Abortion: Even the non-religious should be against it

[Darkbloom]

AYE! when iwas at the March for Life in Ottawa amongst the 15,000Marchers we saw Atheists for Life.I even saw one guy who was considerably counterculture and hirsuite holding a sign saying "do I look like a Catholic?Do i look like a suit?do I look like a government stooge?Anarchists for Life!!! "

Murder is Murder and you can stamp your feet and close your ears and say it’s a blob of tissue-IT"S A BABY AND IT"S BEING MURDERED.

Just like the Jews,Gypsies,Poles,Slavs,Russians,Homosexuals,disabled and clergy at Auschwits they are considered sub-human.

Thomas Jefferson said “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

Exactly. Pro-abortion philosophy seems to be equal parts reflexive anger and self delusion.

 

[Soutane]

Exactly. Pro-abortion philosophy seems to be equal parts reflexive anger and self delusion.

I think a lot of it stems from rebelliousness and Pride.Strangely enough the sins that got us chucked from Eden.“You can’t tell me what to do”!It’s MY body"!Not any more it isn’t.You can’t murder another person because they’re an inconvenience.There are 200,000 Americans seeking to adopt-There are 22,000 babies brought to life by women who recognize the Truth.Their place in heaven is assured.

 

[Rich_Clark]

I think a lot of it stems from rebelliousness and Pride.Strangely enough the sins that got us chucked from Eden.“You can’t tell me what to do”!It’s MY body"!Not any more it isn’t.You can’t murder another person because they’re an inconvenience.There are 200,000 Americans seeking to adopt-There are 22,000 babies brought to life by women who recognize the Truth.Their place in heaven is assured.

Back in the 1960’s, Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Archbishop of New York, made a Christmas visit to Viet Nam in 1966. I can remember reading in the newspaper that he had blessed the troops, and told them that they were “fighting God’s war”. I remember thinking at the time that such a comment represented an obvious element of hypocrisy on the part of this Church leader, since the Catholic Church was opposed to abortion. Consider Archbishop Spellman’s comment with respect to a pregnant Vietnamese woman. If she aborts her fetus, the Church condemns her and accuses her of committing murder. But if she carries the fetus to term, gives birth, and twenty years later that baby, now grown to adulthood, becomes a Communist, THEN it is perfectly OK to kill him. Apparently killing Communists was no longer considered murder in the opinion of Archbishop Spellman.

So that has me wondering whether you Catholic believers who do consider abortion to be murder have the same view towards other kinds of accepted killing, for example, capital punishment and particularly with regard to war in general. Or is it only abortion that you consider murder, and that fires up your passionate opposition?

 

[Polycarp1]

Back in the 1960’s, Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Archbishop of New York, made a Christmas visit to Viet Nam in 1966. I can remember reading in the newspaper that he had blessed the troops, and told them that they were “fighting God’s war”. I remember thinking at the time that such a comment represented an obvious element of hypocrisy on the part of this Church leader, since the Catholic Church was opposed to abortion. Consider Archbishop Spellman’s comment with respect to a pregnant Vietnamese woman. If she aborts her fetus, the Church condemns her and accuses her of committing murder. But if she carries the fetus to term, gives birth, and twenty years later that baby, now grown to adulthood, becomes a Communist, THEN it is perfectly OK to kill him. Apparently killing Communists was no longer considered murder in the opinion of Archbishop Spellman

So that has me wondering whether you Catholic believers who do consider abortion to be murder have the same view towards other kinds of accepted killing, for example, capital punishment and particularly with regard to war in general. Or is it only abortion that you consider murder, and that fires up your passionate opposition?

Well it could be that Archbishop Spellman was wrong if he said that. We don’t claim that clergy are infallible and I’m sure many Catholics would have disagreed with him especially now knowing some of the real motivations behind the Vietnam war. One person’s opinion and comment don’t reflect the the official view of the Church anymore than one American’s view reflects the official policy of America as a whole.

 

[Polycarp1]

So that has me wondering whether you Catholic believers who do consider abortion to be murder have the same view towards other kinds of accepted killing, for example, capital punishment and particularly with regard to war in general. Or is it only abortion that you consider murder, and that fires up your passionate opposition?

