Should An Atheist Be Pro Life?

[SquareOne]

I would like to open this topic up for discussion.  I so doing, I appreciate that for many people, probably including members here, abortion and reproductive rights generally is a deeply affecting and personally relevant topic.  I will therefore endeavour to approach it with sensitivity, honesty, and openness.  I do not seek to attack anyone, or portion out judgement.

 

Please note that my experience is mostly based on the law in the United Kingdom, though I have a reasonable background knowledge of the US history too.

 

Should an Atheist be Pro Life?

 

I would call myself pro-life.

 

This is because I do not accept the moral legitimacy of the State sanctioning abortion.

 

This is because I believe that all laws should be founded on a rational, non-arbitrary justifications.

 

And, I do not believe that current state-sanctioned abortion law is entirely founded upon rational, non-arbitrary justifications.

 

For me the starting point is that human life should be protected.  We are cosmic miracles: unlikely blessings from what appears to be a cold and unconscious universe.

 

For me, this is the justification for making murder and manslaughter crimes.  Though I would accept there are other legitimate supplementary justifications for murder and manslaughter being crimes, it is the preciousness of life itself that we should seek to preserve.

 

Therefore, I derive the general principle that all human life is, for want of a better word - sacred.  That is to say, worthy of protection in its own right.

 

When a state creates an abortion law, it draw an arbitrary line: the number of weeks up until which a foetus may be aborted.  At present, I understand this line to be 24 weeks in the United Kingdom.  It is presumably variable elsewhere.

 

The alleged justification for this cut-off point, is that after 24 weeks a foetus may survive outside its mothers womb, if born prematurely.

 

For me, this justification is fallacious.  The premature babies can only survive with outside intervention from the best medical care humanity can offer.  Even then, far from all actually survive such premature birth.

 

Indeed - no baby can survive on its own without outside intervention.

 

Indeed, up until the age of at least two years old (and I am being generous there), it is not thinkable that a human being could survive unaided without external care.

 

The time from which a premature baby can survive is also variable according to the year and country in which it is born, based on medical advancement in those particular circumstances.  It is, in the grand scheme of things, arbitrary.  It does not latch onto to a moral absolute.

 

...

 

For me, as long as the cut-off point for abortion is arbitrary, then the entire law is arbitrary, and unjustifiable.  I cannot reconcile it intellectually, and therefore must take a pro-life position.

 

I invite all opposite views.  I know I will probably be deluged.

 

I do not pertain to be on a moral or intellectual high ground.

 

At best, I would say that nobody can have absolute moral authority in this area.  And for that reason we should cling to what is for me the most salient moral principle to the issue - the preciousness of human life.

[Guest MadameX]

Does not compute.

 

Whatever. Go ahead, atheists have no 'should.'

 

PS yes of course the line is arbitrary. But as Oscar Wilde said, morality, like art, means the line has to be drawn somewhere.

 

Sorry you are an absolutist. Life is complicated, nature is unconcerned with ideology, and there just is not going to any comportment with things being the way you want them to be because you want them to be that way.

 

And excuse me for saying but, duh. Laws are not very rational or non-arbitrary.

 

Can I ask how old you are?

[wndwalkr99]

 

I am pro-choice.

No fetus is welcome in my uterus, or in my life, at any time. Were I to get pregnant, I would abort. That could potentially mean the end of my marriage, but so be it. I have had my tubes tied to hopefully prevent this issue, but nevertheless I keep cash in a separate account of my own, plus a passport and a credit card with a high limit in case I should need to travel.

 

I am pro-choice because, to paraphrase Sam Harris, morality is concerned with the alleviation of suffering. If a fetus had not yet developed a nervous system, then it cannot suffer. I see no moral problem with the destruction of something that can it suffer. That said, it would alleviate my own suffering.

 

I see no reason not to extend this courtesy to others.

 

I am undecided whether I think that a fetus should be aborted after the development of the nervous system. I am leaning towards yes, I am ok with it, because an unwanted pregnancy is about the worst thing I could think of and I would rather kill myself than to through with it.

 

SquareOne, do you have a problem with abortion in the case of a health problem wherein the pregnant woman may die or otherwise suffer serious complications if the pregnancy continues? There have been at least two recent cases, one in Great Britain and one in Central America, in which the woman was denied an abortion and died as a result.

