What are the “objective moralities/truths”? Is there a list?

[Gorgias]

If one sees an embryo as exactly the same as a person there should be no question about saving 1000 lives over 1. You might feel bad that you couldn’t find a way to save 1001 lives but by any measure the person who saves a thousand children is a hero. I’m not certain many would take that action though.

We had that exact discussion here on this forum a few months ago. You might want to look up that thread.

(For the record, I made the argument that those who think that embryos aren’t “human life” would nevertheless conclude that there’s greater value in the embryos than in the sole child. )

 

[Dan123]

I’ll check it out, fairly new member so wasn’t around for that.

Did any of the people who felt the embryos weren’t people agree with you?

 

[goout]

When did @Bradskii come into existence, then?

To quote the poster boy of intellectual flaccidity Anthony Kennedy:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life

This is what is confused with freedom of thought.

 

[Gorgias]

Did any of the people who felt the embryos weren’t people agree with you?

My recollection is no. But, my impression was that this was a political reaction, not a logical one. As I’ve come to recognize, anyone can reject any idea they wish. Confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and all that…

 

[Gorgias]

This is what is confused with freedom of thought.

As the saying goes, “liberty =/= license” …

 

[Lucretius]

Don’t you think, though, that there is more to life than not harming others (harming in the common sense meaning of the term)? Is the ideal human one who merely doesn’t murder, rape, steal, and acts nice and polite generally?

What I’m getting at is that I think you and many of the Christians on this forum have a different idea about what the actual aim of morality is. When we Catholics talk about morality, we are talking about what the human ideal is, and how we can best approach it. What do you think is the ideal human life? Do you have any examples of actual people who’ve reached close to it?

Christi pax.

 

[Lucretius]

Those few cells in my mother’s whom weren’t me. They had the potential to become me. But desroying them didn’t harm me. I didn’t exist.

If we claim to be humanists though, if we really value human life inherently, wouldn’t we prefer having the child rather than destroying it before it is born?

It is no more harming a ‘potential’ person than it would be to decide not to have another ‘potential’ child. I’m in agreement with Jewish beliefs on this.

We understand other human beings by the way they act and behave, correct? Just because they can’t do the common sense things more mature human beings do, doesn’t mean they aren’t human beings.

The fact that zygotes inherently develop into human beings that do all those things signals that they are in fact human beings, even if they are not very developed. You agree that sleeping and disabled human beings are no less human beings because of their inability to express themselves, right? In fact, medicine assumes that this is true, otherwise attempting to find a cure from such conditions is fundamentally fruitless. How is this different when we apply this logic to the fetus?

A proper scientific analysis pretty easily indicates that the zygote is in fact an individual of the human species, that is, a person. Are we to say that an acorn is not the same species as an adult oak tree? Is a fetchling not also a spearow?

Christi pax.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

Those few cells in my mother’s whom weren’t me.

Pardon me for chuckling at the absurdity of this statement.
Should we call them “Steve”?

You’re going to counter with “stage of development” and “only potential”…etc
The truth is that human life has an objective value is not (thankfully) subject to your opinion on the matter.

You will choose to put your opinion over the objective value of human life, without reflecting on the various holocausts that human beings perpetrate on other human beings who are not quite “:up to their potential”.

Maybe you weren’t aware that anything between 30% and 70% of fertilised eggs (that would be little humans as far as you are concerned) are passed out with the menstrual blood having failed to implant. The woman would not even know she was.pregnant. See a pdf link here:

Loading…

ask.metafilter.com

So now you have this information, what do you plan to do if you and your wife are trying for a child? Presumably you will need to have her checked each month to see if she was actually pregnant at the time of her period so you can have the chance to mourn.

Would you then have a small service perhaps? Take a few days off work to come to terms with your loss? Perhaps a small plaque in the garden?

And don’t give me any hogwash about there being a difference between actively having an abortion and the body rejecting the few cells. The result is the same as far as you are concerned. A life has been lost.

But let’s face it. You would never ask your wife for any such test. Because losing a few cells is literally meaningless. Otherwise please explain your indifference.

 

[Dan123]

Would you then have a small service perhaps? Take a few days off work to come to terms with your loss? Perhaps a small plaque in the garden?

I didn’t realize this until a few years ago when people in my age group started having kids, but I didn’t realize people often waited until 3 months to announce they were pregnant. The idea being since the chance of losing the pregnancy is so much higher in the first few months than the rest of the pregnancy, it allows the couple to deal with that loss privately. This is SUPER practical and I approve, but for those who feel it’s a full person at the moment of conception it seems strange to act like you don’t have a child for 3 months.

 

[Dan123]

My recollection is no . But, my impression was that this was a political reaction, not a logical one. As I’ve come to recognize, anyone can reject any idea they wish. Confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and all that…

So when faced with the fact that no one agreed with your assessment instead of thinking that perhaps you don’t quite understand their point of view, you became convinced that all of them are wrong about what they believe, and thankfully you’re around to explain to them what they think? Come on.

 

[Dan123]

A proper scientific analysis pretty easily indicates that the zygote is in fact an individual of the human species, that is, a person. Are we to say that an acorn is not the same species as an adult oak tree? Is a fetchling not also a spearow?

You switched from person to species.

Is an acorn a tree? It’s an Oak but is it a tree?

 

[HarryStotle]

Those few cells in my mother’s whom weren’t me. They had the potential to become me. But desroying them didn’t harm me. I didn’t exist.

