Same sex marriage and the slippery slope.

Post Reply New Topic

you missed a good one:

There is no doubt that a zygote is alive. Question: is a zygote a person? Does a zygote have self awareness. Can a zygote formulate intentions? Can a zygote think? I think the answers to these questions is No.

Here is a question for you: Is an acorn an oak tree? Does it have roots? Does it have leaves? Does it have bark?

ruveyn

No, actually, my position wasn't that. You missed my point:
"The reason being that parental quality will vary, so there is no reason to think that the best gay couple to adopt will be worse than the minimum in quality needed for a straight family to adopt. Even further, the gay couple will still be better at raising children than the state will likely be. "

So, even if I accepted your claim as true if everything else is equal, it is not necessarily the case that what you advocate is the best for children. The best gay couple will probably make much better parents than an average heterosexual couple, and once we accept the point of statistical variation within groupings, the mere fact that one group may or may not be better on average than the other is irrelevant, because members of groups will have overlapping abilities. Even further, I made the comment that no matter how bad gay parents are, they would have to be horrible to be worse than the state system for handling these matters.

Because of this, your assessment of my position is fundamentally flawed.


That's because I don't think an honest person would defend these views without other overriding reasons. Especially not with the arguments you present, as your fervor is a LOT more than the strength of your arguments, I would even hold this even if we took your argument charitably.


The relevant issue is your claim that marriage is a religious institution needing to be wedded to those religious traditions to maintain its strength. If non-religious people uphold the value of marriage better than religious people, then the need to be wedded to religious traditions is shown to be flawed, as "the family" is shown to work better without what you claim it needs.

As for "degree of value for marriage"... um... honestly, this "experiment" has already occurred in many places, even further, this "experiment" isn't really much of a variation. The "traditional place of marriage" isn't really an image of the role of marriage in society, which has been for much of my lifetime been symbolizing the commitment between two individuals in a loving relationship. This isn't to say that families are disregarded, but no litmus tests tend to exist for the willingness of a couple to create a family in terms of getting married, and we allow marriages without a real possibility of creating a family already. Our tests tend to center around willingness to commit. I don't really see an "experiment" here, I see a rational change in laws, and one that should have little to no impact on anything.


Well, the issue is that I argue that these criterion best represent what we consider legitimate signs of personhood. This isn't this "radically subjective" framework that you seem to decry.

The fact is that these lines are difficult, and frankly, they are difficult because these lines are our creations.

In any case, I use pain because it is a major developmental mark, and it is normally considered very ethically important. Frankly, I use pain along side other markers for the development of the brain. I actually consider my "subjective method" really very conservative for determining personhood in this situation, in that I am being overly charitable to the fetus. The reason being that the development necessary to really have qualities of personhood is extensive, so just going off of the emergence of some solid brainwave activity and pain is really being very charitable, as even at that point, it is hard to justify the label of "person" on those qualities alone.

As for "look like", that's a superficial reading, as I was referring to the neurological properties, neurological properties representing the mental development, and mental development being very important for our conceptions of personhood. This is not an argument that parallels that other argument.


No, they really don't. You continually project your underlying beliefs into other people's statements, and you have done this on many many many occasions by this point, 91. You've done this with NeantHumain, calling him totalitarian when he didn't really express any sentiment with any similarity to what you charged him with. You've done this to me in the past, claiming that my belief that religion should be removed from existence was a call for totalitarian efforts to suppress religion. I really think you are doing this now.

I've said nothing about "children abandoned from conception", I've outright questioned your views on the matter. I've pointed out that your "objective line" is flawed given the possibility of other lines. I've pointed out that the best metrics for judging personhood happen to fall in the third trimester, while you dismiss this as if I am talking about the flavor of a beverage, while you pushed forward metrics that say almost nothing as if they were equivalent. I've clearly thought through my view, but your view ends up with outright incoherency if you think that a child's beginning is at conception, as there is not a one to one ratio of conceptuses to possible children assuming those conceptuses survive and grow, nor can these conceptuses reasonably be treated as if they were actual children given the biological workings of human reproduction. The view is not just silly, it is downright absurd.

You might try to take some moralistic stand here, but the basic point is obvious, your position is not founded upon its rationality. The "practicality of the objective line at conception" does not entail this moral fervor you have about your position, which means that you are bringing a LOT more to the table than you present, and this bias is obvious.


Why can't he pass a value judgment on you? He thinks you're being a 'tard, and intellectual honesty is generally one of the values that web forums tend to uphold pretty strongly.

Maybe they are right, but you haven't actually given a real reason to think that your position is very solid.

I have no problem with homosexuality. I merely have a problem with it being pushed down the throats of our youth and the distortion of the concept of marriage. Also, I did acknowledge that I choose to be with a woman because I find women more attractive and because sex with a woman is far more appealing to me, however considering I feel far more comfortable in the company of men than the company of women I could have made a different choice as well.

Yes, just like a bunch of milk, eggs, and powder is a cake! (EDIT: Ruveyn's gotten after this more than I have)



How is this logically true without a goddamn argument?

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 19 Jan 2011, 11:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

that cake is a lie.

Life begins at conception. However, personhood does not. A zygote is not self aware.

So, when does a baby become self aware? Certainly sometime after birth. So why isn't it okay to kill a newborn? Because a line has to be drawn somewhere. Drawing it before then restricts women's rights to control their own body.

As for the Biblical argument for being against abortion... utter nonsense. The Bible says god breathes life into babies. In other words... when the baby takes it's first breath.

