Re: The never ending Religion thread!!!

[the UNSC]

also you can have an abortion right up the the fifth month. the fetus certainly looks like, and is starting to act like, a baby. its not that much different than the kids in the infancy ward. whats the change from being IN the womb than out of it? i don't think it makes a difference, and killing the organism is not a moral option for me.

[Citrustan]

you make good points, but the reason i allow for rape and incest cases is because the circumstance is so extreme. recall that i don't describe myself as pro life, but rather anti abortion. i believe that at times death is a necessary price for commodity's worth it. however it is also my belief that you should spend those lives very wisely. wasting good lives is unfair. especially in the case of abortion when the kid didn't choose to give it up.

I still think this is inconsistent. What, precisely, is the "commodity" that can be "purchased" with the life of a rape survivor's child and not with the child of a mother who has engaged in consensual sex? Anyway, the consensual-sex mother's fetus didn't choose to die either. It also didn't choose (or want) to live. Fetus brains are not equipped to handle things like that.

i would call a fetus a human being, because there is no other cell type anywhere that has the ability to equal you.

Where do you get the idea that one cell "equals me"? One cell equals one cell. It may be programmed to divide a lot in very specific ways, but it doesn't think for itself and it doesn't feel pain or pleasure or any of that. When it develops a brain and starts thinking for itself and having a concept of 'I' and having desires and fears, then we can talk about it being a person.

i feel like while its still developing its worse to to kill it than later on when he/she has developed into an adult and knew it was coming or gave up their life willingly.

What makes you think people would "give up their lives willingly" unless their lives would be short and unpleasant anyway? If you tell me, "I'm going to kill you in three months," sure I know it's coming, but I'm not going to go "willingly," and I won't enjoy those last three months (assuming I can't escape the killing). I would actually say that warning someone makes it worse, because not only have you ended their life, you've made the warning-until-death period completely unenjoyable.

While in a technical sense its not yet human it doesn't take an expert to realize that it will be, and that it looks like a baby. it feels, listens, and even see's.

Um, no, not in the early weeks and even months of the pregnancy. Most jurisdictions don't allow late-term abortions anyway, and one of the very few doctors in the country that performed third-trimester abortions was just assassinated.

But another important point to make here is that plenty of animals feel, listen and see. Do you think it is impermissible to kill chickens, or lizards, or frogs? Probably you don't, because the five senses mean nothing when it comes to moral considerability.

they can have basic thoughts. i s'pose i think its splitting hairs to just call them less than human and conveniently be lacking that annoying pregnancy.

Oh, I'm not calling them less than human. They are human. I'm going to put this really starkly: just because they are biologically human doesn't mean it's not okay to kill them. The thing that matters isn't their species - it's psychological characteristics like seeing that you have a future, and having a sense of self, and desiring things for your future. That's why we rightly regard adult humans as more important and morally considerable than other adult animals. But fetuses don't do any of these things.

Also, it's an unfair trivialization to call unwanted pregnancy "annoying" and its termination "convenient". A quick Google revealed that the common side effects include constipation, back pain, sharp pains in the calves, thighs and feet, dizziness, dehydration, heartburn, hypertension, insomnia, mood swings, nausea, vomiting, and pain/soreness in the rib area. It's not a walk in the park. And then there's labor and childbirth, which is much worse than anything encountered during pregnancy.

i want to make it known that i'm not one of those crazy fanatical peopled who run around yelling and stopping women from going into abortion clinics, and i certainly don't think less of you as a person for having variable views

Thanks, I guess? I mean, I'm glad we can disagree like adults, but it doesn't really change either of our arguments.

it is my opinion that abortion is morally lacking and certainly over used.

What is your evidence that it is overused? I keep hearing this thing about women using abortion as "birth control" and I have never, to this day, found a shred of support for the idea that people actually do that in statistically significant numbers. Abortion does suck, especially if you don't get one until the second or third trimester. It's unpleasant and it can have nasty side effects afterward (though not nearly as nasty as pregnancy and childbirth). And that's exactly why people don't use it as birth control - because the pill doesn't have those side effects (although it does have some), and neither do condoms.

I would love to reduce the need for abortions by making birth control cheaper and easier to obtain, and by making sex education better. But even then, abortion shouldn't be illegal, because protection always fails sometimes, and we probably won't be able to get sex education to everyone so not everyone will know how to use protection, and so on. I will also add that most of the people who don't want teenagers to be educated about contraception, are also anti-abortion. Puzzling.

You will surely recall roe V wade? i know every pro lifer and pro choicer brings this up and makes some BS argument till we're all bored. Jane roe, or by her real name Norma Mccorvey, is now pro life. she deeply resents her choice to have an abortion and takes an active role in the white rose catholic child crisis pregnancy center. i know because (while i was to young to remember) my mother used to know her and be part of that same Texas organization.

I know that Roe changed her mind about abortion, but millions of women who have had abortions didn't. And some people who used to be anti-abortion are now pro-choice. I don't really take anything from it.

i know that's just some little blurb to you, and i honestly don't mean it to be some horse shit inspiring story to "change your heart" but the psychology of aborting a pregnancy goes deep. and often many women have to have therapy, because whether you want to go by the technical definition or not, we all see a fetus and associate it with an infant.

