Dawkins and "The Great Tim Tebow Fallacy" (re: pro-life advertisement)

Dawkins is so imbued by natural science that he has almost entirely abandoned the very philosophy of science that makes natural science relevant to human beings.The only lasting reason science is interesting is that something meaningful can be extracted, otherwise it is useless information. If we look at why cancer research is so interesting is because of the suffering caused by cancer and how we might, through science, alleviate it or eliminate it. The only reason anyone gives a crap about squamous cells is because of their potential to cause suffering.That and Dawkins almost unnaturally worships science as if a religion. While pain certainly factors in, I believe at the base level it is a straw man in the debate. Stalking someone unbeknownst to that individual and shooting them point blank in the back of the head will almost certainly kill them instantly, in which they will feel no pain. Does the fact that they felt no pain somehow make it acceptable now? Does that diminish the crime?If not, then what relevance does pain have in the debate on abortion? It is a difficult moral question that I struggle with because I see valid arguments on both sides.In ancient cultures, such as with the Greco-Romans, a form of eugenics were routinely conducted for children who were deformed, born mentally retarded, or otherwise had some malady that would prevent them from living normal lives.In some instances it is seen as a heinous crime committed against an innocent life. It makes us judge of who is worthy of life and who is worthy of death. Who made us the arbiter? Who made us the angel of death or the angel of life?On the other hand, some would say that it is an act of mercy. Is it better to allow someone the chance to live if that life is spent in agony? Is that really living? When we see a hurt animal, it is often seen as merciful to put that animal down to alleviate its suffering. We wouldn't ordinarily kill the animal, but in this instance we empathize with its pain.Is there an absolute moral imperative with abortion or eugenics? I don't know. You decide.

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

I'll play the devil's advocate since I don't have an official position on abortion. I'll argue both for and against the pro and anti-abortion position. As a huge proponent on individual freedom, I can sympathize, except when one's persons freedom directly affects another individuals freedom. I assume that you are on some level outraged when someone is murdered. Do you not care because you didn't track down the victims family? Or are you against the premise of murder?How is that any different for abortion?Tracking down pregnant mothers or newborn babies assumes you have knowledge of them and know where they live. 99.99% of the time that is not known, so the only way to protect babies from reckless people who only selfishly care only about themselves is through legislature.One thing is certain is that "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are two of the most ridiculous terms for abortion. Lets just call it what it is. You're either pro-abortion or anti-abortion.

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

Let's not be coy. The only choice is about whether you fundamentally agree with abortion or not. That means the sole qualifier here is abortion, not choice itself. We're only taking about two choices, and both relate directly to abortion and nothing else. It is a poor name, agreed, but so is pro-choice.

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

Sure, but just keep that monster in your pants The baby doesn't get a choice, the choice is made for them. The father doesn't get a choice, the choice is made for him.

quote:

---

I assume that you are on some level outraged when someone is murdered.

---

So you only want to protect your family against murder? Lets assume you're a woman (but still with a huge penis). Does the premise still stand that you only want to protect your own DNA when it is your very DNA that would be destroyed? With abortion it directly involves the individual getting an abortion, no? You say if it doesn't personally affect you, you don't care. But is that entirely true? If you watched a man kill someone and found out they let him go, would you really not care? Would there not be some shred of humanity that cried out for justice regardless of whether or not it was committed against a family member of yours? Okay, well then we'll make it a little more personal. Lets say that ungodly ginormous member between your legs (I'm having fun with this, just go with it) impregnated your wife. For the sake of the argument, lets suppose it is your last chance to have kids. She wants the abortion. You protest, you plead, but to no avail. It affects you personally. And by all rights that child is at least half yours. Are you entitled to anything? It's not fake sincerity just because it did not personally happen to us. The O.J. trial didn't really personally affect us, but the world watched and waited for justice. Was that insincere concern for the outcome?The Iraq War didn't happen to you. The Palestinians attacked by Israelis didn't happen to you. There are many things that didn't happen to you that I;ve seen you express concern over. The abortion debate is no different. Well, you and I are pretty much eye to eye. The only real argument is whether or not a fetus (child) has any inalienable rights, as in someone's personal freedoms affecting or invalidating other peoples rights. If not, why not? Who gets to arbitrate such a decision? Does having a vagina and a uterus give you the right to choose whether or not to kill your own progeny? If so, why? If not, why not?

