I would think the starting assumption would be that it doesnt have a starting point (since we can't even define it properly). I think life is like happiness, warmth, crowdedness or any other fuzzy state without a clear boundary. There isn't a starting point for when a room gets crowded - nonetheless an empty elevator isn't and one with twenty passengers is.

Your declaration that fertilisation is the only objective place to declare life starting seems analogous to me as someone who declares that a lift is crowded as soon as there's one person in it - anything else is an arbitrary choice.

The best strategy would be if the abrahamic religions stopped their condemnation of birth control, started supporting sex ed and stopped making sex a sin. imo.

So you would have no problem with a society that doesn't have laws and punishments for murder or assault because you are not interested in the law?

Basically im just asking if you think abortion is murder and harming a fetus is assault. If you do and you dont want to pass laws against it, ok. Still want to know how you view it.

I cannot tell you when it goes from freezing to boiling, but I can tell you when you turn the heater on. And that is all that is needed.

I would like to think I would respect the humanity of the random ethopian. If I did have a random ethopian killed to save a loved one, I would certainly have a guilty conscious about it.

Do you think your action would be moral? Also how many random ethopians would you be willing to kill in order to maintain the happiness and well being of your wife? If you had one killed to get her a new heart, would you have another killed if your wifes body rejected the first transplanted heart or if a year later it turned out she also needed a liver?

I disagree.....the amount of time in which it is ambigious whether you have two gametes or a new distinct organism isn't meaningful.

By the time a woman realizes she is pregnant and begins to consider having an abortion it obvious there is a new and distinct organism there.

If human life having value became inconvenient I would expect that those that don't believe in god would for the most get rid of it. History has shown that to be true. (and really continues to be true today, human life only has value when it is convenient.)

I agree that the "debate" is not over a biblical passage, in the same way there there is no verse I can point to that states red heads also have value to their life.

I don't understand why does it matter whether an embryo is biologically human being? Even if it is, who says we have to value all things that are biologically humans the same?

Analogy with Hitler does nothing except show that under the premise that embryo is a human being, we share a certain common denominator - that is, we think its acceptable to kill a type of human beings. But thats the problem only if we think that such a common denominator is actually bad. I don't think it necessarily is.

I don't see how this is going to decrease the amount of abortions. But if it could I would be all for it.


When it comes to morality I don't care about the law. And if passing a law doesn't help the situation then I don't see what good it would do. If the jails were filled with people that stole because they had to feed their family, then I would not be for spending effort to increase the police to catch all of the food thieves. Instead I think we should spend the effort feeding the poor.

In other words, instead of focusing on how to react to a tragedy (which I think it is every time someone has an abortion) lets focus on what we can do to prevent the tragedy.

Also, I am just not concerned with people being punished. I would rather help them out of the situation that caused them to sin in the first place.

Yes, I do view it as murder.

When I first started posting in this thread I thought people would challenge the assumption that the ideology responsible for the most evil is the one that allows some human beings to be valued less than others.

No body really put in any significant effort in challenging that assumption. I gotta admit I am a little surprised.

Sure, ideology that was responsible for the most evil is the one that allowed some human beings to be valued less than the other.

But that's a very loose description of such ideology. You could have a whole range of different ideologies - I argue some of them to be good - under the same umbrella.

For example, I think ideology that says women can decide whether they want to make an abortion is responsible for a lot of good. That doesnt mean nazi ideology is also responisble for lot of good.

I am going to call bull**** on this claim. I highly doubt that you have sufficient evidence to make the claim that history has shown that people who don't believe in god get rid of human life when it becomes convenient to them. More relevantly, since your interpretation of the pro-choice viewpoint is so hostile (i.e. would not be accepted by them as an accurate statement of their own views), I think you are just not interested in answering my question.

It is probably worth reminding you at this point that the majority of people who have abortions in the U.S. are Christians.

So basically, you don't think there is any debate at all. There is the pro-life view, which is obviously correct, and then there are a bunch of dumb and immoral pro-choice people. I hope you can see why I reject this understanding of the issue.

You think there has been some influential ideology that hasn't valued some human beings differently? I can't think of any religion, ideology or society that would on a practical level value all human beings the same whether they are women, gays, transsexuals, atheists, theists, blacks, asians, whites, nudists, capitalists, communists, criminals, fetuses, brain-dead... So besides maybe some weird community somewhere, any ideology or culture that has done good or evil allows some human beings to be valued less than others.

What do you mean "allows"? We assign different values to human beings as a matter of fact.


I'm not sure ideologies per se are responsible for anyhing, because abstract things aren't causal.

Well its better then your suggestion of "helping them" which says nothing really.


Alright thats all i was asking.

Would you count shutting down the life-support of someone who is brain dead as murder?

Depends on the situation.

History has shown that Human life has value when it is convenient to have value.

I don't see how there can be a debate that once conception has taken place that the being is not a human life at one point but is at another.

I suspect this will end up as a somewhat useless generality, but I don't see what your claim here has to do with the connection you claimed existed between a lack of belief in God and a propensity to view human life as without value.

Obviously you don't see how there can be a debate about abortion. However, since there obviously is such a debate, I think you should be troubled by your inability to recognize or explain it.

But it doesnt depend on the situation with abortion? That's illogical.

A prochoicer's Christian life sucks. Sex only during marriage, no contraception, no sodomy. Welcome back to waaaaay before the sexual revolution.

So the business about equal human value is really just a bullcrap cover?

nope. Two completely different situations, DUCY?

no

So your answer to my question is "I don't need to answer it". Hardly reasonable. You accept that you can't then? When does an elevator become crowded? When does a cold rock baking in the sun become warm? The heater being switched on is irrelevant to the fact that temperature exists.

The answer to your question is "I can't tell you when a fetus goes from nonhuman to human, but I can tell you when it's Tuesday. And that is all that is needed."

Hard to calculate. How many Ethiopians did you kill the last time you and your family went on holiday rather than sending the money to provide sanitation and other services to a village? If you show your working I'll use the same assumptions in providing my estimate.

I'd treat this as rhetorical, by the way (not that you seem interested in actually defending your position anyhow) I've made a determined effort to understand your view (which I still maintain is unjustified) and you don't seem to have any interest in articulating it further or in answering my questions. I'm getting a little tired of answering ridiculous thought experiments which you then judge based on this cryptic, unstated moral calculus without ever actually defending your hyperbole.