Okay, look. I don't need ostensibly benevolent men to tell me that even though I (hypothetically) want an abortion, I shouldn't have one because I might regret it later. The women who get abortions understand their bodies and their minds better than you do.

Yes, some women regret their abortions. The majority do not. I have actually asked a practicing psychologist about this, and she said that it is only common among women who were morally anti-abortion but had an abortion anyway (that happens more often than you'd think). Other risk factors include the woman being pressured to obtain the abortion (by family/partners/whomever). I am unequivocally NOT in favor of women being pressured to get abortions when they prefer to keep the baby. Nobody is in favor of that, except maybe the people doing the pressuring.

In addition, childbirth can be a source of depression too. About 10% of new mothers are affected by postpartum depression, which is different from the mild "baby blues" that only last a few days. And guess what? A risk factor for that is anxiety and negative feelings about the pregnancy! If you force women to continue unwanted pregnancies, you put them through a ton of mental and physical trauma.

though its s gray spot for sure, i end up on the other side of the argument because its too close. I'd be pissed if my mum had had an abortion lol.

Well, you wouldn't be around to be pissed about it. I'm retrospectively glad my mom didn't have one, obviously, but I think it would have been okay for her to do it if she'd wanted to.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. If you don't want to continue the argument then that's fine.

[the UNSC]

thats ok you are very respectful so i don't care if it continues. i see your points, but it sort of breaks down into two main issues. is a fetus a baby? if so is is moral to abort it's life and end a pregnancy?

As you can obviously see i say it is a baby, and that it's not moral to kill it for no good reason.

Also i want to refute something you said. i am not attempting to tell you what to do with your own body. i am trying to say that you wouldn't be the only person involved, which makes it bigger than you. if its just some growth than sure i don't care its just a cancer right? assuming you think so than there really is no problem with abortion. BUT i think that advanced little thing is human and therefore deserves a right or twelve. meaning it has to be a very very grave circumstance to abort a pregnancy. dad gets a little drunk one night, starts getting creepy, next thing you know your in the abortion clinic ending the pregnancy. i totally sympathies here. some nice little girl is walking home from a school dance when a local gang gets horny. next thing you know SHE's in the abortion clinic right next to incest girl. these are acceptable reasons to consider abortion, however, some small town girl's parent's are out visiting family away, some women gets a little too drunk, they both let a guy, boy friend some bar guy in and end up pregnant. that is not an extreme circumstance and since (i solidly believe) that fetus swimin around is a child, bar girl, and small town girl aren't really getting my sympathy. they did that to themselves.

Assuming you believe a fetus is NOT a child than abortion isn't really wrong and i understand the logic. but a baby (cause that's what I'm positive it is) doesn't need to die so we can eat (like an animal as you mentioned) and they should be "spent" if it can save the remainder of someone's life who was a victim. Really i think we disagree because of a couple core questions. is a fetus a baby? or is a baby expendable? my answers are yes then no. your's are surely different. if we agreed on THIS subject abortion wouldn't be a subject in social debate.

I don't care either way if we stop or keep going. just say if you're going to continue or not please!

[Qlorplox]

I suppose it depends on where you live. In Australia, serious Atheists seem to outnumber serious Christians, and I've never experienced door-knocking Christians.

I was speaking from personal experience. Two of my RL friends will not accept any opposition to Atheism, and decree that it's fact.

Hm. I have an Aussie philosophy professor (who is one of those "serious atheists" but not for the reasons that the more scientifically-minded atheists give) and he tells me that in Australia, nobody listens to the crazy religious nuts, so you export them here, where people do listen. There's an Australian dude by the name of Ken Ham who now lives in the US and has opened a creationist museum in Kentucky. Fun fact: I just looked up the creation museum on Wiki and it's been vandalized. The first sentence reads thusly: "The Creation Museum is a museum dedicated to spreading bullshit lies to stupid people who refuse to believe in things that actually make sense." I repeat what I said about internet atheists being loud and obnoxious, but Ken Ham kind of deserves it. He's a complete buffoon.

Anyway, I didn't know Australia was completely devoid of the door-knocking, street-preaching evangelist types. I sort of assumed you guys would have them too; I'm not sure why I thought that. If your Christians are saner and your atheists are louder, then yeah, I guess you have every reason to say what you did.

There are people around in the City I live in who stand around and hand out leaflets. Going Door to Door has never really been done by anyone in Australia, as far as I'm aware.

Most people who go to church do so because it's something they do, not for any religious conviction. People in Australia identify themselves with Religion culturally, rather than as a religious thing.

I heard about that Creationist Museum, and it sounds rather silly. I went to a Jewish School (despite not being Jewish in the slightest) for two and a half years, and they did no real indoctrination of religious policies. They taught Creationism as a religious thing, and practically accepted Evolution as fact.

There are growing numbers of Evangelicals, but the Atheists seem to be growing faster in numbers.

Most Australians seem to accept the fact that Abortion is around, although in one state it was only legalised last year, I think. It comes down to personal choice, really, from the viewpoint of most Australians.

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