Theist or Atheist?

[Phantaroth]

If abortion is legal then killing new born babies should be legal too.

Reasoning: If the logic is a fetus needs the mother to survive, therefore it is not yet an individual human being, then you must also admit infants need mothers to survive, making them not yet human beings as well.

If the logic is that life begins at a certain point etc, etc, I can't argue with that because there is no fact/logic involved for me to base my opinion off of.

Are we even talking about abortion?

[boost]

no, infants need another humans help to survive, not the mother.

[pgil]

i think we are all forgetting about the biggest determinate in this whole abortion debate, that is the development of the brain, which is ultimately what makes us who/what we are. after the brain is fully developed, then a case can/should be made that abortion should no longer be allowed. before the brain is fully developed, it is just a conglomerate of cells, which can be aborted.

case closed really.

[Phantaroth]

Not case closed, it'll never be closed... You can't insist that everyone is going to agree that humans are humans when their brains are fully formed as that is just an opinion...

[pgil]

you arent dead until your brain dies. death = brain death. if you dont have a working brain, you cant and wont live. if you dont have a brain at all, we have no qualms about killing you, just look at vegetables. if you are a bunch of cells without a brain you can be killed without ethical problems. unless you are a pythagorean or a vegan. but then you have bigger problems. its all about the brain people. how you argue against a brain based view of humanity i dont know, but would like to see.

[Phantaroth]

I'm not saying your wrong i'm simply saying your argument is based on ethics, and you can't win an argument about ethics because they arn't universialy accepted.

The same people who disagree with you would probley also be in favor of not letting poeple die even if they are brain dead.

[bigred]

you arent dead until your brain dies. death = brain death. if you dont have a working brain, you cant and wont live. if you dont have a brain at all, we have no qualms about killing you, just look at vegetables. if you are a bunch of cells without a brain you can be killed without ethical problems. unless you are a pythagorean or a vegan. but then you have bigger problems. its all about the brain people. how you argue against a brain based view of humanity i dont know, but would like to see.

I bet if I ripped your heart out you'd be dead.

[vqc]

I just realized how lame flirting would be if God didnt exist.

Example
Vincent: "You're as pretty as an angel. "
Margaret: "Wow, lets fuck"
vs.
Boost: "You're as pretty as the 6 dimensioned Calabi-yau shaped objects curled up where no one can see, but are important in defining the existence of elementary particles."
Emma: "wow, lets go do math"

[Pelion]

I just realized how lame flirting would be if God didnt exist.

flirting is always lame... thats it's charm.

The thing is firtig isnt necessary if God exists because he can tell ur bitches what he needs of them. But if he doesnt exist then they arent ur bitches but have free will instead (rather than being created to server man) so flirting is much more important as you actually have to hopegirls like you rather than trusting that God makes it so.

[Greedo017]

you arent dead until your brain dies. death = brain death. if you dont have a working brain, you cant and wont live. if you dont have a brain at all, we have no qualms about killing you, just look at vegetables. if you are a bunch of cells without a brain you can be killed without ethical problems. unless you are a pythagorean or a vegan. but then you have bigger problems. its all about the brain people. how you argue against a brain based view of humanity i dont know, but would like to see.

Would a human being who was conscious, able to think, feel, reason, but they were born without a brain, not be a person?

A squirrel has a brain, but it is clearly not a person.

Maybe its not the brain itself that's important, but the abilities and properties that it gives us that are important?

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

Just something else I thought of. Just what is a working brain, and when does a fetus have one?

[azureXsmurF]

you arent dead until your brain dies. death = brain death. if you dont have a working brain, you cant and wont live. if you dont have a brain at all, we have no qualms about killing you, just look at vegetables. if you are a bunch of cells without a brain you can be killed without ethical problems. unless you are a pythagorean or a vegan. but then you have bigger problems. its all about the brain people. how you argue against a brain based view of humanity i dont know, but would like to see.

Would a human being who was conscious, able to think, feel, reason, but they were born without a brain, not be a person?

A squirrel has a brain, but it is clearly not a person.

Maybe its not the brain itself that's important, but the abilities and properties that it gives us that are important?

