abortion classic or dud?

Who do you rely on to "invest in you" and what would happen if they all closed their accounts? Do you cease to exist? :-)

"The hope is invested in the imagined potential, not in the life.

It's like when two good-looking, 18 yr old, footy-playing guys die in a car crash. Everyone considers it such a tragedy because of their "potential". Not their potential to be wife-beating rapists though. Their potential to live out other people's fantasy lives. I suspect many people don't gain this potential until they have died."

Reflecting on your thoughts, I'd say this is a bit of a self-centered way to mourn others. Are we mourning that lost benefit that we could receive from the dead person had he/she lived? If so, does life have inherent value outside of the value that other people give it?

The equations for this stuff become confusing fast: let's say I live comfortably on a small island with my beautiful wife. We have everything we need to live long lives. I value her; therefore her life has value. She values me; therefore I have value. But, if I had no value before she "gave" me my value, what is the "value" of my value for her?!?!? OK, I'm making myself dizzy... OK, so what happens if I stop valuing her? Does her life cease being valuable?

Well, Christians (or as Mark says, xtians :-) ) believe that life is inherently valuable. The US Declaration of Independence states:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Without arguing about the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, our government is saying that none of us need another person to "invest hope" in order to be valuable. No investment of hope for potential...life is unalienable right that no one else can give or take from us.

Enjoy.

That's ridiculous, right? But can you find a way to tell me it's ridiculous without acknowledging that there's a very close interplay of dependency involved there, a period during which this "potential life" is in fact not a separate entity but rather very much a body's work-in-progress (on which work can be suspended)?

Value means value to someone (sing or plur). This can include value to one's self obv (so does the self continue after death, cz if YES then why is death treated as a social problem?) or value to He Who Died for Us All or other deity (if you decide you need a super-being to ground inherent-value-for-no one-living). Erm there's a whole LOTTA dizzying stuff in this. The condition of possibility of either framework, to establish "inherent value", ends up valorising the unbiddable but also unreadable opinions of the non-living (also known as the ever-living) over the living, unfortunately: ppl who will die turn out to be second-calss citizens in this Eternal Polity.

Work from your assumption that a cell cluster is in fact a viable individual human being: what obligates the first human being -- the mother -- to have it in her body without her consent?

Work from your assumption that non-"viable individual human beings" don't have rights. Why can't I just run around intensive care units and pull the plugs of all the patients? Why can't I argue for my government to kill all those terminally ill (mentally or physically) who are draining our tax dollars for their medical treatment? Many people aren't "viable." If we could reduce the tax burden (ie. give citizens more "freedom of choice" with their money), why shouldn't we do this? Even more extreme: what if we could just kill ~10% of the least productive members of society? Despite the "graphically ridiculous" arguments, these ideas have all been championed at one time or another.

If society doesn't "consent" to these burdens (elderly, mentally ill, sick), is it still morally bound to care for them, or may it kill them? I think the situation is the same for both the mother and society.

For what it's worth, both the law and society often reprimand parents who fail to fulfill their obligation to protect and care for their children. What happened with the young mother who slapped her child under the watch of Big Brother? Maybe this mother didn't want to accept the responsibility of being a mother. Yet despite her daily problems, society sees it as her responsibility to care for her child.

Nabisco writes:

"El Catracho let me put the question this sort of graphically ridiculous-sounding way. (If it's really an "individal" what makes this not rape?)"

Are you really convinced that an unwanted baby is "raping" its mother? That's pretty weird. Well, OK it's ridiculous too. :-)

Mark writes:

"In order to say yes to this, you have to argue that there's this big person-who-isn't-a-person outside time and history, in whom the recognition of value can reside."

Actually, there's a big "person-who-isn't-a-human." A "person-who-isn't-a-person" would not be a person.

Well, there's a bunch of questions that science hasn't the slightest idea of how to answer. All the big questions of the Universe are pretty interesting to me. Theists and atheists come from different starting points; but I'm always interested in hearing the views on these questions from diverse points of view.

Enjoy.

The new Christian strategy, though, is to pretend that their ridiculous claims would still be true in the absence of God. They wouldn't, though, and no amount of slumming down here with the godless intellectuals will change that.

