currently considered necessarily impossible), we could perfectly predict all the permutations of that atom's state and thus all resulting states.

So it is less that we are dealing with 'uncaused' phenomenon and more that we are dealing with hidden information.
Grifter • Aug 24, 2012 @8:47 pm

@Ben:

Isn't that an assertion on your part though? As I understand it, there are no causal links that have ever been seen.
John Beaty • Aug 24, 2012 @8:55 pm

Following up after getting home:
The quote is from Starship Troopers, a book filled with interesting ideas, many of which are not, IMO, fully thought out.
My point was apparently understood: I do not believe that anybody can determine for me, what the moral thing is to do. And duty is nothing if it is not a moral thing (Legal duty is a fiction that the whole can determine, on a heuristic basis, the correct outcome.)
As far as the boat example goes, let's reduce it to one man in a canoe, 10 days from shore, with 19 days of water. Without you, he's fine, but with you, both are at risk.Now, why does this man have a duty to rescue you? That's not to say I wouldn't, as a matter of choice about how I live my life, but why is it a duty to him to risk his life for yours? Does it matter if he has only enough water for 10 days? How about if he doesn't have enough even for himself?
I'm not asking whether it is a good idea to rescue you (maybe you'll find a new way to survive together that you wouldn't have by yourself), but whether it is a duty. An obligation.
If the canoe is a passenger liner, does this change anything? If it adds even a small amount of risk (say, 17/10,000), does that obligate the passengers to rescue you? NOt, would they do it, but duty? As someone pointed out upthread, there is no legal obligation to add risk to yourself, although at sea you are under law to alert authorities and stand-by if requested, but not under law to attempt a rescue.
So, by chance or design, a woman is pregnant. Where does her duty lie? To herself. She cannot share this with the fetus/blastocycst/premie. Her duty lies where she has determined it. Otherwise, we are deciding that there is a circumstance where people not her are appropriately determining her risks and decisions. I would violently disagree that this is proper, nor that it is desirable. For once we decide that there are circumstances where, absent a freely chosen duty, there is obligation, we are no longer free.

One more Heinlein (and no, I don't believe or agree with many, many things he says, but he said a lot of things very well):
I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

As far as bringing children into the world goes, I have 2 adopted kids. One was my granddaughter, the other an open adoption. I know first hand how difficult it is to adopt, and to be adopted (I am also an adoptee.)

When I was younger I spent time in the slums of Calcutta and Bombay. I have seen what happens to poor, unwanted children, and I still wake up sweating. I have seen young women brutalized until they will bear children, because they make more money begging with children, until they are about 1, at which point they are often abandoned outright. Most of Gavin's arguments fall apart when confronted with the non-American reality of unwanted children in the world. Enforced carrying of pregnancies to term is the leading fixable cause of poverty, IME. So, M., you have my very best wishes for being a self-controlled eugenics program: the handicapped have a very tough time of it with all the support and willing help they can get. Without that, it is exactly "short, nasty and brutish."

Again, I'm sorry if my passion overwhelmed my ability to express my thoughts.
M. • Aug 24, 2012 @9:06 pm

@John Beaty: Thank you. And coincidentally, that particular Heinlein was a major influence on my developing sense of self and morality as a teenager. People frequently can't tell the difference between illegal and immoral (most memorably ironic example of this in my experience was on a U.S.-based marijuana forum). Outside the issue of legality, it seems to me that personal responsibility is the only freedom we really have.

I visited the Dominican Republic briefly and was deeply disturbed by the poverty I saw there. Being told that it's a lot better than Haiti didn't help, needless to say. The fact that the countries with the worst quality of life are frequently overwhelmingly Catholic, thus precluding most people from using the only easily available form of birth control, is a really, really cruel twist of fate. Even here in the U.S., I've seen things that many Americans would have you believe don't exist here. The United States is truly divided between the First World, the Third World, and the Fourth World.
Ben • Aug 24, 2012 @9:32 pm

Well, it is an assertion in the sense that natural science asserts causality as a necessity.

One of the objections with some of the old theories was that they supposed certain systems (radioactive decay is an oft used instance) as being entirely free frm causality. We have since created more and more accurate models, quantifying various determinants in the process.

That is not to say that we can perfectly predict the outcome state from an initial state – but we understand that it is not 'magic' (or something so alien that our minds cannot comprehend) but an unbroken chain of causes and effects that yield a particular state.
Grifter • Aug 24, 2012 @9:41 pm

@John Beaty:

Thanks for letting me know! I totally started reading Mrs. Grifter's copy of Starship Troopers after I read your quote; I figured it was time to finally read some Heinlein, which I've never done before. PKD had nothing but nice things to say about the man.

Your canoe example made me think of "The Cold Equations", have you read that?

@Ben:

Please explain this: "natural science asserts causality as a necessity." more fully, because I'm tempted to call shenanigans.
M. • Aug 24, 2012 @10:54 pm

@Grifter: You will love it. I went into it expecting something like the movie, and, well, no.
Ben • Aug 25, 2012 @12:01 am

Grifter,

Of course I am willing to explain it. I am at a coffee shop at the moment, typing on accursed phone, so apologies in advance for 'typos'.

Natural science without causality is superstition. Science is a means of predicting outcomes, which is why various theories or groups of theories are sometimes referred to s 'models'. They 'model' a system by determining cause (requisite and essential initiator) and effect (requisite end state). We say a scientific model is flawed when it fails to meet these criterion; exempli gratis a cause that is not requisite ( walking requires pants) essential (socks allow walking) or causal (shoes cause walking). We do this be0ause we have obviously not identified the correct causal conditions, and thus cannot test the model to validate or falsify it (and it is therefore of no value to further scientific inquiry). Under certain testing conditions (say, legally, comfortably and safely) we may be able to test the theory and confirm (or invalidate) it. We can revise the model to achieve greater completeness in this more limited scope, but the theorem is useless where it either cannot predict or does not accurately predict the result.

Does this satisfy you I hope? I am not the best at explaining things, I know, so definitely let me know if I was unclear.
Grifter • Aug 25, 2012 @8:48 am

@Ben:

But in that model you have described, it is not necessary for all randomness to be removed. In the case of nuclear decay, the hypothesis is: this decay will happen at this rate, with an element of randomness. That hypothesis has been consistently confirmed, and the hypothesis "there is some cause for the apparent randomness" has no evidence supporting it as yet.
Narad • Aug 25, 2012 @9:19 am

So it is less that we are dealing with 'uncaused' phenomenon and more that we are dealing with hidden information.

Hidden-variable theories have been considered at great length. Bell's theorem nixes local hidden variables. Put another way, this statement is false:

So, in the case of radioactive decay, it is still 'clockwork' – if we were ever able to gain perfect knowledge of an atom's state (currently considered necessarily impossible), we could perfectly predict all the permutations of that atom's state and thus all resulting states.
Random Encounter • Aug 25, 2012 @9:59 am

The practical case is that reality isn't simple. This is a great annoyance to theoretical physicists, but once you dig down to the bottom you have this bubbling cauldron of randomness that is continually messing with our ability to measure things accurately at that level.

On the other hand, we are getting some results that rule in and out a lot of current theories (planck-length granular space is under assault by a recent set of observations, for instance, and of course the Higgs discovery supporting the "Standard Model" particle physics formulation).

The world is a messy place, but with persistent observation and continued attempts to resolve those observations with theory we have a chance of getting a handle on it.
Narad • Aug 25, 2012 @10:21 am

The practical case is that reality isn't simple. This is a great annoyance to theoretical physicists….

Are you kidding? It's what keeps them in business.
Random Encounter • Aug 25, 2012 @11:08 am

That doesn't mean they don't find it annoying. The field is littered with theories that are simple, elegant, and wrong.
Ben • Aug 25, 2012 @12:40 pm

Grifter,
Indeed, they do not require 'true randomness' in the sense of an unpredictable, causeless effect. But they demonstrate the necessity of associating cause with effect to create a usable (and refutable) model – to be a complete scientific model, it must accurately predict the resultant state from an initial state (effect from cause).

Narad,

That is incorrect. As with a previous comment about the Bekenstein bound, I think the problem here is rooted in a lack of attention to what a theorem actually means.

Bell's inequality was used to demonstrate a paradox between quantum mechanic's predictions and the predictions made by certain subsets of 'local hidden-variable' models.

If we have perfect knowledge of an atom's initial state, Quantum Mechanics would be violated (CFD and uncertainty) and the end state would no longer be a statistical association with an observation, but the result of a dynamical and deterministic system.
John Beaty • Aug 25, 2012 @1:37 pm

M., you're welcome. I agree that most Americans have zero idea what happens outside their local sphere. The reality of poverty in America is both real and disheartening. It is also an order of magnitude less than Haiti, the DR and Africa.
Ben, if you can't do the math, you can't understand the underpinnings of Heisenberg and therefore why Bell's theorem does, in fact, preclude locally hidden variables. 2nd semester Partial Differentials to start. Also, it is sufficient for a model to predict a range of ending conditions from an initial range of starting conditions. There is no necessity that either be precise the way you appear to me to be stating. A "complete" model would actually be the entire system. And the HUP dictates that it is in fact impossible to determine perfectly the initial state. Unless you are willing to falsify it, I think you're stuck with it.
Grifter, The Cold Equations was the first SF story I read that had me in tears, nearly 50 years ago. I let people read it who don't believe the SF deals with real events and real people. Currently, C. J. Cherryh is my favorite author, running neck and neck with Harlan Ellison and Ursula LeGuin.
What a fabulous conversation we're having!
John Beaty • Aug 25, 2012 @1:38 pm

Random E: "For every complex issue, there is at least one solution that is simple, obvious and completely wrong." Don't know who said it first….
Random Encounter • Aug 25, 2012 @1:47 pm

That is a slight variation on an H.L. Mencken quote. He probably wasn't the first to say it, though.
Narad • Aug 25, 2012 @2:42 pm

Bell's inequality was used to demonstrate a paradox between quantum mechanic's predictions and the predictions made by certain subsets of 'local hidden-variable' models.

"Certain subsets"? You sure seem to be plainly asserting local realism.
John Berry • Aug 26, 2012 @2:37 pm

I am reading this thread as simply an observer and I am sincerely grateful that you have all decided to participate and share your knowledge and passion with the rest of us. Many thanks.
Gavin • Aug 27, 2012 @9:19 am

Alright, I'm back from the weekend and going to do my best to give every response a fair turn. I don't know how long you guys monitor these article comments for afterwards but hopefully some of these responses will reach the inidividuals they're intended for. I'll respond in order unless there's a particularly long post to respond to separately. Please let me know if I have missed your post.

@Random Encounter: (you get your own response)
Keep in mind that the old covenant laws were also a work intended to govern, like a constitution (the covenant components are actually in the form of a suzerain treaty, between a Ruler and his subjects). Even today if someone beats or kills a pregnant woman they can be considered to have killed two people. Perhaps the main difference is that they wanted the kid, or perhaps to reflect the more heinous act of beating/killing a pregnant woman just like we have harsher laws for harming old people or children. But I do not think it is unreasonable to say that a "life for a life" is clearly on the side of it being life. Typically though, in biblical times this means the mother was beginning to show. I would guess.

I understand that you think religion is necessarily magic. Just keep in mind that if such a creator exists then it is a "natural" being. It may not belong in this universe since it wasn't created here but that would just make it a sort of alien. I see human kind constantly racing towards the ability to make universes. We see the most clear expression of it within computer development in gaming and computer generated movies but games are the best example as they're dynamic 3 dimensional environments that you can travel in. As those games get more and more complex, it will get closer and closer to making legitimate universes, perhaps to the point that individual lines of code will eventually think for themselves without even knowing that they're in it (hate to get all matrixy but our big bang could have been some developers starting our program and this is how far the program has developed. I hope they make regular backups if that's the case. This joke brought to you by: a computer nerd). It is not then, unreasonable to suppose that a being with sufficient know-how and means would do so. It is also not unreasonable to think that this being would pay closer attention to the areas of the universe supporting life, especially if those areas only support life due to intervention on its part.

None of this, thought of in this way, would be magic. Any being that can manipulate energy well enough, for example, could also be able to convert it into matter. At some point we should be able to do that ourselves if we haven't already since we do know that energy can be converted to matter and vice versa. I would say that if God exists, that there is a reason why He would be powerful enough to create a universe. So it doesn't have to be magic.

Understand also that without religion there is no actual morality. There are laws or ramifications for actions imposed by society or perhaps physics (e.g. jumping off a building means you'll likely die depending on distance fallen, this ramification is supplied by gravity and biology, not society) but no action is good or bad except in the survival of your lineage which is the only important part of evolution. Passing on your genes. So, without a moral framework for ethics then the morality of abortion is a null discussion. "But it's a human life" can be most easily countered by "so?". Technically, you're just making my genes more fit for survival by limiting competition in the next generation in that scenario. But this line of thinking diminishes the value of human life and really any actions we take. Such toughts and motivations are sociopathic by way of an extreme dose of utilitarianism. Again, without a moral construct/framework then that's not necesarily a bad thing.

Now then, I have made every effort to state that my position is not based on religion. It was interesting to see the verse that Grifter presented but by no means any evidence that I'm using here. Perhaps if everyone here was of the same faith I could explain that our moral framework makes it so, but my personal reasons are based on how I identify life (organic metabolism, primarily said this way to rule out a.i. programs which could eventually qualify as life anyways, albeit constructed) and how I identify humans (DNA, the ultimate identification system). There is nothing that would indicate that a fetus is not alive, nor that it is not human. It is clearly human life and I think we're all pretty much in agreement on this. The differentiator is apparently humanity and this is the point being argued.

My point is that there's really not much difference between a one-day old baby and a fetus. Neither presents any of the elements of humanity that we would really associate babies as having. Babies are still parasites on those around them in that they can only take and anything they produce you wouldn't want. The only real differences is that it is no longer connected to another human being. Yet we would clearly define killing a baby as murder, and egregious murder at that.

Tell me, at what point do you think it's ok to abort a fetus? You stated after the first trimester, but a lot happens in the first trimester. By week 4 the fetus' heart is already pumping blood and has nerves. Arms, facial features and the shape are also clearly developing here. That's less than a month. It is first actually called a fetus in week 9 after conception, after the genitals have formed (eyelids have fused, ears have set). The last week of the trimester is when the fetus grows fingernails and the face is clearly human in appearance. Please note that this is 10 weeks after conception, some sites may say 12 weeks because pregnancy is not counted from conception, the previous period is where it's counted from. The information I got above was from the Mayo clinic.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/prenatal-care/PR00112

I strongly agree with the idea that if abortion is made illegal that society needs to step up and take care of the expenses. I do not think that abortion should ever be made illegal in the case of risk of the mother's life due to complications. Let me be very clear on this, if my wife and I were to get pregnant and we learned that there was even a 10 or 5% possibility of her death due to complications I would have the pregnancy terminated if she'd agree to it. We spoke about it this weekend. We may consider going to the point of viability and inducing birth then if the risk is significantly lower a month ahead of full birth, but I do not believe that my wife's life is worth less than a child's life nor should she be forced to risk her life for anyone else including the child/fetus. I would not impose this on anyone else either. I don't think that the actual risk of normal pregnancy is a legitimate cause for concern (in comparison, even a 1% chance of fatality is 100 times more likely that you'd die than the normal risk). I would consider even a 1% chance pretty high and I'm not a gambler. Well, I am, but with money and at a table amongst friends. But even then not with a lot of money, $20 tops and I usually win.

If abortion is ever made illegal across the board, even in the case of complications and increased risk, then I will see it as an egregious miscarriage of justice. Absolutely no pun intended.

And almost on queue:
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pregnancy-begins-2-weeks-before-conception-now-the-law-in-arizona/politics/2012/04/13/37993

Pregnancy does begin 2 weeks before conception. It always has in the medical community. As I stated in the post before reading your next comment, that's where doctors count the 9 months/40 weeks from. If the doctor tells you you've been pregnant for 2 months, it's more likely 1 and a half months that you've actually had a zygote.

That being said, any previously existing laws should be changed to reflect this change in terminology. There is an additional thing to consider, that the confusion of terminology just needed to be clarified and that this is already what they intended with their claims. Does the language of the previously existing laws say pregnancy or conception? Because conception would always remain the same point and this law wouldn't change it. Now, if they say conception starts two weeks before conception, that will be VERY interesting.
Random Encounter • Aug 27, 2012 @10:41 am

@Gavin
I see your point, and we are clearly doomed to disagree on the point at which an embryo or fetus deserves legal protection.

I am relieved to see that you understand my view of the full social contract implied by making abortion illegal, I wonder how many others who hold the same opinion see the contract the same way? From my perspective it appears that few could be persuaded, though I hope that they could argue their case as effectively as you do.

On the last point, enshrining a medical rule-of-thumb in law as a basis for rulemaking that can adversely impact the rights of a particular class of people is something that gives me chills. You realize that should the law stand it would make it perfectly reasonable to make it illegal to serve alcohol to women of childbearing age? I leave it to you to come up with other ways such a well-placed fulcrum could be used.
Grifter • Aug 27, 2012 @10:58 am

@Gavin

Understand also that without religion there is no actual morality.

I reject that statement. If gawd himself came down and said that baby rape/murder was the moral thing, I still wouldn't think it was.
Random Encounter • Aug 27, 2012 @12:38 pm

@Grifter that's a pretty standard part of Calvinist theology. If he subscribes to a Calvinist denomination that's just how it goes.

If the Calvinists are correct we are just lucky that the good Lord was so generous in spreading that morality around even to those of us who don't believe in Him.
Gavin • Aug 27, 2012 @2:02 pm

Sorry, busy day, not even close to responding. Just got two in.

@Narad:
It is a statistic, and I'm saying it is not significant. Not only is the number itself not likely to happen at all, but of the 17 per 100,000 there is a decent chance that many of them were the people who did not have proper medical care or were the ones that went ahead with the pregnancy despite being warned. Any major complication can be identified well before the "big day", such is modern technology.

