The Question of Jake or John [W:35]

[FutureIncoming]

I said I didnt understand it. You asked why and I said it was inadequate...why do you think I didnt understand it?

I just searched most of this Thread for the word "understand", and don't see you saying that until after you claimed my answer was inadequate, not before. Thus I still cannot find the question you claimed I answered such that you declared my answer inadequate.

Really? You just want to avoid it now.

I'm reasonably willing to try again; I just need to know what the question was.

 

[FutureIncoming]

So then why didnt you 'believe it' when I wrote it, more than once....in the 2 posts I listed?

Because you were lumping ALL abortion opponents together, falsely. Some are not in the "brainwashed" category; some are only in the "indoctrinated" category and can be reasoned-with. Which is why I bother continuing trying to explain all the relevant facts to them.

Again, your personal conclusions on this are so rigid that you truly seem unable to process any information that doesnt specifically conform to your own ways of articulationg and presenting it. You dont seem in the least open to new information...and dont even recognize that which does conform to your beliefs. :doh

Try again! I'm not the one lumping the entirety of the opposition into a single category.

 

[FutureIncoming]

That's pretty much what I wrote. You demonstrate again that you do not actually process what you read.

You are describing yourself, not me, because cuticle cells are 100% living human organisms, and no abortion opponent opposes killing them during manicures and pedicures.

And it still does not refute what I wrote after it:

That's really all many people need to hold their beliefs on abortion. So again, it comes down to the subjective, no matter what 'facts' or 'truths' you manage to confront them with.

They are provably applying their beliefs inconsistently. In-essence that means they don't really know what they are talking about, and thus can be ignored.

To these people, the "human" animal is elevated beyond others and no scientific facts will change their minds.

And like I said, cuticle cells are 100% living human animal organisms, trivially different from zygotes, yet abortion opponents don't at all oppose the killing of those organisms by the hundred-at-a-time, routinely, in beauty salons all around the world.

 

[FutureIncoming]

And I and others here have told you repeatedly that 'the physical realm' is not the only thing that many pro-life supporters base their position on.

Right; they base their position on what they have been told to believe, told in childhood before learning skepticism, by humans able to lie for their own benefit, who also didn't support their tellings with verifiable evidence.

Answer to question: yes.

Very good, except for the part about them explaining to others why such a reason to oppose abortion should be believed.

 

[Lursa]

Then you misunderstood the breadth of application of the proof that prejudice is Objectively wrong. The rationale for prejudice is entirely irrelevant when prejudice, the action (can't be said to meaningfully exist if no action whatsoever is associated with it), is Objectively wrong.


Ah, but wrong actions can be punished. For example, if prejudicial actions (including promoting prejudice) were made felonies, then anyone convicted of prejudice could lose the right to vote, and by some such means abortion opponents could throughout the future blather all they wanted, utterly uselessly.


If they can be rendered impotent, so what?

So, none of that readily applicable or even refuting the lack of usefulness in debating abortion.

You like to write alot...you should try writing effectively instead.

 

[Lursa]

Because you were lumping ALL abortion opponents together, falsely. Some are not in the "brainwashed" category; some are only in the "indoctrinated" category and can be reasoned-with. Which is why I bother continuing trying to explain all the relevant facts to them.


Try again! I'm not the one lumping the entirety of the opposition into a single category.

So, you dont quite have the answers to the *full* abortion debate then?

btw, I'd like to see some disctinctions (that matter) between 'brainwashed' and 'indoctrinated.'

 

[Lursa]

You are describing yourself, not me, because cuticle cells are 100% living human organisms, and no abortion opponent opposes killing them during manicures and pedicures.


They are provably applying their beliefs inconsistently. In-essence that means they don't really know what they are talking about, and thus can be ignored.


And like I said, cuticle cells are 100% living human animal organisms, trivially different from zygotes, yet abortion opponents don't at all oppose the killing of those organisms by the hundred-at-a-time, routinely, in beauty salons all around the world.

Not a single thing you mentioned effects pro-life people at all whom base their position on their beliefs. All completely irrelevant.

