well i have just finsihed listening to the president in his state of the union speech.
i have suggested in other threads that the us should go isolationist.
george w. bush says this is an absolute no-no.
What does the foreign policy set by an English 18th Century gentleman farmer have to do with the 21st Century?
Isn't it just the tiniest bit possible international affairs have changed since then, and a simplistic stance suitable for a small political power with no International presense, no industry and no standing army of any size is no longer suitable for the most powerful country in the world?
Come on!
well i have just finsihed listening to the president in his state of the union speech.
i have suggested in other threads that the us should go isolationist.
george w. bush says this is an absolute no-no.
LOL
Of course, some forms of isolationism are possible, so it's first important to define terms. However, political disengagement would lead to commercial changes.
One often one finds unrealistic ideas about the economic impact on US citizens; most forms of isolationism would lead to a rise in prices. The term is normally used as a magical word, a bit like Dorethy in WIzard of Oz; "There's no place like home". Say 'isolationism' and you can pretend all the problems go.
Realsitically, isolationism as a solution to the US's problems is like Santa Claus as a solution to buying Christmas presents.
I think the US has a pivotal role to play in the progress of the World, for good... or for worse...
Some interesting reading.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,661105,00.html
the ones i'm familiar with are from the repercussion of the rape and murder of the levites concubine.
judges 19-21 .
about 100,000 died in battle then all the towns of benjamin were put to the sword as were the people that didn't join in against the benjamites.
Hellrider
This is hysterical man,
Prehaps it will come as a surprise to you, but you say a few posts above;
Emotive arguments are a very important part of the law, and an even greater part when the law is practically applied.
Despite this clear statement, you say in your last post;
I have never made the claim that the law is based on emotions!
You also say;
I have continously referred to ETHICS, NOT EMOTIONS!
Errr... I suggest you read what you write more closely; to not read another's response is rude, to not remember your own is... silly... however, as you responded directly to my request that you prove emotions are part of law (with quotations which proved MY point), your claims of never making that argument just make your new argument even more muddled and contradictory.
Additonally you accuse;
you dismissed all my insisting on the fact that ethics are the basis off all lawmaking
Please provide the quotation to support this claim, or is this another instance where your response to me shows you have either not read or fully understood what I have said? You won't be able to show me dismissing ethics from lawmaking... in fact you must realise this on some level because you also say about my last post;
... fact is, this is probably even the first time the word "ethics" has even occured in your posts!
How did I "dismissed all my insisting on the fact that ethics are the basis off all lawmaking" when you admit yourself I'd probably not used the word until responding to your last post?
I certainly don't say ethics has nothing to do with lawmaking there; just that without your assumption of equivalence there is not an ethical dimension to early term abortions. Previously I was merely showing that emotions are not part of lawmaking, which was a direct response to your above quoted claim.
LOL. So I guess I redirect this comment in your last post back at you;
So you are now trying to rewrite the history of this thread?
However, I choose not to apply this comment in your last post back at you;
You are the most dishonest debattant I have ever had an internet-discussion with! In my opinion, this discussion is now over.
... as I like to think you are prehaps a little muddle-headed in discussions and maybe at a disadvantage due to English not being your native language.
Any confusion over this issue Hellrider seems entirely due to your debating abilities and/or how closely you read the responses, plus possibly your English. I've even questioned whether 'ethics' and emotions' are synomynous in Norwegian as I have seen how confused an argument you've been making, and hoped by doing so it would make the thread less oppositional, but you ignored this in your eagerness to attack me for things you have done.
Don't get pissed with me if you mis-stated what your argument is, or if your 'forget' you have included x in your argument and later deny you had x in your argument. Will you now get angrier with me because you've made mistakes, or will you admit error when it occurs? You might note I don't have any problem doing this when I have made a mistake, as shown above.
the ones i'm familiar with are from the repercussion of the rape and murder of the levites concubine.
judges 19-21 .
about 100,000 died in battle then all the towns of benjamin were put to the sword as were the people that didn't join in against the benjamites.
Hellrider
I did respond to the medical considerations. Furthermore, unlike you, I did not only respond to the medical considerations, I also put them in an ethical perspective
The "ethical perspective" you present is only present because you ignore the medical perspective, ignoring is not responding, mentioning something in passing and then going straight back to your original and unproven argument is not responding;
Yes, medical considerations are of course part of this issue, but that doesn`t mean that this issue is, was and always will first and foremost an ethical issue.
It's your circular argument of equivalence again, that any fetus = born human, constantly repeated, never proven.
Without this being proven there is not an ethical perspective.
It's like someone saying 'animals are equal to humans, therefore the treatment of animals must meet the same standards of ethics as the treatment of humans', and then expecting all farm animals to be liberated. They have never proven animals are equal to humans, but that doesn't stop them expecting their opinions to be acted on as if they had proven something.
You say;
You claim that all the basic development of the featus (development of neural tissue, brains etc) is basically finnished at 20 weeks into the pregnancy, and that after week 20, the primary activity of the fetus is to grow. Still, you insist that it is ethically responsible to perform abortions up until week 16 (or week 20 ??), but not in the weeks 20-40. And....???? Why? If nothing neurolgically important happens after week 20 (just growth), then there is no logical reason why abortions shouldn`t happen between week 20 and 40, if there is no difference of significance in the neurological status of the fetus in week 19, and in week 38. Does something “magical” happen between week 16 and 20, is that what you are saying? ;
My argument is that as neural compexity is not sufficient to give any real equivalence to a new born in early-term pregnancies, to such an extent that major 'wiring' in the brains that allows pain to be perceived and phisiologically responded to does not take place until just after week 20, around week 20 is a good limit for social abortions.
To say what you said you either did not understand what I said or cited, or did not have the common courtesy to read what I wrote or cited. I don't think you're deliberately distorting what I said or I wouldn't bother replying to you again.
You say you answer the question "In terms of violation of bodily rights and freewill, what is the difference [between forced pregnacy and rape]?" You do no such thing, you just repeat your curcular argument;
However, the point here is that different ethical principles collide !
You're assuming different ethical principles collide based upon your assumption of equivalence, which as we know is merely a repeated claim, not a proven fact.
I am right about law usually being based on ethical considerations.
you should update yourself on the almost inseparable nature of law and ethics (I think you understood this, at least from what I wrote before the quotes).
I've never said ethics weren't involved in the making of law; please stop using strawman arguments.
You did however fail miserably to prove the role of emotions in law, as I thought you would; linguistically, are ethics and emotion synonyms in Norwegian? They aren't in English. Maybe that explains the 'misunderstanding'.
Like I said, ethics is constrained by logic. Emotions aren't. And your insistance of the involvement of ethics in the above example is only possible due to your insistance it is, not because of a rational demonstration of equivalence between a 12 week-old fetus and a new born.
It really is simple;
You create an ethical quagmire where there is none (as is recognised by the law in most Western countries) purely on the basis of your emotions about the issue.
At the same time you would gladly impose your will on others... something that is recognised as being AGAINST the law in most Western countries? Where does ethics come into that?
As for a further thread, well, you can start threads about whatever subject you like. I don't know if I'd find further discussion of any interest if it involved further repetition or a protagonist who will say things like "there is no logical reason why abortions shouldn`t happen between week 20 and 40" when, if they'd been following the discussion carefully, they'd of realised that this is a total misrepresetation of what has been said and ignores citions of hard scientific data in the thread.
Harsh but fair, sad but true.
the ones i'm familiar with are from the repercussion of the rape and murder of the levites concubine.
judges 19-21 .
about 100,000 died in battle then all the towns of benjamin were put to the sword as were the people that didn't join in against the benjamites.
Hellrider
I was under the impression that the discussion was over:
Oh, but you keep on saying things that make my fingers itch... "he thinks what??!!"
And you are not excluded from having an opinion because you are a man. You are not excluded from having an opinion; you misrepresent the situation. Have your opinion and enjoy it.
You are excluded from the right to force a woman to give birth.
You refuse to deal with the subject in scientific or medical terms, yet expect your opinion to be considered equal to one based on sound secular argument that cite facts. As your opinion is not based on scientific or mdecial facts, it is of no more validity in a court of law than a religious opinion. Get over this will you? Your claims that a fetus at any point is of equal value to a born human is based on the same level of proof as a Roman Catholic insisting abortion (or even contraception) is wrong because 'every sperm is sacred'.
I`ll be sure to inform her first that I am against abortion, and that that is the reason why my pockets are full of condoms.
I have one daughter and have helped a girlfriend through an abortion brought about by torn condoms. What is in your pocket is irrelevent as all contraceptive methods fail at some point. No matter what is on your pockets, if they fail, you will still expect a woman to carry your seed even if this is against her will. Would you make this clear? As we're so 'up' on ethics, you should.
even though you try to hide this fact behind medical considerations
BUT THEY ARE THE CONSIDERATIONS!!! You are hiding from the medical considerations as you refuse to accept them!
Next bit gets funny; I say;
You still going to insist emotions are important in making law? Got any quotes by law makers?
You say;
Now, I found no quotes references as to establish for you (from the mouths of a lawyer or something like that) whether this is the case or not, simply because everybody knows it is,
Hellrider, you are no being what is know as 'intellectually dishonest'.
You totally failed to find any reference backing your claim; in your last post, the word emotion (or variations of it) were only used by YOU, not by the parties you quoted. Man, you are a sore loser... give it up...
Well, I don`t really care what you do or what you don`t, but if you were interested in finding out the truth on an issue,especially an issue on which you have some weird, unclear ideas, you would make an effort. You could at least Google “Law and Ethics”.
No, YOUR argument, YOU do the work... oh, but you can't, as the evidence I called for to back your argument isn't there. If you HAD bothered to cite evidence I may well have done research as required by the evidence you provided. But as you never bothered to do so yourself (as the weakness of your argument shows, in truth), it's hysterical you see this as my responsibility.
Let's cut your argument back to the bone, again; you said;
I refuse to discuss this on medical and scientific terms.
You also say people in the past were wrong "about everything because they lived at a time when they didn`t [know] anything about... anything".
Yet you refuse to discuss the subject from the point-of-view given by knowledge.
If people who didn't know anything about anything were wrong, people who refuse to know anything about anything are also wrong.
What is it about fetuses that disqualifies them from having human value?
Is it because they can`t breathe or eat on their own? Well, in that case, everyone who are connected to a life-support machine (but are not braindead) have no human value.
Misrepresentation of an argument is called a "strawman" argument. I have no doubt (as you did when I introduced you to the term "circular argument") you will throw it back at me without ever considering what it means as regards to the validity of your views.
I have NEVER said that people with meaningful brain activity but connected to life support are 'without human value'. But you trying to distort the discussion in an emotive way by distorting what I have actually said is not suprising as you admit you argument is an emotional one not based on science or medicine.
I could remind you that I was the first to point out the difficulty in this, when I have argued that abortions sometimes are necessary, such as in situations of rape, incest and illness in the fetus (or woman). And the point I made, a point which you of course have ignored, was that: “Just because we may be forced to violate ethical boundaries, this doesn`t mean that we should remove the ethical boundaries alltogether”.
All you do, by breaking your own insistence on abortion being wrong is a woman is sexually violated in some way, is further demonstrate the emotional nature of your argument. You care for the fetus unless your emotions are (rightfully, but not in a wat that makes your argument valid) drawn to the victim of a crime; then the fetus hasn't got a chance, even though it has done no more wrong than a fetus bought about under normal circumstances. This inconsistency is why law should not not based on emotions.
Morals, yes. Ethics, yes. But they can be constrained by logic, whereas emotions are not constrained by logic - as your argument demonstrates.
She hears a german voice in the distant, yelling out a military command, and so, in desperation, she strangles the infant.
Horrible. She crossed a very definnite ethical boundary, but she did it to serve a greater purpose, an equally (??) ethical purpose: To save the lives of a 20 children and several adults.
This doesn`t mean that infanticide should be allowed indiscriminately, does it?
And yes, I know, my “running assumption”, that fetuses are humans, is present in this analogy,
Yes, and you fail to understand (as I point out above) that a circular argument is by definiton invalid. You can repeat it until the end of time, but it is like saying;
We know that as radiocarbon dates would have been affected by the presence of the cloud canopy before the Flood, that the dates over 5,000 years given to some civilisations, buildings and trees must be in error, thus we can see the Flood actually happened.
but on the other hand, the “running assumption” that fetuses are not humans, or shouldn`t be considered as something with human value, is present in everything you write, without it being proven, neither medically, scientifically and especially not ethically, that they are not.
Actually, I have argued quite comprehensively why brain development is the key factor in discussing the rights or wrongs of abortion, and produced evidence to back these claims. You have not proven this evidnece is wrong, You have declared it isn't important.
Just as religious people opposed to abortion typically don't care about the scientific and medical knowledge that lead to the legal, secular view of abortion, you reject the scientific and medical knowledge as it is not important to you.
It boils down to your opinion, without facts, that you would have imposed on others. You might claim it is because the any fetus = a born baby, but that is a claim you are still to demonstrate. Saying that a fetus of 16 weeks (see the posted information about brain development) is equal to a born human is NOT supported by the facts. Saying a fetus of 12 weeks is equal to a born human is not supported by the facts. These, given the brain development at such points, is an 'extraordinary claim' and you have no evidence, let alone the extraordinary evidence you would need to prove your claim.
It's like people expecting you to believe in god because they do. It's good enough evidence for them maybe, but to take it on someone's say-so is not good enough for most people.
We can never agree because of this. I still support your right to your opinion, which is something your opinion unavoidably denies.
let me start with the questionable, unprovable, yet common premise that the gods in general were born out of human fear.. if we look for the closest match to our word "religion" in the hebrew bible, the best candidate, interestingly, will be "fear of (the) god(s)".
"service" to the gods will denote the religious practice, but the basic religious attitude is fear.
no matter how politically correct translations water it down into respect, reverence etc.
Nark
I guess this experience was quite possible, and probably often realised, in the ancient world too.
They had CARparks!!??
Actually it was one essential ingredient in religious change (in a sense, henotheistic and monotheistic Yahwism start with blasphemy... of other gods).
A bit like the amusing comment (don't know whos it was originally) that the different between an atheist and a monotheist is that one disbelieve sin ONE more god than the other.
The question is whether we can overcome fear itself without a similar strategy (which of course doesn't need to be a theistic one). I feel we still need to name our fears, give them external existence, on the imaginary level, to deal with them. As long as we do so we are, in effect, playing a religious act, aren't we?
I think supernatural entities are a response to the unknown, a 'best fit explantion' for the inexplicable that although it now creates MORE questions than it answers (as most of the inexplicable is quite explicable nowadays thank you very much) is a very powerful meme hard to overcome with reason, as if under attack it can redefine itself so as to be unanalysable by reason.
I think that meditation, the I-Ching, astrology, prayer etc. are ancient forms of self-relective therapy where we use tools to get glimpses of our subconscious. They are totally meaningless out of context, but a mind can use them as tools for self-redaction and analysis.
let me start with the questionable, unprovable, yet common premise that the gods in general were born out of human fear.. if we look for the closest match to our word "religion" in the hebrew bible, the best candidate, interestingly, will be "fear of (the) god(s)".
"service" to the gods will denote the religious practice, but the basic religious attitude is fear.
no matter how politically correct translations water it down into respect, reverence etc.
I think I more or less agree...
... however, one can overcome fear of gods... I've been skipping round the carpark at work all morning singing "Allah is an asshole, Yahweh is a fraud, Odin don't seem likely, and the rest are just bores", and not ONE bolt of lightning...
comment heard from the watchtower conductor from the platform today regarding elijah versus baal showdown at mount carmel:.
the conductor states that he used to have a 1948 magazine (watchtower ofrawake!
is unknown) that quoted a scientist that had discovered "blue crystals" on mount carmel.
Actually, I do recall something about 'atomic fire' being muttered in reverential terms... it may have been the JWurban myth of the day...
my firstborns son's mother i live with asked me today if i wanted anyone else.. i replied "yes, i want to know every unmarried woman on earth, so i can insure i will never feel like i missed out on something.
i want to find my match, a woman that can convince me to give up my free agent status, and spend forever as her property alone.
she got really mad.
I do so love to watch the Universe come wooshing by as it revolves around my crotch... LOL Excuse the irony. It's actually not my point-of0view, but hearing guys talk sometimes you wonder if it's theirs.
Seriously, I was a dog. I have had as many as five sexual relationships going on at once (most of whom knew all about the others) with varying degrees of frequncy whilst at University.
But I really find it hard to get how some guys are all surprised when they find out expressing their sexual wishes to women they are in a serious relationship with gets them into trouble. When my then girlfriend and I moved in together I gave up my sexual freedom. I just couldn't see getting back from screwing Sally-Ann and my gf saying 'did you have fun darling?' as realistic or fair.
However, there is a difference between;
... and;
My fiance (one of the five above) and I are happy with the first understanding. Fully open, no surprises, just sex with someone different for fun, not because we want to find someone better - as we're pretty damn sure we can't.
If you feel you can find someone better than your current partner, trying to convince them to let you 'try before you buy' so you have a nice and safe situation to return to if you find out the grass is not greener might be a little tricky...
the ones i'm familiar with are from the repercussion of the rape and murder of the levites concubine.
judges 19-21 .
about 100,000 died in battle then all the towns of benjamin were put to the sword as were the people that didn't join in against the benjamites.
Hellrider
We`re all in this together, whether you like it or not.
Squeeze a grapefruit through the eye of your cock and I'll believe that. Bearing children is a uniquely female experience. Men insisting they have a right to force women to bear children is just a continuation of millenia of misogyny.
Your examples are poor. You could steal, and be stolen from. You can murder and be murdered. You can rape and be raped.
But you will never, ever, ever be pregnant. Thus your opinion can never be as informed and as sincere as a woman's, as you could have the most ill-thought out opinion on abortion in the history of the world and never ever have to suffer the consequences. It's an very easy opinion for you to have.
I hope you make sure you inform all women you have sex with that you expect them to bear your seed if they get pregnant, even by accident. Do you? Considering your standard on this subject, you should; hell, I think most girls like to know that the guy they are about to sleep with would force them to have a baby before they sleep with the guy. The fact that the law considers your attitude wrong is not the point, neither is it the point that you legally have no say; you should let them know your personal standards.
It might cramp your style a little, LOL.
Do you tell women you sleep with? I am serious; if not, then all this is just a stance, not something you carry through as you should in real life. Which is fine; an observation, not a criticism.