[Akheia]

Your argument is a non-starter. It doesn't matter how much of a miracle *you* think life is; not everybody shares your opinion, and what amounts to a religious opinion shouldn't be binding upon others. I don't think that any opinion overrides a person's right to decide how her body gets used. My body, my vagina, my uterus, my rules. Someone tries to insert something into or remove something from my body against my will, I get to stand my ground.

 

United States law has already established that people can't be coerced into donating organs against their will, and it has already accepted that a woman's privacy overrides the government's interest in destroying her self-rule. Overturning that would require overturning some major precedents.

 

If you happen to feel that abortion is wrong, then by all means don't have an abortion, and make sure your partners know you think you have a say in what would happen if they got pregnant against their wills. But I would urge you to really think about how you would feel if someone told you that you'd have to donate your blood and organs, get hooked up via IV to a random stranger for 9 months, endure excruciating pain and lifelong complications, possibly lose your primary relationship and even your job, and even risk your own death--all against your will. Think about how that'd feel, to be herded into something like that, and to get told that it's being done to you because someone knows better than you do what to do with your personal body, that you are going through all of that because someone else thinks LIFE IS PRECIOUS--except your life of course. You're just the incubator, and hey, it's only 9 months, slut, you were asking for it, suck it up, stare at the ceiling and count the tiles, it'll be over soon...

 

In short: believe whatever you want, just don't try to remove my bodily rights and invade my privacy.

[JadedAtheist]

I guess you could say I have a weak pro-life position.

 

By that I mean, in a general sense I am against abortion unless it a baby vs mother's life scenario whereby I would hold the mother has the greater right to life than the baby. I would also be inclined to allow abortion for fetuses that have severe defects. 

 

A common pro-choice deflection is of course "if you don't like abortions, don't have one" but the issue is that if abortion = killing of human life then the person who sees it this way sees the deflection of "don't like, don't do it" no different to (yes, I am aware of what I am committing here) "hey, if you don't like killing Jews, nobody is making you do it".

 

The fact is, even if we assume that it is a human life that we're dealing with we still have someone who this fetus depends on to survive. This argument illustrates the issue well. If it can't survive on its own, and the 'life-giver' doesn't want it attached to them anymore, what then?

 

My position as a "pro-lifer" is that abortion should be made available (and even that makes me cringe) but that things should be put it place that would make it rarely used (like better access to contraceptives, better financial support for soon to be parents, better education about sex and perhaps even changes to culture and things of that nature).

[Akheia]

I am pro-choice.

No fetus is welcome in my uterus, or in my life, at any time. Were I to get pregnant, I would abort. That could potentially mean the end of my marriage, but so be it. I have had my tubes tied to hopefully prevent this issue, but nevertheless I keep cash in a separate account of my own, plus a passport and a credit card with a high limit in case I should need to travel.

 

I am undecided whether I think that a fetus should be aborted after the development of the nervous system. I am leaning towards yes, I am ok with it, because an unwanted pregnancy is about the worst thing I could think of and I would rather kill myself than to through with it.

 

You brought up a lot of interesting points but these two really resonated with me. I'm sterilized, but my husband and I have already had the discussion about what would happen were I to get pregnant involuntarily. I would never date, let alone fuck, someone who didn't fully agree with my right to do whatever I want with a pregnancy, but I became pro-choice during a previous marriage to a fundamentalist, and I remember how horrifying it was to be with a man who did not accept my rights in such a personal matter, how terrifying it was after I left him and did actually get pregnant a few months later--holy fuck, I wouldn't wish his behavior when he found out on my worst enemy. He scared me so much. He was like some Gorean BDSM freak. I think it's both wise and good that you've got contingency plans. Uppity women bring out the worst in fundie husbands.

 

If a fetus is viable, I'm okay *personally* with delivering it to the state, but I wouldn't make that mandatory. To me, the heartbeat or CNS or whatever else is irrelevant; what's relevant is that another entity is sucking on my body without my consent. Doesn't matter if it's a college student trespassing in my kitchen or a cute little pink-frocked baby gurgling and cooing 1/4" clump of cells that might become a fetus in a few weeks in my belly. Life is precious, but there is nothing magical about a fetus to me. I flush eggs every single month; men ejaculate millions of sperm constantly. If one meets the other and fertilizes it, there's a damn good chance the result will be flushed out of me too. Big whoop! What's more precious to me is what happens with the life happening out here in the big bad world. Preciousness happens because we make it happen, not because of some accident of conception. But when someone else decides he knows all about what makes life precious, I get a little concerned, because my vision doesn't seem to often coincide with the person trying to ram his ideas down my throat. And when someone else decides he knows exactly what is sacred, combined with a sure and certain knowledge of what's best for everybody, that's when things get scary.

