Haha @ atheistic "belief".
No offense meant here Z, and coming from a fellow atheist, we have still yet to find solid, decisive proof that there is not a higher deity, just as much as the religious have yet to find proof that the world did not originate the way we think it did. Hence, this is a belief. Not a religious or theistic one, mind you, but it is something we believe because there has been enough evidence supplied, yet no decisive proof.
I suggest you remain open-minded and admit that there are flaws in any kind of belief system.
I find it bizarre to see this particular argument coming from a supposed atheist. It is classically a
tu quoque fallacy used by theists to criticize atheists for something that theists themselves already do: the act of faith. They don't seem to realize the fallacy, because even if were correct in their criticism, all it would do is invalidate their own position along with that of the atheists. So, for an atheist to buy into that same thinking is a double whammy of wrong. Right or wrong, you lose.
Perhaps there is ground to say that metaphysical certainty on the possibility of the divine is not something we currently possess. I happen to assert exactly that, which is why, cosmically, I am an agnostic and not an atheist. At the degree of metaphysical certainty, which is the highest degree of certainty, atheism does indeed contain an element of belief—but not in the matter of the question of the existence of the divine. No, the element of belief on the atheist's part is that he or she has the standing to declare metaphysical certainty in the first place. The question being judged (in this case the question of the divine) is irrelevant.
Metaphysical certainty is itself a tricky concept. Is it even logical? If so, is it ever truly applicable outside of a priori truths? Outside of personal experiences? Can metaphysical certainty ever be applied legitimately to objective reality? That's not an easy question. What are the criteria under which one can justly assert metaphysical certainty? Some people would even demand the very definition: What does it
mean to have metaphysical certainty? My personal philosophy has not yet resolved this issue, and so I am likely to refrain from asserting metaphysical certainty in most cases for the foreseeable future.
But I digress: Atheism is most definitely not, on the inherent level, a form of belief akin to theism. There are people whose expression of atheism takes the form of a belief, but this is a logical failure on their part and not an inherent flaw in the concept of atheism. In logical terms, atheism is the rejection of a divine premise. There are two forms, strong and weak. (Note that this is my own terminology: my definitions do not apply outside of my own writing.) Weak atheism rejects divine premises one at a time. I, for instance, am a weak atheist when it comes to specific religions like Christianity and Buddhism, because I reject the divine premises at the center of these religions. (A “divine premise” is something like “There exists an all-perfect God who created the universe and influences the course of all events, who gave humanity the gift of salvation by dying innocently on a cross.”) In contrast, strong atheism rejects the very premise of any affirmative divine premise. It is this form of atheism which runs into the metaphysical certainty issue. Weak atheism does not, on a technicality: Every divine premise that has come along thus far has suffered from a lack of falsifiability, a lack of verifiable physical evidence, a plethora of logical contradictions, a plethora of substantive contradictions, and various other ills which, on any other topic, would make the rejection of the divine premise in question an uncontroversial matter.
Now, it is important to remember that rejecting a premise—any premise—is not the same thing as affirming its opposite. There is a difference between the statements “I do not believe in your god” and “I believe your god does not exist.” The latter is unsupportable. The former is the correct: You can see even in the phrasing that it is a rejection of another belief rather than a belief of its own.
It is always important not to confuse the act of belief with the judgment of a premise. I encourage everyone to think on that.
Atheists believe the Big Bang was the start of the universe.
Zephira, atheists do not inherently believe any such thing. Atheism is not a worldview. The label of atheism tells you
nothing about a person other than that they reject one or more divine premises. It doesn't tell you if they like seafood more than Italian food. It doesn't tell you if they are liberal or conservative. It doesn't tell you if they had a troubled childhood, or won the Tour de France, or invented penicillin. And it doesn't tell you if they subscribe to the Big Bang theory.
That's why the argument that atheism is bad because Stalin was an atheist falls flat. Atheism is the absence of a checkmark on a box on the list of one's personality. Anyone who uses the label “atheist” for anything else other than to reject divine premises is misusing the label. If you want to talk about somebody who thinks government and religion should be kept separate, the appropriate word is “secularist,” not “atheist.” If you want to talk about somebody who thinks highly of the human spirit and cares for human wellbeing, that word is “humanist,” not “atheist.” If you want to talk about somebody who hates religion and works to dismantle it beyond the separation of church and state, well, there's are words for that too, none of which is “atheist.”
It was our universe, and it will do it again. No matter came from anything, it is the same matter you see here today, just compressed. We can speculate that our universe has done this before many times, and we're just another part of the cycle.
I don't think I missed your absence. Would you care to substantiate any of that stuff you just said? You can't say things and have them magically be true. You have to think about what you say, and reason your claims so that they will be supportable and defensible. What a ridiculous hodgepodge of cobbled-together pseudo-spiritual schmutz and drek.
What I refer to, of course, is the fetishization of penetrative sex. Why, when the entire human body is a sexual organ, do we continue to focus on such a small portion of it? Might we not reconcile the argument at hand by allowing the hypothetical couple to engage in sexual behavior that involves no penetration, and therefore no chance of pregnancy? (...)
Faust, I will give you credit for trying to mediate an amicable resolution to their disagreement, but just look at what you are resorting to. You aren't really offering a compromise; you're essentially saying that Daniel is correct, but that it's okay because we can still indulge in every other kind of sexual behavior without the risk of pregnancy—thus rendering their disagreement moot.
That is noble of you, but it is a complete nonstarter. Heterosexual vaginal intercourse isn't a “fetish.” It is the evolutionary mechanism by which we propagate our species, and that makes it the root form of all human sexuality. Yes, other sexual activities can bring sexual stimulation and pleasure. Even so, most of our species have the impulse for this basic sexual act, and that will
never be neutralized through social conditioning. Only drugs, selective breeding, or genetic engineering could effect the changes in neurochemistry that would be necessary to relieve people of their fundamental desire for this form of sexual intercourse.
You can't tell people not to have sex. Christians have tried it for 2000 years, and it doesn't work. Your suggestion is nothing more than a variation on that theme. No matter what kinds of alternative or derivative sexual activities humans might cook up, the majority of us will still desire the good old V&P. It's not a matter of judgment. It's not a matter of discipline. We have the power to choose our actions, most of the time, but, whatever we choose to do, the desire will still be there.
I applaud your denunciation of “androcentric” sexual folkways, but the way forward is not to shackle and fetter male sexuality; it is to liberate female sexuality.
This anti-abortion mentality is why we have so many large, poor families. Yeah, kids are nice. Yeah, life is nice. But knowingly bringing a child into a poor existence is just cruel.
I would have to argue that you have misdiagnosed the cause; if that were true then one would expect the number of large, poor families to have decreased over the last 50ish years as abortion has become more socially acceptable (not that it is now socially acceptable, but it is certainly more so).
Your claim is merely a hypothesis. Have you checked it? I would doubt it, because a key part of your claim is wrong: Abortion has become
less socially acceptable since it was nationally legalized, as indicated by a reduction in the national abortion rate by nearly one-third since its high around 1980. The absolute numbers paint a similar picture: The highest number of abortions recorded in the United States was in 1990. (The relative number is derived from the absolute number by factoring the overall population, which is always increasing. That's why the year with the highest absolute number of abortions occurred later than the year with the highest rate of abortion.)
Thus, factoring in both population growth and the birth rate, both abortions and the abortion rate have declined considerably. What caused this? It can't be that abortion has become
more socially acceptable, as you say, because that premise does not fit with the observation. It
may be that abortion has become
less socially acceptable. However, opinion polling does not bear this out. People's attitudes on abortion today are almost identical to what they were in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s.
That leaves only two plausible explanations: The conception rate may be dropping, which would indicate increased contraceptive use. That's the good variable. And
access to abortion may be in decline. That's the bad variable. You can compare the relative contributions of these two possibilities by looking up the abortion rate numbers and sorting them by socioeconomic indicators like income and education, and cross-referencing these numbers with census data on family size.
Or you could find somebody who has already crunched all of these numbers. =)
My own research suggests that the dominant force over time in the reduction in the abortion rate has been increased contraceptive usage, as abortion rates have dropped much more sharply in progressive, secular states like Washington than in ultrareligious redneck preserves like Mississippi. Access to abortion has gone way down, but it's gone down mostly in places where people were less likely to seek out abortions anyway.
Here, I suppose I will share some links with you:
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/index.htmlhttp://www.gallup.com/poll/118399/more-americans-pro-life-than-pro-choice-first-time.aspxAll-in-all, I think that Zephira's argument that an anti-abortion mentality has led to larger, poorer families is not convincingly refuted by your claim about abortion's social acceptability or its actual incidence.
It is curious that society has separated sex, intimacy, and responsibility.
Well observed.
While I certainly could be wrong, I'd suspect most people would rather be alive than not. Thus, I suspect that even most orphans would rather be orphans than to have never existed.
Most of us would indeed choose to exist than not to exist; we are all therefore thankful to some extent that our parents did not abort us. However, to argue against abortion on the grounds that those who are not aborted are appreciative of their existence is a logical fallacy, exposed by the reductio ad absurdum. By such logic, abortion is invalidated by the gratefulness of those who were not aborted. Well, if our gratefulness is the measure of these things, then
every conceivable child should be born, or at least as many as possible, given that the potential number of sperm and egg pairings in the human species is...absurdly high.
Abortion isn't the bad thing:
Not being born is the bad thing, because only those who are born can be grateful, and gratefulness is the measure.
See how ridiculous that is? But that's not the only fallacy at work. There is also the implication that abortion is wrong because when we apply the prospect of it to our own lives, we chafe—for our lives our full and we most certainly do not wish that we had been erased before ever having the chance to live out our experiences. This is a fallacy because it is not
our lives that are being evaluated when someone considers getting an abortion. Those who
do get aborted will never be in the position of looking back on their lives and being glad they weren't aborted. There is no dissonance here because it is illogical to foist our own perspective onto somebody else's circumstances.
I don't think I said that very well, but I would imagine you get the point.
Calling someone a bigot is an insult and even people engaged in racist or sexist behavior will deny the claim; near no one willingly takes on such a title.
Calling someone a bigot may insult them, but it does not mean the accusation is inaccurate. But I interrupted you. Go on:
Because of this, pointing out behaviors that are sexist or racist in a person can be an effective tool for motivating change. Very few people want to be engaged in behaviors that they believe are sexist or racist. The problem comes in making them realize those behaviors are sexist or racist. If denying abortion is blatantly sexist, then it would be much easier to convince those who are against it to change their mind; one could point to the obvious and leave Jimmy Cricket to do the mop-up.
So calling bigots “bigots” is counterproductive because it hardens their minds. You're right, Thought.
I will tell you: If my primary aim were to defeat the bigots by showing them the error of their ways, I would take a very different tack here. But that isn't my primary aim. My aim has been what I always said it has been: to point out the truth. I suppose you might say that my arguments are always directed to the Compendium at large. I may not win the minds of my opponents, and sometimes I do go farther than behooves my cause in my aggressive denunciations of villainy, but I am certain that these arguments of mine are thought provoking to at least some of the people who bother to read them, and provoking thought is good enough for me, because I am confident in most of what I say, and in every argument I make. I don't need anyone to “believe me”; I just need people to think about it for themselves.
There is little hope of being able to convince someone to change their ways unless you can understand why they hold to those ways in the first place. And, once you truly understand them, there is that terrifying moment in which you realize that it would have been a simple thing for you to have believed in them yourself. Generally, what separates us from those that we hate is a random chance of birth.
I think you overstate your point here, but there is some elegance in that point. One time we had a windstorm here in Seattle that caused power outages for over a week in some areas. In the aftermath of this long night, an editorial cartoonist at one of the city's dailies drew a cartoon of a regular old Joe Cubicle and a barbaric-looking savage. Drawn between them was a big light switch.
When it comes down to it, the key philosophical differences between any two people are often few in number. By the same token, there are any number of variables a person could chance in their past that would have radically altered the course of their lives. It all seems so delicate a balance of improbability upon improbability that it might lead one to wonder whether it's all a dream.
But I don't feel that way myself. History is what it is. We are the way we turn out. In a raffle of one trillion people, there will always still be a winning ticket. Our differences are not always important in the ways we make them out to be, but some of our differences are very important indeed, and they should not be downplayed simply because it would be too easy a thing to erase them with the succor of a time machine or a propaganda blitz.
Women do get abortions on their own, however. It seems that there is a disconnect somewhere along the line; both sides drop men from the equation. Is it better to drop them from one side than the other?
Ideally, the mother and father of an unborn child would agree on what to do with it. But that often does not happen, and because the child is the mother's burden and not the father's, it becomes her choice by default. To have it be any other way would be to impose an outside control over her body. If the woman is mature and open-minded, she will take the father's wishes into consideration. But the final decision must be hers. Males can play a role in shaping their own destiny by choosing their mates with care.
You know, I've been watching this discussion for a couple of iterations now, and what bugs me is that most of the people posting here (not all, but most) seem to assume that birth control is 100% effective. Guess what?
That's because from the extremes of both perspectives (which is where people generally argue from), it is irrelevant. If abortion is fundamentally wrong, then it doesn't matter if you were taking preventatives. And if abortion is right, then it likewise doesn't matter if you were taking preventatives.
You have my gratitude for pointing that out so nicely.
One has to first admit that, if it is reasonable, abortion should be avoided, before allowing that birth control is an important factor. And, if in certain circumstances it should be avoided, then we’re quibbling over what is reasonable. Extremists on both sides would hate such a stance since it moves towards the middle.
Ah, the Tyranny of the Center. One of the few areas in which conservatives are more palatable than moderates is that at least conservatives have to defend their positions. Moderates have succeeded in fostering a society which accepts without skepticism the premise that the moderate position is always the superior one.
The irony is that this is almost always the opposite of the truth. Government thrives on compromise, and suffers enormous inefficiencies as a result. I am watching with much trepidation our Congress' debate on healthcare reform. Universal coverage was deemed out of the question before the negotiations even began. Now the most liberal position is simply a government-run health insurance plan that will compete with the private insurers. This compromise, if it succeeds, will do very little to rein in the waste and rationing created by our current system, thus guaranteeing that we will have to reform our reforms soon down the road. And that, my friend, is the
best possible outcome at this point.
Other excellent moderate positions in history include:
The Articles of Confederation
The Three-Fifths Compromise
Oh, hell, I'll stop right there. The Three-Fifths Compromise...I can't top that. It was the ultimate centrist triumph. What better way to illustrate the tyranny of the center than to cut a person's democratic soul in two?
Anyhow, centrists can't even define what they are about until the left and the right draw a line for them. I look on such people as irritants. It's certainly better to have more centrists than conservatives, but too many people get suckered into the idea that being moderate is what it's all about. When it comes to abortion, the lines of debate are ridiculous. The center's position is completely unacceptable, and the right's position is 12th-century barbaric.
There
are two good reasons to avoid getting oneself into the position of needing an abortion: The first is medical. Abortion is rarely as dangerous or excruciating as childbirth, but it is a very uncomfortable procedure, and, as with any serious medical procedure, it entails a nonzero risk of complications. The second reason is familial. The mother (or the father, or someone else very important to her) might actually want the kid. Wanting to have the kid—if that desire is informed and deliberate—is a
great reason not to have an abortion!
But that's it. Those are the
only two factors that ought to weigh
against having an abortion in a person's mind. Everything else is religious baggage.
I would NOT sacrifice my life and everything I've worked for because of some stupid mistake.
(...)
People ruin their lives because of stupid mistakes all the time. Here we have a chance to undo such a stupid mistake.
Calling sex a “stupid mistake” strikes me as narrow-minded. Certainly, sometimes an act of sex is stupid, or is a mistake, or is both stupid and a mistake. More generally, however? I seriously doubt it. Most of the people who get abortions are in their twenties and thirties. They're not teenagers in school; they're adults who wanted sex but didn't want the kid. That's fair.
Which only makes it all the worse that abortion care access is in such danger.
To be fair, if someone did evolve towards Daniel’s way of thinking, they may have also learned in the process not to show it around you. You can be rather ruthless, when you want to be, and not everyone has Daniel’s (or your) endurance.
Maybe so! But if those who are not convinced can be cowed, I won't call it a loss. We would all do a lot better if the bigots were routinely browbeaten into timidity and bashfulness.
Ah, but that implies that our good Daniel himself is a bigot, as is anyone who thinks like him. Let it not be said that I think so little of him anymore. Therefore: If the
misguided can
nurture their wisdom in humbleness, so much the better!
In fact, humbleness is a virtue for us all, myself included. I'm not brazen on every topic—only those topics where I have cause to be. And ruthlessness isn't my only posture. Daniel might appreciate this next bit: When it comes to ruthlessness, I respect people by the way I disrespect them. I never hold back the truth. I never settle for half-arguments. I always say what I mean. I don't necessarily say everything that I'm thinking, but I never lie. I treat people like adults, even if they're not capable of handling it today, because maybe tomorrow they will learn. That's “ruthlessness,” for better or worse. On the Good-Evil axis, I'm benign. I wish harm on no one. I hope all of us have full and satisfying lives, yourself and Krispin and IAmSerge and everyone. That's why I can say with no inflation of self-importance that even those who end up not agreeing with me tend to benefit from my contributions. I have no idea if I am well-
liked around here, but I am certainly a curious figure.
However, your statement does contain several topics that, if presented in an non-insulting manner, I would love to debate. For example, I find it rather bigoted that “fat” is used as an insult, and I’d generally argue that apply the label “ugly” to any woman is sexist. I could also debate the use of “whore,” but that is a topic that gets more face-time anywho.
You are welcome to open that debate, but I don't think we will have much to disagree about. I picked that insult precisely because it is the opposite of what I would consider an effective attack:
On the subject of fat: I spend a lot of energy combating fat-bashers; fat acceptance is one of my bigger social justice commitments. And it's not only academic: I'm actually attracted to fat women. Like I said, your wife is attractive! Yeah, she's fat, but it would never be an insult coming from me. I'm even pudgy myself; it would be terribly ironic of me to commit that particular hypocrisy.
On the subject of ugly: This one requires no comment. Anyone who think I would attack on this line is not thinking straight.
On the subject of “whore”: It should be pretty obvious that I am pro-sex. I don't think of it as disparaging if a person—or a female in particular—has had multiple sexual partners. If anything, I think people benefit from having at least more than one sexual partner in their lifetimes. It's like language: Perfecting one is empowering; perfecting more than one is enlightening. And I'm talking
only about the sex. There are also the many rewards and benefits of getting to know the
people with whom one shares that pleasure.
And pro-choicers should defeat anti-abortionists by ensuring that abortion is a spotless process; if problems arise, it should be the pro-choice crowd that brings them to light and addresses them.
I am amused that this is the only thing you bothered to demand of pro-choicers, almost as if you couldn't think of anything else. =)
Really, your position on abortion is far less extreme than I thought. If you really are in favor of unrestricted legal access to abortion, then I don't much care if you'd like to keep it rare; I won't try to change your mind.
I myself do not necessarily want to see the abortion rate go up, down, or stay where it is. What I want is for women to get smarter in choosing what's best for them in their individual circumstances, and for the government to guarantee that they'll have access to the healthcare they need in the event that they choose abortion, and for contraceptive usage and effectiveness to be improved upon.
I think what I'm eventually getting at is that even pro-choicers don't glorify the act of abortion; I mean, do we? Do we hold abortion balls like ultraconservatives hold these chastity balls? There's good reason why we do not. I don't think any of us fail to acknowledge that abortion is not a pretty procedure in terms of risks to the woman undergoing it, or in cases of abortion of an advanced pregnancy, that a fetus with a functioning nervous system could feel pain during the procedure.
You are premature to speak on behalf of everyone else. On the contrary, while I would agree with you that few pro-choice people are likely to raise themselves to the level of pomposity required for an “abortion ball,” your underlying premise is totally off-base. Abortion is up there with birth control in terms of reducing the liberty gap between the sexes; its modern practice and legality was one of the most empowering innovations of the 20th century. Many millions of women (and men) cherish abortion, even if it does involve gore and nausea and pain. So do root canals, but nobody would avoid one of those on moral grounds. I don't think anyone would go out of their way to get pregnant just so that they could get an abortion, but plenty of people feel empowered rather than ashamed when they end up pregnant and choose the best course of action for themselves.
The anti-choice crowd depicts abortion as a guilty, miserable experience that causes depression and cancer and whatever else. They show images of aborted fetuses to disgust people. The traditional media have largely adopted that viewpoint. That probably explains why many if not most Americans see abortion as a “necessary evil,” thinking that it should be legal only when necessary. But, really, it's the wrong way of looking at it. The risk of abortion are overstated by its opponents; pregnancy and childbirth are almost always more hazardous. Indeed, many abortions are performed for precisely that reason. The accusations of cancer and depression have been studied, with no support found for those claims. (Surprise, surprise.) And don't let the imagery of a fetus fool you: It looks as ugly when it's alive and healthy as it does when it's dead and perforated, because of the Uncanny Valley: We have our human instincts to thank for that.
I think our nation needs a campaign to remind people what abortion is: It's not a “necessary evil.” It is a tool of self-determination and sexual equality.
But if its just an irresponsible teenager who had an "accident", I don't give a shit and its your own damn fault.
An inherently sexist attitude is revealed in this one line. "Irresponsible teenager" - singular. Last time I checked, women don't get pregnant on their own.
Thank you, Zelbless, for pointing out the mistake I made when typing a post, for calling me sexist, and for completely misunderstanding the point of that sentance. *sigh&facepalm*
Don't sigh and facepalm when somebody corrects your ignorance. Zelbess made an excellent point: You unwittingly committed an act of sexism. Your phrasing gave it away. You should have thanked her for pointing it out, and resolved to consider the admonition.
