Geneaux486

One day God gazed upon the people of Earth who were starting to play Civilization while eating popcorn. He gleefully said "DELETE THIS THREAD!" and then suddenly they did died.Their ghosts yelled all night long and that noise brought forth the Klingon Empire."DAMMIT GODZILLA'S FINGERING US" shouted the anthropomorphic mole people who were furries, but had a huge party in the house of Machinima, when Ross Scott shouted out loud "LEAVE ME ALONE!" His arms waving and hit the "Self Destruct" button. All of Machinima exploded in a thermonuclear explosion. Meanwhile coke ran free through the river, causing everyone to screw burning Machinima, meanwhile in Canada a television manufacturer ruled by Osama's son, a young fire breathing boy, who farted loudly that blew his brain. Suddenly the followers of Gordon Freeman began to sang very stupid songs about whales. Angered, he yelled "I'm Ishmael bitch", so everyone in the 'verse before this one made prostheletyzing illegal. Tacoman came by

One day God gazed upon the people of Earth who were starting to play Civilization while eating popcorn. He gleefully said "DELETE THIS THREAD!" and then suddenly they did died.Their ghosts yelled all night long and that noise brought forth the Klingon Empire."DAMMIT GODZILLA'S FINGERING US" shouted the anthropomorphic mole people who were furries, but had a huge party in the house of Machinima, when Ross Scott shouted out loud "LEAVE ME ALONE!" His arms waving and hit the "Self Destruct" button. All of Machinima exploded in a thermonuclear explosion. Meanwhile coke ran free through the river, causing everyone to screw burning Machinima, meanwhile in Canada a television manufacturer ruled by Osama's son, a young fire breathing boy, who farted loudly that blew his brain. Suddenly the followers of Gordon Freeman began to sang very stupid songs about whales. Angered, he yelled "I'm Ishmael bitch", so everyone in the 'verse before this one:

Yeah, if you actually can't use LIVE, there's really no way to do it, sadly. Hopefully they'll release 'em on hard disc like they did for the two Mass Effect 1 expansions.

Terminology. The living being is a member of the same species at every stage. No one is arguing that the embryo is the exact same as a baby, but it is a human life at both stages nonetheless, and the question of whether or not we have the kill it is not so easily answered as you seem to think. That doesn't even make it irrelevant. It exists, it's human, it's living, and it's growing. What part of that do you find silly?

But what you consider the sperm and the egg seperately, or the zygote that hasn't implanted, are still irrelevant to what the implanted, developing embryo is. An argument for or against one has no bearing on the argument about the other. An embryo is still a developing human being. It's not two separate things that will combine to make one, it's already made, it's already growing. It's like you keep bringing up the sperm, the egg, and the zygote to avoid acknowleging that. A statement that diminishes the ethical and moral difficulties in deciding whether or not to get an abortion, or trying to decide if one believes we even have the right to carry out such a procedure. The issue is not as simple as your statement makes it out to be, and pretending that it is is what's disgusting.

Yeah, I got that. I'm saying that doesn't logically plug into your arguments relating to abortion.

Using contraception to prevent a sperm and egg from joining is not the same as killing an embryo that's already implanted and is developing into a fully grown human being. You bring up a good point about it and the zygote, to be sure, and that's another discussion topic in and of itself, but it isn't an argument against the embryo's right to live.

It isn't akin to, say, organs in the body either. How dependent it is on the mother as it developes is irrelevant in determining whether or not it is morally right to kill it.

We didn't actually witness it happen. Nitpicking, yes, and on the same level as your view that we need to be able to talk to animals to learn how they think. You can determine mental capacity from a brain scan. That in turn determines their ability to think and reason, and whether or not they could ever be conversed with at all. At conception you have a living, developing organism. Yes, life begins at conception. He did not live until God breathed life into him. That doesn't mean something has to breathe to be considered alive. There are living organisms that do not breathe in order to survive. It survivies off of the woman, but after implantation becomes its own growing, developing entity. Dependent on the mother for survival, yes, but that survival serves as further testament to its very life and identity as a developing human being. A human embryo cannot develope into anything other than a human being. That's what it is, from conception to birth, and beyond.

Like you I can't think of anywhere I'd rather have been born than the place where I was, but there are a lot of places that would be great to visit. Austria, Puerto Rico, New Zealand are places specifically family and friends have been to and come back from with great stories.

No, you did not solve the abortion controversy. Your answer does not account for whether or not we have the right to terminate other human life. The "it works for some, not for others" line of thinking does not work when life itself is involved. A forced rule that should be followed anywhere, but you said we shouldn't force rules on anyone. Yeah, like how the brain works. Nor do we know enough about evolution to prove that we definetely evolved from a more primitive form. What we can say, however, is that these are the most logical conclusions scientists have drawn based on the evidence they've gathered and studied.

