wtf? "Liberals(feminists)"? I think you are confused.
Liberals (feminists) have long hated that you have to actually be convicted of a crime (as in, evidence, facts, deliberation) before being considered guilty of rape.
You don't know what you are talking about. I can't believe your comment has been modded up to five -this is absolutely ridiculous! What you have asserted is simply not true. Nothing about feminism involves what you are suggesting.
For the record, a feminist is any person who believes the following two statements. 1) women are disadvantaged, and 2) we should try to eliminate this disadvantage. Those are the defining beliefs of a feminist. While there are some crazy feminists out there, they are by no means representative of the philosophy of feminism.
So if you're accused by anyone, you might as well go out and rape an orphan, because you're going to jail for it anyway.
Might as well! I know that's the first thing I would think of doing... ummmm?
Now who decides that? How is that decided "scientifically"? I could make the opposite claim - no one has properly defended the deliberate destruction of living human beings that occur during abortions and stem-cell research. Do you not see that both your statement and mine are opinion, and outside the realm of science?
For the time being, it is defended rationally. Philosophers, ethicists, scientists, and the general public seem fairly convinced that a living, breathing human has more rights than a microscopic thing with no thoughts or sentience. However, religious folks disagree (in the face of rational discourse.) The rationality is so plain to see I can't believe you have missed it -the reason rights are accorded have everything to do with consciousness and sentience, and nothing to do wiht DNA.
Heck, they were CREATED because of their "potential for life". Put them in a vagina (or other proper medium, not invented yet) and watch them grow.
Wow you must have attended an abstinence only sex-ed program. No, a blastocyst will not survive inside of a vagina.
I won't even go into the horrors that have been justified with that argument.
Why not? By all means go into the horrors that are supposedly justified by my reasoning. I'd like ot show you why you are wrong, but I can't really debate you if you are refusing to provide actual arguments or even a single example of such a horror. But I really want you to realize why you are wrong, so let me guess, you would have said something like "OMG THAT MEANS YOU CAN KILL DEATHROW PRISONERS BEKUZ THEY WILL DIE NE WAYZ!! BY YOUR LOGIC!! WTF!!! LMAO!"
I agree, that kind of thing would be a horror. But it doesn't have shit to do with what I am arguing, because of the obvious differences in the scenarios. The deathrow example is horrific specifically because there is a living being involved. The reason we all recognize so clearly it is wrong in one case is because it is a different situation, and it is obviously wrong. So to will it be obviously wrong, for obvious reasons, for any of the horrors that you can come up wiht as examples. Killing living people is a horror. Killing blastocysts is not a horror, because they aren't conscious, they aren't sentient, and they aren't alive in any morally meaningful sense of the word. Once again, to fill that definition, you can resort to reason, which dictates that according rights has something to do with an agents consciousness, sentience, or ability to feel pain or pleasure. Or, you could resort to a baseless religious teaching, which states some mystical point at which a tiny collection of cells is for miraculous reasons just as important as an actual human, with thoughts, emotions, and experiences.
You don't spend much time around Christians, do you. Which "THE church" are we talking about?
Which "the church"??? You idiot. ANY CHURCH. Christians get their beliefs from a church somewhere (or from Pat Robertson, or other speakers.) My point was that the bible is not the only source of christian beliefs. If thats not obvious to you, then I am surprised you have not managed to kill yourself by now.
Again, you must not spend much time around Christians.
Who cares if I do or don't spend time with Christians? I have spent a good deal of time talking with them, and have taken religion courses at university. To shut you up, I should point out that I happen to spend alot of time with religious people of various groups, including christians. But, this is besides the point. The fact of the matter is, and you would learn this if you do some research yourself, that there a large number of christians who don't read the bible -they keep one at home, and they might glance at it now and then, but by and large their beliefs come from the church, and they haven't given the "good book" a thorough reading. In fact, I have spoken to one Christian who, having finally taken the time to read the bible, consequently cited his reading it as the primary reason for denouncing his faith.
well you're an idiot, but luckily I don't hang around with people like you. As a matter of fact, my so called "rhetoric" is not only common sense to most ethicists and scientists, but most people support what I am saying about this particular issue. Furthermore, the bill was actually voted in. It was a minority that didn't like the bill. Unfortunately, this minority included the president, who holds veto power. As for all of those who voted against the bill -I respect their decisions only insofar as they arrived at them through reason. But all of those whose decisions were rooted in either A) religious conviction, or B) ignorance (those who clearly did not even read the bill), they do not deserve respect for their decisions. While I would not go so far as to call them idiots (I'm sure their IQs are actually quite high,) I would certainly argue that they should not hold any political power, are irrational, and are in general harmful to society (if the voting behavior they exhibited is indicative of general trends).
To clarify your arguments, you should not use the term "life", which is political rhetoric and lacks clarity. Indeed, in doing so, you are playing into your opponent's hands - "life" obviously, and according to accepted scientific defintions, begins at conception. "Personhood" is a more subtle substitution. You cannot argue that a three-week-old fetus is anything other than a living human being - but you could argue that it should not be considered a legal human. Note the "should" in my previous sentence. It is not a statement than can be proven with "evidence".
this is why i specifically said what we needed was a "morally meaningful definition of life." Once our rational discourse has provided that definition for us -ie, what does it take to be human in a way that means they should be accorded rights- then the solution to this debate DOES lie with science, since science identifies identities that meet or fail to meet that definition. So far, no one has properly defended a view of life beings at conception on rational grounds, though religious conviction does make this point appear more meaningful than it really is.
Rather, they would be arguing that the high potential of this organism to attain that ability is sufficient for certain basic protections. Note that again, science cannot help us with this debate.
the blastocysts in question had no potential for life. Firstly, they could not survive without scientists. Secondly, they were going to be destroyed anyways. In the overall debate of stem cell research, I would address your point more thoroughly -on this current issue however, it is entirely irrelevant. these blastocysts did not meet your requirement of "having potential for life" -they didn't have that potential, on two counts.
You are right about the Bible - there is little concerning homosexuality. Unfortunately, that little bit is extremely clear on the matter. The same is not true concerning abortion. The only line that I can think of (and the one most often cited) is the "I knew thee in the womb" line, which doesn't imply that "I knew thee from conception", and therefore does not settle the matter.
You entirely missed the point. The point was that the bible doesn't decide what christians believe -the church does. What they say, is what christians believe. They say homosexuality is really bad, because the emphasis the relevant passages. However, they could have just as easily emphasized passages about good-will, loving your neighbour, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and so forth. The church could have easily had a different interpretation, also based on the religious texts, and that would have been the official christian stance. The homosexuality issue is just an example, but the proof of my argument lies in that 1) there are huge numbers of christians who don't even read the bible -they get their beliefs entirely from the church, and 2) that there are so many different churchs, all based on the same religious texts, but with varying opinions.
Here we go, do this experiment (if legal in your country)
* Take cell samples from a 1 day zygote and another from a living 75 year old human.
* Conduct a full range of biometric & DNA testing on each sample.
* Send results for peer review, asking the question "Are these cells both from living human beings?"
The only meaningful scientific answer has to be the one that is stripped of all emotion and subjectivism and reduced only to highly repeatable observations, a clearly stated prediction ("that zygotes and 75 year old men are both human and alive") and an evidence based answer ("yes"). It is even disprovable, so Popper would be happy.
