Do this test and find out where you stand in the political compass.


Here's my result:

Economic Left/Right: -6.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.00

And here's the graph.


This means I'm definitely a liberal socialist.

Interesting - I wonder how accurate the chart for significant political figures is.

Apparently I'm a liberal socialist as well, though not to the same degree as you.

Edit: Might as well.

Economic Left/Right: -5.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.41

Economic Left/Right: -5.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.62

I'm not terribly surprised. That poll seemed to have an agenda, though. The way some of those questions were phrased...hmm.

All leading questions. Never a good sign. And they seem to take themselves very seriously about 'demolishing' the 'myth' of the left-right scale, when the axis they use is widely acknowledged and has been for some time.

Anyhoo, I scored:

Economic Left/Right: -4.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.05

Economic Left/Right: 5.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 4.62

Economic Left/Right: -3.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.72

Economic Left/Right: -5.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.13

Economic Left/Right: -1.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.00

Intresting idea.

Burro Boskov

Economic Left/Right: -6.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.97

Funny. I thought I was quite conservative on that scale. Looks like I'm the most Liberal here. Fits I guess when I think of mine and Chili's past discussions.

Liberty above all.

Looking at those who posted their scores, it looks like we are all in the same Quadrant. Interesting ehh?

Burro Boskov

Flame isn't he's totally opposite us.

Thats 'cos hes a slayer. And the Slayer Symbol is the Saint George's Cross. And well know what they say about people who openly brand that cross....

I dont know actually, os unless its something not worth bringing up, i wouldnt mind knowing

Burro Boskov

They're all beer-soaked racist skinhead pot-bellied BNP-supporting b***ards who drive grubby white vans and attack little old ladies with big clubs.

No offence meant, of course.

Your forgot the football hooligan bit, but otherwise yeah, thats what I meant.

Economic Left/Right: -5.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 2.56

Interesting... well, not really.

How well you know us ;) :P

I don't think that was a particularly good poll at all...

Anyway, I scored:

Economic Left/Right: 1.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.85

I think that I'm a little further along towards the authoritarian side...and probably more of a rightist when it comes to economics.

Economic Left/Right: -7.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.64

Which I suppose makes me the most left-wing person on the site.

Hell, you're almost a commie... ^_^

I was almost perfectly centerist but swung on the x axis right about .5

Centerist Socially
Right Economically

^ Sounds like me

Economic Left/Right: -7.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.23


Guess I'm the most commie here.

The trouble with a left/right or libertarian/authoritarian scale is that it doesn't show when someone has an opinion that differs from the rest of his political leanings.


Here's an example: most liberals are pro-choice when it comes to abortion. But even though I'm very liberal, I'm also a moderate pro-life: I think abortion should only be used in cases of rape or incest, or when the pregnancy might threaten the mother's life, or if the baby will have an important malformation or handicap. After all, if two lovers don't want to have babies, it's their own responsibility to take steps to avoid it.


Edit: MY OPPOSITION TO ABORTION HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH MY BELIEF IN GOD, in case someone mentions it. This is a question of ethics, not one of religion. I'm sure there are many pro-life atheists out there.

Just out of curiosity, why incest?

Myself, I'd lay money there's a strong correlation between atheism and a 'pro-choice' view of the issue. Mainly because the anti-choice ('pro-life' is Christian propaganda... we are all pro-life, except for psychotic serial killers) arguments fall down remarkably quickly if you don't believe in some sort of 'soul', and atheists tend not to believe in that kind of thing.

In this world of billions of individuals, yes, I'm sure there are 'many' anti-choice atheists. But I'd also be very confident that they are a pretty small minority of atheists as a whole.

First off, I'm pro-life even for psychotic serial killers. I'm one of the most fanatical anti-capital-punishment people out there: if Hitler had been tried at Nuremberg and that I had been a member of the jury, I would have voted against his execution (though I would gladly have sent him to rot in a dark and dusty cell for the rest of his life).

Second: how does the lack of belief in a soul cause the fall of pro-life (I'll still use that word, for this reason) arguments? Explain please.

You seem to think that in the absence of a 'soul', life is worth less than if there were a soul. Would you kill someone and then defend your action by saying that you merely shot a bullet in the middle of a big pack of carbon-based cells?

