Originally posted by Bosse de NageMy definition of murder is killing with the intention of killing. While killing is killing without the intention of killing.
MUUUUUUUURDEEEEEEEERRRRRRRR.
There are different kinds of killing. Murder is not the same as killing in self-defence.
Society's views on what constitutes murder & what should be done about it have changed...Whatever happened to the wereguild?
Originally posted by LordOfTheChessboardJust checking 🙂
lol NOOOOOOO!!!!
OK, with self-defence, you might have to intentionally kill someone to save your own life. In which case you've justifiably murdered someone, unless I misunderstand your definition of murder. So, too, with abortion, in some cases.
Let me guess, you'd call extinguishing a zygote murder too?
Originally posted by LemonJelloI have been known to time people out on posts, so watch
[b]Nemesio: I am also very interested in figuring out a proper criterion for personhood (in terms of both necessary and sufficient conditions). I have been doing some research on the matter, and if you allow me some time over the next week or so, I will offer up for discussion some of the main criteria that have been proposed before in the literature.[/b]
your time bank. 😀
Originally posted by KellyJay
No, you asked why I felt humans
were important, once is was established that we were talking about
ending human life, that was my argument, not God.
Can you please reiterate why you think humans have value?
Somehow I missed this.
So do not twist my arguments that I have been making to points
I was not attempting to make, just so you can back out of addressing
them. I except that from nr1 since he thinks more times than not he
can read my mind when I say one thing he knows I mean another.
I have twisted nothing, KellyJay.
The concept of soul, can you prove to me you have one now! If you
cannot, how can you prove to me when you acquired one?
Nope. And, as strongly as I feel that I, and you, and Rwingett,
have souls, I will never ratify/affirm a law that uses as its fundament
this concept.
If you can
not prove to me when, why are you supporting the death of so many
that you do acknowledge are human? I simply do not understand
you’re reasoning here!
Because I don't believe morality should be legislated. For example,
I think that prostitution is a sin. I would never go to a prostitute, even
if I couldn't get laid. I would never encourage someone to go to a
prostitute. I would never tell someone 'prostitution is morally
permissible.' However, I also oppose legal sanctions against
prostitution. I think people have a right to 'sin,' as it were, because
my faith construct is predicated on 'free will' (as opposed to the
absurdity of 'double predestination' or 'everything's unfolding
according to God's will'😉. The only laws that I approve of are those
laws which protect people's rights, which includes the right to sin.
So, while I might feel people jeapordize the state of their
immortal soul by seeing a prostitute, I feel that it is none of my
business to force them by law not to do so.
Similarly, whereas I find abortion to be a horrible act (again,
predicated on the existence of a soul, an irrational point of view), I
feel I have no place to interfere in that act.
You may feel this is callous, because a human life is being ended.
But because the human life has not become a person capable
of suffering or even knowing that things have gotten worse from its
point of view (for it lacks a point of view), it is not entitled to rights,
just as a tree or rock isn't entitled to them. If you want to talk about
salvific economy, its soul goes straight to heaven and the soul of the
abortionee is stained.
I am aghast that you would say that God may allow those
unborn into heaven, and think the right to abort that you are
supporting is still the right thing to do.
I don't understand this sentence. Are you saying the souls of the
aborted don't go to heaven?
If you know you are supporting the ending of life, the devaluing of
it at its earliest stages, why are you doing that? That isn’t even a
matter of faith like God and soul, it is something you acknowledge is
here and now and real. You do not have to support abortion, but you
should at least support the lives of those that are being killed that
cannot do anything but yield the will or choices others make for them
because they are defenseless. If you are going to defend something
or someone, why not defend those that cannot yet defend
themselves?
Because I have not been convinced the human life has any
intrinsic value. Personhood does, as is self-evident. My flesh
is just a jumble of carbon. I have no particular affinity for it except
that it sustains my person. When I die, I don't care what they
do with my body, or at my funeral, except that it comforts the people
who knew me. If it made my wife feel better, she could put me out
with Sunday night's trash in a plastic bag. It's just a body. If they
wanted to dress me up like a clown and parade me around telling bad
jokes, what do I care? It's a pile of flesh. That's all a human body is,
alive or dead. It is the person that is enfleshed within that
body that makes any difference. If the person doesn't exist,
I see no logical reason to care about it, and, consequently, no legal
reason to grant it rights.
Now, if you want to appeal to my spiritual/religous tendencies with
mournful posts about all the dead babies in heaven, I can assure you:
you will get nowhere with me. I will never let my faith life become a
means of oppression of other people's rights. If you want to make a
case to me, and indeed the world, you're going to have to demonstrate
in a logical way why human life is valuable in and of itself and
demonstrate the fallacy of attending to the personhood of an
entity (that is, why chimpanzees, say, do not have rights even
though they have personhood).
Nemesio
For example,Everyone who has a job is prostituting themselves.
I think that prostitution is a sin. I would never go to a prostitute, even
if I couldn't get laid. I would never encourage someone to go to a
prostitute. I would never tell someone 'prostitution is morally
permissible.' However, I also oppose legal sanctions against
prostitution.
The only thing that changes is what a person is selling.
If the unborn's value can be compared to that of an animal, there is no reason not to compare the value of born people to animals.
Bioethicist (I think he is currently professor of ethics in Princeton University) Peter Singer wrote in 1975 a book that was to become the banner of a new movement: Animal Liberation. Here's what Singer said: "It can no longer be maintained by anyone but a religious fanatic that man is the special darling of the universe... or that we have divine authority over them, and divine permission to kill them."
Singer denouces what he calls "speciesism" - valuing humans above animals. He defines it a "prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species. In his textbook, "Practical Ethics", Singer says that speciesism is just as bad as sexism or racism. "It is speciesist to judge that life of a normal adult member of our species is more valuable than the life of a normal adult mouse."
Singer has streched the classical definition of person beyond recognition by saying that not only can humans be nonpersons, but nonhumans can be persons... wait a minute, isn't that what you are implying Nemesio? "Person" seems to have become some mystical property which is a free for all, provided you make the self-defined criteria and redifined terms.
Singer goes on to say: "We should reject the doctrine that places the lives of members of our society above the lives of members of other species. Some members of other species are persons; some members of our own species are not. No objective assessment can give greater value to the lives of members of our species..."
"If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog or a pig, for example, we will ofter find the nonhuman to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality, self-consciousness, communication and anything else that can plausibly be considered morally significant."
Okay, LJ, and Nemesio, my problem is that once such logic is adobted, (and it sound like you guys are fresh from a class of "Singer-ethics"😉 there is no stopping place. It should now be recognised that not all men are human. It would seem more inhamane to kill an adult chimpanzee than a newborn baby, since the chimpanzee has more mental awareness. Of course if our concern is for mental awareness, we could kill the chimpanzee or the baby painlessly in their sleep, hence the as yet biologically vague "cognitive capacity".
The real question is whether there is some reason to regard human life as inherently more valuable than nonhuman life. Our society has always acted on that premise. It is deeply rooted in our Western civilization - the very bedrock of democracy.
The problem is not whether animals should be treated humanely. Of course they should. The problem is whether humans should be treated humanely. Here the double standard becomes obvious. Its become the ambiguous case of - Save the whales; kill the human unborn children.
A rat is a pig is a dog is a unborn human child.