The Nature of Evil

pinko · February 20, 2011

Unavailable? Uh-oh.

Probably got tired of explaining things to you.

No. He and I live quite a distance apart and although he has a busy schedule and two infants to raise we speak on a regular basis.

I would suspect one of the reasons you are off kilter is that you lack freindship and a place to filter your weird ideas.

bush_cheney2004 · February 20, 2011

It's also illegal to have sex with children and animals, or to force yourself on any other unwilling participant. We're talking about different things.

You are dodging the question...I understand. I am challenging your assertion above with consensual reproduction between adults, not children or animals. Does the state have a legal, public interest in preventing such reproduction or not?

betsy · February 20, 2011

I would suspect one of the reasons you are off kilter is that you lack freindship and a place to filter your weird ideas.

My ideas may be weird to you....but it's you who keeps tugging my sleeves for attention. Now, that's weird. :lol:

So I better say bye-bye.

Edited February 20, 2011 by betsy

pinko · February 20, 2011

My ideas may be weird to you....but it's you who keeps tugging my sleeves for attention. Now, that's weird.

So I better say bye-bye.

Get help.

cybercoma · February 21, 2011

You are dodging the question...I understand. I am challenging your assertion above with consensual reproduction between adults, not children or animals. Does the state have a legal, public interest in preventing such reproduction or not?

I answered your question fully in the paragraph that followed.

bush_cheney2004 · February 21, 2011

I answered your question fully in the paragraph that followed.

Your answer is not complete, as it dodges the issue of government regulation of consensual, adult, familial reproduction. What we find is that the state currently declares such unions and incestuous relations as illegal because of the increased possibility for birth defects.

Under Canadian law, incest is defined as having a sexual relationship with a sibling (including half-sibling), child/parent or grandchild/grandparent while knowing the existence of the blood relationship. It is punishable by up to 14 years imprisonment

I understand why you don't wish to engage the issue, and your avoidance has served its purpose. Thanks.

pinko · February 21, 2011

"I understand why you don't wish to engage the issue"

He did engage the issue. Perhaps you can elaborate on the understanding you have reached.

cybercoma · February 21, 2011

I understand why you don't wish to engage the issue, and your avoidance has served its purpose. Thanks.

Actually, you're avoiding my argument. That's fine, but don't say I didn't engage the issue when I did.

bush_cheney2004 · February 21, 2011

Actually, you're avoiding my argument. That's fine, but don't say I didn't engage the issue when I did.

Then let's just cut to the chase....should government continue to have a role in reproductive choice or not? If yes, it would seem to conflict with your underlying premise.

pinko · February 21, 2011

Then let's just cut to the chase....should government continue to have a role in reproductive choice or not? If yes, it would seem to conflict with your underlying premise.

How so?

bush_cheney2004 · February 21, 2011

How so?

Those who maintain that reproductive decisions are a personal choice not to be intefered with by government are ignoring obvious examples of same: abortion funding for the poor, incest laws, fetal health laws (USA only - fetuses have no protection in Canada), etc., etc.

So which is it?

pinko · February 21, 2011

Those who maintain that reproductive decisions are a personal choice not to be intefered with by government are ignoring obvious examples of same: abortion funding for the poor, incest laws, fetal health laws (USA only - fetuses have no protection in Canada), etc., etc.

So which is it?

It should be obvious to you if you are aware of the state of the law. Apparently, in your confusion, you are unable to accept the current legal landscape.

cybercoma · February 21, 2011

Then let's just cut to the chase....should government continue to have a role in reproductive choice or not? If yes, it would seem to conflict with your underlying premise.

I condensed it as far as I possibly could in the post that you keep saying I dodged the question on. I'm not going to write a 10,000 word research paper on the topic for you. If you don't like my argument, that's fine, but asking the question again doesn't change the answer I already gave you.

WIP · February 21, 2011

Those who maintain that reproductive decisions are a personal choice not to be intefered with by government are ignoring obvious examples of same: abortion funding for the poor, incest laws, fetal health laws (USA only - fetuses have no protection in Canada), etc., etc.

So which is it?

Maybe you just write too much, because I'm not finding where you draw the line and declare new life worth protecting.....and interfering with a pregnant woman's interests. Are you advocating banning birth control pills and IUD's as all of these whackjob anti-abortion groups do? They claim birth control can "kill" a fertilized egg by preventing the new egg from implanting and being able to grow.