There is really no rational way to decide when exactly life begins, however there are other arguments against legalised abortion. IMO the most important argument against legalised abortion is that it encourages people to freely have sex without any responsibility whatsoever. If you have sex with someone and you aren't willing to have a baby with that person, then use contraception. If you still can't accept the tiny chance of conception when using contraception, then you shouldn't be having sex in the first place. Show some responsibility before you put your genitals in someone else's !

Of course there's the exception of rape. In this case and the event where a woman is likely to die from giving birth, most people otherwise objecting to abortion would consider abortion a valid option and I have no problem with that either.

If you think about it, setting the line between human and non-human at conception is pretty arbitrary.

If we were to care about life itself and not human life, then we would worry about the sperm and eggs, since they are live. Then we should probably talk about nature/god seemingly disposing millions and millions of such live forms every second...

But of course, abortion discussion centers around when human life actually begins, and for this matter, I do not think a zygote is that human. It may have human DNA, but for what we know, it is just a cell, it will begin a journey between cell and pluricelular being, and then it will generate bones, arms, legs, head, brain, eyes. There is such a long journey before it would be truly deserving of the word human. I tend to think that what makes us human is our brains and our capacity to learn, and such thing is not happening until the late months... A heart pumping is just physiology, humans have blood pumps, but so do rats...

Then we can argue that birth itself is also kind of an arbitrary line. Newborn babies are just things that cry , get fed, sleep and cry again... Perhaps humanity is something that needs to be earned rather than something you are given automatically when a sperm enters an egg...

Of course, that new born babies and fetuses may not be fully human yet, it does not necessarily mean they should be disposable. But the line about legal disposability , probably makes sense to be put between fetus and newborn. Why? Because the law basically does it already. No fetus is a recorded citizen of any country. We record new citizens at birth time.

I'd personally think that it is best to draw the line at some time between early months and birth. I think that once a fetus can learn , think and suffer, it becomes a major thing to dispose of. But before such things, it is basically just a bunch of cells. But legally, it may make most sense to draw the line at birth, because we already use such arbitrary line for many legal things.

so the most important argument against legalized abortion, according to you, is that people might use it as their primary method of contraception? please ask a woman who's had one if she'd like to have another.

Last edited by waltur on 19 Jan 2011, 11:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ok, but rational methods to decide when personhood does not begin is perfectly fine with me! You see, one might be problematic, while the other isn't.

That being said, Salonfilosoof, I don't even see much reason to begin to accept your argument against abortion:
1) Getting an abortion is a cost, so abortion doesn't make everything naturally costless.
2) There is no real reason I see that a person who uses contraception should have to carry a child to term, even if they accept it as a risk. If it is more efficient to have an abortion, then it is irrational for this not to happen.
3) While abortion may decrease the cost of sex, thus increasing the amount of sexual activity, for an argument about abortion to be that powerful, it must be clear that the costs of additional sex are greater than the benefits of allowing abortion in cases where it is not beneficial to all parties.
4) Even if ideally people who have sex ought to be willing to have children(assuming this premise), we see in reality that this isn't the case all of the time, such as with teenage pregnancy. So, allowing abortion in cases like teenage pregnancy really just seems outright rational.

Rapists.

They won't bother using protection and I haven't heard of any woman that would use contraception "just in case you are raped". If forced to comply with the birth, the mother will have to nurture the child of the guy who raped her and the child will most likely have rape tendencies as well and be a bane to society.

So, can anyone tell me a reason not to make abortion for rape victims legal?

Because the fetus develops a heartbeat at 21 days.

The most important argument against legalized abortion, according to me, is that people might use it as their primary method of avoiding pregnancy or are careless about contraception (doesn't contraception imply avoiding conception?).



You are aware of the fact that some women just have one abortion after the other, right?



The same is true for getting an STD, yet it doesn't stop people from having unprotected sex with total strangers either.



Why? Why should anyone have sex if they aren't mature enough to handle the responsibility that comes with pregnancy?



Please elaborate. You lost me here...



Educating teenagers to act responsibly and not go sleeping around when they're really too young for it seems to be a more reasonable approach. Certainly, unwanted teenage pregnancy is nothing new but it has never been as common in the past as it is today.

I don't see anyone arguing against that. Rape and the likelyhood of the mother dying at childbirth are common exceptions made with regards to opposition towards abortion.

No, but only the government would say that this is a reason to have more STDs running around.


Not the point, you apparently missed the point.

While a person may be mature enough to handle the responsibility that comes with pregnancy, this is not a sufficient reason to hold that this person OUGHT to have that responsibility if eliminating it is an option. I am arguing that if everybody is better off if a pregnant woman is no longer pregnant, then why not bring this state of affairs into being all else equal?


You say: "Abortion is bad because it leads to more sex"
The counter-point is: "Abortion is good because it helps people live better lives"

So, the real issue is the costs of more sex compared to better lives through aborting fetuses.


Well.... ok? But, they're going to get pregnant either way. This isn't some crazy either/or situation. Rather, we have teenagers who get pregnant. In any case, teen pregnancy has declined due to less teens getting pregnant anyway: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/05/1/gr050107.html

"Among teens in the United States, at least in recent years, declining birthrates are not the result of more pregnant teens opting to have an abortion. The U.S. teen abortion rate, after rising through the 1970s and holding fairly constant during the 1980s, then began a steady decline. By 1997, the rate was 28 abortions per 1,000 women 15-19—33% lower than the rate a decade earlier."