Hmm, I found new results: I'm getting some conflicting data. Other sources list 6.5 deaths per 100,000 (0.000065). According to The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Between 2000 and 2006 they collected data on 1.5 million deliveries. 95 of which resulted in death. 27 of those deaths were deemed preventable (17 were caused by doctor mistakes, 10 by non-doctors). It doesn't include the number that had been warned not to continue but did so anyways or the number that were too far away from the hospital (silly home births, 20-40% of births can have major complications that can be almost entirely taken care of in hospitals but not at home).

The CDC listed 13 per 100,000 in 2006. So I don't know which is right. I haven't seen the CDC's study parameters, just the journal one with the 1.5 million sample size.

Thanks for making me research the topic, I wouldn't have found real information if I wasn't pushed to do so.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/25/home-birth-increasingly-popular-but-dangerous.html

See, home birth has had an explosion in the states. I already knew this because of people I'd met in New England and Washington State. It isn't just religious people, hippies too (for lack of a better word). According to the link it has grown 29% from 2004-2009 to 30,000. Though the study says that it's really difficult to nail down solid figures (since there's no registry for homebirthers). What's worse is since fatalities involving the mother are so rare, only the infant fatalities are ever listed as far as I can tell. All I see are comments like in wikipedia where it says, "much higher risk for maternal deaths and perinatal mortality.", very technical. However, it stands to reason that any complication that would otherwise just involve a change of rooms in a hospital will result in a trip across town or perhaps a trip into town.

It seems that if the midwife is a fully trained medical professional (they usually aren't and just need to pass a single multiple choice test to be a certified midwife), if they get prenatal care, and if the city's transportation is up to par, that the difference in safety is not noticeable. These three things are not always the case. In fact, a family friend just had a home birth without ever doing prenatal care stuff or even having an ultrasound (much to my dismay). The child turned out fine but I can't imagine what it'd have been like if it'd gone the other way.

The most significant risk is to the infant.

The lifetime risk of maternal death in the U.S. in 2010 was 1 in 2400.

0.041%? So if you're a woman there's a 99.96% chance you'll die from something other than pregnancy? That would be the equivalent of women have an average of around 3 or 4 children in their lifetime. I think the 2000 US survey was under 2 children per household so it should be lower than that. The number should be figured out this way. If the average number of children per household with children is 1.86 (probably down from 2000 though) and the risk of dying from child bearing is .017% (a number I now believe to be high as is), then the liklihood of death in your lifetime from child bearing in America should be .032%. The ratio of this to .41% is 1.32, multiply that times 2400 and you get 3174.

So the lifetime risk would be 1 in 3174. This will differ according to the 2010 census average number of children per family with children but that number is supposed to be going down. To put this into perspective to the car statistic you mentioned. More people die by car crash in the US in one year and three months than will die in their entire lives (80 something years since we're talking risk in lifetime) by child bearing. Your risk of dying in a car is about 1 in a 100. You have a 1% chance to die in a car. The odds are only increasing, especially with text drivers, those assholes. I would expect a significant leap from 2006 to 2016 in driving related deaths thanks to just that demographic.

This number doesn't increase the risk of having a single child. The risk remains the same but the risk is still there each time (actually subsequent pregnancies are more risky, especially if the previous one had a c-section or other complications).

Listen, there is a danger to most everything we do. But you can't say that the only necessary evolutionary trait (passing on genes) that makes any species successful is dangerous. Let me present some interesting things that are more likely

Heart Disease
1-in-5

Cancer
1-in-7

Stroke
1-in-23

Accidental Injury
1-in-36

Motor Vehicle Accident*
1-in-100

Intentional Self-harm (suicide)
1-in-121

Falling Down
1-in-246

Assault by Firearm
1-in-325

Fire or Smoke
1-in-1,116

Natural Forces (heat, cold, storms, quakes, etc.)
1-in-3,357

http://www.livescience.com/3780-odds-dying.html

They actually don't list pregnancy even though they eventually go to things like getting hit by an asteroid. I guess that's because men are 0% likely so the odds are a little less than twice for a human. Still, I'd expect it to be mentioned. We're (US) actually twice as likely to die from pregnancy than Canada, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Singapore and 21 of the 22 Western European countries (http://www.conversationsforabetterworld.com/2010/05/increasing-trend-of-u-s-mothers-dying-during-pregnancy/).

That article may hold the key. We have the highest teen pregnancy rate amongst these developed nations I listed and giving birth younger than 20 years of age is significantly more risky. It also states new definitions of maternal death in the states as contributing to higher numbers (death while pregnant or within 42 days of birth/miscarriage from any cause caused by or made worse by the pregnancy, e.g. suicide).
AlphaCentauri • Aug 27, 2012 @2:10 pm

Part of the religious issue is the concept that humans have a spiritual component in addition to the physical one ("soul," etc.). Some faiths believe all sentient beings possess it. The question then becomes, at what point in development does the developing embryo become a member of the human community by virtue of its spiritual existence?

One thing to consider is identical twins. If you split the zygote in fragments before 8 days gestation (from fertilization), you get multiple separate humans, who are clearly not a single person. After 12 days, if the embryo survives at all, it is only if it is a partial division, as conjoined twins. Something changes in that interval from a biological standpoint that defines that developing embryo as a single human rather than a cluster of cells that can all individually become different humans.
Gavin • Aug 27, 2012 @2:19 pm

Quick responses to the posts made during my post:

Random Encounter:
I was just stating possible reasons behind what they did. I didn't read enough to see what the actual implications of that decision is for existing laws. If it is something sneaky they did, then shame on them. If major changes are to be made to such volitile laws then they should be done publicly, not in shadows. It is not doing a service to the people you govern (in a democracy!) if they do not agree with it. It is failing to do your job.

As for social contract. I doubt anyone could give a good argument for why society should enforce their view at such a great cost to the individual without also providing every available assistance to them.

@Grifter/Random Encounter: I am not Calvinist by any means.

My comment is one of ethical framework, completely void of religion and solely steeped in philosophy. Religion establishes a persistent and objective (perhaps subjective at the time of creation but objective to those who follow) moral framework. Without religion there is no such thing. There are laws, but they can easily change and aren't necessarily moral (think of laws in Muslim countries that harm women and allow murder of people who switch faiths to anything but Islam or pro-slavery laws in America pre-1865 and Jim Crow laws later on). Now we clearly see these laws as "wrong", but by what standards? What's to say society won't cycle back at some point or find something we're doing now unethical or things we aren't doing now ethical? Then there's just a personal code of ethics. Entirely subjective as well without any necessary correlation with another person's codes.

So praytell, is there any absolute good or evil without a framework?
Grifter • Aug 27, 2012 @2:24 pm

@Gavin:

There were as many slaveowners who used the bible to justify their positions as there were abolitionists who did the same, so your argument that religions is "objective" is kind of ridiculous.
Grifter • Aug 27, 2012 @2:31 pm

@Gavin:

But even if we think of a hypothetical religion with unambiguous terms, we still run into the problem that you could have a religion which said baby rape was the moral thing to do…would you really say "well, that's objective ethical framework!"

As has been said: "With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
John Beaty • Aug 27, 2012 @6:45 pm

Gavin, please list an action that is purely good or purely evil, outside a religious context.
Grifter • Aug 27, 2012 @7:09 pm

@John Beaty:

I think Gavin's position is that there's no such thing as good or evil outside of a religious context?
Random Encounter • Aug 27, 2012 @7:29 pm

@Gavin I look with a jaundiced eye whenever lawmakers get into trying to define technical issues as a matter of law. When to count the start of a pregnancy is very much a technical issue for doctors, and setting a definition that precedes conception as a matter of law opens up a can of worms that in my opinion is best left closed and buried under at least 10 feet of good solid basalt.
AlphaCentauri • Aug 27, 2012 @8:05 pm

The reason for having a legal definition of gestational age is that you have to determine how to enforce laws that are based on gestational age, such as the limits for legal abortions. If one person is saying 23 1/2 weeks and means 23 1/2 weeks since conception and another person means 23 1/2 weeks since the first day of the last menstrual periods, you've got problems.
Gavin • Aug 28, 2012 @6:27 am

I'm responding to more recent posts first because these are the current debates. I should mention now that I have a 5-day holiday starting on thursday.

@Grifter:
The slavery happening in Jerusalem in new covenant times (the covenant Christians are part of) wasn't supposed to be the same as American slavery. It was still bad, but the Bible actually didn't impose its philosophy on laws, it just taught how to live amongst those laws (give to Casear what is Casear's, Romans 13:1-2, and 1 Peter 2:13-17: all phrases or verses that tell Christians to obey the laws of the land). Slavery typically occured through bondsmanship, not kidnapping. In fact, kidnapping is forbidden in scripture (old testament demands death for a kidnapping a man and sells or uses him as a slave, Exd 21:16 and the new testament also condemns them 1 Timothy 1:9). The old testament does have a precedent for slaves acquired through battle, but the alternative was usually to kill them. You can decide which is better, to be dead or to be alive but captive.

American slavery as we think of it was purely kidnapping. We did have bondslavery early on for people to get to America. But anyone who advocated theft of people from Africa to be held as slaves for the entirety of their lives or any time at all were merely ignorant of what it was supposed to mean back in those days. A person had a debt and was unable to repay it so they had to work it off. Credit and credit cards are the same thing nowadays, just in a different way, thankfully.

Alpha Centauri:

With regards to the spirit aspect, this is exactly the sort of thing I want to avoid getting into. We're not only talking about something that can't really be quantified, but something that is personal belief-based.

I think you're making a reasonable case against the individuality of a zygote not being established, but I have also claimed that the zygote is the equivalent of a seed with all the components of a seed. Seeds and Zygotes/embryos are analogous, containing all the same components and features and yet we don't call a seed a plant, just a seed. I would be willing to accept this distinction ourselves and call life at implantation rather than conception.
Gavin • Aug 28, 2012 @7:06 am

@Grifter:
You are pointing out the potential flaw of having a bad moral construct. It's a very real problem and I don't deny it. Look at Islam, one of my areas of specialization. The Qur`an gives you the appropriate steps to punish your wife (1. Warn her, 2. Refuse to lay with her. 3. Beat her) with modern translations being so kind as to add the word "lightly" to the "beating her" step. The murder of a convert away from Islam is demanded and regularly carried out today. The burning of a book results in legally sanctioned death, a twelve-year old girl is recently making headlines because she did that (dumb girl… *sigh*) and is about to be executed for it. Then there is freely allowed murder of anyone who isn't a Christian, Jew, or Sabian and the murder of any of those faiths if they don't pay the taxes demanded of them. Those laws aren't as readily enforced, it seems, but the law often looks the other way in such situations.

Additionally, the Prophet of Islam (whose actions are held as holy and perfect) married a 6 or 7-year old girl named Aisha and consummated at the age of 9. This is heavily documented with only one disenting source claiming she was 10 and they have no special information to be the only correct one and come on, it's still a 10 year-old child. This was a 50+ year-old man having sex with a 9 year old girl and this is to be considered a righteous action by Islam.

So yeah, you get into a situation where the moral construct could be bad. This is usually when the scripture is also part of the legal system. Christianity can avoid this because it isn't, it puts itself inside a foreign environment and not in the leadership role. The worst thing that happened to Christianity was when the western church (Rome, as opposed to the other 4 members of the Pentarchy: Alexandria, Istanbul/Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch) assumed the role of government when the Roman Empire created a power vaccuum by falling. This suddenly meant that the pope was also emperor and thus began mafia like violence for the next several centuries since the church positions became powerful and thus attractive to non-believers and non-faithful (non-believers being non-Christians, non-faithful here being used to imply that they believe but don't follow the faith) with aspirations of ruling.

Keep in mind that the Christian religion is adherant to the New Covenant. If a Christian insists on enforcing Old Covenant law to you, feel free to point out the scriptures of modern contention or the idea that it was a covenant designed to rule a nation in violent times, but most of all point to our own scripture where it blatantly says that we have a new covenant and the old one is no longer ours (Hebrews 8:13 = By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.).

This seperation is why you get renowned Atheists, Agnostics, or even members of other faiths who find themselves liking the words of Jesus even though they don't believe in his deity or abhor the way religion has been used despite its peaceful message.

The point is that while there are bad constructs and good constructs, at least they are attempts at moral absolutes that laws and societies don't necessarily have the "authority" to impose on individuals. These then become rules and subjective points that then change from area to area. Sure, pedofile activities like a 50-year old man having sex with a 9-year old girl are illegal here? That's great, they're also legally acceptable elsewhere. Is it right? Who knows [/sarcasm/jest]?
Grifter • Aug 28, 2012 @7:33 am

@Gavin:

But they aren't objective. They're completely subject to the interpretations placed on them.

For example:

You can say, now, that "oh, well, it was different slavery!", but the bible still says "slaves, obey your masters". You can say "oh, what's better, slavery or death", and I can respond "that's a false dichotomy, better would be neither, like we presently do with prisoners of war".

You can say "oh, we're under the new covenant, but then Matthew 5:18 says "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." (Yes, I know there's better translations, but "tittle" is a funny word).

The "moral framework" you are advocating as "objective" is: Subjective initially (created in theory by your God), and subjective in application (since there is nothing to prevent someone from saying "This is what it says, but this is what it means", which happens all the time.

It would only TRULY be objective to the practitioner of the moral framework if there were oversight, which there is not. There is no way to prevent someone from being mistaken through religion any more than there is with rational philosophy. Especially since all religions come from a "revelation", which in theory could be repeated, which allows for whatever books to be "corrected" by anyone with a sincere belief.
Gavin • Aug 28, 2012 @8:18 am

That's twice that my responses have gotten lost thanks to power outages. Hurricane Isaac or whatever it is isn't even raining on us and the sun is even shining through breaks in the clouds. My company has large generators that should be handling this.

I'll wait a bit on responding so I do not continue to lose lengthy posts. My current attempt is to respond to M.
John Beaty • Aug 28, 2012 @10:22 am

Gavin, save your work outside of the comment box and cut and paste.

Grifter, I was trying to come from the other direction. Gavin seems to think that without religion, all acts are permitted, including those that he deems evil or good. What I was trying to ask was, what are those acts, which, with religion, would be unacceptable, while being acceptable in a self-derived moral framework, which acts are not strictly religiously prohibited ones.

Gavin, please do not fall back on the No True Scotsman fallacy. And what Islam does is irrelevant to the current discussion.

OK, gods of clarity, shine on me!
Narad • Aug 28, 2012 @11:06 am

It seems that if the midwife is a fully trained medical professional (they usually aren't and just need to pass a single multiple choice test to be a certified midwife)….

I'm not planning to pursue this much further, as it's quite tangential, but there are a number of midwifery categories, just as there is quite a bit of variation in state licensing requirements. I'm familiar with the homebirthing set; the genuine frontier types who just put a kiddie pool in the living room and hope for the best have not struck me as being in the majority. It looks as though only two states recognize the CM credential, which would seem to be the test-only option that you identify above as being "usual."
Narad • Aug 28, 2012 @11:08 am

Gavin, save your work outside of the comment box and cut and paste.

The Textarea Cache add-on for Firefox can also be handy in this regard.
Gavin • Aug 28, 2012 @1:57 pm

@M.: Ah, where I'm from pro-choice/abortion is the norm or the pro-life category is so ridiculous as to not warrant any attention. As for the pro-life groups. I think the comparison is so striking because of the term "pro-life". The idea is that a fetus is inherrently innocent just as a man in a coma cannot commit a punishable crime due to a lack of motivation and means. This is true. So, I can understand someone (who believes it is a life) speaking up for a fetus but not speaking up for a serial killer. Due to the difference of criminal activities that demand justice I don't see any necessary conflict. The apparent oxy moron of a pro-capital punishment pro-lifer is fun to point and laugh at, but not really mutually exclusive from eachother.

I'm not particularly in favor of or against capital punishment. As in, I'm not a proponent of either side. I think our prison system is largely broken so I'm not really happy either way and there is so much moral dilema everywhere in between. I think that justice needs to be had, but what that entails has plagued human kind's various legal systems since they began. I see every side but the most reliable person on the matter I've seen is largely in the anti-capital punishment side of things.

His name was John Howard Yoder. I hesitate to bring him up only because of the sex scandel he got wrapped up in at some point. I find that church's have been really bad at accepting sex as a normal human function. I trace it back to Augustine who wrote a lot on the subject as it was his own vice and his words ended up being abused by the Western Church to great harm. This is why we now see priests that are forced to be celibate for the rest of their lives or leave the job they love. We also see pastors that are extremely repressed and don't know what to do when tempted sexually because they've avoided the subject like the plague. I guess groups like the Roman Catholic Church just throw out scriptures that require leaders of the Church to have only one wife and children that are well behaved (1 Timothy 3:1-12). It is because of all of this that we see people who are otherwise good men fall to really crappy stuff for which there's really no excuse on the individual level even if the institution has created a breeding ground for it. Still, it is remarkably sad that a renowned Christian Ethics scholar fell to this. Hypocrisy is something I hope I never understand on a personal level.

Anyways, back to Yoder. He taught two things that I really spent a lot of time on. One, that the job of Christians isn't supposed to be taking over government or forcing their beliefs onto others, but rather just being the Church, taking advantage of good opportunities to show compassion and good will. I particularly love this philosphy and try to live it out.

The second that he dealt with is the point of his mention here. Capital punishment. It is intended as two things, sacrifice and deterrence. His point on sacrifice was that the notion of blood for blood is an antiquated component of the Old Covenant that was abolished by the sacrifice establishing the New Covenant (the sacrifice of Jesus). That's an acceptable explanation for Christians and combining that with forgiving others of debt would also go a long way to insist only on captivity to keep the threat away from society. But that doesn't help society which is not necessarily Christian. So I applied it to the topic of the need for sacrifice as reparations for victims. Much the same way that life insurance can't indemnify the holder of the claim by restoring the life so it just gives the people lots of money.

Are victims of heinous acts owed sacrifice? Is it justice to repay blood for blood in reparation for the victims? This is something I cannot answer and hope I'll never have to make a personal judgment call on.