[mandatory self-outing: I am in fact religious though not Christian]

ie it's not *my* contradiction

Hello. How are you doing today?

You write:

"The new Christian strategy, though, is to pretend that their ridiculous claims [hahaha, which claims have I made here?] would still be true in the absence of God. They wouldn't, though, and no amount of slumming down here with the godless intellectuals will change that."

OK, J0hn, I've spent most of my time here trying to figure out if non-Christians (atheists?) really think that any life has a provable value. If you review my posts, I'm not talking making many claims, let alone what you refer to as "ridiculous claims." I'm asking questions.

I haven't heard a reasoned argument yet that supports that any life is worth more than a hill of beans. Help me understand this, please. I'm coming here with questions that you seem afraid to answer. Is it that your arguments fall apart when you face these questions? Well, if your arguments answer my questions, why are you holding back?

Considering that you want us all to "ID" ourselves, why does Christianity matter if it's not part of the discussion? Why does your "mandatory self-outing" matter if it's not germane?

Despite your stance, most people here are interested in having a dialogue. If you're not, then why bother posting?

-------------

I wrote:

"does life have inherent value outside of the value that other people give it?"

Mark responds:

"assuming you want your answer to be YES..."

Mark, I don't "want" you to answer yes or no. I just am interested in your answer. BTW, aside from your conjecture about my intentions, you didn't answer the question. Would you care to give me your answer?

Enjoy

It is utterly germane if it's the sole informing ideology behind your reasoning, which is clearly the case here.

I am fine, thanks for asking :)

i don't think you know what you mean by "value" and i don't think you know what you mean by "life"

"It is utterly germane if it's the sole informing ideology behind your reasoning, which is clearly the case here."

Is this some kind of a litmus test that you use on people? Should I believe that atheists' beliefs are their "sole informing ideology" behind their reasoning?

I'm just here asking some questions. Some people have chosen to answer and give their views. Others have chosen to skirt my question and focus on my intentions.

My intentions are to think about and discuss the questions that I ask. That's why I ask questions. I want to learn. I'm sorry if you think that I've got some kind of defect in my ability to reason because my beliefs don't match yours. Is my "rhetoric loaded"? Well, yes, just like everyone else here! Others have asked me to answer hypothetical questions. Would you argue that these questions weren't "loaded"? I guess if the questions weren't loaded they'd be empty, right? :-)

Could I turn the tables for a second? Let's say that an atheist posts a bunch of questions to a group of mostly Christian contributors. When the atheist asks hard questions, the Christians avoid the question and say, "Why should we waste our time with you, you are blinded by your atheism. If you were a Christian like us, you'd understand." Doesn't that sound like a cop-out? Well, it works both ways...it's still a cop-out when the tables are turned.

Either you have thought about the questions that I ask or you haven't. Either way, it's your opportunity to shine and show that atheists aren't afraid of these questions.

Maybe you believe that my questions are uninteresting. Well, in that case, no one's forcing you to answer. I personally wouldn't ask the questions if they didn't mean anything to me. I hope you would respect that.

Enjoy.

PS--I guess this thread proves the point--the abortion debate is a classic.

As I've pointed out, I'm not an atheist at all. As to whether atheism creates an ideological superstructure for the atheist in the way that Christianity does for the Christian: clearly not! Though Christians are fond of claiming that atheists are as reliant on faith in their daily lives as are Christians, it's not so. Atheists, for example, can believe that Christ rose from the dead if they like -- nothing in their atheism prevents them from believing that. A Christian, however, can't believe that Christ died & was buried & did not rise. From this example it's clear that atheism per se isn't a governing ideology in the way Christianity is. That's why I think you should be honest and begin your argument by saying "As a Christian, abortion seems wrong to me & here's why" rather than attempting to construct a sort of Socratics-for-Christ style of interrogation.

Your analogy to the terminally ill, by the way, supports my point entirely: as soon as a person is dependent on someone's providing life support to maintain life -- life support paid for and thus "provided" by family -- it's quite normal for the family to cease providing that support. (The strict analogy here is: if it's only through your actions -- above and beyond the provision of basic care, as with a child -- that a particular life can continue to exist, you're in no way obligated to continue providing that support.)

