Question for the atheist converts

[_asbestosman]

I would grant them something like personhood. I would not destroy it for instance and would value it.

I have good reason to think that bodily interaction with the world might be important. Hubert Dreyfus argues that a being can never have what he calls "Dasein" without having (or once having) a body.

So lets say that this computer had a body and behaved like a 2-year old and could pass a modified super-turning test. It could demonstrate understanding of the world such as recognizing a chair even if it is partial covered by a coat, talk about feelings and spontaneously play in creative ways etc.

Then I would grant it tentative personhood.

By the way, I think it would be a big social fight. I expect religious people to not grant such a being personhood no matter how it behaved (since it can't have a soul).

Yes the spirit issues does enter my mind. On the other hand, would you grant personhood to a dog that displayed the intelligence of a 2-year old human? We already grant some protection to these animals from cruelty, but we still allow euthenizing them under certain circumstances as well as some other things we will not do to humans. Is it because dogs do not act like humans? Why would acting like a human be so impoartant? Are we speciest (racist) after all?

[_Some Schmo]

(ps, regarding dart's bigotry against atheists - I suggest taking his inflammatory statements about atheists and substitute the word "negroes" for "atheists" to get a clear picture)

There's no doubt he's a bigot. When I accused him of it, he implied I didn't know what it means. (LOL - awesome defense, isn't it?) Of course, if his personal definition of "bigot" is as accurate as his personal definition of "knowledge," I suppose we can all take his comments with a large chunk of salt.

Is it just me, or do the most obnoxious, ignorant, and dogmatic anti-abortionists seem to be religious males? It's at least true on this board.

Abortion is murder... right. Just like fornication is rape.

By the way, the grip is a reflex--machine-like. You couldn't have picked a less impressive example. It's not even an example of awareness in a newborn which does indeed have awareness but evident in other ways.

No doubt. When I read the original comment, I burst out laughing imagining darte thinking he was making a compelling argument. I guess Venus Flytraps are aware too, since they instinctively close around the presence of a fly (or anything else that happens to fall into its leaves).

LOL... what a dumbass.

[_Tarski]

I would grant them something like personhood. I would not destroy it for instance and would value it.

I have good reason to think that bodily interaction with the world might be important. Hubert Dreyfus argues that a being can never have what he calls "Dasein" without having (or once having) a body.

So lets say that this computer had a body and behaved like a 2-year old and could pass a modified super-turning test. It could demonstrate understanding of the world such as recognizing a chair even if it is partial covered by a coat, talk about feelings and spontaneously play in creative ways etc.

Then I would grant it tentative personhood.

By the way, I think it would be a big social fight. I expect religious people to not grant such a being personhood no matter how it behaved (since it can't have a soul).

Yes the spirit issues does enter my mind. On the other hand, would you grant personhood to a dog that displayed the intelligence of a 2-year old human? We already grant some protection to these animals from cruelty, but we still allow euthenizing them under certain circumstances as well as some other things we will not do to humans. Is it because dogs do not act like humans? Why would acting like a human be so impoartant? Are we speciest (racist) after all?

Well, just off the top of my head, if a dog were somehow able show that it understood it's own world well enough to have hopes and plans then that would count for a lot, even if those hopes and plans weren't humanish.

I have entertained the idea that we are speciest (sp?). More than once I have wondered whether if we had a more godlike perspective we might realize how ghoolish we are. http://blog.ateava.com/media/1/Meat-is-Murder-Lo.jpg

These are tough questions.
Dennett wrote a book (I didn't read it) about this stuff called "Kinds of Minds".

[_beastie]

If I recall correctly, Carl Sagan makes the argument that we ought to extend certain protections to some apes for the reasons being discussed on this thread.

I think there is little doubt we are specists.

[_the road to hana]

"God" is the ulitmate abortionist. I'm not sure why religionists find the whole thing objectionable. That god of yours loves to abort the babies, fetuses, and zygotes like no one's business. Who cares if we abort an additional few million? That god of yours is aborting billions... Quite literally. He's the baby-killer extraordinaire.

I don't think God doing the deed makes it any easier to accept for those who belive. The only help I know of in the case of natural termination to pregnacy is not realizing you're pregnant in the first place.

That's just my point, Mr. Man.

God is a babykiller. He aborts BILLIONS every year. Yet... No anger toward him. Only anger toward the women who abort a few million a year.