The fifth commandment forbids direct and intentional killing as gravely sinful. The murderer and those who cooperate voluntarily in murder commit a sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance. Infanticide, fratricide, parricide, and the murder of a spouse are especially grave crimes by reason of the natural bonds which they break. Concern for eugenics or public health cannot justify any murder, even if commanded by public authority.

Capital Punishment :The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor. "If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. "Today, in fact, given the means at the State’s disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender 'today … are very rare, if not practically non-existent.

War: All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war. However, “as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed.”

 

[MikiBee]

governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed."

So, what happens if they join in on a war they were never part of to begin with? No longer self defense.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

anEvilAtheist:

I never said I maintained that harming life is always wrong. I do not believe it is immoral to pick a flower for instance. There is nothing magical about something being life that gives it moral standing.

I never implied that you did say any and all harm to life immoral. But you did say that doing it without just cause is immoral. That means abortion is immoral.

Well, I believe that picking a flower is morally permissible even without just cause. Life that is conscious and has needs and wants definitely deserves some moral consideration in my opinion and should not be killed without good cause.

You’re using indeterminacy as a crutch. Any moral person, as you have said throughout, would oppose the unnecessary destruction of life. That is exactly what abortion is.

How am I using indeterminacy as a crutch? I am not saying that it’s hard to say when a fetus reaches moral significance so we should be free to abort them all. What I’m saying is that we need to look closely at what makes killing some living things moral and killing other living things immoral. I do not think that any of the reasons that it is often wrong to kill living things apply to killing a plant or to killing a human zygote.

Furthermore, is there any indisputable proof of exactly when a fetus does feel pain? If not, why not error on the side of compassion and not abort?

No, there is no indisputable proof of the exact moment that it takes place. As far as I can tell, the best current research indicates that the wiring that is necessary for a fetus to be conscious of pain is not in place until week 28 (religioustolerance.org/abo_pain2.htm). I think we should err on the side of compassion when there is genuine uncertainty about whether a fetus is conscious, can feel pain, and has desires. But I do not think that the government should ban the killing or removal of all fetuses, even those that have clearly not reached the point of moral significance any more than the government should ban the killing of all animals.

Be this as it may, you are advocating abortion as a way to relieve a mother of a burden.

Yes, if a procedure does no significant harm and can relieve someone of a burden, I am generally for it.

More over, human are clearly possessed of evolutionary adaptations for eating meat, which is to say it is natural to our biology. Being a vegetarian gets easier, I know first hand, but it is still our nature to eat meat.

Likewise, women are adapted to have children. It is also a basic biologic function. They are really on the same moral plane.

Yes, evolution made it such that humans were able to eat meat and women were able to give birth. It doesn’t follow from evolution that engaging in either activity is either moral or immoral.

It seems that you’ve gone from saying that living beings deserve moral consideration to saying only certain orders of living beings deserve moral consideration. Perhaps I’m wrong, but that seems to be the case.

Life is very clear cut. Your notion is much more nebulous. If we are to be consistently moral, why would we not hold ourselves to the standard of protecting life instead just life that has risen above some ill defined standard of morally worthwhile life?

If you want a clearer definition, I would say that things deserve moral consideration once they start having desires and placing value on things. This requires attaining a certain stage of consciousness first. If you want to make the argument that even non-believers should be against abortion, I would need to see a reason why I should attach moral significance to fetuses before that point in their development.

I don’t see it as being inconsistently moral to value certain types of life more than others. If plants have to die so I can save my friend’s life, so be it.

Also, I think it’s wrong to say that life is clear cut. When you begin to study it, you realize that defining life is surprisingly difficult (artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/2009/03/can-we-define-life/). You said earlier that “Furthermore, is there any indisputable proof of exactly when a fetus does feel pain? If not, why not error on the side of compassion and not abort?” If you think this justifies abstaining from all abortion even when it is clear that the fetus’ brain has not developed and think that all life is morally significant, then couldn’t I also argue: “Is there any indisputable proof of exactly what exactly is alive? If not, why not error on the side of compassion and treat even rocks as morally significant beings?”

I’m positive that my previous post was the first time I asked you how ending a pregnancy because it is burdensome to a mother is not using abortion as a way to do away with a burden because you just recently said that pregnancy was a burden (to differentiate it from vegetarianism), even though you earlier said you did see abortion as a way of disposing of a burden.