[JadedAtheist]

But I would urge you to really think about how you would feel if someone told you that you'd have to donate your blood and organs, get hooked up via IV to a random stranger for 9 months, endure excruciating pain and lifelong complications, possibly lose your primary relationship and even your job, and even risk your own death--all against your willBut I would urge you to really think about how you would feel if someone told you that you'd have to donate your blood and organs, get hooked up via IV to a random stranger for 9 months, endure excruciating pain and lifelong complications, possibly lose your primary relationship and even your job, and even risk your own death--all against your will.

That's not an entirely accurate illustration I think. Getting pregnant either happens because you knew the risks but went 'fuck it', or you did the right thing and used protection/contraception but it failed (assuming consensual sex of course). I guess it's a bit closer to playing Russian roulette, and then being pissy with the outcome which is being hooked via IV to this other patient et cetera. Does this in of itself mean that one should keep the fetus? No, of course not. It once again all depends on one's view of the fetus itself.

[mymistake]

This is because I believe that all laws should be founded on a rational, non-arbitrary justifications.

 

And, I do not believe that current state-sanctioned abortion law is entirely founded upon rational, non-arbitrary justifications.

 

For me the starting point is that human life should be protected.  We are cosmic miracles: unlikely blessings from what appears to be a cold and unconscious universe.

 

Arbitrary

 

For me, this is the justification for making murder and manslaughter crimes.  

 

But you did not make these things into crimes.  Something else did before you were born.

 

Though I would accept there are other legitimate supplementary justifications for murder and manslaughter being crimes, it is the preciousness of life itself that we should seek to preserve.

 

Arbitrary

 

Therefore, I derive the general principle that all human life is, for want of a better word - sacred.  That is to say, worthy of protection in its own right.

 

Arbitrary

 

When a state creates an abortion law, it draw an arbitrary line: the number of weeks up until which a foetus may be aborted.  At present, I understand this line to be 24 weeks in the United Kingdom.  It is presumably variable elsewhere.

 

The alleged justification for this cut-off point, is that after 24 weeks a foetus may survive outside its mothers womb, if born prematurely.

 

For me, this justification is fallacious.  The premature babies can only survive with outside intervention from the best medical care humanity can offer.  Even then, far from all actually survive such premature birth.

 

Indeed - no baby can survive on its own without outside intervention.

 

Indeed, up until the age of at least two years old (and I am being generous there), it is not thinkable that a human being could survive unaided without external care.

 

The time from which a premature baby can survive is also variable according to the year and country in which it is born, based on medical advancement in those particular circumstances.  It is, in the grand scheme of things, arbitrary.  It does not latch onto to a moral absolute.

 

Just like your assertions about how presious human life is and how we must save it.

 

...

 

For me, as long as the cut-off point for abortion is arbitrary, then the entire law is arbitrary, and unjustifiable.  I cannot reconcile it intellectually, and therefore must take a pro-life position.

 

Lets go down to the local orphanage and assign orphans to you, starting with the oldest, until your income per family member is diluted down to the level of a farmer in rural China.  Let's make it so you can't disown any of them and they all have a claim on your estate.  After all, the lives of those orphans are sacred.

 

You see the pro-life position imposes on many people without justification for that imposition.  You are forcing people to carry children to term and then forcing them to raise those children. 

[SquareOne]

Thank you for replying, I appreciate you all taking the time.

 

MadameX

 

 

 

Go ahead, atheists have no 'should.'

 

How can you at one point shout me down for absolutism, but at the same time make an absolute statement such as this?

 

Nonetheless, I entirely agree with you that objectively speaking there are no "should"s.

 

My own views are of course subjective, and I would not try to claim otherwise.  If I ever appear to claim my views are objective, I must humble ask you to forgive my poor communication.  (If it does seem that I really am claiming objective morality, do feel free to explain why though, I accept that you might be correct.  I am often wrong.)

 

 

 

Life is complicated, nature is unconcerned with ideology, and there just is not going to any comportment with things being the way you want them to be because you want them to be that way.

 

Again, I entirely agree that nature is unconcerned with ideology.