BILLIONS versus a few million.

I think the religionist's anger is clearly misplaced.

Even for those who don't believe in God, that seems to be a false analogy. Someone could argue that "God" takes the lives of several million people a year through illness, accident or death, so therefore, why is it a problem to kill someone?

It just doesn't translate. Spontaneous abortions (miscarriages) generally occur because of a problem medically that might be unknown to the mother and/or her doctors. Elective abortions are elective and can, and often do, include fetuses that would be otherwise viable.

Advances in medical science in the past two centuries, and particularly in recent decades, have moved the discussion from bioethecists and religionists viewing a fetus from one way to another, and with each advance in the medical world regarding fetal medicine, it becomes increasingly complicated to argue the ethics of terminating life in utero.

However, it should be said that most people who claim to be pro-choice aren't really pro-abortion, although they might be painted that way. Faced with the choice themselves, few of them would make it. And if they were given the legal option of terminating the life of their child after birth, the discussion would be deemed horrific and ridiculous. Just not everyone at this point sees pre-term life through the same lens.

Making the "God" comparison in regarding to life being terminated just doesn't work. A society needs to decide whether or not it is acceptable to take other human life; where it draws the line regarding "life" or "human" is where the debate engages, and changes over time based on medical knowledge.

If their god is all-powerful, all-knowing, and omni-present... Then it is definitely the cause of all life and death in this Universe. "It's God's will" takes on a whole new value when viewed through this kind of lens. It creates everything and it destroys everything. It's Alpha and Omega. It is inherently responsible for everything that happens. Everything.

So. That being said, their god creates and then destroys babies, fetuses, zygotes, eggs through menstration, and a host of variations that I'm not listing. Their god, within the aforementioned context, is far more guilty of destroying "innocents" than any society has ever been.

The point I'm trying to make is the irony of a believer being upset with a few million abortions when their supposed god murders far more lives than anyone is willing to admit. If we're talking about sensient beings making a choice to terminate a life at any point, then the believer has to accept that their sensient god lusts for death on a scale that boggles the mind; they're using their sense of morality, derived from their notion of a deity to judge abortionists, but they themselves worship a god that kills.

That's crazy talk. You're smarter than that. It's a false analogy.

Even if you (or anyone else) believes in God, those who do believe that God creates all, so the same rules wouldn't apply to start with.

But setting that aside, as a secularist argument, for someone who doesn't necessarily believe in God but wants to point out the flaws in a pro-life argument, the comparison still fails. The difference between a spontaneous abortion for medical reasons and an elective abortion of a viable fetus is the same as the difference between a person dying of cancer and a person dying from a gunshot wound at the hands of another human.

Each society, as I noted, gets to decide where it draws the moral lines. Some have included human sacrifice, some the death penalty, some infanticide. Those lines don't get drawn the same way in each civilization.

It's incumbent on our society to make informed choices when drawing the line morally. However, suggesting that it's somehow acceptable to kill human life because "God does" doesn't really equate.

What you're trying to do is prove to people who are pro-life the folly of their religious beliefs, when in fact the two can be quite separate. A person can be pro-life and non-religious, and a person can be religious and be pro-choice.

But making a false analogy doesn't wash. Would you kill a post-term child? If not, why? Would you kill a child that was born prematurely and required NBICU care? If not, why?

[_the road to hana]

For those of you who used to be religious anti-abortionists, do you have a different opinion on abortion now?

By the way, to Scottie's original question, I was much more tolerant of abortion/pro-choice prior to leaving Mormonism, and my reasons for becoming less so have mostly to do with working in medicine for many years. Maybe I was unusual, but even discarding organized religion I reevaluated my position on abortion that moved to being more conservative on that particular issue where I would be generally liberal on others.

[_asbestosman]

Well, just off the top of my head, if a dog were somehow able show that it understood it's own world well enough to have hopes and plans then that would count for a lot, even if those hopes and plans weren't humanish.

Even then, what hopes and dreams does a 6 month old baby have other than to be safe and loved? I would imagine that it's similar with dogs. Dogs want the love of their masters and they also throw temper tantrums / display nervousness when the master is gone for a while (my parents' dog chews up toilet paper and tips over waste baskets while they are at church or otherwise away from home).

