Arguing About Abortion

[VanitasVanitatum]

Well, not in the way you want it to be, but this is a democracy and as one who supports the authoritarian forced-birth ethic, your view is a little out of vogue.

Majority rules is about power which isn’t much of an ethical argument.

 

[Hume]

In a world where there either is no god or that god does not speak, it’s what we have.

As an olive branch, big changes often require more than a 51percent majority.

 

[Stephen168]

Well, they all invoked the ideals of their masonic “God of the Philosophers” in their underlying assumptions.

Another red herring. And Daniel & Charles Carroll would disagree.

Seems like a red herring. This has nothing to do with me claiming there are natural rights and you rejecting them. Then claiming the opposite.

Lol, I’ve done no such thing.

Actually you did. Remember:

So by rejecting my proposed default for natural rights, you didn’t get away from it.

You have never proposed natural rights. You have rejected them completely. I have proposed them.

You rejected individual liberty in favor of… natural rights which entails individual liberty as one of the more fundamental tenets.

I believe in natural rights. Liberty is one of them. Life, Liberty, and Property. I believe everyone has a right to their own liberty, their own life, and their own property. Your liberty is not limited to other people or their life or their property.

Yes, life, liberty, and property are natural rights, you said you reject the idea of natural rights, and life in particular.

I reject the idea because I’m not superstitious. There probably isn’t a god and “nature” hasn’t conferred any more rights on you than it conferred on the mosquito I killed while walking today.

If you wish to discuss any specific right - lets do so!

I really don’t care. The fact is you reject them. You have always rejected them and you have never proposed them as a default.

You have no rational limit to keep ‘libertas’ from turning into tyranny.

So choice is ethical in your view?

No, Liberty, a natural right, always has been my view.

 

[otjm]

The “purpose” of sex isn’t one thing. This is one of the problems with trying to self-righteously declare telos - something that may not exist anyway.

With no self righteousness at all, I will declare that the primary end of sexual activity is reproduction, and that an orgasm is simply a side enhancement.

One could very readily argue that the purpose of sex is climax and reproduction is merely a happy byproduct of it.

If one wanted to make a sophist argument, once could claim that.

NFP is more reliable than any other form of birth regulation, and to call it a crap shoot is simply factitious
Y’all have a good day. .I have no interest in arguing for the sake of arguing; I got over that better than 50 years ago.

You are now on ignore.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

In a world where there either is no god or that god does not speak, it’s what we have.

As an olive branch, big changes often require more than a 51percent majority.

Then everything we discussed can be discarded.

 

[Hume]

Sure.

But at some point you have to leave the philosophers table and try to make this stuff work.

Go from academia to practicalia, so to speak. From goal to tactics.

Democracy is the best we have in a universe where there are no kings.

 

[Hume]

Two thoughts Stephen,

I don’t wholesale reject natural rights as individual concepts. I reject the idea that nature confers them. It doesn’t because it can’t. It’s just “god” by another name.

And on the rights to life and liberty - the unwillingly pregnant woman demonstrates a conflict between her liberty and the fetuses supposed right to life.

How do you solve the conflict without inherently violating sacred liberty?

Choice.

This is why the only ethical solution is to promote choice and then labor to eliminate the reason a woman would choose abortion.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

Democracy is the best we have in a universe where there are no kings.

That’s a preconception and is unprovable.

How do you solve the conflict without inherently violating sacred liberty?

Choice

Liberty can be just be overided to favor the fetus.

 

[Hume]

Sure. Slavery.

Tough sell.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

Sure. Slavery.

Tough sell.

Melodramatic much.
The epidemic shows that banning abortion can be ethical.

 

[Hume]

It shows that we can restrict movement in the name of public safety.

Trying to make the jump from that to the enslavement of women would be difficult even if you had a trampoline and a jet pack.

As said; tough sell

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

Trying to make the jump from that to the enslavement of women would be difficult even if you had a trampoline and a jet pack.

As said; tough sell

Your claim that banning abortion is enslaving women when in actuality it is a banning of an unethical service is a tough sell.

 

[Hume]

Sure. Like the poll tax wasn’t racist either.

“I don’t want to take away your right to it, just your access to it!”

That argument was squashed last century.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

Okay.
Then going back to the epidemic it can be seen that “enslaving” people can be justified if it protects others.

 

[Hume]

Okay.
Then going back to the epidemic it can be seen that “enslaving” people can be justified if it protects others.

And with that, we can pretty fairly summarize your position that the enslavement of others is acceptable if it serves a greater good in your view. Fair enough?

Just tired of circling with you at this point. Nothing new being said.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

And with that, we can pretty fairly summarize your position that the enslavement of others is acceptable if it serves a greater good in your view. Fair enough?

Just tired of circling with you at this point. Nothing new being said.

You already made the allowance that liberty can be overridden if a case can be made, but then you resort to language to obfuscate and amplify what’s happening in order to demean without making addressing what is being said.