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

Just something else I thought of. Just what is a working brain, and when does a fetus have one?

This question doesn't really make sense. The brain is what controls how we think, feel, and reason. Even if we didn't call it a "brain" or it was divided into different body parts, the part(s) we had would still combine into what we call a brain. We aren't able to do these things without one.

[Greedo017]

just because we can't be a person without a brain doesn't mean we are a person if we have one.

[azureXsmurF]

just because we can't be a person without a brain doesn't mean we are a person if we have one.

I misunderstood what you were trying to say then, I wasn't trying to say what you just said.

I'm saying that this statement:

Would a human being who was conscious, able to think, feel, reason, but they were born without a brain, not be a person?

is physically impossible since we can't be conscious, think, feel, or reason without a brain, or at least a body part that acts in the same way as a brain.

[Greedo017]

gotcha. what i was saying is he is specifically using the physical brain to say, once you have one you're a person. If one day a baby was born with a totally unrecognizable brain in his foot that gave him all these properties, he'd still be a person obviously, and he wouldn't have that physical brain. Its not the structure that's important, its the properties it gives. I could equally say someone can be born with a brain as we know it, and not be a person.

i'm tired of talking about abortion though i finished my test and my teacher asked three of the easiest questions of ten and I wasted my time studying all this abortion crap and now its spring break.

[Sprayed]

I don't believe in dinosaurs. Does this belong in this thread?

[azureXsmurF]

gotcha. what i was saying is he is specifically using the physical brain to say, once you have one you're a person. If one day a baby was born with a totally unrecognizable brain in his foot that gave him all these properties, he'd still be a person obviously, and he wouldn't have that physical brain. Its not the structure that's important, its the properties it gives. I could equally say someone can be born with a brain as we know it, and not be a person.

i'm tired of talking about abortion though i finished my test and my teacher asked three of the easiest questions of ten and I wasted my time studying all this abortion crap and now its spring break.

Ah... okay. I completely agree with this

[bigred]

you arent dead until your brain dies. death = brain death. if you dont have a working brain, you cant and wont live. if you dont have a brain at all, we have no qualms about killing you, just look at vegetables. if you are a bunch of cells without a brain you can be killed without ethical problems. unless you are a pythagorean or a vegan. but then you have bigger problems. its all about the brain people. how you argue against a brain based view of humanity i dont know, but would like to see.

I bet if I ripped your heart out you'd be dead.

You're the one with the big whole in your chest.

[azureXsmurF]

you arent dead until your brain dies. death = brain death. if you dont have a working brain, you cant and wont live. if you dont have a brain at all, we have no qualms about killing you, just look at vegetables. if you are a bunch of cells without a brain you can be killed without ethical problems. unless you are a pythagorean or a vegan. but then you have bigger problems. its all about the brain people. how you argue against a brain based view of humanity i dont know, but would like to see.

I bet if I ripped your heart out you'd be dead.

You die when your heart is ripped out because blood stops flowing to your brain... so you're still technically not dead until your brain dies. =]

[Pelion]

you arent dead until your brain dies. death = brain death. if you dont have a working brain, you cant and wont live. if you dont have a brain at all, we have no qualms about killing you, just look at vegetables. if you are a bunch of cells without a brain you can be killed without ethical problems. unless you are a pythagorean or a vegan. but then you have bigger problems. its all about the brain people. how you argue against a brain based view of humanity i dont know, but would like to see.

I bet if I ripped your heart out you'd be dead.

You die when your heart is ripped out because blood stops flowing to your brain... so you're still technically not dead until your brain dies. =]

Not everybody who has a heart transplant dies... and theretically it should be possible to replace someones heart with a mechanical pump permently and they would be alive. If you replaced their brain with a pentium 6 then they would not be alive.

[Greedo017]

Not everybody who has a heart transplant dies... and theretically it should be possible to replace someones heart with a mechanical pump permently and they would be alive. If you replaced their brain with a pentium 6 then they would not be alive.

why not?

[Pelion]

They would be brain dead. They might carry on breathing but there would be no thought. I suppose you could argue that they are alive but they certainly would not be a concious person.... or even a concious animal.