 

But the State is.

 

So if the state is going to make a law, then -in my subjective opinion- it ought to back it up with consistent, non-arbitrary reasons. Do you agree with this?

 

If so, do you deny or agree that the 24-week rule is arbitrary?

 

For me, It is the arbitrariness of the law that I disagree with.

 

wndwlkr

 

 

 

I am pro-choice because, to paraphrase Sam Harris, morality is concerned with the alleviation of suffering.

 

It seems to me - correct me if I am wrong - that by that logic if a grown human being could be killed instantly and painlessly and without foreknowledge, that would not be immoral.

 

 

 

 

I am undecided whether I think that a fetus should be aborted after the development of the nervous system. I am leaning towards yes, I am ok with it, because an unwanted pregnancy is about the worst thing I could think of and I would rather kill myself than to through with it.

 

I respect your opinion here.  I honestly and sincerely do.

 

However, for me, this is an opinion which varies from person to person, and therefore any law based on this would be arbitrary at best; and does not solve the problem of the arbitrariness of the law.

 

 

 

SquareOne, do you have a problem with abortion in the case of a health problem wherein the pregnant woman may die or otherwise suffer serious complications if the pregnancy continues?

 

This is a very important point, and I was waiting for somebody to raise it - rather than complicate my initial post.

 

For me the argument about the preciousness of life argument gives the mother prescience here.  If she is going to die, and the child with her, better to save her life.

This is an area in which I would argue it is possible to create a non-arbitrary law.

 

There is a clearly definable test here.  For example, is there an X% chance that the mother and/or child will die if the pregnancy is not terminated.

 

It is complicated though if the mother could die and the baby survive.  Then I suppose one is faced with a balancing act.  Which life is more valuable.  Its tough.  And I am not claiming to have all the answers, by any stretch!  But I don't accept that anybody else does either.

 

Akheia

 

 

It doesn't matter how much of a miracle *you* think life is; not everybody shares your opinion, and what amounts to a religious opinion shouldn't be binding upon others.

 

I agree.  As I replied above to MadameX.  I would refer you to my comments there.

 

 

 

United States law has already established that people can't be coerced into donating organs against their will, and it has already accepted that a woman's privacy overrides the government's interest in destroying her self-rule. Overturning that would require overturning some major precedents.

 

Here you raise a matter of constitutional law.  I am not concerned in this post with the validity of the ruling in Roe v Wade.  I am concerned about what the law should be, not what it can be according to the constitution of any given state.

 

Regarding your analogy.  I do not accept that it is the same thing as abortion.  Comparable, but not the same.

 

However, I would ask you to examine whether it is consistent for you to argue that my opinion doesn't matter in your first paragraph, and then appeal to my personal feelings in your third paragraph.  Do you think we should make laws based on subjective opinion or not?   I don't think you can have your cake and eat it.

[Akheia]

 

But I would urge you to really think about how you would feel if someone told you that you'd have to donate your blood and organs, get hooked up via IV to a random stranger for 9 months, endure excruciating pain and lifelong complications, possibly lose your primary relationship and even your job, and even risk your own death--all against your willBut I would urge you to really think about how you would feel if someone told you that you'd have to donate your blood and organs, get hooked up via IV to a random stranger for 9 months, endure excruciating pain and lifelong complications, possibly lose your primary relationship and even your job, and even risk your own death--all against your will.

That's not an entirely accurate illustration I think. Getting pregnant either happens because you knew the risks but went 'fuck it', or you did the right thing and used protection/contraception but it failed (assuming consensual sex of course). I guess it's a bit closer to playing Russian roulette, and then being pissy with the outcome which is being hooked via IV to this other patient et cetera. Does this in of itself mean that one should keep the fetus? No, of course not. It once again all depends on one's view of the fetus itself.

 

It doesn't matter what the pregnant person did to cause the situation; what matters is that someone's body is being imposed upon. A rape victim is not to blame if she wears "slutty" clothing, right? You don't think that emergency care should be withheld from people who knew the risks and still decided to drive their car to work that day and got in an accident, right? And why does it matter if the sex was consensual? Do you cut some slack for someone who needs an abortion for "virtuous" reasons? Wow. So babies are the penalty for being slutty?