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

Okay, and the opposite side asks why a child doesn't have the moral right to have dominion over its own body. The fundamental question is why one life trumps another?See, we're dealing with a body within a body, except the first body is the reason why the 2nd body is inside that body. The body within the body did not create itself. It took the first body to make that happen.In a strange twist of irony, the right for the mother to be pro-choice invalidates the baby's right to be pro-anything.And so the crux of the matter still exists.

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

Sure it does. In fact that is the only point of the debate. They are moral questions. Is it right to take away a woman's right to choose, and is it right to take away a baby's right to life? Those are the deep moral questions that exist, everything else is just details. That is one half of the issue, certainly. The other half is whether or not a new life has a right to life. That's immaterial since the kidney was there since the mother's own gestational period. The baby (remember: it's a body within a body) is a separate being from its mother.Secondly, the whole my body, my choice mantra is not entirely true. It is illegal to kill yourself. Imagine that. You cannot opt to die if you want. People will try and stop you and force you to live. We do not have full control over our bodies. I'm not agreeing with that, I'm just saying that is the reality of the situation.And something more applicable to the conversation, women cannot generally opt to have a hysterectomy if they want if a doctors sees no need for it. Imagine that! The one surefire way a woman would never even get pregnant, thus nullifying the need for abortions to ever occur, is NOT the woman's choice! Her uterus, her choice? Nope. Only when there is another life involved does the my body my choice mantra come out. I'm not, I'm getting this information from you. You support abortion, bottom line. You can try and dress it up real fancy if you want, but the underlying message is that you support abortion.You may not like the need for abortions, but you still support them. You may say that in a perfect world you would never want to see an abortion. But so what? That quickly dissolves when looking at it from another perspective.Most supporters of execution don't like having to execute anyone! They say, in a perfect world, there would be no need for death row or executions. But we don't live in a perfect world and never have, so it's useless to even bring it up. It's just a distraction. The reality is they are pro-execution. They aren't pro-choice of executions, they are pro-execution, regardless of whether or not they like them. They like them enough to allow them. So it is with pro-abortionists.All people like life and all people like choosing things. But if you don't narrow down that huge topic, anything less in disingenuous. We are talking about abortion. You therefore are pro or anti-abortion.

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

It is not, nor will it ever, be a life-sustaining organ like the kidneys are. *sigh* Honestly... First of all, this only corroborates that it is illegal like I said, but that really is beside the point. I'm not talking about prosecution of suicide, I am referring to the fact that you cannot attempt to commit suicide where authorities, if knowledgaeble of the action, will not try and stop you, by force, if necessary.Shit, you can't even legally not wear a seatbelt. In every single state, if any authority figure caught wind that someone was trying to kill themselves, they would do whatever they could to stop them exercising their choice with their body. That's my point. But that's my point. Why would they be more willing to remove a fetus than a tubal ligation in young women? I lol'd. And you are Mr. Sensitive.Try and bear in mind that I'm simply playing the devil's advocate here. If there was an anti-abortionist in here, I'd probably be debating them too with a similar tenacity. Look. No pro-lifer on the fucking planet is against choosing things in general. They are against abortions, SPECIFICALLY. When a Pro-Choice advocate talks about having the right to choose what they want for there body, they're only refering to one thing... ABORTION.Therefore the debate is about ABORTION. There is really little else to deduce. Pro-Choice and Pro-Life are just stupid terms invented by both sides to illicit sympathy for their cause. They are pro-execution. If the topic is about execution, and you favor the use of execution, why on earth would that not be "pro-execution?"

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

I'm sure that's of little consolation to those on the chopping block. If you said, "I wish there was no need for nuclear bombs," but then vaporize an entire continent, it kind of looses its sentimental value, don't you think?You like it enough to allow it. That's really the only factor here. Sentimental notions like describing your utopian values offers nothing substantive to the debate. I'm not seeing the relevance. Can you explain where you were going with that? The interesting thing about pregnancy is that if you want to be melodramatic enough, you could use the same arguments for either side. Lets take your slavery notion.By forcing a woman to not kill the fetus is slavery to that woman. It forces her to deal with the baby.By not allowing the baby their natural right to life, they are in essence a slave to their master's desires and wishes. Maybe it forces women to confront their responsibilities. Lets be honest here, please. The fetus, I'm sure you are aware, did not create itself. The woman and man are directly responsible for bringing that baby in to existence, but the baby alone pays for the mistakes of their parents. Yes, but this where the divide is, hence the crux.Unfortunately I have to get going and I can't save this information. You bring up interesting points that I'd like to address tomorrow. So until then, enjoy.