Most sane, rational people...who don't have hidden agendas of transforming society back to what it was a hundred years ago believe that a fetus has to be in the later stages of pregnancy, where it has started to develop some cortical function that can be considered a start of conscious awareness...before we start talking about giving it individual rights that are enjoyed by the rest of society. In poll after poll, even after the constant bombardment of church propaganda for the last four decades, the majority of people still stand about where they were back in 1970 -- fertilized eggs are not babies....pregnant women should have the right to choose if they want to have an abortion in the first and 2nd trimester....and late term abortions should only be done when the pregnant woman's life is in danger, or there are serious birth defects that will badly degrade whatever quality of life the new baby would have. Most of us set the bar fairly high before we start respecting the rights of fetuses more than the rights of pregnant women!

bush_cheney2004 · February 21, 2011

Maybe you just write too much, because I'm not finding where you draw the line and declare new life worth protecting.....and interfering with a pregnant woman's interests. Are you advocating banning birth control pills and IUD's as all of these whackjob anti-abortion groups do? They claim birth control can "kill" a fertilized egg by preventing the new egg from implanting and being able to grow.

No, as stated befoe, I am not interested in the least in banning abortions or contraception. However, I am very interested in holding those with cognitive dissonace accountable for their inconsistencies. I am completely congruent along the conception to death continuum, placing no higher or lower value to any along the way, and accepting that we do indeed decide who lives or dies based on socio-political and economic drivers.

Most sane, rational people...who don't have hidden agendas of transforming society back to what it was a hundred years ago believe that a fetus has to be in the later stages of pregnancy, where it has started to develop some cortical function that can be considered a start of conscious awareness...before we start talking about giving it individual rights that are enjoyed by the rest of society.

Interesting, but not relevant to the larger point of personal or state control. At some point the life is viable outside the womb, and it is before a full term birth. Accordingly, my purpose in asking about the regulation of incest/reproduction or government funded abortion is obvious.

... Most of us set the bar fairly high before we start respecting the rights of fetuses more than the rights of pregnant women!

Except for pregnant women who care about their fetus's survival. There can be no such protections for causing fetal death in Canada because it would undermine the entire and completely arbitrary binary definition of a human being / life.

Edited February 21, 2011 by bush_cheney2004

Oleg Bach · February 22, 2011

Blind faith is better than none at all. Blind faith has it's place. If you do not fully understant but instinctively know that something is probably true - it is better to be instinctive - and instinct is very similar to blind faith...Now visual faith is for lazy people - who only dare believe what they see...and they believe if they can not see it - that it does not exist.

WIP · February 22, 2011

No, as stated befoe, I am not interested in the least in banning abortions or contraception. However, I am very interested in holding those with cognitive dissonace accountable for their inconsistencies. I am completely congruent along the conception to death continuum, placing no higher or lower value to any along the way, and accepting that we do indeed decide who lives or dies based on socio-political and economic drivers.

I don't recall disputing the basic premise here; my point of contention is that the right lowers the value of the lives of poor women and children through its opposition to abortion and birth control. It creates a situation like many Third World countries, where millions of children grow up in grinding poverty....if they survive. But, I don't consider most rightwing politicians and church leaders to be sincere in the first place, when they state their concerns for fetal life. If that's what it was all about, they would have declared a Marshall Plan to stop the 50% of pregnancies that end in miscarriage, or involuntary abortion. The concern of rightwing male leaders is more likely to do with their insecurity about having lost control of women's bodies over the last half century or so.

Interesting, but not relevant to the larger point of personal or state control. At some point the life is viable outside the womb, and it is before a full term birth. Accordingly, my purpose in asking about the regulation of incest/reproduction or government funded abortion is obvious.

And that's why fetal viability may justify interfering in an abortion decision. An example would be for purposes such as sex-selection -- where the woman's life is not endangered, nor are there defects that will degrade the quality of life the fetus would have in the future. There have been no easy ways to draw a line where the rights of one should abrogate the rights of the other, but in general, most people agree that giving full human rights to newly fertilized eggs and banning birth control is stupid, but that ending the fetus's life at a late stage as previously mentioned, when it is both viable and becoming fully human, is wrong......it's a matter of finding a reasonable way to decide between the competing interests of the pregnant woman and the new life growing inside her.