 

[Lursa]

Right; they base their position on what they have been told to believe, told in childhood before learning skepticism, by humans able to lie for their own benefit, who also didn't support their tellings with verifiable evidence.

Very good, except for the part about them explaining to others why such a reason to oppose abortion should be believed.

Yes they do. Both. And successfully in many cases. Hence we still have an abortion 'debate' which you have not provided a solution to.

Except that they are not lying. If they believe in God and His Word...how will you prove to them they or anyone is lying about how He and they value human life at any stage?

 

[FutureIncoming]

Since many pro-life people do not distinguish between potential and actual when it comes to a human life, your position, based on your opinion in weighting the criteria for potential and actual, will not affect their beliefs.

You don't know what you are talking about, and I can prove it. First of all, the Overall Abortion Debate is the only place where "potential" is treated like the "actual"; in all other considerations, the two things are so-obviously different that they always get treated differently.

Factually, they can reduce it to human life, period. And they are correct. They can choose to value those states, unborn and born, potential and actual, equally, valuing each stage equally.

Human life is human life, always, that is true. But when I explain the situation regarding cuticle cells, it is clear that abortion opponents don't actually treat all types of human life equally. Technically, the difference between a cuticle cell and a zygote is only a matter of "potential". The cuticle cell is currently processing DNA code telling it how to behave like a cuticle cell, but it has the potential to process any other block of DNA code, such as zygote code. And stem-cell workers are actively researching how to make it do that thing (on a more general level, involving any specialized type of living human cell, not just a cuticle cell, that has the full set of DNA).

The typical response to that explanation has been something to the effect that the zygote is actively attempting to fulfill its potential, while the cuticle cell only has "passive" potential. But that argument, too, is flawed, because the zygote can't accomplish the goal (desired by abortion opponents) without active external help, exactly like a cuticle cell can't accomplish the goal of behaving like a zygote without active external help. Remember that a zygote normally forms as a result of sperm meeting ovum inside a Fallopian tube; the tube contains cilia that actively push the zygote toward the womb. Without that active external help, an ectopic pregnancy can happen that must be terminated lest it kill the mother.

We can now very-easily see abortion opponents claiming, "Active external help must be provided!"

Later, after a blastocyst implants into the womb, it produces hormones that command the mother's body to help it construct a placenta. Modern DNA analysis of the cells of the placenta reveal quite plainly that part of it is part of the overall unborn human organism, and part of it is part of the mother's body. If there is a genetic defect such that the hormones are defective, or if the mother's body somehow fails to respond to non-defective hormones, the placenta doesn't get constructed and the unborn human organism will die. It requires the active external help of the mother's portion of the placenta, in order to survive. (Note the mother doesn't need the placenta, and early in a pregnancy the drug RU-486 can cause it to detach from the womb.)

We can again very-easily see abortion opponents claiming, "Active external help must be provided!"

Finally, at birth, the unborn human does not claw its way out of the womb; it cannot get born without active external help (sometimes in the form of a cesarean section). In theory, an extremely-late-term abortion could be initiated by giving the mother a muscle-relaxant drug, thereby preventing labor and denying the active external help of her musculature. Eventually the placenta would detach from the womb and the unborn human would die, after which the corpse could be removed in any manner desired.

We can again very-easily see abortion opponents claiming, "Active external help must be provided!"

So, why shouldn't active external help be required, to convert a cuticle cell into a zygote? Perhaps only because we don't yet know how to do it? But that is going to change, in the not-too-distant future; stem-cell researchers are not about to give up their goal. Yet even without that goal in sight, the cuticle cell is still "human life", that routinely gets killed by the hundred, with no complaints about it from abortion opponents!

You are rude and arrogant to treat his valid argument (not that it's even what he personally believes) as idiotic. I just proved you are wrong, that YOUR rebuttal to that argument is only based on your opinion.

You proved nothing, and I didn't say it was his argument. I only said the argument was idiotic. Try reading what was actually written, instead of what you put into it that wasn't there.