 

In the case I cited above wherein the US decided that someone cannot be forced to donate organs, here is what happened: a guy was really sick and needed an organ transplant. His entire extended family took tests to see if any of them were compatible and could donate it. One turned out to be a match. But the matching dude decided in the end not to take the medical risks and the pain and donate the organ. The sick dude sued him, saying he knew what he was getting into when he took the test and that taking the test was a tacit agreement to giving the organ, so now the matching relative, in his opinion, should be forced and held down in the hospital to donate the organ he'd promised. The court disagreed, thankfully! Would you say this relative should have been forced to go through with it? Or is it more like sex, when a woman has the right to withdraw consent at any time regardless of what she'd said or done earlier to indicate she was cool with the sex?

 

As to SquareOne: "However, I would ask you to examine whether it is consistent for you to argue that my opinion doesn't matter in your first paragraph, and then appeal to my personal feelings in your third paragraph.  Do you think we should make laws based on subjective opinion or not?   I don't think you can have your cake and eat."

 

I wasn't. I'm illustrating a point about your subjective opinion that fetuses are magical. They aren't. What is horrifying is that if a legal system does decide to make fetuses magical, the real and lasting impact on women's lives will run about like I described. That feeling of being a rat in a cage, forced to incubate against your will, which you clearly didn't understand above? That's the feeling a woman gets when she realizes she's been hijacked. All your high-flown magical talk doesn't compare to the simple reality of realizing that you're pregnant, you don't want to be, you're not in a situation where you can handle it, and that. Fetus. Needs. To. Come. Out. Fucking. NOW. This is why we joke that forced-birth women (and men, as at least one study's shown) are just one unplanned pregnancy away from an abortion. Thankfully, laws in civilized countries are not based on subjective opinion but upon the complexities of human rights, and situations like that don't happen except in nations where subjective opinions do in fact become laws--like the Middle East.

[SquareOne]

mymistake

 

I would of course accept that everything I have said is my opinion.  I probably did not say that clearly enough to begin with, though I hope I have addressed it more fully in my first reply.

 

You seem to be saying that it is inconsistent for me to hold what is, in the grand scheme of things, and arbitrary opinion about something, and then complain that the law connected to that thing is arbitrary.  That is a very good point, and I welcome it.  I will have to think about that.  In my opinion - you could well be right.

 

 

I do have to disagree with what you said here though:

 

your assertions about how presious human life is and how we must save it.  //

 

I never said that we should save all human life.  In fact, I did not even say that the state should not end human life.  I said that the state should not be arbitrary in the way in which it elects to end it.

 

Lets go down to the local orphanage and assign orphans to you, starting with the oldest, until your income per family member is diluted down to the level of a farmer in rural China.  Let's make it so you can't disown any of them and they all have a claim on your estate.  After all, the lives of those orphans are sacred.

 

You see the pro-life position imposes on many people without justification for that imposition.  You are forcing people to carry children to term and then forcing them to raise those children. 

 

This seems to be founded on your misconception of my opinion that we should save all human life.  Since I do not hold that opinion, this analogy need not be rebuffed.

 

However, I do believe that society has a role to play in caring for each other; if not necessarily in the deliberately exaggerated way that you describe.  This is of course - just my opinion.

 

 

 

I'm illustrating a point about your subjective opinion that fetuses are magical. They aren't

 

I never said that foetuses are magical.  That is a comically absurd misrepresentation of what I said.

 

What I said is that my opinion is that human life is precious, and it follows from that that the state should have some consistent pattern for destroying it, not one that is arbitrary.  Bring me a non-arbitrary abortion law, and you've got a solid argument.

 

Thankfully, laws in civilized countries are not based on subjective opinion but upon the complexities of human rights,

 

Human rights are subjective.  Your argument is invalid.

[Akheia]

Could you please explain why you think that human rights are subjective? And why you think that my argument is invalid because civilized countries try hard not to make their laws based upon fairy tales like religion or "life begins at conception"?

[JadedAtheist]

It doesn't matter what the pregnant person did to cause the situation; what matters is that someone's body is being imposed upon. A rape victim is not to blame if she wears "slutty" clothing, right? You don't think that emergency care should be withheld from people who knew the risks and still decided to drive their car to work that day and got in an accident, right? And why does it matter if the sex was consensual? Do you cut some slack for someone who needs an abortion for "virtuous" reasons? Wow. So babies are the penalty for being slutty? 

My illustration wouldn't work if rape was included, that is why I mentioned consensual sex. Rape would be akin to the example you gave. That was the reason.