You could of course argue that an unborn baby (or fetus, as you'll probably call it) is just a few organic tissues, but that's exactly what you were some 19 years ago. And now you've become an intelligent and cultured young man who studies physics, works to earn money and plays Warhammer. Not bad for 'a few organic tissues', huh?


Edit: If you have good pro-choice arguments, Chili, throw them here. I'm pretty sure I already have a counter-argument for every one of them.

.

If there is no concept of some sort of unchanging 'essence' of the individual, that is present from the moment of conception - a soul, spirit, or what have you - then one must admit that, in a very early-stage abortion, all one is 'killing' is a ball of cells barely more complex or self-aware than the microorganisms we kill by their thousands every time we clean the toilet bowl. In a somewhat later-stage abortion (but still within the legal time limit), one is killing a vole-sized foetus with no nervous system, no capacity to feel pain, no demonstrable self-awareness - when we lay down rat poison, we destroy creatures more self-aware, more able to feel pain, more alive in every sense of the word than the foetus you kill in that instance. The idea of a soul, even the subconscious application of that idea, is vital to anti-abortion thinking, because it is the only way to think that an embryo has the same rights and value as a born baby, or a fully-grown human being: believing that they all have a constant, unchanging spiritual component.

The only stance that can accept the scientific reality and still be anti-choice is one that is blatantly, flagrantly speciesist: because it has human DNA, that arbitrarily makes it special. Which just raises another question of degree: how human does something have to be to make it part of that special class? Shouldn't chimps, sharing 99.4% of our DNA, have more rights than, say, dolphins? And if someone is born with a significant mutation, then are they entitled to the same rights as a 'pure' human? If not, why not? It's our identity as members of the human species that gives us this special right, that authorises us to preserve a human blastocyst with the sentience and sapience of an amoeba while slaying rats, mice, flies, wasps etc. at will, isn't it? So where do you draw the line?

You bring up the argument from potential: that I myself was a blastocyst some 18-and-a-bit years ago. This is true. But, 118 years ago, a similar ball of cells was created that would not fit your argument... it developed to become the Fuhrer of Nazi Germany. 129 years ago, the egg that would become Josef Stalin was fertilised. 83 years ago, Robert Mugabe. I could go on, but I hope you get my point: we cannot argue from what something could become, because it could become anyone - a saint or a serial killer. A scientific genius or a brutal dictator. Or, perhaps, a disabled person in a vegetative state, with zero quality of life - indeed, only 'alive' through a technical definition of the word. The net potential, that is the sum of all the possible things that embryo could become, evaluated on a good-bad axis, is zero. Or, since at least one of its parents wish to have it aborted, possibly negative, as it is more likely than others to grow up in a negative environment.

Because of this bewildering variety of future potentials; because we cannot control or foresee all the variables, our system of ethics and reasoning does not work around what could be. When a mother decides to have a baby, there' s a chance that that baby could be seriously disabled, requiring such a great degree of care and effort that it indirectly prevents her from bringing any more children into the world, each of whom could be marvellous people if they were allowed to be conceived. That doesn't mean that people stop having babies. When I step out of the door later today, the first person I see could turn round and shoot me three times in the back of the head when I walk past them in the street. That doesn't mean I tackle them to the ground and search them for firearms, just in case - similarly, when I feel anger against someone, I could suffer a sudden psychotic episode and batter their head in with a blunt instrument. That doesn't mean I handcuff myself until I'm feeling less angry. We have to work on the here and now, not the there-and-then - particularly when we have no idea where 'there' is and exactly when 'then' will be. And what we have now is a ball of unthinking cells. If we 'kill' it, then we have killed something barely more complex than a bacterium, or, in the case of a more developed embryo, significantly less complex and less 'alive' than a rat. While it could , if allowed to develop, become a wonderful person one day, because we abort the embryo now does not mean we kill that person. It merely means we kill the embryo: a being that is physically incapable of self-awareness or suffering, and thus cannot be said to be harmed by being killed, except from the totally alien viewpoint of a fully-grown human trying to imagine their point of view. The problem with that, of course, is one you yourself pointed out in the religious discussion - you can't imagine nothingness, and before its brain and nervous system develop, that's what the embryo's point of view will be. So how can it be wrong to sacrifice it if it is endangering the interests of its fully-grown, sentient, sapient mother?