 

[Stephen168]

I don’t wholesale reject natural rights as individual concepts. I reject the idea that nature confers them. It doesn’t because it can’t. It’s just “god” by another name.

I go camping with my friends Jim and Justin in the country of Libertas. A country with no laws; total freedom. We set up camp on the Liberty River. Justin and I know nothing about river rafting but Jim loves it and brings his raft. Justin and I get in Jim’s raft. Suddenly, we are unmoored and moving down the river. Quickly, we find ourselves in a very fast moving river and are scared to death.

The river and the gravity that moves it are a thing whether you believe in God or not. It is nature whether you believe God is the force behind nature or not. Natural rights are a thing whether you believe God is behind them or not. Man has a right to his own life, his own liberty, and his own property. We have no right to take another’s life, liberty, or property AND they have no right to take away ours. They are inalienable. I may be bigger and stronger than Justin or Jim, but my liberty can not take away their natural rights.

How do you solve the conflict without inherently violating sacred liberty?

Choice.

Justin and I are in a pickle.

In your world of Libertas with no natural rights I could just choose to pull out my knife and destroy Jim’s raft to put an end to the terror. Or in the spirit of democracy Justin and I could vote on the ‘Pickle Ordinance’ which allows me to violate natural rights when we are in a pickle then take my knife, and destroy Jim’s raft.

In a world of natural rights, we ride it out until we get to the lake when this horror will finally end. After all, people safely ride this river all the time and Jim has a natural right to his raft.

 

[Stephen168]

Don’t try to be smarter than God. Since God did not tie copulation to procreation as a logical step (for the Great Apes), don’t try to second guess God.

I sure would not want to try and be smarter than God. While reproduction might not be the only purpose it is the only purpose unique to copulation. After 44 years of marriage, reproduction is the only thing I have NEEDED copulation for. And copulation is made possible by the design of the reproductive organs; male and female. Second guessing God would be to use artificial means to eliminate reproduction from a reproductive act and then claim its designed purpose is no longer unique.

During copulation, male and female are signing a contract to raise the creation they may be producing. If a human being, with its own sex and unique genetic code, is produced as God designed it, I would not want to second guess God by murdering it. Yes, I would not want to try and be smarter than God.

Just curious: is there a passage which directly quotes God, which commands abstinence if the couple does not desire procreation?

If you really are into the bible thing try Genesis 9:7 or Genesis 1:28. It seems not desiring procreating would be trying to be smarter than God.

 

[Hume]

Hume:

And with that, we can pretty fairly summarize your position that the enslavement of others is acceptable if it serves a greater good in your view. Fair enough?

Just tired of circling with you at this point. Nothing new being said.

You already made the allowance that liberty can be overridden if a case can be made,

Common sense makes the allowance that liberty can be curtailed if a case can be made.

This is why impositions created by things like the golden rule and the inherent equality of persons are considered reasonable.

“Because my preferred god said so” can be valid upon the individual - but not upon the greater society. Your preferred god is not everyone’s preferred god.

Thus, the basis for your argument - either openly or cryptoreligious - will always fall flat.

 

[Hume]

I go camping with my friends Jim and Justin in the country of Libertas. A country with no laws; total freedom.

This is a point that you keep missing because, frankly, you want to.

For at least the dozenth time in this thread, libertas is the beginning. Not the end. It is where we start as human beings, not where we end up.
As Harry was fond of pointing out - it’s not really even an argument. It’s just the identification of our default state - where we morally “begin”.

In light of this hard reality, the rest of your thought experiment mostly collapses because it’s incorrectly premised.

I really hope you actually bother to read some of this stuff as opposed to blindly thrusting triumphalisms… Most of your points were raised way waaaaaay up in the thread, multiple times.

Multiple times.

I may be bigger and stronger than Justin or Jim, but my liberty can not take away their natural rights.

Nature didn’t confer rights to any of you. It can’t.
It has no power to do it.
We have no power to test it.

It’s hiding behind the word “nature” when we’ve already lost the ability to credibly use the word “god”. This is why we see it near the end of the Enlightenment went theists had lost the power to appeal to their god in debates. They found that they didn’t have to change their arguments much if they just dropped “god” and wrote “nature” and congratulated themselves for being so clever.

What they didn’t realize at the time is that the same arguments die by the same lance.

Justin and I are in a pickle.
… …

In a world of natural rights, we ride it out until we get to the lake when this horror will finally end. After all, people safely ride this river all the time and Jim has a natural right to his raft.

Nonsense.

The “river” keeps women in poverty, causes them a near-certain amount of lasting bodily harm and still kills them everyday all over the world. They still die on that river here in the well-lit and well-stocked United States of America.

It’s a perilous river and if no one wants to take any unnecessary passengers upon their raft on that dangerous trip, their right to “life, liberty and happiness” (per you) demands that they have that right of refusal.