[thedarkknight]

(08-01-2015 05:04 AM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  

(08-01-2015 03:30 AM)thedarkknight Wrote:  

(07-31-2015 06:13 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

I would say there is no such thing as Natural Law.

There is nothing in this world besides "Might Makes Right".

"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

I hate to say this but I think you're right. Shit world, man.

lol

So says "thedarknight."

Here's something for you to chew on: Your illusions make your reality.

I'm googling that as I type....

[thedarkknight]

(08-01-2015 05:04 AM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  

(08-01-2015 03:30 AM)thedarkknight Wrote:  

(07-31-2015 06:13 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

I would say there is no such thing as Natural Law.

There is nothing in this world besides "Might Makes Right".

"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

I hate to say this but I think you're right. Shit world, man.

lol

So says "thedarknight."

Here's something for you to chew on: Your illusions make your reality.

Well played. I get what you're saying. I take it on board.

[iknowexactly]

What the OP was talking about was the Social Contract, sort of the opposite of Natural Law.

When a new male lion becomes alpha he kills the cubs of previous alpha, bringing the females into estrus so he will have more offspring sooner. THAT'S natural law-- murder by the powerful.

Most people don't really like having murder happening around them, so they agree on laws to prevent it to the degree they prefer.
That's people making a social contract.

[Enigma]

(08-01-2015 05:14 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(08-01-2015 04:45 AM)Enigma Wrote:  

(08-01-2015 12:22 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

^ Isn't that always the case?

Murder is always against the law, whether it is seen or not.

Just because you are not caught and punished doesn't mean you didn't break the law.

That applies to both natural law and positive law. Observed law of 'keeping the peace' and law decreed by a wise and benevolent king should be the same, only the enforcement differs.

Your test for telling whether something was natural law was whether it was punished or not.

My point is that just because something isn't punished/seen doesn't mean it's not against the law.

I'm not really following the rest of your argument because it's not really relevant to what I posted.

[Phoenix]

You said 'then it's fine..?'. Fine can be interpreted in a number of ways, and I attempted to respond to it.

[TooFineAPoint]

(08-01-2015 04:23 PM)iknowexactly Wrote:  

What the OP was talking about was the Social Contract, sort of the opposite of Natural Law.

When a new male lion becomes alpha he kills the cubs of previous alpha, bringing the females into estrus so he will have more offspring sooner. THAT'S natural law-- murder by the powerful.

Most people don't really like having murder happening around them, so they agree on laws to prevent it to the degree they prefer.
That's people making a social contract.

I don't believe the OP was talking about a social contract at all.

What is the contract, exactly?
Did I sign it?
What are the terms?
May I see and/or review the contract?
Under what situation(s) in the contract null and void?

[Phoenix]

^ Exactly. 'Social contract' is like 'social justice': nebulous sophist trickery. Obviously it's absurd and immoral that people can be born into contracts. The 13th amendment at least addressed the most severe manifestation of this immoral belief.

[Enigma]

(08-02-2015 02:45 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

You said 'then it's fine..?'. Fine can be interpreted in a number of ways, and I attempted to respond to it.

I said "fine" in the context of a conversation about whether something is or isn't against the law.

Fine meaning "not against the law", i.e., okay, acceptable, legal.

[Phoenix]

Well that's just the issue Legal and OK (moral) are not the same thing.

[Enigma]

Just forget it, man. My post was made in the context of what I quoted. I'm not even sure what you're arguing anymore.

[Sonsowey]

(07-31-2015 08:05 PM)thegreenman Wrote:  

Sonsowey: The notion that "might makes right"... you can't REALLY believe that. Lemme ask you a simple question:

"Would you want to live in a world where everyone followed your philosophy?"

A world in which there was no intrinsic sense of moral guidance, and where everyone took your saying to heart?

I think if you found yourself in such a world, you'd want out quickly.

Don't confuse "is" and "ought".

I am not saying that I wish the world were based on "might makes right", I am saying I think it IS based on "might makes right".

[thegreenman]

(08-02-2015 11:24 AM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

(07-31-2015 08:05 PM)thegreenman Wrote:  

Sonsowey: The notion that "might makes right"... you can't REALLY believe that. Lemme ask you a simple question:

"Would you want to live in a world where everyone followed your philosophy?"

A world in which there was no intrinsic sense of moral guidance, and where everyone took your saying to heart?

I think if you found yourself in such a world, you'd want out quickly.

Don't confuse "is" and "ought".

I am not saying that I wish the world were based on "might makes right", I am saying I think it IS based on "might makes right".

Well yes, that does seem to be the case. However, "might makes right" is not law - it's what happens in spite of law.

In my city, Baltimore, there was a recent rash of riots. The people who looted and burned, were certainly not following the law. They did, however, get away with it. But does that make it lawful? Of course not.

You can think of "the way the world currently works" as a great big, giant, planet-wide riot. Yes, they've been getting away with it, but that doesn't make it lawful.