Regulating incest can be justified in most cases just on a basis of health -- preventing birth defects from dangerous inbreeding. And regulating reproduction as practiced in China, and formerly in India, may be justifiable on the basis of present day overpopulation and the risks it poses for longterm human survival. I recently heard an interview of retired engineer - environmental activist Jack Alpert on a panel discussion show...his position, as outlined on his own website is that the World can only support 100 million people permanently in the manner of energy and resource use we are accustomed to here in the West.....and he cannot come up with a plan that would accomplish a rapid population decline except through clandestine, involuntary methods, such as an aerosol mass sterilization strategy. Even panel members who preferred everyone reducing energy and resource consumption, still agreed that present day world population is two to three times a permanent sustainable level.

Edited February 22, 2011 by WIP

bush_cheney2004 · February 22, 2011

If that's what it was all about, they would have declared a Marshall Plan to stop the 50% of pregnancies that end in miscarriage, or involuntary abortion. The concern of rightwing male leaders is more likely to do with their insecurity about having lost control of women's bodies over the last half century or so.

I fail to see what the "right" or obligatory reference to yet another American but completely different post WW2 recovery plan has to do with the basic question, nor do I understand the focus on males only.

And that's why fetal viability may justify interfering in an abortion decision....

Regulating incest can be justified in most cases just on a basis of health -- preventing birth defects from dangerous inbreeding. And regulating reproduction as practiced in China, and formerly in India, may be justifiable on the basis of present day overpopulation and the risks it poses for longterm human survival.

The specifics aren't important...what you are advocating is consistent with the idea of government regulation of human reproduction at some level for some reason(s), which is directly counter to any idea about a "woman's right" to make any and all reproductive choices as described by some members above. That was the entire purpose of this exercise.

Timothy17 · February 23, 2011

Then it follows that God did create the condition - "good" - for which evil can manifest itself. Therefore, either God made evil as a logical corollary of good; or that the "good" God made was seriously flawed.

I am not sure I follow. In my tract I tried to explain - to the best of my poor, very limited ability - that, in order for creatures to be able to authentically love, it was also necessary their free-will have a certain self-determination and originating capacity ; that is, the ability to reject that love, turn away from it, etc. For Christians, God created all that is, and it was all good (nature included), and evil is not, properly speaking, a creation or a part of nature : it acts within that creation, acts against that nature, and takes away from it. Returning to my analogy, evil is like to cold or darkness, wherein there is the absence of heat or light (truth or love). Hence evil and sin is said to consequently darken the intellect of man, to make us (spiritually) blind.

You assert that this is a flaw, that our free-will's potential to reject what is right or good, to reject love or turn away from it, is a flaw. I don't find this tenable, because then we enter the circular argument of whether or not we can be said to even possess a legitimate free-will or be able to legitimately (i.e, freely) love if we didn't also have the potential to refuse that love. We could have been created in a permanent, fixed and perpetual state of adoration before God, with all the bliss and blessings that involves ; however, I would think this would be an inferior state of adoration as it would not have been freely given and rendered, as the possibility of refusing it would not have been, well, possible. Enamoured as we might have been, we could never be not enamoured and, therefore, never truly know the depth and extent of the goodness we enjoyed. Perhaps this lends weight to the proverb, "It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all."

God is not, therefore, the origin of evil. Free-will, defecting, is. The consequences of evil, of that defection from perfect love and truth, is astounding, perhaps humanly indescribable and incomprehensible, owing to the infinity of God, communion with whom was lost by our betrayal, our defection. It therefore follows that man has a legitimate potentiality in his own right, that of free will, for which he is himself exclusively responsible, and hence the need for redemption, salvation, forgiveness, etc. At times we feel compelled to inform people that something is not their fault, for they are blaming themselves for things that are not properly their responsibility. This crude, though common, example is at least roughly akin to the fallacy of blaming God for sin or evil. Sin and evil exists only in a turning away from God, who is perfect love and truth. Much as we might wish to conveniently or expediently expunge any and all guilt or responsibility for the consequences of our choices and actions, we nonetheless bear - insomuch as it is so - personal responsibility for the evil we do.

Pax,

Tim

Timothy17 · February 23, 2011

Ultimately, the decision to have an abortion is the no one else's but the woman that is pregnant. The government has no place interfering with a person's decision about her body. When life begins is a philosophical question that the government ought not to be legislating at the stroke of a pen.

