LearningIsFun brings up a couple of interesting statements from the last post.
Didn't you notice that your original post is entirely an appeal to possible hypocrisy? Wasn't that whole point? You wanted to get people to see the inconsistency between their feelings on abortion and their feelings about the thought experiment?
I don't think it's the same thing. I'm appealing to consistency of position, and illustrating it by removing the age-ist bias, which you display as well. You are a bigot.
I, personally, feel differently about the two scenarios because my moral sense doesn't equate the life of a fetus with that of an adult.
Who cares what you feel, though? How about an argument why they're different? You know, evidence?
I'm genuinely surprised that you would not save the innocent people by killing the person systematically murdering them
It would be murder on God's Law, yes, as murder is defined as the unjustified taking of human life. But it wouldn't be murder on the law of the land, and I as an individual don't have the authority given to me by God to just overturn that law whenever I want towards others. It's the same reason I don't kill aborticians or blow up their abortuaries - that's not my role and I don't have authority to do it.
(As an aside, if someone told me they were the one who killed an abortician, I'm not at all confident I'd turn them in. I'd lean towards keeping mum and plausible deniability, and would have to be persuaded to turn the person in. Same if I witnessed him setting fire to the abortuary.)
You'd probably only have to kill about a dozen doctors to make the rest too scared to continue.
That's true, and it's tempting, and I mean that. But like I said, I don't have the authority to dole out death as I see fit; only in self-defense, just war, or as part of a legitimate gov't capital punishment would I have the God-given authority and permission to do so.
By the way, I'm not advocating violence. I'm advocating that pro-lifers stop equating abortion with murder,
I understood what you were getting at, but I appreciate the clarification.
6 comments:
If changing the name from "hypocrisy" to "inconsistency of position" works for you, then please apply it my argument as well. My intentions were the same--to show that you would act differently in the two situations, but I failed, because apparently you would act the same.
In your new list of justifications for killing, I noticed that you left out the "in defense of others who are defenseless" justification that you included on your original chart. Do you no longer feel that you have the authority to defend the defenseless?
Anyway, I'm glad that the bible doesn't give people the authority to kill to enforce moral standards, because this country would be in terrible shape if it did.
For one thing, you changed the conditions of the question.
For another, it started when you said: "You don't actually value the life of a fetus as much as you value the life of an adult human."
You're directing the issue toward ME, whereas my post was directing the issue towards the ISSUE, asking why one is said to be OK while another is not.
in defense of others who are defenseless
I didn't think of that when I wrote it, now that you bring it up. Should've qualified it. My mistake. I was referring to the defenseless around me, who depend on me for protection or who are under danger, in which I'm involved. I suppose there are quite a few scenarios one could bring up to examine that, and that's a topic for an ethics textbook, to be sure. So I'm going to say here that I may not have all the answers on that, but I do know that on atheism there's zero reason to think that any of them are right. Or wrong. They just ARE.
Finally, I'd like to know your standard by which you judge "shape" and moral value, since you've made a moral statement.
Let me fix that.
...this country would be in terrible shape to me if it did.
Now it's a subjective moral statement that may or may not resonate with your own feelings. If you subjectively evaluate that outcome to be bad like I do, then maybe me pointing out that it is a consequence of too much biblical authority will make you feel glad for the same thing. If you disagree, and you would find that outcome preferable, then maybe my statement will make you wish that God had granted you more authority.
Think of it like us looking at a sunset together and I say, "Wow, that's beautiful!" Is the appropriate response really to turn to me and ask me to defend the beauty of the sunset and the ugliness of cockroaches? Would you then declare "I have no reason to listen to you!" when I say that I can't defend objective beauty. It's a subjective claim. I meant it as nothing more. That doesn't mean that subjective statements are pointless to make or that they are never persuasive. You just have to be careful not confuse them with truth claims like "the earth is flat".
Read the scenario I linked to, please.
http://rhoblogy.blogspot.com/2007/12/scenario.html
I suppose that the problem is that “pro-lifers” equate “abortion with murder” since everyone should.
The reason that healthy, beautiful, innocent and defenseless human babies are brutally murdered by the millions is that the people who want the abortions know that the babies are human beings, human beings with which they do not want to deal.
Also, FYI: the abortician body count is 7 or 8 in three decades in both the USA and Canada combined.
I was referring to the defenseless around me, who depend on me for protection or who are under danger, in which I'm involved.
Who is my neighbor? Lk 10:29
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