The second component, that of deterrence is an interesting one. Yoder mentioned that if the purpose of capital punishment was deterrence then it would serve to deter (duh). He presented statistical evidence that showed no correlation between increases in capital punishment and the acts they're meant to deter. There is a much stronger tie to local economies. He also went on to say that if capital punishments were meant to deter, they should be as violent and public as possible to reach the intended audience and instill fear. But that violent and public is something we as a society have certainly moved away from so they cannot currently serve in that capacity either.

AlphaCentauri:

What does conjoined twins being rare and unique have to do with the conditions of a fetus being attached to the mother's body organically being similar to two humans being attached and potentially sharing such life saving functions too? If there was a really common form of conjoined twin defects would that form somehow not be conjoined?

The child and the mother are biologically attached for the entire pregnancy after the implantation stage. They both impact the other immensely though only the fetus relies on the mother for life (though the pregnancy does increase the mother's immune system). This is directly comparable to a conjoined twin scenario where one twin has all the "goods" that the other twin would not survive without. The difference is that those situations usually result in a severely handicapped second twin and that the first twin is usually likely to die if the second one is not removed. That is not the case here. Not only is the mother extremely unlikely to die, but the second twin/fetus will be naturally removed in a matter of months and then both lives can survive and go their seperate ways.

As for laws, what do you mean? There is a ton of legislation regarding conjoined twins. It is a really difficult area with a lot of concern placed on the possibility of one conjoined individual committing a crime. Would you be ok with two otherwise perfectly healthy conjoined twins being seperated if it means that one will die? How is that not comitting flagrant murder just to improve the other's quality of life? I understand if they'd both die if not seperated, but not if just one would.

As for the discussion not blowing up, I'm pretty impressed with the caliber of responses for what that's worth. I've really enjoyed learning and developing my train of thought. Perhaps it is docile because I just want to explain what I believe rather than force other people to believe it too. I'm also genuinely interested in what your side thinks.

I understand that the viability of enforcing these beliefs is low. I fully expect people to find ways around it. Difficulty in enforcing something shouldn't mean we should just allow it though. That wouldn't make sense at all. Theft in general is illegal and it's still going to happen.
Grifter • Aug 28, 2012 @2:05 pm

@M. @John Beaty (if either of you're still checking in): M., you were right, I liked it! Now, on to Stranger in a Strange Land.
Gavin • Aug 28, 2012 @2:23 pm

Ok, recent responses first then it looks like Grifter's magna post will be next on the list. Looks like a job for tomorrow though! Sorry.

@Grifter: (your recent one, not the two bigger posts yet)

There are several areas left for interpretation, yes. I'd be an idiot not to admit that. But laws don't resolve that problem either. There are some clear things and some ambiguous things anywhere you look. The problem I'm presenting is the lack of legitimacy of any moral construct of good or evil in the absence of a deity or framework that is considered to be an absolute. I'm just saying that morallity is a uniquely religious term. You can say personal morality which serves no purpose to society or you can say social morality (where breaching social contract is the only "bad") but not only does social morality morph but it can often accomodate egregious acts of what we'd currently agree is civil injustice. Likewise, why should another person accept social contract like you may? I have the golden rule as a reason to follow social contract but another person would only have your word to accept or reject.

This is just a philosophical problem of ethics when completely divorced from the idea of any absolute truths. Do you agree or disagree with this premise?

Now then, to scripture. The idea is that the New Testament was not meant to create laws, not like the Old Testament or the Qur`an or so many other religions. It was intended to describe how to be a Christian in a world that is not Christian. This world included slavery in many forms and so it explained how to deal with it. It also is quite clear against the action of kidnapping individuals. So we should be able to assume that with "kidnapping" being brought off the table that the discussion would have been left on bondmanship, something we still have today in the form of debt. It's just now we pay it off over time while working for someone else while still getting money to tend to ourselves. MUCH more convenient!

The explanation of the verse from Matthew is typically that His death was the completion of it. There's also the concept that the Law still exists but has been made obsolute (i.e. there are now two covenants). But ultimately this only proves the point that there are many "explanations" just like you're stating.

Even then, there are many points that are not in contention. Murder, for example, bad. Most of scripture is not ambiguous.

@John Beatty: It's a concession of the point Grifter made about the potential of a religion that teaches negative things that would be considered quite bad by society (I believe he stated baby rape). Islam is a fantastic example of a religion that is quite popular and yet has remarkably violent commands that are still being carried out. So it is very pertinent to the religious sub-conversation to point out the fact that some religions can have VERY different moral structuring behind them.

My main use of it was to contrast a religion instituted to govern and one that was not. If you find it offensive for me to present beliefs and verses of a religion that I can actually cite, please let me know.
Grifter • Aug 28, 2012 @3:28 pm

@Gavin:

"This is just a philosophical problem of ethics when completely divorced from the idea of any absolute truths. Do you agree or disagree with this premise?"

I do disagree with that premise. In the first place, there are very few absolute truths at all. In the second, you think "absolute truths" can only be reached by religion, rather than reason. Thirdly, you think religion gives absolute truths, when it clearly doesn't.

We figured out the laws of physics without religion. We figured out celestial mechanics despite the religion of the time. We figured out the constitution without having to refer to biblical passages. We have come up with some pretty good ethical systems without religion, too.

To respond to this:

"The problem I'm presenting is the lack of legitimacy of any moral construct of good or evil in the absence of a deity or framework that is considered to be an absolute. "

I would respond:
Even if you're religious, you operate in the absence of a deity. God doesn't come down daily and say "Uh, Gavin, you were thinking of beating up a gay dude, perhaps you didn't understand me, I didn't want you to do that".

You can never prove your "absolute", and it's always up for debate even among people who use the same book! (vis. Protestant vs. Catholic vs. Mormon vs. Jehovah's Witness, et al.)

To return to what I said before: Either God sets the morals and could make anything moral, or there is a principle higher even than God that sets them, which removes the religion necessity from the argument. Your framework, in theory, could require baby rape/murder. And even if you knew it was wrong, you'd still do it because it was an "absolute".

Religion in an ethical context is nothing more than a filter between reason and action that adds one more opportunity for corruption, like a game of telephone. Reason can lead you wrong, true, but so can religion.

My quote from earlier is still true: "With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." There are people, devout Christians, who don't want to hate the gays, yet who think it's required of them by their deity.

And, more, even if there was a God, what gives him moral authority except reason? "I created all this, therefore I get to be a dick. Prepare to be tortured"? I find the God of the bible to be a morally repugnant creature who rewards evil capriciously (the Jacob/Esau story troubled me a lot as a kid, as did a lot of others), and requires worship on pain of torture.

As regards to your arguments about the Testaments: I won't really bother engaging with them, sorry. Because the point is not whether your interpretation is valid on its own, but whether another interpretation can be made that is valid on its own. It can.

Even then, there are many points that are not in contention. Murder, for example, bad. Most of scripture is not ambiguous.

Buwahahahahahaha. Sorry, but I find that hilarious. "Murder, for example, bad." Unless God commands you to do it, right? Abraham's willingness to murder his son is why the Jews were the "chosen people", if I recollect. The fact that he stopped it at the last second isn't really germane to the fact that Abraham was rewarded for not saying "WTF? I'm not murdering my son!" And that's just the first example that sprang to mind. Of course, there's also a nice laundry list of capital offenses in the bible, which I guess aren't "murder", but still show that life wasn't particularly cherished by God, considering you could die for just being a disobedient kid, or approaching the tabernacle, or not being a virgin when married.

And don't forget that when you're at war, rape and child murder are totally okay, at least according to Isaiah 13:15-18:

"Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished. Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it. Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eyes shall not spare children."

I'm not trying to attack your religion, though I'm sure it seems that way. You should believe whatever you see fit. But you can't claim an objective truth and reference the bible.

Arguments like the one you presented remind me of the recent debate I saw between Dan Savage and Brian Brown (of NOM). A lot of Brown's arguments were basically "No, my views should be law because other Christians are wrong."

(And, for the record, not comparing you to Brown…just saying it's a similar type of argument, that seems to take my "This interpretation with awful things is also valid based on the book you claim is so great" and respond with "Well, you can't disprove my interpretation, therefore yours is invalid."…again, the point is not that yours is invalid, but that the one I presented is equally valid based on the same source documents…the fact that you've chosen one interpretation over the awful ones shows more the good of your own reason, than it does the good of the bible).
M. • Aug 28, 2012 @3:32 pm

@Grifter: Excellent! Now, if she offers you a copy of For Us, the Living, avoid at all costs unless you have a large amount of marijuana.
Gavin • Aug 29, 2012 @2:41 pm

Since this will already be a wall of text. I'll include the response to both of Grifter's comments here, seperating them just by the bold name font I use.

@Grifter:

Let me bold the part of the quote you cited to prove to me that atheism can be used to just mean non-faith.

"Atheism has sometimes been defined to include the simple absence of belief that any deities exist. This broad definition would include newborns and other people who have not been exposed to theistic ideas. As far back as 1772, Baron d'Holbach said that "All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God."

This "sometimes" doesn't mean it is accurate. American soldiers have sometimes defined themselves as mercenaries since they get paid to fight but mercenaries are specifically professional soldiers hired to serve in a foreign military. The quote (cited a bit below) talks about a philospher who has created non-accepted terms or at least the non-mainstream terms of "Positive and Negative Atheism". Please note, even if you want to use this term, "Negative" is not "Agnostic". Please understand that while Atheism may try to include agnosticism into its ranks, agnosticism does not include atheism. Agnosticism is specifically withholding judgment until evidence may be presented. You can say you are a "Negative Atheist" if you so desire, but Agnostic Atheism is not a valid category.

You are correct that Non-theism does include all branches not found in theism so it does include both agnosticism and atheism but saying non-theist doesn't mean you're everything outside of that spectrum, it's just a broader term like saying I'm not Russian doesn't mean I'm German, it only means I'm not Russian.

Let me ask you something, do you think theism necessitates creation by a supernaturally powerful God or could it simply be a sentient being with the know-how and ability to create on this scale? I think if anything actually exists then it must be inherrently natural even if immensely advanced, the "supernatural" are things that are said not to be possible. So, if it exists, it isn't supernatural.

A disbelief is not its own positive belief in the opposite.

I'm sorry but you're wrong. Disbelief is to not believe. Do I need to also cite a definition of the prefix "dis" or would that be distasteful and disrespectful? Perhaps citing it would be to my disadvantage or would it cause you to disassociate yourself from me in this conversation and permanently dislike me? Do you agree or disagree?

Haha, joking aside, "dis" is a latin word that literally means negative or reversing force. It is the opposite of the word it precedes. Non-belief is different from disbelief in the polarity of distinction. Again, belief = affirming existence, non-belief = Not affirming existence but not denying existence either, dis-belief = denying existence.

But, sometimes dis can mean "not", so there is a potential for ambiguity here. Disbelief can mean Not belief. It is possible, I don't think so since terms like non-belief exist, but I can't entirely rule out the possibility. This is the fault of the dictionary whose writers we cannot expect to foresee just such an argument. Still, the very sources you presented still explain that agnostics generally claim the exact point I've been making, here, I'll post your source again and bold the components you seem to have missed. I do not see how you could accuse me of not reading the source fully and then presenting something that says everything I've been claiming

"While Martin, for example, asserts that agnosticism entails negative atheism,[29] most agnostics see their view as distinct from atheism,[citation needed] which they may consider no more justified than theism or requiring an equal conviction.[43] The assertion of unattainability of knowledge for or against the existence of gods is sometimes seen as indication that atheism requires a leap of faith.[44][unreliable source?] Common atheist responses to this argument include that unproven religious propositions deserve as much disbelief as all other unproven propositions,[45] and that the unprovability of a god's existence does not imply equal probability of either possibility.[46] Scottish philosopher J. J. C. Smart even argues that "sometimes a person who is really an atheist may describe herself, even passionately, as an agnostic because of unreasonable generalised philosophical skepticism which would preclude us from saying that we know anything whatever, except perhaps the truths of mathematics and formal logic."[47] Consequently, some atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins prefer distinguishing theist, agnostic and atheist positions along a spectrum of theistic probability—the likelihood that each assigns to the statement "God exists".

So you see, the argument that atheists have with agnostics is that they think that just because there's not enough evidence either way doesn't mean that there is an equal possibility that either are true. But this is besides the point, agnosticism isn't a judgment on probability, it's a statement that there's not enough evidence to be either even if one is more likely than another. You also can't say that one is more likely than another, have you mathematically calculated the probability of each potential cause of the universe in a meaningful and interpretable way? No, we can't. So I assert that agnostics have it right if you want to avoid faith-based or gambling-like actions.

Even the initial sentence of that quote has martin saying that agnosticism entails negative atheism (which is not Atheism). He has just redifined atheism to include agnosticism and the agnostics strongly disagree and rightfully so.

So again, you can be a negative atheist, but not an agnostic atheist. You can be an atheist who is close to agnosticism on the scale of probability but once you decide that God does not exist as opposed to God may not exist you have chosen a side.

I'll point most firmly to the comment I bolded in the middle from J.J.C. Smart (Jack Smart, though his actual name is John Jamieson Carswell Smart, no Jack). He stated that many Atheists incorrectly call themselves agnostics simply because of the philosophy that we can't really know anything. According to him you can't be two things, you can only be one but very close to one of the other points but there is no firm point on the scale of 0-1 that could be objectively pointed out as the break.

Dawkin's was more direct. Dawkin's scale does not include agnosticism at all but I would say of the 7 points that the middle three options of his scale are where agnosticism falls. It includes inclination but not affirmation of either side with 4 being in the exact middle and without even inclination towards a side. One more step away from the middle three (going to 2 or 6) in either direction still includes small degrees of uncertainty but the way the individual lives their lives is based on the assumption that God is or is not there. So these stages are labled De Facto Atheist or De Facto Theist. The final step is of course absolute belief, "I do not believe, I know", so either I know that God does not exist or I know that God does exist. Dawkins placed himself as a 6 on the scale. So his scale is in line with Smart's. I would admittedly place myself on 2 though I know a good little boy should say 1…

In any instance, none of them would accept the idea of agnostic athiesm. They are simply mutually exclusive terms and the clear distinction is affirmation of belief or accepting one side. Martin himself is only stretching Atheism to the entire lower 50 percent when adding a negative category to Atheism. But this is something almost everyone else seems to disagree with as you should clearly see.

I'm just trying to help you be a better atheist. Every time you define yourself as an agnostic atheist to someone who knows better an angel gets his wings and I know for a fact that you atheists hate angels with wings most of all.

So then, are you an agnostic, or an atheist? Dawkins is generally considered reliable due to Dawkin's successful status as a public face of atheism. So if atheist, are you a de facto atheist or just a 100%atheist? I would say, from what you told me, that you'd be a de facto atheist. Either way, you are not agnostic unless you also don't believe God doesn't exist (yay, double negatives).

If by "newer" you mean "since the 1700s", then I will concede your point.

You actually brought up Huxley immediately after saying that. If you do realize that agnosticism was first used in 1869 by Thomas Henry Huxley to define his belief in direct contrast of contemporary beliefs in his day then you should understand that the definitions of atheism were different from just non-belief in his day? The baby comment would have only been to explain that a baby didn't have faith because there was no agnostic option. Pre-1869 there was only Atheism and Theism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley_and_agnosticism#Thomas_Henry_Huxley

Huxley specifically created the word to define a position that neither affirms nor denies the existance of God or "immortal man". Follow that link, this is the creator of the word itself, here is a quote of the creation of the term:

When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis,"–had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion. [...]. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. […] To my great satisfaction the term took.

So you see, the term agnosticism was made as a direct alternative to atheism which had already existed. Anyone who now tries to redifine it is an asshat (haha) with no memory of its reason for inception.

Again, Atheism may be willing to include Agnostics in their ranks but Agnostics do not include atheism. Agnostic is a term that specifically means reserving judgment. If you take atheist to mean everyone except theists then that includes agnostics, but agnostics do not include atheism. My opposition to you is specifically your combination of Agnosticism and Atheism, an intrinsically contradictory combination. It is literally saying, "I don't have enough information to fully choose so I won't if God exists or not, I choose that God does not exist." Nonsense.

Again, there is a modern trend to allow the combination of the terms but it is one made out of ignorance just like your source on Smart stated. George H. Smith started this Agnostic Atheist crap by trying to remove the with-holding of judgment from the term agnostic, but that's the entire point of the term agnostic, that there is not enough information so I reserve judgment until new information is gathered.

The concept of Agnostic Atheism is catching on and may very well have already become accepted despite agnostic contesting the terminology. But the definitions of "Agnostic Atheist" are in no way different from just the term Agnostic. If you will, please explain how you differentiate Agnostic Atheism from Agnosticism?

Let me give you an example:

"Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not have belief in the existence of any deity, and agnostic because they do not claim to know that a deity does not exist."

So then, an agnostic atheist doesn't believe in God nor do they claim to know that a deity does nto exist? That's pretty much the definition of agnostic, they don't believe in God nor do they believe that God does not exist. How is that any different and why are you adding the word Atheist to it? In this case it'd be like saying ATM machine.

You already have faith that matter and energy conservation laws were thrown out, and that cause and effect are suspended, you just believe they were thrown out by a god before the birth of the universe, rather than by the universe's birth. Again, I know the universe exists. And I know that at present we do not know any of the conditions pre-universe, nor what the physical laws were pre-universe. Until that changes, I'm going to say that it seems more likely that the thing I know created itself, than that there was something else that violates all those laws instead, then created this universe.

I don't believe that anything was thrown out. Only that the laws in this universe did not necessarily apply to anything before the universe. You are the one who is guilty of saying that our universe's laws and principles existed before its creation. That's the "faith" position being expressed here. I will tell you this though, in a universe where cause and effect are basic laws and principles then there should be a point in the past where the principle and law itself was caused unless the rule itself is something that breaks itself…

Now then, again, it is awfully convenient for people to say "Well, the laws of science didn't exist at the big bang", if the big bang had no rules then there is no claim anyone could make about anything. It could have been any number of dieties or actions causing it, it simply doesn't matter because we can never know without being able to see it.

