I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure the wart and finger thing is a good comparison: a woman having an abortion is removing a clump of cells that are inside her body, and part of her, so the only real difference between her removing a wart from her own finger and removing a zygote or fetus is the fact that the DNA in her fetus is not only hers, it's part the father's. It's not like someone is aborting her fetus without her consent.
This part really depends on the core question of at what point it is a separate organism. If you believe the fetus is a separate organism then it is a good comparison, if not, then it isn't and I will gladly yield that point.
If someone injected a separate lifeform into your body, does it have a right to exist, and to continue using your body as a host (because removing it would kill it)?
Agreed that if someone injected a separate lifeform (even a human fetus) in to your body, you would have the right to remove it, even if it resulted in the death of the fetus. That said, the key distinction is that someone else did it to you, it was not your choice. I strongly believe abortion should legally be allow in the event it was not the woman's choice to accept the risk of pregnancy. I would still encourage them to have the child, but I do believe they should not have to live with the consequences of being victimized in lieu of an option that saves both the child and the end of the victimization.
All in all, a thorny question
Yes it is and it is a pleasure to have a rational discussion with you on a topic that so frequently becomes stick and stone throwing.
I think maybe you are confusing the OPs comment with one about men having no say in whether their child is aborted. His point had nothing to do with that and was completely valid. Personally I am opposed to abortion being an option of convenience but I will be the first to agree that the vast majority of those who support a woman being able to choose to have an abortion would never consider one themselves or consider encouraging someone to have one, but rather they feel that they and society should not have a right to do so.
That said, I'm just now realizing there is one thing I don't understand about that. Why would you not encourage someone to have an abortion? If you feel that it does no harm, then why discourage it? If it does do harm, then why not prevent it? Is it simply that you feel that the woman will be the only one hurt? If so, then would you support laws that require high standards of disclosure of possible harm prior to an abortion? I'm just trying to understand why it would be discouraged if you feel that it has no impact on anyone but the woman getting an abortion.
Also, didn't think of this when I was responding before, but on your example of impregnating as many people as you can and asking if society would vindicate you if they didn't commit suicide, I think that is a different question. Society does care about quality of life, but not over life, just over creation of life. Your asking in your example if your actions in making many new lives would be vindicated if they simply existed, clearly this is irresponsible and society would look at it as such (unless you could support them, and even then maybe since we live on a crowded planet). My point was not from societies perspective so much as the perspective of the individual. No individual that society considers to be sane would prefer death to life, no matter how bad their circumstance is. In that way, society prefers life or persistence of life to quality of life. Otherwise, for society to fully value quality of life over life, society would have to feel that it is worth killing off those who are a burden on society to improve the overall quality of life.
Huh? I'm saying that it is not my responsibility to make up for someone else's wrong. I'm not responsible for the actions of others beyond my civil duties as a member of a democracy to support a society that seeks to prevent harm from occurring. (ie, to the level that I am part of society and that it is society's job to prevent harm to others when possible). I truly do not understand what argument you are trying to make or where you see inconsistency.
K, we'll send a team over to remove one of your kidneys. You've got a spare, and there's lots of people who could really use one. Clearly the right thing to do is to donate that kidney, so we need to do so by force of legislation.
Huh? I don't follow how that is at all related to anything.
No, if the mother dies, they die. They consume resources from the mother, they rely on her to deal with their waste. As long as they are inside the mother, they have no autonomy.
What you describe is it is possible to move birth up a month or so via surgical means. But it's still birth. Before that event, it's not a child.
Did you miss the word "viable"? I understand that if the mother died and they were trapped inside still, then they would die. However if removed from the mother, they would be viable to live on their own without their mother's body supporting them.
Actually, you can. Indeed, it happens very frequently. Perhaps you should come back to this debate after a little more thought?
Ok, I should have clarified my point here but was not clear enough. I am not talking about vegetative requiring life support. I am talking about, for example, an Alzheimer patient who has no ability to interact and can not feed themselves but provided they are given food and water and their waste is dealt with, they remain alive on their own. I am not aware of any state in the United States where it is legal to kill them despite their helplessness or lack of any quality of life. I am aware that you can deny life saving measures but you can't just let someone starve to death if they are otherwise fine in any jurisdiction I know of.
but I don't think that how something is put in to law is indicative of the majority view on the actual subject.
So...not really up on understanding this whole "democracy" thing then?
Lack of understanding the whole "democracy" thing isn't the problem. Realization that we don't live in a perfect democracy is. In an ideal world a democracy would exactly represent the view of the governed. We live in a representative democracy, we choose representatives that express their view, not necessarily ours. To compound it we have a primarily two party system that encourages voters to vote for people who disagree with them but agree on other issues. This results in a very imperfect representation of the views of the people being reflected to the letter of the law. Yes, in general the basic principals will hold true, but you can't look at the specific implementation of law or proposed law as evidence of a majority view.
It also could be reflective of a view that some have (and some research does support) that women are not made aware enough of the emotional consequences of having an abortion by the doctor performing the abortion. This can result in the woman truly being a victim of the abortion doctor who did not properly inform her of the possible results of the action.
Ah yes, the lovely anti-science of anti-abortion. Multiple studies have demonstrated that this "emotional consequences" bullshit is indeed, bullshit. Indeed, your statement requires that we believe that women are unable to understand the consequences of their actions unless someone in authority (the abortion doctor), who is usually male, explains it to her. She just can't handle the hard thinking required!!
Perhaps women are smarter and tougher than you are led to believe?
I don't need you to put words in my mouth. I can speak from fairly authoritative experience as crisis counselor talking to women about their experience with abortions, I am not saying that it occurs in all cases, but the fact is that many women do have emotional distress as a result (and many do not), but the perception (and I don't know that I believe this myself, but this is what the perception is) is that abortion clinics do better if people have abortions and therefore would want people to have them. If someone believed this then punishing the doctor would make sense. It has nothing to do with the women not being smart or not being tough and has everything to do with nobody being subject matters on everything. A person doesn't just inherently understand the possible impacts of getting an abortion and it is a doctor's responsibility to insure that a patient (male or female) is fully informed about a procedure before they agree to it if possible. If they withhold information to get a patient to go through with a procedure, they are responsible for any harm that comes to that patient as a result of the withheld information.
What about the pro-life argument do you feel is inconsistent. Personally at least, I think you hit the nail on the head saying that it is up to society to decide where to draw that line. The two most common lines seem to be either self-sufficiency or separate genetics. I get what you are saying about deciding to use a condom and I think that is why the catholic church actually opposes the use of contraceptives as they feel it prevents the natural order of things from occurring. I don't really buy that argument since my view centers around the separate life. Prior to conception, I don't do harm to any living thing, just possibly something that doesn't live yet but might. After conception, I harm something that is alive but dependent on the mother due to our inability to remove it from the mother without killing it. After it matures enough to be self-sufficient, then you've reached the end of what I think can be considered a rational spectrum since it is then fully it's own separate entity with no connection to the mother anymore. I hope that explains more about where I'm coming from personally at least.
But how do you judge the difference in quality of life between having issues related to your mother's abuse during pregnancy versus being dead? If it would be better to be dead than have that low standard of living, then why doesn't everyone who has that standard of living (or at least most) commit suicide and end their life to escape it? The only real weight to a standard of life argument is the burden on society, which at its core is simply, "I don't want you to be a burden on me." I'm not saying there are not situations where that is fair and even the right attitude, but lets not play it off as being in the best interest of the person we aren't supporting.
Unless it isn't her body any more than it is after it is born. If the child was born, she couldn't simply neglect the child, she would have to give it up for adoption. I hope for science that will allow a fetus to grow outside a womb so that we can put the entire debate to rest since the crux of the pro-abortion should be a choice argument is that the woman is stuck with the baby in her since we lack the means to transfer it without killing it. In an ideal world, we would be able to simply remove the fetus and let it develop on it's own, but given that we don't have that, it becomes a question of if the fetus is her body or not. If it is her body, I 100% agree that I have no right to interfere with her choice, but if she is doing anything with her body that hurts someone else, then it is absolutely societies business to determine if it is causing illegal harm.
You were aware that having sex with a condom could potentially break and isn't foolproof, that doesn't mean that having an abortion was the right thing to do or justifiable. That said, it is important to say that I don't hold it against you either. I do plenty that isn't justifiable or the right thing to do, I just think that there is something broken with a culture that sees it as no big deal and a throw away solution to getting bad luck.
Could you clarify, I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say.
While I agree in many cases it can be shown that religion has been abused as a means of control, I would challenge that some of the earliest help for the poor and declarations of equality stem from religion and religious thought. That isn't to say that religion can't be abused to horrible ends, but so can anything that can be used to influence people, be it government, marketing, philosophy or any of a number of other things that can be both good and bad.
As for factual versus emotional arguments, I'm not sure what you are trying to say. I think the point a lot of people have been making is that there can be no factual argument for or against abortion as it is inherently a philosophical and ethical issue. This by definition means that any argument for or against is based on weighing values which you seem to call emotion.
I don't really follow the legislation side of this much, but I am firmly opposed to abortions of convenience and I can say that for the vast majority of people I know that share my view, your "tell" is irrelevant. It is possible that a politician is trying to use the cultural backing to push his own agenda (cause that never happens) or it is possible that the politicians simply thought it would be legally easier or more palatable to go after the doctor than the women who could be painted as a victim by opponents, but I don't think that how something is put in to law is indicative of the majority view on the actual subject. It also could be reflective of a view that some have (and some research does support) that women are not made aware enough of the emotional consequences of having an abortion by the doctor performing the abortion. This can result in the woman truly being a victim of the abortion doctor who did not properly inform her of the possible results of the action.
I'm not sure I see the connection there. As the other responder pointed out, wanting to protect unborn individuals from what is equivalent to murder of convenience is as justifiable and reasonable as trying to stop someone from stealing your neighbors car (and really more so). It is busy body to stop someone from doing something that only impacts them, it is not to protect the otherwise unprotected.
Also, I don't see how creationists (in general) are "I don't like this choice and I won't let you make it either." I don't know of many cases where creationists don't want evolution taught but rather want creationism taught in parallel and that is mostly just the vocal ones. If anything, objecting to the philosophical presentation of creationism in parallel with the scientific presentation of evolution would be for evolutionists to be saying that "I don't like your choice so I won't let you make it either." That said, I am not in favor of creationism being taught in school despite my personal view that evolution and particularly the origination of life seem to make more sense given an intelligent creator, but I do think it is important that the philosophical distinction that even given scientific theory from the big bang forward, it still does not answer the fundamental question of where the big bang came from or why anything is.
Except fetus's are autonomously viable prior to birth, typically by a month or more, however since they could still benefit from the shelter they stay in. Even prior to that point, you could make a more accurate comparison to a parasite. A parasite is a separate living entity, dependent on the host to survive, but is not similar to one of the host's organs. That said nobody would object to killing a common parasite feeding off someone, but lets continue with a different analogy. If you take in a pet, it is dependent on you and you are responsible for it due to making a choice to take it in. Abusing or neglecting that pet is a criminal offense in most cases. If someone consensually takes on the responsibility of potentially getting pregnant, that is analogous to getting a pet. It becomes their responsibility to take care of it if they are able or to give it up if they are unable so that a capable individual can take care of it. (Granted I realize this analogy also breaks down since you can have your pet humanely put to sleep, but that is a value of life judgment since you can't for example, have your elderly, vegetative state grandparent put down.)
Someone can think theft is wrong and not be lining up to give people their money back when someone else steals it too. I'm not sure I see your point here since it isn't the moral obligation of every person to fix someone else's mistakes.
After doing some googleing from the suggested comments I came across this link http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB141.html that was very helpful in giving a layman's explanation. If I understand correctly, it is simply the fact that the genetic material can match up that matters and not the chromosome structure. Thanks again for the clarification.
I don't have a problem with the concept of evolution (macro) but I do have a problem with the idea of it "just happening" that I have never had someone be able to give a good answer to. To the best of my knowledge, we have never been able to observe a creature producing a functional offspring with a different number of chromosomes than it's predecessor, yet clearly this has happened many times in history. I'm also not aware of any organisms with different chromosome counts that can reproduce together. Given this, how do you get two organisms that can reproduce together with a different number of chromosomes than the proceeding organism. I suppose that it could occur under asexual reproduction, however I believe there are families of organisms that are believed to have broken off after moving to sexual reproduction that have differing chromosome counts. If anyone has evidence to contradict one of my assumptions, please respond as I would genuinely like to be able to answer these questions.
You should double check your assumptions, most pro-life people I know are aware of what you mentioned about IVF and fall in to one of two camps about it, either a) they feel IVF is wrong as well as currently practiced or b) feel that leaving the cells up to their own devices is ok, but directly killing them is not. Viewing pro-lifer's as the same grouping as anti-science nuts shows a very clear and unscientific bias whether you want to admit it or not. The fact is that there can be a legitimate scientific argument that conception results in a separate individual human life form (containing human genetic material unique to the cell. The value of that lifeform is a purely philosophical and ethical question. Sure you removed a clump of cells that was a wart, but it was YOUR wart. If I came along and removed say, your finger, you would have every right to be pissed because it isn't my right to remove your finger since it isn't my finger. Blindly proclaiming that those who disagree with you are clearly uneducated doesn't support your position, but simply exposes your own lack of understanding of the issues you claim to understand.
Why do you find it hard to say it should be illegal as a libertarian? If life begins at conception, then wouldn't it by definition be murder (though potentially justifiable under certain circumstances) and isn't that something that should be protected even under libertarian views as it is a direct harm to someone other than yourself. Just curious why you feel it isn't something that you feel should be legislated at all under libertarian views.
You forgot about the people who actually get free anti-virus software to keep their system clean. That's why it is so low. And yeah, I definitely agree on your reasoning. I know my personal record is fixing someone's computer only to find it had over 16,000 difference pieces of malware on it... I believe the solution was a reformat and instructions to be more careful with kazaa.
From the article, the company that provides the service uses UK laws to track down marketing databases that have your information and files requests to remove the information on your behalf. So basically they scrub your info from any competitors databases allowing you to control where your information goes.
Not to nag, but Photoshop is only 3 figures (and low 3 figures at that for upgrades) and has advanced substantially since 2006. (64 bit support, 3d object painting, autofill generation, gpu utilization, numerous performance enhancements just to name a few) Enough so that even an upgrade from CS4 to CS5 is extremely tempting despite my normal rule of only upgrading every other version. Even the elements version of Photoshop which is very cheap is close to GIMP. I don't see GIMP catching up with Photoshop anytime soon. It would be great if they did, and I'd consider switching if they can also offer open source alternatives to the rest of the Master Collection, but I don't foresee that all happening in the next 20 years unless the culture around open source software changes substantially.
A huge number will have 100% of their customers because they are functional monopolies. I have precisely one choice for high speed internet access where I live and I live in a city in upstate NY. Giving a monopoly the ability to choose what I can or can't access on the internet can only end badly for anyone other than the monopoly.
Please provide support for your claim of illiteracy. I can see your point in regards to comparing the apparent silliness of both religions from an outsiders perspective (though I think the point that most Christians find silly about Mormons is not their view, but rather the fact they claim their view is based roughly on the same thing which really does not hold weight and is a goofy claim. (For the record, the same thing applies between Islam and either Judaism or Chrisianity, not making a statement about any of them, just the fact that the claim that Islam is roughly based on the same thing requires an extremely broad view of "roughly" just based on a simple reading of the core books of each religion.) That said, calling someone who was referred to as a teacher and was clearly considered educated by his educated peers of the day illiterate begs some supporting evidence.
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I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure the wart and finger thing is a good comparison: a woman having an abortion is removing a clump of cells that are inside her body, and part of her, so the only real difference between her removing a wart from her own finger and removing a zygote or fetus is the fact that the DNA in her fetus is not only hers, it's part the father's. It's not like someone is aborting her fetus without her consent.
This part really depends on the core question of at what point it is a separate organism. If you believe the fetus is a separate organism then it is a good comparison, if not, then it isn't and I will gladly yield that point.
If someone injected a separate lifeform into your body, does it have a right to exist, and to continue using your body as a host (because removing it would kill it)?
Agreed that if someone injected a separate lifeform (even a human fetus) in to your body, you would have the right to remove it, even if it resulted in the death of the fetus. That said, the key distinction is that someone else did it to you, it was not your choice. I strongly believe abortion should legally be allow in the event it was not the woman's choice to accept the risk of pregnancy. I would still encourage them to have the child, but I do believe they should not have to live with the consequences of being victimized in lieu of an option that saves both the child and the end of the victimization.
All in all, a thorny question
Yes it is and it is a pleasure to have a rational discussion with you on a topic that so frequently becomes stick and stone throwing.
I think maybe you are confusing the OPs comment with one about men having no say in whether their child is aborted. His point had nothing to do with that and was completely valid. Personally I am opposed to abortion being an option of convenience but I will be the first to agree that the vast majority of those who support a woman being able to choose to have an abortion would never consider one themselves or consider encouraging someone to have one, but rather they feel that they and society should not have a right to do so. That said, I'm just now realizing there is one thing I don't understand about that. Why would you not encourage someone to have an abortion? If you feel that it does no harm, then why discourage it? If it does do harm, then why not prevent it? Is it simply that you feel that the woman will be the only one hurt? If so, then would you support laws that require high standards of disclosure of possible harm prior to an abortion? I'm just trying to understand why it would be discouraged if you feel that it has no impact on anyone but the woman getting an abortion.
Also, didn't think of this when I was responding before, but on your example of impregnating as many people as you can and asking if society would vindicate you if they didn't commit suicide, I think that is a different question. Society does care about quality of life, but not over life, just over creation of life. Your asking in your example if your actions in making many new lives would be vindicated if they simply existed, clearly this is irresponsible and society would look at it as such (unless you could support them, and even then maybe since we live on a crowded planet). My point was not from societies perspective so much as the perspective of the individual. No individual that society considers to be sane would prefer death to life, no matter how bad their circumstance is. In that way, society prefers life or persistence of life to quality of life. Otherwise, for society to fully value quality of life over life, society would have to feel that it is worth killing off those who are a burden on society to improve the overall quality of life.
Huh? I'm saying that it is not my responsibility to make up for someone else's wrong. I'm not responsible for the actions of others beyond my civil duties as a member of a democracy to support a society that seeks to prevent harm from occurring. (ie, to the level that I am part of society and that it is society's job to prevent harm to others when possible). I truly do not understand what argument you are trying to make or where you see inconsistency.
K, we'll send a team over to remove one of your kidneys. You've got a spare, and there's lots of people who could really use one. Clearly the right thing to do is to donate that kidney, so we need to do so by force of legislation.
Huh? I don't follow how that is at all related to anything.
No, if the mother dies, they die. They consume resources from the mother, they rely on her to deal with their waste. As long as they are inside the mother, they have no autonomy. What you describe is it is possible to move birth up a month or so via surgical means. But it's still birth. Before that event, it's not a child.
Did you miss the word "viable"? I understand that if the mother died and they were trapped inside still, then they would die. However if removed from the mother, they would be viable to live on their own without their mother's body supporting them.
Actually, you can. Indeed, it happens very frequently. Perhaps you should come back to this debate after a little more thought?
Ok, I should have clarified my point here but was not clear enough. I am not talking about vegetative requiring life support. I am talking about, for example, an Alzheimer patient who has no ability to interact and can not feed themselves but provided they are given food and water and their waste is dealt with, they remain alive on their own. I am not aware of any state in the United States where it is legal to kill them despite their helplessness or lack of any quality of life. I am aware that you can deny life saving measures but you can't just let someone starve to death if they are otherwise fine in any jurisdiction I know of.
So...not really up on understanding this whole "democracy" thing then?
Lack of understanding the whole "democracy" thing isn't the problem. Realization that we don't live in a perfect democracy is. In an ideal world a democracy would exactly represent the view of the governed. We live in a representative democracy, we choose representatives that express their view, not necessarily ours. To compound it we have a primarily two party system that encourages voters to vote for people who disagree with them but agree on other issues. This results in a very imperfect representation of the views of the people being reflected to the letter of the law. Yes, in general the basic principals will hold true, but you can't look at the specific implementation of law or proposed law as evidence of a majority view.
Ah yes, the lovely anti-science of anti-abortion. Multiple studies have demonstrated that this "emotional consequences" bullshit is indeed, bullshit. Indeed, your statement requires that we believe that women are unable to understand the consequences of their actions unless someone in authority (the abortion doctor), who is usually male, explains it to her. She just can't handle the hard thinking required!!
Perhaps women are smarter and tougher than you are led to believe?
I don't need you to put words in my mouth. I can speak from fairly authoritative experience as crisis counselor talking to women about their experience with abortions, I am not saying that it occurs in all cases, but the fact is that many women do have emotional distress as a result (and many do not), but the perception (and I don't know that I believe this myself, but this is what the perception is) is that abortion clinics do better if people have abortions and therefore would want people to have them. If someone believed this then punishing the doctor would make sense. It has nothing to do with the women not being smart or not being tough and has everything to do with nobody being subject matters on everything. A person doesn't just inherently understand the possible impacts of getting an abortion and it is a doctor's responsibility to insure that a patient (male or female) is fully informed about a procedure before they agree to it if possible. If they withhold information to get a patient to go through with a procedure, they are responsible for any harm that comes to that patient as a result of the withheld information.
What about the pro-life argument do you feel is inconsistent. Personally at least, I think you hit the nail on the head saying that it is up to society to decide where to draw that line. The two most common lines seem to be either self-sufficiency or separate genetics. I get what you are saying about deciding to use a condom and I think that is why the catholic church actually opposes the use of contraceptives as they feel it prevents the natural order of things from occurring. I don't really buy that argument since my view centers around the separate life. Prior to conception, I don't do harm to any living thing, just possibly something that doesn't live yet but might. After conception, I harm something that is alive but dependent on the mother due to our inability to remove it from the mother without killing it. After it matures enough to be self-sufficient, then you've reached the end of what I think can be considered a rational spectrum since it is then fully it's own separate entity with no connection to the mother anymore. I hope that explains more about where I'm coming from personally at least.
But how do you judge the difference in quality of life between having issues related to your mother's abuse during pregnancy versus being dead? If it would be better to be dead than have that low standard of living, then why doesn't everyone who has that standard of living (or at least most) commit suicide and end their life to escape it? The only real weight to a standard of life argument is the burden on society, which at its core is simply, "I don't want you to be a burden on me." I'm not saying there are not situations where that is fair and even the right attitude, but lets not play it off as being in the best interest of the person we aren't supporting.
Unless it isn't her body any more than it is after it is born. If the child was born, she couldn't simply neglect the child, she would have to give it up for adoption. I hope for science that will allow a fetus to grow outside a womb so that we can put the entire debate to rest since the crux of the pro-abortion should be a choice argument is that the woman is stuck with the baby in her since we lack the means to transfer it without killing it. In an ideal world, we would be able to simply remove the fetus and let it develop on it's own, but given that we don't have that, it becomes a question of if the fetus is her body or not. If it is her body, I 100% agree that I have no right to interfere with her choice, but if she is doing anything with her body that hurts someone else, then it is absolutely societies business to determine if it is causing illegal harm.
You were aware that having sex with a condom could potentially break and isn't foolproof, that doesn't mean that having an abortion was the right thing to do or justifiable. That said, it is important to say that I don't hold it against you either. I do plenty that isn't justifiable or the right thing to do, I just think that there is something broken with a culture that sees it as no big deal and a throw away solution to getting bad luck.
Could you clarify, I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say. While I agree in many cases it can be shown that religion has been abused as a means of control, I would challenge that some of the earliest help for the poor and declarations of equality stem from religion and religious thought. That isn't to say that religion can't be abused to horrible ends, but so can anything that can be used to influence people, be it government, marketing, philosophy or any of a number of other things that can be both good and bad. As for factual versus emotional arguments, I'm not sure what you are trying to say. I think the point a lot of people have been making is that there can be no factual argument for or against abortion as it is inherently a philosophical and ethical issue. This by definition means that any argument for or against is based on weighing values which you seem to call emotion.
I don't really follow the legislation side of this much, but I am firmly opposed to abortions of convenience and I can say that for the vast majority of people I know that share my view, your "tell" is irrelevant. It is possible that a politician is trying to use the cultural backing to push his own agenda (cause that never happens) or it is possible that the politicians simply thought it would be legally easier or more palatable to go after the doctor than the women who could be painted as a victim by opponents, but I don't think that how something is put in to law is indicative of the majority view on the actual subject. It also could be reflective of a view that some have (and some research does support) that women are not made aware enough of the emotional consequences of having an abortion by the doctor performing the abortion. This can result in the woman truly being a victim of the abortion doctor who did not properly inform her of the possible results of the action.
I'm not sure I see the connection there. As the other responder pointed out, wanting to protect unborn individuals from what is equivalent to murder of convenience is as justifiable and reasonable as trying to stop someone from stealing your neighbors car (and really more so). It is busy body to stop someone from doing something that only impacts them, it is not to protect the otherwise unprotected. Also, I don't see how creationists (in general) are "I don't like this choice and I won't let you make it either." I don't know of many cases where creationists don't want evolution taught but rather want creationism taught in parallel and that is mostly just the vocal ones. If anything, objecting to the philosophical presentation of creationism in parallel with the scientific presentation of evolution would be for evolutionists to be saying that "I don't like your choice so I won't let you make it either." That said, I am not in favor of creationism being taught in school despite my personal view that evolution and particularly the origination of life seem to make more sense given an intelligent creator, but I do think it is important that the philosophical distinction that even given scientific theory from the big bang forward, it still does not answer the fundamental question of where the big bang came from or why anything is.
Except fetus's are autonomously viable prior to birth, typically by a month or more, however since they could still benefit from the shelter they stay in. Even prior to that point, you could make a more accurate comparison to a parasite. A parasite is a separate living entity, dependent on the host to survive, but is not similar to one of the host's organs. That said nobody would object to killing a common parasite feeding off someone, but lets continue with a different analogy. If you take in a pet, it is dependent on you and you are responsible for it due to making a choice to take it in. Abusing or neglecting that pet is a criminal offense in most cases. If someone consensually takes on the responsibility of potentially getting pregnant, that is analogous to getting a pet. It becomes their responsibility to take care of it if they are able or to give it up if they are unable so that a capable individual can take care of it. (Granted I realize this analogy also breaks down since you can have your pet humanely put to sleep, but that is a value of life judgment since you can't for example, have your elderly, vegetative state grandparent put down.)
Someone can think theft is wrong and not be lining up to give people their money back when someone else steals it too. I'm not sure I see your point here since it isn't the moral obligation of every person to fix someone else's mistakes.
After doing some googleing from the suggested comments I came across this link http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB141.html that was very helpful in giving a layman's explanation. If I understand correctly, it is simply the fact that the genetic material can match up that matters and not the chromosome structure. Thanks again for the clarification.
Thank you to all who posted, I'm looking forward to reading it later.
I don't have a problem with the concept of evolution (macro) but I do have a problem with the idea of it "just happening" that I have never had someone be able to give a good answer to. To the best of my knowledge, we have never been able to observe a creature producing a functional offspring with a different number of chromosomes than it's predecessor, yet clearly this has happened many times in history. I'm also not aware of any organisms with different chromosome counts that can reproduce together. Given this, how do you get two organisms that can reproduce together with a different number of chromosomes than the proceeding organism. I suppose that it could occur under asexual reproduction, however I believe there are families of organisms that are believed to have broken off after moving to sexual reproduction that have differing chromosome counts. If anyone has evidence to contradict one of my assumptions, please respond as I would genuinely like to be able to answer these questions.
You should double check your assumptions, most pro-life people I know are aware of what you mentioned about IVF and fall in to one of two camps about it, either a) they feel IVF is wrong as well as currently practiced or b) feel that leaving the cells up to their own devices is ok, but directly killing them is not. Viewing pro-lifer's as the same grouping as anti-science nuts shows a very clear and unscientific bias whether you want to admit it or not. The fact is that there can be a legitimate scientific argument that conception results in a separate individual human life form (containing human genetic material unique to the cell. The value of that lifeform is a purely philosophical and ethical question. Sure you removed a clump of cells that was a wart, but it was YOUR wart. If I came along and removed say, your finger, you would have every right to be pissed because it isn't my right to remove your finger since it isn't my finger. Blindly proclaiming that those who disagree with you are clearly uneducated doesn't support your position, but simply exposes your own lack of understanding of the issues you claim to understand.
Why do you find it hard to say it should be illegal as a libertarian? If life begins at conception, then wouldn't it by definition be murder (though potentially justifiable under certain circumstances) and isn't that something that should be protected even under libertarian views as it is a direct harm to someone other than yourself. Just curious why you feel it isn't something that you feel should be legislated at all under libertarian views.
You forgot about the people who actually get free anti-virus software to keep their system clean. That's why it is so low. And yeah, I definitely agree on your reasoning. I know my personal record is fixing someone's computer only to find it had over 16,000 difference pieces of malware on it... I believe the solution was a reformat and instructions to be more careful with kazaa.
From the article, the company that provides the service uses UK laws to track down marketing databases that have your information and files requests to remove the information on your behalf. So basically they scrub your info from any competitors databases allowing you to control where your information goes.
Not to nag, but Photoshop is only 3 figures (and low 3 figures at that for upgrades) and has advanced substantially since 2006. (64 bit support, 3d object painting, autofill generation, gpu utilization, numerous performance enhancements just to name a few) Enough so that even an upgrade from CS4 to CS5 is extremely tempting despite my normal rule of only upgrading every other version. Even the elements version of Photoshop which is very cheap is close to GIMP. I don't see GIMP catching up with Photoshop anytime soon. It would be great if they did, and I'd consider switching if they can also offer open source alternatives to the rest of the Master Collection, but I don't foresee that all happening in the next 20 years unless the culture around open source software changes substantially.
A huge number will have 100% of their customers because they are functional monopolies. I have precisely one choice for high speed internet access where I live and I live in a city in upstate NY. Giving a monopoly the ability to choose what I can or can't access on the internet can only end badly for anyone other than the monopoly.
Please provide support for your claim of illiteracy. I can see your point in regards to comparing the apparent silliness of both religions from an outsiders perspective (though I think the point that most Christians find silly about Mormons is not their view, but rather the fact they claim their view is based roughly on the same thing which really does not hold weight and is a goofy claim. (For the record, the same thing applies between Islam and either Judaism or Chrisianity, not making a statement about any of them, just the fact that the claim that Islam is roughly based on the same thing requires an extremely broad view of "roughly" just based on a simple reading of the core books of each religion.) That said, calling someone who was referred to as a teacher and was clearly considered educated by his educated peers of the day illiterate begs some supporting evidence.