Based on your definition of 'life', a recently dead person and cancerous cell tissue would be considered life. Tell me, is this the meaningful definition of life form a moral perspective that you had in mind? I didn't think so.
Oh, BTW, you might also want to look to see what Descartes was doing when he invented the modern idea of scientific enquiry - he was doing theology, my friend. Not all religous thought is bad for your mind, you know.
stop fawning over descartes -as far as questions concerning consciousness and morality he did alot more harm than good. For many years people engaged in the torture of animals based on descartes "reasoning" -according to him (because of his religious convictions) animals had no souls and thus were incapable of feeling pain (since pain is felt by the soul.) btw, the source of communication between the soul and the physical world, according to him, is the pineal gland. In spite of the obvious foolishness of his view, people crucified dogs and sliced them open while alive -their howls were taken to be a stimulus-response behavior with no pain involved. A piano was made for a king that worked by thrusting pins into the tails of cats. etc. So yes, descartes religious thought was CERTAINLY, WITHOUT A DOUBT, bad for science, bad for morality, and bad for the mind.
Now, before you start rambling over your greatest hero descartes, and his superb accomplishments, do some research on how modern day philosophers view his work (as a source of problems, not as a solution,) and the incredibly detrimental effects his theological views had on the wellbeing of animals.
thanks for putting the previous poster in his place. Might I also suggest taking a sample from a cancerous tissue. Based on his definition of life, killing cancer could be morally wrong. Clearly the functional organization of the tissue in question (is it alive, dead, capable of thought etc), is something we should be asking in addition to, or perhaps even instead of, the DNA of the entity.
no, that is not me. Nor Am I the David Shultz who won the olympic wrestling title in '84. Or the David Shultz who produces folk rock and acoustic music out of Richmond, VA. Also, I am not the photographer David Shultz, or the adjunct professor from the School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma. I am but one in a very large club of David Shultzs (if that is even my real name.)
Although I fail to see why someone who doesn't recognize gay marriage is bigoted. Recognition or lack of recognition is not bigotry. Finally, if your lifestyle is characterized by eating babies, and I am against eating babies, I am an anti-baby eating bigot. So in the strictest definition of bigotry, not all bigotry is wrong.
Well, I don't think it is much of a stretch to suggest that conservative christians are actually against gay-marriage, as opposed to just "not recognizing" it. If they had their way, most of them wouldn't even want civil-unions (even pictures of gays kissing in a paper invokes flurries of angry mail). Given that, then they are bigots, by the definition you provided. I agree with you entirely on all other points you made, including that in the "strictest definition of bigotry", being a bigot isn't always bad. I feel that the bigotry exhibited by the church wrt to homosexuals is bad, especially insofar it is emotionally harmful to a large number of people.
If you want to turn this into an issue of ethics, you can exercise it on a personal level by refusing treatment that was the result of stem cell research, then you can die and there will be one less self-righteous dweeb hell bent on fucking up society in the process of promoting his perverted sense of morality.
Do you even understand the difference betwween religion, morality and ethics?
What are you talking about? Morality/Ethics are equivalent. Religion is supposedly a basis for morality, but is not based in reason, and ergo should not be included in rational discourse (unless they can provide a rational basis for their beliefs.) When republicans use the term "moral issue", what they mean is "christian issue", because their opponents are also arguing in favour of moral issues, although they are from a different perspective.
It's a likely unintended consequence of encouraging it, therefore, directly related.
No its not. If you had read the bill, or my previous comments more closely, you would realize that this outcome was specifically protected against by provisions in the bill.
Why is it going to happen anyway, and should it? Are we deliberately creating extra embryos so we can use them for scientific research? Are you sure there aren't people who would/are do it for expediency and to win your point of view that "they exist anyway so why not use them?"
"we" are deliberatly creating additional embryos for in vitro fertilization purposes. All of these extras are currently being destroyed. These embryos being destroyed are the ones the bill says should be given to researchers.
Sure it is... the more embryos created to increase choice, the more that have to be discarded.
Its irrelevant because no one is proposing it -it wasn't part of the bill, and its not part of the issue we are discussing. Its a meaningful ethical question, yes, but entirely irrelevant to what we are talking about now.
You claim we should harvest any and all embryos we want because they're going to be destroyed. It's the same argument.
its not the same argument. In one case we are talking about embryos smaller than the head of a pin, which are by the way incapable of thought, sentience, or conscious experience of any kind. In the other case we are talking about a living human. This is not even to mention the hypocrisy in the fact that the most likely group to support the death penalty is conservative christians.
It is not I who haven't supported my decision, it is you. EVERY answer you give is "because the embryos will be discarded anyway." The deeper question is why are we deliberately creating embryos to discard in the first place and is it ethical to encourage scientists to deliberately create more embryos for the sake of unproven research when we can study a similar cell (adult, placenta, etc stem cells) without the ethical hangups before we push all gung ho for something which does raise questions... Just because you feel the questions are irrelevant (probably due to your complete hatred of christians (of which, I am not - I'm an atheist), Bush, conservatives, etc), doesn't mean that those questions aren't valid.
once again you have missed the point. If bush really thinks throwing away embryos is murder, then it is crazy that he isn't leading a fight against these fertility clinics. Stopping this bill didn't stop any embryos from being destroyed -all it did was prevent us from getting any benefit from it. Furthermore, you,among many others, have failed to provide a reason for believing there is anything at all wrong with destroying an embryo -it doesn't think, feel, or have any sensations whatsoever. It has never formed a thought, and the ones in question never will. Not only that, but they do not even have the potential to become a living being -not without the help of scientists. And more specifically, not even then, because these embryos are being destroyed anyways.
Your scope of reason != "all reason." You're as narrowminded as the people whom you so voraciously despise.
holy fuckbeans! if you are so sure of yourself then for godsakes GIVE ME A REASON!
Ahem, you were the one who called me douche-smear in your very first reply to me... and I'm the one attacki
Okay genius, let's look at every question you asked, one by one, and let's try to find a SINGLE reason for veto'ing the bill, okay? If we can't find one, then bush's action was AGAINST ALL REASON, because there was no REASON (beyond religious conviction,) for doing so. understand? Okay, let's go.
Would it be ethical for scientists to create extra embryos that they have absolutely no intention of using for fertility, so they may conduct research on them when someone comes in to try to produce a child? That's not the issue we're discussing here. If thats one of Bush's reasons for vetoing the bill, then he is guilty of incompetence. The embryos to be used were leftovers. Furthermore, no more would be created after the passing of the bill than would have otherwise.
Is it ethical to create more than one or two at a time which they plan to attempt to impregnant a woman with since there is a very high likelihood that the rest will go to waste or is it a matter of convenience to do more than they need at once even though the rest will be discarded? This is irrelevant. It is going to happen anyways.
Is it ethical to even create embryos outside of the normal process simply because a couple wants to have a child but hasn't been able to? irrelevant
Is it ethical to sift through the many embryos that were created to pick the one you want with the right gene sequences? irrelevent
Would it be ok to harvest organs from prisoners condemned to death since they're going to die anyway? irrelevant.
Okay, let me point something out to you. you started your post by attacking me, boldly claiming I was out of line when I asserted that Bush's veto was done against all reason. But then, you fail to provide a single shred of evidence in support of your crime. This is why you get D's on all your essays. Once you provide a thesis, you must defend it somehow. Go on, tell me -what were the rational reasons for bush's decision?
None of those questions involve religion even if religion does try to offer guidance to them. There is nothing wrong with asking those questions and debating the morality of them. There is nothing wrong with questioning ourselves as we push our knowledge and abilities farther and farther.
Of course there's nothing wrong with asking questions. I would be the first to ask questions if it wasn't being done. But, as far as this debate goes, all of the right questions had already been asked, and answered in favour of stem cell research. However, bush decided to veto the bill, and thus he did so against all reason. tell my, which questions have we forgotten to ask? You failed to provide a single meaningful one in your post. Care to try again?
Is it ok, in the name of research, to mutilate a death row prisoner that has exhausted his last appeal? For people that see an embryo as a person, that's pretty much what stem cell research comes down to.
Alright, well now let's figure out why those particular people believe those situations are equivalent. To me, I wouldn't have any problem with destroying an embryo of less than 200 cells, than ending the life of an actual human. That's because a living human being is not equivalent to an embryo. To me, a human being is a being capable of experiences, of consciousness, of sentience -an embryo is capable of none of these. We need to ask the people who think "killing" an embryo is equivalent to killing a human, why they think they are equivalent. Secondly, we need to ask, if the reason they believe this is strictly religious in nature (and hence completely irrational, until such time as a meaningful reason is provided) whether their opinion should carry any weight. I believe it fairly obvious that in the domain of rational discourse the answer is a strict "no" -religious conviction should be considered worthless.
As far as your demoncracy-can't-work-in-the-face-of-media-blather rant, if people are so pathetic that they can't stand up and think for themselves, regardless of outside influence, why worry about maximizing their self determination, why not just decide things for them?
I apologize for taking the discussion away from the original topic, but I feel I should respond to your comment.... A fair and balanced media isn't necessary, but it couldn't hurt, could it? I am not at all advocating taking away peoples voting rights, and I haven't suggested that their votes are totally worthless. This is not a black and white issue. The peoples right to participate in a proper voting system, are being harmed (not demolished) by biased media sources. The current system is not a disaster (you seemed to characterize my view as such in your post) -its just problematic (perhaps very.) Basically, what I am saying is that more reasonable and intelligent decisions might be made if the population in general was given more reasonable and intelligent sources of information. Seems obvious right? The huge number of links I provided was jsut to demonstrate the bias that, in my opinion, is hurting policy making.
While I am not a supporter of Bush or his veto of this bill, I do think you are a bit naive if you think that only embryos that were going to be destroyed would have been used if this bill had been passed. The BBC reported this week on a similar bill passed in parliment in the UK allowing for the use of embryos that were going to be destroyed anyway. Actually that wasn't the gist of the article. The article was about how fertility clinics across the UK were now allowing couples to pay for their treatment by "donating" excess embryos. Kind of using the embryos as cash, so to speak.
You didn't read the bill either, I see. If memory serves me, the bill had provisions to explicitly stop donors from receiving any profit whatsoever. Thus what happened in the UK would not happen here, because the bill over here was more carefully written, in an attempt to alleviate concerns such as this (though that hardly helps if those voting against it haven't read the bill, which seems evident by the comments many of them made).
Personally, I think Bush probably screwed up, but not for the reasons you mention. There was overwhelming support for this bill in congress and the public. There were protections to ensure ethical research, etc. He could have emphasized that along with the notion the embryos were going to be destroyed. Instead, he has caused problems for his party and strengthened the opposition.
Bush's move was a smart one politically, because it is more likely to polarize and strengthen his religious base -they will see it as a great victory- whereas others, such as yourself, will see this as merely a minor loss for science. Furthermore, much of the public is still probably split on the issue. On the other hand, you may be right. I say this only because, those 33% that still support him, are clearly going to continue to support him no matter what he does. Knocking down this bill could hardly help him with those folks (though there are other christians out there who might be pleased.)
Will his veto have any negative impact? Not immediately, nothing was removed, nothing was taken away. Private research still continues (as the Time article points out, several private biotech firms are getting ready to pettition the FDA for human trials). The only thing that has happened is that researchers, like myself, who work at universities wanting to do this research have the same restrictions we did before the veto. Research still continues.
Of course it continues -he didn't ban science (yet.) And research will not go any slower than it already is. What exactly is your point, if I may ask? The research could have been going faster. Bush prevented it from going faster, which is perfectly equivalent to slowing it down. However you choose to look at it, there were gains in scientific research to be made, and because of bush's veto, they wont be made in the time they could have been.
There is absolutely nothing "religious" about the belief that personhood begins at conception (rather than any other point you want to put it).
I disagree. It is overwhelmingly christians who support the "life begins at conception" idea, specifically because they believe that at conception a soul, a special divine spark of life, enters at precisely this moment. This claim is totally and utterly baseless, and should be thrown out immediately without consideration. While I am not a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, he hit the nail on the head when he said "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismisssed without evidence." Until we have some reason to believe that life (in a morally meaningful sense of the word) begins at conception, we should ignore people who say so. Some have argued that human life should be thought to start at conception through non-religious means, I think quite unsuccessfully, but you are free to peruse those arguments at your leisure. In any case, this is not even relevant, since the embryos in question were going to be destroyed regardless of bush's decision to veto the bill -they were slated for the trashbin.
I think you would do well to research other cultures opinions on when life begins. Depending on the religious scripts available, life begins either: just prior to conception, immediately after conception, a couple months after conception, or a couple months after the baby is born. The key factor involved is religion. It is not a coincidence that it is predominately christians holding this view.
None of these positions is necessarily any more "religious" than the other, and more importantly, none is any more "scientific" as well. "Personhood" is a moral concept and outside of the scope of science. Science can tell us that a blastocyst is alive and a human (according to the accepted definitions), but it cannot tell us if this is sufficient for the granting of rights.
I am among those people who believe that morality can be defined using the tools of rationality and science (yes, science.) I believe it fairly obvious that morality is intimately linked with the notions of consciousness and sentience. To the extent that this is true, it is obvious that science is critical in evaluating moral statements, since consciousness and sentience are within the domain of science. Questions such as "when does a life begin?", are subject to answers from science, since science is capable of telling us when something gains the status of a living being, according to the moral definition of "life", as provided by rational discourse.
This debate has nothing to do with science OR religion, let alone a conflict between them.
It has everything to do with science and religion. First of all, and downright trivially, science has been struck a blow, because scientists will be lacking valuable research materials. Secondly, scientists are arguing in favour of the stem cell research. Thirdly, it is religious types arguing against it. It can't get any more plain than that.
Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
The bible isn't the arbiter of what christians believe -the church is. There is also VERY LITTLE in the bible about homosexuality, and yet you would think its the worst of all sins, judging by the churches reaction to it. If the church says something is the case, then that is what the christian faith teaches, by definition. You can bet your ass that if the christian church had been saying "the divine spark enters the body at 8 months after conception", then we would not be having this debate.
I agree with you that 'marriage' and 'civil union' should be equivalent under the letter of the law. However, those opposed to gay marriage are struggling for ways to distance themselves from that which they see as immoral or ungodly. The distinction between 'civil union' and 'marriage' is contrived in order to allow homophobic individuals to feel that their institution has not been tainted. My solution to the problem would be as follows: allow gay marriage, and call it what it is -marriage- (in order to not be discriminatory), but religious types who are worried about a gay taint on their institutions are free to offer "catholic marriage" or "X marriage", where X is any religion that still feels like living with outdated morals. This solution is ideal: the government is not being discriminatory (which they would be were they to deny gays marriage,) and certain religious people are free to continue in their bigoted practices. While I would like to see this second option stopped entirely, we live in a free society, and you have to take the good with the bad.
we're talking about giving stem cells to researchers instead of throwing them in the trash. I'm not sure if that has sunk in yet -think about it for a minute. Most people thought letting the researchers use them is the best idea (any benefit whatsoever would be worth it,) bush decided, against all reason, that those people were wrong.
What's worse than not just understanding the moral point of view is the complete lack of action that you still can take.
What do you mean by "the moral point of view"? What you fail to understand is that both sides are arguing for the moral point of view (yes, even the scientists.) Republican Christians (or the "moral wrong", as I like to call them) have their moral point of view, and the more rational people have their moral point of view. The difference is this, while the moral wrong are concerned with what actions they must perform to ensure they go to the magical land of their preference when they die, the rest of us are concerning ourselves with ending the suffering of others.
I am not claiming that child == embryo. Merely that equal potential outcomes do not make ethical decisions indistinguishable.
Good point, I agree. There seems to be an ethical difference between pulling the trigger yourself, and letting someone else do it. Now, If the gunman told me that a million lives (or a single life) would be saved if I was the one to pull the trigger, I wouldn't have a problem doing it. In fact, I'd have to be pretty heartless (or a Christian fearful of "sin") not to do it.
On the topic of the fertility clinics that are providing the stem cells, do women actually volunteer for abortions, or do they have to be forced by others?
Holy shit what the fuck are you talking about? The idiocy has reached new and incredible heights!
Your inability to understand "moral reasons" makes me glad that Bush has this nation's highest office and not you. In your world, "fetal farming" is just some "fucking moral reason" to be set aside.
Okay shithead, if you had a brain you would realize that the phrase "moral reasons" when used by Bush or other republicans means "christian values," which have no basis in reason. What I don't understand is how they are allowed to get away with using the term "moral reasons" as a blanket term for christian ideas, as if christians are moral whereas those they disagree with are not. I contend that the opposite has historically always been the case, and that continues into today. Chrstians made the wrong moral decisions wrt freedom of speech, slavery, witch burning, gay marriage, and now stem cells.
In case you missed it (clearly you did) my post was entirely about morality -I was arguing that bush's veto was very immoral. I haven't failed to understand morality -I was making a moral argument. Read my post again, and try to understand it, or do us all a favour and die.
You do realize that morality and ethics exist outside of the spectrum of religion, right?
Yes, that's a fairly pointless question, and I don't see why you would bother asking it, except to be a bitch. Don't bother coming up with examples. oh wait...
If I can access bank accounts and drain funds away to another account, do I cross an ethical line?
If I can steal supplies from work for my personal use at home, do I cross an ethical line?
If I can sell my dad's used diabetic needles to junkies instead of throwing them away, do I cross an ethical line?
If I can walk out into my back yard, cross over into a neighbor's property and hunt without his permission, do I cross an ethical line?
If I throw away food that someone else could have eaten, do I cross an ethical line?
If I kill more animals than I can eat before the meat rots, do I cross an ethical line?
If I own a 1000 acres of woods and I decide to burn them all down, do I cross an ethical line?
If I drive a hummer to the grocery store 500 feet away to get a quart of milk, do I cross an ethical line?
Okay that was stupid. What's next?
There are lots of ethical questions regarding embryonic stem cells that don't involve religion. For example, is it ethical to create extra embryos that I know I won't need so I can sell them/use them for research? At what point do we cross the threshold of duplicating embryos and cloning people? Is it ethical to force people getting paid minimum wage to pay for general scientific research (especially when adult stem cells are showing results NOW but embryonic ones aren't) or would it be better to do it through private donations and other capitalism?
Okay listen up douche-smear, and listen good. NOTHING that you just said has any bearing on the recent stem cell issue. The bill that Bush vetoed was very strict in stating that only those embryos which are leftover from fertilization clinics and going to be destroyed anyways would be used for research. Furthermore, it had provisions to ensure tht no extras would be created. Before you say any other stupid thing, go read the bill for yourself. I trust you are capable of finding it with google. But then again... By the way, why did you respond to my post if you hadn't watched the links I provided (I noticed that you were spouting stupid talking points that were addressed and dismantled in the links I provided.)
You know, just because we are capable of doing something doesn't always mean that it's a good idea. There's nothing wrong with questioning where we're going and if we are doing the right thing, especially at the beginning of something new versus finally asking those questions after getting halfway through it or finished with it.
Who the fuck is arguing that stem cell research should be carried out "just because we are capable"? REally! who the fuck said that? I didn't say we aren't allowed to question the ethics of stem cell research. In fact, my post was entirely based in ethical argument -I argued thats its incredibly unethical to do what bush did -he is ensuring that many people will suffer from diseases for longer than is necessary, because he doesn't want to see lifeless embryos that are going to be destroyed anyways, used for the purpose of benevolent scientific research. I'm talking about ethics here shitface, so don't pretend that I've ignored them -that is my main interest in this issue.
This is clearly another battle between religion and science. For anyone who doesn't have all the facts on Bush's recent veto, they are quite simple:
intelligent, reasonable, people outlined a bill that would see leftover embryos from fertility clinics, that were going to be destroyed anyways because of a limited shelf-life, given to researchers. Furthermore, the bill outlined measures to ensure that the number of embryos being created would not be increased for scientific purposes.
Bush decided that it was a bad idea for "moral reasons," whatever the fuck that means. The embryos that this douche "saved" are all going to be destroyed anyways, we just won't see any scientific research come out of it, and so he has set back the clock on medical advancements that will one day save countless numbers of lives (though in the mean time, countless will die because of bush).
Bush either did what he did because he really felt the bill was wrong for his own personal religious reasons (which would have been hard had he actually read the bill, seeing as though the embryos are destroyed either way,) or he was pandering to his base. In either case, the prime motivator for his decision was religion -religion beat science this time, unfortunately.
I would also like to use this post to point out a number of ways in which the conservative media attempts to unethically further their agenda -including using biased language, misleading stories, and outright lies.
The first is attempting to confuse the public by juxtaposing stories about stem cells with stories about fetal farming (an unrelated issue that the casual viewer might confuse as being the same.) While it is true that bush signed in a law banning fetal farming, this has nothing to do with the stem cell debate. Although, based on the coverage provided by some news stations, you'd think it was the same issue (or at least related).
NY Times, CNN on "fetal farming"
If this sort of crap is what passes for intelligent discourse, on a channel where people get their "news" and "information", is it any wonder that stupid decisions are being made, and shithead leaders get elected into power?
What I'm showing you above are not rare snippets from unpopular shows -admittedly, they are some of the more severe abuses of media power, but they are selected from among a great many such occurences, from some of the most popular American "news" people. The American population is constantly pelted with a barrage of bullshit and rhetoric. It's kind of hard to have faith in democracy under such conditions. Sure, the votes may be cast freely -but what about the months and years beforehand, when the voters should have been getting informed about current events? If that process is sufficiently disrupted, its no longer a democracy. How can you expect people to understand the issue properly, when they are constantly being fed the kind of bullshit demonstrated in the links above?
Slashdot Mirror
You don't know what you are talking about. I can't believe your comment has been modded up to five -this is absolutely ridiculous! What you have asserted is simply not true. Nothing about feminism involves what you are suggesting.
For the record, a feminist is any person who believes the following two statements. 1) women are disadvantaged, and 2) we should try to eliminate this disadvantage. Those are the defining beliefs of a feminist. While there are some crazy feminists out there, they are by no means representative of the philosophy of feminism.
Might as well! I know that's the first thing I would think of doing... ummmm?
What do you think of the idea of performing an election by jury? It is much easier to control for fraud, and has other benefits as well.
Now who decides that? How is that decided "scientifically"? I could make the opposite claim - no one has properly defended the deliberate destruction of living human beings that occur during abortions and stem-cell research. Do you not see that both your statement and mine are opinion, and outside the realm of science?
For the time being, it is defended rationally. Philosophers, ethicists, scientists, and the general public seem fairly convinced that a living, breathing human has more rights than a microscopic thing with no thoughts or sentience. However, religious folks disagree (in the face of rational discourse.) The rationality is so plain to see I can't believe you have missed it -the reason rights are accorded have everything to do with consciousness and sentience, and nothing to do wiht DNA.
Heck, they were CREATED because of their "potential for life". Put them in a vagina (or other proper medium, not invented yet) and watch them grow.
Wow you must have attended an abstinence only sex-ed program. No, a blastocyst will not survive inside of a vagina.
I won't even go into the horrors that have been justified with that argument.
Why not? By all means go into the horrors that are supposedly justified by my reasoning. I'd like ot show you why you are wrong, but I can't really debate you if you are refusing to provide actual arguments or even a single example of such a horror. But I really want you to realize why you are wrong, so let me guess, you would have said something like "OMG THAT MEANS YOU CAN KILL DEATHROW PRISONERS BEKUZ THEY WILL DIE NE WAYZ!! BY YOUR LOGIC!! WTF!!! LMAO!"
I agree, that kind of thing would be a horror. But it doesn't have shit to do with what I am arguing, because of the obvious differences in the scenarios. The deathrow example is horrific specifically because there is a living being involved. The reason we all recognize so clearly it is wrong in one case is because it is a different situation, and it is obviously wrong. So to will it be obviously wrong, for obvious reasons, for any of the horrors that you can come up wiht as examples. Killing living people is a horror. Killing blastocysts is not a horror, because they aren't conscious, they aren't sentient, and they aren't alive in any morally meaningful sense of the word. Once again, to fill that definition, you can resort to reason, which dictates that according rights has something to do with an agents consciousness, sentience, or ability to feel pain or pleasure. Or, you could resort to a baseless religious teaching, which states some mystical point at which a tiny collection of cells is for miraculous reasons just as important as an actual human, with thoughts, emotions, and experiences.
You don't spend much time around Christians, do you. Which "THE church" are we talking about?
Which "the church"??? You idiot. ANY CHURCH. Christians get their beliefs from a church somewhere (or from Pat Robertson, or other speakers.) My point was that the bible is not the only source of christian beliefs. If thats not obvious to you, then I am surprised you have not managed to kill yourself by now.
Again, you must not spend much time around Christians.
Who cares if I do or don't spend time with Christians? I have spent a good deal of time talking with them, and have taken religion courses at university. To shut you up, I should point out that I happen to spend alot of time with religious people of various groups, including christians. But, this is besides the point. The fact of the matter is, and you would learn this if you do some research yourself, that there a large number of christians who don't read the bible -they keep one at home, and they might glance at it now and then, but by and large their beliefs come from the church, and they haven't given the "good book" a thorough reading. In fact, I have spoken to one Christian who, having finally taken the time to read the bible, consequently cited his reading it as the primary reason for denouncing his faith.
well you're an idiot, but luckily I don't hang around with people like you. As a matter of fact, my so called "rhetoric" is not only common sense to most ethicists and scientists, but most people support what I am saying about this particular issue. Furthermore, the bill was actually voted in. It was a minority that didn't like the bill. Unfortunately, this minority included the president, who holds veto power. As for all of those who voted against the bill -I respect their decisions only insofar as they arrived at them through reason. But all of those whose decisions were rooted in either A) religious conviction, or B) ignorance (those who clearly did not even read the bill), they do not deserve respect for their decisions. While I would not go so far as to call them idiots (I'm sure their IQs are actually quite high,) I would certainly argue that they should not hold any political power, are irrational, and are in general harmful to society (if the voting behavior they exhibited is indicative of general trends).
To clarify your arguments, you should not use the term "life", which is political rhetoric and lacks clarity. Indeed, in doing so, you are playing into your opponent's hands - "life" obviously, and according to accepted scientific defintions, begins at conception. "Personhood" is a more subtle substitution. You cannot argue that a three-week-old fetus is anything other than a living human being - but you could argue that it should not be considered a legal human. Note the "should" in my previous sentence. It is not a statement than can be proven with "evidence".
this is why i specifically said what we needed was a "morally meaningful definition of life." Once our rational discourse has provided that definition for us -ie, what does it take to be human in a way that means they should be accorded rights- then the solution to this debate DOES lie with science, since science identifies identities that meet or fail to meet that definition. So far, no one has properly defended a view of life beings at conception on rational grounds, though religious conviction does make this point appear more meaningful than it really is.
Rather, they would be arguing that the high potential of this organism to attain that ability is sufficient for certain basic protections. Note that again, science cannot help us with this debate.
the blastocysts in question had no potential for life. Firstly, they could not survive without scientists. Secondly, they were going to be destroyed anyways. In the overall debate of stem cell research, I would address your point more thoroughly -on this current issue however, it is entirely irrelevant. these blastocysts did not meet your requirement of "having potential for life" -they didn't have that potential, on two counts.
You are right about the Bible - there is little concerning homosexuality. Unfortunately, that little bit is extremely clear on the matter. The same is not true concerning abortion. The only line that I can think of (and the one most often cited) is the "I knew thee in the womb" line, which doesn't imply that "I knew thee from conception", and therefore does not settle the matter.
You entirely missed the point. The point was that the bible doesn't decide what christians believe -the church does. What they say, is what christians believe. They say homosexuality is really bad, because the emphasis the relevant passages. However, they could have just as easily emphasized passages about good-will, loving your neighbour, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and so forth. The church could have easily had a different interpretation, also based on the religious texts, and that would have been the official christian stance. The homosexuality issue is just an example, but the proof of my argument lies in that 1) there are huge numbers of christians who don't even read the bible -they get their beliefs entirely from the church, and 2) that there are so many different churchs, all based on the same religious texts, but with varying opinions.
Here we go, do this experiment (if legal in your country) * Take cell samples from a 1 day zygote and another from a living 75 year old human. * Conduct a full range of biometric & DNA testing on each sample. * Send results for peer review, asking the question "Are these cells both from living human beings?" The only meaningful scientific answer has to be the one that is stripped of all emotion and subjectivism and reduced only to highly repeatable observations, a clearly stated prediction ("that zygotes and 75 year old men are both human and alive") and an evidence based answer ("yes"). It is even disprovable, so Popper would be happy.
Based on your definition of 'life', a recently dead person and cancerous cell tissue would be considered life. Tell me, is this the meaningful definition of life form a moral perspective that you had in mind? I didn't think so.
Oh, BTW, you might also want to look to see what Descartes was doing when he invented the modern idea of scientific enquiry - he was doing theology, my friend. Not all religous thought is bad for your mind, you know.
stop fawning over descartes -as far as questions concerning consciousness and morality he did alot more harm than good. For many years people engaged in the torture of animals based on descartes "reasoning" -according to him (because of his religious convictions) animals had no souls and thus were incapable of feeling pain (since pain is felt by the soul.) btw, the source of communication between the soul and the physical world, according to him, is the pineal gland. In spite of the obvious foolishness of his view, people crucified dogs and sliced them open while alive -their howls were taken to be a stimulus-response behavior with no pain involved. A piano was made for a king that worked by thrusting pins into the tails of cats. etc. So yes, descartes religious thought was CERTAINLY, WITHOUT A DOUBT, bad for science, bad for morality, and bad for the mind.
Now, before you start rambling over your greatest hero descartes, and his superb accomplishments, do some research on how modern day philosophers view his work (as a source of problems, not as a solution,) and the incredibly detrimental effects his theological views had on the wellbeing of animals.
thanks for putting the previous poster in his place. Might I also suggest taking a sample from a cancerous tissue. Based on his definition of life, killing cancer could be morally wrong. Clearly the functional organization of the tissue in question (is it alive, dead, capable of thought etc), is something we should be asking in addition to, or perhaps even instead of, the DNA of the entity.
theres also a pro-wrestler named dave shultz who goes by the monicker dr-death.
no, that is not me. Nor Am I the David Shultz who won the olympic wrestling title in '84. Or the David Shultz who produces folk rock and acoustic music out of Richmond, VA. Also, I am not the photographer David Shultz, or the adjunct professor from the School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma. I am but one in a very large club of David Shultzs (if that is even my real name.)
Although I fail to see why someone who doesn't recognize gay marriage is bigoted. Recognition or lack of recognition is not bigotry. Finally, if your lifestyle is characterized by eating babies, and I am against eating babies, I am an anti-baby eating bigot. So in the strictest definition of bigotry, not all bigotry is wrong.
Well, I don't think it is much of a stretch to suggest that conservative christians are actually against gay-marriage, as opposed to just "not recognizing" it. If they had their way, most of them wouldn't even want civil-unions (even pictures of gays kissing in a paper invokes flurries of angry mail). Given that, then they are bigots, by the definition you provided. I agree with you entirely on all other points you made, including that in the "strictest definition of bigotry", being a bigot isn't always bad. I feel that the bigotry exhibited by the church wrt to homosexuals is bad, especially insofar it is emotionally harmful to a large number of people.
If you want to turn this into an issue of ethics, you can exercise it on a personal level by refusing treatment that was the result of stem cell research, then you can die and there will be one less self-righteous dweeb hell bent on fucking up society in the process of promoting his perverted sense of morality.
amen!
Do you even understand the difference betwween religion, morality and ethics?
What are you talking about? Morality/Ethics are equivalent. Religion is supposedly a basis for morality, but is not based in reason, and ergo should not be included in rational discourse (unless they can provide a rational basis for their beliefs.) When republicans use the term "moral issue", what they mean is "christian issue", because their opponents are also arguing in favour of moral issues, although they are from a different perspective.
It's a likely unintended consequence of encouraging it, therefore, directly related.
No its not. If you had read the bill, or my previous comments more closely, you would realize that this outcome was specifically protected against by provisions in the bill.
Why is it going to happen anyway, and should it? Are we deliberately creating extra embryos so we can use them for scientific research? Are you sure there aren't people who would/are do it for expediency and to win your point of view that "they exist anyway so why not use them?"
"we" are deliberatly creating additional embryos for in vitro fertilization purposes. All of these extras are currently being destroyed. These embryos being destroyed are the ones the bill says should be given to researchers.
Sure it is... the more embryos created to increase choice, the more that have to be discarded.
Its irrelevant because no one is proposing it -it wasn't part of the bill, and its not part of the issue we are discussing. Its a meaningful ethical question, yes, but entirely irrelevant to what we are talking about now.
You claim we should harvest any and all embryos we want because they're going to be destroyed. It's the same argument.
its not the same argument. In one case we are talking about embryos smaller than the head of a pin, which are by the way incapable of thought, sentience, or conscious experience of any kind. In the other case we are talking about a living human. This is not even to mention the hypocrisy in the fact that the most likely group to support the death penalty is conservative christians.
It is not I who haven't supported my decision, it is you. EVERY answer you give is "because the embryos will be discarded anyway." The deeper question is why are we deliberately creating embryos to discard in the first place and is it ethical to encourage scientists to deliberately create more embryos for the sake of unproven research when we can study a similar cell (adult, placenta, etc stem cells) without the ethical hangups before we push all gung ho for something which does raise questions... Just because you feel the questions are irrelevant (probably due to your complete hatred of christians (of which, I am not - I'm an atheist), Bush, conservatives, etc), doesn't mean that those questions aren't valid.
once again you have missed the point. If bush really thinks throwing away embryos is murder, then it is crazy that he isn't leading a fight against these fertility clinics. Stopping this bill didn't stop any embryos from being destroyed -all it did was prevent us from getting any benefit from it. Furthermore, you,among many others, have failed to provide a reason for believing there is anything at all wrong with destroying an embryo -it doesn't think, feel, or have any sensations whatsoever. It has never formed a thought, and the ones in question never will. Not only that, but they do not even have the potential to become a living being -not without the help of scientists. And more specifically, not even then, because these embryos are being destroyed anyways.
Your scope of reason != "all reason." You're as narrowminded as the people whom you so voraciously despise.
holy fuckbeans! if you are so sure of yourself then for godsakes GIVE ME A REASON!
Ahem, you were the one who called me douche-smear in your very first reply to me... and I'm the one attacki
Okay genius, let's look at every question you asked, one by one, and let's try to find a SINGLE reason for veto'ing the bill, okay? If we can't find one, then bush's action was AGAINST ALL REASON, because there was no REASON (beyond religious conviction,) for doing so. understand? Okay, let's go.
That's not the issue we're discussing here. If thats one of Bush's reasons for vetoing the bill, then he is guilty of incompetence. The embryos to be used were leftovers. Furthermore, no more would be created after the passing of the bill than would have otherwise.
This is irrelevant. It is going to happen anyways.
irrelevant
irrelevent
irrelevant.
Okay, let me point something out to you. you started your post by attacking me, boldly claiming I was out of line when I asserted that Bush's veto was done against all reason. But then, you fail to provide a single shred of evidence in support of your crime. This is why you get D's on all your essays. Once you provide a thesis, you must defend it somehow. Go on, tell me -what were the rational reasons for bush's decision?
None of those questions involve religion even if religion does try to offer guidance to them. There is nothing wrong with asking those questions and debating the morality of them. There is nothing wrong with questioning ourselves as we push our knowledge and abilities farther and farther.
Of course there's nothing wrong with asking questions. I would be the first to ask questions if it wasn't being done. But, as far as this debate goes, all of the right questions had already been asked, and answered in favour of stem cell research. However, bush decided to veto the bill, and thus he did so against all reason. tell my, which questions have we forgotten to ask? You failed to provide a single meaningful one in your post. Care to try again?
With great power comes great responsibility.
Okay Spiderman.
Is it ok, in the name of research, to mutilate a death row prisoner that has exhausted his last appeal? For people that see an embryo as a person, that's pretty much what stem cell research comes down to.
r rant, if people are so pathetic that they can't stand up and think for themselves, regardless of outside influence, why worry about maximizing their self determination, why not just decide things for them?
Alright, well now let's figure out why those particular people believe those situations are equivalent. To me, I wouldn't have any problem with destroying an embryo of less than 200 cells, than ending the life of an actual human. That's because a living human being is not equivalent to an embryo. To me, a human being is a being capable of experiences, of consciousness, of sentience -an embryo is capable of none of these. We need to ask the people who think "killing" an embryo is equivalent to killing a human, why they think they are equivalent. Secondly, we need to ask, if the reason they believe this is strictly religious in nature (and hence completely irrational, until such time as a meaningful reason is provided) whether their opinion should carry any weight. I believe it fairly obvious that in the domain of rational discourse the answer is a strict "no" -religious conviction should be considered worthless.
As far as your demoncracy-can't-work-in-the-face-of-media-blathe
I apologize for taking the discussion away from the original topic, but I feel I should respond to your comment.... A fair and balanced media isn't necessary, but it couldn't hurt, could it? I am not at all advocating taking away peoples voting rights, and I haven't suggested that their votes are totally worthless. This is not a black and white issue. The peoples right to participate in a proper voting system, are being harmed (not demolished) by biased media sources. The current system is not a disaster (you seemed to characterize my view as such in your post) -its just problematic (perhaps very.) Basically, what I am saying is that more reasonable and intelligent decisions might be made if the population in general was given more reasonable and intelligent sources of information. Seems obvious right? The huge number of links I provided was jsut to demonstrate the bias that, in my opinion, is hurting policy making.
While I am not a supporter of Bush or his veto of this bill, I do think you are a bit naive if you think that only embryos that were going to be destroyed would have been used if this bill had been passed. The BBC reported this week on a similar bill passed in parliment in the UK allowing for the use of embryos that were going to be destroyed anyway. Actually that wasn't the gist of the article. The article was about how fertility clinics across the UK were now allowing couples to pay for their treatment by "donating" excess embryos. Kind of using the embryos as cash, so to speak.
You didn't read the bill either, I see. If memory serves me, the bill had provisions to explicitly stop donors from receiving any profit whatsoever. Thus what happened in the UK would not happen here, because the bill over here was more carefully written, in an attempt to alleviate concerns such as this (though that hardly helps if those voting against it haven't read the bill, which seems evident by the comments many of them made).
Personally, I think Bush probably screwed up, but not for the reasons you mention. There was overwhelming support for this bill in congress and the public. There were protections to ensure ethical research, etc. He could have emphasized that along with the notion the embryos were going to be destroyed. Instead, he has caused problems for his party and strengthened the opposition.
Bush's move was a smart one politically, because it is more likely to polarize and strengthen his religious base -they will see it as a great victory- whereas others, such as yourself, will see this as merely a minor loss for science. Furthermore, much of the public is still probably split on the issue. On the other hand, you may be right. I say this only because, those 33% that still support him, are clearly going to continue to support him no matter what he does. Knocking down this bill could hardly help him with those folks (though there are other christians out there who might be pleased.)
Will his veto have any negative impact? Not immediately, nothing was removed, nothing was taken away. Private research still continues (as the Time article points out, several private biotech firms are getting ready to pettition the FDA for human trials). The only thing that has happened is that researchers, like myself, who work at universities wanting to do this research have the same restrictions we did before the veto. Research still continues.
Of course it continues -he didn't ban science (yet.) And research will not go any slower than it already is. What exactly is your point, if I may ask? The research could have been going faster. Bush prevented it from going faster, which is perfectly equivalent to slowing it down. However you choose to look at it, there were gains in scientific research to be made, and because of bush's veto, they wont be made in the time they could have been.
There is absolutely nothing "religious" about the belief that personhood begins at conception (rather than any other point you want to put it).
I disagree. It is overwhelmingly christians who support the "life begins at conception" idea, specifically because they believe that at conception a soul, a special divine spark of life, enters at precisely this moment. This claim is totally and utterly baseless, and should be thrown out immediately without consideration. While I am not a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, he hit the nail on the head when he said "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismisssed without evidence." Until we have some reason to believe that life (in a morally meaningful sense of the word) begins at conception, we should ignore people who say so. Some have argued that human life should be thought to start at conception through non-religious means, I think quite unsuccessfully, but you are free to peruse those arguments at your leisure. In any case, this is not even relevant, since the embryos in question were going to be destroyed regardless of bush's decision to veto the bill -they were slated for the trashbin.
I think you would do well to research other cultures opinions on when life begins. Depending on the religious scripts available, life begins either: just prior to conception, immediately after conception, a couple months after conception, or a couple months after the baby is born. The key factor involved is religion. It is not a coincidence that it is predominately christians holding this view.
None of these positions is necessarily any more "religious" than the other, and more importantly, none is any more "scientific" as well. "Personhood" is a moral concept and outside of the scope of science. Science can tell us that a blastocyst is alive and a human (according to the accepted definitions), but it cannot tell us if this is sufficient for the granting of rights.
I am among those people who believe that morality can be defined using the tools of rationality and science (yes, science.) I believe it fairly obvious that morality is intimately linked with the notions of consciousness and sentience. To the extent that this is true, it is obvious that science is critical in evaluating moral statements, since consciousness and sentience are within the domain of science. Questions such as "when does a life begin?", are subject to answers from science, since science is capable of telling us when something gains the status of a living being, according to the moral definition of "life", as provided by rational discourse.
This debate has nothing to do with science OR religion, let alone a conflict between them.
It has everything to do with science and religion. First of all, and downright trivially, science has been struck a blow, because scientists will be lacking valuable research materials. Secondly, scientists are arguing in favour of the stem cell research. Thirdly, it is religious types arguing against it. It can't get any more plain than that.
Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
The bible isn't the arbiter of what christians believe -the church is. There is also VERY LITTLE in the bible about homosexuality, and yet you would think its the worst of all sins, judging by the churches reaction to it. If the church says something is the case, then that is what the christian faith teaches, by definition. You can bet your ass that if the christian church had been saying "the divine spark enters the body at 8 months after conception", then we would not be having this debate.
I agree with you that 'marriage' and 'civil union' should be equivalent under the letter of the law. However, those opposed to gay marriage are struggling for ways to distance themselves from that which they see as immoral or ungodly. The distinction between 'civil union' and 'marriage' is contrived in order to allow homophobic individuals to feel that their institution has not been tainted. My solution to the problem would be as follows: allow gay marriage, and call it what it is -marriage- (in order to not be discriminatory), but religious types who are worried about a gay taint on their institutions are free to offer "catholic marriage" or "X marriage", where X is any religion that still feels like living with outdated morals. This solution is ideal: the government is not being discriminatory (which they would be were they to deny gays marriage,) and certain religious people are free to continue in their bigoted practices. While I would like to see this second option stopped entirely, we live in a free society, and you have to take the good with the bad.
we're talking about giving stem cells to researchers instead of throwing them in the trash. I'm not sure if that has sunk in yet -think about it for a minute. Most people thought letting the researchers use them is the best idea (any benefit whatsoever would be worth it,) bush decided, against all reason, that those people were wrong.
What's worse than not just understanding the moral point of view is the complete lack of action that you still can take.
What do you mean by "the moral point of view"? What you fail to understand is that both sides are arguing for the moral point of view (yes, even the scientists.) Republican Christians (or the "moral wrong", as I like to call them) have their moral point of view, and the more rational people have their moral point of view. The difference is this, while the moral wrong are concerned with what actions they must perform to ensure they go to the magical land of their preference when they die, the rest of us are concerning ourselves with ending the suffering of others.
I am not claiming that child == embryo. Merely that equal potential outcomes do not make ethical decisions indistinguishable.
Good point, I agree. There seems to be an ethical difference between pulling the trigger yourself, and letting someone else do it. Now, If the gunman told me that a million lives (or a single life) would be saved if I was the one to pull the trigger, I wouldn't have a problem doing it. In fact, I'd have to be pretty heartless (or a Christian fearful of "sin") not to do it.
On the topic of the fertility clinics that are providing the stem cells, do women actually volunteer for abortions, or do they have to be forced by others?
Holy shit what the fuck are you talking about? The idiocy has reached new and incredible heights!
Your inability to understand "moral reasons" makes me glad that Bush has this nation's highest office and not you. In your world, "fetal farming" is just some "fucking moral reason" to be set aside.
Okay shithead, if you had a brain you would realize that the phrase "moral reasons" when used by Bush or other republicans means "christian values," which have no basis in reason. What I don't understand is how they are allowed to get away with using the term "moral reasons" as a blanket term for christian ideas, as if christians are moral whereas those they disagree with are not. I contend that the opposite has historically always been the case, and that continues into today. Chrstians made the wrong moral decisions wrt freedom of speech, slavery, witch burning, gay marriage, and now stem cells.
In case you missed it (clearly you did) my post was entirely about morality -I was arguing that bush's veto was very immoral. I haven't failed to understand morality -I was making a moral argument. Read my post again, and try to understand it, or do us all a favour and die.
You do realize that morality and ethics exist outside of the spectrum of religion, right?
Yes, that's a fairly pointless question, and I don't see why you would bother asking it, except to be a bitch. Don't bother coming up with examples. oh wait...
If I can access bank accounts and drain funds away to another account, do I cross an ethical line? If I can steal supplies from work for my personal use at home, do I cross an ethical line? If I can sell my dad's used diabetic needles to junkies instead of throwing them away, do I cross an ethical line? If I can walk out into my back yard, cross over into a neighbor's property and hunt without his permission, do I cross an ethical line? If I throw away food that someone else could have eaten, do I cross an ethical line? If I kill more animals than I can eat before the meat rots, do I cross an ethical line? If I own a 1000 acres of woods and I decide to burn them all down, do I cross an ethical line? If I drive a hummer to the grocery store 500 feet away to get a quart of milk, do I cross an ethical line?
Okay that was stupid. What's next?
There are lots of ethical questions regarding embryonic stem cells that don't involve religion. For example, is it ethical to create extra embryos that I know I won't need so I can sell them/use them for research? At what point do we cross the threshold of duplicating embryos and cloning people? Is it ethical to force people getting paid minimum wage to pay for general scientific research (especially when adult stem cells are showing results NOW but embryonic ones aren't) or would it be better to do it through private donations and other capitalism?
Okay listen up douche-smear, and listen good. NOTHING that you just said has any bearing on the recent stem cell issue. The bill that Bush vetoed was very strict in stating that only those embryos which are leftover from fertilization clinics and going to be destroyed anyways would be used for research. Furthermore, it had provisions to ensure tht no extras would be created. Before you say any other stupid thing, go read the bill for yourself. I trust you are capable of finding it with google. But then again... By the way, why did you respond to my post if you hadn't watched the links I provided (I noticed that you were spouting stupid talking points that were addressed and dismantled in the links I provided.)
You know, just because we are capable of doing something doesn't always mean that it's a good idea. There's nothing wrong with questioning where we're going and if we are doing the right thing, especially at the beginning of something new versus finally asking those questions after getting halfway through it or finished with it.
Who the fuck is arguing that stem cell research should be carried out "just because we are capable"? REally! who the fuck said that? I didn't say we aren't allowed to question the ethics of stem cell research. In fact, my post was entirely based in ethical argument -I argued thats its incredibly unethical to do what bush did -he is ensuring that many people will suffer from diseases for longer than is necessary, because he doesn't want to see lifeless embryos that are going to be destroyed anyways, used for the purpose of benevolent scientific research. I'm talking about ethics here shitface, so don't pretend that I've ignored them -that is my main interest in this issue.
This is clearly another battle between religion and science. For anyone who doesn't have all the facts on Bush's recent veto, they are quite simple:
intelligent, reasonable, people outlined a bill that would see leftover embryos from fertility clinics, that were going to be destroyed anyways because of a limited shelf-life, given to researchers. Furthermore, the bill outlined measures to ensure that the number of embryos being created would not be increased for scientific purposes.
Bush decided that it was a bad idea for "moral reasons," whatever the fuck that means. The embryos that this douche "saved" are all going to be destroyed anyways, we just won't see any scientific research come out of it, and so he has set back the clock on medical advancements that will one day save countless numbers of lives (though in the mean time, countless will die because of bush).
Bush either did what he did because he really felt the bill was wrong for his own personal religious reasons (which would have been hard had he actually read the bill, seeing as though the embryos are destroyed either way,) or he was pandering to his base. In either case, the prime motivator for his decision was religion -religion beat science this time, unfortunately.
I would also like to use this post to point out a number of ways in which the conservative media attempts to unethically further their agenda -including using biased language, misleading stories, and outright lies.
If this sort of crap is what passes for intelligent discourse, on a channel where people get their "news" and "information", is it any wonder that stupid decisions are being made, and shithead leaders get elected into power?
What I'm showing you above are not rare snippets from unpopular shows -admittedly, they are some of the more severe abuses of media power, but they are selected from among a great many such occurences, from some of the most popular American "news" people. The American population is constantly pelted with a barrage of bullshit and rhetoric. It's kind of hard to have faith in democracy under such conditions. Sure, the votes may be cast freely -but what about the months and years beforehand, when the voters should have been getting informed about current events? If that process is sufficiently disrupted, its no longer a democracy. How can you expect people to understand the issue properly, when they are constantly being fed the kind of bullshit demonstrated in the links above?
I sure as hell know that I would rather have 2 tons of styrofoam fall on my head then concrete.
Yes, that would be much lighter. Oh wait...