Thursday, February 21, 2008

Not murdering your baby means you're a bad person



Just a few reflections on the comments on this post entitled "Aborting Downs Syndrome babies is a moral obligation?"

I'm coming to find out that James White's comment about the nature of blog comboxes as "Internet Ignorance Aggregators" is right on the money, but sometimes they are instructive in their amazing blindness and foolishness.

Here's one comment that was appropriately bludgeoned by Peter Pike:

Could you please spare us your sanctimonious drivel?
It also says "thou shalt not kill".
Who listens to that? Do you?
After you jump down from your abortion soap box and someone asks you about a 20 year old boy killed in a nefarious conflict where the benefit is that a few Americans have their pockets greased, do you have a tendency to look down at your shoes?

And then a brilliant illustration of what I've often said on this very blog and elsewhere (like here, here, here, here, here, and here:

I bet Peter Singer would agree that such abortions should be obligatory.
The foundations of ethics are arbitrary. Ranting at each other over arbitrary things is like arguing over what your favorite color is.

Finally, one atheist who types like he really has his worldview figured out (though, as the Triablogger said, $1000 says he doesn't live that way):

I'm not saying I'm happy about this fact of arbitrariness, but I'm not going to lose my nerve like you and believe that ethical principles 'exist' the same way that, say, numbers exist. If you try to rob me, of course I'll try to stop you (but I wouldn't reproach you), but this impulse to stop you is only a subjective emotion in my head. It does not correspond to anything outside of that. If I ever behave 'ethically', I'm merely following the path of least psychological resistance. Don't try any of your Francis Schaeffer tricks with me. I'm not afraid to stare the ethical vacuum in the face.

All those objections are appropriately dealt with in the post's combox so I won't rehash them here, but in honor of Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, I just invite you to reflect on how pathetically lame the arguments FOR abortion are. Whether political, moral, psychological, practical, none of them work! If you think they do, I invite you to peruse Randy Alcorn's book on life.

But anyone is welcome to present their best argument for abortion in the combox. Grace us with your best one; maybe you can convince someone that murdering a baby is perfectly OK!

2 comments:

  1. Hi Rhoblogy,

    I appreciate your commenting in the combox at my Triablogue article. I rarely actually offer responses to the comments following my posts due to a very tight schedule and because it is usually a waste of time. Nevertheless, I appreciate your responses and God bless!

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  2. Oh, I doubt we can convince anybody that murdering a baby is okay. Clearly that's not really the question, though; the question is, at what point does one define a developing human as possessing individual rights, and are those rights an "all or nothing" affair? The problem is that we have different perspectives on this, and it's not something that arguments can resolve.

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When posting anonymously, please, just pick a name and stick with it. Not "Anonymous". At minimum, "Anonymous1", just for identification.