 

[FutureIncoming]

Good to see that you're argument devolves into insults when it doesn't follow your prescribed assumptions. If you want to talk about idiotic arguments, it's your emotionalized hyperbole you tried to pull with killing people and embalming them now because eventually we all die.

Try to refrain from hysterics please.

An idiotic argument is an idiotic argument, and even quite-intelligent folks can present an idiotic argument. I just wrote a longish message explaining some more about that argument's idiocy. The potential is NOT ever equal to the actual, and it any claim they must be treated the same is indeed an idiotic claim, provably.

 

[FutureIncoming]

There are those that will pretend they do not understand that being human is a matter of just a period during life.

What definition of "human" are you using? There is a biological definition, and there is a social definition (related to the word "humane"). The former definition includes an entire life; the latter does not. (No one in his right mind will claim an unborn human is "humane" when it acts to dump toxic biowastes into the bloodstream of its mother.)

 

[year2late]

An idiotic argument is an idiotic argument, and even quite-intelligent folks can present an idiotic argument. I just wrote a longish message explaining some more about that argument's idiocy. The potential is NOT ever equal to the actual, and it any claim they must be treated the same is indeed an idiotic claim, provably.

Says the person who believes that a traumatically decapitated twin and a brain dead twin have significance in the abortion debate.:roll:

 

[FutureIncoming]

People like to snap shot biology because it helps their arguments. "It's just a clump of cells". But we all were. We all can trace our origin story to the fertilization of the egg, the implantation in the uterus, the development. Everything we are was once that clump of cells.

FALSE!!! And not even in biological terms, since 90% of the cells in the average walking-about human body are bacterial, not human.

But even discounting that, there is the matter of Nurture, as explained in this Thread in Msg #96. WE, as entities communicating with each other via the assistance of this web site, are not purely the results of biological growth, and any claim otherwise is a major error that many abortion opponents make.

 

[FutureIncoming]

It would appear FI, some pro lifers will never change there stance no matter how many times you show there arguments are flawed(which is top priority in my mind since they would then have no grounds to ban abortion). I believe the pro lifers you would be convincing the most, are those that are more open minded like I was years back and realize that your calling the arguments ignorant not the person.


I remember when I was a big fan of the SLED argument when I was pro lifer years ago and linked it to your site to see if it was any valid and it isnt.

Thank you for offering evidence that some abortion opponents are merely indoctrinated, not brainwashed.

 

[FutureIncoming]

So, none of that readily applicable or even refuting the lack of usefulness in debating abortion.

You like to write alot...you should try writing effectively instead.

One suggested hypothetical is not an all-encompassing thing. Spreading the knowledge widely, that abortion opponents exhibit prejudice in their arguments, and most people who are against prejudice will be against them. Some abortion opponents are also against prejudice, and what they do after finding out how prejudiced are their anti-abortion arguments is going to be a fun thing to watch.

 

[FutureIncoming]

So, you dont quite have the answers to the *full* abortion debate then?

Oh, the thing about prejudice mentioned in the last msg (#190) might be effective against the brainwashed. I'm quite aware that no argument will sway them, but other things might (like treating them like pariahs).

btw, I'd like to see some disctinctions (that matter) between 'brainwashed' and 'indoctrinated.'

I did that in #147, but perhaps you thought it looked too much like a "wall of text" to bother reading it. Your loss.

 

[FutureIncoming]

Not a single thing you mentioned effects pro-life people at all whom base their position on their beliefs. All completely irrelevant.

WRONG, because their beliefs declare human life to be too important or valuable to kill --yet cuticle cells fully qualify as human life, and are routinely killed, and even female abortion opponents routinely participate in that killing, whenever they get manicures and/or pedicures. There provable inconsistency in their application of their beliefs reveals that they don't actually know what they are talking about, and thus they and their anti-abortion arguments can be ignored.

 

[Henrin]

I have to admit the cuticle cell argument is imaginative. Stupid as all ****ing hell of course, but imaginative all the same.

 

[Henrin]

So, why shouldn't active external help be required, to convert a cuticle cell into a zygote? Perhaps only because we don't yet know how to do it? But that is going to change, in the not-too-distant future; stem-cell researchers are not about to give up their goal. Yet even without that goal in sight, the cuticle cell is still "human life", that routinely gets killed by the hundred, with no complaints about it from abortion opponents!

Actually researchers give up their hopes of something working all the time, so that is a bit silly.

 

[Henrin]

What definition of "human" are you using? There is a biological definition, and there is a social definition (related to the word "humane"). The former definition includes an entire life; the latter does not. (No one in his right mind will claim an unborn human is "humane" when it acts to dump toxic biowastes into the bloodstream of its mother.)

It also acts in some ways that benefit the woman, so you know, there's that.

 

[FutureIncoming]

Yes they do. Both.

Please be more specific. They do what? Both what?

And successfully in many cases.

If that is about the passing-on of beliefs to those who haven't learned skepticism and its importance, so what? It is no more okay to cheat at education than it is to cheat at cards.

Hence we still have an abortion 'debate' which you have not provided a solution to.

Really? If you have skipped reading lots of what I've written, how can you be sure of that?

Except that they are not lying.

I'm aware of the distinction between a lie and an untruth --the former includes knowing that what is said is an untruth. It is well known that religious leaders sometimes include believers, and sometimes includes liars (they haven't all of them always believed all the claims they spout, as members of the clergy). It only took the Catholic Church something like three centuries to realize it was no longer spouting an untruth, but was now actually lying, when it claimed that the Earth was the center of Creation. So they finally stopped making that claim.

If they believe in God and His Word...

That's two different beliefs, and believing the latter is not essential to believe the former. Especially when not even religions claim God sat down somewhere and wrote the Bible, that we know humans who are able to lie-to-benefit-themselves wrote it, instead --and consequently benefited from what they wrote.

how will you prove to them they or anyone is lying about how He and they value human life at any stage?

One place to start is the story of the Flood. Where was God placing a high value on human life in that story (regardless of whether true or exaggerated or outright-fictional!)? And how often are claims made to the effect that "the body is only dust; in the end only the soul matters"?

 

[FutureIncoming]

Says the person who believes that a traumatically decapitated twin and a brain dead twin have significance in the abortion debate.:roll:

The definition of "person" has huge significance in the abortion debate, thanks to the US Constitution using that word throughout, and the word "human" not even once. Therefore, discussions about the essence of personhood are extremely relevant.

 

[FutureIncoming]

I have to admit the cuticle cell argument is imaginative. Stupid as all ****ing hell of course, but imaginative all the same.

Your mere claim is worthless without evidence. If the argument is truly stupid, you ought to be able to offer evidence showing why.

 

[Henrin]

Your mere claim is worthless without evidence. If the argument is truly stupid, you ought to be able to offer evidence showing why.

You basically already did it yourself by making it clear they are not equatable to the unborn. You even go so far as to say they might be equatable one day and back this assertion up by the rather fallacious argument that researchers are never going to give up trying. This is all done because apparently to you the growing process of an organism is somehow not worthy of mention. All that apparently matters to you when it comes to human life and the stages it encompasses is the stages that include a level of independence and brain functionality that you have subjectively determined are what makes humans valuable.

Of course even if researchers find out a way to do what you want the cells would only be equatable after being altered.

 

[FutureIncoming]

Actually researchers give up their hopes of something working all the time, so that is a bit silly.

They only do that after acquiring evidence that the goal is too difficult or impossible to reach. But in the case of stem-cell research, a couple of crucial facts are known to be true:
(1) An ordinary virus can easily cause a cell to stop processing its normal DNA code, and start processing the DNA (or even RNA) code in the virus.
(2) Cloning researchers have successfully got the zygote code in a specialized cell to get processed. The DNA was removed from its original environment, but it was originally DNA that had been having a specific block of its code getting processed by its original cell, and after the DNA was moved, the zygote code in that DNA got processed, instead.

I suspect all we need is a special pseudo-virus designed to tell an ordinary cell to stop processing its normal DNA code, and start processing the cell's zygote code.