Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

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_Chap
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Chap »

Brackite wrote:
Tarski wrote: ...

If we are going to go by intuition, then I think the best intuitions come from real women faced with the unwanted pregnancy rather than self-righteous old white men poisoned by ancient magic based conceptual schemes about the nature of human life.

In short, in the contest between an unwanted three or four week old fetus and a full grown adult in a hopelessly tough situation, it is no contest. You may think this is monstrous, but that is only because you have a cartoonical and/or superstitious concept of personhood and because you haven't real life experience to know what you are talking about. My wife had an abortion before we met and given the intractable circumstances I say thank God.


I am Not for making abortion illegal during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy . (However, I do believe that abortion should be illegal after the first trimester, except to save the life of the mother.) I was mainly Pointing out the the OP here started a Thread earlier on this Forum calling the death penalty barbaric, and then he goes starting another thread supporting tax payer funded abortions, which I find odd and very partisan.


One small point, not along the main lines of your post, but not irrelevant.

The women who have abortions are tax payers too, and will continue to be for the rest of their lives. Even if they always remain too poor to pay much tax on income, there are many indirect taxes that no-one can dodge so long as they spend money.

Part of the reason why people consent to be taxed (and most of us do) is because we expect that when we need something back out of the system, we shall get it. Some women feel that help with abortion when it will make a crucial difference to their lives may be part of that deal.

That does not seem to me to be a completely unreasonable attitude.
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_EAllusion
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _EAllusion »

Human's evolutionary history is utterly irrelevant to homo sapiens sapiens fundamental taxonomic status and stasis as a unique species bounded by absolute biological barriers relative to other species. Those biological barriers are absolute between species as


Well, no. This is just flat wrong. Feel free to cite some sources that demonstrate that humans are a unique species bound by absolute biological barriers that prevent speciation. Nice that you call basic science, one I actually have a degree in this case, "pseudoscience." Feel free to cite some sources backing up your claim. What are the nature of these biological barriers? What prevents human populations from evolving into non-humans?

The evolutionary argument is moot. Humans are a distinct and settled taxonomic class, and their humanness is grounded, biologically at least, in that settled, phylogenetic stasis.


Humans are not in evolutionary stasis. Human evolution actually has been accelerating in recent geologic time, probably due to the rapidly changing environments they produce through cultural change.

Check out the work of John Hawk from the University of Wisconsin:

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/evol ... _2007.html

So you couldn't be more wrong and yet you equate disagreeing with you to Naziism. On a subject you know nothing about. There is no essential genetic type that makes something "human." Rather it is a closely related grouping of independent, slightly different genomes that will invariably be fuzzy at the boundaries. That's the nature of evolution.
I'm well aware, and have been for decades, of the standard definitions of "personhood" used by feminist intellectuals and political theorists to justify unrestricted elective abortion.


Personhood is a term used by all parties in the abortion debate. It's just the standard term to refer to a being deserving of moral/legal respect. Francis Beckwith will be surprised to learn that he is a feminist intellectual and political theorist looking to justify unrestricted elective abortion.

Keep on keeping on.
_Droopy
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Droopy »

Well, no. This is just flat wrong. Feel free to cite some sources that demonstrate that humans are a unique species bound by absolute biological barriers that prevent speciation. Nice that you call basic science, one I actually have a degree in this case, "pseudoscience." Feel free to cite some sources backing up your claim. What are the nature of these biological barriers? What prevents human populations from evolving into non-humans?


Perhaps nothing (although, given the incredibly speculative nature of that aspect of evolutionary biology, that's a very large "perhaps"), but the point is still irrelevant to the abortion debate. Present humans are in a state of species stasis; they are a settled and distinct species and a clearly stable and distinct taxonomic class, and they are completely unique and distinguishable upon those grounds, and it is upon those grounds - and others, which are beyond the boundaries of biological science and unpalatable to the secular leftist mind - that unrestricted abortion must be met as an ethical problem.

