Be careful what you wish for, the Canadian system has a lot of failings. Reading through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_health_care_systems_in_Canada_and_the_United_States, Canada might be moderately better than the US, but only very very moderately in some areas, and for a population that is 1/10 the size (ie, the size of California) - I'd find a better model if I were you...
Interestingly, most Democrats mock Republicans for being too corporatist while being disappointed that the (Democrat) ACA is a handout to private insurance companies... Choose your friends carefully, they may not be who they say they are. Truth is, both parties are responsible for the mess, and both parties are in love with money. As for why far right Republicans slam the ACA, you might want to read what they actually say - when discussing that to do about health care, they slammed socialized medicine, but most of the commentary nowadays is about how inefficient and stupid the ACA is, and that actual socialized medicine would be non-ideal but better than the system the Democrats have saddled us with...
Denmark's population is also ~5 million. There is no guarantee that the system there could scale to the entire United States. Most countries with actual efficient public medicine are more akin to a single state (eg. Canada is well down the efficiency curve at only 30 million) than to all the states combined. While the system may be more efficient for a combination of more than one person (eg. 1 million), scalability matters.
Also, your claim about government = bureaucracy... much of the paperwork in the states is likely government mandated. Finally, the discussion here is about Obamacare, which is nothing like the model you're touting in Denmark. It does in fact seem to be worse than what it replaces, which is a funny way to move forward...
So, given some things (vacuum, the way we understand vacuum, time), other things may come into being. Still "there is something because there was something", with possibly the added twist that "there always has been something, there never has been nothing."
Prepare for your mind to be blown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivity_in_United_States_income_tax
The top 1% get 20% of the income and pay 38% of the tax
The next 4% get 15% of the income and pay 21% of the tax
The next 5% get 11% of the income pay 11 % of the tax
Yet most people here are angry that the one percenters aren't paying their fare share... ?
Actually, it does have some predicting ability - if there is a creator, and He is who the Bible says He is, then this world will end, not with a whimper but a bang. May not happen in our lifetime though...
I think you're making a lot of assumptions about what they're admitting. Saying there is scientific evidence for Biblical truth is far different than saying they need scientific evidence for Biblical truth. If I see a sign pointing to New York and tell someone "see, New York exists, look at the sign!", I'm not actually basing my belief that it exists on the sign because that's what I used as evidence to get you to consider travelling there. Not saying I agree with said random church that using science as an evangelistic tool is wise, but neither do I agree with you that this is surrendering an epistemological war.
Funny thing - he didn't actually spend his money, 'cause no one took him up on his bet. Even if it's sitting in an escrow account, he's free to spend it on the poor later, I'm sure he has no intention of paying out on his bet. Don't judge his entire character based on one foolish bet...
By your logic (and your words), atheism is a hate group that discriminates against Christians. Disagreeing with someone is different than hating someone is different than discriminating against them.
As I said elsewhere, eldavojohn appears to be looking for a philosophical argument that proves there is no conflict between science and religion, not a scientific one. While Dr. Bakker has made a good scientific argument (based on solid evidence), a philosophical one is a bit harder to maintain (in general, not just in this case, good philosophical arguments can be made both ways for all complex issues). Of course, that's the point of science - evidence trumps hypothesis...
I actually find Dr. Bakker's take much more scientific than yours. He looks at the data from the past ~2000 years and uses it to answer the question of "is there a conflict between religion and science?" and comes to the conclusion that while there has been some tension, it's not necessarily between those two. As evidence, he gives some examples with which he is familiar, and comes to a reasonable conclusion.
You, on the other hand, take his argument and make up unfalsifiable claims that we would be "far better off" today if the church had been less powerful centuries ago. You may be right, but you're really taking this on faith, there is no way to prove your claims. You're also speaking out of both sides of your mouth. On the one hand, you say Augustine was a successful scientist because of his mindset, on the other you insinuate that if he had a questioning mindset he would have been burned at the stake (wrong time period, but hey).
Likewise, because a Reverend could use evidence to come to the correct conclusion that dinosaurs were more like birds doesn't present one shred of evidence to me that Christianity is right, let alone reconcilable with science.
It actually proves that someone very "into" Christianity can come up with good scientific conclusions, so I'm not sure what evidence would convince you that it is reconcilable with science. I think what you're saying is that the conclusion is in spite of the philosophical leanings of the person in question. In that case, you're not looking for evidence, you're looking for a philosophical argument, and you should be asking your questions to a philosopher, not a scientist.
