Why The Judaeo-Christian God Makes No Sense to Me

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I didn't say person, I said human being.



Yep, went through this in the other thread. Personhood means different things to different people (in US law it pretty much everyone under the age of 18), you need a much tighter definition if you are using it to justify ending the lives of human beings.


You know, some might call that absolute innocence. Again I put to you the same implied question, still unanswered. Why is it wrong to kill an unconscious, anaesthetised person?



It's pretty obvious what I mean, no need to get that stuck into that kind of philosophical precision.

Because they presumably wish to continue living. That assumption doesn't apply to fetuses because they don't have the necessary organs to have wishes, and it's the same reason why it's OK to euthanize the braindead.

Why do you trust your imperfect mind when it judges the Bible to be perfect?

Ah interesting argument. Is it acceptable to kill anyone who has expressed suicidal thoughts?

I don't trust my imperfect mind. The point that I am making is that if we go by the Christian belief system then it is impossible to comprehend the Bible. Perfect means complete, whole and not needing anything else added to it. If all of humankind is imperfect (anything that is less then God's completion) and if these are his perfect words then none of us can truthfully comprehend what it actually says since we as mankind is incomplete if we compare ourselves to God (as the Biblical God).

Every denomination in Christianity does not agree upon what everything in it says actually means. Yet, they all say and claim to represent God's will and claim to be his sole representatives and everyone else are false prophets.

Who is correct? How are we to read and interpret the Bible correctly? Under the conditions laid out no one including myself can know what it actually says even if they believe and think they do since based upon conditions laid out by Christains the Bible is the perfect word coming from a perfect God and man is imperfect and sinful. Plus I have my ASD so it's double for me.

As for the bigger picture. If we can't even get the details right that makes up the bigger picture then how can we really understand what the bigger picture is supposed to be? How do we interpret properly?

Kill them? No. Let them kill themselves? I'm not sure. I had suicidal feelings several times, and it just so happens that now my current life has improved to the point that I'm glad I lived. But nothing guaranteed this improvement would happen.

Psychiatric science has concluded that suicidality is a disordered state of mind that doesn't actually promote the best interests of the subject. In someone not otherwise afflicted with incurable suffering, the wish to die is a misaimed wish for better conditions.

If you believe in your beliefs, you do trust your mind. You trust it every time you have an opinion or make a choice.



If you can't be sure what the Bible means, why are you so sure it's perfect?

not okay to kill an anesthetized person because, even though not at that moment. the capacity for sentience.

One can trust one's mind but one can have a certain amount of skepticism of one's own conclusions.



And, that's the problem I can't be sure either way. Which is why I have reasonable doubt. The more I read it and listen to the followers and the experts in it the more I go away from it. There is no reliable way to determine truth from error when it comes to the Bible. It is all based in faith and every denomination says they're the way and the truth and anyone else outside of them are apostates and the false prophets.

TBH all of this is very high and theoretical. There's a certain point where we decide where we draw lines on what we accept and don't and it will always shape cultures in ways that we don't anticipate.

I think if we were really to say something about abortion it's this - outside of medical need, in the case where either child or child and mom will die, something went wrong and it's usually an avenue where society's really come up with a bunk idea and declared it a standard which initially enables licence but later worse, forces that behavior as each gender competes within itself almost in the way that honest businesses in a corrupt environment would lose out if they don't bend the rules themselves.

For example - I think in the 50 years since the late 60's we can say that 'free love' is a bust. If we were going to hold both sexes equal and say that anyone could have sex with anyone, no strings attached, no one would go back to the other for a monthly check if a pregnancy occurred. The trouble is, for anything less than an independently wealthy woman, that seems like it's the logical option even if it's not agreed upon at the time of a sexual encounter. Being that's the case we should probably, at the societal level pull that one back and say that it was a mistake and we'd probably be wiser to do that in any area where we catch on that all we've given people new rights to is natural consequences.

Over and above that - if we want to have our cake and eat it too we then have the right to find ourselves slipping into barbarism and as often is the case, usually from secondary effects, freedoms start slipping away from any populace who isn't already in the habit of balancing rights with responsibilities.

Lots of angles to consider with all of this, none of it that I'd moralize in any religious way but we clearly have to keep the list of things we want to be able to do (or have rights to) and the list of things that we're willing to accept in our society congruent. What's worse is when those two lists are incongruent, the results are misunderstood (in earnest or deliberately), and the unforeseen consequences trigger conspiracy theories. If that last part happens we're really fit to lose everything.

For my hypothetical, let's assume the wish is genuine and not the result of madness. If I get your drift, for you the right to live or personhood is predicated on an (assumed) instinctual or conscious will to live?

In myself, there exists a "conscious will to live."

I don't want to die. To die, to me, means perpetual darkness which you can't escape.

Then let the suicidal person do the deed. Letting anyone else do it would always leave open the possibility of misinterpreted intention. In the case of someone who clearly communicates the intention but is so physically disabled that they can't kill themselves, the rules for permissibility of euthanasia would apply.



It's interesting that you (seem to) equate right to live with personhood. I'd say an adult with the gravest possible degree of mental retardation has a right to live, even if their personhood is hard to ascertain.

To answer your question: yes, I link the objective right to live with the subjective urge to live. Which is, for example, one of the reasons why I'm a vegetarian and only, if ever, consume animals with the simplest nervous systems.

I don't, I am just trying to comprehend your views. I say humans in general should have that right (if you like such terms), a right only to be taken away in extreme circumstances. It's not my side of this debate that feels the need to invent new kinds of humanness, so we can kill the others.


Then the next question is why and where from?

The only reason why we care about other people's wishes is our evolved ability for empathy. If I do not want to die, I can put myself in the shoes of someone at risk of dying and more-or-less-confidently assume they'd want to be safe. The entirety of morality comes from this process.

Part of our effort in making our points clear faces an obstacle in word usage. I use "human" as a solely biological category and "person" as a moral category. It appears to me that you use "human" as a moral category. Am I correct?

I think I see the origins of this thinking now, but carry on.



No I use it in its biological sense (Edit: actually it's not that simple, I need time to compose a better-than-one word description, as in my other post a few years ago, a human's progression through time is also a part of that understanding, which I don't think falls under biology strictly - whatever else that description is I wouldn't call it a moral category) my morality dictates that, while there are several arguable exceptions, we should not kill other humans and abortion is almost never one of those exceptions. I am wary of creating other categories of humans with the sole purpose of excusing killing, like persons and zygotes, Aryans and....

Edit2: unless... hm can morality and biology sensibly be separated in that way at all?

Edit3: There are oddities in your position I am struggling to get my head around. So far the implied wish or instinct to live grants the right not to be killed. I sort of understand that, though it doesn't seem quite sufficient to me. You say you might allow post-natal termination for babies that have serious conditions that were undetected during pregnancy (why does time of detection matter?), are these only conditions that affect the baby's current will to live? If not you are presumably making judgements on that baby's future quality of life and future will to live. Simultaneously, in my thought experiment, you say we should not kill the suicidal man, because he might change his mind. More writing please.