All this, of course, falls down if you believe the embryo is imbued with some sort of soul at the moment of conception, which is immortal and unchanging throughout the person's entire life - indeed, this is perhaps one of the big reasons that the Christian Right are so ardently 'pro-life', because they're very big on belief in the soul. But then, if you're going to retreat into supernaturalism, then the idea of rational debate of abortion has already been discarded.

That is what "it" is called, or, depending upon its/his/her age, an embryo. The phrase "unborn baby" doesn't, technically, make sense. It's not a baby until it's born. That's like calling a person a "living corpse" - being a corpse means that you're already dead.

And I still have my previous question: why allow abortion in cases of incest? Why even in cases of rape?

Yes, but where do you draw a line between a ball of cells and an human being? Does that mean that one day it's an aborted pregnancy, and the next it's a murder? What extraordinary thing happened to the fetus between those two days? Since you have a scientist's mind, you must surely have a taste for clear and accurate boundaries, but I don't think any scientist will ever be able to determine at which moment a fetus becomes human. Since you think there is no soul, you must also think that consciousness does not appear within a second, but forms itself over time.

You also seem to mean that killing something with no consciousness is not so bad. Then why would you be more horrified by the murder of a newborn baby or little child than by the murder of an intelligent and conscious adult? And does that mean that the lives of intelligent people are so much more important than the lives of mentally retarded people? That line of thinking sounds a little like eugenism.

Besides, if you justify abortion by saying that you're killing something that has no soul, the same could be said about all humans, after all. Does the fact of having no soul make our lives less valuable than if we had a soul? And as I said before: could a murder or a genocide be justified with that argument?

Of course. But I wanted to point out that an embryo must not just be seen as an amoebe-like lump of cells. It must be seen as a potential human. With counsciousness, just like you and me. What if your mother had aborted her pregnancy while you were a fetus? You wouldn't be there to think about the idea, of course. Scary, isn't it?

I said I'm a moderate pro-life, so I'm not going to call abortion 'murder'. I agree that killing a piece of organic tissue (i.e., embryo) is not nearly as bad as killing a full human being. But if you say we should consider the 'here and now' rather than the 'there and then', I'd like you to explain why killing a newborn baby is a crime: after all, you don't know whether the baby will become a nice person, a cruel dictator or a brain-dead and half-human thing with no consciousness: you said so yourself. So what's the big difference with killing the fetus? And as I said before: where do you draw the line between the lump of cells and the human being?

No worries, I'm not going to do that. :)


Bottom line: I'm not so fanatically pro-life, but hell... Contraception is so cheap and so easy to use... If you don't use it, why should the baby pay for your irresponsibility? Stopping the embryo from being even conceived is easier and morally much better than killing what will one day become human, don't you think?

Because the pregnancy was unvoluntary and isn't even the result of a lack of responsibility from the mother. Do you know a lot of rapists who use condoms?

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Arent the christian community against the use of condoms and the like? I have not read into this, so im not sure. Thats why im asking. :)

Oh and all this abortion thing, with those arguments: wouldnt mastubation be murder in that case? I mean, every seed is a potential human beeing, right? It´s a case of how far one is willing to push it.

And the question about incest and rape has not been aswered yet either (Ok, has been now). If I understood it right, those are the exceptions, yes? That would really be like chopping of ones own head. Saying its not ok here, but its ok there?

Just my two cents :). Intresting debate by the way. I rarely engage in these cos I lack the knowledge in the subjects :P .

This is the case with many pregnancies, not just in case of rape.

That's the Pope and his stupid zealots. They don't even know what they're talking about: they tell Africans not to use condoms, as if they didn't know that AIDS kills thousands of people every year in those countries. They're morons.

Some people are willing to push it that far. I don't.

After all, a seed doesn't have one chance out of a thousand to form a human being. But a twenty-weeks-old fetus starts to have pretty good chances to survive.

What if your parents hadn't had sex at that exact moment? You wouldn't be here to think about the idea of course. Scary, isn't it? And as Tyrion said, there are times when contraception doesn't work. Should the foetus be killed, or aborted, because of something it had no say in, from your point of view?

Exactly. You could go as far as to say that every time you have the opportunity to have sex, but don't - hell, every time you pass up the chance to rape somebody - you are effectively killing a potential human.

You say you're not willing to push it too far. How far is too far?

I did say in my post: its nervous system and/or brain developed to the point where it can be said to experience suffering and/or self-awareness to a significant degree. This is what the time limit for abortions in British law is based on, and I think the rest of the West as well.