I wonder… if you could see far enough and could get far enough away from the center of the universe if you could see the universe's creation just like how we see a multiple year-old version of celestial bodies that are multiple light-years away. I wonder what you'd see if you took one more step away (assuming at this point you were previously traveling at the same rate of expansion and have then gotten one more unit of distance away).

As do I! But it does prove that "something can come from nothing" as part of the natural world, with no need for "magic". So…therefore your argument, that we "never" see this, is invalid. No, that was the entire point of my statement. There is no "nothing" anywhere in the universe. Zero point energy isn't absolutely no energy. There will always be vacuum energy, for example, which is a positive number. That's what vacuum energy is.

This isn't something from nothing, it's energy to matter and matter to energy and because vacuum energy is everywhere, even in vacuums (hence the name) it is always there and is a positive number. This is what I mean by the terminology being incorrect. There is no such thing as a pure vacuum void of energy. All the links I presented and sources I mentioned were to explain this fact. Zero-point energy is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical physical system may have, it is not 0. There's a reason why they don't just define it as there being no energy in the system. "The uncertainty principle actually requires every physical system to have a zero-point energy greater than the minimum of its classical potential well, even at absolute zero." These words are directly from the wiki page you cited earlier. So if the classical potential well is 0, the zero-point energy must be higher. Why, you ask?

Zero-point energy is fundamentally related to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Roughly speaking, the uncertainty principle states that complementary variables (such as a particle's position and momentum, or a field's value and derivative at a point in space) cannot simultaneously be defined precisely by any given quantum state. In particular, there cannot be a state in which the system sits motionless at the bottom of its potential well, for then its position and momentum would both be completely determined to arbitrarily great precision. Therefore, the lowest-energy state (the ground state) of the system must have a distribution in position and momentum that satisfies the uncertainty principle, which implies its energy must be greater than the minimum of the potential well.

Even though the zero-point energy is theoretically infinite, there is as yet no practical evidence to suggest that infinite amounts of zero-point energy are available for use, that zero-point energy can be withdrawn for free, or that zero-point energy can be used in violation of conservation of energy.

The second paragraph I cited immediately above from wikipedia explains that while zero-point energy does have a measureable output, there is no evidence whatsoever that it can be used in violation of conservation of energy which is what "something from nothing" would be.

Double-slit experiment, Wikipedia. Heisenberg uncertainty principle (which, while it doesn't confirm randomness, it does show there's sometimes we can't go any deeper) I'm not linking because I don't want to be trapped in moderation limbo.

What about the double-slit experiment? It didn't say we couldn't look any further, it just established that light and particles did not behave the way we previously thought. For example, light behaves as both a wave and matter, something we'd never really known before. This was revolutionary. Also, we observed that particles did not always behave in the manner we expected. This does not infer the idea that we can't ever figure out why some objects on the atomic level don't behave as expected, instead this is a current question mark.

How do you get that this means we can't ever figure it out or look deeper and that it must simply remain a mystery?

Are you referring to the uncertainty principle because we can't successfully look at an object's position and momentum at the same time? This is a natural hinderance that means we can either know one or the other but not both. It's surprisingly a lot like having your cake and eating it too. I didn't say that we're able to do logically illogical things, just that us not knowing why something is happening doesn't mean that it happened for no reason.

Actually, as regards to wave/particle duality and other weird, nonsensical elements of Quantum theory, it's more like if "every group who repeated the experiment for the last 60 years" made the particles travel faster than light, and it was easily replicable, and no one had come up with an alternative satisfactory solution yet, despite years of effort.

What? No, they didn't. Cite anything that has a repeatedly successful experiment of anything traveling faster than the speed of light. This would disprove (opposite of prove, haha) Einstein's theory of special relativity and allow us to send information back in time. You're literally saying to me that people have been sending information back in time for the last 60 years to which I'm going to have to call, "Bullshit". Look up the guardian's article on the Neutrino researchers who thought they'd sent neutrino particles faster than that speed. The title to google is, "Neutrino researchers admit Einstein was right".

Einstein had trouble with this entire thing because his cosmological constant had been aparently refuted by the hubble redshift because Einstein was trying to use it to define a static universe. It's now being used for dark matter explanations.

You have in no way established any "something" from "nothing". You have only established a lack of understanding of admittedly confusing scientific terms as I mentioned. Zero point energy sure sounds like there's no energy in the vacuum, but that's not the case.

No, it would be murder just the same, if we followed your logic. Because it would be removing the fetus from nutrients just as assuredly as removing it from the uterus. No, two things:

1. I maintain that the zygote is completely comparable to a seed and have already stated a belief that implantation is required for the "seed" to actually begin to produce a plant. Please note that the embryo has every single components arranged in much the same way as a seed. They both have internal fertilization but neither develops past a certain point without being "planted".

2. Again, it is not floating around in the uterus that makes a zygote grow. It must be planted in the uterine wall to begin growth. Removing it from its source of life would be killing it, preventing it from being hooked up to a source of life would be preventing its life in the same way not planting a seed is not killing the seed though it does slowly die until planting it would no longer produce anything.

The other inherent problem in your analogy is that we can't be sure where oen twin ends and the other begins, due to their identical DNA. So, again, your analogy fails.

I'm not saying that they are twins, silly. I'm saying that the situation is the same. This is why I made the analogy of an evil doctor knocking two people out and then stitching them together in such a way that one would die if they were seperated. You repeatedly link me to a site whose author I cannot discuss the points with. If you cited your own reasoning from that link we carry it further.

But the "twin" part isn't the focus. It's the conjoined part. Having different DNA, if conjoined twins could be paternal, wouldn't make a difference.

While a seed and a zygote are analogous, zygotes are not what are implanted in the uterus, as I pointed out. Further, the other side of the equation is not an inanimate object, as it is in your analogy, but rather a sentient being who you say does not control her own body.

Once again, an embryo is identical to a grown seed. A zygote would be similar to a seed in its earliest stages after pollination has occured.

The point isn't to discuss the soil's right to take a seed, the point is to explain that the uterine wall fills the role of soil here. There should be NO point of contention here. This entire explanation is to explain why I would not consider the loss of the fetus/embryo/zygote, whatever you want to call it, prior to implantation.

Except, again, it is never the zygote which implants. It's the "Morula", which would be more analogous to a sproutling of a plant.

No, the Morula or solid ball inside the zona is just a few stages before implanation. It's day three or part of the compaction phase. Before implanation the hollow center has to form and then the embryo hatches from the zona. It is only after then that the embryo, looking VERY much like a seed implants itself into the uterine wall. Just as in plant cells, eggs and everything else, the inner cell mass from this phase is what becomes the being.

You ignored my call of bullshit on your claim that it has nothing to do with legislating what a woman can do with her own body. Please either concede that point or argue it, lest I assume wrongly.

It isn't just her body anymore. Not once the two are conjoined through implantation. She is now conjoined to a fetus for the next nine months. Let's also not forget that an abortion isn't just kicking the tyke out. It's usually anything from a saline solution that burns the fetus to death or any other number of proceedures that involve killing the fetus directly. What right does she have to impose her will to the death of another being's body?

Once again, this pairing is exactly the same as being conjoined when one pair has all the vital goods and the other pair does not have primary access to any of them. This is not "slavery" in any more of a way than a coinjoined twin pair may find themselves forced to live with their twin in their body until a time where it may be healthy enough to be removed and survive.

You can debate the point of consciousness or a soul as the point of humanity. But again, this means we get to run around killing everyone who is asleep or in a coma. If it is developed humanity then babies are fair game too.

Ultimately, why does the mother get to just kill the life? Why does her convenience override the life?

If you cannot see this as two entities sharing a common organ system like conjoined twins do then we can simply agree to disagree. I cannot see any legitimate reason why these wouldn't be considered conjoined beings so if you cannot see how they could be then it's impasse and I'm ok with that.

@Grifter:

In the first place, there are very few absolute truths at all. In the second, you think "absolute truths" can only be reached by religion, rather than reason. Thirdly, you think religion gives absolute truths, when it clearly doesn't.

1. To you, there may be very few absolute truths. I would consider murder being evil to be an absolute truth (where killing and murder may be differentiated by justifiable reason for killing). I would consider most physical properties to be absolute truths ("the book is on the table, I'm looking at it" should not be available for subjective debate). The potential number of absolute truths is perhaps infinit in those regards even without moral absolute truths being thrown in the mix.

It is moral absolute truths we're talking abou there now.

2. I think that absolute moral truths may only be reached through religion, whether that religion is a construct or based on a real deity because it gives inherrent authority to the laws given that transcends government or society based laws. I'm not talking about say, mathematical truths. Please explain to me how 2+4=6 translates into a moral truth which is the topic of discussion.

As for "ethical systems", how can you freely divorce religion from them when there is no closed environment free of them for ethical values to form?

3. No, it clearly does. There are clear absolute truths in scripture. Usually in the form of "this is bad". There are some ambiguities but a religion doesn't have to be a unified theory of the universe. It can leave things unanswered or ambiguous while still clearly answering it. Do you see areas where murder, incest, theft, rape, and a number of other conditions are ok? Their moral depravity would be absolutely true in this scenario. There are parts that are up for debate and may require some subjective interpretation. But others are clear cut and those are the moral absolutes I'm talking about, like the ten commandments people hate seeing statues of in public places.

Religion is a filter between reason and action in the same way that laws and ethics are. I should would like that donut, but I'd have to kill that police officer to get it. I don't do it (aside from that being far too much effort) because it's a sin, unethical, and completely against the law.

What do you think morality is? It's sorting actions into right and wrong. Of course it's a filter. Religion only becomes a touchy subject when you start to disagree with the ways things are filtered (e.g. "What do you mean I can't divorce my infertile wife?!!!" = *BAM* Church of England, opening up a legitimate path for future generations to split with the seriously flawed RCC).

Look, if you're going to debate about my religion then you have to do it with my religion's rules in play. First off, the Old Testament (which does not contain my covenant, I said I'm a Christian, I did not say I was a theonomist or someone that adheres to the Old covenant. That covenant isn't just a book of religion. It's also a book intended to rule a people in a time of great war. It was a chosen people at war with other nations. The New Covenant is that sort of covenant but now open to the entire world. This is the fundamental difference. Do not forget that Christianity is a religion in which non-believers (people outside the covenant) will be punished for what sounds pretty clearly like all eternity. Do you think people who believe this should bat an eye at killing people outside of the covenant in the old covenant who were at war with Israel?

I'll also point out that the verse in Isaiah is a prophecy of what will happen. It is not a command for what will happen. The people attacking babylon in this verse are not Jews, at least not necessarily. They're members of foreign nations

Isaiah 13:5 They come from faraway lands,
from the ends of the heavens—
the Lord and the weapons of his wrath—
to destroy the whole country

As for Isaac, three things:

1. God did not allow it to happen.
2. This was, according to the Christian view, to be a foreshadowing of what God was going to have to do.
3. Killing and murder differ in intention. Killing in battle is not anger. Killing for justice is not murder. If both of those types of killing can be sanctioned by the government, why would killing for another purpose not be sanctionable by God?

Note that this is an important time. Where human sacrifice could have entered play but was kept off the table. This story is one of the most important stories in religion ever told. Can you imagine if human sacrifice aside from Jesus had been made widespread like the Mayans?
Gavin • Aug 29, 2012 @2:42 pm

Aw crap. What an awful mess. I apologize. I'll post it a second time if a moderator can delete the crap above this at some point.
Gavin • Aug 29, 2012 @2:45 pm

Since this will already be a wall of text. I'll include the response to both of Grifter's comments here, seperating them just by the bold name font I use.

@Grifter:

Let me bold the part of the quote you cited to prove to me that atheism can be used to just mean non-faith.

"Atheism has sometimes been defined to include the simple absence of belief that any deities exist. This broad definition would include newborns and other people who have not been exposed to theistic ideas. As far back as 1772, Baron d'Holbach said that "All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God."

This "sometimes" doesn't mean it is accurate. American soldiers have sometimes defined themselves as mercenaries since they get paid to fight but mercenaries are specifically professional soldiers hired to serve in a foreign military. The quote (cited a bit below) talks about a philospher who has created non-accepted terms or at least the non-mainstream terms of "Positive and Negative Atheism". Please note, even if you want to use this term, "Negative" is not "Agnostic". Please understand that while Atheism may try to include agnosticism into its ranks, agnosticism does not include atheism. Agnosticism is specifically withholding judgment until evidence may be presented. You can say you are a "Negative Atheist" if you so desire, but Agnostic Atheism is not a valid category.

You are correct that Non-theism does include all branches not found in theism so it does include both agnosticism and atheism but saying non-theist doesn't mean you're everything outside of that spectrum, it's just a broader term like saying I'm not Russian doesn't mean I'm German, it only means I'm not Russian.

Let me ask you something, do you think theism necessitates creation by a supernaturally powerful God or could it simply be a sentient being with the know-how and ability to create on this scale? I think if anything actually exists then it must be inherrently natural even if immensely advanced, the "supernatural" are things that are said not to be possible. So, if it exists, it isn't supernatural.

A disbelief is not its own positive belief in the opposite.

I'm sorry but you're wrong. Disbelief is to not believe. Do I need to also cite a definition of the prefix "dis" or would that be distasteful and disrespectful? Perhaps citing it would be to my disadvantage or would it cause you to disassociate yourself from me in this conversation and permanently dislike me? Do you agree or disagree?

Haha, joking aside, "dis" is a latin word that literally means negative or reversing force. It is the opposite of the word it precedes. Non-belief is different from disbelief in the polarity of distinction. Again, belief = affirming existence, non-belief = Not affirming existence but not denying existence either, dis-belief = denying existence.

But, sometimes dis can mean "not", so there is a potential for ambiguity here. Disbelief can mean Not belief. It is possible, I don't think so since terms like non-belief exist, but I can't entirely rule out the possibility. This is the fault of the dictionary whose writers we cannot expect to foresee just such an argument. Still, the very sources you presented still explain that agnostics generally claim the exact point I've been making, here, I'll post your source again and bold the components you seem to have missed. I do not see how you could accuse me of not reading the source fully and then presenting something that says everything I've been claiming

"While Martin, for example, asserts that agnosticism entails negative atheism,[29] most agnostics see their view as distinct from atheism,[citation needed] which they may consider no more justified than theism or requiring an equal conviction.[43] The assertion of unattainability of knowledge for or against the existence of gods is sometimes seen as indication that atheism requires a leap of faith.[44][unreliable source?] Common atheist responses to this argument include that unproven religious propositions deserve as much disbelief as all other unproven propositions,[45] and that the unprovability of a god's existence does not imply equal probability of either possibility.[46] Scottish philosopher J. J. C. Smart even argues that "sometimes a person who is really an atheist may describe herself, even passionately, as an agnostic because of unreasonable generalised philosophical skepticism which would preclude us from saying that we know anything whatever, except perhaps the truths of mathematics and formal logic."[47] Consequently, some atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins prefer distinguishing theist, agnostic and atheist positions along a spectrum of theistic probability—the likelihood that each assigns to the statement "God exists".

So you see, the argument that atheists have with agnostics is that they think that just because there's not enough evidence either way doesn't mean that there is an equal possibility that either are true. But this is besides the point, agnosticism isn't a judgment on probability, it's a statement that there's not enough evidence to be either even if one is more likely than another. You also can't say that one is more likely than another, have you mathematically calculated the probability of each potential cause of the universe in a meaningful and interpretable way? No, we can't. So I assert that agnostics have it right if you want to avoid faith-based or gambling-like actions.

Even the initial sentence of that quote has martin saying that agnosticism entails negative atheism (which is not Atheism). He has just redifined atheism to include agnosticism and the agnostics strongly disagree and rightfully so.

So again, you can be a negative atheist, but not an agnostic atheist. You can be an atheist who is close to agnosticism on the scale of probability but once you decide that God does not exist as opposed to God may not exist you have chosen a side.

I'll point most firmly to the comment I bolded in the middle from J.J.C. Smart (Jack Smart, though his actual name is John Jamieson Carswell Smart, no Jack). He stated that many Atheists incorrectly call themselves agnostics simply because of the philosophy that we can't really know anything. According to him you can't be two things, you can only be one but very close to one of the other points but there is no firm point on the scale of 0-1 that could be objectively pointed out as the break.

Dawkin's was more direct. Dawkin's scale does not include agnosticism at all but I would say of the 7 points that the middle three options of his scale are where agnosticism falls. It includes inclination but not affirmation of either side with 4 being in the exact middle and without even inclination towards a side. One more step away from the middle three (going to 2 or 6) in either direction still includes small degrees of uncertainty but the way the individual lives their lives is based on the assumption that God is or is not there. So these stages are labled De Facto Atheist or De Facto Theist. The final step is of course absolute belief, "I do not believe, I know", so either I know that God does not exist or I know that God does exist. Dawkins placed himself as a 6 on the scale. So his scale is in line with Smart's. I would admittedly place myself on 2 though I know a good little boy should say 1…

In any instance, none of them would accept the idea of agnostic athiesm. They are simply mutually exclusive terms and the clear distinction is affirmation of belief or accepting one side. Martin himself is only stretching Atheism to the entire lower 50 percent when adding a negative category to Atheism. But this is something almost everyone else seems to disagree with as you should clearly see.

I'm just trying to help you be a better atheist. Every time you define yourself as an agnostic atheist to someone who knows better an angel gets his wings and I know for a fact that you atheists hate angels with wings most of all.

So then, are you an agnostic, or an atheist? Dawkins is generally considered reliable due to Dawkin's successful status as a public face of atheism. So if atheist, are you a de facto atheist or just a 100%atheist? I would say, from what you told me, that you'd be a de facto atheist. Either way, you are not agnostic unless you also don't believe God doesn't exist (yay, double negatives).

If by "newer" you mean "since the 1700s", then I will concede your point.