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

If I bypassed it, it's because it isn't true. Rape accounts for less than 1% of unwanted pregnancies. The vast majority is due to carelessness. That's because it is an altogether different matter, and a strawman conveniently thrown in to the fray to distract from the overwhelming majority of people who do not take sex respsonsibly. Abstinence is actually 100% effective. The only problem is that few have the resolve to abstain, nor feel there is any reason to do so. It is an unrealistic goal. The creation of life only occurs during the fertilization process, so the rest is moot. Good thing I'm not religious. Well, the same could be said of a newborn, no??? So why stop before birth with that rationale? Why not just get rid of the damn thing the second it becomes a burden, because let's be honest, that's all it really is about -- getting rid of burdens. I'm sure you are aware that all children, including everyone in here at one time, had the same progression from less autonomy to greater autonomy. Babies, toddlers, and even young children cannot survive independent of their parents, so really you invalidate the personhood of babies and children in your quest to dehumanize the unborn. You are comparing having to care for your own child as slavery? That's rich... Well, then, I guess it is slavery for a man when he has to pay child support for a child he doesn't want then? Or do men only enjoy 2/3 of a woman's rights?Because it seems a woman has the unfettered right to deny her baby, but the man doesn't have the right to say whether he does or does not want to keep it. She decides it all. Who says? See, that's the problem, hence the crux of the argument. One side says they are human beings because they are human for all intents and purposes. They have human DNA through and through, they are human. The other side says they only become human when it passes through the birth canal. That's odd, but that's the belief. Well then you just described ages 0-12 (depending upon the child). Tell me one thing: What is wrong with adoption? Mother gets to alleviate her troubles of raising a child from a rapist, adopting parents get the bundle of joy they always wanted, and the child gets a chance of survival, such as you. You would prosecute that raping piece of shit the same way with any other rape case. No baby can survive independent of help. None... Not one... Alright, well, I'll let the cat out of the bag. Where I really stand on the issue (I was playing devil's advocate) is that I am on the fence. There are good arguments made by both sides. And while I unapolgetically lean towards the side I was defending, I'm not so inept to realize that the application of such a prohibition is almost impossible to enforce realistically.If someone is determined enough, they are going to do it. They will find a way. And even if they were "caught," how do you prosecute? How do you investigate such a thing? It's impractical and would be unfair to assume guilt every time someone miscarries (legitimately) and subject her to scrutiny.So for me, I allow the law to make those determinations and only follow my own moral compass with my personal life. Since it is legal, I respect that fact. But for the sake of debate, I'll throw my two cents in as I've done here.

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

When the fertilization process begins (unification of ovum and spermatozoa). It starts at a finite moment in time. Yes, except if we all agreed we wouldn't be having this conversation. So I guess we're hashing out the gritty details here and now. If left to nature, a fetus with all the DNA signatures of a human will, if allowed, continue to be human and nothing else. It won't be a chimpanzee, it won't be cancer cells, it won't be a cat. When left to nature the result is human. My opinion is that a blastocyst, foetus, newborn, toddler, child, teenager, young adult, or geriatric adult are just terms of gestation and/or life-cycles that everyone, if left without intervention, would follow quite naturally. At no point were they not human.This isn't weird science. If a dog is pregnant, at no point will she give birth to an alligator. Everyone knows that. There is a puppy inside an adult dog.When a woman is pregnant, the first thing that happens is the humanization process. They ask, boy or girl? What is his/her name? This is because every single person you have ever layed eyes on or conversed with over the internet have ALL passed through this cycle of gestation. We all are the product of that and we ALL are human.So for some reason to deny that when it is convenient, seems nothing more than wishful thinking and playing pretend; pretending this is not human so as to alleviate those nagging bouts of guilt or to offer solace and absolution.The law also recognizes that if a pregnant is murdered, the offender could receive 2 charges of homicide. Why, if murder can only happen to a human being.