You can’t be said to ‘murder’ something that is not aware of its own life and is not capable of suffering. Once it starts to tick those boxes, then you can start considering its welfare.

On the contrary: since I am a big fan of science, I have read into it a good deal, and what science shows us again and again is that, as long as you’re working on the macroscopic scale (i.e. above the level of atoms), nature loves continuums and positively hates absolute boundaries.

Furthermore, every scientist already knows at which moment a foetus becomes human. It’s the moment at which that foetus is conceived: the genetic material it contains remains unchanged for the entirety of that individual’s life, and contains the recipe for making a human being. It is the barcode of humanity. However, just because the foetus contains this unique information does not mean I will arbitrarily privilege it over, say, a born orang-utan, which is not human but is self-aware and capable of suffering. The blastocyst is undoubtedly human, but the value of its life at that point in time is roughly equivalent to that of an amoeba.

1. Because a newborn baby or little child is, as far as we know, as conscious and capable of suffering as an adult.
2. Because the newborn baby or little child has no means of self-defence or resistance to its murderer, and thus the possibility of mitigating circumstances – what under British law might be a manslaughter plea – are hugely reduced.
3. Because evolution has wired my brain to be protective of the young, as this makes my own genes more likely to be passed on.

This example has no relevance to the argument, as I hope I have just demonstrated.

A man lies in a coma on a hospital bed. He has been in this state since his birth: doctors state it is a medical certainty that he will remain so until his death. Brain scans, tests, and the best indications of medical science are that what you are looking at when you look at his bed-sore-ridden, pale and pudgy body is no more than a human vegetable, incapable of conscious thought, self-awareness, or suffering. While the mechanical processes of his body still maintain rudimentary functionality, he is brain-dead.

However, he has a healthy liver. Through no fault of his own, an eminent research doctor has developed a cancerous growth in his own liver. It is thought that it is possible to save his life, but to do so he requires a liver transplant. Only one suitable donor has been found: this is the disabled man on the hospital bed.

There is only one moral choice. Unless you believe in the soul, or irrationally privilege bearers of human DNA even when the value of their life is less than that of other species, then it is indefensible not to pull the plug on the vegetable and transfer his liver to the doctor, who could then go on to save many other healthy lives by his research. If you don’t agree, I’d like to see you construct a plausible counter-argument. Merely waving the red flag of eugenics vaguely in the direction of this line of thought is not constructive – it is rhetorical scaremongering, not logical debate.

You’ve missed my point entirely. To re-state it for you: without belief in the soul, it is very hard to accord an unchanging value to human life: that is, to believe that the life of a just-this-moment-fertilised egg has the same value as the life of a baby, or a 20-year-old person. Logical enquiry into the scientific facts of the matter reveal that the blastocyst or embryo in question has less self-awareness and less capacity for suffering than animals which we regularly kill for our own convenience, without the faintest hint of moral qualms (indeed, even animal rights activists probably do so, whenever they clean the toilet bowl). If it cannot suffer, and is not aware of its own existence, then who are we harming? And what grounds do we have to fight for its rights when we accord creatures to whom we must logically do much more harm to every day of our lives, and which have a far greater capacity to appreciate that harm, none of those rights?

No, let me stop you there. In Britain at least, an abortable embryo is not conscious. While I don’t claim to be an expert, I know enough biology to definitively state that a blastocyst and (I’m almost certain) an early-stage embryo has no functioning nervous system, no functioning brain and possesses, to all intents and purposes, the same degree of consciousness as a virus or bacterium – that is, none whatsoever. Zero consciousness. Not just less than that of a baby or adult, but none at all.

What if a different spermatozoa had fertilised ‘my’ egg? What if I had walked under a bus when I was two? What if, tomorrow, you clean the worktop in your family kitchen, and as a result kill a microorganism that would have killed another microorganism that turns out to be the progenitor of the first mutated bacterium that spawns a pandemic that wipes out 50% of the human population? We cannot control or predict even the intermediate future to any reliable degree, since tiny variations in the initial conditions of almost any scenario can produce enormous differences in the end result: that’s the essence of Chaos Theory. We have to base our decisions on the information we have at present, not the information we might have at some indeterminate point in the future. If we did make allowance for all this potential, then we would have to seal ourselves inside sterile containers and try very carefully not to move, just in case even the most insignificant of our actions were to set off one of the myriad chains of events beyond our control with negative consequences.

