Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 7:38 pm
I'm not following why you think Kevin's example is false equivalence
I don’t believe that.
… and a bad faith argument.
And I don’t believe that, either.
I see it as a pretty classic Trolley car problem. in my opinion, establishing that there are valid reasons to distinguish between an embryo and and child gives folks some common ground to start a discussion. It does exactly the same thing as your argument –– demonstrates that even staunch pro-lifers do not see embryos and babies as the same thing.
Some religious folks do take up arms against that kind of evil.
The trolley car dilemma is just a logic problem, but it isn’t an argument meant to establish a moral absolute. First, given the dilemma presented above, it requires my participation and then subordination to the parameters within it. And if I agree to its premise, am I obligated to its forgone conclusion(s)? It’s a lose/lose for the person engaging in the problem:
A) You’re a monster who doesn’t value birthed children by sacrificing them to fertilized eggs or embryos.
B) You’re a hypocrite because you undermine your own ethics by choosing a birthed child over a 1,000 unbirthed children or embryos or babies or future humans (whatever you need to call them to present your ethics in the best possible light).
eta: Arguments or dilemmas like the one above do a remarkably bad job of addressing the moral conditions of in which the subject finds themselves, it’s simply a rubric designed to elicit a desired result which is either to become philosophically aligned with the giver of the scenario, or to shame the receiver if compliance isn’t achieved.
- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.