From his tweets:

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/311774201012948992

"With respect to those meanings of "human" that
are relevant to the morality of abortion, any
fetus is less human than an adult pig"

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/311787421354319872

"The most important moral question in abortion
debate is "Can it feel pain?" Late abortuses
may, but you don't have to be human to feel pain"

---------

Christopher Hitchens, my favorite atheist, was
wrong. Religion doesn't poison everything.
Darwinism does. Just read the Darwinist logic
above from Dawkins.

When we humans butcher animals or harvest
plants in order to consume them or otherwise
expand our scientific knowledge, we cause
these living creatures pain. But this is not
immoral.

Killing another human being is immoral.
Killing a fetus is not abortion, it is feticide.
Abortion is just a euphemism for an immoral act.
Once we use the correct word for the action,
we get a better understanding of that action.

You can kill another human without causing
pain. But does painless killing change the act
in any way? No. If you have ever planned on
killing someone with such provision, the fact
that you have prepared it beforehand makes it
murder.

Darwinists like Dawkins makes eugenics easy to
swallow. And that is how they've really
poisoned everything.

At what point do you consider replicating cells a "fetus?"

First Dawkins needs to clearly define what a human is. Then he can lecture all he wants about an adult pig being more human than a developing human.

As far as replicating cells, I'm replicating more than a few right now.

When there are enough cells to commit feticide.

Is a human fetus not human? Or is it less human than an adult pig?

How many cells is that?

Come on Kolobian, you know that every sperm is sacred. Have you not studied your Monty?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2013 12:55PM by Jesus Smith.

Or even further back, spermicide?

When did Richard Dawkins become the Pope of Darwinism having the final say on what Darwinism is or isn't?

Darwin's theory is about the evolution of species by natural selection and says nothing about when human reproductive tissue becomes human or when such developing tissue can feel pain. These are solely the opinions of Dawkins and have nothing to do with evolution or Darwinism - even if Richard Dawkins thinks they do.

You are mixing together 2 issues which are separate and allowing Dawkins' opinions to bleed over into social issues Darwinism makes no comment about. I wonder what your motivation for doing this is. Creationists are famous for mixing social issues with this scientific theory in order to discredit evolutionary theory by association. It is a logical fallacy and when intended (I don't pretend to your intentions, Katuwiran) it is dishonest.

Why are we talking about painless killing when abortion is horrifically painful for fetuses developed enough to feel pain? At least we put our unwanted animals to sleep.

Thank you. It is well known that unborn babies feel physical sensation early on, i cant remember off hand exactly how many weeks it is when they begin to respond to touch stimulus. Anyone who claims fetuses dont feel their abortions (or only late term fetuses do) should challenge themselves to watch an abortion being done on an ultrasound. They definitely feel it. I dont know about darwinism and all that but the idea that a being as neurolgically advanced as a human fetus cant feel pain is utterly ridiculous.

This part of it also makes me very uncomfortable. And even though I may not morally oppose abortion as I used to due to religious reasons, I certainly would never ask any woman to perform an abortion because just because they didn't want to keep it. However, the pain aspect, from a moral standpoint, I understand and agree with. So hopefully it's brief. But I'm not a vegetarian either, so my diet is causing a lot of pain to a lot of different animals. I don't consider the morality of that pain before eating a steak. Maybe I should. But I don't.

to feel pain, and how many abortions are actually done after that point?

An even worse crime than murdering a fetus is taking a day off from having sex, and thus preventing fetuses from even existing in the first place. Annihilation is worse than murder, wouldn't you agree?

or masturbating and killing all those innocent sperm and disposing of all those corpses in a sock

Notice the "cide" in Spermicide
It's basically genocide
lol

Ask yourself why murder is wrong. It's not just about the pain the victim suffers. It's also about taking a person away that perhaps didn't want to die. The sadness that it will cause others that will miss that person. Love taken away. Stripping an individual's right to live.