You actually brought up Huxley immediately after saying that. If you do realize that agnosticism was first used in 1869 by Thomas Henry Huxley to define his belief in direct contrast of contemporary beliefs in his day then you should understand that the definitions of atheism were different from just non-belief in his day? The baby comment would have only been to explain that a baby didn't have faith because there was no agnostic option. Pre-1869 there was only Atheism and Theism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley_and_agnosticism#Thomas_Henry_Huxley

Huxley specifically created the word to define a position that neither affirms nor denies the existance of God or "immortal man". Follow that link, this is the creator of the word itself, here is a quote of the creation of the term:

When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis,"–had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion. [...]. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. […] To my great satisfaction the term took.

So you see, the term agnosticism was made as a direct alternative to atheism which had already existed. Anyone who now tries to redifine it is an asshat (haha) with no memory of its reason for inception.

Again, Atheism may be willing to include Agnostics in their ranks but Agnostics do not include atheism. Agnostic is a term that specifically means reserving judgment. If you take atheist to mean everyone except theists then that includes agnostics, but agnostics do not include atheism. My opposition to you is specifically your combination of Agnosticism and Atheism, an intrinsically contradictory combination. It is literally saying, "I don't have enough information to fully choose so I won't if God exists or not, I choose that God does not exist." Nonsense.

Again, there is a modern trend to allow the combination of the terms but it is one made out of ignorance just like your source on Smart stated. George H. Smith started this Agnostic Atheist crap by trying to remove the with-holding of judgment from the term agnostic, but that's the entire point of the term agnostic, that there is not enough information so I reserve judgment until new information is gathered.

The concept of Agnostic Atheism is catching on and may very well have already become accepted despite agnostic contesting the terminology. But the definitions of "Agnostic Atheist" are in no way different from just the term Agnostic. If you will, please explain how you differentiate Agnostic Atheism from Agnosticism?

Let me give you an example:

"Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not have belief in the existence of any deity, and agnostic because they do not claim to know that a deity does not exist."

So then, an agnostic atheist doesn't believe in God nor do they claim to know that a deity does nto exist? That's pretty much the definition of agnostic, they don't believe in God nor do they believe that God does not exist. How is that any different and why are you adding the word Atheist to it? In this case it'd be like saying ATM machine.

You already have faith that matter and energy conservation laws were thrown out, and that cause and effect are suspended, you just believe they were thrown out by a god before the birth of the universe, rather than by the universe's birth. Again, I know the universe exists. And I know that at present we do not know any of the conditions pre-universe, nor what the physical laws were pre-universe. Until that changes, I'm going to say that it seems more likely that the thing I know created itself, than that there was something else that violates all those laws instead, then created this universe.

I don't believe that anything was thrown out. Only that the laws in this universe did not necessarily apply to anything before the universe. You are the one who is guilty of saying that our universe's laws and principles existed before its creation. That's the "faith" position being expressed here. I will tell you this though, in a universe where cause and effect are basic laws and principles then there should be a point in the past where the principle and law itself was caused unless the rule itself is something that breaks itself…

Now then, again, it is awfully convenient for people to say "Well, the laws of science didn't exist at the big bang", if the big bang had no rules then there is no claim anyone could make about anything. It could have been any number of dieties or actions causing it, it simply doesn't matter because we can never know without being able to see it.

I wonder… if you could see far enough and could get far enough away from the center of the universe if you could see the universe's creation just like how we see a multiple year-old version of celestial bodies that are multiple light-years away. I wonder what you'd see if you took one more step away (assuming at this point you were previously traveling at the same rate of expansion and have then gotten one more unit of distance away).

As do I! But it does prove that "something can come from nothing" as part of the natural world, with no need for "magic". So…therefore your argument, that we "never" see this, is invalid. No, that was the entire point of my statement. There is no "nothing" anywhere in the universe. Zero point energy isn't absolutely no energy. There will always be vacuum energy, for example, which is a positive number. That's what vacuum energy is.

This isn't something from nothing, it's energy to matter and matter to energy and because vacuum energy is everywhere, even in vacuums (hence the name) it is always there and is a positive number. This is what I mean by the terminology being incorrect. There is no such thing as a pure vacuum void of energy. All the links I presented and sources I mentioned were to explain this fact. Zero-point energy is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical physical system may have, it is not 0. There's a reason why they don't just define it as there being no energy in the system. "The uncertainty principle actually requires every physical system to have a zero-point energy greater than the minimum of its classical potential well, even at absolute zero." These words are directly from the wiki page you cited earlier. So if the classical potential well is 0, the zero-point energy must be higher. Why, you ask?

Zero-point energy is fundamentally related to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Roughly speaking, the uncertainty principle states that complementary variables (such as a particle's position and momentum, or a field's value and derivative at a point in space) cannot simultaneously be defined precisely by any given quantum state. In particular, there cannot be a state in which the system sits motionless at the bottom of its potential well, for then its position and momentum would both be completely determined to arbitrarily great precision. Therefore, the lowest-energy state (the ground state) of the system must have a distribution in position and momentum that satisfies the uncertainty principle, which implies its energy must be greater than the minimum of the potential well.

Even though the zero-point energy is theoretically infinite, there is as yet no practical evidence to suggest that infinite amounts of zero-point energy are available for use, that zero-point energy can be withdrawn for free, or that zero-point energy can be used in violation of conservation of energy.

The second paragraph I cited immediately above from wikipedia explains that while zero-point energy does have a measureable output, there is no evidence whatsoever that it can be used in violation of conservation of energy which is what "something from nothing" would be.

Double-slit experiment, Wikipedia. Heisenberg uncertainty principle (which, while it doesn't confirm randomness, it does show there's sometimes we can't go any deeper) I'm not linking because I don't want to be trapped in moderation limbo.

What about the double-slit experiment? It didn't say we couldn't look any further, it just established that light and particles did not behave the way we previously thought. For example, light behaves as both a wave and matter, something we'd never really known before. This was revolutionary. Also, we observed that particles did not always behave in the manner we expected. This does not infer the idea that we can't ever figure out why some objects on the atomic level don't behave as expected, instead this is a current question mark.

How do you get that this means we can't ever figure it out or look deeper and that it must simply remain a mystery?

Are you referring to the uncertainty principle because we can't successfully look at an object's position and momentum at the same time? This is a natural hinderance that means we can either know one or the other but not both. It's surprisingly a lot like having your cake and eating it too. I didn't say that we're able to do logically illogical things, just that us not knowing why something is happening doesn't mean that it happened for no reason.

Actually, as regards to wave/particle duality and other weird, nonsensical elements of Quantum theory, it's more like if "every group who repeated the experiment for the last 60 years" made the particles travel faster than light, and it was easily replicable, and no one had come up with an alternative satisfactory solution yet, despite years of effort.

What? No, they didn't. Cite anything that has a repeatedly successful experiment of anything traveling faster than the speed of light. This would disprove (opposite of prove, haha) Einstein's theory of special relativity and allow us to send information back in time. You're literally saying to me that people have been sending information back in time for the last 60 years to which I'm going to have to call, "Bullshit". Look up the guardian's article on the Neutrino researchers who thought they'd sent neutrino particles faster than that speed. The title to google is, "Neutrino researchers admit Einstein was right".

Einstein had trouble with this entire thing because his cosmological constant had been aparently refuted by the hubble redshift because Einstein was trying to use it to define a static universe. It's now being used for dark matter explanations.

You have in no way established any "something" from "nothing". You have only established a lack of understanding of admittedly confusing scientific terms as I mentioned. Zero point energy sure sounds like there's no energy in the vacuum, but that's not the case.

No, it would be murder just the same, if we followed your logic. Because it would be removing the fetus from nutrients just as assuredly as removing it from the uterus.

No, two things:

1. I maintain that the zygote is completely comparable to a seed and have already stated a belief that implantation is required for the "seed" to actually begin to produce a plant. Please note that the embryo has every single components arranged in much the same way as a seed. They both have internal fertilization but neither develops past a certain point without being "planted".

2. Again, it is not floating around in the uterus that makes a zygote grow. It must be planted in the uterine wall to begin growth. Removing it from its source of life would be killing it, preventing it from being hooked up to a source of life would be preventing its life in the same way not planting a seed is not killing the seed though it does slowly die until planting it would no longer produce anything.

The other inherent problem in your analogy is that we can't be sure where oen twin ends and the other begins, due to their identical DNA. So, again, your analogy fails.

I'm not saying that they are twins, silly. I'm saying that the situation is the same. This is why I made the analogy of an evil doctor knocking two people out and then stitching them together in such a way that one would die if they were seperated. You repeatedly link me to a site whose author I cannot discuss the points with. If you cited your own reasoning from that link we carry it further.

But the "twin" part isn't the focus. It's the conjoined part. Having different DNA, if conjoined twins could be paternal, wouldn't make a difference.

While a seed and a zygote are analogous, zygotes are not what are implanted in the uterus, as I pointed out. Further, the other side of the equation is not an inanimate object, as it is in your analogy, but rather a sentient being who you say does not control her own body.

Once again, an embryo is identical to a grown seed. A zygote would be similar to a seed in its earliest stages after pollination has occured.

The point isn't to discuss the soil's right to take a seed, the point is to explain that the uterine wall fills the role of soil here. There should be NO point of contention here. This entire explanation is to explain why I would not consider the loss of the fetus/embryo/zygote, whatever you want to call it, prior to implantation.

Except, again, it is never the zygote which implants. It's the "Morula", which would be more analogous to a sproutling of a plant.

No, the Morula or solid ball inside the zona is just a few stages before implanation. It's day three or part of the compaction phase. Before implanation the hollow center has to form and then the embryo hatches from the zona. It is only after then that the embryo, looking VERY much like a seed implants itself into the uterine wall. Just as in plant cells, eggs and everything else, the inner cell mass from this phase is what becomes the being.

You ignored my call of bullshit on your claim that it has nothing to do with legislating what a woman can do with her own body. Please either concede that point or argue it, lest I assume wrongly.

It isn't just her body anymore. Not once the two are conjoined through implantation. She is now conjoined to a fetus for the next nine months. Let's also not forget that an abortion isn't just kicking the tyke out. It's usually anything from a saline solution that burns the fetus to death or any other number of proceedures that involve killing the fetus directly. What right does she have to impose her will to the death of another being's body?

Once again, this pairing is exactly the same as being conjoined when one pair has all the vital goods and the other pair does not have primary access to any of them. This is not "slavery" in any more of a way than a coinjoined twin pair may find themselves forced to live with their twin in their body until a time where it may be healthy enough to be removed and survive.

You can debate the point of consciousness or a soul as the point of humanity. But again, this means we get to run around killing everyone who is asleep or in a coma. If it is developed humanity then babies are fair game too.

Ultimately, why does the mother get to just kill the life? Why does her convenience override the life?

If you cannot see this as two entities sharing a common organ system like conjoined twins do then we can simply agree to disagree. I cannot see any legitimate reason why these wouldn't be considered conjoined beings so if you cannot see how they could be then it's impasse and I'm ok with that.

@Grifter:

In the first place, there are very few absolute truths at all. In the second, you think "absolute truths" can only be reached by religion, rather than reason. Thirdly, you think religion gives absolute truths, when it clearly doesn't.

1. To you, there may be very few absolute truths. I would consider murder being evil to be an absolute truth (where killing and murder may be differentiated by justifiable reason for killing). I would consider most physical properties to be absolute truths ("the book is on the table, I'm looking at it" should not be available for subjective debate). The potential number of absolute truths is perhaps infinit in those regards even without moral absolute truths being thrown in the mix.

It is moral absolute truths we're talking abou there now.

2. I think that absolute moral truths may only be reached through religion, whether that religion is a construct or based on a real deity because it gives inherrent authority to the laws given that transcends government or society based laws. I'm not talking about say, mathematical truths. Please explain to me how 2+4=6 translates into a moral truth which is the topic of discussion.

As for "ethical systems", how can you freely divorce religion from them when there is no closed environment free of them for ethical values to form?

3. No, it clearly does. There are clear absolute truths in scripture. Usually in the form of "this is bad". There are some ambiguities but a religion doesn't have to be a unified theory of the universe. It can leave things unanswered or ambiguous while still clearly answering it. Do you see areas where murder, incest, theft, rape, and a number of other conditions are ok? Their moral depravity would be absolutely true in this scenario. There are parts that are up for debate and may require some subjective interpretation. But others are clear cut and those are the moral absolutes I'm talking about, like the ten commandments people hate seeing statues of in public places.

Religion is a filter between reason and action in the same way that laws and ethics are. I should would like that donut, but I'd have to kill that police officer to get it. I don't do it (aside from that being far too much effort) because it's a sin, unethical, and completely against the law.

What do you think morality is? It's sorting actions into right and wrong. Of course it's a filter. Religion only becomes a touchy subject when you start to disagree with the ways things are filtered (e.g. "What do you mean I can't divorce my infertile wife?!!!" = *BAM* Church of England, opening up a legitimate path for future generations to split with the seriously flawed RCC).

Look, if you're going to debate about my religion then you have to do it with my religion's rules in play. First off, the Old Testament (which does not contain my covenant, I said I'm a Christian, I did not say I was a theonomist or someone that adheres to the Old covenant. That covenant isn't just a book of religion. It's also a book intended to rule a people in a time of great war. It was a chosen people at war with other nations. The New Covenant is that sort of covenant but now open to the entire world. This is the fundamental difference. Do not forget that Christianity is a religion in which non-believers (people outside the covenant) will be punished for what sounds pretty clearly like all eternity. Do you think people who believe this should bat an eye at killing people outside of the covenant in the old covenant who were at war with Israel?

I'll also point out that the verse in Isaiah is a prophecy of what will happen. It is not a command for what will happen. The people attacking babylon in this verse are not Jews, at least not necessarily. They're members of foreign nations

Isaiah 13:5 They come from faraway lands,
from the ends of the heavens—
the Lord and the weapons of his wrath—
to destroy the whole country

As for Isaac, three things:

1. God did not allow it to happen.
2. This was, according to the Christian view, to be a foreshadowing of what God was going to have to do.
3. Killing and murder differ in intention. Killing in battle is not anger. Killing for justice is not murder. If both of those types of killing can be sanctioned by the government, why would killing for another purpose not be sanctionable by God?

Note that this is an important time. Where human sacrifice could have entered play but was kept off the table. This story is one of the most important stories in religion ever told. Can you imagine if human sacrifice aside from Jesus had been made widespread like the Mayans?
Gavin • Aug 29, 2012 @2:46 pm

Well, now I'm just yelling. Don't know where I missed it and my day is well over.
Grifter • Aug 29, 2012 @4:29 pm

@Gavin:

I'm reading your reply on my phone, so won't bother to try to reply for real until I'm home, but I wanted to correct someting real quick. My faster than light comment was in direct relation to yours. I was just extending your analogy. You said if we ever found something that in some way violated causality it would be like if a group claimed to find something that went faster than light, and something we've want to confirm more on. I was trying to say that would only be true if things which violated the speed of light had been seen and verified for decades, since the probability aspects of quantum theory have been seen for decades, and no hidden variable has been discovered.
Grifter • Aug 29, 2012 @5:24 pm

@Gavin:

I think I'll try to approach your response a. It piecemeal. On the subject of definitions, what would YOU call someone who says "I lack an affirmative belief in god. I don't know for sure there isn't".

I don't KNOW you don't have, for example 4 nipples. I suppose it's possible, and I haven't seen you shirtless. But unless/until I hear otherwise, I'll assume you don't. That doesn't mean I have faith you don't, though.
Grifter • Aug 29, 2012 @7:35 pm

Going to try to fix the bolding…..

@Gavin:

On the subject of defintions, I did note that agnosticism didn't exist at the time of my 1700s quote. Doesn't make it any less valid; you can't say "that's not what atheism's ever meant before, it's a new thing!" when I can give you a quote from the 1700s where it is used in exactly that way. You seem occasionally to find fault without actually reading the whole thing you're criticizing, which gets kind of frustrating.

"Agnostic Atheism is not a valid category."

Funny, because if you search the googles for "agnostic atheism" you'll quickly find the Wikipedia article on the subject. (Like I said before, I decided to stop actually linking 'cause I'm tired of being tagged for moderation.) Check the "Agnostic" article in its entirety, as well as the "Agnostic Atheism" article in its entirety. Then come back to the discussion once you have a better understanding of the history and overall usage of the term, both etymologically and philosophically.

To quote:

"Bertrand Russell uses the example of the celestial teapot. He argues that although it is impossible to know that the teapot does not exist, most people would not believe in it. Therefore, one's view with respect to the teapot would be an agnostic "ateapotist", because while they don't believe in the existence of the teapot, they don't claim to know for certain."

One of the earliest definitions of agnostic atheism is that of Robert Flint, in his Croall Lecture of 1887–1888 (published in 1903 under the title Agnosticism).

The atheist may however be, and not unfrequently is, an agnostic. There is an agnostic atheism or atheistic agnosticism, and the combination of atheism with agnosticism which may be so named is not an uncommon one.

If a man has failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God, it is perfectly natural and rational that he should not believe that there is a God; and if so, he is an atheist… if he goes farther, and, after an investigation into the nature and reach of human knowledge, ending in the conclusion that the existence of God is incapable of proof, cease to believe in it on the ground that he cannot know it to be true, he is an agnostic and also an atheist – an agnostic-atheist – an atheist because an agnostic… while, then, it is erroneous to identify agnosticism and atheism, it is equally erroneous so to separate them as if the one were exclusive of the other…

This one's one of the references:

Harrison, Alexander James (1894). The Ascent of Faith: or, the Grounds of Certainty in Science and Religion. London: Hodder and Stroughton. p. 21. OCLC 7234849. OL21834002M. "Let Agnostic Theism stand for that kind of Agnosticism which admits a Divine existence; Agnostic Atheism for that kind of Agnosticism which thinks it does not."

You'll note the second to last one was 1887, the last one was from 1894.

So you see, the argument that atheists have with agnostics is that they think that just because there's not enough evidence either way doesn't mean that there is an equal possibility that either are true. But this is besides the point, agnosticism isn't a judgment on probability, it's a statement that there's not enough evidence to be either even if one is more likely than another. You also can't say that one is more likely than another, have you mathematically calculated the probability of each potential cause of the universe in a meaningful and interpretable way? No, we can't. So I assert that agnostics have it right if you want to avoid faith-based or gambling-like actions.