Maybe one day computers will become complicated enough to sustain a thinking lifeform of their own. For the moment though all they could do would be to control the body like a machine.

[Greedo017]

ya sorry that's what i meant. theoretically we can make a computer chip that does all the stuff a brain does, same as we theoretically can make a mechanical heart.

[Pelion]

well once we make a computer chip that does all of the stuff the brain does it will probably have to be considered a living thing (perhaps after centuries of forced slavery and a mass civil rights movement). They key deciding factor though is conciousness.

At the moment we have Pentium 5s (ish??) which can control simple mechanical tasks similar to a braindead person.
If we get to the Pentium 10000 stage where they can act like humans and think stuff out for themselves then we will have to consider them as living beings with a right to exist...if they havnt wiped us out by then.

[boost]

Ive always wondered about that stuff...

If we make a computer that can carry out all the functions of a brain and then someone gets brain cancer to a point where they are gonna die. Then we have a device that can copy everything from thier brain to this device that replciates the brain, and then do a transplant. Ok sounds good right? But its just a copy... maybe that person would seem to me you and everyone they know to be the same person. But wouldnt the original person be dead? Like, the copy would think they are still alive? I dont know if I really beleive in souls, but it just seemed if this was ever possible, the real person would still be dead, but there would be no way we could know.

[vqc]

Ive always wondered about that stuff...

If we make a computer that can carry out all the functions of a brain and then someone gets brain cancer to a point where they are gonna die. Then we have a device that can copy everything from thier brain to this device that replciates the brain, and then do a transplant. Ok sounds good right? But its just a copy... maybe that person would seem to me you and everyone they know to be the same person. But wouldnt the original person be dead? Like, the copy would think they are still alive? I dont know if I really beleive in souls, but it just seemed if this was ever possible, the real person would still be dead, but there would be no way we could know.

there has been soooo mch good philosophical work done on this.
LIke so incredibly good that I woke up at 9 am to go to class just to listen.

I think Shoemaker was the philosopher that did alot of good work on it.

[boost]

so tell me some...

[vqc]

so tell me some...

sadly i cant find my notes on it and I cant remember that much about it off of hte top of my head.

If I find any relaly good resources ill tell ya.

[boost]

word son

[pgil]

gotcha. what i was saying is he is specifically using the physical brain to say, once you have one you're a person.

actually what i was saying is WITHOUT one you AREN'T a person, not that having one makes you a person. big difference, and very relevant when talking about abortion. before the brain develops, its not a person and can be aborted.

[pgil]

as for brains made of computer chips, not likely, in fact so unlikely it borders on implausible. the main reason being the brain is a living changing thing, and to replicate its many behaviours with a silicon chip is impossible. the question reminded me of the old thought experiment where someone's brain is replaced one neuron at a time with silicon chips, and then the question asked once the complete brain is replaced is "is this the same person". the easy answer is that cant happen. a chip cannot replace the functions of a neuron. now, if we were to replace neurons with organic an organic substance that behaves like a neuron, then we have a thought experiment. but then you would also have to replace the glial cells, and that would be pretty god damn hard.

i think the question can be partially answered if you think about someone who has suffered a traumatic brain injury, such as a stroke. if this person loses a large portion of their brain to injury, are they the same person? they still have (some of) the same memories. they have probably undergone some sort of personality change however. this is to be expected. this as always leads to the question, what is it that makes us who we are and not someone else, who or what keeps us the same person when (virtually) all of our cells are replaced through natural processes, which does happen? these are questions that cant be answered properly because noone will agree on the definition of what makes someone the same person as before. and if they do agree, its because they already agree on the answers to all of the other questions posed along the way.

[Renton]

Kudos to anyone who can tell me which scripture this was pulled from:

"And Jesus and the disciples walked towards Nazareth, but O the trail was blocked by a giant brontosaurus, with a splinter in his paw.
And the disciples did run a screaming when a big fuckin' lizard appeared...
"I'm sure going to mention this in MY book," said Luke.
"Well, I am sure going to mention this in MY book," said Matthew.
"I'm not sure what I saw," said Thomas.
Timothy nudged him, "It was a big fuckin lizard, Thomas!"