The liberal rage machine ain't pretty either (see the first part of my reply), but the problem isn't the bias of the machine, it's the tone. The problem is that from the inside it's easy to get worked up about the other side and not realize how ugly the tone is on your own side.
There's a legitimate argument to be had over the role of government, the problem is that people get so wrapped up in their own view (and on both sides it's usually actually that "my" government can do no wrong, "their" gov can do no right - whether Bush or Obama is president - which is fantasy either way) that they can't see the good in others.
Should we allow dumping toxic chemicals into river water? No! Should there be 50 different federal agencies to prevent it? Also no! In general, today, we've swung towards many, ineffective and bloated agencies instead of few, effective and streamlined. If you've dealt with a government agency or worked for one, you know this. Should torture be used routinely? No! However, both Bush and Obama have used intel gained by what I would call torture, to a fairly similar degree as far as I can tell (and not an extensive nor a routine one), but the reaction from any individual depends heavily on what side of the spectrum they identify themself with. Either "Obama/Bush is a hypocrite" or "Obama/Bush is just doing what he needs to", depending which four year stretch you're in.
If politicians in general don't overspend, how come out of the last 40 years only 5 have produced a surplus, and the US debt is sitting at nearly 17 trillion dollars and going nowhere fast? Clinton did well economically (maybe because he was pursuing other interests??), but that's irrelevant to my argument. In fact, by saying Clinton didn't overspend and had a surplus, you're supporting my point that Obama (and many other presidents before him) did overspend in order to get a deficit.
The problem with your premise is that it is powerful people using government to protect their interests. That is the essence of many of the problems with government today, I agree, but it's not pretty. Experts backed by the power of government can be a very scary thing when they have an agenda that differs from yours (which will inevitably happen when they multiply!), which is why the most successful countries today are those that actually limit the power of government over individuals to some degree.
Just to pile on, when you say "both sides do it," you are implicitly refusing to deal with the actual topic at hand, which is for example "budget" or "national security," or whatever.
So when you do that, you are basically throwing up your hands and saying "who can know such things?"
It's fucking lazy. Very, fucking lazy. I don't have much time to argue with people too lazy to at least delve into the elements of a topic. You obviously are.
A few very big assumptions in there - very lazy of you. Shouldn't you have at least researched greenbird's personal record on researching the actual topics at hand? Maybe he deals with them explicitly instead of implicitly like you do... Saying that both parties are equally wrong is just a blanket level statement, what you do with it is up to you. I'd say judging a politician by his party is the lazy approach.You're basically throwing your hands up and saying "I don't have time to judge the individual, so I'll go by party".
the inability of the conservatives to promote the general welfare of the people
Just wanted to point out that conservatives also get blamed for the polarization of politics, but when faced with statements like this... why wouldn't we be polarized?? There are different ways to promote people's welfare, and when it comes to government, the best way is to remove red tape and just generally get out of the way. A point that is often lost on liberals is that promoting the welfare of individuals is promoting the welfare of people - I'll put a fictional case of beer on the line that on a measure of absolute dollars, conservatives donate more to charity (yes, including religious charities) than liberals... if you can prove me wrong, please do! (OK, I'm sure there are studies from both sides saying they're better at that than the other, but this is slashdot, let's see what happens!).
The cause of the debt in the US is that the government spent more money than it made, so it had to borrow money. Through Democrat years, through Republican years, that doesn't vary. You can get away with that if you'll make the money in the future (in fact, you can really accelerate your returns through basically leveraged investing), but they forgot that they don't control the future. The GOP believed that if government got out of the way, the people could generate wealth. The Dems believed that raising taxes and making a few superficial cuts to the DoD could raise the money. But when it comes time to actually make cuts, real people get hurt, and politicians lose their nerve - it's pretty hard to take leviathan down when leviathan squeals so loudly.
No, I don't have a solution either. I don't like it when people (me) get hurt by budget cuts or tax increases. In hindsight it's pretty easy to say we should control spending... Ok, it was pretty easy to say in foresight too, but when votes are demonstrably buy-able, that takes real leadership, and none of our politicians on either side have provided that.
As for needing real revenue to balance the budget, I think both sides are saying you actually need real economic growth to do so now - even the Dems don't think tax increases alone will do it. Cutting some DoD budget may help, but even a 10% cut there only gets you a fraction of the way to balanced. And it affects a lot of people (voters) directly, not to mention the optics of it. I wasn't a fan of the Bush spending, but Obama's done Bush on steroids (I know, fighting the dreaded double-dip recession... time will tell how well that went, but so far it's nothing like advertised!).
If you have a problem judging politicians as a whole, why is it OK to judge parties as a whole? Vote local, and odds are one of your candidates is doing better than the party line on the "being wrong" scale... vote for those candidates often enough and maybe you can bring those averages down to the 50% mark... Stick with your party-line black-and-white politics, and you end up only averaging things out.
The difference is that the union member can't be fired for his malfeasance (in at least some cases, see public sector unions) without causing more pain for those doing the firing than he himself will ever feel. The non-union member will (more often) have to face the consequences of his actions. That's the real reason people don't like unions - people should have to face their own consequences. Also, incidentally the reason that people don't like corporations - with corporations, people sometimes have to feel consequences they actually don't deserve - opposite problem, still a problem...
At least you're being reasonable about the whole thing - I think it is a pretty strong moral negative, although perhaps not strong enough to be legislated against (as that legislation itself produces negative effects). To me, the fetus is for all intents and purposes a human, and to want to eliminate it for aesthetic or selfish purposes says something about you (I hate to judge, but really). Especially when (most of the time) you could have prevented it in the first place.
However, to ban abortion is not to eliminate it, and legislating morality doesn't really work (see the prohibition in the USA), so... we're left trying to educate people to make the right choice and support them if they've made the wrong one, even though the wrong one ended up in the death of, at some level, a human. So I could live with your boundaries - education for free, make people face their own choices head-on, and hopefully more often than not (certainly more often than today) they'd make the right choice!
Same to you - great to see that an interesting (dare I say rational) conversation can be had with someone who holds a very different viewpoint than mine - unfortunately it doesn't happen too often! The contrast between Old and New Testament is indeed fascinating - they aren't inconsistent, yet they are different. Not sure if modern man could construct something half as interesting - so far, in all the fiction I've read, I haven't found anything close (which makes me lean towards some form of divine inspiration, although I'm sure you draw a different conclusion:).
Anyway, I am not against reducing abortions trough positive means
I think we have a pro-lifer in the makings!!! Lol;)
but against doing so trough negative means (banning, making it too expensive, hard to get and so on)
Banning, no, but a 24-hour wait period or an ultrasound is hardly banning, really not risky at all, and not a long enough period of time to make a significant difference in the status of the fetus (assuming the mother was able to figure out she had an "unwanted" pregnancy in the time period of a few months). So is that positive or negative? It really should be a choice, but I think as a society, we've assumed that "choice" means easy, and this is one choice that should be anything but (in a moral way, not a financial/etc way).
I also found your repeated references to the poorer women needing more access to abortion instructive... why would a poorer woman want an abortion sooner than a richer woman? Obviously there's more at play than just "I don't want this baby right now". Rather than focusing so much energy on making abortion easier to obtain, can't we focus some of that on making keeping the child easier to do?
Most biblical heroes are:). They tend to be very very human (as you I can see you know from the rest of this post). However, getting it right does make one somewhat heroic... if he was wrong, he would have been a monster. Apparently he had the faith and the discernment to be right, which is why he's held up (even in the New Testament) as a hero of the faith. We should all struggle to be as right as him. And be very careful not to be as wrong as he could have been...
Put another way, it's possible for God to be all-powerful, and it is possible for God to be all-good, but it is not possible for him to be both in a world which requires suffering, struggling, growth, change and reward:)
I prefer to think of it as a "definition of good" kind of thing - we define it as a lack of suffering and struggling, but I don't think that's accurate (as we also define change and reward as "good"). I always love the fact that the "tree" in the garden was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - ie, before we knew "good" (or "evil"), we were perfect...
That sort of makes the idea of Heaven, and an eternal bliss, scary when you think about it - sure, it might be fun, but you lose your personhood once you're at one with God. It's more comforting to me to think that after my life is over, it's simply over, and that I won't have to suffer through an eternity of no growth, change or reward:)
I don't spend a lot of time thinking about heaven, and the Bible is quite explicit that we can't understand it. There is a heaven, but it very much doesn't describe the details (other than to say that you in heaven compared to you now, is kind of like looking at a big tree and comparing it to a seed - ie, the same, yet very much not). This life itself is much more rewarding with God than without, and that's more than enough for me - maybe I'm just weak in that I need to give it some meaning... but I think that's a very human failing (and I believe rather intensely that there really is that meaning - but I do recognize that there is some faith required).
arguably the idea of an afterlife as proposed by various religions is also an example of this phenomenon.
Very interesting. When religion is only bought into as a pass to the afterlife, then I hesitate to call that religion real. That God may choose to accept me into His presence after this life can be a comfort at times, but this life would be awfully long if that was the only reason I had for doing what I do (as Martin Luther once said, even if I knew God was coming back tomorrow, I'd still plant a tree today...).
Until there is a way of transferring the fetus out of the woman to some device, it is my opinion that the woman has priority over her own body. If/when there is such a device then the fetus could be carried full term outside of the woman.
And what about abortions that happen past the point when the fetus actually is viable outside of its mother? There are more of those than there are the "rape case".
Unless you are willing to call "getting pregnant" a crime, then you could sentence the woman to 9 months of prison.
Not a crime, but surely we can work towards a point where we reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. And one portion of that should be turning unwanted ones into wanted ones (ie, give the mother the support she's lacking, or at least give her time to decide and make the honest decision to kill her child rather than to "get rid of a few cells"). Also, lots of parents occasionally do not "want" their children. Or children their parents. Should we sanction killing them?
The problem with death penalty for rape is that then there is not higher penalty for murder, which means that once the rapist did his deed he might as well kill the victim.
Valid point. I'm not entirely in favour of the death penalty... for fetuses or rapists.
Even if they were born the society will have to take care of them because the mother won't.
Again, the idea is to reduce abortions. I really don't believe that every aborted fetus would have been a burden on society, and I really don't believe that every abortive mother would have chosen to have an abortion if there were other/better options, or if abortion wasn't as easy to obtain as the Sunday paper. Even other elective surgery (what this is) is generally more of a pain...
Also, what "rational criteria"? Race (a few people already tried that), usefulness to society (then the fetus is not useful), what?
Jonathon Swift had some ideas about this - based on the hunger of the surrounding population perhaps?
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Be careful what you wish for, the Canadian system has a lot of failings. Reading through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_health_care_systems_in_Canada_and_the_United_States, Canada might be moderately better than the US, but only very very moderately in some areas, and for a population that is 1/10 the size (ie, the size of California) - I'd find a better model if I were you ...
Interestingly, most Democrats mock Republicans for being too corporatist while being disappointed that the (Democrat) ACA is a handout to private insurance companies ... Choose your friends carefully, they may not be who they say they are. Truth is, both parties are responsible for the mess, and both parties are in love with money. As for why far right Republicans slam the ACA, you might want to read what they actually say - when discussing that to do about health care, they slammed socialized medicine, but most of the commentary nowadays is about how inefficient and stupid the ACA is, and that actual socialized medicine would be non-ideal but better than the system the Democrats have saddled us with ...
Denmark's population is also ~5 million. There is no guarantee that the system there could scale to the entire United States. Most countries with actual efficient public medicine are more akin to a single state (eg. Canada is well down the efficiency curve at only 30 million) than to all the states combined. While the system may be more efficient for a combination of more than one person (eg. 1 million), scalability matters.
... much of the paperwork in the states is likely government mandated. Finally, the discussion here is about Obamacare, which is nothing like the model you're touting in Denmark. It does in fact seem to be worse than what it replaces, which is a funny way to move forward ...
Also, your claim about government = bureaucracy
So, given some things (vacuum, the way we understand vacuum, time), other things may come into being. Still "there is something because there was something", with possibly the added twist that "there always has been something, there never has been nothing."
Prepare for your mind to be blown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivity_in_United_States_income_tax ... ?
The top 1% get 20% of the income and pay 38% of the tax
The next 4% get 15% of the income and pay 21% of the tax
The next 5% get 11% of the income pay 11 % of the tax
Yet most people here are angry that the one percenters aren't paying their fare share
Actually, it does have some predicting ability - if there is a creator, and He is who the Bible says He is, then this world will end, not with a whimper but a bang. May not happen in our lifetime though ...
I think you're making a lot of assumptions about what they're admitting. Saying there is scientific evidence for Biblical truth is far different than saying they need scientific evidence for Biblical truth. If I see a sign pointing to New York and tell someone "see, New York exists, look at the sign!", I'm not actually basing my belief that it exists on the sign because that's what I used as evidence to get you to consider travelling there. Not saying I agree with said random church that using science as an evangelistic tool is wise, but neither do I agree with you that this is surrendering an epistemological war.
Funny thing - he didn't actually spend his money, 'cause no one took him up on his bet. Even if it's sitting in an escrow account, he's free to spend it on the poor later, I'm sure he has no intention of paying out on his bet. Don't judge his entire character based on one foolish bet ...
By your logic (and your words), atheism is a hate group that discriminates against Christians. Disagreeing with someone is different than hating someone is different than discriminating against them.
As I said elsewhere, eldavojohn appears to be looking for a philosophical argument that proves there is no conflict between science and religion, not a scientific one. While Dr. Bakker has made a good scientific argument (based on solid evidence), a philosophical one is a bit harder to maintain (in general, not just in this case, good philosophical arguments can be made both ways for all complex issues). Of course, that's the point of science - evidence trumps hypothesis ...
I actually find Dr. Bakker's take much more scientific than yours. He looks at the data from the past ~2000 years and uses it to answer the question of "is there a conflict between religion and science?" and comes to the conclusion that while there has been some tension, it's not necessarily between those two. As evidence, he gives some examples with which he is familiar, and comes to a reasonable conclusion.
You, on the other hand, take his argument and make up unfalsifiable claims that we would be "far better off" today if the church had been less powerful centuries ago. You may be right, but you're really taking this on faith, there is no way to prove your claims. You're also speaking out of both sides of your mouth. On the one hand, you say Augustine was a successful scientist because of his mindset, on the other you insinuate that if he had a questioning mindset he would have been burned at the stake (wrong time period, but hey).
Likewise, because a Reverend could use evidence to come to the correct conclusion that dinosaurs were more like birds doesn't present one shred of evidence to me that Christianity is right, let alone reconcilable with science.
It actually proves that someone very "into" Christianity can come up with good scientific conclusions, so I'm not sure what evidence would convince you that it is reconcilable with science. I think what you're saying is that the conclusion is in spite of the philosophical leanings of the person in question. In that case, you're not looking for evidence, you're looking for a philosophical argument, and you should be asking your questions to a philosopher, not a scientist.
The liberal rage machine ain't pretty either (see the first part of my reply), but the problem isn't the bias of the machine, it's the tone. The problem is that from the inside it's easy to get worked up about the other side and not realize how ugly the tone is on your own side.
There's a legitimate argument to be had over the role of government, the problem is that people get so wrapped up in their own view (and on both sides it's usually actually that "my" government can do no wrong, "their" gov can do no right - whether Bush or Obama is president - which is fantasy either way) that they can't see the good in others.
Should we allow dumping toxic chemicals into river water? No! Should there be 50 different federal agencies to prevent it? Also no! In general, today, we've swung towards many, ineffective and bloated agencies instead of few, effective and streamlined. If you've dealt with a government agency or worked for one, you know this. Should torture be used routinely? No! However, both Bush and Obama have used intel gained by what I would call torture, to a fairly similar degree as far as I can tell (and not an extensive nor a routine one), but the reaction from any individual depends heavily on what side of the spectrum they identify themself with. Either "Obama/Bush is a hypocrite" or "Obama/Bush is just doing what he needs to", depending which four year stretch you're in.
If politicians in general don't overspend, how come out of the last 40 years only 5 have produced a surplus, and the US debt is sitting at nearly 17 trillion dollars and going nowhere fast? Clinton did well economically (maybe because he was pursuing other interests??), but that's irrelevant to my argument. In fact, by saying Clinton didn't overspend and had a surplus, you're supporting my point that Obama (and many other presidents before him) did overspend in order to get a deficit.
The problem with your premise is that it is powerful people using government to protect their interests. That is the essence of many of the problems with government today, I agree, but it's not pretty. Experts backed by the power of government can be a very scary thing when they have an agenda that differs from yours (which will inevitably happen when they multiply!), which is why the most successful countries today are those that actually limit the power of government over individuals to some degree.
Just to pile on, when you say "both sides do it," you are implicitly refusing to deal with the actual topic at hand, which is for example "budget" or "national security," or whatever.
So when you do that, you are basically throwing up your hands and saying "who can know such things?"
It's fucking lazy. Very, fucking lazy. I don't have much time to argue with people too lazy to at least delve into the elements of a topic. You obviously are.
A few very big assumptions in there - very lazy of you. Shouldn't you have at least researched greenbird's personal record on researching the actual topics at hand? Maybe he deals with them explicitly instead of implicitly like you do ... Saying that both parties are equally wrong is just a blanket level statement, what you do with it is up to you. I'd say judging a politician by his party is the lazy approach.You're basically throwing your hands up and saying "I don't have time to judge the individual, so I'll go by party".
the inability of the conservatives to promote the general welfare of the people
Just wanted to point out that conservatives also get blamed for the polarization of politics, but when faced with statements like this ... why wouldn't we be polarized?? There are different ways to promote people's welfare, and when it comes to government, the best way is to remove red tape and just generally get out of the way. A point that is often lost on liberals is that promoting the welfare of individuals is promoting the welfare of people - I'll put a fictional case of beer on the line that on a measure of absolute dollars, conservatives donate more to charity (yes, including religious charities) than liberals ... if you can prove me wrong, please do! (OK, I'm sure there are studies from both sides saying they're better at that than the other, but this is slashdot, let's see what happens!).
The cause of the debt in the US is that the government spent more money than it made, so it had to borrow money. Through Democrat years, through Republican years, that doesn't vary. You can get away with that if you'll make the money in the future (in fact, you can really accelerate your returns through basically leveraged investing), but they forgot that they don't control the future. The GOP believed that if government got out of the way, the people could generate wealth. The Dems believed that raising taxes and making a few superficial cuts to the DoD could raise the money. But when it comes time to actually make cuts, real people get hurt, and politicians lose their nerve - it's pretty hard to take leviathan down when leviathan squeals so loudly. No, I don't have a solution either. I don't like it when people (me) get hurt by budget cuts or tax increases. In hindsight it's pretty easy to say we should control spending ... Ok, it was pretty easy to say in foresight too, but when votes are demonstrably buy-able, that takes real leadership, and none of our politicians on either side have provided that.
As for needing real revenue to balance the budget, I think both sides are saying you actually need real economic growth to do so now - even the Dems don't think tax increases alone will do it. Cutting some DoD budget may help, but even a 10% cut there only gets you a fraction of the way to balanced. And it affects a lot of people (voters) directly, not to mention the optics of it. I wasn't a fan of the Bush spending, but Obama's done Bush on steroids (I know, fighting the dreaded double-dip recession ... time will tell how well that went, but so far it's nothing like advertised!).
If you have a problem judging politicians as a whole, why is it OK to judge parties as a whole? Vote local, and odds are one of your candidates is doing better than the party line on the "being wrong" scale ... vote for those candidates often enough and maybe you can bring those averages down to the 50% mark ... Stick with your party-line black-and-white politics, and you end up only averaging things out.
The difference is that the union member can't be fired for his malfeasance (in at least some cases, see public sector unions) without causing more pain for those doing the firing than he himself will ever feel. The non-union member will (more often) have to face the consequences of his actions. That's the real reason people don't like unions - people should have to face their own consequences. Also, incidentally the reason that people don't like corporations - with corporations, people sometimes have to feel consequences they actually don't deserve - opposite problem, still a problem ...
At least you're being reasonable about the whole thing - I think it is a pretty strong moral negative, although perhaps not strong enough to be legislated against (as that legislation itself produces negative effects). To me, the fetus is for all intents and purposes a human, and to want to eliminate it for aesthetic or selfish purposes says something about you (I hate to judge, but really). Especially when (most of the time) you could have prevented it in the first place.
However, to ban abortion is not to eliminate it, and legislating morality doesn't really work (see the prohibition in the USA), so ... we're left trying to educate people to make the right choice and support them if they've made the wrong one, even though the wrong one ended up in the death of, at some level, a human. So I could live with your boundaries - education for free, make people face their own choices head-on, and hopefully more often than not (certainly more often than today) they'd make the right choice!
Same to you - great to see that an interesting (dare I say rational) conversation can be had with someone who holds a very different viewpoint than mine - unfortunately it doesn't happen too often! The contrast between Old and New Testament is indeed fascinating - they aren't inconsistent, yet they are different. Not sure if modern man could construct something half as interesting - so far, in all the fiction I've read, I haven't found anything close (which makes me lean towards some form of divine inspiration, although I'm sure you draw a different conclusion :).
Anyway, I am not against reducing abortions trough positive means
I think we have a pro-lifer in the makings!!! Lol ;)
but against doing so trough negative means (banning, making it too expensive, hard to get and so on)
Banning, no, but a 24-hour wait period or an ultrasound is hardly banning, really not risky at all, and not a long enough period of time to make a significant difference in the status of the fetus (assuming the mother was able to figure out she had an "unwanted" pregnancy in the time period of a few months). So is that positive or negative? It really should be a choice, but I think as a society, we've assumed that "choice" means easy, and this is one choice that should be anything but (in a moral way, not a financial/etc way).
I also found your repeated references to the poorer women needing more access to abortion instructive ... why would a poorer woman want an abortion sooner than a richer woman? Obviously there's more at play than just "I don't want this baby right now". Rather than focusing so much energy on making abortion easier to obtain, can't we focus some of that on making keeping the child easier to do?
This makes Abraham a very odd hero
Most biblical heroes are :). They tend to be very very human (as you I can see you know from the rest of this post). However, getting it right does make one somewhat heroic ... if he was wrong, he would have been a monster. Apparently he had the faith and the discernment to be right, which is why he's held up (even in the New Testament) as a hero of the faith. We should all struggle to be as right as him. And be very careful not to be as wrong as he could have been ...
Put another way, it's possible for God to be all-powerful, and it is possible for God to be all-good, but it is not possible for him to be both in a world which requires suffering, struggling, growth, change and reward :)
I prefer to think of it as a "definition of good" kind of thing - we define it as a lack of suffering and struggling, but I don't think that's accurate (as we also define change and reward as "good"). I always love the fact that the "tree" in the garden was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - ie, before we knew "good" (or "evil"), we were perfect ...
That sort of makes the idea of Heaven, and an eternal bliss, scary when you think about it - sure, it might be fun, but you lose your personhood once you're at one with God. It's more comforting to me to think that after my life is over, it's simply over, and that I won't have to suffer through an eternity of no growth, change or reward :)
I don't spend a lot of time thinking about heaven, and the Bible is quite explicit that we can't understand it. There is a heaven, but it very much doesn't describe the details (other than to say that you in heaven compared to you now, is kind of like looking at a big tree and comparing it to a seed - ie, the same, yet very much not). This life itself is much more rewarding with God than without, and that's more than enough for me - maybe I'm just weak in that I need to give it some meaning ... but I think that's a very human failing (and I believe rather intensely that there really is that meaning - but I do recognize that there is some faith required).
arguably the idea of an afterlife as proposed by various religions is also an example of this phenomenon.
Very interesting. When religion is only bought into as a pass to the afterlife, then I hesitate to call that religion real. That God may choose to accept me into His presence after this life can be a comfort at times, but this life would be awfully long if that was the only reason I had for doing what I do (as Martin Luther once said, even if I knew God was coming back tomorrow, I'd still plant a tree today ...).
Until there is a way of transferring the fetus out of the woman to some device, it is my opinion that the woman has priority over her own body. If/when there is such a device then the fetus could be carried full term outside of the woman.
And what about abortions that happen past the point when the fetus actually is viable outside of its mother? There are more of those than there are the "rape case".
Unless you are willing to call "getting pregnant" a crime, then you could sentence the woman to 9 months of prison.
Not a crime, but surely we can work towards a point where we reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. And one portion of that should be turning unwanted ones into wanted ones (ie, give the mother the support she's lacking, or at least give her time to decide and make the honest decision to kill her child rather than to "get rid of a few cells"). Also, lots of parents occasionally do not "want" their children. Or children their parents. Should we sanction killing them?
The problem with death penalty for rape is that then there is not higher penalty for murder, which means that once the rapist did his deed he might as well kill the victim.
Valid point. I'm not entirely in favour of the death penalty ... for fetuses or rapists.
Even if they were born the society will have to take care of them because the mother won't.
Again, the idea is to reduce abortions. I really don't believe that every aborted fetus would have been a burden on society, and I really don't believe that every abortive mother would have chosen to have an abortion if there were other/better options, or if abortion wasn't as easy to obtain as the Sunday paper. Even other elective surgery (what this is) is generally more of a pain ...
Also, what "rational criteria"? Race (a few people already tried that), usefulness to society (then the fetus is not useful), what?
Jonathon Swift had some ideas about this - based on the hunger of the surrounding population perhaps?