Abortion bill pass in Kentucky

[turingtest]

"It's well known".... is it? No wonder you're a Trumpista. This is the direct cousin of "People are saying...."

It's a whackjob conspiracy theory. It comes from the likes of Icke and Jones. As noted, you can find patterns in anything if you look hard enough. If only we had a good skeptical word for that.

I've always liked the "you do the work" gambit too. Two points about that-

1) Apparently, it's up to the person questioning the belief to figure out what sources specifically convinced the believer;

and

2) it's an invitation to play ball with someone who's set the rules so he can move the goalpost at will- "no, that's not where I got my information, try again."

("Wow" is right, Chris- do you expect people to read your mind for the source of the information that you find convincing? If it's so well known, it shouldn't be that hard to say where that information came from. Pony up or slither away, your choice- the claim is yours, so the accountability for it is too.)

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

Look at a map of pretty much any major city and draw a few lines and you'll no doubt come up with some symbols that conspiracy nuts would consider to be significant in some way. Nothing to be gained, but if it keeps you amused, carry on.

What do you make of the Great Seal of the US on the back of the $1 bill? Particularly the unfinished pyramid and the all Seeing Eye above it. Just a coincidence as well? Nothing significant?
Chris B.

 

[turingtest]

Originally Posted by surrogate View Post
What about when the rape happens in the city and the woman doesn't cry loud enough? Are we supposed to wait until after she delivers to stone her?

Dang, you're gettin' Old Testament on me.

Chris B.

And why not? If you believe that aborting a fetus is, without qualification, murder of a human being, then isn't the death penalty for the murderers the logical outcome of your own argument?

(That's assuming you favor the death penalty- if not, change "death penalty" to "life in prison" for any woman having an abortion)

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

I've always liked the "you do the work" gambit too. Two points about that-

1) Apparently, it's up to the person questioning the belief to figure out what sources specifically convinced the believer;

and

2) it's an invitation to play ball with someone who's set the rules so he can move the goalpost at will- "no, that's not where I got my information, try again."

("Wow" is right, Chris- do you expect people to read your mind for the source of the information that you find convincing? If it's so well known, it shouldn't be that hard to say where that information came from. Pony up or slither away, your choice- the claim is yours, so the accountability for it is too.)

I provided you with an exercise in education if you're curious to learn something interesting. By all means feel free to ignore it if you are not interested. It's not homework and not a requirement for conversation. I'm not gonna hold your hand and drag you into the light. You'll get there or not on your own, your choice. If you're not interested, that's perfectly fine, just please don't spit at me for freely suggesting an exercise in education. It was not meant to belittle your current knowledge in any way. Enlightenment is certainly a good thing.

Chris B.

 

[Resume]

Surely it has evidentiary value?

We can start with whether or not the founders (whatever that's supposed to mean) were atheists or theists. If we agree they believed in a supreme being, then they are theists - as already agreed to. Now, we can ask what brand of theist were they? If the dominant religion of the time and place is Christianity, it seems like a small step to assume they were Christians. And by that I mean they would be identified at the time as Christian by their peers - not that we can see into their long-dead heads and know for sure.

Do they have to be Christians to found the country on Christian principles? No. Presumably an educated person of the time would "know their bible." Heck, I'm an atheist and I know it fairly well. It is perfectly possible for me to use ideas I've extracted from the bible - even though I don't think they are divinely authored.

The real nut of the conversation, and the part I don't think has been argued very well, is separating out just what a "Christian principle" is supposed to mean, short of actually worshiping Jesus. That whole bit needs clarification.

A number of the founders were deists and did not accept the divinity of Christ.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-Deism-and-Christianity-1272214

In his widely read The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine, the principal American exponent of Deism, called Christianity “a fable.” Paine, the protégé of Benjamin Franklin, denied “that the Almighty ever did communicate anything to man, by…speech,…language, or…vision.” Postulating a distant deity whom he called “Nature’s God” (a term also used in the Declaration of Independence), Paine declared in a “profession of faith

And of course we (should) know of the Jefferson bible in which he deleted the supernatural and miraculous.

Adams, Washington and Madison were similarly informed by The Enlightenment. The best one could argue in regard to "christian values," the framers, and the framework is a sort of Jesus meets the Golden Rule and Likes It.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

And why not? If you believe that aborting a fetus is, without qualification, murder of a human being, then isn't the death penalty for the murderers the logical outcome of your own argument?

(That's assuming you favor the death penalty- if not, change "death penalty" to "life in prison" for any woman having an abortion)

I don't believe in killing anyone. Abortion certainly is murder. If a woman can live with the knowledge of having one, I expect that's punishment itself.
Chris B.

 

[Belz...]

Interesting to note, there's a theory that was proposed a few years back that all life on Earth formed from a single celled organism. My aren't we lucky it wasn't squished.

First of all, it's not just a hypothesis. It's the best possible explanation for what we observe: we are all descendants from the same organism. Any other organism formed prior to it or during that time was wiped out. My, aren't we lucky they were squished.

Your post is an appeal to potential by looking at the result of past events, but it has no bearing on the issue whatsoever. Perhaps if you'd care to make an actual argument, we could discuss it, but as it stands you're just "against" it because of, I guess, religion.

 

[fagin]

I provided you with an exercise in education if you're curious to learn something interesting. By all means feel free to ignore it if you are not interested. It's not homework and not a requirement for conversation. I'm not gonna hold your hand and drag you into the light. You'll get there or not on your own, your choice. If you're not interested, that's perfectly fine, just please don't spit at me for freely suggesting an exercise in education. It was not meant to belittle your current knowledge in any way. Enlightenment is certainly a good thing.

Chris B.

I drew some lines and they came out as a pentagram. Scary.

 

[Resume]

Enlightenment is certainly a good thing.

Chris B.

The founding fathers and the framework were certainly informed by it.
http://www.ushistory.org/gov/2.asp

The foundations of American government lie squarely in the 17th and 18th century European Enlightenment. The American founders were well versed in the writings of the philosophes, whose ideas influenced the shaping of the new country. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, and others took the brave steps of creating a government based on the Enlightenment values of liberty, equality, and a new form of justice. More than 200 years later, that government is still intact.

 

[Worm]

What do you make of the Great Seal of the US on the back of the $1 bill? Particularly the unfinished pyramid and the all Seeing Eye above it. Just a coincidence as well? Nothing significant?
Chris B.

What do I make of it? Nothing much. For instance, my understanding is that the All Seeing Eye was a religious symbol before it was used by Freemasonry, and was adopted by them because of its religious connotation.

The seal was designed by committee and included all sorts of influences from all sorts of people. No doubt some of them were masons, but a design suggestion from a mason is not automatically a masonic design.

The pyramid has 13 steps representing the 13 original states? Not sure what is weird about that. It was used on other currency as well.

 

[Resume]

Abortion certainly is murder.
Chris B.

It is? In what jurisdiction?

 

[turingtest]

I provided you with an exercise in education if you're curious to learn something interesting. By all means feel free to ignore it if you are not interested. It's not homework and not a requirement for conversation. I'm not gonna hold your hand and drag you into the light. You'll get there or not on your own, your choice. If you're not interested, that's perfectly fine, just please don't spit at me for freely suggesting an exercise in education. It was not meant to belittle your current knowledge in any way. Enlightenment is certainly a good thing.

Chris B.

"OMG, you guys, this is really important stuff! Masons behind the founding of the US! Come to the light! Be enlightened about this!"

"Well, ok- where did you get the information that leads you to believe this that might convince me to do likewise?"

"Oh, well...it's not important enough to tell you that..."

(I do have to say that I found the references to being "drag[ged]...into the light" and "enlightenment" to be kind of revealing about just what sort of information we're talking about)

 

[turingtest]

I don't believe in killing anyone. Abortion certainly is murder. If a woman can live with the knowledge of having one, I expect that's punishment itself.
Chris B.

Good for you.* But if the "punishment enough" is what the woman alone can mete out to herself, then the responsibility for making the choice that might merit that punishment should be hers alone also. You can't have it both ways, call it "certainly murder," which is a legal judgment, and then say a proper enough punishment is a strictly moral one.

*This is way OT, I guess, but...I personally would have no problem at all being the one who pushes the needle into Dylann Roof's arm, but I oppose the death penalty. How can I reconcile those opposing positions? Because I can distinguish between an individual application of a system from the flawed system itself- Roof's isn't the only case under consideration. There are too many instances of wrongly convicted people being subsequently exonerated to believe that it can't happen (or hasn't happened) with death penalty cases. One innocent life outweighs any number of Dylann Roofs; we have an imperfect system that can result in a perfect penalty- which is to say, an irreversible one.

 

[Finster]

I don't believe in killing anyone. Abortion certainly is murder. If a woman can live with the knowledge of having one, I expect that's punishment itself.
Chris B.

How completely bizarre. If you truly believe that abortion is murder why would you believe in a different degree of punishment? Or do you believe that knowledge of having committed murder is punishment enough for all murder?

 

[fuelair]

Requiring others act morally sounds like a moral judgement as well. If I take the antiabortion side seriously - that is, they believe what they say - then what am I to make of the "abortion is murder" slogan? Surely, I too would act to prevent murders without much regard for what happens next, simply because murder is so morally objectionable. If the victim of the hypothetical murder were, for instance, someone with ALS, I wouldn't feel I'd taken on the burden of their care, just because I prevented the killing.

Now, I should be clear - I am not against abortion on those grounds, I'm trying to point out that antiabortion advocates don't necessarily take on the chore of "what happens next." At least, not on moral grounds.

Or any other - they do not give a flying **** about what happens later!!!!!

 

[marplots]

(much snipped)

Side note- this is what I come to this forum for, a little intellectual exercise. It's nice to be able to have a discussion on a more stimulating level than "that's my story and I'm sticking to it, bite me leftists, lol."

I was getting to that.

There is a strong counterargument by way of the religious freedom built into the Constitution. When I think of Christianity, I don't think of theological permissiveness, at least not of the broad brush sort. It seems to be something more like, "You can believe in any style of Jesus you want, so long as Jesus is the main selling point."

Worshiping as you please (or not worshiping at all) seems the opposite of a Christian principle.

I don't even find the major divisions in politics along religious grounds to be clearly supported by Christian principles. For example, the bible doesn't tell us that abortion is wrong, nor that capitalism and free markets are right, nor much of anything useful structurally. Did Jesus support property rights? The right to bear arms? Homosexual marriage? None of this is clear and biblical arguments can be made in either direction.

The very usefulness of the bible - it can be bent to justify whatever I think best - makes it particularly useless when it comes to crafting laws. And the parts of the Old Testament which do outline specific laws have been abandoned by Christians anyhow. What we might expect to see we do not: "Subsection 12, para 3.4, compiled Christian laws... 'If it be demonstrated that the defendant does not love his neighbor as himself, then he shall be imprisoned for such a period as set out under para 2.5 until such time as the required love is obtained.'"

It would be an interesting bit of jurisprudence if the Supreme Court had to determine the limits of "meek" so that inheritance statues could be properly administered.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Yes, Christians are one type of theist. Was the argument going to be that the founding fathers were Muslim? That would be cool.

ETA: If it isn't part of Christianity, I'd love to see an example of a Christian who didn't believe in God.

Nope. But not all were Christian.

 

[fuelair]

I don't know,I consider you to be a person, yet at one time you were an unviable foetus. If you'll note, even the definition of "foetus" specifically calls them a prenatal human being........

Some may argue that doesn't make one a person, but in reality isn't that exactly what makes a person?

I think the common argument now is the heartbeat. I think it should be the DNA content. If there's enough DNA content to make a person, that's what you have obviously. And that person deserves protection.

I know someone will ask "Well what about rape?" and "What about incest?"
Obviously those are horrible crimes and the woman was the victim. However,instead of punishing the unborn with a death sentence, let's punish the perpetrator instead. If the mother does not wish to keep a child which came about as a result of said crimes, she should give it up for adoption, not kill it.

Punishing the innocent for the sins of the father? No where else in our Constitution is that allowed except for abortion.


Chris B.

Total load of fecal matter - psychological damage and potential physical damage to the mother so she should have an abortion unless she wants to keep child (her free choice, no force including psychological). Meanwhile the male involved should have a watermelon stuffed up his rectum and have to carry it for 9 months.

 

[Foolmewunz]

I provided you with an exercise in education if you're curious to learn something interesting. By all means feel free to ignore it if you are not interested. It's not homework and not a requirement for conversation. I'm not gonna hold your hand and drag you into the light. You'll get there or not on your own, your choice. If you're not interested, that's perfectly fine, just please don't spit at me for freely suggesting an exercise in education. It was not meant to belittle your current knowledge in any way. Enlightenment is certainly a good thing.

Chris B.

Double Wow. Can "Wake up sheeple!" be far behind?

Translation: It's some crap I heard on Coast-to-Coast or read in a tract handed out at the local ShopWell by a guy who was talking about quantum precious bodily fluids.

What we know: Some of the founding fathers and some prominent people in history were Masons. Most were not. The authors of the documents we think of as our foundation (thereby the term "founding fathers") were not those people. Masonry Mutts have tried to tie in Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Hamilton with no success. They were not Masons. Period. Evidence that maybe some Mason included some reference to their favorite icons is not surprising. Crosses and Stars of David and Crescent Moons adorn all sorts of things. Unlike Israel or various Islamic Republics of...., there's nothing in the historical record other than "well it just seems to me...." in lieu of evidence.

Unless you can show a document by the sainted founding fathers that shows that they incorporated those designs to express our Christian origins, it amounts to nought. Your efforts to prove this contention are bordering on ridiculous. The side trip into Masonic Conspiracy Theory is just an entertaining sidebar. Evidently we can take the bigfooter out of the blind but can't take the blind out of the bigfooter.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

What do you make of the Great Seal of the US on the back of the $1 bill? Particularly the unfinished pyramid and the all Seeing Eye above it. Just a coincidence as well? Nothing significant?
Chris B.

The popularity of iconography is subject to the same trends of opinions as any other art forms, fashion styles, or color schemes, they change over time. The Eye of Providence happened to be popular around the close of the 18th century. The Great Seal of the United States was designed (1782) before the eye became a symbol of Freemasonry (1797). Ben Franklin is the only known Mason on the design committee and his suggestions for the design were not implemented.

That might fit the definition of coincidence. Even if it doesn't meet the strictest definition of it, the common link between them (the Great Seal was designed and Mason adoption of the eye both happened in a time period when it was a popular symbol) is so innocuous as to have no particular relevance to anything at all.

Once again, it isn't a dichotomy (complete coincidence vs. grand inter-generational conspiracy to enslave the world).