But Jesus was unafraid.
And he took the splinter from the brontosaurus' paw.
And the brontosaurus became his friend.
And Jesus sent him to Scotland, where he lived in a loch, O so many years, attracting fat American families with their fat American dollars, to look for the Loch Ness monster.
And O the scots did praise the Lord.

Thank you Lord!
Thank you, Lord."

[Warpe]

[bigred]

This thread has become very long, like my god's penis, which is longer than your god's.

[a500lbgorilla]

This thread has become very long, like my god's penis, which is longer than your god's.

My god can shoot lazerbeams from his eyes though.

Lazerbeams are like kryptonite to penises.

[azureXsmurF]

This thread has become very long, like my god's penis, which is longer than your god's.

My god can shoot lazerbeams from his eyes though.

Lazerbeams are like kryptonite to penises.

My god has both laserbeams and a big penis... what now?

OOOOooooOOOOOooooOOOOOOOOOooO snap

[Renton]

my god has a deep vagina that could swallow up all your gods. The razor sharp teeth that line my gods vagina will cause your gods very much anguish.

[bigred]

THREAD HIJACK SUCCESSFUL

TAKE THAT GOD LOVERS AND HATERS

[mrhappy333]

People only think God exists because someone told them he does.

[surviva316]

Abortion is ethically meh because a human life has no intrinsic value. People simply have difficulty getting upset over an unwanted, non-sufficient cluster of cells being terminated.

[surviva316]

Two addendums:

1) It really is that "simple," but I'm not surprised the debate has raged so hard for so long (and will continue long into the future). One of the few religious tenants that have survived the modern world is the literal awesomeness of human life and the distaste of anything that threatens it, so this issue is not only provocative but maybe cardinal for religion; the increasing human-esqueness of an egg/zygote/embryo/fetus is—at the very least—intellectually profound; the act of terminating it is biologically unnatural by basically all definitions; and the answer to the riddle is philosophically radical and abhorrent (for the time being). EDIT: Since I seemed to at least confused MMM, I'll clarify that I think abortions are, on-the-whole, fine. This point was only to say that even though I think my above post holds the answer, I think it'll take the better part of forever for people to come around to it because it's so abhorrent.

2) Humans by-and-large have immense value. I simply haven't seen any argument beyond conceit and wishful thinking that supports that the value is intrinsic. But I feel I should spend some time emphasizing how much I value human life just to be certain that my post above doesn't get thrown in the waste bin for being {I could put a million adjectives here, honestly}.


Firstand most obviously, humans are awesome. They are certainly impressive beasts whose existence is all-in-all a great thing, but of course there are 7 billion of us and we will be extant regardless of whether or not an unfertilized egg/zygote/embryo/fetus (referred to herein as EZEF)--or even, indeed, a great number of EZEFs --don't make it to birth, so the fact that humans as a race are highly valuable is irrelevant.


Humans are also valuable because they are valued. In other words, some of their value comes from the value projected onto them by others. Here is where we get to the key difference between an abortion and a miscarriage (or still births, deaths at child birth, etc). We can debate how “human” an EZEF is at its varying stages of development, multiply that by how much their parents valued that life, and the product is a lot of rightful tears over the tragic loss of their beloved human life (or humanesque)--the fruits of their love and labor. A mother-to-be who wants nothing more than to create a child and raise it might feel disappointment over every menstruation;they might feel despair at having successfully pairing sex cells with their partner only to have it slip through their uterus one way or another (I don't know if this is possible or possible to know that it happened); they might feel inexorable depression over losing their child who had shown up positive in tests for quite some time, whose joy of existence had been shared with loved ones, about whom they maybe knew the sex, etc etc; then, from every month from then on,they might feel anguish for every knew step into humanhood their child took and every ounce more of labor the parents put into bearing the child's life through (especially once it gets to the stage to where it could have survived as a prematurely birthed child); then,to lose the child during childbirth when it was just a membrane away from our world would be hardly different, if it all, from losing a child to SIDS. It's for a different debate to argue over each of these opinions the mother-to-be holds for these stages of life (for,as per my opinion above, the debate is relevant but not essential tot his argument), but