This is just tripe. One doesn't have to calculate the mathematical likelihood of something that has no proof to dismiss it. The one making the claim has the burden of proving themselves.

From Wikipedia:
"Huxley identified agnosticism not as a creed but rather as a method of skeptical, evidence-based inquiry."

So again, you can be a negative atheist, but not an agnostic atheist. You can be an atheist who is close to agnosticism on the scale of probability but once you decide that God does not exist as opposed to God may not exist you have chosen a side.

I'm going to just say that until you do a better job of proving Bertrand Russel wrong, you should stop trying to assert things based on reading only halves of definitions.

So you see, the term agnosticism was made as a direct alternative to atheism which had already existed. Anyone who now tries to redifine it is an asshat (haha) with no memory of its reason for inception.

Perhaps if you read the entirety of things, you would make less stupidly confrontational comments.

I don't believe that anything was thrown out. Only that the laws in this universe did not necessarily apply to anything before the universe.

Soo….you believe they were thrown out before the universe.

Which was my point.

Before the universe, we have no idea of anything. You say "therefore, necessarily must have been god!" I say "Therefore, we have no idea of anything. Could be anything, so I won't assert anything and I will argue against anyone who asserts anything unless they have a good reason."

Now then, again, it is awfully convenient for people to say "Well, the laws of science didn't exist at the big bang", if the big bang had no rules then there is no claim anyone could make about anything. It could have been any number of dieties or actions causing it, it simply doesn't matter because we can never know without being able to see it.

Yup! Which is how you get to "Therefore God", and I get to "Therefore, wedunno".

You have in no way established any "something" from "nothing". You have only established a lack of understanding of admittedly confusing scientific terms as I mentioned. Zero point energy sure sounds like there's no energy in the vacuum, but that's not the case.

Neither have you. The point here is not that you must be wrong, but that there are other explanations. I don't have to defend my position, because I'm only asserting we don't know. You're asserting you do know, that your position is the true one, so you have to defend it.

Next post will be about the original topic.
Grifter • Aug 29, 2012 @8:24 pm

@Gavin:

If, for a moment, I buy this "seed" analogy, I'd ask: If I remove a tomato seed from the soil before it has sprouted, is anyone going to say I "killed a tomato plant"?

The best part is this: "It isn't just her body anymore."

Is the seed fundamentally merged with the soil? I don't think so. And you ignored my expansion of your analogy, I noticed.

I'm not saying that they are twins, silly. I'm saying that the situation is the same. This is why I made the analogy of an evil doctor knocking two people out and then stitching them together in such a way that one would die if they were seperated. You repeatedly link me to a site whose author I cannot discuss the points with. If you cited your own reasoning from that link we carry it further.

That article is my reasoning.

I do not believe that someone has to be a slave to another. You do.

But the "twin" part isn't the focus. It's the conjoined part.

Fine. But then don't say that "the situation is the same", then get huffy when I point out differences to the situation.

The point isn't to discuss the soil's right to take a seed,

You're right, that's not the point at all. The "soil's right to take a seed" has never been the poitn. The point is can you require to soil to take the seed, if we buy your analogy?

It isn't just her body anymore.

Yes, it is. Just because she is connected to someone else doesn't mean it's not her body. She had it before the fetus, she'll have it after either way.

Let's also not forget that an abortion isn't just kicking the tyke out. It's usually anything from a saline solution that burns the fetus to death or any other number of proceedures that involve killing the fetus directly. What right does she have to impose her will to the death of another being's body?

If we know for a fact that no matter how we remove the fetus from a body it is going to die, it seems mere sophistry to claim that removing it using saline is different than pulling it out with tweezers.

Once again, this pairing is exactly the same as being conjoined when one pair has all the vital goods and the other pair does not

You called me silly for pointing out that there are differences in the situation you are describing, even as you say the situations are identical.

This is not "slavery" in any more of a way than a coinjoined twin pair may find themselves forced to live with their twin in their body until a time where it may be healthy enough to be removed and survive.

And if it never is? Let's look at that. You claim that the timeframe matter, so what if it's never going to be healthy enough to be removed? Does that mean that the other twin is obliged to a life of servitude?

You can debate the point of consciousness or a soul as the point of humanity. But again, this means we get to run around killing everyone who is asleep or in a coma. If it is developed humanity then babies are fair game too.

This is just pure stupidity. Are really claiming that there is no difference between something that is CLEARLY NOT CONSCIOUS and something that's asleep? Newsflash: Your brain is not nonexistent or "off" while you're asleep. In a barely-implanted fetus, it's nonexistent. There are points where I am willing to err on the side of caution as regards to consciousness. When the thing has no nervous system, I feel confident saying there is no way I can reasonbly think it's conscious.

Ultimately, why does the mother get to just kill the life? Why does her convenience override the life?

Because she has the right to do whatever she wants to her own body.

If you cannot see this as two entities sharing a common organ system like conjoined twins do then we can simply agree to disagree. I cannot see any legitimate reason why these wouldn't be considered conjoined beings so if you cannot see how they could be then it's impasse and I'm ok with that.

There is a difference between conjoined beings and conjoined twins. I suspect you have oversimplified in your mind, equating conjoined beings to conjoined twins, when conjoined twins biologically have a very specific set of circumstances, which has been my issue with the analogy from the beginning.
Grifter • Aug 29, 2012 @8:33 pm

@Gavin:

First off going to try to close some tags by using all the ones listed in "allowed tags" and closing them off (which should hopefully be invisible…the periods are just to see which one fixes it if any do…)

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Last one for the night!

1. To you, there may be very few absolute truths.

I was requoting you, however, I will be more specific (considering, if we're going to consider non-philosophical truths in our absolute truths, then the bible is just CLEARLY wrong in multiple ways). I think there are very few absolute moral truths.

I would consider murder being evil to be an absolute truth (where killing and murder may be differentiated by justifiable reason for killing).

But different cultures may define murder differently, which changes whether it's "justified". Regardless, I can concede that point if I accept the "you know what I mean" argument from you.

That's still 1. 1 is a "very few" number.

I think that absolute moral truths may only be reached through religion, whether that religion is a construct or based on a real deity because it gives inherrent authority to the laws given that transcends government or society based laws.

Ahem.

First off, you believe that it doesn't matter if the religion is true or not? Is that what that "whether it's a construct" statement meant? WTF kind of authority can a nonexistent deity provide to an ethical framework?

Second:Do you believe god can make Child rape/murder okay? I've said it multiple times, and you've ignored it. If god said to do it, would that make it moral?

I maintain it would not, and that therefore it is not God who sets the morality, but rather reason.

I'm not talking about say, mathematical truths. Please explain to me how 2+4=6 translates into a moral truth which is the topic of discussion.

I never said it did?

There are clear absolute truths in scripture. Usually in the form of "this is bad". There are some ambiguities but a religion doesn't have to be a unified theory of the universe. It can leave things unanswered or ambiguous while still clearly answering it. Do you see areas where murder, incest, theft, rape, and a number of other conditions are ok? Their moral depravity would be absolutely true in this scenario. There are parts that are up for debate and may require some subjective interpretation. But others are clear cut and those are the moral absolutes I'm talking about, like the ten commandments people hate seeing statues of in public places.

I already gave you a quote where rape was okay, from the bible. You try to dismiss it further down, but fail miserably considering the prophecy specifies it is "the Lord" and "the weapons of his wrath".

Religion is a filter between reason and action in the same way that laws and ethics are. I should would like that donut, but I'd have to kill that police officer to get it. I don't do it (aside from that being far too much effort) because it's a sin, unethical, and completely against the law.

What do you think morality is? It's sorting actions into right and wrong. Of course it's a filter. Religion only becomes a touchy subject when you start to disagree with the ways things are filtered (e.g. "What do you mean I can't divorce my infertile wife?!!!" = *BAM* Church of England, opening up a legitimate path for future generations to split with the seriously flawed RCC).

Exactly. Reason and religion can both be flawed. But I can find no examples of things that religion finds immoral, but reason finds neutral, that aren't stupid (despite it being an abomination, I wear clothes made from more than one type of fabric). I can, however, find many examples of things that religion finds moral that I find despicable. Slave ownership is only one example, but lets go away from your religion for a moment, since it makes you so defensive. The Scientologists think that you can lie, cheat, steal from, or kill a "suppressive person". Now, we can look with our reason and say "Um, no, that's still shitty", but their religion has led them to think that it's okay...so they could steal that donut. If you divorce your reason from your ethics, then things which you know to be bad can be "good".

Look, if you're going to debate about my religion then you have to do it with my religion's rules in play. First off, the Old Testament (which does not contain my covenant, I said I'm a Christian, I did not say I was a theonomist or someone that adheres to the Old covenant. That covenant isn't just a book of religion. It's also a book intended to rule a people in a time of great war. It was a chosen people at war with other nations. The New Covenant is that sort of covenant but now open to the entire world. This is the fundamental difference. Do not forget that Christianity is a religion in which non-believers (people outside the covenant) will be punished for what sounds pretty clearly like all eternity. Do you think people who believe this should bat an eye at killing people outside of the covenant in the old covenant who were at war with Israel?

Bullshit. You don't get to speak to your religion as a whole's rules of play. You don't speak for every Christian, and to pretend otherwise makes you a liar. From a debate standpoint it is perfectly legitimate when discussing the religion to go off of the ACTUAL WORDS, as opposed to the spin you choose to put on them. A spin which, I might add, still doesn't excuse the justifications for murder. Not every Christian believes what you do. Which was my point.

I'll also point out that the verse in Isaiah is a prophecy of what will happen. It is not a command for what will happen. The people attacking babylon in this verse are not Jews, at least not necessarily. They're members of foreign nations...the Lord and the weapons of his wrath

So? They are "the Lord and the weapons of his wrath", I would think the Lord would have responsibility for himself and his weapons, yes?

As for Isaac, three things:

1. God did not allow it to happen.

As I stated, doesn't matter. Abraham didn't know that, did he? The point is that Abraham was willing to kill for no reason, and had he done so, it would have been straight-up murder of his son.

2. This was, according to the Christian view, to be a foreshadowing of what God was going to have to do.

Bullshit again. According to your Christian view. And the views of many others, I'm aware. But not EVERY Christian. I mentioned the similarity of your arguments to the Brian Brown ones...stop playing "no true Scotsman".

3. Killing and murder differ in intention. Killing in battle is not anger. Killing for justice is not murder. If both of those types of killing can be sanctioned by the government, why would killing for another purpose not be sanctionable by God?

Your examples don't apply at all, and you're being disingenuous. This would have been a killing for no reason. Not a killing in battle, not killing for justice, but killing just because God told him to. So, are you in favor of every nut who's said God told him to kill? Do you believe that they haven't committed a moral wrong?
Grifter • Aug 29, 2012 @8:34 pm

None of them fixed it. Apparently, Gavin, you broke the internet.
Random Encounter • Aug 29, 2012 @9:18 pm

So as not to shout, I hope this works.

On the topic of Atheism:
I do not believe in God, I also do not believe in Spiderman.
Yet if I saw a guy in a red and blue suit run out in front of me, shoot something at the side of the building across the street, and leap swinging away at high speed I'd believe in Spiderman.

If some event that I currently cannot conceive but admit to the possibility of occurred to convince me that there was indeed a deific entity that matched up with the Judeo-Christian God, I would then believe in Him.

That is no guarantee that I would then choose to worship Him, but I would believe.

I certainly don't worship anything or anybody else, I'm just not built that way.
Narad • Aug 31, 2012 @6:38 am

Yet if I saw a guy in a red and blue suit run out in front of me, shoot something at the side of the building across the street, and leap swinging away at high speed I'd believe in Spiderman.

You know what that something is, right?
Random Encounter • Aug 31, 2012 @8:17 am

I always thought Parker was more of a swinger than he looked like.
Gavin • Sep 4, 2012 @5:45 am

I'm back, super long holiday weekend and birthday, buddy's bachelor party, traveling out of town is done! Apparently failing to close a bold text causes the rest of the page to be bolded. I tried closing it here. Other than that. I'll try to respond.
David • Sep 4, 2012 @5:49 am

Fixed the misbegotten bolding. You had closed a bold with left-angle, b, forward-slash, right-angle.

If something goes horribly awry on the HTML front, always feel free to ping me at david at popehat dot com.
Gavin • Sep 4, 2012 @7:00 am

Nope, closing the brackets doesn't work. Maybe closing several…

@Random Encounter (you're first because your post is shorter):

The point of atheism being a belief that God does not exist is that you believe you have enough "evidence" to say that there is no God.

The point of agnosticism being a general absense of belief in the existence or absense of God is that with hold actual belief in any position as evidence cannot be presently obtained to rule out any option.

So, whether or not you'd change your view when presented with conflicting evidence doesn't really have any bearing on which one you are.

Let me explain further:

Just because new information can change your mind doesn't make you any less of an atheist or theist, it just means you're willing to listen to new evidence.

Agnosticism doesn't just mean you're willing to listen to new evidence. It means you refuse to take a stance until such evidence is recieved. Huxley (the creator of the term) specifically meant it as a point between belief in God's existence and belief in God's non-existence. It is the non-belief in existence/non-existence until either side proves true.

If you believe that God does not exist. You are an atheist.

If you do not know what to believe and so with-hold judgment until information should pop up either way then you are an Agnostic.

Saying you have a lack of belief in God is only half the answer. The other answer needs to include whether or not you have a belief in Him not existing.

Position: Belief in Existence Neither Belief in Non-Existence
Theism: YES NO NO
Agnosticism: NO YES NO
Athiesm: NO NO YES

Unless Atheism is being used to cover agnosticism too (something that Huxley and agnostics adamantly disagree with, like atheists are their Mormons), then it can have no part with agnosticism because a stance has been taken. If it is being used as a synonym with agnosticism which I have shown is an incorrect use after the acceptance of agnosticism as a distinct term, then saying agnostic atheist is like saying agnostic agnostic. It is not just redundant, it is redundant redundant…
Gavin • Sep 4, 2012 @7:02 am

Thanks David. I saw the mistake and corrected it in the second attempt at posting it (please delete one as it's an immense post). I'll ping you in the future should it happen again.
Grifter • Sep 4, 2012 @10:25 am

@Gavin:

Welcome back! Don't break the internet again…

"which I have shown is an incorrect use"…You have made many statements. But have not "shown it" to be an incorrect use. Again, the Wikipedia article on Agnostic Atheism, which includes my favorite Bertrand Russel quote, would seem to contradict you, as does

One of the earliest definitions of agnostic atheism is that of Robert Flint, in his Croall Lecture of 1887–1888 (published in 1903 under the title Agnosticism).

The atheist may however be, and not unfrequently is, an agnostic. There is an agnostic atheism or atheistic agnosticism, and the combination of atheism with agnosticism which may be so named is not an uncommon one.[5]

And, of course, Huxley himself:

"Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, 'Try all things, hold fast by that which is good'; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him."

"…Not a creed, but a method"

That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.

So, while one can assert that in one's opinion at present there does not seem to be information to support the positive assertion of a god, so long as one says "but we don't/can't know for sure", one would be agnostic by Huxley's definition, while also atheistic in the sense that when asked, the response to "do you believe in god" would be "no".
Gavin • Sep 4, 2012 @12:37 pm

@Grifter:

I'll respond in order of your posts, several though they be.

Post 1: Aug 29, 2012 @4:29 pm

Ah, I see, you're saying that it would be like that. I disagree. If scientists for the past 60 years had been able to repeatedly send particles faster than the speed of light then that would be the current scientific belief even if wrong. The fact that everything in our universe has always had a cause and effect should not be thrown out because we have just found a process that we're unaware of the cause of. As far as I can tell, none of the scientists are saying that there is no cause. Again, the terminology they use to name these processes are extremely confusing to anyone who hasn't researched them deeper but the principle of causality is still very firmly established.

Read the wiki on causaility and it'll explain to you that special relativity is married to it and currently making little causality/relativity rosey cheeked babies that grow into full grown iron fisted principles of their own.

"It is considered to be fundamental to all natural science, especially physics"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_(physics)

If cause and effect fall, then so does everything else, including particles being able to travel faster than the speed of light or faster than instananeous. This is great for time travel but really crappy for modern understanding of all science.

From the link above:

"In modern physics, the notion of causality had to be clarified. The insights of the theory of special relativity confirmed the assumption of causality, but they made the meaning of the word "simultaneous" observer-dependent.[6] Consequently, the relativistic principle of causality says that the cause must precede its effect according to all inertial observers. This is equivalent to the statement that the cause and its effect are separated by a timelike interval, and the effect belongs to the future of its cause. If a timelike interval separates the two events, this means that a signal could be sent between them at less than the speed of light. On the other hand, if signals could move faster than the speed of light, this would violate causality because it would allow a signal to be sent across spacelike intervals, which means that at least to some inertial observers the signal would travel backward in time. For this reason, special relativity does not allow communication faster than the speed of light."

So you see, to violate causality is to violate special relativity. Keep this in mind when reading new scientific discoveries that use words like "random", "net zero" or "uncertainty".

In fact, keep two principles in mind:

Conservation of Energy and Causality.

There is a lot in QFT which may appear at first glance to conflict with one of those rules but if you actually research them you'll find out that there is no conflict whatsover.

Present the single strongest QFT experiment that you feel discards either of those and I can pretty quickly provide you with a link to the contrary defined with fancy diagrams and explanations. I recommend using google first, yourself, before presenting any such experiment because this is a common misconception and so regularly rebutted by physicists. There is often a claim, "This violates causality" and the it is either explained why that is not the case or why the results are incorrect.

Post 2 Aug 29, 2012 @5:24 pm

Someone who lacks belief in God and doesn't know for sure if He doesn't exist isn't entirely defined yet. The question of whether or not they then believe in His non-existance needs to be answered.