Another important question, just for informational purposes: are you arguing this on a moral or a legal level? Is your viewpoint strictly predicated on any religious or quasi-religious belief? (These are simple questions that you can't spend three paragraphs carefully avoiding, I hope.)

"That's why I think you should be honest and begin your argument by saying, 'As a Christian, abortion seems wrong to me & here's why" rather than attempting to construct a sort of Socratics-for-Christ style of interrogation.'"

With all due respect to Socrates and Christ, my intent hasn't been to ask questions in order to push my position. Maybe my position's not too difficult to imagine. But I'm asking (not interrogating) people why they believe what they believe--I'm genuinely interested. I am not telling people what to believe. I am not attempting to ridicule others for their beliefs, even though others may want to Christian-bash here. I'm just asking questions. Don't get so defensive.

I wonder why you aren't faulting those who have presented totally loaded hypothetical questions to me. Is this something that I should be upset about? Are they "interrogating" me like a police officer? Do I care? No.

J0hn writes:

"it's clear that atheism per se isn't a governing ideology in the way Christianity is."

OK, so if atheism "isn't a governing ideology," don't you think it would be much more interesting to learn about the diversity of opinions of those free from a "governing ideology?" I ask myself questions and I have some answers. I'm curious how other people approach the same questions. Yet, you have expressed that it's better not to discuss these things. Sounds like thought police. Is that the part you need to play? Officer? :-)

All my best,

Officer Catracho.

Incidentally, I haven't opined -- not once -- that it's better not to discuss things. I've pointed out that you aren't entering the discussion in good faith. I don't think that a discussion rooted in dishonesty can produce much more than a lot of words. I have always been eager to hear a variety of opinions; I'd just prefer to actually hear them, rather than having to root them out from "questions" that are actually arguments.

"I don't anticipate your ever properly responding to anything anyone asks you..."

Yet I already have responded to questions directly. The facts are against you.

Nabisco writes:

"Note that one doesn't even have such an obligation for the care of a born infant!"

Laws and penalties exist for those who do not care for infants. And they are pretty severe.

Nabisco writes:

"Your analogy to the terminally ill, by the way, supports my point entirely: as soon as a person is dependent on someone's providing life support to maintain life -- life support paid for and thus "provided" by family -- it's quite normal for the family to cease providing that support. (The strict analogy here is: if it's only through your actions -- above and beyond the provision of basic care, as with a child -- that a particular life can continue to exist, you're in no way obligated to continue providing that support.)"

If the family ceases to provide support, may the state cease to provide support? May the state terminate the life of the "useless eater"? I don't think many people would want to live in a country whose government acted in that way.

Nabisco writes:

"Another important question, just for informational purposes: are you arguing this on a moral or a legal level? Is your viewpoint strictly predicated on any religious or quasi-religious belief? (These are simple questions that you can't spend three paragraphs carefully avoiding, I hope.)"

Which questions do you claim that I have avoided?

1) Am I arguing on a moral or legal level?

I am asking questions which I myself face. I am curious to learn how others answer these questions. I suppose I'm asking the questions on a moral level. Basically, I'm trying to understand how other people form their personal morality. I've stated my motivations repeatedly. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, though.

2) Is your viewpoint strictly predicated on any religious or quasi-religious belief?

No, I'm just here asking questions. I promise I won't push my beliefs on anyone here; but I will state my position if anyone is curious. Is my morality influenced by my religious beliefs? Yes...I would suggest that everyone's religious beliefs (because they are so fundamental) have an important impact on their entire belief system.

Thanks

PS--J0hn, if you believe that I'm avoiding questions after this post, please support your claim with concrete examples.

"I have always been eager to hear a variety of opinions; I'd just prefer to actually hear them, rather than having to root them out from "questions" that are actually arguments."

Though you claim to be "eager to hear a variety of opinions," I'm actually acting on my interest to hear a variety of opinions.

Here's my question, J0hn:

"Does life have inherent value outside of the value that other people give it?"

What "argument" do you have to root out? The question is there. It's an honest question. There's three possible answers: yes, no, or maybe. Which one do you believe and why?