This also provides the difference between suicide and euthanasia. Suicide is a selfish act because it destroys a body that others still valued,whereas euthanasia puts an end to one that has become little more of a burden and memorabilia for times passed. Of course, I have neverhad a loved one in any such situation, and I realize I'm being insensitive and presumptuous of how people actually feel in these scenarios, but I suspect the most blamable aspect in my words is their lack of euphemism. Anyway, I'm only sketching the key difference that there is on the whole between suicide and euthanasia;not trying to accurately capture every nuance of every emotion that goes into all affected.


And then, of course, humans are an instrumental good. This is probably little more than an elaboration on the earlier points, but here it is more plainly: humans create art, make other humans laugh, advance knowledge about a great many things in our world, create yet more humans, etc etc etc. This makes humans (as a whole as a race, and individually) insanely valuable.


This is why the non-sufficient part of my curt argument is worth mentioning. The EZEF isn't, unto itself, capable of the instrumental values of human beings. Sorry, but they're just not. You could argue that it's the mother's ethical duty to foster the potential of an EZEF into self-sufficiency, but I think making motherhood an ethical duty is unsustainably rigorous. By this argument, a50-year-old maid is just as guilty of not fulfilling their duty of rearing self-sufficient humans, since the only part of their supposed ethical duty that sets her apart from a pregnant woman is the easiest part: banging a dude without a condom. Therefore, this argument is maybe potentially tenable, but it shouldn't be made without an appreciation of how rigorous it is, and once its immense breadth of duty being generally placed on women is appreciated, it mostly gets dismissed as a dated concept.*


The value of a human life varies, then, based on a million factors. I'm sorry if it sounds wrong for some reason but it's just goddamned true. Losing an 80-year-old loved one is easier to take because they lived “a full life.” Right around 18 (including a few years before that and several years after it) come the most tragic deathsSomeone who has come soooooo far and yet has everything ahead of them. Basically all the hard work was done (with rearing,especially), and their life ended at their ripest moment, just as they were about to turn this latent value into something with greater reach than just making their friends and family smile. (I'm actually accidentally wording this astoundingly close to Louis CK's rant on how 20 year olds have done nothing for anyone and have just been a sponge soaking everything up in society, except I'm putting it in more charitable terms, haha; HE'S AN EVERYMAN GENIUS I SAY) , they also know a great number of people, genuinely have large circles of friends, have a high amount of surviving family members,etc, so they (to put it in insensitive terms) score highly in the other determinants of value (sorry, just seemed like the simplest way to word it). The sadness of the loss of a life also spikes once someone becomes a parent, since a whole new nook in our world's spacetime has become literally dependent on them. Basically, if the children are our future (ie: the earth's and everything at the earth's immediate disposal), then some small part of it has been affected by the loss of their provider's life.




Allllllllof that being said, this is all an addendum for a reason. The two sentences I wrote before are the complete argument for all this blathering is just a plea to not be an anti-intellectual ass and assume the worst of those two sentences.




*I realize the above argument is far from apodeictic, but I'm arguing frigging abortion on the internet. You'll have to forgive me glossing over a thing or two. I'll say that actually, as a consequentialist, I could very well argue that it's “unethical” [or really non-optimal] for someone women to choose not to dedicate themselves to motherhood, and that this categorical placement of ethical duty on women as a whole is not necessary. This would be a woman-by-woman determination, though, based on all the overwhelming amount of factors that would go into the ethical algebra, so that maybe the most I can say is that it's slightly less likely that a pregnant woman (one who wants an abortion) is wrong in getting one than it is that a non-pregnant woman is wrong in choosing not to have children. So still, using the above as support that it's categorically wrong for pregnant women to not bear children into self-sufficiency yet ethically neutral for non-pregnant women to no tbear children into self-sufficiency seems logically inconsistent.

