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"180" Movie

I think it's a powerful presentation and encourage as many people as possible to watch it.

Are you surprised at my answer?

No.

When you start a thread on a topic, it's common to write some words about what you think about the subject. What do you think about the content of the video? Do you believe it's persuasive and logically sound?
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y2KsU_dhwI

http://180movie.com/


http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=1437294

"A well-known evangelist says his new documentary has the capability to change a person's mind on the issue of abortion in a matter of seconds."


Ah, what the hell. I'll watch it and take notes...
He starts talking about Hitler, and nobody he talks to knows exactly who Adolf Hitler is, some of them even claiming to never have heard of him. (Seriously? Are there really people from first-world countries that ignorant?)

Except for Steve, who happens to be a Neo-Nazi and proudly proclaims White Superiority, and claims that Christianity is a Jewish trick. Steve says "I don't hate black people because they're black, I hate black people because they're pieces of ****. Because they ruin every ****** neighborhood they come into, because they do bad things to my people because of the color of our skin" and so on, about how he hates America, Jews, etc. As for the holocaust he says "I think that's a lie. I don't think he killed that many people".

After a lengthy interview with Steve he finally comes across other people who actually know who Hitler was. Although some of them are holocaust deniers, claiming it to be Jewish lies.

"It's 1939, you've got a high-powered rifle and Adolf Hitler is in your sights. Do you take him out?"
"Absolutely."
"It's about 30 years earlier. Mrs Hitler is pregnant with Adolf. Would you take her out?"
"If I knew what he was going to do, yeah."

He then goes on about how Adolf hated Christianity, perverted it. How Adolf's God was not the God of The Bible. And brings up images and descriptions of events from the concentration camp.

"It's 1943, a German officer is pointing a machine gun at you and told you to get in the bulldozer and drive it forward. You look in front of you and there's a big pit. Hundreds of Jewish families have been shot, and they're in the pit, many of them dead but some of them still alive. He's telling you to bury them alive. You know that if you say no, he's just going to say okay and shoot you with a machine gun and someone else is going to do it. He's going to do it. Would you do what he says?"

[Different answers from different people.]

"Let's say the soldier said to you 'Look, I don't want you to bury these people alive, I'm just going to give you my gun and you can finish them all off, just shoot them'. Would you do that?"

"No that would be harder to do. That would be something..."
[Personally, I'd use the gun to shoot the German officer.]

"It would be more merciful to be shot than buried alive, don't you think?"

"Oh, I think so."

"So you wouldn't shoot them, but you'd bury them?"

"Yeah I..."

"What's the difference?"

"Because I would think that most of them would be dead. That would be the ..."

"But there's some still alive."

"Yeah, I'd probably try and put that out of my mind."

[He asks this of several other people, who also seem more reluctant to use the gun than the bulldozer.]

[When people decide that they wouldn't kill the Jews even to save their own life, he then asks them...]

"So you value human life?"

"Yeah."

"So how do you feel about abortion?"

"I feel it's a woman's right to choose. Every situation is a different situation."

[He then shows video footage of fetuses, asking people if they consider this to be a baby.]

"Finish this sentence for me. It's okay to kill a baby in the womb when..."
[Personally, I'd say before the brain is functional. Although, at that point it's not technically a baby.]

"I don't know."

[Several different answers from different people.]

"If I'm a construction worker and see a building over there and I say to you I'm just going to bow up that building in a minute. There's a possibility that there's someone in there. I just don't know, but I'm going to blow it up anyway. What would you say to me? I'm not sure if there's life in that building or not, but I'm going to blow it up anyway?"

[Skip to some more questions by other people without showing the answer.]

"Here's you, Frank. You'd give your life for Jews who were going to die anyway, but you won't stand up against murder of children in the womb. I would like you to say 'Man, it's wrong to kill a child in the womb, the safest place on earth is in a mother's womb, and to actually go in there and destroy a human life, and why, for selfish reasons'."

"It's dependent, I guess. Dependant on the reasons."

"What reason is there for killing a baby in the womb?"

"If it's rape or something like that. I know it's a tough decision, but it's meant to be."

"Why would you kill the baby for the crime of the father? Which is worse, murder or rape? You're murdering a baby, taking a life, because of the crime of the father."

[Skip to another person without showing the reply.]

"Who knows when life begins?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think God knows when life begins?"

"I think so. Probably."

"And do you know what the sixth commandment is?"

"No."

"It says 'you shall not kill'. So you should say it is never right to kill a child in it's mother's womb. And Hitler declared Jews as non-human. And that's what you're doing when you're saying 'It's not a baby until it's three months. That's what I think. It's very suggestive. And if you're not sure, it's taking a terrible risk with someone else's life. Imagine if someone said that about you if you were just on three months old, and they decided to kill you because of selfish reasons."

[It goes on like this for a while, bringing up the 6th commandment, etc. Someone brings up birth defects as a reason for abortion, and he asks if it's okay for Nazis to kill children with Down's syndrome, and so on. "I would never kill Jews, but I think people should have the right to do it". Nazi Germany comes up a lot.]

He gets most of the people to agree that they've changes their minds about
abortion, and that they'll vote differently in the future.

Then he starts asking people about the afterlife, and that if there is a heaven if they think they'll go there. Asking people if they've ever told lies, and what do you call someone who lies? A liar. Have you ever stolen anything? What do you call someone who steals? A thief. And so on. :(

Although it's amusing when he asks a woman if she'd ever looked at a guy with lust, and she answers "Nah, I'm gay". :)

So the questions can be summed up as...
  • Would you ever kill another person?
  • You'd rather die than kill hundreds of Jews who'd be killed anyway, but you won't even speak out against killing babies in their mother's womb?
  • When does life begin?
  • If you're not sure when life begins, isn't having an abortion like blowing up a building without knowing if there are any people inside?
  • Hitler justified killing Jews by saying that Jews weren't really human. Isn't that what you're doing when you say that the baby isn't a person until three months?
  • When is it justified to kill a baby in the womb?
  • Isn't abortion after rape the same as killing a child for the crimes of it's father?
  • Isn't abortion for birth defects the same as Nazi's killing children with Down's syndrome?
  • What if you were in Nazi Germany, would you ever say "I would never kill Jews, but I believe people should have the right to kill Jews"

And at the end he then goes on about the afterlife and asks...
  • Have you ever lied?
  • What do you call someone who lies?
  • Doesn't that make you a liar?
  • Have you ever stolen anything?
  • What do you call someone who steals...
And so on.

ETA: Looks like Ryokan beat me to it.
 
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JudeBrando, if you had been alive and an adult in Europe during WW2, would you have taken up arms against the Nazis?

I would, and I'm proud of both my grandfathers who fought against them.
 
People are asked, it's 1939, you have a sniper rifle and have Hitler in your sights, would you shoot?

Most say yes.

He then asks, what if it's Hitler's mom, pregnant, would you shoot her?

Most hesitate a bit before they say yes.

Except for one old guy who goes on to say that he'd kill every member of Hitler's family (he lost a lot of his own relatives in WWII).

I noticed that this question has absolutely no relevance to Ray's arguments.

He then asks if they'd been given a rifle instead, and asked to shoot all the Jews, would they still do it?

Most hestitate for some time, then say they wouldn't. Why? Because it would be harder.

I wonder why nobody gave the obvious answer: Use the rifle to shoot the German officer and let the Jews live.

(Of course, Ray could get around that by stipulating that there is more than one German soldier pointing a gun at you. But why aren't they finishing off the Jews? It'd take ages with just one person, and you'd need to reload a lot.)

There's still 10 minutes left of the video. The rest seems to be a summary, and some back patting by Comfort. I can't watch anymore.

If only that's all there was. (See my last post.) I almost turned it off too.
 
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JudeBrando, if you had been alive and an adult in Europe during WW2, would you have taken up arms against the Nazis?

I would, and I'm proud of both my grandfathers who fought against them.
Some of my relatives left Auschwitz well-before, a little after the turn of the century,
and others surely died there.
 
Some of my relatives left Auschwitz well-before, a little after the turn of the century,
and others surely died there.

I'm sorry to hear that. It's an understatement to say that it was a great tragedy. No one I know of in my family was killed during the war. I am, of course, eternally grateful that my grandfathers survived it, otherwise I wouldn't be here.. :)

But the question is, knowing that and what the Nazis stood for, would you have been among those who took up arms to fight them? Millions did. I would. Would you?
 
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I think it's a powerful presentation and encourage as many people as possible to watch it.

Are you surprised at my answer?

I understand Ray Comfort's motivation in regard to this debate; it's about male control over a woman's reproductive system. I get that, but what's your motivation Jude? Same thing?
 
Thanks for the summaries Ryokan and Brian-M.

What strikes me is that all the arguments used in the video could be equally applied to vegetarianism. Yet, I doubt that Comfort is vegetarian.
 
I'm sorry to hear that. It's an understatement to say that it was a great tragedy. No one I know of in my family was killed during the war. I am, of course, eternally grateful that my grandfathers survived it, otherwise I wouldn't be here.. :)

But the question is, knowing that and what the Nazis stood for, would you have been among those who took up arms to fight them? Millions did. I would. Would you?
Other relatives, a half-century further removed, were likely also among them as well.
 
Other relatives, a half-century further removed, were likely also among them as well.

I'm a bit surprised, JudeBrando. With all that, why are you hesitating to tell me if you would have taken up arms against the Nazis or not? I think it's the most straight forward question I've asked on this forum, and surely easy to answer.
 
Wow, seems to be full of a lot of horrible reasoning and people who don't have a firm idea on why they think abortions are ok.

Few people think aborting an 8 month fetus is ok. Few people think aborting a 1 day old embryo is not ok if the woman wants to do it. Not a lot of people are very good at reasoning things out from there. This guy seems to be using fallacious reasoning to compare things to the Holocaust or to say "well, it looks kinda human, so destroying it must be murder, right?" Horrible.

If someone is brain dead and so will never regain any brain function, is ending what remains of that life wrong? I'd say "no." What gave them their personality, thoughts, and so forth is gone. All the remains is a shell. Ending that isn't killing or murder.

I don't see how it is any different for a fetus. Organized neural firings don't happen in the brain until something on the order of 4 or 5 months. That's when you first start having something that can arguably be called "human" or close to it. Before that you definitely only have something that resembles a person, and a resemblance does not a human make. I don't see anything wrong with stopping that from becoming a person anymore than there's a problem with using safe sex to stop an unwanted pregnancy before it happens. Thankfully, 4 or 5 months is plenty of time for someone to decide whether they want a baby or not.

Other people might have their own well-reasoned thoughts on the matter, but that's mine. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like the above video presents people who have actually thought much about things.
 
I understand Ray Comfort's motivation in regard to this debate; it's about male control over a woman's reproductive system. I get that, but what's your motivation Jude? Same thing?

As much as Ray Comfort is totally wrong, I think this is an unfair characterization. I believe such people seriously think abortion is murder. Just because a fetus is attached to another human being doesn't mean they are against the 'murder' just because they want to control women. (Unless you have evidence to support your particular claim against Ray Comfort).

If a conjoined twin wanted to be separated from his/her other half, would it be allowable if only the one twin would survive and the other would almost certainly die? I don't think so. Is an abortion one day before the expected due date ok? I don't think so. Do you disagree with this? I think we must logically concede that at a certain point a fetus has matured enough to have human rights similar to what a baby has. The real question is at what point that is, though conception is a pretty ludicrous place to go with.
 
Thanks for the summaries Ryokan and Brian-M.

What strikes me is that all the arguments used in the video could be equally applied to vegetarianism. Yet, I doubt that Comfort is vegetarian.

Let's be careful with our arguments here. Hypocrisy wouldn't invalidate what the guy is saying. The fact his arguments are full of false equivalences invalidates what he is saying.
 
Sigh. Yet another unethical appeal to emotion.
 

I explained why. I don't believe it is his actual motivation and so it is a straw man argument. Do I need to go further? It's also an ad hominem attack, and one that is a bit questionable in itself.

Did you just read the first sentence of my post or something? Do you think it is ok to attack people rather than their arguments viciously, personally, and misrepresent them if they are wrong about something or have some undesirable traits? Did you not understand what I wrote? Something else? What?
 
So what if he had interviewed me?

Pay attention JudeBrando. My answers are in blue.


People are asked, it's 1939, you have a sniper rifle and have Hitler in your sights, would you shoot?

I would say I would not shoot him. For the following two reasons:

1) If I'm a time traveler and know what he will eventually do then me killing him will cause huge unanticipated changes to the future.
2) If I'm just some dude in 1939 then I don't know he's a monster yet and I'd just be assassinating some head of state that says a lot of nasty things.


He then asks, what if it's Hitler's mom, pregnant, would you shoot her?

Again, I would not.

Comfort then continues asking people questions.

It's 1943, you're in a concentration camp. The nazis have put you in a bulldozer in front of a ditch full of Jews. They tell you that either you drive the bulldozer and fill the ditch, or they'll kill you. Will you?

Probably. Even if I refuse they'll find someone else to do it. So they're dying anyways. No sense in adding my body to the pile.

He then asks if they'd been given a rifle instead, and asked to shoot all the Jews, would they still do it?

I don't see how it would make a difference.

He then says, so you value life?

I value certain kinds of life. Self aware life to be precise about it.

He then asks, what do you think about abortion?

I support it.

He asks, so when does it become a life?

It's always life. But that's irrelevant.

He then asks, ok, finish this sentence: It's ok to kill a baby in the womb when...?

At any point. Never while it is in the womb is it a self aware being.

So he asks, ok, I'm a construction builder, and I'm going to blow up a building. There's a possibility there's someone in there, but I just don't know. I'm going to blow it up anyway. What would you say?

I wouldn't say anything. I'd slap the freaking controls out of your hand.

The question goes unanswered, as he jumps right to asking, what justifies killing a baby in the womb?

If it can't be given a good life. There are others of course. A father that might murder you if he finds out you're pregnant is another.

So he ask, can you say that's like saying, before you bury those Jews alive, just give us a though and then bury them alive.

Listen Ray, if you can't speak intelligibly there is no point here.

He then says, so you would give your life for the Jews who would die anyway (remember, I wouldn't), but you won't speak up about abortion, you won't speak up about the murder of children in the womb? I would like you to say, that's wrong! To kill a child in it's safest place, it's mother's womb, and to actually go in there and destroy it, for selfish reasons?! Tell me a reason for killing a baby in the womb!

It might grow up to be another mindless Ray Comfort apologist.
 
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He then asks, ok, finish this sentence: It's ok to kill a baby in the womb when...?

At any point. Never while it is in the womb is it a self aware being.

Hmm, what's your basis for that assertion? Do you not think a baby is self-aware 30 seconds after being born too, or is it not ok to kill it then? I don't see how a birth imbues the baby with different cognitive properties than it had just before birth.
 
I explained why. I don't believe it is his actual motivation and so it is a straw man argument. Do I need to go further? It's also an ad hominem attack, and one that is a bit questionable in itself.

Did you just read the first sentence of my post or something? Do you think it is ok to attack people rather than their arguments viciously, personally, and misrepresent them if they are wrong about something or have some undesirable traits? Did you not understand what I wrote? Something else? What?

Not a strawman, not ad hominem. Untwist them, they're in a bunch.
 

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