Killing a newborn baby is a crime because by killing it you cause it suffering: killing the baby is causing active harm to another self-aware being. Killing the foetus is not: it cannot suffer, it does not even know of its own existence, or indeed, anything at all. It is a true victimless crime. On the baby side of the scales, both common intuition and scientific evidence indicate with near-certainty that a baby possesses equal self-awareness and capacity for suffering to a grown human being.

To address your other question: I draw no line between the lump of cells and a human being, because I'm not in the business of imposing arbitrary divisions: indeed, thinking genetically, which is the only objective criterion for deciding, it is 100% human. The fertilised egg is 100% human. But I do draw a continuum of rights from said fertilised egg, which has none, through to Vegetable Charlie on his hospital bed, through to a fully conscious and self-aware ‘normal’ person. I draw this continuum of rights based on the capacity of their recipient to suffer, and to be aware of and define their own interests.

Because it’s not a baby, and is unable to ‘pay’ for anything. It’s a blastocyst, or an early-stage embryo, and it is physically incapable of suffering. Every day, people wilfully murder millions of microorganisms, in the name of making their house look clean. These microorganisms have the same level of self-awareness and the same capability for suffering as a blastocyst. Hey, if people don’t take the simple precaution of not leaving organic waste around, why should the bacteria pay for their irresponsibility? Or what about a headlouse, which actually has something approaching a nervous system? If people go around bringing their heads into contact with people with headlice, then why should the headlice pay for their irresponsibility? Nit combs and shampoo are instruments of mass murder!

Secondly, people aren’t always well-educated as to methods of contraception, and even if they are, should they be so hideously punished for making a simple mistake? One night’s error, and you are burdened with a child that you will have to support for the rest of your life? Alternatively, an abortion offers the chance to accept that you made a mistake and get on with your life, rather than accepting an actual baby as some kind of medieval penance for your irresponsibility.

Abortions do not encourage irresponsibility, either. The process of an abortion is invasive, potentially dangerous and, in many countries, expensive. It is not a pleasant experience, and one that should make anyone think twice about the actions that made them go through with it.

No. It is far superior from a utilitarian point of view, because it is much easier, cheaper and safer than an abortion. But the embryo’s potential is irrelevant. Everything has potential. That abandoned building across the street? With enough effort, it could be renovated and turned into an art gallery, or a museum, or a dance hall. That abandoned quarry? That has the potential to become a great outdoor swimming pool. The pile of rubble from the tower block they demolished? That has the potential to become a series of fascinating sculptures. But we don’t blame people for not making these things. Similarly, we can’t blame people for not giving birth to the baby that an embryo would become, as long as the process does not harm any conscious being – which it does not.

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EDITED:

And here was me remembering another discussion in which my own side of the debate was criticised by an individual whose username begins with an @ for making religites out to be 'stupid'.

And here is that same individual calling the majority of Catholics 'stupid zealots' and 'morons'. Amazing that people like myself would never use that language, and yet we are accused of being 'militant' and 'angry'.

Where is that point?

And if the fetus is going to have a self-awareness in a few days, what difference is there between killing it now or killing it a bit later? The fetus itself doesn't care, but I do. I think the notion of potential is important.

Just like you, I'd choose to take the liver from the brain-dead man. But there's a huge difference between a fetus and a brain-dead man: the fetus has the potential to become a self-conscious human being, while the brain-dead man is, as you said with such extraordinary tact, a 'vegetable'.

And there's also the fact that, in the case you exposed, it's a matter of life and death.

No one. If an asteroid had destroyed the Earth 4 billion years ago before life was even created, it wouldn't have harmed anyone. If I went back into the past with a time machine and killed Winston Churchill while he was still a baby, I wouldn't have harmed the rest of mankind. So I guess we can all agree on that point: killing a fetus without consciousness causes no harm.

But still...

Sorry, my sentence was badly made. I meant that the embryo is potentially a conscious human. I know the embryo isn't conscious, but it will become.

Well, let's call it an embryo. But a few months later, it would have been a baby. Opposition to abortion is based on the potential of what the embryo will become, but you don't admit the importance of potential.

Stop comparing an embryo with bacteria. Though they have the same level of awareness (0), the embryo will one day be conscious, contrarily to bacteria.

Chili, this is not about chaos theory. I just wanted to open your mind to the idea that, considering the millions of abortions every year, you might have been one of the aborted embryos. Imagining our non-existence is more terrifying than imagining the abortion of a pack of organic tissues without consciousness.

In a few words... yes. I'm sorry for them, but contrarily to you, I see the embryo as a potential consciousness rather than a mass of cells.

But not the same potential.

As I told Tyrion, masturbating isn't so bad, because an individual seed has very few chances to be one day a conscious being. Yet a fetus has much better chances.

I meant that zealots were stupid.

When I said 'zealots', I was talking about the most conservative people in Vatican.

And when I said 'morons', I was talking about those who oppose the use of condoms in Africa. Do you deny that they are morons?


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I don't categorically deny that some of them might be morons. However, the Catholic Church commands a huge following, and I'm pretty confident that, of that following, the majority actually follow the 'no contraception' imperative from the Vatican. I don't believe that they are all, therefore, morons. I say that they hold at least two beliefs that I think are ridiculously irrational and harmful, but in the same way that clever people can say stupid things, I don't believe that this makes all of them ridiculous, irrational or dangerous people. It's the notion of individual respect that Benedictus and I elaborated on in the Other Thread. I will describe the idea as moronic (indeed, I’ll go further: irrational, lunatic, dangerous, murderous, callous and nonsensical): I will not extend the same appellation to the individuals themselves until I’ve actually met them.

When the nervous system is developed enough to function. You seem to view sentience and sensation as some great mystery, but we do know of the biological mechanisms that give rise to them. Before these mechanisms are in place, it’s a pretty safe bet to say that the embryo is not capable of suffering or self-awareness.

If you want me to define a particular time after conception on the basis of my medical knowledge, I’m afraid I can’t provide you with that. I’m not a biologist, and I’m not in training to become one, either… physics is more my alley, and even then, I’m only an A-level student at the mo’. However, I can tell you what the point is deemed to be under British law (although not Northern Ireland, I think they have a different law there for some reason): that is up to 28 weeks after conception.

Uh, yes. This is why we have this funny little notion of time. Consider, for a moment, your statement with regards to an old, dying man:

“And if he’s going to be dead in a few weeks, what difference is there between executing the terms of his will now or a little bit later, when he’s ‘actually dead’?”

Or, with regards to any particular human:

“If this person is going to be dead in a few decades’ time, then what’s the difference between them dying then and now?”

In either case, and the original one, the difference is huge: the dead person, or the pre-conscious embryo, cannot be the recipient of harm, because the state they are in makes it logically impossible for any action with themselves as an object to harm them: they cannot suffer, they are not aware of their own state, and so they cannot be harmed, except in a purely physical sense: I’m sure that no-one would argue that when medical students cut up cadavers they are causing ‘harm’. But if we perform the same action – that is, causing bodily damage that leads to death, or distributing all their worldly goods amongst their relatives while they are still capable of suffering and aware of these events, then we are causing harm. If you were on your deathbed, I dare say you would be very distressed if your grandchildren started moving in and shifting all your furniture before you’d actually kicked the bucket. In the same way, the distinction is drawn between aborting the foetus before it is conscious – when it is not a valid recipient of harm – and murdering the foetus after it is conscious, when the action does in fact have a conscious victim.

In a way, I can’t believe I’m having to explain this to you. Do you not see the difference between destroying a being that can feel pain and is aware of its own destruction and destroying a being that is not even aware of its own existence, far less able to experience suffering?

If we’re going to talk about tact, I refer you back to the ‘Pope-following Catholics are morons’ comment.

As for the argument from potential: well, here you say it again, so I hope you’ll excuse me if I combine my rebuttal into one chunk rather than repeating myself:

If the asteroid had destroyed the Earth, the many fragments of rock and dust would, over time, have accumulated under the pull of gravity into a new Earth-like mass, which would have formed a new planet in the ‘Goldilocks zone’ that we currently inhabit, which might well have spawned strange and wondrous life forms that we can only imagine. And, far in that alternate future, on some alternate medium of communication, an intelligent species might be debating whether it was right for one of their three sexes to be allowed to empty their egg-sacs and kill the thousands of gestating larvae inside if the larvae were not yet conscious. If you went back with the time machine, it might well be that Churchill’s death as an infant in the late 19th century was the first step in a causal chain that caused Adolf Hitler to grow up as an ardent Communist who lived out his life in Austria without ever achieving much of note, and spent the vast majority of his days as a house-painter.