[MadMojoMonkey]

"the act of terminating it is biologically unnatural by basically all definitions"

Not for nothing, but I bet everyone reading this is wearing clothes... seems pretty unnatural... so maybe whether or not something fits this (I think poor) definition of natural is not relevant to whether or not something is ethical.

There are (at least) 2 schools of thought when it comes to the definition of natural. The above illustrates one, and here's another:
If it happens, it is natural. Nature is what is real, and not conjecture, about the universe around us. Anything that happens in the universe is natural. Humans are just as much a part of nature as anything, and therefore the actions and consequences of humanity are also natural.

Why choose the definition of natural in which humans philosophically exist outside of nature? Even if it your intention is to use a word which means exactly this, it opens up a whole can of contradiction worms into your argument.

Why do you assume there is always benefit to humans trying to emulate the non-human, "natural" processes around them? Furthermore, why do you assume that when humans do anything that goes against this paradigm, then it is a folly?

You cite the "awesomeness" and "value" of humans, as separate from nature, while criticizing humans for behaving in "unnatural" ways.

The assertion that traits of culture are exclusive to humans seems like you're intentionally ignoring the massive amount of nuance to be discussed there. Many animals have culture, or at least have aspects of their society which resemble culture (great apes, porpoises, ants, bees)... many species have laughter (apes & monkeys, mice)... to posit otherwise is misleading.

***
On the whole, I think this argument is not fleshed out (badum ching), and fails to capture the nuanced experience of existing on the brink of "natural". I think it fails to capture the fact that well over 99.9999% of the universe is fatally hostile to all life. The notion that it is unnatural to end a life seems to ignore the mechanisms by which natural processes progress.

***
I think your addendum is taking a complete non-sequitur from your original quote,

"Abortion is ethically meh because a human life has no inherent value. People simply have difficulty getting upset over an unwanted, non-sufficient cluster of cells being terminated."

My only main criticism is that you posit human life has no inherent value, which I'm just as bothered as if you would posit that it has some specific inherent value. The issue, it seems to me, is that the only thing we all agree is that the value of human life is between 0 and infinite... but we don't even know the units we'd use to measure or quantify the value... so the argument breaks down right there.

[surviva316]

I'll break this into two parts because I think two very very separate things are getting confused here:

The value of humans and generally clarifying my point

I made a huge gaffe in saying inherent value where I meant intrinsic, and I've fixed that in my post.

It also seems that I need to clarify my stance because "ethically meh" was unsurprisingly an unclear way of putting it. I meant that it's (for lack of a better word) amoral. As a consequentialist, I don't really believe that anything is categorically amoral*, so I resorted to Simpsons vernacular express that people don't naturally (HA!) care all that much and nor should they. Sorry, it seems it may have wasted both of our times.

Now back to the value of humans. Let's see if this makes it clear: I do in fact believe the value of human life is 0 unto itself. Now add the most basic, foundational, biological factor that that human's mother loves them and her personal existence is invested in that life, and that life has a value of ... like holy shit, you might be able to convince me that there's literally nothing of greater inherent value on this earth.[2] Add to that an ability to make people smile, and this life's really got some value and it would be a shame if something happened to it; please don't do anything to it if you can help it. However, an unloved thing that can't--on its own accord--do things that anyone cares, is valueless, regardless of whether or not the semantics can be managed to make it a human life.

Again, this isn't to say that aborting fetuses is categorically amoral. If you love your EZEF, but decide to shove a coat hanger up your vagina because you can't find much better to do with your Friday night, then I would say that the shortterm value of finding something to do with your night (if that's even positive in the first place) is far outweighed by the value that has been placed on the EZEF. If you would love nothing more than to create life and raise it with your loved one, but you would be ill-advised (or, if you will, it would be unethical) to abort the EZEF for something silly like the babyis too black due to 1/16th bit of African American blood that you'd hidden in your ancestry. I could also very easily be convinced that abortions are often of positive value (ethical, if you will).

The point is that the weightiest parts of the issue (when does human life begin, what's the intrinsic value of a human life, etc.) overcomplicate the matter. It really is as simple of weighing whether bringing that child into the worth will be a good thing for all involved.

