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

Yet they call both "babies". For emotive effect? If we really thought that all conceptuses were babies there is much we would and could do. The fact that nobody thinks it is worth even researching what we could do to save the 50+% of "babies" that die before they are even known to exist is the finest demonstration of the hypocrisy of the "all conceptuses are human" pro-life advocates one could wish for.

I suppose. But, they're closer to babies than, say, teenagers. Are you saying that there hasn't been any research into preventing miscarriages and that the rate of them has not decreased since the advent of modern medicine?

How is a clump of cells lacking a brain, consciousness or even the possibility of self-awareness closer to a baby than a baby is to a teenager? Research into the tiny minority of miscarriages by women that know they are pregnant - Yes. But the vast majority of conceptuses aborted naturally are unknown to even exist.What do pro-lifers advoacte regarding the discovery and saviour of these "babies"? The vast majority of humanity (as they have defined "human" to be) that is unknowingly flushed down the toilet?

Clearly we should examine all used tampons, and mourn when we find that an un-implanted fertilized egg...I mean, a baby has died.

How dare you advocate the use of tampons!! Clearly all women of child bearing age should be forced to undergo bi-weekly checks for the possible existence of conceptuses. And in the event of a conceptus being found to exist all necessary action must be taken to bring every such entity discovered to term.The sanctity of human life is above any economic, social or other considerations. Anyone who says otherwise is guilty of advocating baby murder by neglect.

Indeed every menstrual cycle is yet another "potential child," as those anti-lifers put it, another baby dead.All females of menstrual age should be undergo mandatory breeding - through the neglect of these women their unborn babies are expelled like feces in a toilet in a deluge of blood every month! This is child murder on a staggering scale!Tampons are vaginal plugs of death! Menstrual pads hide the blood of the unborn! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

Back in Message 105 I put forward a proposal for mandatory fertility treatments for all women of childbearing age. You wanted technology to all but eliminate miscarriages (known or unknown)...well, it's already here! Coupled with mandatory breeding, we could have this place swarming in NO time.Babies for everyone!!!

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"My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. J.B.S Haldane 1892-1964

You don't miind if I borrow that, do you?- Oni

Jazzns, please follow the train of logic. Well over 50% of conceptuses are spontaneously aborted without anyone having known otherwise, is the claim. If no one knows how many end up in the toilet, then that is quite unobserved, is it not? If the mother never knew she was ever pregnant in the first place, then surely doctors and scienctists could NOT have known she was pregnant either, right? Unless of course you think scientists live inside toilet bowls and check fertilization. And if they do not have that information then cannot establish a baseline, now could they?You just keep touting that science knows it (the ever ubiquitous and infallible science) yet not one person here is seeing the obvious (or playing dumb) -- namely, that they could not know or observe such a phenomenon in order to accurately estimate how many fertilized eggs end up in a toilet UNLESS they.... knew..... she..... was...... pregnant..... in...... the...... first place.

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Not that any of that straw man argument bears relevance to the debate.

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No, it is not knowable!!! Straggler claimed that most fertilized eggs end up in the toilet unbeknownst to menstruating women everywhere.Question: How would anyone know the egg was fertilized in the first place without scientificially VERIFYING fertilization in the FIRST place???? Hello?!?!?!Remember, she doesn't even know she was ever pregnant. That means NO one knows she was pregnant either, including doctors and scientists because it is unobserved and therefore unverifiable.All one could do is measure the rate of KNOWN pregnancies that end in miscarriage versus live births in order to establish a realistic percentage of survivability.Everyone simply keeps appealing to authority, but no one is explaining how they could know, and yet also have no one know they were pregnant at the same time.Since no one wants to discuss abortion, there is no sense in continuing.Again, even supposing we allow for Straggler's red herring we should still be able to continue with the discussion. His ENTIRE premise hinges on whether or not I think we should do more to mitigate miscarriages. I have already unequivocally stated that I support more research.Apparently unless I achieve omnispresence and omnipotence and wait patiently inside everyone women's toilet with a strainer ready to rescusitate a fetus, I must not care.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

I'd be honored

No. We can observe it in the lab. Under scientific scrutiny. No. They work diligently inside labs to study one thing that is very important to humans which is procreation. They do have that information, it has been presented to you that they do. You are denying facts. And YOU just keep rephrasing the very same Argument from Incredulity. Science CAN and HAS observed this phenomenon in the lab. If you think that we can't use those observations in the real world then you are denying that science can produce knowledge and you have a much bigger problem than a moral on one your hands. Right! Most women don't take highly expensive and sensitive hormone tests every single month just before they are about to menstruate to determine if an egg has been fertilized. But scientists sometimes DO! Very simply we "scientifically VERIFY fertilization"! Do you think this is impossible or something?Labor - Women's Health Issues - Merck Manuals Consumer Version There is an arms race among commercially available pregnancy tests to cheaply detect these hormones as early as possible. That is just because YOU are unimaginative and fallaciously incredulous. It is a good thing that science is not or else we would still have a number of unsolved problems in the realm of human reproduction. Actually, a NUMBER of people have described how they "could know" and I have yet again. You have just either not read, not understood, or like to be argumentative about facts. I don't particularly care about alleged deficiencies of Straggler's argument. I personally think that a better argument against abortion restriction is that in a free society we do not restrict privacy, medical decision, family decision, and body sovereignty without very solid reasons to do so. Since the personhood of a fetus is a gray area, I don't think it is a very solid basis on which to impinge on the basic human freedoms of half of our population.I jumped into this discussion because you were committing a very distinct logical fallacy which implies a denial of reality. You can have your own opinion about the morals of abortion, but perhaps you shouldn't complain when other people call you on your denial of facts.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

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If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson

It doesn't matter. But 13 years is less than 9 months, so they're at least chronologically closer Are you really claiming that there has been no research nor advancements in the viability of consepsuses that would not be known by the mother to exist? Nothing in particular that I'm aware of.But of course they don't see a consepsus as equivalent to a born baby, and of course some of them use the term "baby-killer" as hyperbole or even literally in some cases I assume.So yeah, some people are hypocrites.

You made the claim. And yes it does matter. Is letting a baby die by denying it medical assistance like standing idly by while conceptuses get inadvertantly flushed down the toilet? Or is it more similar to letting a 19 year old die from lack of medical attention?Doesn't this get to the heart of the matter? What do we consider human and what do we just treat as a bunch of mindless cells? Exactly. Outside the context of imposing their misguided morality on others pro-lifers give no more thought to these "human lives" than I do.That is the point. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

In Message 127, you wrote: After clarifying the lack of equivalency, you ask: I'll have to stay with what I said before:

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it doesn't have much to do with it. The life of those conseptuses are in god's hands, not thiers. They don't feel they should be deciding if it lives or dies. It doesn't matter how many undecidedly die, that's not a case for allowing for the decision to be made.

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Sure, but too at the heart of the matter is the lack of treating every single human as equivalents. A 'bunch of mindless cells', while being considered human by a pro-lifer, does not get equivalent treatment as a more developed, or born, person. Sorry for the pedantry, but I'd say they give it just a little more thought in that they consider it to have a soul and be a person. But not so much that they advocate treating them as equivalent to born people.

Yes. It only gets called a "human" in the context of abortion. Otherwise it seems they are as happy to "dehumanise" it as I am. Well if you are gonna talk about conceptuses and souls this raises the rather bizzarre notion that 50+% of human souls in heaven (or wherever it is religious pro-life advocates think such souls end up) are the souls of people who were never even born. Doesn't this ask some rather serious questions of the whole "soul" concept? So some souls are more human than others? Please explain.