 

As for victim 'blaming' (I don't like the term blame), not everyone that is a victim of something is completely 'blameless' and they shouldn't have to be either. Just because you could have prevented something doesn't mean you deserve its consequences but I am not going to pretend either that the jackass who went into Iran multiple times to evangelise is a 'blameless' victim for example. That does not mean I believe he deserves to die or any other such consequence; it's merely an acknowledgement that he had the foresight to be able to prevent this particular predicament and he ignored it.

 

So, if my point here is to be understood. I am not saying "If you get pregnant it's your punishment for having sex" rather my comment is merely "Since having sex can result in pregnancy, even if you use protection you should consider well before having it". To reword it again, I guess I mean it's to consider the weight of act you're committing. Even if you have no moral qualms about abortion, it can still be something tough to do mentally.  My mother had no moral issue with abortion for example, but after she had one she still got distressed, upset and cried (and I mean over a long period). The consequences even for a pro-choice person can be grave. This is a potential outcome for some, that is my point essentially in full. 

[SquareOne]

Akheia 

 

Could you please explain why you think that human rights are subjective? And why you think that my argument is invalid because civilized countries try hard not to make their laws based upon fairy tales like religion or "life begins at conception"?

 

Human rights are subjective because they are determined by human beings without recourse to any external, objective authority.

 

When I said your argument was invalid, what I meant was that the sentence was self-contradicting if human rights are subjective.

[Akheia]

JA: I can agree with that in principle. I don't like blaming people either. To me it comes down to it not mattering how the fetus got there; what matters is if the person in question wants it in her body or not. I do view pregnancy much like I view sex. Is the pregnancy consensual? Then let it be there. Is it not consensual? Then nobody has the right to make her keep it there if she doesn't want it there. I was a little sad too when I got an abortion, but I came to realize that was cultural indoctrination; I was sad, simply put, because society said I should be sad. In truth I was nothing but relieved and thankful that I had the option to end a pregnancy I wasn't in any way capable of dealing with. I think a lot of women would feel way less sad if they realized that 1/3 of women have had 'em. We're not all walking around weeping inside over it.

 

Sq1: I guess at the end of the day, we disagree about that. Human rights are determined to the best of our ability and to the best of our reason. They do shift with time, but they don't tend to regress. If anything we keep adding stuff on to the existing body of what we know about human rights. And so I don't think they're subjective. My right to decline my body's use by another person is inviolable. Pesky things, these rights, aren't they? If you do manage to criminalize abortion, you don't imagine women won't know deep down that their bodily sovereignty is being violated and get abortions anyway? It's been going on in Ireland ever since the Church got their mitts on the laws there. The terrifying truth about the "pro-life" platform is that if you get in bed with those diseased asshats, you're signing off on a raft of regressive social policies that are all but guaranteed to increase the number of abortions. One would hope that an atheist would be sensitive to the overwhelming religiosity of the "pro-life" platform's leadership and be very wary indeed of trying to dictate his moral views onto others for precisely that reason, just as one would hope that an atheist would take a more rational approach to a subject that is categorically guaranteed never, ever to directly and personally affect his life.

 

The rational approach, in case you're curious, would be this: Ironically enough, lowering abortion rates has nothing whatsoever to do with making abortion criminal. Rather, it is to make abortion easy to access, to make contraception easily obtained, to give women adequate tools to determine their futures via sex education and an end to rape culture, and introduce social policies that remove the financial concerns so many women cite as the reason they had an abortion. I think England's doing a good job with that last one, which is probably a lot to do with their low abortion rate compared to that of the US (17 per thousand vs 20 per thousand, according to UN figures from 2003-2005), but Finland and Norway, which have even fewer restrictions than we do and even more social protections in place for women, enjoys a rate about half that--11 and 15 respectively! Why do you suppose that would be?

[wndwalkr99]

It seems to me - correct me if I am wrong - that by that logic if a grown human being could be killed instantly and painlessly and without foreknowledge, that would not be immoral.

That's a big if, and I do not see how it coincides with anything approaching reality. I am an atheist because I am unable to function in realms other than that of reality. You may have to find someone who can function in the world of fiction and fantasy to answer that question.

 

 

Sorry for all the edits. Trying to get the HTML quote to work properly on the iPad.

[mymistake]

mymistake

 

I would of course accept that everything I have said is my opinion.  I probably did not say that clearly enough to begin with, though I hope I have addressed it more fully in my first reply.