You’re right, my apologies. I agree with you that ending a pregnancy because it is burdensome to a mother is using abortion as a way to do away with a burden. I’m unsure of what point you’re making though.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

It doesn’t at all surprise me that atheists do not volitionally structure their morality to oppose religious teachings. Like I said earlier, much of the support of abortion is not thought out at all; instead, it is chosen reflexively to signal a rejection of faith and membership in a certain subculture.

I think most people have not given much thought to why they believe what they believe when it comes to morality. I don’t think atheists are unique in this regard. Do you have any evidence that atheists adopt moral beliefs because religions adopt the opposite stance? I think most atheists are in favor of legal abortion not because many religions want to make it illegal, but because they can’t think of good reasons why it should be banned.

Really, what has more predictive and explanatory power, the idea that those who most wildly uphold compassion and tolerance as their watch words just happen not to see anything wrong with infanticide, or that those people support abortion because to do so is to demonstrate how far removed from religion one is?

It’s not that they don’t see infanticide as wrong; it’s that they don’t see abortion as infanticide because fetuses and zygotes are not infants in the way that term is normally used. But I’m sure there are some atheists who don’t see genocide as wrong, just as there are some Christians who think that God supported or committed genocide in the Bible and such acts were perfectly moral.

 

[Polycarp1]

So, what happens if they join in on a war they were never part of to begin with? No longer self defense.

If it is a war of aggression as opposed to defence or in defense of others it most likely be be an unjust and immoral act and outside the provisions of the Just War Doctrine.
The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

The Church and human reason both assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. "The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties. Non-combatants, wounded soldiers, and prisoners must be respected and treated humanely.

Actions deliberately contrary to the law of nations and to its universal principles are crimes, as are the orders that command such actions. Blind obedience does not suffice to excuse those who carry them out.

catholic.com/library/Just_War_Doctrine_1.asp

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Then it should be plain that when we deal with life itself, we are dealing with a moral issue of a higher order than most.

I agree that there has to be life for there to be morality, but not that all life has moral significance (plants for example).

There has been no convincing secular rebuttal of Hume’s distinction between “is” and “ought”. There never will be in my opinion. Hume rightly showed that nothing in the natural world accounts for the nearly universal human belief that “is” does in fact lead to “ought”.

Since this is the case, it follows that if no natural explanation can link “is” and “ought”, even the connection is recognized in one form or another by nearly everyone, then the only other option is a supernatural explanation.

A full discussion about Hume’s ‘is-ought’ distinction would probably require a whole new thread, but I’d like to make a few brief points. If Hume’s argument is correct, it doesn’t mean that morality does not exist, but that we cannot ever come to know what it is. It would not rule out that an uncaused necessarily existing God is the source of morality, or that an uncaused necessarily existing set of Platonic moral facts exist. So I don’t see how his argument would be any less problematic for theists. But Hume doesn’t give evidence that you can’t get from ‘is’ to ‘ought’; he merely says that he can’t think of a way to go from ‘is’ to ‘ought’. This is no more a proof that you can’t get from one to the other than an atheist’s claim that they can’t think of any reason why an omnipotent omnibenevolent God would allow suffering proves that an omnipotent omnibenevolent God does not exist. Both are merely arguments from ignorance. There also doesn’t seem to be any reason that ‘ought’ cannot be a subset of ‘is’. In order to show that ‘ought’s cannot be derived from ‘is’s, you first have to explain what is meant by ‘ought’. Of course you could leave it undefined, or merely define the set of moral terms (such as ‘ought’, ‘morality’, ‘ethical’) only relative to each other, and in that case, other people will obviously not be able to say anything about morality in the way you use the term. Similarly, if I defined ‘shnuhoih’ as “that which is ‘ujoinjm’”, then you would not be able to say anything about either term. But I believe morality can be explained naturalistically, and I believe that desire utilitarianism (aka desirism) does that.

And even if Hume’s argument showed that there could be morality if God exists, but not if God does not exist, this would not show that theism is true. It might make it more desirable for some people, but it would not make it any more true.

You gave the reason in nascent form yourself. We should avoid undue harm to life, especially human life as the highest yet known.

You can reframe it as a desire not to cause harm or suffering, but you still haven’t escaped that life is ontologically prior to morality, harm, suffering, etc, and hence rises to a higher moral order.

You keep claiming that it is immoral to harm any life whatsoever, but I don’t remember you providing any evidence that it is. I am not just going to concede that if you don’t have a good enough reason for picking a flower, doing so is immoral.

You’re making my point for me. Moral truth is true of itself, not because of popular assent.

If you are truly arguing for the morality of the simple majority, then you must, if you are to remain consistent, agree that enslaving black people in the American south was okay because it was held to be moral by a majority of those in the south. Same is true for Nazism, the subjugation of women, the whole sale slaughter of heretics, etc, because there have been times and places where these views were held by a simple majority.

No, I am not arguing that morality comes from majority opinion. I explained this before, but maybe I wasn’t clear. Allow me to elaborate upon my earlier example of slavery:

Slavery is not immoral simply because the majority opposes it. It is immoral because it thwarts a great deal of very strong desires. I believe that morality deals with what is possible, and while it is possible to eliminate the desire to enslave people, even if it takes hundreds of years, it is not possible to eliminate the desire to be free from physical abuse, the desire for some degree of freedom, the desire to choose one’s wife, and the desire to protect one’s family. Only by making humans no longer human, can you make it such that slavery is moral.

Your stated desire not to cause undue harm, and your belief that moral consideration should be commiserate with sophistication/intelligence/whatever of life.

I do not think that breaking a rock, picking a flower, or killing a zygote do any harm. And since fetuses early in pregnancy do not yet have desires, they do not yet deserve moral consideration.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

I’ve presented a very solid reason atheists should oppose abortion, arising from your own stated philosophy. Maybe you disagree with that reason, but to say I didn’t present one is a lie.

I think your reason was based on a misunderstanding of my philosophy. And I do think my statement that “you have yet to present any moral or pragmatic reasons that atheists should oppose abortion in all cases” is accurate. Maybe you’ve presented a reason that you think should convince all atheists (or at least those who adhere to the same beliefs about morality as I do), but I don’t think you’ve presented a reason that actually should convince atheists. If I said that you should become Buddhist because chairs exist, that wouldn’t actually be a reason why you should be Buddhist even if I thought it was. This is kind of nit-picky though, and it’s not worth arguing over. I agree that you think you’ve provided a good reason, but think that all the arguments you’ve provided have either been flawed or have been based on a misunderstanding of my views.

Please quote the passage in which you did this because I don’t see it.

I am quoting it below, even though it may be unnecessary since I explained it more fully in my last post:

Even if you could convince the slaves that they desired to be slaves, slavery would still thwart many of their desires, such as freedom, lack of physical abuse, and ability to choose one’s wife and protect one’s family. In a world in which you could change every single thing people cared about so that being enslaved brought them maximum satisfaction, people would no longer be people. Although it took a long time, the desire to enslave others declined. So now almost no desires are being thwarted by prohibiting slavery.

Earlier in the very same post I am replying to, you scoff at my notion that morality by simple majority is reprehensible, but now you say that even if everyone on earth thought that slavery was moral it would still be immoral. That is not consistent.

I looked over the post and couldn’t find the scoffing. I have always opposed morality by majority and have been clear that desirism is not morality by majority.

That speaks to the fundamental flaw in desire utilitarianism. All desires are treated as if they are morally equal, which they are not.

No, they are not treated as if they are morally equal. They are just treated as if there is no supernatural force that makes some desires inherently superior to other desires. Instead, desires are evil because they make the world a worse place by depriving others of what they desire.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Would you care to explain why you think it is murder, since I already explained why I think that it does not match the definition of murder in a multiple ways?

No problem:

My point is that while both characterizations “killing children” or “relocating cells” may be technically accurate depending on how you define those words, they are biased characterizations that rely on emotions to score points. We are rightly horrified if someone murders a five-year-old child and are generally indifferent about moving cells around. But in order to show that abortion is wrong, you need to show why the morally relevant facts in aborting a human zygote are more like those of murdering a five-year-old than those of relocating cells. Otherwise we’re just trying to persuade others by shouting words. Sure, we could have the whole abortion debate be nothing more than pro-lifers shouting “Life!” and pro-choices shouting “Choice!”. Pro-lifers are trying to protect life and pro-choicers are trying to protect choice, and both life and choice are generally good things, but the issue of abortion is far more complex.

I think your use of biased rhetoric is especially bad when you characterize abortion as murder. While it may be technically accurate to describe abortion as ‘killing children’ under some definitions of those words, I don’t think it’s reasonable to describe it as murder since murder is typically defined as unlawful killing and abortion is not illegal. To illustrate, Merriam-Webster defines murder as “the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought.” Even if the definition of ‘persons’ should include zygotes, and even if everyone getting abortions did so because they hated their fetuses and wanted to take pleasure in watching them die, it would still not be murder since abortion is not illegal.

This is a very simple argument.

1. Life is a biological process.
2. That biological process begins at conception.
3. Stopping that process is tantamount to ending that life.
4. Forcibly ending a life is commonly referred to as murder.
5. Abortion forcibly stops the biological process of life.
6. Hence, abortion is murder.

I see a number of problems with this argument. First a minor quibble, you should probably change (1) to “Human life is a biological process”, otherwise (2) would be false. The biggest problem lies with (4) and (6). This is like saying that tables commonly have four legs, the thing I just purchased from Ikea is a table, therefore the thing I purchased from Ikea has four legs. The table I purchased may in fact have only three legs, and knowing Ikea, it probably does. For it to work, you would have to strengthen (4) by changing it to “Forcibly ending a life is murder”. But then you would be saying that killing in war is always immoral, which seems inconsistent with Catholic Just War doctrine. You would also be saying that a farmer harvesting his crop is murdering the wheat. Ending a life is sometimes, but not always, called murder.

If characterizing abortion as what it is makes you feel uncomfortable, then you need to reevaluate your morality, not insist I speak in code.

I advocate speaking about it as what it is: the abortion of a human fetus.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

This thread should make it perfectly clear that no one can argue for abortion unless they use much obfuscation and disingenuous.

Would you mind explaining where I have intentionally obfuscated things or been disingenuous? Whenever two people with radically different worldviews engage in dialog, there will be some misunderstandings, but I have tried to present my views as clearly as possible.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

This is a very simple argument.

1. Life is a biological process.
2. That biological process begins at conception.
3. Stopping that process is tantamount to ending that life.
4. Forcibly ending a life is commonly referred to as murder.
5. Abortion forcibly stops the biological process of life.
6. Hence, abortion is murder.

If you want another illustration of the problems of that argument, consider the following similarly flawed argument:

1. The Eucharist is the body of Jesus.
2. Jesus is someone.
3. Eating someone’s body is commonly referred to as cannibalism.
4. Eating the Eucharist is cannibalism.

The problem with this argument is that the reasons why eating someone’s body is normally wrong do not apply to the Eucharist. Similarly, we need to determine whether the reasons that ending human life is normally wrong apply to all fetuses.

Sure, we can resort to rhetoric by saying that eating someone’s body is always wrong or that killing human life is always wrong without confronting the reasons that the Eucharist and abortion are unique. But I think that before going there, we need to make sure that the reasons eating someone and killing someone are normally wrong also apply to the Eucharist and to abortion.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

But you still don’t explain why the fact that the fetus could one day possess valuable attributes means that we should treat it as if it has those attributes right now.

I’m glad we got the misunderstanding out of the way. Yes, I believe that ending human life is morally acceptable in some circumstances. Even Catholics would say that ending human life can be morally acceptable in the case of a Just War and when capital punishment is the only means of keeping people safe. Of course you could argue that with abortion, we are talking about innocent human life. But I do think though that even in just wars, you end up killing people on the other side who are innocent.

Yet even if it was always immoral to kill human life after birth, that wouldn’t show that killing human life before birth is immoral. In order to determine whether it’s immoral, we need to look at what makes life valuable. As I explained in some of the posts before this, I think we need to get past the rhetoric and look at the reasons why it is or is not immoral. The morality of killing a fetus does not become any more or less moral based on whether the dictionary defines baby to include or not include fetuses.

There are times when I think abortion is clearly the best option, and times where the best option is more unclear. I think a clear example of the former would be a woman who found out that she’s one month pregnant, and for whom pregnancy poses serious health risks.

Well at least we agree on giving people the best quality health care.

 

[ForeverGrace]

presidentjlh,

Excellent summation of the most ridiculous arguments for murdering a child. You covered all the standard objections to the pro-life stance.

I agree wholeheartedly that even an atheist should see the evil in abortion.

 

[Lizziebel]

I’m glad we got the misunderstanding out of the way. Yes, I believe that ending human life is morally acceptable in some circumstances. Even Catholics would say that ending human life can be morally acceptable in the case of a Just War and when capital punishment is the only means of keeping people safe. Of course you could argue that with abortion, we are talking about innocent human life. But I do think though that even in just wars, you end up killing people on the other side who are innocent.

Taking the life of innocent humans is definitely something to avoid.

Yet even if it was always immoral to kill human life after birth, that wouldn’t show that killing human life before birth is immoral.

The deliberate killing of innocent human life is always immoral. The key words there are deliberate and innocent. It doesn’t matter if that innocent baby is already born or not. It is just as immoral to deliberately kill him or her prior to birth as it is immediately after birth or beyond.

In order to determine whether it’s immoral, we need to look at what makes life valuable.
As I explained in some of the posts before this, I think we need to get past the rhetoric and look at the reasons why it is or is not immoral.

Human life is intrinsically valuable. When a person is murdered, this is a tragedy. It’s a tragedy, regardless of that person’s potential, or abilities, or the number of lives he or she impacted.

The morality of killing a fetus does not become any more or less moral based on whether the dictionary defines baby to include or not include fetuses.

True. A definition changes nothing about the morality (or rather lack thereof) of deliberately killing an innocent human life, whether born or unborn.

Well at least we agree on giving people the best quality health care.
Yes, at least we agree on that

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Taking the life of innocent humans is definitely something to avoid.

The deliberate killing of innocent human life is always immoral. The key words there are deliberate and innocent. It doesn’t matter if that innocent baby is already born or not. It is just as immoral to deliberately kill him or her prior to birth as it is immediately after birth or beyond.

Human life is intrinsically valuable.

But what I’m wondering, is why should a non-believer agree with these statements. I agree that they have a strong intuitive pull, but is the reason we see it as wrong to take human life because we have some knowledge that intrinsic value is granted at the moment of conception, or because when we think of taking human life, we think of things like a teenage girl being stabbed to death or a man being shot, things which are definitely immoral? There would be a lot more suffering in the world if everyone had no aversion to walking up to someone and killing them. But I don’t see any reason to think the same is true for killing or removing fetuses early in their development.

When a person is murdered, this is a tragedy. It’s a tragedy, regardless of that person’s potential, or abilities, or the number of lives he or she impacted.

I agree completely. I do not believe that murder is any less wrong if the person being killed was leading a sad lonely life. My morality is based on the effects of the desires, and the desire to walk up to someone on the street and kill them is a bad desire since it typically leads to a great deal of suffering.

 

[Darkbloom]

Back in the 1960’s, Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Archbishop of New York, made a Christmas visit to Viet Nam in 1966. I can remember reading in the newspaper that he had blessed the troops, and told them that they were “fighting God’s war”. I remember thinking at the time that such a comment represented an obvious element of hypocrisy on the part of this Church leader, since the Catholic Church was opposed to abortion. Consider Archbishop Spellman’s comment with respect to a pregnant Vietnamese woman. If she aborts her fetus, the Church condemns her and accuses her of committing murder. But if she carries the fetus to term, gives birth, and twenty years later that baby, now grown to adulthood, becomes a Communist, THEN it is perfectly OK to kill him. Apparently killing Communists was no longer considered murder in the opinion of Archbishop Spellman.

So that has me wondering whether you Catholic believers who do consider abortion to be murder have the same view towards other kinds of accepted killing, for example, capital punishment and particularly with regard to war in general. Or is it only abortion that you consider murder, and that fires up your passionate opposition?

Are you really equating sucking a child out of the womb with a vacuum tube to giving a lethal injection to a mass murderer?

 

[Darkbloom]

I agree that there has to be life for there to be morality, but not that all life has moral significance (plants for example).

Babies are not plants.