Even though this riot has been going on for thousands of years, we can still quell it. In fact, the longer it goes on, the more people grow tired of it.

[turkishcandy]

There is no such thing as the life of an unborn child. Life begins with birth. Therefore the comparison of abortion to murder is inaccurate. Better compare death penalty to murder.

You can argue that there is such thing as the ''soul'' of an unborn child and have a religious debate. But ''life'' and ''unborn'' contradict each other.

[Phoenix]

(08-03-2015 01:22 PM)turkishcandy Wrote:  

Life begins with birth.

Nope. Birth is a physical movement of your body, like getting off a bus. Life begins at conception.

• Distinct physical body
• Consisting of N>0 cells sharing all the same genome
• Where that genome is unique
• Where that genome is human
• Where those cells are undergoing cellular respiration
  

Equals living person.

I've yet to see someone pro-abortion rebut this. So far they just ignore it, sidestep it, or talk over the top of it.

[turkishcandy]

(08-03-2015 01:28 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(08-03-2015 01:22 PM)turkishcandy Wrote:  

Life begins with birth.

Nope. Birth is a physical movement of your body, like getting off a bus. Life begins at conception.

• Distinct physical body
• Consisting of N>0 cells sharing all the same genome
• Where that genome is unique
• Where that genome is human
• Where those cells are undergoing cellular respiration
  

Equals living person.

I've yet to see someone pro-abortion rebut this. So far they just ignore it, sidestep it, or talk over the top of it.

According to your criterias, a person who has just died is alive and will be alive for hours.

Before birth, it's just a living organism. The word life bears legal consequences. In the eyes of the law life begins with birth.

[Phoenix]

(08-03-2015 01:47 PM)turkishcandy Wrote:  

According to your criterias, a person who has just died is alive and will be alive for hours.

This isn't rebuttal, it's merely requesting more detail and accuracy. Sure, to be more accurate, 'living' means something like 'odds are below X% that Y% of the bodies cells are going to cease cellular respiration within Z minutes'. This is just sidestepping.

(08-03-2015 01:47 PM)turkishcandy Wrote:  

Before birth, it's just a living organism. The word life bears legal consequences. In the eyes of the law life begins with birth.

Legal is only relevant to consequences, it is not relevant to morals. Slavery was legal, due to the immorality of the states that enforced those laws, not due to the morality of slavery.
Yes it is a living organism, specifically: a human.

[turkishcandy]

(08-03-2015 01:55 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(08-03-2015 01:47 PM)turkishcandy Wrote:  

According to your criterias, a person who has just died is alive and will be alive for hours.

This isn't rebuttal, it's merely requesting more detail and accuracy. Sure, to be more accurate, 'living' means something like 'odds are below X% that Y% of the bodies cells are going to cease cellular respiration within Z minutes'. This is just sidestepping.

You shouldn't be able to sidestep, you have to draw a very clear line. It's murder you are talking about. If we consider pre-birth life, abortion should be murder both in human law and natural law. The line is very clear, it's the moment when the baby is detached from its mother.

If you are arguing otherwise, give me a definition of life that makes more sense than 'odds are below X% that Y% of the bodies cells are going to cease cellular respiration within Z minutes'.

[Phoenix]

(08-03-2015 02:06 PM)turkishcandy Wrote:  

You shouldn't be able to sidestep, you have to draw a very clear line. It's murder you are talking about. If we consider pre-birth life, abortion should be murder both in human law and natural law. The line is very clear, it's the moment when the baby is detached from its mother.

If you are arguing otherwise, give me a definition of life that makes more sense than 'odds are below X% that Y% of the bodies cells are going to cease cellular respiration within Z minutes'.

1. It is impossible to restrict sidestepping in an argument. You can only point it out that the counter-party is doing so.
2. The clarity of this line doesn't affect the moral result, since it applies to all persons. It is irrelevant to the specific topic of fetuses and abortions. If your argument is "because 'life' is fuzzy, killing doesn't exist", this applies to someone 50 years old as much as it does to someone 5 days old. Your demands that I clarify this line (which even doctors would debate in an age of ICUs), merely detract from the argument.
3. You have said that it is 'very clear' that the line of life [beginning] is when the baby is detached from its mother, but given no reasons why that should be defined life. You could just as soon say that it begins when the 'baby says its first word', or when 'it opens its eyes' or when 'its heart starts beating'. All of this is arbitrary. To say that "so long as the baby is attached to the mother, it's life doesn't exist", would have to mean that stabbing it to death after it is born and crying isn't murder (so long as the umbilical cord isn't cut), nor is killing a grown man so long as you sow him to his mother first. It is obvious that life begins on the transition from 0 cells to 1, no earlier and no later.

If a person, as detailed in the bulletpoints, comes into existence (first instance of the criteria for person-hood being met, i.e. conception), and then all its cells stop cellular respiration, it has died. If something deliberately and forcefully caused that death, it has been killed. If that thing was a person, it was a homicide. I see no way to weasel out of this logic.