 

You seem to be saying that it is inconsistent for me to hold what is, in the grand scheme of things, and arbitrary opinion about something, and then complain that the law connected to that thing is arbitrary.  That is a very good point, and I welcome it.  I will have to think about that.  In my opinion - you could well be right.

 

 

I do have to disagree with what you said here though:

 

your assertions about how presious human life is and how we must save it.  //

 

I never said that we should save all human life.  In fact, I did not even say that the state should not end human life.  I said that the state should not be arbitrary in the way in which it elects to end it.

 

>

Lets go down to the local orphanage and assign orphans to you, starting with the oldest, until your income per family member is diluted down to the level of a farmer in rural China.  Let's make it so you can't disown any of them and they all have a claim on your estate.  After all, the lives of those orphans are sacred.

 

You see the pro-life position imposes on many people without justification for that imposition.  You are forcing people to carry children to term and then forcing them to raise those children. 

 

This seems to be founded on your misconception of my opinion that we should save all human life.  Since I do not hold that opinion, this analogy need not be rebuffed.

 

However, I do believe that society has a role to play in caring for each other; if not necessarily in the deliberately exaggerated way that you describe.  This is of course - just my opinion.

 

Okay I need you to clarify and expand upon: "For me the starting point is that human life should be protected." and "Therefore, I derive the general principle that all human life is, for want of a better word - sacred."

 

What exactly did you mean by that?  You do claim all human life is sacred.  By what mechanism should we decide which of these sacred lives are to be saved and which can be ended?  And of course you have raised the problem of justifications being arbitrary so that will be the first filter we use.

 

 

(Akheia)

I'm illustrating a point about your subjective opinion that fetuses are magical. They aren't

 

I never said that foetuses are magical.  That is a comically absurd misrepresentation of what I said.

 

What I said is that my opinion is that human life is precious, and it follows from that that the state should have some consistent pattern for destroying it, not one that is arbitrary.  Bring me a non-arbitrary abortion law, and you've got a solid argument.

 

Shouldn't you first demonstrate that human life is precious?  That we (and so many others around the world) are have this disagreement that the opinion is not universal.  

 

 

(Akheia)

Thankfully, laws in civilized countries are not based on subjective opinion but upon the complexities of human rights,

 

Human rights are subjective.  Your argument is invalid.

 

And that is the problem of using 'arbitrary' as a filter.  I think some laws have to be arbitrary.  Being arbitrary in itself does not make a law or rule bad.  Some laws must be arbitrary in order that they can be enforced.  We do not allow the required arbitrary nature force us to live in lawless chaos.

[R. S. Martin]

Some good answers here to SquareOne. My question is whether SquareOne is actually an atheist or if we've got a religious person in the guise of an atheist. I ask because his posts sound like religious arguments to me.

[SquareOne]

my mistake

 

I said above that I need to think about what you said initially.  It may affect my view.  Maybe you are right that I shouldn't be holding an objection to arbitrariness if everything is arbitrary.  Therefore the things I said to Akheia in the same reply may be subject to revision as well.

 

 

 

Shouldn't you first demonstrate that human life is precious?  That we (and so many others around the world) are have this disagreement that the opinion is not universal.  

 

I assume you meant "That we (and so many others around the world) are have this disagreement [is evidence that] that the opinion is not universal."  <<- I'm not being smarmy, I'm just checking I've comprehended the typo correctly?

 

Assuming I have ->> Of course the opinion that human live is not a universal opinion.  Opinions are almost by their definition not universal.  I'm never going to be able to objectively prove that human live is "sacred" or "precious".  I think I will prefer to say precious because it has less of the religious connotation.

 

 

 

Okay I need you to clarify and expand upon: "For me the starting point is that human life should be protected." and "Therefore, I derive the general principle that all human life is, for want of a better word - sacred."

 

What exactly did you mean by that?  You do claim all human life is sacred.  By what mechanism should we decide which of these sacred lives are to be saved and which can be ended?  And of course you have raised the problem of justifications being arbitrary so that will be the first filter we use.

 

I'm not proposing a mechanism.  I'm just objecting to the current one.

 

I am still thinking about your objections to my objections of arbitrariness though, so I'm going to have to come back to you on that.

[mymistake]

We are animals.

 

The animal kindgom has many examples of animals killing their own kind.