Furthermore, would a person lose humanness if they do not have hopes and plans? Are the severly depressed or mentally ill still human?

These are tough questions.
Dennett wrote a book (I didn't read it) about this stuff called "Kinds of Minds".

From the reviews at Amazon, I think I may have to drop by the library and at least read a chapter or two.

[_antishock8]

If their god is all-powerful, all-knowing, and omni-present... Then it is definitely the cause of all life and death in this Universe. "It's God's will" takes on a whole new value when viewed through this kind of lens. It creates everything and it destroys everything. It's Alpha and Omega. It is inherently responsible for everything that happens. Everything.

So. That being said, their god creates and then destroys babies, fetuses, zygotes, eggs through menstration, and a host of variations that I'm not listing. Their god, within the aforementioned context, is far more guilty of destroying "innocents" than any society has ever been.

The point I'm trying to make is the irony of a believer being upset with a few million abortions when their supposed god murders far more lives than anyone is willing to admit. If we're talking about sensient beings making a choice to terminate a life at any point, then the believer has to accept that their sensient god lusts for death on a scale that boggles the mind; they're using their sense of morality, derived from their notion of a deity to judge abortionists, but they themselves worship a god that kills.

That's crazy talk. You're smarter than that. It's a false analogy.

Even if you (or anyone else) believes in God, those who do believe that God creates all, so the same rules wouldn't apply to start with.

But setting that aside, as a secularist argument, for someone who doesn't necessarily believe in God but wants to point out the flaws in a pro-life argument, the comparison still fails. The difference between a spontaneous abortion for medical reasons and an elective abortion of a viable fetus is the same as the difference between a person dying of cancer and a person dying from a gunshot wound at the hands of another human.

Each society, as I noted, gets to decide where it draws the moral lines. Some have included human sacrifice, some the death penalty, some infanticide. Those lines don't get drawn the same way in each civilization.

It's incumbent on our society to make informed choices when drawing the line morally. However, suggesting that it's somehow acceptable to kill human life because "God does" doesn't really equate.

What you're trying to do is prove to people who are pro-life the folly of their religious beliefs, when in fact the two can be quite separate. A person can be pro-life and non-religious, and a person can be religious and be pro-choice.

But making a false analogy doesn't wash. Would you kill a post-term child? If not, why? Would you kill a child that was born prematurely and required NBICU care? If not, why?

That definitely wasn't a false analogy. I established the premise of their god's all-everythingness which would result in the willful death of billions of babies, fetuses, zygotes, embryos, eggs, etc*... I still don't see why a religionist would have an issue with a few million willful abortions when their god willfully kills billions upon billions of lives or lifeforms.

* I mean, do I really have to break it down for you how an All-Everything God is truly responsbile for everything that happens in its reality? Hell, an All Everything God is even responsible for the people who have abortions since they're just an extension of Itself.

[_Tarski]

Well, just off the top of my head, if a dog were somehow able show that it understood it's own world well enough to have hopes and plans then that would count for a lot, even if those hopes and plans weren't humanish.

Even then, what hopes and dreams does a 6 month old baby have other than to be safe and loved?

Not many I guess but the parents have hopes and plans for the child and maybe that's enough. On the other hand, the nascence desire to be safe and loved is good enough isn't it?
Remember, I am all for a large margin of safety.

[_the road to hana]

That definitely wasn't a false analogy. I established the premise of their god's all-everythingness which would result in the willful death of billions of babies, fetuses, zygotes, embryos, eggs, etc*... I still don't see why a religionist would have an issue with a few million willful abortions when their god willfully kills billions upon billions of lives or lifeforms.

* I mean, do I really have to break it down for you how an All-Everything God is truly responsbile for everything that happens in its reality? Hell, an All Everything God is even responsible for the people who have abortions since they're just an extension of Itself.

Not really, and yes, you're smarter than that. The point is that by extension the same argument could be used to justify killing humans outside the womb. If you're willing to do one with that argument, logically it extends to the other. "God kills people with cancer; therefore, it's acceptable to shoot them with a gun."

Reverence for human life should extend past participation in organized religion. Even those who profess no faith in a supreme being and claim to be either atheist or agnostic can, and frequently do, still adhere to a moral code that reveres human life. The difficulty, as noted, comes from medical science determining exactly when that begins. You can't make the argument about, "Well, God does it" to justify one and not the other.