For example, you can believe that God doesn't exist even if you don't know for sure that He doesn't.

The point of agnosticism is that you don't know either way so you are with-holding judgement until such a time as adequate evidence could be presented.

This is what the advent of agnosticism did. It created a seperate category where before had only been theism and atheism. Now there is something inbetween. It is not for or against theism. Again, I presented Huxley's own words on this.

Your nipple example is exactly the point. You don't know whether or not I have four nipples. If you believe I have four nipples or believe I don't have four nipples then you have crossed the line out of indecision based on a lack of evidence to a belief in something regardless of lack of evidence.

I do not understand why this has been difficult to understand.

Post 3 Aug 29, 2012 @7:35 pm

I'll agree that Atheism has included the area of non-belief, but the moment that Huxley's term became accepted over a century ago the distinction seperated itself out. It is specifically designed to not be atheist or theist by his own words. So no, atheism has NEVER been meant to include agnosticism. The moment agnosticism was created it was meant to be it's own seperate thing. Atheism may have included it befure, but Huxley correctly pointed out the need for such a distinction and so one now exists and is now being abused by people who don't know any better.

It's fantastic that you can cite people who have incorrectly used the term agnostic or agnosticism. I have presented, for you, the original creator and his own definition as a distinction away from atheism. The quote I presented even included "atheism". Here, I'll post his quote again:

"When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis,"–had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion. [...]. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. […] To my great satisfaction the term took."

So you should be able to clearly see his intention and the understanding of the word Atheism in his day as the belief that God does not exist. It's just that anything other than theism was thrown into that term before he came up with the term. To use agnostic in any other way is to fail in the understanding of the history and intention of the term. It is cute that people would use agnostic as a prefix that is synonymous with the word "weak" or that they would suffix atheism or theism to imply which position they side with, but that is just wrong. The entire point of agnosticism is to withhold siding with either and so to do so is to missuse the term.

Again, how would you define agnostic atheism. The definition I presented from the wikipedia pages you just told me to read (as if I hadn't already done so) is exactly the definition of agnostic. So what difference does throwing the term atheism on the end of it? The best that you can arrive at is that you are being redundant in usage if you wish to say that agnosticism is part of atheism, the worst you can arrive at is that you are simply misusing the term. My belief is that you are doing both, misusing the term and being redundant.

I did not say that this term is not being used in this way, my claim is that it is only being used incorrectly. Perhaps so that people can use two big words when defining their beliefs to sound more intelligent. People like using big words, it makes them feel better about themselves.

Note the ambiguity mentioned in your quote:

"while, then, it is erroneous to identify agnosticism and atheism, it is equally erroneous so to separate them as if the one were exclusive of the other… "

It seems to say that they are not the same thing and yet cannot be seperated, lending to the idea that he doesn't know what the Hell he's talking about, saying that you're wrong either way. The only reason why it is difficult to divorce agnosticism from atheism is because atheism included agnosticism and all things non-theistic (some religions are atheistic) previous to the distinction. In the sense that atheism may mean absense of belief you can find agnosticism within its ranks. What you should not be able to find is agnostic atheism due to the redundancy.

This is what we have, we have me citing the creator of the word and its intended use and then we have you citing people who then immediately misuse it and me freely admitting that people misuse it. So, to me, it's like you're citing people who use it incorrectly as evidence that the word means something that it doesn't. Your claim that I have to do better than Bertrand Russell pails when I make the claim that you have to do better than Huxley, the word's creator.

If I created the word "spork" to define an item that is neither fork nor spoon and yet both of them, you would be incorrect to say that it means spoon. No matter how many times you say that it means spoon it doesn't change the definition. It is still its own thing, in between both (though it fails in that agnosticism is neither whereas a spork is a combination of both).

However, for your sake I will do better. I'll see your Betrand Russell quote from 1952 and raise with a Betrand Russel essay from 1953:

http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/06/10/what-is-an-agnostic-by-bertran/

This is a particularly good link as it also includes some discussion on morality in the absense of theism.

Are agnostics atheists?

No. An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism. His attitude may be that which a careful philosopher would have towards the gods of ancient Greece. If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments. An Agnostic may think the Christian God as improbable as the Olympians; in that case, he is, for practical purposes, at one with the atheists.

Betrand shows the same distinction I've been making. He goes on to establish though that an agnostic may be very close to atheistic in that the probability which he may esteem theism could be so low as to almost not be considered but there is the firm line of throwing it out vs. leaving it there as a very unlikely thing. The moment that line is crossed you have breached into atheism.

I could have merely left the quote at this though:

"Are agnostics atheists?

No"

Can they be very close to atheists in their beliefs? Yes. But they are not atheist.

Please note that Betrand is comparing the specific religions here because his main audience are Christians. He is correct that faith in a specific deity is not intrinsically different from faith in a different deity in as much as there are no clearly contradictory tenents (for example, scientology was started by a man who stated that he could make a lot more money by starting a religion than he could by continuing to try and make money of publishing literature. This is actual evidence that could empiracly place this religion on a lower pedistal than ones where no clear motive were expressed and then carried through with). The problem with this lies in ignoring the concept that some deity we do not know of has created the universe. Something that doesn't require the same sort of faith to consider that picking a specific deity does. As I said, the belief in a deity much as a belief in any particular scientific process believed responsible for creation of the universe may be arrived through reason. It is the next step to ascribe specific properties to the deity that then breaches faith. I am, admittedly, guilty of faith in that respect as much as I am a Christian. But my belief in theism as the correct theory of the universe's existence is no less thought out than any other process in as much as I do divorce the logical conclusion of theism from the faith based acceptance of Christianity. Any Christian who would tell you that Christianity may be arrived at by anything other than faith is at best ignorant and at worst a liar (poor Occam and his less known theory of Christianity by nature).

I think, in the end, that the advent of agnosticism saw the greatest loss of theists and atheists when both sides lost all the members who don't actively believe in a creator or that a creator does not exist. Huxley, in my opinion, accidentally created a term for one of the largest segments of society there is today and subsequently diminished the larger two that came before him.

Perhaps if you read the entirety of things, you would make less stupidly confrontational comments.

Oh damn, I failed pretty bad at that attempt at humor. I thought the "haha" got me out of Poe's Law. My apologies. I was in too much of a hurry to get something out before my extended vacation.

Onto Science!

Soo….you believe they were thrown out before the universe.

Which was my point.

Before the universe, we have no idea of anything. You say "therefore, necessarily must have been god!" I say "Therefore, we have no idea of anything. Could be anything, so I won't assert anything and I will argue against anyone who asserts anything unless they have a good reason."

I can say it a little louder I guess (As loud as typing goes anyways):

I said: "Only that the laws in this universe did not necessarily apply to anything before the universe. "

Strawmans are super fun to use but not really condusive to the discussion. I am claiming exactly what you have said. That the laws of this universe may or may not have carried on from before our universe's inception. This is not me saying that the laws did or did not apply previously, only that you can't make a claim one way or the other. You demanded that any "unmoved mover" of this universe would themselves need a mover according to the principles of our universe. This makes no sense as I've clearly stated that the laws of our universe do not necessarily preceed our universe.

That being said, for all we know God, if He exists, may have a family and a birthday, may be more than one person, may be many things. But at some point the principle of causality will need to not apply as well as the conservation of energy and the principles of thermodynamics. Causality and conservation of energy are inherently self-conflicting (every effect must have a cause and yet energy cannot be created) and yet both are fundamental to nearly every area of science.

Neither have you. The point here is not that you must be wrong, but that there are other explanations. I don't have to defend my position, because I'm only asserting we don't know. You're asserting you do know, that your position is the true one, so you have to defend it.

You made the claim "something from nothing". The burden of proof is absolutely firmly on your shoulders.

Remember that matter=energy and vice versa. There is a conversion between the two. To create anything from nothing is to create energy.

Now then, please explain to me what principle actually proves that energy may be created and by all means link me to the large list of articles of buzz generated by this overturning of all science everywhere.
Gavin • Sep 4, 2012 @12:41 pm

@Grifter's latest comment:

Of course Agnosticism isn't a creed. It's an expression of NON-belief in the absense of evidence. It is withholding an acceptance of creed. It's the method of not believing either side if no evidence exists.

It would be logically illogical in that light to be a creed. Are you trying to say that it is not a cosmological position? It most certainly is. There are agnostics, I believe in them even if they aren't sure if they believe in me or other things/people/places!
Grifter • Sep 4, 2012 @1:09 pm

@Gavin:

"Are you trying to say that it is not a cosmological position? It most certainly is."

According to the originator, which I quoted, it most certainly is not.

It is a method of arriving at an answer, wherein one does not pretend to know what one does not; where one allows one's reason to go as far as it can, and no further.

However, Bertrand Russell actually agreed with you, in some of his writing, but at the end it becomes clear that it doesn't really make sense even to him to differentiate in the manner you are trying for:

"Are agnostics atheists?

No. An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism. His attitude may be that which a careful philosopher would have towards the gods of ancient Greece. If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments. An Agnostic may think the Christian God as improbable as the Olympians; in that case, he is, for practical purposes, at one with the atheists."

To be honest, this is a long debate on terminology that I think we can both prove has been used differently by different people over time.

Neither of us is truly "right", since we can both prove our cases to a certain extent.

From a technical standpoint, I believe mine is more "precise", allowing one to make clear one's position on both knowledge and existence of god using only two words, while I find fault with yours because it means that there's probably about 5 atheists in the world, since I've met no atheists who don't at least acknowledge both our lack of certain knowledge, and the possibility of the existence of god(s), making them agnostics, with no more clarification regarding the position they take on existence.
Gavin • Sep 4, 2012 @1:49 pm

@Grifter, (I have a long post up for moderator approval above)

Russell's point as he clearly states is that Agnosticism may be so close to Atheism that it is functionally the same thing thing, not that it is. This correctly adheres to my claim that Atheism is belief that God does not exist rather than just uncertainty. Russell's statement also fails to encompass all the agnostics who do not consider the "chances" to be unnecessary to consider or extremely unlikely. He's just pointing to the idea that they may be very similar. His answer is still no and he is right, agnostics are not atheists. Some may be very close to atheists but with the advent of agnosticism atheism became a belief system now that a term to describe non-belief or indecision due to unavailable evidence exists.

The originator intended it to be something other than atheism and theism. He specifically mentioned them as things his belief was meant to be contrary to.

Again, agnosticism is not a creed because it does not have any set of beliefs or tenets except that without evidence no position should be taken. It is very much a cosmological position. There are agnostics. These are individuals who do not believe in God and yet do not believe God does not exist. If you fit both of those categories, you are agnostic.

There are not set tenets of belief to go along with it.

Yes, there are much fewer atheists in the world, that is true. Dawkins pointed this out with his scale making even himself a de-facto atheist but not actually an atheist. Atheists in contrast with Agnostics are making that step from leaning towards to faith in. This is in line with what Russell was saying. The individuals he's saying that are close enough to atheism to practically be atheists (while not being atheists) are the "de facto" atheists that Dawkins placed in his scale. I would suspect he's read Russell quite closely. But in distinguishing between atheism and de facto atheism even Dawkins has admitted that atheism is now used to define 100% belief that God does not exist.

So you see, this means the Russell, Dawkins, and even Huxley would not call an agnostic an atheist nor would they call an atheist and agnostic.

You may think that agnostic atheism is more precise, but it isn't. It's two conflicting beliefs in that one is a belief and the other isn't. Huxley didn't believe it was a creed because it's a statement of non-belief. I don't know why that statement isn't making sense.

Creed: Statement of beliefs.
Agnosticism: Statement of not believing.

Ergo, agnosticism =/= creed.

It does mean you don't adhere to theism, atheism, or pantheism (don't know why Huxley felt the need to distinguish theism from pantheism) as Huxley stated.
Joe • Sep 4, 2012 @5:10 pm

Todd Akin – "I dont' always say something stupid but when I do, I keep talking to make it worse." Somewhere in Missouri a village is missing it's idiot.
Grifter • Sep 4, 2012 @5:10 pm

@Gavin:

I am, to a certain extent, beginning to lose patience with this. It is a debate about definitions, not concepts, and has gone on far too long.

I showed how the originator of the term stated it was not its own creed. (Therefore, not an alternative creed to Atheism/Theism, but rather, a different way of approaching the question). I have given several examples (including ones contemporary to the formation of the word) that support my position that "agnostic atheist" is a legitimate term. I have pointed you to the gorram wikipedia article on "agnostic atheism". And I've granted that your position has a certain degree of validity, however, I explained why I felt there was more precision in mine, in that for both theists and atheists there are those who claim to KNOW there is/isn't a god, and those who do not claim to KNOW it.

And your response to my evidence is "you're wrong". Sorry, but rather, your statement that it does not exist, and/or is a "wrong use" is what is wrong, and you are wrong to continue to make it in light of the contemporary sources and encyclopedia entries on the subject.

I will say this: I apologize for my initial statements that your position was wrong, in light of the fact that the word has been used in the manner you described. However, it has also been used in the way I describe (and I still maintain that, both etymologically and philosophically speaking the way I prefer to use it makes more sense, but that's a different debate).

I have proven that multiple times. Go argue with the mods on the wikipedia article for "agnostic atheism" that the thing they have defined does not exist. In the meantime, you are flatly and completely wrong when you try to say that the term does not exist when it clearly does. You keep pretending that I made this concept up. I did not.

Here's another source taking the same position I am:

http://freethinker.co.uk/2009/09/25/8419/

I can do it all day, find sources that use the term in the way I described. At what point would you concede the validity? 100 sources? 1000?
Grifter • Sep 4, 2012 @5:12 pm

@Joe:

"This video is currently unavailable"?
Joe • Sep 4, 2012 @5:24 pm

Hey Grifter – YouTube is the only way I know to embed a pic into a post here on Popehat. Unless someone can pas along instructions otherwise so I can post it properly. I know it can be done – just not how.
Narad • Sep 4, 2012 @6:39 pm

Fixed the misbegotten bolding. You had closed a bold with left-angle, b, forward-slash, right-angle.

I'm pretty sure the misbegotten close tag was supplied automatically.
David • Sep 4, 2012 @7:06 pm

You are, are ya?
Grifter • Sep 4, 2012 @8:05 pm

@Joe:

I am under the impression that you can't embed in WordPress unless the mods install the plugin that allows it, so using Youtube is solid concept…but I'm not a mod, so, undoubtedly they know more than me.

@David:

(Since you mod…) how is it that one poster can frack up the other posters, but they can't unfrack it? I tried to close all possible tags (including, obviously, b), and yet everything stayed bold….is there a way for us humble posters to try to help, at least for posts going past ours?
Gavin • Sep 5, 2012 @6:06 am

@Grifter:

Allow me to say this again.

A creed is a system of belief.

Agnosticism is a statement of non-belief.

It has been my point this entire debate on the nature of the word that it is when you go a step further to actually take a side that you cease to be agnostic and this is because you are now adherring to a creed or belief system.

So agnosticism is by definition not a creed because it is specifically the position of not holding a creed.

My response to your "evidence" was more evidence.

I cited the word's creator stating that he is not an atheist, theist, or a pantheist but rather an agnostic and then going on to define the term. Meaning that the term conflicts with any of the previously listed creeds and ergo should not be combined with them.

I cited one of your own sources, Russell, whom you admitted did not believe that agnostics were atheists and answered the question with a no.

I cited Dawkins, widely considered the current foremost "atheist" or at least the most public one at the moment whose scale puts atheists at 100% and thereby distinguishing them from the rest of the field. Dawkins even considers himself to not be an atheist but something very close to it.

I don't think you could ask for more evidence from me. This in no way sounds like a "you're wrong".

As for the wikipedia page, read the talk page. They are very much aware of the poor sourcing and incorrect citations. I've never edited wikipedia before but I think I should contribute for once. The most I should probably do though is cite Huxley (not even mentioned on the page) and perhaps even Russell's essay. The page is very poorly cited and Robert Flint was known to be extremely anti-Agnostic.

From the Talk page:

Regarding Robert Flint being a terrible source:
"The present work, then, is not an historical, colorless estimate of the part played by Agnosticism in modern thought; it is a partisan work, destined to refute the agnostic. source = P. E. Winter. "Agnosticism by Robert Flint, Review". The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Apr., 1903), pp. 254-255."

Regarding the page in general:

The article is almost wholly unsourced – and the sources that are mentioned are very poor indeed. un☯mi 21:37, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the Bertrand Russell quote that you accidentally used and so led you into a debate folly:

"Try as I might, I can't find mention of either agnostic or ateapostist in the source, the relevance to the current article seems very dubious. un☯mi 02:54, 16 June 2012 (UTC)"

Now that I see that referrence, I read the link it used to cite him and also did not find the term ateapostist or ateapotist.

Please feel free to browse the Archive pages which seems to include everything we've talked about here but in an inflamatory manner. For example,
1. there is a discussion of an article about the term being an oxymoron. Both sides are taken in much the same way we're doing here but with no sources.
2. There is a quote of Dawkins stating that he's agnostic only to the extent that he's agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden which is why he made a scale that weeded out agnosticism altogether because it unfairly weeds out those who are de facto atheists and would otherwise have them be just agnostic which is a pretty vague term. Dawkins has recognized the oxymoronic use of "agnostic atheist" and so his proposed scale was to remove agnostic from defintion and proposed de facto atheists or de facto theists as those who believe but do not claim to know. I believe in God but He hasn't come down and told me that He exists, I'm not a theist in this scale but a de facto theist. I'd say Dawkin's scale is the most accurate to date.

This page needs a lot of work. If I was to edit it I would present evidence on the alternative definition but have to include the allowance of ambiquous definitions of atheism that lead people to think the two are compatible.

But until then, I think it's pretty clear from what I've established that this wiki page is really FAR from correct in any light.
Joe • Sep 5, 2012 @6:25 am

@Grifter – well I will do a test and see if this works.
Joe • Sep 5, 2012 @6:26 am

Sigh – back to the drawing board.
Random Encounter • Sep 5, 2012 @8:00 am

@Gavin

The point of atheism being a belief that God does not exist is that you believe you have enough "evidence" to say that there is no God.