*That might take a while to explain, but imagine if someone went through the BC and commented on 9/10 hands being like, "You didn't do anything abhorrent, but you didn't do anything heroic either," and then in the 10th hand was like, "You did one of those things you're never supposed to do; may you burn in Hellmuth!" That's kinda how I see people who label entire categories of actions as amoral. There are precious few decisions in life where it doesn't much matter either way which you choose, and the other basquillion should either be expected to on-the-whole have positive or negative results (and not because of what category that action falls under, but because of the world of factors that there are to consider).

[2] Something like an inoculation that saves 1,000,000s of loving mothers and loved children's lives is a secondary instrumental good: it's good insofar as it facilitates the salvation of lives that are themselves inherent values (but intrinsically useless); all of these entities we're discussing are worthless floating out there in the vacuums of space.

All the natural law stuff

Let me first say that I'm not a believer in Natural Law. The only part it was vaguely important was to make a passing comment that evolutionary ethicists might not like abortion. EDIT: After rereading this post, I'd advise you to stop reading here. I do provide a clarification of what I meant and why I agree with several of your points without having to amend my position, but it's a bit rambly. So sufficed to say that it's not relevant to my point and proceed from there with caution.

Anyway, we're on the same page for thinking that natural versus unnatural is silly criteria for ethics. The same preachers who speak out against the unnaturalness of homosexuality (if that premise is even true to begin with, which biology doesn't all-too-readily support), are the same ones who are offended when you say their ancestry is shared with beasts. Well, which is it preacher; are we higher beings who can opt out of throwing our feces and fucking everything we see and opt into reading books and believing in god or are we held to the same standards of natural laws.

I maybe should have said something more like "anti-natural" because women have a keen protective instinct as part of the well-oiled reproductive machine that evolution hones and the uninterrupted course of pregnancy would lead to child birth if not for fairly invasive measures terminate it ("invasive measures" is certainly not solid footing to rest our terminology, but whatever). In this way, it works strongly and directly against nature and the course of evolution. Jizzing in a guy's butt, on the other hand, is no less anti-natural than not jizzing at all as neither will lend to reproduction. I'm not saying that "working strongly and directly against nature and the course of evolution" is sufficient to proving it's unethical--well obviously not because this was all part of an argument that abortions are (mostly) amoral.

But I was kinda glossing there, anyway. I only meant to say that, though my answer is "simple," even if (big assumption) it comes to be the accepted one, I expect that to be many years and many protests down the line because the answer is offensive to the popular standings in almost every field, from science to religion, from the arts to philosophy.

Also certainly most definitely not at all was I criticizing humans for acting unnatural. I hope this post serves as a clarification of that, but even putting aside the unnatural/anti-natural distinction (which is a guess--probably an imperfect improvement), I was only speaking for why it's going to be tough to convince an evolutionary ethicist that abortion is fine. I wasn't speaking for my own ethical beliefs; only saying we have a ways to go before my "simple" answer could ever be adopted in the heart of the populace.

For whatever it's worth, I wasn't arguing that humans are valuable as separate from nature, since I'm not quite sure what that means. The closest I can come to comprehending is saying that humans are valuable in a vacuum, that they're a good unto themselves regardless of the world that surrounds them, and I most definitely do not believe that. This is exactly what I'm speaking against when I say humans have no intrinsic value. I didn't even mean to argue that humans are more valuable than any other thing in nature (I would, if forced to, argue we're the most awesome animal, but I'm no expert on the subject and that's not totally pertinent here). You could say that we're a cool people by nature, for nature and of nature and I'd say groovy, whatever, sounds good enough for me, I won't even ask for too much clarification on what that means because I think it's oblique to the discussion as I see it.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Sorry, it seems it may have wasted both of our times.

It seems like you discovered something about your stance, if nothing else.

It's only a waste if you don't learn anything and you stop thinking about something just because it's complicated and difficult to figure out. (If you stop thinking about it because you figured out you don't give a flying rat's ass, that's different.)

Besides, I was intrigued by the argument that abortion is categorically beyond a moral consensus... which I hadn't heard before other than as an idle fancy.