Science fiction scenarios of possible human evolutionary development on the scales of hundreds of thousands or millions of years, is of no import to this particular ethical quandary - or any other (assuming such evolution would take place simply on the basis that the potential for such evolution is present).

But of course, by attempting to ground your entire argument in biology, you have abandoned the field of ethics and morality altogether at the outset, which does not surprise me given the complete moral relativism, at the epistemological, metaphysical and ontological level, that is at the foundation of all secular humanistic philosophies that must rely on present or theoretically modeled sociocultural fashions and trends (especially among the reigning bohemian intelligentsia that is at the core of all such modernist movements) as a basis of moral discrimination.

Humans are not in evolutionary stasis. Human evolution actually has been accelerating in recent geologic time, probably due to the rapidly changing environments they produce through cultural change.


And this is a nice try at a clever sophistry that exists, however, only as pure theoretical conjecture outside the most trivial microevolutionary changes, such as increased height, foot size, cranial size, and various minor biochemical alterations, which have no bearing upon the much more radical alterations envisioned by macroevolutionary theory. Like a number of other forms, humans could have reached their evolutionary apogee as to any further serious modifications, and will undergo little fundamental change, outside of tiny, peripheral modifications on the fundamental theme.

So you couldn't be more wrong and yet you equate disagreeing with you to Naziism.


Well, the Nazi's were big into evolution (its philosophical implications, that is) as well, and eugenics, and ideologically grounded abortion, and playing with the definition of "human" and "person" based upon ideological expediency and prejudice.

The entire modern Left is heir to that tradition - as the very existence of Planned Parenthood attests - as well as to other utopian and revolutionary philosophies that create categories of persons and non-persons based upon the the grand theoretical narrative subscribed to and the pragmatic political need to govern according to that theoretical template (or to just find ways to morally justify the circumvention of the consequences of its culture of radical personal autonomy and unlimited hedonistic indulgence while at the same time preserving that very culture).

The other thing the secular humanist movement, whatever its name or names in may be known at any particular time, is wont to do, is wrap its ideological vision and its moral justification for the policies and measures needed to secure that vision, in the hallowed robes of science.

This is an old, old, worn out trick.

And many of us see it precisely for what it is.

On a subject you know nothing about.


Or so you pray and hope.

There is no essential genetic type that makes something "human." Rather it is a closely related grouping of independent, slightly different genomes that will invariably be fuzzy at the boundaries. That's the nature of evolution.


Herr Delusion, we are not talking about evolution. The ethical and moral debate about unrestricted elective abortion has nothing to do with macroevolution. You continue to artfully dodge the core biological, indeed, ontologial fact that a human sperm, combining with a human female egg, will, under normal and healthy circumstances, and barring anccident of disease pathology of some kind, eventuate in a human child, and only a human child (of the species homo sapiens sapiens).

No other outcome is biologically possible. The phylogenetic identity of the embryo, the fetus, the infant, the toddler, the youth, the adult, the elderly grandfather or grandmother, and the corpse lying in the coffin at the viewing, is inexorably and unalterably determined by the phylogenetic identity and information contained within the original sperm and egg.

Now, Mr. Astaire, keep dancing around this core biological, logical, and semantic reality as long as you would like. What humans may or may not be like several million, or tens of millions of years from now (in a conjectural fantasy future) is of no relevance to the ethical dilemma facing modern humans as they confront unrestricted abortion on demand - and many other moral problems.

And we have not as yet approached the deeper metaphysical problems associated with such conduct, especially on a large societal scale, but that, of course, is well beyond the intellectual tools or methodology of the natural sciences.

I'm well aware, and have been for decades, of the standard definitions of "personhood" used by feminist intellectuals and political theorists to justify unrestricted elective abortion.

Personhood is a term used by all parties in the abortion debate. It's just the standard term to refer to a being deserving of moral/legal respect.



