Does he have a valid point?

[Zzyzx]

.

Bill Maher:
"When I hear from people that religion doesn't hurt anything, I say really? Well besides wars, the crusades, the inquisitions, 9-11, ethnic cleansing, the suppression of women, the suppression of homosexuals, fatwas, honor killings, suicide bombings, arranged marriages to minors, human sacrifice, burning witches, and systematic sex with children, I have a few little quibbles. And I forgot blowing up girl schools in Afghanistan."

Some say "The good outweighs the bad." If so what is that weighty good?

Many say "That is just the other religions." Is that true?

[acapiz]

Personally, I doubt if this 'debate' has anything to do with the OP. Thanks Blastcat, for your long reply. I draw attention to the following sections of same.

Blastcat:But most of the world pretty much considers a human being starts at being BORN.

acapiz: I would be amazed if this were remotely true

Blastcat:Are you truly advocating that we should force women to carry unwanted babies to term?

acapiz:This is the 'hopping' within your contributions here that tires Paprika. I propose that we call abortion what it is, ie the termination of a human life. The world terminates people 'willfully' all the time. This happens within the statistics of transport accidents, it happens in war, it happens in the consumption of certain foods and drugs. People are allowed to die, all the time. That ultimately is what people will do. Abortion is primarily a solution of convenience and if people decide to terminate a human life for this reason then at least have the intellectual honesty to call it like it is. If I sell cigarettes in my shop, I expect my customers to die. I can live with that. Paprika's argument is sound and correct.

Paprika:
Here's the argument:
1) The embryo is living
2) The embryo is human (adj, as opposed to leonine or serpentine) by its DNA
3) The embryo is an organism of its own (and not say like a muscle cell in my heart which is not)
C) Biologically, the embryo is a member of the human species
C) The embryo is a human (noun)

[Paprika]

With the argument in hand, perhaps even to those inured against the humanity of the embryo by pro-abortion propaganda it may become clear why some might choose to save the bucket of embryos over the toddlers:

Depending on the maturity of the embryo, the bucket will contain two to three times in order of magnitude the number of human lives. The choice then easily follows.

[Paprika]

acapiz:This is the 'hopping' within your contributions here that tires Paprika. I propose that we call abortion what it is, ie the termination of a human life. The world terminates people 'willfully' all the time. This happens within the statistics of transport accidents, it happens in war, it happens in the consumption of certain foods and drugs. People are allowed to die, all the time. That ultimately is what people will do. Abortion is primarily a solution of convenience and if people decide to terminate a human life for this reason then at least have the intellectual honesty to call it like it is.

Agreed. Now, I gather that the statistics reveal that since Roe v Wade the number of abortion in the US is multiple times that of the Holocaust and is roughly the death toll due to WWII.

The human death toll is not yet at Stalin or Mao levels but I have faith in the utter depravity of human beings to achieve such numbers. (Frankly such numbers should have already been achieved except for those pesky Christians trying hard in many ways to save the unborn children from mass slaughter).

[acapiz]

Paprika: (Frankly such numbers should have already been achieved except for those pesky Christians trying hard in many ways to save the unborn children from mass slaughter).

You just could not resist a bit of snarky 'point scoring', Paprika.
The abortion 'white knight' stance of the Christian Churches on this is nauseous. It is the perceived ace in their pack. If the Pope air lifted free condoms and sex education advice to Mexico City, he might halve the problem overnight. The highest abortion rates in the world are in Latin America which is approx 90% declared 'Christian'. I assume he has a printer.

It is 'Christians' who have abortions. (at least the majority of them)

Explain that if you can?

[Paprika]

Paprika: (Frankly such numbers should have already been achieved except for those pesky Christians trying hard in many ways to save the unborn children from mass slaughter).

You just could not resist a bit of snarky 'point scoring', Paprika.

Indeed. Problem?

The abortion 'white knight' stance of the Christian Churches on this is nauseous. It is the perceived ace in their pack.

Well, they are actually (at least in the US) trying to do something about routine slaughtering of millions against the general culture that accepts, praises, and funds it so I think they deserve some kudos on that.

If the Pope air lifted free condoms and sex education advice to Mexico City, he might halve the problem overnight.

Or maybe condoms are already widely and cheaply available (like they are in the west) yet millions are still aborted.

The highest abortion rates in the world are in Latin America which is approx 90% declared 'Christian'. I assume he has a printer.

Because self-declaring as 'Christians' means much, or does the Pope's authority (given the widespread flouting of official dogma re: condoms and abortion)

It is 'Christians' who have abortions. (at least the majority of them)

Explain that if you can?

Quite. It is the flouting of Christian doctrine/dogma (as the case may be) and embrace of liberal/progressive ideas that result in the many pregnancies and then the slaughter. So the fault lies mainly with the progressives/liberals for encouraging free sex, abortion etc etc, though of course fault lies with Christian leaders for not taking a firmer stance on this and carrying out church discipline accordingly.

Edit- this would be the same answer to 'oh why oh why do Christians in the US divorce at such high rates': infection of the churches with progressivism/liberalism, and church leaders going along with it instead of upholding Christian doctrine and praxes.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 313 by dianaiad]

May I butt in here?

YEP.. please do.

I have often thought that the argument for the acceptability of abortion because 'a potential human is not a human' is circular. I've never been able to express it clearly.

Let me try this again.

Thank you so much.
I KNOW that it's so hard to think about circular thinking without getting all tangled up.
So, any help in that regard is much appreciated.

Circular thinking has become one of my "things".. and woo. Not the expert here.

There's an old 'joke' of sorts that well illustrates the problem with it; the guy who is on trial for killing his parents asking for mercy from the court on account of his being an orphan.

Hmmm... I'm having trouble with how it applies.

1. The guy kills his parents.
2. Is now an orphan.
3. His being an orphan has nothing to DO with if the killing was justified or not.

I'm supposed to see the connection between the faulty logic of the parent killer in the joke and.. how something that is merely potential isn't actually actual.

I show you my empty hand. It POTENTIALLY can have a cup of coffee in it.

But does it have a cup of coffee in it?
Not yet, it doesn't.

Ok, back to you.. I'm sure you will explain this to me.

The problem with 'potential human' not being the same thing as an 'actual human,' is that it is a dichotomy. It isn't a potential ANYTHING ELSE.

You might mean "false dichotomy"?
I don't this is a case of a false dichotomy.
At least, not in the way that you describe it.

Ok.. a human fetus can't be anything else than a human person if it's potential becomes an actuality.

The fetus can be ONLY one thing, if it is born.

A human person, or.. not.
If it spontaneously aborts.. like 25% of them do... it won't be a person.
I agree.

So here is the dichotomy that I see.

A person or not a person.
Those are two things.

What is merely potential isn't actual.
If something that is potentially so NEVER fulfills the potential, then it just isn't ever actually so.

I hope you agree with my reasoning that something potential isn't actual.


So, let's apply my reasoning to a potential person:
A potential human person can become an actual human person or not an actual human person.

Actual person or not an actual person.
Potential person or actual person.

This is the dichotomy .. how is it false?

There are only two choices here; this embryo becomes a human adult...or it dies first.

Yep, two choices. That's the dichotomy.
Potential or actual.

If it's only potential, and dies first, then it's not going to be actual.

It has no potential to take any other course than those two things. Therefore, the reason for ending its life is to prevent it from becoming a human adult, or child, or infant. That's the whole idea.

I agree. That's the whole idea of abortion. Yes.

It seems to me that if only death will prevent an embryo from reaching the next stage of its development as a human...embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent, adult....then it's already a human.

Oh, that seems to be a stretch.
It might be ALIVE and yet not be a human person.

the word "YET" is very important here.

What has YET to happen can't be said to have happened.

After all, i has no potential to become an elephant.

And I hope that you can see that this is irrelevant to the dichotomy.

Adulthood...or death.

Be careful with words, we are not talking about adulthood, or elephants or childhood, but PERSONHOOD.

There is a difference.

Also, human persons who are not ADULTS are NOT all dead. So, it can't be adulthood or death. That's a false dichotomy, to be sure.

Therefore if it is morally wrong to kill a child BECAUSE it is only a 'potential adult,'

You are building up a false dichotomy here.

A CHILD is an actual human PERSON. So, as soon as you use the word "child" you are saying that it is a person.

In other words, you are saying that it is morally wrong to kill a person ( a child is a person ) BECAUSE it is a person.

Circular reasoning.
X because of X.

Saying that a person is a person isn't saying much of anything.

That's why we should avoid false dichotomies and circular thinking.
They both lead to NOWHERE.

It's wrong to kill a human person of any age.

What the debate is about is whether or not a human FETUS is a person or not.

If we can destroy a fetus. That's the question.
The question isn't if we can kill a human person.

That's been settled a LONG time ago.

then it is equally wrong to kill a fetus BECAUSE it is only a 'potential adult.' It is already human.

Following your reasoning, yes, maybe. But I say that your reasoning is faulty in this regard.

There may well be other reasons for ending the life of a fetus. Some of them, though tragic, are necessary. But to use THIS one...that it is only 'potentially' a human?

No. It's not 'potentially' human. It is human. It's nothing else; it's human, or it's dead.

Human or dead.

1. "Human" isn't the opposite of "dead".
2. You seem to think that potential human persons are already human persons.
3. That would imply that potential things are actual things.
4. I can't follow that. Potential things are not actual things.

I am potentially a billionaire. Does that imply that I am an actual billionaire?

How does it work to say that something that is potentially so, IS actually so?

Thank you for making me sweat.
THAT one made me think!

Hope to hear what you have to say about it.

Cheers.

[Hatuey]

[Replying to post 316 by Paprika]

Agreed.

Fetuses are living.
Sperm is living.
Unfertilized eggs in or out of e ovaries are living.

At no time are the components to a fetus "nonliving."

Every sperm is sacred, and we should subject to capital punishment every man and woman alive because each man and woman have allowed thousands or millions of potential human offspring to die in the normal course of daily living.

[Hamsaka]

With the argument in hand, perhaps even to those inured against the humanity of the embryo by pro-abortion propaganda it may become clear why some might choose to save the bucket of embryos over the toddlers:

Depending on the maturity of the embryo, the bucket will contain two to three times in order of magnitude the number of human lives. The choice then easily follows.

Not even close. Your argument above conveniently leaves out reference to the personhood, the status as 'person', in regard to the embryo. You announce this is just not part of the issue, but announcing or claiming something doesn't make it so. It is a legal and ethical issue, with the appropriate bodies of medical and ethical research from which to draw guidance. I understand the theist position, and note theists denying the existence of things that challenge their faith regularly, and also note their denial does not make these necessary elements disappear. To continue to promote a deliberately incomplete argument will result in greater actual ethical harm (in this case).

[Hatuey]

[Replying to post 303 by Paprika]

Do you think the parents would appreciate you deciding in such a manner?

Somehow, I think the scenario highlights stupid reasoning and stupid rationalization required to produce such stupid reasoning.

[Hatuey]

[Replying to post 326 by Hamsaka]

How ridiculous is it to refer to a bucket of embryos as a bucket of human lives? Lol.

Yall are really missing out when it comes to this "paprika" character. The terminology he uses is retarded (note that I did not call any PERSON "retarded"). Dismantle/deconstruct the verbiage and he doesn't have any arguments. It's all just empty vitriol and extremist propaganda. No truth in an empty box with a pretty bow can always be beaten by simple truth without any packaging at all.