 

Some animals have customs and punish their own kind for breaking those customs.

 

Humans organize themselves into countries with with ultimate power usually determined by either voting or violence.

 

Those countries create laws that determine when they will police and punish their own people.

 

Conclusion:

Laws are arbitrary by nature.

[SquareOne]

Some good answers here to SquareOne. My question is whether SquareOne is actually an atheist or if we've got a religious person in the guise of an atheist. I ask because his posts sound like religious arguments to me.

 

 

R.S. Martin

 

I really am an atheist.  Read my posting history if you like, see what you think.  Obviously there's no way I can prove it, and I'm not going to try to.

 

I'm quite blatantly not making any religious arguments.  At least, I'm not relying on God.  If you consider my arguments to be religious in nature, then you are of course entitled to your opinion, and please feel free to point them out to me.  I'd hate to be religious about this.

 

Can't really say much more in reply than that.

[SquareOne]

Laws are arbitrary by nature.

 

I agree with you in the broadest sense.

 

But as a practical matter, we don't just make up arbitrary laws, do we?  They are created by a process of human reasoning and discussion, and we attempt to base our laws on fixed ideas.  The 24-week cut off point is doubly arbitrary, in that it is not fixed on anything logical.

[Akheia]

MM, I've hit my quota for the day, but I'd be upvoting the shit out of you if I had any left. I'm trying to show a little restraint here so I don't come off as wanting to fangirl my boobs in your face but holy fuck you do break it down don't you dude? I don't think Sq1 has shown that rights are subjective or arbitrary. Maybe I'm still misunderstanding how he's using the terms. I don't think that human rights are subjective; rather, they are the best that humanity can determine to allow people to live freely without impinging on the free living of others. We have a sort of body of rights in our collective heads about what is and isn't a human right, which we add stuff to from time to time. Some situations and groups get rights added to that body of rights, but I don't remember a time when rights were removed from it without there being a justified outcry. So if he wants women's rights to be stripped from them upon impregnation, he's going to have to bring a better game than this to justify it.

 

RS: I have not yet seen an atheist forced-birth stance that wasn't super-religious-sounding, that didn't rely upon dogma or subjective opinion, that didn't distort or deny simple science and reality. We might abandon the outer trappings of religion, but some of us take a little longer to leave the indoctrination and deeper programming behind.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

I'm an atheist I guess you can say, I don't believe in a supernatural, life after death, etc... Then again.... the entire question has died in the back of my mind, its become irrelevant to me. This issue, has never had relevance to my religious belief. Even as a believer, I had rational reasons for being anti-abortion (let's for the sake of honesty stop calling it prochoice/prolife/etc....),

 

Am I still against abortion? I don't like it at all. Though I see it as a necessary evil. Think about it this way.....

 

When a woman gets an abortion, there are usually 2 big reasons, the inability to care for the child (financially or emotionally), or the woman might die from having one. As far as using it as birthcontrol, if a woman is just having unprotected sex with people and not trying to protect herself from having a child, do you want her to have a kid? As far as putting a child up for adoption, that's a way to make a child develope emotional issues as well. A lack of attachment to a parent figure can be psychologically damaging to a child if they don't have a parent figure from infant days to childhood. So why fill up orphanages? How do we pay for this?

 

I don't like abortion. Don't get me wrong. But there are good reasons to keep it.

[SquareOne]

Can a third party please address this?

 

I don't think Sq1 has shown that rights are subjective or arbitrary. Maybe I'm still misunderstanding how he's using the terms. I don't think that human rights are subjective; rather, they are the best that humanity can determine to allow people to live freely without impinging on the free living of others. We have a sort of body of rights in our collective heads about what is and isn't a human right, which we add stuff to from time to time.

 

What you have described is subjective.  It is an opinion which moves with time.  It doesn't matter whether you think it gets better with time.  In fact, the fact that it changes with time is evidence of its subjectivity.

 

Objective things are constant and unchanging.

 

 

 

RS: I have not yet seen an atheist forced-birth stance that wasn't super-religious-sounding, that didn't rely upon dogma or subjective opinion, that didn't distort or deny simple science and reality. We might abandon the outer trappings of religion, but some of us take a little longer to leave the indoctrination and deeper programming behind.

 

I think that was directed at me.  I am relying upon subjective opinion, and so are you.

 

I have not distorted science or reality.

 

You are mis-characterizing me, and I think that is unfair.