All I have stated personally is that we are capable of percieving right from wrong in a way that most other animals are not. You're oversimplifying morality. It is the very concept of what we can and cannot, should and should not, do to other living things. We can no more "create" morality than we can create the beings it would apply to. And the monitoring of animal brain activity, direct observations of the brains themselves, and tests involving increasingly difficult obstacles or response to changing stimuli, observation of consistensies in behavior are irrelvant in the face of us not translating animal noises because...?

Yeah, I got that part. I'm not getting the relevance. We've obviously different from cats, dogs, and whales. What bearing does this have on morality? Or abortion? You're arguing that morality is something we humans created, then contradicting yourself by saying the behavior can be observed in other animals. If you think other animals are capable of exhibiting the behavior, then you should come to the conlusion that morality is not something we created because it already existed. By your logic, all we did was define what already existed. Scientists have been conducting studies on the mental capacities of various animals for a very long time.

Only humans can reason and think in a way that allows us to discern, discuss, and understand morality. In two sentences you first say that comparing humans with other animals is a "fool's errand" then proceed to compare humans with other animals. Furthermore, how is any of this relevant to the original point that you came in here arguing? No, by your own logic: you're the one comparing apples to oranges, then later saying it's pointless to do so. Not to mention the fact that in this particular quote you use the fact that other non-human animals seem to exhibit moral traits as proof that there is no morality and it's just something we humans made up, even though your observation of non-human animals exhibiting similar behaviors contradicts this assertion. Perhaps you meant humans to other animals is like apples to oranges in the sense that they're both fruits but with differences, but again, in this quote you seem to be trying to establish deep-rooted similarities that would contradict the above quote as well. What exactly is your stance on morality? Yeah, you should probably stop saying that then sticking around. No you don't. Observe: Whereas he says: So you're basically saying you agree with his assertion that comparing humans to other animals is like comparing apples to oranges, then building on that by saying we're all just animals, implying similarities. One does not logically follow the other.

Because scientific studies tell us what mental capacities these animals have. Some of them can reason to an extent, this is true, in that they are capable of problem solving through trial and error learning, but they still can't do it to the extent we can. Is that what you think? I was just pointing out a contradiction in your argument.

I think his view of reason is incorrect. Reason is what allows us to overcome our most basic instincts and kneejerk reactions, and it does so often. EDIT: Also this is like the third time you've said you were done posting then posted again.

Loved the episode. Freeman's just about the only person I'd follow on Twitter.

That's not base instinct, that's logic and reason. It is our ability to percieve what is and is not moral that comes from us, not morality itself. The ability to percieve, for instance, that slavery is wrong because there is no discernable difference between the person who owns the slaves and the slaves themselves. What comes from us is the ability to percieve unfair, unjust, and immoral actions such as these. But the trait these animals lack is the ability to think and reason. Furthermore, how would the existence of moral traits outside of human beings mean that morality is something humans created? The conclusion you've reached there seems contradictory to the evidence you presented leading up to it.

You're basically asking why thinking things through before we act isn't a base instinct. Thought and reason are how we overcome our most basic desires for pleasure. That is part of morality. Trying to percieve how we should and should not treat other living things is morality. You're a little late to be delving, the inability to experience guilt for one's actions is a well known psychological disorder.

They're probably ignoring them. Or they have an anti-social personality and do not feel guilt to begin with. This means morality isn't real how?

True moral values evolve, they don't really change. And it still comes from thinking about them. Guilt, penance, redemption, etc. To believe what you said to be true one would have to ignore the existence of these things.

Aside from that being baseless to begin with: We come to the conclusions that these things were wrong because we do think about this type of topic so much. It's how we come to better percieve morality and the way we should and should not treat others. Your notion of "killing morality" is brought about by not thinking about these types of things.

Of course we do, but more on that next: Survival instinct != caring about others besides ourselves. We have the ability to reason, and thus are able to percieve morality. Going beyond our base instincts of simply doing what feels good at the time we do it, thinking about consequences of our actions and actually caring about them, that is part of morality. It is an inescapable part of reasoning, and making decisions beyond our base instincts. To say that morality itself is contrary to our best interests in any capacity is a complete logical fallacy.

Which is something we care about because of morality. Like I said, the argument contradicts itself. So you're suggesting that education will numb us to the fact that abortion is the process of terminating a developing human being. That's kind of the opposite of what an education does. Who here said sex is immoral?

This debate has mostly been about the way things should be vs. the way things are. The fact that tax money cannot fund it right now (a policy that has many opponents who are gaining ground) serves as a jumping off point for a discussion, not as a valid reason as to why it should not be discussed. See my earlier posts where I elaborate on the issue. Living things have always needed to survive off of each other, and always will. We obtain nutrients indirectly from photosynthesis, whether it's by eating plants that have conducted it, or eating animals who have eaten those plants. This fact is irrelevant to abortion. Centuries of philosophical discussion disagree with you. A view that is in and of itself a type of morality. Why is it smarter for us to not kill each other? Even if your answer is "Because we could get caught", that's an ethical egoist type of view. If it's because the person in question is doing something important, then it's still morality because you care about something like that at all. Basically, your argument contradicts itself.