A full discussion about Hume’s ‘is-ought’ distinction would probably require a whole new thread, but I’d like to make a few brief points. If Hume’s argument is correct, it doesn’t mean that morality does not exist, but that we cannot ever come to know what it is. It would not rule out that an uncaused necessarily existing God is the source of morality, or that an uncaused necessarily existing set of Platonic moral facts exist. So I don’t see how his argument would be any less problematic for theists. But Hume doesn’t give evidence that you can’t get from ‘is’ to ‘ought’; he merely says that he can’t think of a way to go from ‘is’ to ‘ought’. This is no more a proof that you can’t get from one to the other than an atheist’s claim that they can’t think of any reason why an omnipotent omnibenevolent God would allow suffering proves that an omnipotent omnibenevolent God does not exist. Both are merely arguments from ignorance. There also doesn’t seem to be any reason that ‘ought’ cannot be a subset of ‘is’. In order to show that ‘ought’s cannot be derived from ‘is’s, you first have to explain what is meant by ‘ought’. Of course you could leave it undefined, or merely define the set of moral terms (such as ‘ought’, ‘morality’, ‘ethical’) only relative to each other, and in that case, other people will obviously not be able to say anything about morality in the way you use the term. Similarly, if I defined ‘shnuhoih’ as “that which is ‘ujoinjm’”, then you would not be able to say anything about either term. But I believe morality can be explained naturalistically, and I believe that desire utilitarianism (aka desirism) does that.

And even if Hume’s argument showed that there could be morality if God exists, but not if God does not exist, this would not show that theism is true. It might make it more desirable for some people, but it would not make it any more true.

Hume was very clearly not a believer in objective moral values, which stems from his very rigorous form of empirical skepticism. There have been many attempts refute him, and excepting possibly Kant, none have stuck.

The most likely explanation for this is the fact that he is right. There is nothing in our sense experience that forces, or even allows, us to believe in objective morality. Yet, we all do.

If nothing in the natural world is a sufficient explanation for something that practically all people agree exists, it seems sensible to conclude the explanation must reside in the supernatural.

You keep claiming that it is immoral to harm any life whatsoever, but I don’t remember you providing any evidence that it is. I am not just going to concede that if you don’t have a good enough reason for picking a flower, doing so is immoral.

I’ve never said any harming of life is immoral. I was taking your notion, which I agree with, that causing undue harm to an intelligent, sentient, pain-feeling being is immoral.

No, I am not arguing that morality comes from majority opinion. I explained this before, but maybe I wasn’t clear. Allow me to elaborate upon my earlier example of slavery:

Slavery is not immoral simply because the majority opposes it. It is immoral because it thwarts a great deal of very strong desires. I believe that morality deals with what is possible, and while it is possible to eliminate the desire to enslave people, even if it takes hundreds of years, it is not possible to eliminate the desire to be free from physical abuse, the desire for some degree of freedom, the desire to choose one’s wife, and the desire to protect one’s family. Only by making humans no longer human, can you make it such that slavery is moral.

For this view to be consistent you would have to explain the following:

1. Several “very strong desires” were thwarted among slave holders in the American south, as evidenced by secession and the Civil War. How do you balance that with the other desires you claim are thwarted?
2. There are several “very strong desires” that are thwarted by the practice of abortion. Even if we leave the children themselves out of the equation, there are legions of people passionately opposed to abortion who have desires thwarted every time a child is killed.
3. The current status of abortion is unique to time and place. For instance, 100 years ago, those who would oppose abortion greatly outnumber those who supported it. If the balance of desires can swing so suddenly in just a century, isn’t this a clear example of the mutability of morality, which, if I recall, seems to be one of the major objections to Divine Command theory, which you don’t support?
4. If all that qualifies a given act as moral or immoral is a particular desire, how do you explain opposing desires? And how do you judge desires themselves? What makes Ghandi’s desires more noble or just than Hitler’s?

I do not think that breaking a rock, picking a flower, or killing a zygote do any harm. And since fetuses early in pregnancy do not yet have desires, they do not yet deserve moral consideration.

Until you answer the above, I think it is fair to say the absence or presence of a desire is a very weak gauge of morality. Furthermore, what of the desires of those who are aggrieved at infanticide?