There are a few misconceptions and contradictions here.

I.

"Ultimately, the decision to have an abortion is the no one else's but the woman that is pregnant."

This is not accurate. The woman necessarily (needs) the co-operative decisions of others to implement an abortion, commonly understood. She requires either pills or operations intended to facilitate her purpose ; therefore, she needs the consent of society, as society by no means is under duress to provide her with these things. A woman does not wave a magic wand, as it were, and the baby disappears ; she requires others to help her intervene to end the male or female child's life.

II.

"The government has no place interfering with a person's decision about her body.

This is an imploding statement. Why is an adult female's decisions regarding her body sancrosanct, but the female child's body has no benefit ? We cannot possibly know whether the person in the womb wills to live or die, and it seems a bit presumptuous to assume that they are in accord with their mother's decision. Properly speaking, the subject matter is not the adult female's body, but the body of the human child (whether male or female) existing in her womb.

III.

"When life begins is a philosophical question that the government ought not to be legislating at the stroke of a pen."

You are misinformed. The meaning of life is said to be restricted to being a philosophical question, certainly, and logic certainly plays its parts in many things, including science ; however, the presence of natural life is a measurable and easily, readily ascertainable phenomenon. Life self-propagates. It grows, expands, replaces, etc., and all natural life requires nourishment of some form or another, or else it ceases. At the moment of conception, life happens, gender is determined, and the DNA - the rubrics of the human being - of this new person is all determined. Everything needed is there, and life is actively happening, growing. We are never more "alive," in a measurable, biological sense, than when we are growing in the womb. It is very easy to see that the child is very much alive.

Pax,

Tim

Edited February 23, 2011 by Timothy17

scorpio · February 23, 2011

God is not, therefore, the origin of evil.

I know you religious types don't like KJV Isaiah 45:7,(I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil, I the LORD do all these things) as evidenced by the many translations to discredit it. But then you cannot ignore or shirk away from all the "evil" that God partook in or orchestrated in the Old Testament. Can't have it both ways.

cybercoma · February 23, 2011

This is not accurate. The woman necessarily (needs) the co-operative decisions of others to implement an abortion, commonly understood. She requires either pills or operations intended to facilitate her purpose ; therefore, she needs the consent of society, as society by no means is under duress to provide her with these things. A woman does not wave a magic wand, as it were, and the baby disappears ; she requires others to help her intervene to end the male or female child's life.

You've taken the quote out of context. Society had already accepted the implementation of abortion and all but the most batshit crazy fundamentalists accept that abortions are a sometimes necessary life-saving technique. When I write of it being "no one else's decision but the woman's", it is in this context of society having already decided that it was necessary. However, the establishment of an arbitrary bureaucratic system of therapeutic assessment panels to decide such a time-sensitive and personal matter is the issue. Why does it need to be at least 3 doctors having consensus? Isn't one licensed doctor good enough? Why must a fourth doctor then perform the procedure? Why does one panel consider only the literal life and death of the mother, ignoring perhaps permanent physical disability from birth, while another may consider severe injuries and mental anguish in their decisions? It is in this context that the state is wholly ineffective at making such a personal decision for the mother, where that decision is whether or not it is right to have an abortion.

II.
"The government has no place interfering with a person's decision about her body.

This is an imploding statement. Why is an adult female's decisions regarding her body sancrosanct, but the female child's body has no benefit ? We cannot possibly know whether the person in the womb wills to live or die, and it seems a bit presumptuous to assume that they are in accord with their mother's decision. Properly speaking, the subject matter is not the adult female's body, but the body of the human child (whether male or female) existing in her womb.

Not only is the fetus incapable of making decisions for itself or having will one way or the other, but once a child is delivered, human babies are wholly incapable of taking care of themselves and surviving. Practically speaking, humans are one of the only animals born premature, considering we don't even begin walking until close to a year later. Why is the woman's decision about her body paramount to the fetus? Because the fetus, until born, is quite literally a part of the mother's body with her blood flowing through it even.

III.
"When life begins is a philosophical question that the government ought not to be legislating at the stroke of a pen."