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

I suppose this is a lot like the difference between dying and the moment one is actually dead. If someone has a terminal disease, their body may be going through physical changes leading up to death. But there is a moment in time where the individual is actually dead by all medical accounts.Well, sperm flowing through the birth canal on a long journey is leading up to the creation of a brand new life, but it is not the same thing as a created life just as dying isn't actually dead, regardless of how graduated it appears. It seems rather obvious that when the fertilization process begins, a new life distinct from its mother and father, is procreated. There is and has been improvement in medicine for centuries for the increased birth rate. There is nothing anyone can do to save a spontaneously aborted fetus besides good prenatal and preventative medicine. The glaring difference between the two is one is intentionally induced by the hand of a doctor with the intent to destroy, the other is the intent to save a life.It kind of falls in line nicely with that whole hippocratic oath dictum "Do no harm" I don't know what a mindless cell is, can you explain in more detail? How exactly have you quantified that 70% of humans are flushed down a toilet in the first place to even begin to entertain the notion of answering it seriously?

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

I don't place too much stock in to the Malthusian theories. I think what would help is for people that don't want to get pregnant to not get pregnant in the first place. I'm saying that if someone dies as the result of an accident or medical reasons is vastly different than someone dying as the result of intentional and premeditated killings.That's like asking if I think it's cool if someone dies from cancer. No I don't, but some things are either unavoidable or unintended. Jamming a vacuum with blades in to someone's crotch with then intent of killing what's inside the womb, however, is a little easier to prevent.

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

Because it directly affects someone else's body, Oni. The only issue is that it is directly affecting someone else who has no choice, otherwise no one would care. It's kind of like this for me: If a woman wanted to drive 150 on a race track, I don't care. Have all the fun you want. But if that same parent now has their own child in the backseat, that kind of changes things dramatically.It all has to be looked at in context. Let me ask you something. I think I recall you saying something about having a child, a daughter if I'm not mistaken. What kind of reaction do you think your daughter would give seeing images of what would have been her brother or sister mutilated? Do you think there wouldn't be a visceral reaction? And then ask yourself why she might act that way if she was horrified. Answer honestly, please. LOL! If you go to an abortion clinic to get an abortion, that completely summarizes the intent! I could be extremely graphic and provide all sorts of imagery and I could say that God is going to kill all Pro-Choicers while regurgitating various scriptures. That would be akin to what you're talking about. Me describing a process is me describing a process that most people want to pretend doesn't really happen. It seems fake probably because you're the only one inside your head and since you don't feel anything about it, conceptualizing what other people feel is next to impossible for you.If you're as indifferent to it as you claim, why do you care so much what I think? Edited by Hyroglyphx, : Correcting typos

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

Sneaky? It has been a law in 34 separate states, not to mention the very open Unborn Victims of Violence Act. Is that 35 instances of sneaky lobbying?It makes a lot of sense if you stop to think about it. A woman who is pregnant and is carrying the baby seemingly wants to carry the child to term. Lots and lots of people actually want to get pregnant, believe it or not. I don't know if you've been informed but all species actually rely on procreation.What do you expect an expecting mother to do if some asshole killed her child?No rational person on the planet would reasonably be against such a law. Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

What?!?! By that reasoning we shouldn't make murder illegal if it doesn't personally happen to us. Or we should never allow CPS to ever intervene if the beaten or neglected child is not ours. Or we should never care if we see a person abusing their dog because it's their dog. The list goes on. Maybe that is a good thing. We tend to become desensitized as we age. Is there not any sense of "If you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime?" Is there no sense of personal ownership or responsibility in the thought process? I understand what you're saying and to a degree I certainly can empathize. But there is something that seems deeply troubling about the whole thing. I don't think that is why he's a virgin. He's a virgin because of his religious beliefs. In many cases that is true, sadly. Is that anything like soliciting an assassin to kill your wife, meeting with them, discussing money and instructions on the hit, not intent? They aren't. They involve crushing skulls, burning the skin with high concentrations of salt, tearing limbs from the body, etc. Do some research, it's not just about taking a morning after pill. I do care about puppies actually. I only support no-kill shelters and always have. Um, yes, I would and do. I can tell you though why most people feel so vehement about it is because there is a sense of innocence. What is inside the womb has never done anything to anyone, ever. People can at least feel some sense of justice with executing murderers. But just so you know, I don't support the death penalty. Give me a break. Who doesn't care about children? Seriously... You assume that in order to care one has to follow a fetus around their entire life in order to "care." That's unrealistic. Just because I don't know which fetus is about to be aborted in (pick a random city) doesn't mean that I somehow am not allowed to dislike the premise.I dislike the premise of torture but don't personally know of anyone who was tortured. Does that mean I don't really care?

---

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams