Ironically, they're doing just this, albeit volunatary for all the Burning Crusade instances. You'll be able to run them on 5 different diffculty levels which will skew the mob levels and loot levels appropriately. Would love to see the idea retrofitted.:)
I don't deny that sometimes we must risk life to save that life. Those are terrible choices, and I hope they're as rare as possible. When faced with them, we make our best judgement and go on, because there's no good answer.
But I see it as a different thing to risk or even certainly destroy life in order to create life, as with IVF. How is this ethically defensable?
Relatedly, with stem cell research you have the destruction of some human beings with the hope that their death will benefit others. I have no problem with this if the person being destroyed is willingly doing so. It's no small thing to die for another. But that's not the situation we face with stem cell research. Instead we have human beings who have not, indeed cannot, give their consent for such a sacrifice being destroyed in the name of science. The only way this is ethical is if we somehow consider them to be less than human beings, and that's a difficult case for me to make.
As to the idea of legistlation, I wonder who you're disagreeing with. Am I against abortion? Certainly. Do I think it should be legistlated out of existence? With the expection of the life of the mother and possibly rape/incest (where I struggle), probably. Is that the best way to deal with it? Not at all. The far better answer is to provide aid for those who would consider abortion their only option in the hopes that they will choose otherwise. Life is sacred and precious. Legistlating that won't make it so, and failing to do so won't make it less so.
I do take issue with the idea of people giving up rights on the basis of MY unique moral views. It happens all the time. First, let's be honest. Is having a baby a right? Is it a right that can be pursued at any cost? I would maintain that having children is a priviledge, a responsibility, a lofty undertaking, but I have some difficulty calling it a right.
Let's assume for a moment that it is, however. And let's number it among the myriad of other rights that we freely exercise in the US. (I presume from your website that you're in the US.) I have the right to say what I wish, up to the point that another person is harmed. I have the right to own and shoot firearms, up to the point that another person is harmed. I have the right to do what I wish with my body up until the point that it hurts someone else.
We routinely in our society make laws that restrict freedoms and behaviors on the basis of moral beliefs. For a bit of a hyperbolic example, my freedom to go on a sixteen state killing spree is limited by our societal belief that murder is wrong. My personal moral beliefs have little, if anything, to do with what will happen to me. My ability to have more PC upgrades is limited by our societal beliefs that theft is wrong. Why is it so much of a stretch to believe that the freedom to kill embryos should be limited by a societal belief (that we may or may not have achieved, mind you...) that life is sacred and killing is wrong?
Not at all. Separate the idea of human life (being quite specific there) from a human being. It is at time necessary to harm human life for the betterment of human beings. I know I'm using the terms slightly differently than they're used typically, so to clear up the vocabulary a bit:
All human cells are human life. From sperm to egg to retina to skin to whatever you choose to stick in here.
Not all human life comprises a person with a sense of being. In the case of zygotes and embryos, loss of even a single cell of that life can result in the death of a human being, but I personally lose thousands of cells on a daily basis. Other ethical concerns aside, the spilling of cells in masturbation is ethically no different than shedding skin.
The ethical line that I see is where one crosses from something that has the possibility to create a human being (sperm/egg) to something which is a human being (embryo/zygote)
Finally, it's of interest to me that you assume I hold my beliefs on a religious basis. I do, but have not indicated that previously to the best of my knowledge. Is it not possible to respect human beings in all their forms from a non-religious point of view?
"Stem cell and IVF are both advances in medical science, it's just that IVF is now part of our everyday life while stem cell work is still in the lab, contemplating clinical trials."
I think you may have hit on a large part of it right there. IVF has gone on long enough that people tend to assume it's safe for all involved. Stem cell research is new and exciting and thus generates interest and controversy. I agree that the positions aren't consistent, and should be so.:(
Good point. That was poorly phrased on my part. I shy away from saying that it's only unethical if you KNOW it's going to be killed, because of the obviously vague nature of life. At what percentage is it ethical? That's a tougher question, and not one I have a neat answer to.
Deontology is a dangerous path. The ends rarely, if ever, justify the means. I don't know how we'd master IVF without failing lots of times, yet I cannot sanction the lives lost in said failure. My point was that it's destruction of life that's critical, not the idea of IVF itself. (There are those who feel that the very idea of IVF moves into playing God, but I would respectfully disagree.)
Again, with stem cell research, I cannot sanction those forms that involved the destruction of human beings. Finding new ways to acquire stem cells that don't involve that is the way forward, and more research needs to be done here. Everyone wants to heal people and save babies, etc. It's just that we can't ethically do it at the expense of killing others.
Honestly, I view the position of modern scientific ethics as somewhat confusing. We don't permit experimentation on infants, even prenatally, unless there's an absolutely essential reason to try the treatment, often as a last ditch effort. Yet somewhere before the two week mark after conception we seem to feel that the embryo/fetus ceases to be a human being and becomes fair game for experimenting. It is difficult to reconcile those two positions ethically or logically.
No on both counts, but not out of a difference in ethics. Instead, it's a difference in education. Most pro-life people know how abortion works. It's pretty straightforward, really. Stem cell research has been in the news, and even still I'd imagine that many simply believe it's another form of abortion and therefore wrong. IVF is far more arcane, and I should imagine that most people who haven't studied it or dealt with it have very little idea what's involved.
Don't get me wrong, I think ethically they're correct, but I wish that people would learn a bit more about the tech involved and make informed opinions.
On the other side of the IVF debate, let's pose a theoretical technology where you can create a single embryo, implant it, and have it grow to birth with very little risk to the embryo or parents. In that case the technology would be completely ethical, in my opinion.
Most people that I know of who are familiar with the process of IVF and stem cell research and consider a zygote to be a human being (A fairly narrow group, but one you seem to be asking about.) do regard IVF as unethical as stem cell research. The short version is that any time you're creating a human being with the knowledge that it will be destroyed, you're on shaky ethical ground. Whether that's the embryos lost in implantation, freezing, thawing, stem cell research, contraimplantational devices, or what have you, it's ethically the same.
This is the heart of the stem cell debate for most people that I know. If an ethical method of harvesting stem cells that doesn't involve creating embryos to kill them can be found, then I'm all for it! There have been several promising stories on/. in that direction, and I sincerely hope that scientists manage to accomplish that goal. Stem cell research is a technology with incredible potential, but it must be pursued in line with ethical guidelines.
Their unethical behavior does not necessitate yours. (I realize that sometimes this does happen, but this is not one of those cases.) You can live without music, in the end, or find music from other sources. Your refusal to give any further money to the RIAA through its various tentacles is admirable, but to use an admirable behavior to justify an unethical one is a dangerous precedent. Boycott them entirely and buy from independant artists instead. It's generally better music anyways, IMO.
More seriously, that type of scenario doesn't seem to make for good gaming or good publicity. The corporate laws got to be corporate laws because corporations have good PR deparments. (Read: lobbies) Can you imagine the outcry if someone actually made a game where the objective was to pirate music/movies/software while staying one step ahead of the FBI? Assuming it was a good game, people would, of course play it, but the PR for the gaming industry would be...very bad.
As for the government breaking the really big laws, I'd say that precisely what games like Splinter Cell are. They're games where the player is thrust into the role of a government employee (I assume Sam Fischer is paid...) and carries out things that would be illegal by any national or international law if they were known. (Presidential pardons excluded, of course)
Combining the two? I think perhaps it's just unrealistic. The penalties for breaking corporate sponsored laws are usual severe, but rarely involve things like special ops teams assassinating you. I may be defining "really big laws" too narrowly, but the punishment seems unbelievably beyond the potential crimes.
Maybe I'm just a liberal hippie communist, but I always thought the basis of free government was a willingness to follow the rule of law, not brainwashing children into military service.
This is only accurate to the degree that everyone else is willing to follow the rule of law. When that is not the case, as seems inevitable, society must have organizations which operate outside the usual limits in order to enforce said laws. There are things the police do that an average citizen cannot. SC portrays the far extreme of that power, which may or may not actually exist. (If it did, by definition we wouldn't know...) While it remains debatable what powers such organizations should have (Patriot act, etc), the need for the existence of such organizations and for people to serve as a part of them is rarely, if ever, debated.
As long as there are those who would operate outside the rule of law, freedom will remain something which must be defended. The perceived nobility of the task, combined with the ability to operate outside of the normal societal limits make such organizations material for video games.
There's an old article I remember reading by a gentleman named John Fischer which talked about his efforts as a child to begin a Christian painting company. Things went very well until they knocked on the door of a lady who asked a very pertinent question: "Can you paint?"
Quite frankly, the problem with most Christian software is that it's not fun or well made. The problem with most Christian novels is that they're poorly written, and (dare I say...) the problem with most Christian music is that it's just not good music. (I say this having encountered and continuing to encounter a great deal of the material in question...)
Art and entertainment with an idealogical basis behind them (or theological) sets itself up for one of two fates. Either it accomplishes its attempts to communicate the transcendant and becomes truly great, or, more often, it fails miserably. Very rarely does it seem to be "just art" or "just entertainment." The art gains the hearing for the message, but only provided the art is of sufficient quality.
If Christians wish to use games/music/books/software/whatever as a means to share their faith, the first step in doing so *must* be to be one of the very best designer/artist/author/programmers out there. Simply being a "Christian programmer" is not enough. One must be a very good programmer who is also a Christian.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I knew.
Ironically, they're doing just this, albeit volunatary for all the Burning Crusade instances. You'll be able to run them on 5 different diffculty levels which will skew the mob levels and loot levels appropriately. Would love to see the idea retrofitted. :)
I don't deny that sometimes we must risk life to save that life. Those are terrible choices, and I hope they're as rare as possible. When faced with them, we make our best judgement and go on, because there's no good answer.
But I see it as a different thing to risk or even certainly destroy life in order to create life, as with IVF. How is this ethically defensable?
Relatedly, with stem cell research you have the destruction of some human beings with the hope that their death will benefit others. I have no problem with this if the person being destroyed is willingly doing so. It's no small thing to die for another. But that's not the situation we face with stem cell research. Instead we have human beings who have not, indeed cannot, give their consent for such a sacrifice being destroyed in the name of science. The only way this is ethical is if we somehow consider them to be less than human beings, and that's a difficult case for me to make.
As to the idea of legistlation, I wonder who you're disagreeing with. Am I against abortion? Certainly. Do I think it should be legistlated out of existence? With the expection of the life of the mother and possibly rape/incest (where I struggle), probably. Is that the best way to deal with it? Not at all. The far better answer is to provide aid for those who would consider abortion their only option in the hopes that they will choose otherwise. Life is sacred and precious. Legistlating that won't make it so, and failing to do so won't make it less so.
I do take issue with the idea of people giving up rights on the basis of MY unique moral views. It happens all the time. First, let's be honest. Is having a baby a right? Is it a right that can be pursued at any cost? I would maintain that having children is a priviledge, a responsibility, a lofty undertaking, but I have some difficulty calling it a right.
Let's assume for a moment that it is, however. And let's number it among the myriad of other rights that we freely exercise in the US. (I presume from your website that you're in the US.) I have the right to say what I wish, up to the point that another person is harmed. I have the right to own and shoot firearms, up to the point that another person is harmed. I have the right to do what I wish with my body up until the point that it hurts someone else.
We routinely in our society make laws that restrict freedoms and behaviors on the basis of moral beliefs. For a bit of a hyperbolic example, my freedom to go on a sixteen state killing spree is limited by our societal belief that murder is wrong. My personal moral beliefs have little, if anything, to do with what will happen to me. My ability to have more PC upgrades is limited by our societal beliefs that theft is wrong. Why is it so much of a stretch to believe that the freedom to kill embryos should be limited by a societal belief (that we may or may not have achieved, mind you...) that life is sacred and killing is wrong?
Not at all. Separate the idea of human life (being quite specific there) from a human being. It is at time necessary to harm human life for the betterment of human beings. I know I'm using the terms slightly differently than they're used typically, so to clear up the vocabulary a bit:
All human cells are human life. From sperm to egg to retina to skin to whatever you choose to stick in here.
Not all human life comprises a person with a sense of being. In the case of zygotes and embryos, loss of even a single cell of that life can result in the death of a human being, but I personally lose thousands of cells on a daily basis. Other ethical concerns aside, the spilling of cells in masturbation is ethically no different than shedding skin.
The ethical line that I see is where one crosses from something that has the possibility to create a human being (sperm/egg) to something which is a human being (embryo/zygote)
Finally, it's of interest to me that you assume I hold my beliefs on a religious basis. I do, but have not indicated that previously to the best of my knowledge. Is it not possible to respect human beings in all their forms from a non-religious point of view?
"Stem cell and IVF are both advances in medical science, it's just that IVF is now part of our everyday life while stem cell work is still in the lab, contemplating clinical trials."
:(
I think you may have hit on a large part of it right there. IVF has gone on long enough that people tend to assume it's safe for all involved. Stem cell research is new and exciting and thus generates interest and controversy. I agree that the positions aren't consistent, and should be so.
Good point. That was poorly phrased on my part. I shy away from saying that it's only unethical if you KNOW it's going to be killed, because of the obviously vague nature of life. At what percentage is it ethical? That's a tougher question, and not one I have a neat answer to.
Deontology is a dangerous path. The ends rarely, if ever, justify the means. I don't know how we'd master IVF without failing lots of times, yet I cannot sanction the lives lost in said failure. My point was that it's destruction of life that's critical, not the idea of IVF itself. (There are those who feel that the very idea of IVF moves into playing God, but I would respectfully disagree.)
Again, with stem cell research, I cannot sanction those forms that involved the destruction of human beings. Finding new ways to acquire stem cells that don't involve that is the way forward, and more research needs to be done here. Everyone wants to heal people and save babies, etc. It's just that we can't ethically do it at the expense of killing others.
Honestly, I view the position of modern scientific ethics as somewhat confusing. We don't permit experimentation on infants, even prenatally, unless there's an absolutely essential reason to try the treatment, often as a last ditch effort. Yet somewhere before the two week mark after conception we seem to feel that the embryo/fetus ceases to be a human being and becomes fair game for experimenting. It is difficult to reconcile those two positions ethically or logically.
No on both counts, but not out of a difference in ethics. Instead, it's a difference in education. Most pro-life people know how abortion works. It's pretty straightforward, really. Stem cell research has been in the news, and even still I'd imagine that many simply believe it's another form of abortion and therefore wrong. IVF is far more arcane, and I should imagine that most people who haven't studied it or dealt with it have very little idea what's involved.
Don't get me wrong, I think ethically they're correct, but I wish that people would learn a bit more about the tech involved and make informed opinions.
On the other side of the IVF debate, let's pose a theoretical technology where you can create a single embryo, implant it, and have it grow to birth with very little risk to the embryo or parents. In that case the technology would be completely ethical, in my opinion.
Most people that I know of who are familiar with the process of IVF and stem cell research and consider a zygote to be a human being (A fairly narrow group, but one you seem to be asking about.) do regard IVF as unethical as stem cell research. The short version is that any time you're creating a human being with the knowledge that it will be destroyed, you're on shaky ethical ground. Whether that's the embryos lost in implantation, freezing, thawing, stem cell research, contraimplantational devices, or what have you, it's ethically the same.
/. in that direction, and I sincerely hope that scientists manage to accomplish that goal. Stem cell research is a technology with incredible potential, but it must be pursued in line with ethical guidelines.
This is the heart of the stem cell debate for most people that I know. If an ethical method of harvesting stem cells that doesn't involve creating embryos to kill them can be found, then I'm all for it! There have been several promising stories on
Their unethical behavior does not necessitate yours. (I realize that sometimes this does happen, but this is not one of those cases.) You can live without music, in the end, or find music from other sources. Your refusal to give any further money to the RIAA through its various tentacles is admirable, but to use an admirable behavior to justify an unethical one is a dangerous precedent. Boycott them entirely and buy from independant artists instead. It's generally better music anyways, IMO.
Yeah, I was thinking that as I was posting...It's frightening in a 1984 sort of way. And perhaps a little too plausible to be fun as well.
(Yeah, I realize I'm saying it's too unrealistic to be fun and too realistic to be fun at the same time...it makes sense in my world.)
Kazaa? ;-)
More seriously, that type of scenario doesn't seem to make for good gaming or good publicity. The corporate laws got to be corporate laws because corporations have good PR deparments. (Read: lobbies) Can you imagine the outcry if someone actually made a game where the objective was to pirate music/movies/software while staying one step ahead of the FBI? Assuming it was a good game, people would, of course play it, but the PR for the gaming industry would be...very bad.
As for the government breaking the really big laws, I'd say that precisely what games like Splinter Cell are. They're games where the player is thrust into the role of a government employee (I assume Sam Fischer is paid...) and carries out things that would be illegal by any national or international law if they were known. (Presidential pardons excluded, of course)
Combining the two? I think perhaps it's just unrealistic. The penalties for breaking corporate sponsored laws are usual severe, but rarely involve things like special ops teams assassinating you. I may be defining "really big laws" too narrowly, but the punishment seems unbelievably beyond the potential crimes.
I'd always heard it as:
Power corrupts.
Absolute power....is actually kind of fun once you get used to it.
Maybe I'm just a liberal hippie communist, but I always thought the basis of free government was a willingness to follow the rule of law, not brainwashing children into military service.
This is only accurate to the degree that everyone else is willing to follow the rule of law. When that is not the case, as seems inevitable, society must have organizations which operate outside the usual limits in order to enforce said laws. There are things the police do that an average citizen cannot. SC portrays the far extreme of that power, which may or may not actually exist. (If it did, by definition we wouldn't know...) While it remains debatable what powers such organizations should have (Patriot act, etc), the need for the existence of such organizations and for people to serve as a part of them is rarely, if ever, debated.
As long as there are those who would operate outside the rule of law, freedom will remain something which must be defended. The perceived nobility of the task, combined with the ability to operate outside of the normal societal limits make such organizations material for video games.
There's an old article I remember reading by a gentleman named John Fischer which talked about his efforts as a child to begin a Christian painting company. Things went very well until they knocked on the door of a lady who asked a very pertinent question: "Can you paint?"
Quite frankly, the problem with most Christian software is that it's not fun or well made. The problem with most Christian novels is that they're poorly written, and (dare I say...) the problem with most Christian music is that it's just not good music. (I say this having encountered and continuing to encounter a great deal of the material in question...)
Art and entertainment with an idealogical basis behind them (or theological) sets itself up for one of two fates. Either it accomplishes its attempts to communicate the transcendant and becomes truly great, or, more often, it fails miserably. Very rarely does it seem to be "just art" or "just entertainment." The art gains the hearing for the message, but only provided the art is of sufficient quality.
If Christians wish to use games/music/books/software/whatever as a means to share their faith, the first step in doing so *must* be to be one of the very best designer/artist/author/programmers out there. Simply being a "Christian programmer" is not enough. One must be a very good programmer who is also a Christian.