You are misinformed. The meaning of life is said to be restricted to being a philosophical question, certainly, and logic certainly plays its parts in many things, including science ; however, the presence of natural life is a measurable and easily, readily ascertainable phenomenon. Life self-propagates. It grows, expands, replaces, etc., and all natural life requires nourishment of some form or another, or else it ceases. At the moment of conception, life happens, gender is determined, and the DNA - the rubrics of the human being - of this new person is all determined. Everything needed is there, and life is actively happening, growing. We are never more "alive," in a measurable, biological sense, than when we are growing in the womb. It is very easy to see that the child is very much alive.

Pax,

Tim

Well, if that's the yardstick you choose for the beginning of life, there is a much bigger problem out there than abortion that you ought to be fighting. Perhaps--maybe you are doing this, I don't know--you should be more worried about the horrific holocaust that happens daily in fertility clinics around the world. Several eggs are fertilized and only one is implanted in the mother. If life happens at the moment of conception, as you say in point III, and the will of the child and his/her body ought to be considered just as independently as the mother's, as you say in point II, then it should be absolutely horrifying to you to know that hundreds of fertilized eggs are destroyed daily in fertility clinics.

Most of the opponents of abortion, here and elsewhere that I've heard these debates, are against it because they feel that it is morally reprehensible to "kill" a fetus. Judith Jarvis Thomson, as i do, concedes that a fetus does become a person sometime before birth, but where we disagree with you is that a fertilized egg is a person, simply because it is fertilized and "life" has begun.

Nevertheless, she takes up the moral argument that a fetus is a person from the time of conception and sets up this hypothetical case:

"You wake up in the morning and find yourself back-to-back in bed with an unconscious violinist, a famous violinist, who has a fatal kidney ailment. You alone have the right blood type to help and so you have been kidnapped and plugged into the violinist's ciculatory system, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. You are told that if you disconnect from him he will die. But if you allow him to remain plugged into you for nine months, he will be cured and survived."

Are you morally required to stay "plugged-in" to this violinist? It would certainly be nice if you did such a thing, but you are by no means morally required to do so. If the violinists right-to-life trumps your own right to do as you wish with your body, then morally you must stay plugged-in.

The violinist has a right-to-life, to be sure. However, that does not mean that he can never be killed, only that he ought not be killed unjustly. There is no injustice in unplugging this violinist and allowing him to die because you have a right to do with your body as you wish.

In any case, to argue for the immorality of abortion, it's not simply enough to show that a fetus is a person. For if the right-to-life supersedes the right to do with your body as you wish, then certainly the government ought to be able to force all people to become organ donors and force everyone to give blood donations. After all, in those circumstances you suffer little to no inconvenience and you are saving the life of other living persons. The government doesn't do that though and many would find it morally objectionable for good reason.

Timothy17 · February 23, 2011

I know you religious types don't like KJV Isaiah 45:7,(I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil, I the LORD do all these things) as evidenced by the many translations to discredit it. But then you cannot ignore or shirk away from all the "evil" that God partook in or orchestrated in the Old Testament. Can't have it both ways.

"I create evil," not cause evil. In this sense, without God there would be nothing, neither good nor evil.

This seems to be to be an almost philosophical exactitude being expressed. "I form the light," and consequently, "create darkness."

I always understood this evil as the Hebrew would have it, the evils of sufferings, chastisements, trials and tribulations, etc. As you know, Christians do not believe in abandoning their belief even during the most difficult of times, but that these experiences can habituate us to good, to habitually choosing good even under great difficulty or duress, which is the classical definition of a virtuous person. In the school of evils we become good Christians, and Saints are made manifest. Daniel and his companions had to face the harrowing experience of being thrown into an oven because of their fidelity to God. Their fidelity to God caused them to be faced with that evil. God sends good and evil on both good and evil men, but here we are talking about purely physical goods and evils, which reveals the proper understanding of the sense of the text I believe.

I can see how the boldness can trip people up. It is meant to. But if we want to get into primary and secondary causes, then we are going to need to list philosophical terms and stick to them. I, unless otherwise stated, am using evil in the strict sense of sin, of the human will's defection from what is right or good, and the consequences and depravity this resulted in and still results in. Evil, or more exactly, vice, is still contrary to nature, as nature itself confesses when we experience pain, suffering, sadness, etc. These experiences physically confess that something is wrong, something is disordered.

Properly speaking, the source or origin of sin, and consequently evil, is in the will, in the defection of that will from God. Without sin there would be no evil or evils, nor its present, resulting regime.