Many aspects such as these may not necessarily apply to an embryo, or a fetus. So the question becomes, what and who defines morality? Abortion is morally wrong because _______(fill in a secular reason here). Once aborted, it will terminate a would have been life, and the fate of the unborn child will be exactly what it would have been if conception never occurred.

I personally believe that abortion should be a woman's choice, and just because some people abuse that choice and use it as a form of birth control, should not mean that others should be penalized as a result. I'm not in favour of late term abortion except in circumstances where it may be deemed necessary, because at that point, I think the unborn baby has some consciousness and may be morally closer to stopping the beating heart of a new born baby.

Theists will also say that there is a certain value to life that goes beyond our understanding or feelings, which makes the voluntary termination of life immoral. Based on god's teachings. I've yet to hear anyone but representatives of made up man made religions make that claim though.

Fetus feels pain momentarily (very quick) and then it's dead. Finito. No more pain. Ever.

vs.

Woman feels pain of bodily changes for several months, undergoes severe trauma and pain of giving birth for many hours, is forever impacted by the emotional and ecomonic burden of caring for a child, or the state undergoes that burden.

It's just math.

I was just praying to ask YOU that..

I don't know why that asshole god seems to hate what he does.

All I know is that abortion is none of my business as a diety; not sure why Elohim cares so goddamn much.

[Dawkins]: "With respect to those meanings of 'human' that
are relevant to the morality of abortion, any
fetus is less human than an adult pig."

Less than elegantly expressed. There is no sense in which a pig is "human." However, there is a sense in which an adult pit has some moral rights equal to or greater than the equivalent moral rights granted to something to which we append the adjective "human." For example, what moral rights do "human remains" have, and why do they have them?

[Katuwiran]: "When we humans butcher animals or harvest plants in order to consume them or otherwise expand our scientific knowledge, we cause these living creatures pain. But this is not immoral."

I'm not aware that plants can feel pain. Higher animals can certainly feel pain. Whether and to what extent lower animals feel pain is a matter for debate. Your claim that it is not immoral to cause pain to animals is one that is certainly disputable. Is it morally acceptable that, prior to butchering a pig, I kill it in such a way that it dies slowly and in agony? Is it morally acceptable to torture dogs for sport?

[Kiruwan]: "Killing another human being is immoral. Killing a fetus is not abortion, it is feticide. Abortion is just a euphemism for an immoral act. Once we use the correct word for the action, we get a better understanding of that action."

Just so we're clear, a "fetus" is a particular developmental stage of a mammal that follows the "embryo" stage. In humans, the fetal stage is deemed to begin about the 9th week of pregnancy. Therefore, an abortion prior to the 9th week is not "feticide," it's "embryocide."

What moral rights does a human embryo have, and why? Since you are claiming, essentially, that a human fetus has an absolute right to life even in cases where the fetus can be killed without inflicting pain, what is your argument for that claim? Are you also claiming that a human embryo has the same absolute right to life that you are asserting on behalf of a human fetus?

Recent studies suggest that plants may in fact feel "pain" (and even "scream" right before they are harvested)
-- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/577029/posts
-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYT6jCVQOrY

But I think the pain discussion is misguided. Pain is merely 1 symptom of mistreatment.

Is emotion pain less important than physical pain?
What about lack of comfort? Is that also immoral?
So is the fact that I'm a comfortable first-worlder and that others in the world are less comfortable mean that it is immoral?

Consequences, as I stated, as a better gage.
So if I have pain, and then it makes me afraid to do something, that is a consequence. The pain itself was just a catalyst.

So if we prove that plants in fact feel pain, do we stop cutting our grass & stop walking on it? Or do we not allow lawn (either genocide or population prevention)? Or do we change nothing because that pain causes no consequence.

I'm definitely in the latter camp.

"So if I have pain, and then it makes me afraid to do something, that is a consequence. The pain itself was just a catalyst."

Suppose I attach electrodes to your genitals and turn on the current. The pain that you feel would be a consequence of my action, wouldn't it? Or are you saying that it would be OK for me to do that unless you suffer PERMANENT consequences?

Well, I suppose that one of the consequences could be that it subsequently makes you afraid to do anything that I don't want you to do -- which, for the sake of argument, is precisely the consequence I desired. Does that make it it morally acceptable?

I don't think that in an abortion, they're hooking up wires to the fetus' balls. What you're talking about is deliberate torture. Completely different objective. Apples and oranges.

It would be excommunicated from any self respecting Christian Church. When god can get its act together regarding the sacredness of life than I will consider what it has to say as being mildly relevant. Until such day don't preach to me about god's moral authority.

You aren't able to understand the paradigm of atheism.

If there isn't a god dictating morals, then morals are consequences.

As such, my disagreement with Dawkins is that he has appealed to much to the theist crowd by talking of the morality of pain. Pain, in and of itself, is not a consequence, especially when immediately preceding death.

So with abortion- I look at the consequences. If a parent does not want a child, then the consequences of birth are likely a crappy life (hugely varying degrees of crappy, but almost surely crappy).
Whereas the consequences of abortion remove 1 party from the equation. Only the parents have consequences (perhaps emotional ones), but the infant wasn't born, and all potential consequences are nullified.

With slaughtering animals, again I look at the consequences. If we stop slaughtering animals, our food-chain is disrupted. If we continue doing it, then a set of animals have crappy lives. However, that set of animals is partitioned off from the main populous, and is only required to be seen by those who have selected that profession.
If you feel morally compelled to prevent the cruel treatment of animals, you need to affect consequences. Stop buying those goods.
If enough people do it, then societal morality changes. If not enough people do it, then you are in the minority and you must accept the fact that society doesn't want to change this aspect.

You can debate the morality of anything until you are blue in the face... but the consequences are what actually determines behavior.

This scares many people, as it condones many things that many people consider immoral (like capital punishment, dictator assassination, etc...).
But it also empowers us, as we have (as a society) great control over consequences. We can chose to not purchase things, or we can choose to speak poorly of company X, or we can choose to give preference to individual Y.

^ ^ ^
That

right. darwinism poisons people's mind.
you sound like a pretty religious person with a lot of delusions of morality.

i also think you are giving dawkins too much power. not because he won the nobel prize makes him an almighty, an all knowing being. his opinions are his opinions. you have your own.

plus if darwnism doesn't do it for you, well, then switch to something else that fits you (shrug)

Dawkins is essentially right, although he says things in a way that insults tons of people. A zygote only gradually becomes a person, as anyone who thinks about it rationally for a while would realize. First trimester abortions are more moral that second, and second more moral that third. No one likes intentional abortion.. it's just emotionally repellent. But like almost everything else, black-and-white thinking misses the mark. The key thing is that it is the business of the woman who has to deal with it, and no one else.

"Darwinism," or biological evolution is true, whether people like it or not, and it is corrosive to religion because religion isn't true.

I'm not sure why people still are debating the validity of evolution. The only reason it's even an issue is because many religious people choose to disregard it as contradictory to their beliefs. The only things regarding evolution that should be debated are the yet unknowns, like how did life first evolve or form. But as far as evolution is concerned, there's not a lot of ambiguity in the science that it exists. DNA mutation is observed all the time. It's not a stretch to understand that random mutation and natural selection over thousands and millions of years will cause new species to form.

And religious people are right to reject it, because they love their religion more than the cold hard truth. Back in my religious TBM days, I consciously turned a blind eye to the science of evolution.

They are not fetuses.

A form of survival of the fittest occurs every time an egg is fertilized. If this embryo has a defect it fails to develop and is naturally aborted. Only the ones fit to implant and start thriving survive, so natural abortions occur by the billions. This is actually a form of Darwinism. This selective mechanism acts as a filter and so if you believe in God, he performs billions of abortions.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2013 02:11PM by rationalguy.

They don't result in a pregnancy, and are passed out of the body monthly.

Because he is gross.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2013 02:30PM by Raptor Jesus.