Then define it, at length, so we can see what you really think you are arguing here.
Last edited by Guest on Thu May 17, 2012 12:44 am, edited 4 times in total.
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_Darth J
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Darth J »

Droopy wrote:But of course, by attempting to ground your entire argument in biology, you have abandoned the field of ethics and morality altogether at the outset, which does not surprise me given the complete moral relativism, at the epistemological, metaphysical and ontological level, that is at the foundation of all secular humanistic philosophies that must rely on present or theoretically modeled sociocultural fashions and trends (especially among the reigning bohemian intelligentsia that is at the core of all such modernist movements) as a basis of moral discrimination.


Things I learned on Mormon Discussions today:

Biology is a philosophy.
_Molok
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Molok »

Darth J wrote:
Droopy wrote:But of course, by attempting to ground your entire argument in biology, you have abandoned the field of ethics and morality altogether at the outset, which does not surprise me given the complete moral relativism, at the epistemological, metaphysical and ontological level, that is at the foundation of all secular humanistic philosophies that must rely on present or theoretically modeled sociocultural fashions and trends (especially among the reigning bohemian intelligentsia that is at the core of all such modernist movements) as a basis of moral discrimination.


Things I learned on Mormon Discussions today:

Biology is a philosophy.

You know what's really fun? Reading Droopy's post out loud, in a very serious voice. I can't read more than a paragraph without laughing.
_Darth J
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Darth J »

Molok wrote:You know what's really fun? Reading Droopy's post out loud, in a very serious voice. I can't read more than a paragraph without laughing.


Read his posts in Foghorn Leghorn's voice. Just a suggestion.
_Droopy
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Droopy »

Darth J wrote:
Droopy wrote:But of course, by attempting to ground your entire argument in biology, you have abandoned the field of ethics and morality altogether at the outset, which does not surprise me given the complete moral relativism, at the epistemological, metaphysical and ontological level, that is at the foundation of all secular humanistic philosophies that must rely on present or theoretically modeled sociocultural fashions and trends (especially among the reigning bohemian intelligentsia that is at the core of all such modernist movements) as a basis of moral discrimination.


Things I learned on Mormon Discussions today:

Biology is a philosophy.



Your inability to follow the core elements of the points I'm making, and the degree to which this is so utterly over your head, reminds me yet again that you only post here as a demagogue seeking self validation and affirmation for your empty, blasted ego.

This is called "Grahamism" and appears to be endemic among exmo critics of the church as well as all things moral, in any serious sense of the use of that term.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us

- President Ezra Taft Benson


I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

- Thomas Sowell
_Droopy
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Droopy »

On the other hand, I can name one sub-discipline within the field of biological science that indeed does blur the distinction between science and philosophy, and that's evolutionary psychology.

Sociobiology is another notorious tightening of the bolts of the reductionist, positivist Frankenstein.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us

- President Ezra Taft Benson


I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

- Thomas Sowell
_Molok
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Molok »

Darth J wrote:
Molok wrote:You know what's really fun? Reading Droopy's post out loud, in a very serious voice. I can't read more than a paragraph without laughing.


Read his posts in Foghorn Leghorn's voice. Just a suggestion.

On the upside, it is much funnier. Of course now I can't make it through a single sentence. "I say boy, you are a LEFTIST!"
_Darth J
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Darth J »

Droopy wrote:Your inability to follow the core elements of the points I'm making, and the degree to which this is so utterly over your head, reminds me yet again that you only post here as a demagogue seeking self validation and affirmation for your empty, blasted ego.

This is called "Grahamism" and appears to be endemic among exmo critics of the church as well as all things moral, in any serious sense of the use of that term.


Droopy, I have been punished enough by reading what you say to know that your posts are to the English language what middle-aged men in windowless vans are to school children.

Nevertheless, when you say that EAllusion is grounding his argument entirely in biology, and that this doesn't surprise you given that blah blah blah is the foundation of all secular humanist philosophies, you are in fact saying that biology is the philosophy in which EAllusion is grounding his argument.
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