Pax,

Tim

Edited February 23, 2011 by Timothy17

Timothy17 · February 23, 2011

You've taken the quote out of context. Society had already accepted the implementation of abortion and all but the most batshit crazy fundamentalists accept that abortions are a sometimes necessary life-saving technique. When I write of it being "no one else's decision but the woman's", it is in this context of society having already decided that it was necessary. However, the establishment of an arbitrary bureaucratic system of therapeutic assessment panels to decide such a time-sensitive and personal matter is the issue. Why does it need to be at least 3 doctors having consensus? Isn't one licensed doctor good enough? Why must a fourth doctor then perform the procedure? Why does one panel consider only the literal life and death of the mother, ignoring perhaps permanent physical disability from birth, while another may consider severe injuries and mental anguish in their decisions? It is in this context that the state is wholly ineffective at making such a personal decision for the mother, where that decision is whether or not it is right to have an abortion.

Not only is the fetus incapable of making decisions for itself or having will one way or the other, but once a child is delivered, human babies are wholly incapable of taking care of themselves and surviving. Practically speaking, humans are one of the only animals born premature, considering we don't even begin walking until close to a year later. Why is the woman's decision about her body paramount to the fetus? Because the fetus, until born, is quite literally a part of the mother's body with her blood flowing through it even.

Well, if that's the yardstick you choose for the beginning of life, there is a much bigger problem out there than abortion that you ought to be fighting. Perhaps--maybe you are doing this, I don't know--you should be more worried about the horrific holocaust that happens daily in fertility clinics around the world. Several eggs are fertilized and only one is implanted in the mother. If life happens at the moment of conception, as you say in point III, and the will of the child and his/her body ought to be considered just as independently as the mother's, as you say in point II, then it should be absolutely horrifying to you to know that hundreds of fertilized eggs are destroyed daily in fertility clinics.

Most of the opponents of abortion, here and elsewhere that I've heard these debates, are against it because they feel that it is morally reprehensible to "kill" a fetus. Judith Jarvis Thomson, as i do, concedes that a fetus does become a person sometime before birth, but where we disagree with you is that a fertilized egg is a person, simply because it is fertilized and "life" has begun.

Nevertheless, she takes up the moral argument that a fetus is a person from the time of conception and sets up this hypothetical case:

"You wake up in the morning and find yourself back-to-back in bed with an unconscious violinist, a famous violinist, who has a fatal kidney ailment. You alone have the right blood type to help and so you have been kidnapped and plugged into the violinist's ciculatory system, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. You are told that if you disconnect from him he will die. But if you allow him to remain plugged into you for nine months, he will be cured and survived."

Are you morally required to stay "plugged-in" to this violinist? It would certainly be nice if you did such a thing, but you are by no means morally required to do so. If the violinists right-to-life trumps your own right to do as you wish with your body, then morally you must stay plugged-in.

The violinist has a right-to-life, to be sure. However, that does not mean that he can never be killed, only that he ought not be killed unjustly. There is no injustice in unplugging this violinist and allowing him to die because you have a right to do with your body as you wish.

In any case, to argue for the immorality of abortion, it's not simply enough to show that a fetus is a person. For if the right-to-life supersedes the right to do with your body as you wish, then certainly the government ought to be able to force all people to become organ donors and force everyone to give blood donations. After all, in those circumstances you suffer little to no inconvenience and you are saving the life of other living persons. The government doesn't do that though and many would find it morally objectionable for good reason.

You fall into tricky water when you start habituating your mind to arbitrarily determining something so abstract as personhood and when it begins or ends. Personhood is an entirely legal recognition of something. I believe you realize it is a recognition ; that is, it is the Law recognizing some reality outside and independent of itself, and affirming its existence.

You enter this problem : if personhood does not begin at the moment life begins, and demonstrably so (let's not kid, at conception there's an explosion of life and it's happening, and happening fast), when does personhood "happen" ? Is there some legal Incarnation happening ? Does personhood fall from heaven on a human being at some arbitrary point in time ? If so, pray tell what is the cause of this marvelous event, and when does it occur ? You touched on the danger and ambiguity of arbitrarily off-shoring this responsibility to a panel of experts or bureaucrats, for example, and the precedent of doing that is alarming. It puts terrifying powers in the hands of select individuals, powers of life and death, the rights of men or the abrogation thereof.