Why do you need to keep avoiding the actual discussion and focus on personal attacks? The personal attacks don't matter to me. They aren't germane. :-)

Why are you afraid of such a simple question?

Enjoy

2) Is your viewpoint strictly predicated on any religious or quasi-religious belief?

No, I'm just here asking questions. I promise I won't push my beliefs on anyone here; but I will state my position if anyone is curious. Is my morality influenced by my religious beliefs? Yes...I would suggest that everyone's religious beliefs (because they are so fundamental) have an important impact on their entire belief system.

This is anything but a straight answer. (It certainly isn't the kind of straight talk favored by the historical personage of Christ as we know him.) No-one asked if your morality was influenced by your religious beliefs. You re-cast the question to suit your own ends. Your questions aren't questions! At all! They're positions! If you want to have it out, then do so honestly, like Paul of Tarsus used to, for example.

The preceding has been a concrete example, or as concrete as we can get at the level of language, of how you haven't answered any of the questions people on this board have asked you.

I'd rather avoid the rest of the thread (i.e. the subject), but I have to say I don't agree with this at all -- the choice is not binary, God vs. social construction/"consensus": there are other alternatives. That's pretty much been one of the core issues that philosophy has been confronting since the Enlightenment, and even if you don't agree with them, it would be unwise to lightly dismiss the attempts that have been made to locate ethics in reason -- in other words, to say that (for one) valuing/having respect for human life is an inevitable consequence of the survival instinct/pleasure principle/etc. that should be present in a sentient, conscious, sane, non-omnipotent being who wants to continue to exist. Yeah, "proven by science", all the attendant dangers, etc., but it beats the hell out of the alternatives.

I do hope for your own sake that you're a vegetarian, as your apparent position leaves little room for the killing of sentient beings who lack the means to speak on their own behalf.

also Phil is right: it's not either life has inherent value OR there's no God -- that's another one o' them Christian tricks

(E.g.: if your reading comprehension was as good as your written grammar you'd have noted that I was very plainly saying that the required level of care for an infant is less than what you're asking of a pregnant woman -- all you're really required to do is feed and generally shelter it as best you can, which is a lot less than feeding it, keeping it inside your body, eating for it, breathing for it, etc. So on the "questions you haven't answered" slate there is still that one, which is a very direct one: what obligates a woman to provide that care?) ("That care" is above and beyond the care of a born child -- see below -- so you can leave children out of it.)

(On the side-stepping front: you seemed to acknowledge that I was correct about families providing life support, and then jumped a little, saying "well would you want the state to do that." So far as I'm aware, we are not discussing any situation in which the state forces abortions -- we're talking about a woman herself deciding not to carry a child to term, which I'm equating to a family's decision not to provide for the ongoing life of another person who can't survive without someone else's providing for their basic body functions.) (I italicize that so you don't say "oh, well children need to be provided for too" -- I'm drawing a line here between caring for something and actually motoring its existence, i.e., without you it wouldn't just eventually starve but it would immediately cease to live.)

Of course, the flip side of your point (which came off the flip side of my own, at that) is that it is entirely possible to be anti-abortion without locating that position in religious beliefs. I daresay the pro-choice rhetoric on this one -- i.e. that anyone who isn't of their views is a Bible-thumping, woman-hating cretin -- easily equals the rhetoric spouted by the pro-life folks about their own adversaries: both sides certainly will stereotype, generalize, and belittle those who don't agree with them, if it serves their own agendas.

"social construction = consensus" isn't a defensible synonym, incidentally

You're right, Phil. I just get kind of worked up when I feel like somebody's trying to weasel through a discussion without putting their cards on the table. I actually believe that the whole abortion question is actually painfully complex and generally do take the position that it ought to be left entirely to women. Our mutual friend Mr. Catracho, though, brings out the troo-black-metal-silence-the-Christians adolescent who's semi-latent within me.