It is no more harming a ‘potential’ person than it would be to decide not to have another ‘potential’ child. I’m in agreement with Jewish beliefs on this.

Actually, destroying those few cells would have harmed you because destroying those cells would have precluded you from existing in the first place. Destroying them would have removed all possibility of you existing at all. That would be harm to you in the same sense that obliterating you now would be harm to you.

Now you might claim that it would be no harm because you would not have existed to realize that you have suffered any harm at all. I suppose walking up behind you and blowing your brains away would then become morally permissible along the same line of thinking because after that act you would no longer exist to know you no longer exist.

Awareness of harm as the unqualified determiner for harm having occurred seems problematic at best. It would seem that an objective rather than merely a subjective standard of harm needs to be spelled out. Otherwise murdering unloved individuals in their sleep would seem quite permissible under your rules for the determination of harm

 

[goout]

goout:

Bradskii:

Those few cells in my mother’s whom weren’t me.

Pardon me for chuckling at the absurdity of this statement.
Should we call them “Steve”?

You’re going to counter with “stage of development” and “only potential”…etc
The truth is that human life has an objective value is not (thankfully) subject to your opinion on the matter.

You will choose to put your opinion over the objective value of human life, without reflecting on the various holocausts that human beings perpetrate on other human beings who are not quite “:up to their potential”.

Maybe you weren’t aware that anything between 30% and 70% of fertilised eggs (that would be little humans as far as you are concerned) are passed out with the menstrual blood having failed to implant. The woman would not even know she was.pregnant. See a pdf link here:
What % of fertilized human eggs die? - attach uterus uteruswall | Ask MetaFilter

So now you have this information, what do you plan to do if you and your wife are trying for a child? Presumably you will need to have her checked each month to see if she was actually pregnant at the time of her period so you can have the chance to mourn.

Would you then have a small service perhaps? Take a few days off work to come to terms with your loss? Perhaps a small plaque in the garden?

And don’t give me any hogwash about there being a difference between actively having an abortion and the body rejecting the few cells. The result is the same as far as you are concerned. A life has been lost.

But let’s face it. You would never ask your wife for any such test. Because losing a few cells is literally meaningless. Otherwise please explain your indifference.

Are you addressing a particular point in there? Or is that a feeble attempt to make me feel bad about something?

?
Ah I see. You are proposing the very definition of subjectivity.
Because my wife and I do not mourn the passing of an unnamed human being, that human being never existed.
Same old thing.
Kill the Jews, Who cares. No one will notice. They are not really human. No one is mourning. Must not be a big deal.
Right?
Subjectivity on display.

 

[Lucretius]

You switched from person to species.

What is a person? An individual of the human species, right?

Is an acorn a tree? It’s an Oak but is it a tree?

“Tree” can mean multiple things here.

If we mean “an adult of the species,” then an acorn is not a tree, but this analogy does nothing but critique the abortionist argument.

If we mean “a certain genus of plants,” then yes, an acorn is a tree, because it is the first stage of development in a species that falls under that genus, but this is what I’ve been saying in our argument.

I see you want to draw an analogy between “tree” and “person” though, but I’m not sure how you are understanding person. What is a person?

Christi pax.

 

[QwertyGirl]

Efficacy? Everyone has access to the only absolutely certain birth control technique: abstinence. If you don’t want children then don’t have sex.

How well is that working? By the number of abortions that take place, I would say not very well.

 

[Dan123]

“The abortion index for Catholic women showed that their relative abortion rate was nearly the same as that for all women (1.1).”

How well is it working? Completely averagely.

Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients in 2014 and Changes Since 2008 | Guttmacher Institute

 

[Bradskii]

You seem to have missed the point.

If you have sex with your wife with the intention of having a child, the chances are that a child will die (as far as you are concerned) before a baby is born. There is a more than average chance that your wife will reject what you would describe as a human being before she sucessfully conceives.

Personally speaking, from your point of view, I would never trie to conceive because that would condemn a child to death.

You don’t seem to understand the consequences of what you speak.

 

[Gorgias]

So when faced with the fact that no one agreed with your assessment instead of thinking that perhaps you don’t quite understand their point of view, you became convinced that all of them are wrong about what they believe, and thankfully you’re around to explain to them what they think? Come on.

LOL!

No – I took a loaded question, turned it in favor of pro-life sensibilities, and pro-abortion folks refused to follow. It’s not about me being wrong – it’s about pro-abortion folks refusing to think that they’re not right.

C’mon… you know how this dance works…

 

[OsculeturMeOsculo]

That’s because most people use artificial birth control or maybe they are careless.

 

[Gorgias]

You seem to have missed the point.

No, I think he gets it. You seem to be (intentionally?) missing his…

If you have sex with your wife with the intention of having a child, the chances are that a child will die (as far as you are concerned) before a baby is born.
Personally speaking, from your point of view, I would never trie to conceive because that would condemn a child to death.

You don’t seem to understand the consequences of what you speak.

This argument is specious. By that logic, no one should ever give birth – after all, everyone (who doesn’t die an accidental death) dies a natural death. If you’re afraid of people dying natural death, then you should refuse to have children.

See? Your argument reduces to absurdity. You don’t seem to understand the consequences of what you speak…

There is a more than average chance that your wife will reject what you would describe as a human being before she sucessfully conceives.

Side quibble: she has successfully conceived, and that’s why there’s a new human life. Successful implantation only occurs following successful conception.