But let's hold to human custom and convention : a lot of couples, upon discovering they are pregnant (as it were), are over-joyed, and at once begin to grant the child a name or names. They draw up names for a male or a female, for example. Already, for these parents, personhood is established, and the humanity of the nascent life is unquestioned. Age is not even a factor of consideration. What's material is that life is there. We know, for example, that at the moment of conception a child is always either male or female, so trying to reduce the child to some "it," for the purpose of justifying abortion, is a serious factual error not a little expedient to the ends of the argument. The child, the fetus, is always either a male child or a female child, and never properly an "it."

Now Christians cannot, and will not, ever care for any of this brutish sophistry, for we have known the Truth far before scientists confirmed it. We know, according to our Scriptures and the Creed, that God "became incarnate of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, and was made man." That is, identity, gender, personhood - all of these questions were mute at the moment of the incarnation, which corresponds (biologically) to conception. That will not change for us.

The teachings of our religion is that when man divorces himself from God he falls into errors such as rationalism, and the consequence of these errors are the battles we now face, where we feel compelled to demonstrate every moral truth and argument by the arbitrary and capricious determinations of any given set of men. It is this fallacy that undermines the moral order and lends itself to such evil regimes as the Soviets and Nazis, who were not a little opportunistic of the aggrandizement of the state's powers and jurisdictions afforded by the widespread loss of belief in objective truths and the moral dogmas of the Church. These being evaporated, they left a huge vacuum that philosophy and intellectualism are constantly trying, in vain, to fill. Now Liberalism then as now dogmatically dictates that we Christians need to conform to its own fallacious presumptions and appease its own altar of rationalism before being permitted into its holy of holies and receive the blessing of its recognition of our moral precepts. So far our appeasement of this process has already cost hundreds of millions of lives in labs and abortion clinics throughout the world.

Let's be frank. Canadian law made a disastrous and dangerous swing by subjecting humanity to its fanciful curiosity - who or what is a human or who or what is a person ? My question is who or what is a Canadian court to determine who or what I so intimately am ? Needless to say, I reserve my right to rebellion against any government that presumes it will decide for itself whether or not I am a person or a human or whether or not my children may or may not be worthy of that right gone Animal Farm to a privilege. We are talking about legal errors and contradictions not a little reminiscent of those in the United States before the civil war. Apathy, at present, appears to me the only real difference, and for democracy that is a dangerous difference.

Now in your final argumentation you compare the loss of innocent human life as being comparable to the loss of a certain amount of blood or the loss of organs following death. Seeing as how the loss of a little blood is not liable to kill me nor will my organs being taken from my body following death change the fact of my beind dead, I am not a little inclined to find such concerns spurious in contrast to rather more important considerations as the saving of innocent life from the death penalty.

Pax,

Tim

Edited February 23, 2011 by Timothy17

WIP · February 23, 2011

I fail to see what the "right" or obligatory reference to yet another American but completely different post WW2 recovery plan has to do with the basic question, nor do I understand the focus on males only.

I saw a bumper sticker slogan once that said:"75% of all pro life antiabortion groups are run by men....and none of them have to worry about getting pregnant. That one stuck with me because I also had a hard time trying to figure out why some guys....mostly preachers, have made this issue their life's work. I don't think it's being overly analytical to posit that there is a conscious or even an unconscious desire to be in control of the baby-making business. And again, why so much concern for planned abortion, and little if any concern for unplanned abortion, or miscarriage...which ends about half of all pregnancies? It doesn't add up if the "saving babies" rhetoric had any credibility.

The specifics aren't important...what you are advocating is consistent with the idea of government regulation of human reproduction at some level for some reason(s), which is directly counter to any idea about a "woman's right" to make any and all reproductive choices as described by some members above. That was the entire purpose of this exercise.

That right to privacy cannot be defended as an absolute rule. A big part of the reason why the pro choice side of the abortion debate has steadily lost ground since the 70's, is because they tried to keep all the focus on the "right to choose" and avoid any mention of a fetus having its own interests and when its rights might have to be considered. When I mentioned late term abortion for the purpose of sex-selection previously, there were at least two responses that it might be wrong, but said the state should still not have the right to interfere...even when there is evidence from China and India that it skews population demographics, which is detrimental to society as a whole.