And yes, social construction and consensus definitely aren't synonyms, nor did I intend to suggest they were. I invoked imprecisely.

we value reason = reason is contained within the realm of the values of the living (even if we don't agree on what constitutes reason) (in the sense that i don't think knowledge eventually reaches an indisturbable plateau where you no longer have to worry about its truthm, and can just absorb it uncritically, and that this knowledge can be co-opted into the sphere of reason)

*if god is some big old v.ancient alien who can read all our minds and intervene in earth affairs, then he's "people", even if not my kind of people (necessarily) (if 12-foot tall and saurian i can reconsider)

The Hegelian argument, insofar as I understand it, is congruent with my own: the value of any other human life is the value of one's own, because the process of becoming conscious demands that one be able to recognize oneself in the Other (a recognition in which reason and emotion collaborate -- the instinct for compassion plus the loglcal process which Hegel outlines) (while of course simultaneously recognizing that they are not oneself). Daevid Allen writes "You can't kill me"; maybe the second half of that statement is "...without killing you."

I don't know what this has to do with anything but but I can't think about Hegel without thinking about how De Sade dips his cup into the same waters and comes up with a completely different drink

"Our mutual friend Mr. Catracho, though, brings out the troo-black-metal-silence-the-Christians adolescent who's semi-latent within me."

See, J0hn, at least you're enjoying yourself. :-)

J0hn writes:

"I do hope for your own sake that you're a vegetarian, as your apparent position leaves little room for the killing of sentient beings who lack the means to speak on their own behalf."

Aren't vegetables living things too? According to that logic, your caricature of me should restrict his diet to a balanced diet of water, minerals and other non-living things! :-) Hmm...

J0hn writes:

"also Phil is right: it's not either life has inherent value OR there's no God -- that's another one o' them Christian tricks"

Well, I personally didn't assert (nor infer) the either/or. I simply asked a question related question--no "Christian tricks" here. The answer to the question (not just yes/no, but an attempt at a why) is still interesting to me.

J0hn, thanks for answering my question.

I wrote:

"2) Is your viewpoint strictly predicated on any religious or quasi-religious belief?

No, I'm just here asking questions. I promise I won't push my beliefs on anyone here; but I will state my position if anyone is curious. Is my morality influenced by my religious beliefs? Yes...I would suggest that everyone's religious beliefs (because they are so fundamental) have an important impact on their entire belief system."

J0hn, you weren't happy with this answer. I'm sorry. Let me try again: is my viewpoint strictly predicated on any religious belief? No. My religious beliefs are "predicated" on my viewpoint. Is that a better answer? Here's my breakdown: my viewpoint (my experiences, my education) made me arrive at my religious beliefs. My religious beliefs have an important impact on my entire belief system. I apologize if I didn't articulate my point well before. I hope you'll forgive me.

J0hn writes:

"The preceding has been a concrete example, or as concrete as we can get at the level of language, of how you haven't answered any of the questions people on this board have asked you."

J0hn, are you so sure you should be using absolute statements so freely? Must I re-post each of the questions that I have answered? Have I answered the hypothetical question from Plinky regarding my wife if she had a complicated pregnancy? Yes. I even gave a link. Nick asked me to compare the loss due to miscarriage to the death of a child from leukemia. I gave a complete answer. If you have any more accusations about my ability to answer other people's questions, please give me the specific question and I'd be happy to give the question another try.

Enjoy

PS--this is a fast moving thread!

You get the prize for both the most interesting answer and the most interesting re-phrasing of the question. For those who don't like my phrasing:

Why should one give a tinker's damn about the Other?

Enjoy

I was emotionally incapable of caring for a child, and knew it, and really felt that I had no right to bring a child into the situation I was living in. I decided to terminate the pregnancy (I was 4 weeks along) and I'll harbor some feeling of guilt about it for the rest of my life, thanks partially to my Catholic upbringing, and partially to the letter my 'best' friend wrote me 7 years later berating me for having done it when I "knew" she and her husband were trying to have a baby (I didn't), and how could I have been so selfish.

Ultimately, though, I think I did what was best.

On the other facet of this thread, I can't remember the last time I saw such a volume of sustained, disingenuous, smug, bad-faith 'arguing' (or 'questioning' if you prefer) as from El Catracho here.

I'm starting to believe that he is a troll here.

(In other words, I agree with you, although I think we're able to abstract those types of values until they do seem like they hinge on some overaching non-relative "rule" -- there doesn't have to actually be the arbiter-God so long as we've constructed rules we want to take approximately that seriously.)