Killing a foetus without consciousness causes no harm. Furthermore, we have no control over the future which is influenced by whether the baby that could have grown from that embryo gets to have a life. There are a near-infinite number of possibilities, and for every one which is good or great, there will be those which are bad or positively vile. We cannot make assertions about whether a baby should or should not be brought into the world on the basis of what it could be: as I explained before, the net value of its potential must equal zero, or potentially lower: generally, if the parents wish to abort a foetus, then the child that it would become is not going to grow up in a happy household, as it was unwanted from the beginning. How many lives have been scarred by the confession of a father or mother: “You were an accident!”? Deciding not to have the baby hurts no-one. Forcing the parents to have the baby quite possibly drags two lives into misery and brings a third life into the midst of that misery.

I have yet to hear a persuasive argument for the importance of potential in this case, which is why I don’t accept it. You say potential is important, and yet you refuse to consider the philosophical ramifications of our incorporating what could become of things as a driving force in our system of ethics:

If we’re going to dismiss one of the most important discoveries about how the present affects the future, then how are we going to have any sort of debate about potential at all? Tiny changes can make the hugest differences. You kill a fly now, perhaps in a few hundred million years’ time the entirety of life on Earth is changed from how it would be if you had not killed that fly. A child falls under a train: perhaps in a few decades thousands of lives will have been lost or saved due to the fact that the adult that child would have become is not around. A baby is not born… well, I’m sure you get the picture. If we try to map out the path of potentials, the future soon becomes such a dizzyingly complicated and unpredictable place that we dare not do anything, for fear of the unknowable consequences. Maybe in arguing against abortion on this thread, you are initiating a causal chain at the atomic level that will result in one of the pro-life movement’s most prominent advocates developing terminal cancer, and a pro-choice viewpoint becoming accepted as law across the globe.

We have to let people determine their own value through their present and past actions, not assign them value based on what actions they might perform. To give you a less abstract example: you’re advocating we prevent people from aborting foetuses on the grounds of what the foetuses could become. On the same grounds, why don’t you advocate the police arresting angry people, or people with a fondness for alcohol, on the grounds of the crimes that these people could commit?

As for considering the idea that I could have been one of the aborted embryos: No. I couldn’t. It could be that the embryo that was in this reality to become myself was aborted, and that, in this alternate version of our world, I as I am now would not exist. However, that embryo was not me, and neither am I it. There is not a single cell in my body today that was in my body ten years ago: my personality, my abilities and my identity as an individual have been shaped by the development of my brain, which in that foetus was an inactive blob, or indeed, not present at all. Given different initial conditions, that foetus could have become someone radically different: indeed, at that stage in its development, it might have become anyone. It may be that in four thousand different universes, my parents aborted the foetus of Philip Hamilton, the renowned English Islamic fundamentalist and suicide bomber. In another twenty-one thousand, it may be that they did not, and a train full of innocent commuters paid the price. In another three and a half thousand, it may be that I converted to Catholicism, and spent the majority of my adult life in Africa, instructing people in the evils of contraception and how best to avoid them. The actions we take can and will have consequences far outweighing the value of our own lives. We cannot predict these consequences, we can only observe them and try to piece together the causal web after they have occurred. Any given child might cause more harm than good, might be better off not being born than being born. In fact, on a purely pragmatic scale, if we have to choose a bias, not being born is better: there’s a huge overpopulation problem looming in the not-so-distant future, and lower birth rates is a harmless way of staving it off. But the main point goes back to Chaos Theory, and a critical examination of what ‘potential’ really is – can you really just slap a label saying ‘has potential’ on a foetus, and then automatically assume that this is a good thing? Do you not have to examine the implications of that potential – and the reasons why potential obliges us to let it be born? This is what I’ve gone into here.

I would point out in advance that “it should be given a chance” is not a valid argument: remember, in the here and now, it is not conscious. It has no rights, including the right to be given a chance. To assign it that right is to draw upon its potential again, which is to set up an infinite regression in which a foetus should be given a chance because it has the potential to become a good person, which it should be given a chance to achieve because it has the potential to become a good person, which it should be given the chance to achieve because… and so on ad infinitum.

So you’d sacrifice the parents’ concrete, present well-being for the benefit of a potential consciousness? The details of which you can have no knowledge? I thought you were a fan of Jesus’? He was very big on forgiveness for ones’ mistakes, you know. This hard line of yours is a bit more Old Testament: “you’ve made your mistake, so this is your punishment, biatches”.

And yet, mathematically, it does have a chance. A small one, but a chance nonetheless: it has an iota of the much-vaunted ‘potential’. Does this mean that masturbation is, in the @ztech empire, immoral?

Weird... All my family is catholic (both sides, including every single uncle, grandmother and great-aunt), and yet I had never heard about Vatican's anti-contraception policy until recently. And when I heard from it, it didn't come from anyone of my family.

Okay then, if you insist. Telling AIDS-infected Africans not to use condoms is a moronic, irrational, dangerous, murderous, callous and nonsensical idea, but this is not the case of the people who profess this idea. However, those people don't know what they're talking about: most of them have never gone to Africa. They're not idiots, but I'll gladly call them ignorant. And I'm sure even you cannot deny they are ignorant.

<_<

You're comparing an apple to an UFO, Chili.

I didn't say abortion was harmful. I understand your point: it's true that abortion isn't harmful for anyone. But it's not a question of harming. It's about refusing someone the right to live. True, that someone will never actually be conscious if you kill him/her soon enough, so no one actually suffers. But if you spared that someone, I'm sure he/she would enjoy being alive. In other words: abortion does not make anyone suffer, but it denies some people the sweetness of life.

And even if life isnt sweet... well, a crappy life is a million times better than no life at all.

You're alive. Isn't that enough to convince you of the importance of potential? Are you implying that the embryo you were 19 years ago is unimportant?

I never spoke about punishing the parents. I spoke about not punishing an innocent. And if that means unvoluntarily punishing the parents, that's too bad for them.

And I'm not a fan of Jesus. I just like some parts of his message, that's all.

Nope, because even if you don't masturbate, millions of your seeds will be wasted over time anyway. And that's part of the natural order of things. It's not the same for a fetus: the fetus is meant to live and has good chances to live.


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Excuse me? I think we're getting back to your insistence that everything has to have a purpose, a belief that you've never adequately supported. You can't use that as an argument against abortion.

Actually, I would wager that a lot of them are making the argument that a death due to AIDS is preferable to an eternity in Hell, which would of course be caused by the use of contraception and the waste of that 'potential life'.

Actually, it seemed to me that he was pointing out a flaw in your reasoning. It's exactly the same logic, applied to a different situation.

And if the situation is that a condom broke, or that the birth control pills just didn't work, or one of any number of other feasible situations in which they were responsible, and got pregnant anyway? You're punishing two (or three) innocents so as not to 'punish' - that's a terrible word choice by the way, implying that the foetus is going to suffer by the action - another 'innocent' who isn't aware of it anyway.

Not if you spend all of your time having sex with fertile females, in the hopes of impregnating them. Refer back to Thragka's point in regards to this.

1. What's so terrible about having children?
2. As I mentioned before, I never say the foetus was going to suffer. You're just denying a half-formed human being the right to live and develop a consciousness.


In fact, I think 'abortion on demand' should be legal for the very first weeks of pregnancy, when the embryo's chances to survive are still relatively thin. But after some time, when the embryo has high chances to live, it becomes immoral in my opinion.

I would like to say at this juncture that I think @ztech is outlining some fine reasoning behind his viewpoint as well as Chili and others.

I for one believe abortion is in many cases (unless death of the mother is a real possibility, rape, etc.) an suboptimal act at best given the alternative options such as adoption. That said I will choose not to show my hand in terms of my faith or lack thereof.

I believe firmly in the separation of "the church" and "the state" is the optimal way to run a country. Therefore I firmly believe, more firmly than any other viewpoints I have expressed in this post that abortion should be legal in my country.

It is not the place of the state to dictate the beliefs of its populace through law. The law in my country is created to ensure the protection of property, liberty, and the orderly conduct of governmental business. Since legalized-abortion does not cause disruption in the social fabric in the same way as legalized-murder I do not believe it should be legislated against.

If the parents are in a position where they can't afford to raise it properly, or it will affect the lifestyle they want, plenty. Likewise, just having a child by accident without planning for it can have huge impact on quality of life, as well as the relationship between the parents.