Invert that, I came to the realization over time that I didn't have enough evidence to say that gods of any sort actually exist outside the realm of ideas.

There are actively worshipped deities other than Yahweh/Jehovah in the world, their worshippers believe they exist.

What is your take on the existence of those dieties?
Gavin • Sep 5, 2012 @8:17 am

@Random Encounter:

I readily accept that my belief in the Christian God in particular is faith based. In light of that, my rejection of the other deities is likewise faith based since I believe in the one and not the others. I will say that I have certain reasons why I would hold the Christian faith in higher esteem than other faiths, including a paper I wrote affirming Christianity as the betting man's religion or giving a person the greatest chance of making it to Heaven if such a place exists. But my reasoning is not something I would be so arrogant as to assume that others will hold in the same esteem nor that they should.

My comments in this thread were to espouse the idea that the belief that a sentient being (i.e. God) is not an unreasonable position or necessarily one held out of faith. It can be believed in as much as any other theory or hypothesis and should be possible without any degree of ridicule.

My comments in this thread were not to say that any specific quality or believed interaction with the sentient being are likewise are likewise reasonable. They aren't, that step requires faith and cannot be defended scientifically. I accept that my step into that realm is entirely personal choice and a gamble that disregards other feasible possibilities.

@Grifter:

In reference to Huxley on it not being a creed, the following is the context:

It appears that Mr. Gladstone some time ago asked Mr. Laing if he could draw up a short summary [ 362 ] of the negative creed; a body of negative propositions, which have so far been adopted on the negative side as to be what the Apostles' and other accepted creeds are on the positive; and Mr. Laing at once kindly obliged Mr. Gladstone with the desired articles—eight of them.

If any one had preferred this request to me I should have replied that, if he referred to agnostics, they have no creed; and, by the nature of the case, cannot have any. Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, "Try all things, hold fast by that which is good;" it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him; it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect follow your reason as far as it will take you without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.

So, hopefully you see that he does believe it to be a "faith", but that it cannot be a creed like other religions hold. He would state that the Atheist creed is only that God does not exist.

I have done as you recommended and presented my case to the Wiki page.
Grifter • Sep 5, 2012 @8:54 am

@Gavin:

He didn't invent the term atheist, so, hard as it may be to believe: he may not be right. He believes, as you do, that to be an "atheist" is to make the statement of certainty: There is no god. Etymologically speaking, that is not necessary. Simply lacking the belief in god is enough. The belief in anything's nonexistence is, by nature, rarely a certainty. I'm no more certain that there are no real gods than that there are no real unicorns; this does not mean I have faith there's no god, but rather, that the faithful are positing something, and until they prove their case, I will not believe them, because logically the burden is on the one making the assertion. It does not take faith to reject the positive hypothesis.
Gavin • Sep 5, 2012 @9:27 am

@Grifter:

I did not say Huxley created the word Atheist. I said that he created the term Agnostic and defined what it was intended to be and what it was intended to not be and Atheism along with pretty much all other isms were on that list. The definition of Atheism is largely debated to this day. I can say that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy both definitively put Atheism in the explicit denial of God category while Oxford seems to bridge the gap and include the broad idea of non-belief. There is no consenses as far as I can tell. Huxley may be wrong, but he may be right. The exact definition of Atheism is not what I'm debating here, it's the definition of Agnostic.

The problem is that the use of Agnostic in the wiki page and in general is the theological term. If it were just the colloquial term (I could be agnostic about string theory, for example) then it would be acceptable to say but not a "belief" system.

In any event, the term Agnostic Atheist is not definitionally different than Agnosticsm. Both definitions are that they "do not believe in God and don't believe we can know if God exists or not".

You are correct. It does not take faith to reject the positive hypothesis. It takes faith to reject the positive hypothesis AND accept a negative hypothesis when there is a possibility, small or otherwise, that the positive hypothesis is correct. If I am a poker player and have cards that give me a 90% chance to win, believing that I will win is a step of faith that makes up the remaining 10% and may leave my belief firmly in the wrong category once all the cards have been dealt. If you have 99% certainty that God does not exist (a number that may already be arrived at by faith, mind you) but 1% doubt and yet believe that God does not exist then your faith is bridging that 1%.

I'd put myself at around 60-70% certainty that God exists with a 20% "faith" bridge that would put me in the De Facto Theist category. The 30-40% uncertainty comes with the understanding that while I absolutely believe that the universe was created by something, it could have been a non-sentient but identifiable process. Even though I proposed a loose definition for God that may include non-sentient causes I do not myself adhere to that.
Grifter • Sep 5, 2012 @10:07 am

@Gavin:

I disagree that saying "I shall behave and believe that which is most likely, while acknowledging other possibilities" requires any faith whatsoever.

And, you said "He would state that the Atheist creed is only that God does not exist.", which is what brought that into the discussion. If that's what he would say (and I'm not disagreeing he would have said that), I would argue he would be wrong. Just as being a Theist doesn't speak to how much certainty you have necessarily(though it usually does), neither does atheism. If his word was created to create something that already existed, then it would seem to make sense that the definition would change enough to account for that.

From an etymological standpoint, "gnosis" means knowledge. A-gnosis means lack of knowledge; the prefix (in this case)means "without" or "not".

Perhaps we should be discussing the nature of "belief". For me, I don't believe things which do not have some kind of legitimate evidence. I'm as much an "aunicornist" as I am an "atheist"; I lack any affirmative belief (and, again, the burden is on the asserter to prove their case). This doesn't mean there aren't unicorns somewhere in the Congo, or a god somewhere in the universe, but that since I don't know they exist, and they are not a prediction from any hypothesis that has any proven reliability, I will tentatively say "No" if asked whether they exist. Using your terms, what does that make me? I have no faith in any position, but that doesn't mean that they are all equally likely.
Gavin • Sep 5, 2012 @1:44 pm

@Grifter:

I'll respond paragraph by paragraph for ease referrence. 4 paragraphs in your last post.

1., 2., and 4. Hmm, I see what you mean. You'll accept the most likely option so long as it is the most likely option. In my scenario of poker, I would most likely bet a lot as the odds of me winning would be very high but that doesn't necessarily mean that I reject the possibility of losing due to the 10% of scenarios that could play out to spell my loss.

In this respect, I say Agnosticism views Theism and Atheism as binary. 100% or 0%. Actual decisions affirming or rejecting God with nothing inbetween. You seem to agree that this was the intention of its creator but reject that the intention should impact the use.

I say that Atheism may include in it, only two options if you accept every main definition (except the use of it in antiquity where it could mean anyone who doesn't adhere to your particular deity).
a. The belief that God does not exist.
b. The lack of belief in God.

Now then, if you believe that God does not exist then you have taken a side. Agnosticism would then be naturally contradictory to this definition as Agnosticism in its theological sense (as opposed to colloquially like a Cosmologist may be agnostic towards string theory, wikipedia defines it using the theological/religious definition) as Agnosticism carries in it the lack of decision in the absense of real proof (boy oh boy does this infuriate Dawkins, he calls them fence sitting cowards!).

Then, perhaps you'd prefer the defintion that Atheism can contain within it the absence of belief. In this case the addition of the word Atheism to Agnosticism carries no difference in definition.

Please explain the difference between Agnosticism and Agnostic Atheism.

3. Yes, Huxley explained why he made the term that way. Is there any specific point you wish to add to a belief system he very well could have called "Huxleyianism"? It isn't like this is a word created in the ancient latin speaking world. This is the late 1800. It's relatively new.
Grifter • Sep 5, 2012 @1:58 pm

@Gavin:

The difference in my mind between agnostic atheism and agnosticism is that agnosticism does not necessarily take any position on the existence of god.

Even without certainty, there are 3 options: Believe it should be considered true until disproven (agnostic theism), believe it cannot be considered either true or untrue (Huxley/traditional agnosticism), believe it should be considered untrue until proven (Agnostic atheism).

The argument "you can't prove there isn't a god" (and therefore, belief makes more sense) would be a type of "agnostic theist" argument.

The argument "The burden of proof rests on the one making the claim, and until they have proven their point I will not believe their argument" is a type of "agnostic atheist" argument.
Gavin • Sep 6, 2012 @6:23 am

@Grifter,

But that's my point, an Agnostic by definition does not take a position on the existence of God. Agnostics do not believe God exist nor do they believe He doesn't.

If you combine either theism or atheism with the term agnostic it ceases to be agnosticism if a stance is taken. Agnosticism is truly fence sitting. In my opinion, it is functionally atheism and combining it with theism would be even worse but Agnosticism is more specific of a term in that it specifies non-belief and the belief that we cannot ever really know (at the very least not presently).

As for your definition of Agnostic Theism: "Believe it should be considered true/untrue until disproven"

Please, by all means, cite the source for that definition. Try as I might I cannot find any such definition accompanying agnostic anything with the word "believe" as taking a stance is specifically the part that agnosticism is trying to avoid.

You are making the error that J.J.C. Smart mentioned in the source you listed earlier:

Scottish philosopher J. J. C. Smart even argues that "sometimes a person who is really an atheist may describe herself, even passionately, as an agnostic because of unreasonable generalised philosophical skepticism which would preclude us from saying that we know anything whatever, except perhaps the truths of mathematics and formal logic."[47]

Believing in something but not ruling out the possibility that you're wrong isn't agnosticism. It's just not being stubborn. I believe in a ton of things that if evidence countered I would recant. If you believe that God does not exist then you are Atheist, no Agnostic about it. There is nothing wrong with that, you don't need to tag the word "Agnostic" on the front of it to let us know that if evidence ever cropped up to the contrary that you'd change your view. That's not the point or definition of it.

This is why I like Dawkin's scale so much. It takes into account the variance in degrees of agnosticism without combining contradictory terms.
Gavin • Sep 6, 2012 @8:59 am

If you really want to express the inability to know God while affirming that you do not know him, you may want to look into the term: Epistemological Atheism and its four subcategories (Primarily Objectivist Atheism or Skeptical Atheism). It appears to be functionally the same thing you intend to say with "Agnostic Atheism" but sidesteps the pitfalls of using another belief system as an adjective for a belief system it was meant to counter

http://packham.n4m.org/atheist3.htm (this source actually mentions the use of agnosticism by atheists and views it as the same as saying "I'm open minded" and as such is not useful and not accurate.

1. ETHICAL ATHEISM or EXISTENTIAL ATHEISM (Sartre, Camus):
Because life is absurd, there is no god. The idea of god is inconsistent with the idea of freedom.
2. PSYCHOLOGICAL ATHEISM (Feuerbach):
Ideas of god are simply of psychological origin.
3. SOCIOLOGICAL ATHEISM (Engels, Bakunin):
Ideas of god are false because they have caused social repression.
4. PRAGMATIC ATHEISM:
Ideas of god are not useful, therefore they must be false.
5. METAPHYSICAL ATHEISM (d'Holbach, Marx):
Since only matter exists, god – being immaterial – cannot exist.
6. EPISTEMOLOGICAL ATHEISM:
Knowledge of god is impossible.

There are several subcategories [of Epistemological Atheism]:
KEPTICAL ATHEISM: (based on Hume, although Hume was not atheist)
Since one cannot be certain of knowing anything, one cannot know of the existence of God.
LOGICAL-POSITIVE ATHEISM (Ayer):
Any statement about a transcendent being is fundamentally meaningless.
LINGUISTIC-ANALYSIS ATHEISM:
Since the term "god" cannot be defined, it cannot have meaning.
OBJECTIVIST ATHEISM (Ayn Rand):
Proof of anything about god has never been satisfactorily given.
Gavin • Sep 6, 2012 @9:00 am

Sorry, I mean while affirming that you do not believe in him.
Grifter • Sep 6, 2012 @9:21 am

@Gavin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theism

Do you not have access to Wikipedia at your work? It seems that it would have naturally followed from our discussion, though you mispasted when you asked your question…I said an agnostic theist position would be (but not that it is THE ONLY agnostic theist position, of course) to believe until disproven (and, I suppose I didn't include that within that is to say "and it hasn't been/can't be"). I didn't say that "Believe it should be considered true/untrue until disproven" was the agnostic theist position, as that would encompass both theism and atheism.

Again, from my perspective (I can't defend agnostic theism effectively), I feel that those positing an idea must defend it, because otherwise I am stuck believing all the contradictory religious beliefs of the world. I don't believe it requires faith to go to the Null hypothesis until/unless more data comes along. Thus, while I believe the question is uknown in answer (and, further, I believe it's IMPOSSIBLE to know if god exists), if asked I would say that I have no reason to believe in god's existence, and therefore I do not believe in god.
Grifter • Sep 6, 2012 @9:43 am

Also, @Gavin, from the Atheism Wikipedia article:

"The foundation of epistemological atheism is agnosticism,"
Narad • Sep 6, 2012 @10:01 am

You are, are ya?

It always has been when I've seen it before. I looked at the time, and the offending tag was <b />. Note the space: it's the hallmark of an invalid auto-inserted self-closing tag. WP can do this when it sees nested formatting tags (i.e., the orginal would have been a second <b>), but the tree eventually runs wild. I didn't run the page through a parser at the time, but that's my guess. This "autocorrection" can be turned off, IIRC.
Grifter • Sep 6, 2012 @10:15 am

@Narad:

Is there a way to just fix the problem? It seems like WP (or is it just the theme?) is treating b like a self-closing tag, with a trailing /, which is acceptable (if unnecessary) in the br tag, but is completely jacked up for b?
Narad • Sep 6, 2012 @12:43 pm

Is there a way to just fix the problem?

Yes, you get somebody who can redact the thing from on high. I've seen user-level dorking around remedy similar problems, but never on WP.

It seems like WP (or is it just the theme?) is treating b like a self-closing tag, with a trailing /, which is acceptable (if unnecessary) in the br tag, but is completely jacked up for b?

I think the issue is a conflation of XHTML, which allows any tag to self-close, with HTML, which allows this only for void and foreign elements. So, if the platform is thinking XHTML and serving HTML, one can spray invalid <b />'s and so forth.
Gavin • Sep 6, 2012 @1:14 pm

Yes, the foundation of apistemological atheism is agnosticism. How does that become "therefore agnostic atheism"? It doesn't, it means that there are actual terms that include agnostic tendencies for atheists that grew out of the agnostic movement. If anything, it saying that it has roots in agnosticism without bringing up the term "Agnostic Atheism" and even talking about it's problems should indicate all the more the fallibility of its use.

Hah, the Agnostic Theist page is actually better than the Agnostic Atheist page. I would not have expected that. I guess I am just biased against Agnostic Theism because I consider believing the affirmative to be an even more egregious act against agnosticism than believing the negative. I do believe that Agnostics leaning closer to Atheism are just being more honest.

May I ask why you consider Wikipedia to be a legitimate source though? I picked apart the Agnostic Atheism page pretty thoroughly but that was easy since the talk pages already included those criticisms and I needed only to list them. This particular page, for example, only has three sources and only one is directly talking about agnosticism being theistic or atheistic. I don't see why this single source should be particularly authoritative though, especially when I have cited much more popular sources than this "George H. Smith from 1979". Is he more authoritative than Huxley, Russell, and Dawkins?

The Agnostic Theist page is riddled with the same problems:

2.It is questionable how coherent this position is. "I believe X but I don't know that X". Well if knowledge is justified true belief, that expands to "I believe X, but believe that either X is false, or that I don't believe X, or that I am not justified in believing X" – all three options seem to commit some variant of Moore's paradox. Believing something, but admitting you aren't justified in believing it, is somewhat paradoxical. Are there any reliable sources containing this criticism? Since I would be surprised if no one had made it, it seems clear to me.

And

This position may be seen as a logical fallacy because the agnostic theist is holding a belief, even though he/she is in a state of doubt. In order to believe something, you give a conviction made on knowledge about something you find to be true; in which an agnostic does not do. Additionally, to be in a state of doubt, you make no conviction.

These terms are logically illogical. In this scenario you are saying "I believe despite not having evidence". Belief requires personal evidence (even if that personal evidence is wrong). Again, Theism IS the belief in God/gods. Where atheism may include individuals who just don't believe in God while not denying his existence, Theists must believe that He does exist.
Grifter • Sep 6, 2012 @1:24 pm

@Gavin:

"Belief requires personal evidence (even if that personal evidence is wrong)."

Not true.

Faith is generally considered to be belief WITHOUT (or, in some cases, IN SPITE OF) evidence.

And you did not pick apart the wikipedia pages "pretty thoroughly". For example, the page on agnostic atheism lists a contemporary of Huxley. You didn't like that source, but it certainly supported the idea that that's how the word may be used. I am not taking the position that your use of the words in question are wrong, but rather, I am just as right, if by "right" we define it as "this is how these words have been used", as opposed to "I made up this definition just now".

I used Wikipedia, but I could just as easily link to dozens more; Wikipedia was just easy. Google it yourself, since if I include the literally 100s of links I could, I'd get stuck in moderation limbo. My use is by no means uncommon.
Grifter • Sep 6, 2012 @1:29 pm

Do you prefer this source?

http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/agnostic-atheist-faq.htm
Joe • Sep 6, 2012 @5:51 pm

@Grifter @Gavin- like and enjoy posts from both of you but am reminded of a post from Robert White a ways back about there being a point of diminishing return after which you realize you will not convince the other person to your viewpoint. Question – are you both there yet?
M. • Sep 6, 2012 @7:59 pm

@Joe: The thing about the dog went on longer.
Grifter • Sep 6, 2012 @8:16 pm

@Joe:

As much as I respect Robert White, I don't have that philosophy. As long as there COULD be progress, I'm willing to keep going… I assume I'm just not doing a good enough job explaining myself, plus, in theory I could always be convinced. As long as I'm not pissing off our hosts, and the discourse is still technically abiding by the conventions of civil debate, I am willing to keep going 'till its over.

@M:
Technically, that ones still not over.
Random Encounter • Sep 7, 2012 @1:55 am

Getting the terminology straight is always the hardest part.

That's why we will always need language and philosophy specialists.

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