That said, the question under natural law seems to be: "does it breach the peace?". That is perhaps a more interesting question to debate. I think it's pretty unambiguous that abortion is homicide (with malice aforethought), but whether it is murder (i.e. a malice aforethought homicide that breaches the peace) is probably a more intricate question.

[PapayaTapper]

(08-03-2015 01:28 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(08-03-2015 01:22 PM)turkishcandy Wrote:  

Life begins with birth.

Nope. Birth is a physical movement of your body, like getting off a bus. Life begins at conception.

• Distinct physical body
• Consisting of N>0 cells sharing all the same genome
• Where that genome is unique
• Where that genome is human
• Where those cells are undergoing cellular respiration
  

Equals living person.

That life begins at birth is absurd. I've never understood why people cant seem to get this. The infinity of time before conception or existence is essentially death. Conception is essentially the clock starting the immutable countdown to eventual non existence (or death) again. Life is that finite time period in between the two "non existences".

Whether one is pro-life or pro abortion is irrelevant. The definition of "life" should be seemingly obvious

[thegreenman]

Ah, abortion. Quite the tricky topic.

On one hand, I can see where someone is coming from when they say a microscopic clump of cells, a blastocyst, isn't a person.

But on the other hand, it's quite obvious that a fully formed fetus, which PET scans show having neural activity, including dreams, is indeed a person.

So in my opinion, the upgrade from "life" to "personhood" happens somewhere in between those two stages.

Because it isn't just "killing" that makes abortion unlawful - it's the killing of a PERSON. We kill stuff all the time. And while animals do have rights (such as the right to not be subjected to types of suffering that don't occur in the wild, and the right to not be killed for fun), killing an animal is not quite the same thing as killing a person.

So what distinguishes a biological creature from a person?

Humans are, after all, animals. We are of the genus "homo sapiens." But we also have something EXTRA, in addition to animalhood - we have personhood.

A good possibility for where personhood starts would be the commencement of neural activity. If we can pinpoint the exact development stage where a fetus begins to have neural activity, then perhaps that's the beginning of personhood, and consequently, the point at which abortion transitions from "taking life" to "taking a person's life."

Or... perhaps... it's based on having a soul.

I've read that Tibetan Buddhists consider 49 days post-conception to be the point at which the soul enters the body. And on the other side of the world, the ancient Egyptians believed that the pineal gland is the organ through which the soul communicates with the body. And to bring it all together, modern science (Rick Strassman) notes that the pineal gland first appears in a developing fetus at... you guessed it... around 49 days post-conception.

Something to ponder.

[poutsara]

(08-03-2015 01:47 PM)turkishcandy Wrote:  

Nope. Birth is a physical movement of your body, like getting off a bus. Life begins at conception.

• Distinct physical body
• Consisting of N>0 cells sharing all the same genome
• Where that genome is unique
• Where that genome is human
• Where those cells are undergoing cellular respiration
  

Equals living person.

I've yet to see someone pro-abortion rebut this. So far they just ignore it, sidestep it, or talk over the top of it.

not sure that makes sense

[Samseau]

(08-03-2015 09:54 AM)thegreenman Wrote:  

(08-02-2015 11:24 AM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

(07-31-2015 08:05 PM)thegreenman Wrote:  

Sonsowey: The notion that "might makes right"... you can't REALLY believe that. Lemme ask you a simple question:

"Would you want to live in a world where everyone followed your philosophy?"

A world in which there was no intrinsic sense of moral guidance, and where everyone took your saying to heart?

I think if you found yourself in such a world, you'd want out quickly.

Don't confuse "is" and "ought".

I am not saying that I wish the world were based on "might makes right", I am saying I think it IS based on "might makes right".

Well yes, that does seem to be the case. However, "might makes right" is not law - it's what happens in spite of law.

In my city, Baltimore, there was a recent rash of riots. The people who looted and burned, were certainly not following the law. They did, however, get away with it. But does that make it lawful? Of course not.

You can think of "the way the world currently works" as a great big, giant, planet-wide riot. Yes, they've been getting away with it, but that doesn't make it lawful.

Even though this riot has been going on for thousands of years, we can still quell it. In fact, the longer it goes on, the more people grow tired of it.

I agree with both Sonso and Greenman here. Might certainly makes right but that doesn't mean there isn't an objective morality that exists outside of us.

I believe the strongest evidence for objective morality is the fact that all cultures across the globe value and punish similar things:

Value:

- The creation of life
- Beautiful women
- Abundant health
- Respecting one's neighbors

Punish:

- Theft
- Murder
- Rape
- Fraud


And these are just short lists. However, the key distinction to remember is that the only way to enforce such rules is through superior might. If evil people take control with superior force, then it doesn't matter if what they do is wrong. No one will be able to stop or punish them. Hence a righteous man must be a strong man, or, "The effeminate shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven."