OT: Stem Cell Research - fer it or agin it?

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:36:51 -0800, John Larkin wrote in Msg.

Why interfere at all? Abortion is an ugly thing for all involved; it's not going to develop into some sick pastime of bored women if completely unregulated.

robert

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 22:47:46 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan wrote in Msg.

You're talking about reaching a consensus with fundamentalists. Let's take a look at the American Heritage Dictionary:

fun·da·men·tal·ism, n: A usually religious movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism.

Good luck finding a compromise.

You're probably right in some practical sense. These people are rabid lunatics, and there are many of them.

robert

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 13:59:46 -0800, John Larkin wrote in Msg.

They can and their vast majority does. In fact I'd venture to argue that an atheist is more likely to have a solid ethical foundation than a religious person because the atheist is more likely to have a functioning brain. Especially in a largely religious environment.

robert

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:25:35 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote in Msg.

As I'm sure it would all of us. Especially since an abortion is not an isolated incident; it is a symptom of deeper trouble somewhere else.

robert

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:06:10 -0800, John Larkin wrote in Msg.

Probably because these churches forbid their disciples to find out how it actually works.

robert

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 21:15:06 -0800, John Larkin wrote in Msg.

That's an interesting deviation from your position on the war on Iraq, but I don't want to digress into that particular can of worms just now.

I agree, but I don't think that the question of whether and/or when the life of her fetus should be ended is easily answered by any pregnant woman facing it.

robert

(1) We do not bother and accept a sharp dispute that will serve to further polarize our politics; (2) We point out the risks of (1) to all and attempt to engage a discussion that will chip away at the polarization.

In case (1), we can either hope for the death of the fundamentalists in some random meteorite event or hope there is some other reason for a reduction in their numbers. I don't believe this for a minute as our resources for education are under constant attack; fundamentalist and evangelical organizations are funded to the tune of nearly $100 billion dollars a year and won't go away; and the last 30-40 years has seen nothing but a growth business here. This will get worse before it gets better. Depending on (1) amounts to hoping for that meteor.

In case (2), we may not chip away fast enough. In which case, we are almost in the same situation as in (1). On the other hand, there may be useful progress.

Tell me, what choice do we have?

Agreed.

Jon

I think of it a little differently, having had many of these discussions over the years. (I took long, hard, stressful classes on theology because they were required for anyone taking physics at the Catholic university I attended for a time.)

An atheist doesn't anticipate some deuteronomic theory (the idea that those who do bad things have bad things happen and those who do good things have good things happen.) They know that for good to happen, they have to take personal responsibility for bringing it about. They don't hope for a rapture to clean up the world's mess. They don't believe in a god that will "make things right" or "hand out justice."

There is something else, too. They learn not to depend upon the crutch of others telling them what scripture means and what to do. They also cannot hide their bigotry and prejudices behind a shield of feigned religiosity -- "I'm only quoting the bible on this." They must take responsibility for themselves, completely and with courage. As part of that, yes, they work at thinking for themselves because they have to and cannot reasonably trust others as their authoritative leaders telling them what everything means and what to do about it.

There is a comment that Steven Weinberg, a physicist and Nobel Laureate, made on April, 1999 that comes to mind as one more thing to add, here. At a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., Dr. Weinberg said these words to his audience:

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion."

Whether or not you agree with that, it does ask some questions.

I have a saying I posed a few years back, in 2002, written for those who often make ignorant quips they actually believe about how only religion can be a source of morality. It's this:

"Saying religion is the source of morality is like saying a squirrel is the source of acorns."

Religions collect morals. But real, live humans come up with them. Not god. Just folks like you and me. The saying puts the point across.

Atheists are moral people. So are some very religious people I know as good friends of mine, too.

It does not even cross my mind to think, when I first find out that someone is either a religious person or an atheist or an agnostic, that any of it says anything about how moral they are likely to be. Doesn't even come to mind at the time. So I guess none of my experience tells me to guess one way or another about morality on such first impressions.

Time will tell.

Jon

I generally take this point of view, too. Seems like some people are so caught up in imagining all kinds of evil works in others. I take this tendency to be merely a matter of projection of what they feel they know about themselves onto others, unfairly and without evidence:

I am honestly not aware of a serious problem in the US, outside of the fact that the US doesn't do a good job in education on the subject in many areas in the country and could do a LOT BETTER both in education and in ensuring a variety of options without barriers. There are the occasional "stories" one hears about women who routinely use abortion instead of condoms, for example. However, I don't really believe that applies to well informed women and men -- who understand what works and why and also have ready access to a variety of viable options. They try to make good choices -- to succeed rather than being simply negligent about the whole issue. The crux is in providing an array of options so that individuals can make choices that make sense for them and the education to understand those options and how to apply them.

Jon

Agreed.

I've watched parents come in with their pregnant daughters. I have watched boy friends dropping off their young girl friends and just leaving them to "solve their own problems, alone." (In fact, it's rather not often that I actually saw a high school aged or just-college aged pregnant woman come in for counseling _with_ their boyfriends, for whatever sad thing that says about their relationships with them.) But I cannot think of a single one that came in with an attitude that trivialized the issue, when considering the option of abortion. Not once in my experience.

This idea of using abortion flippantly is another case of apocryphal stories or else projection, by and large, I think. It's certainly not a part of my experience.

Jon

It's a Turing machine. A Turing machine can punch its own output tape. I "presume to know" what biochemists have worked out about the way the cell machinery works. You want to hypothesise activities that nobody has seen and nobody else finds necessary.

I'm not saying that it isn't allowed to, just that it doesn't seem to execute such mechanisms, and that the people who make their living looking into what DNA does do don't seem tto feel the necessity to hypothesise such an activity to explain what they see going on.

I have no difficulty imagining the "complex" activities which you want to hypothesise, but I can't see any way in which "the genome" can get the necessary information to execute these activities in any useful way. You've just failed an examination in systems engineering.

And you claim to know how it actually works?

John

But sex must be punished and children are the punishment for sex. That _IS_ the primitive thinking behind all of this.

OTOH the Mormons gave up on polygamy. It seems if the prize is big enough any of them can be bought.

It certainly hasn't in Canada.

There are apparently a few in this ng alone. My more radical extrapolations, like supressing birth with drugs so a fetus could be poisoned later than its natural birth date, were accepted as allowable.

John

That's fairly common in Russia, as I understand it. Europe averages 48 abortions per 100 pregnancies, and Eastern Europe averages 65, which is more than 2 abortions per live birth. That seems to me to be a very uncomfortable and dangerous substitute for taking pills or some such, regardless of one's feelings about the welfare of fetuses.

John

"Life" can be, and often is, explained in a purely mechanistic way, as just a way some molecules have managed to arrange themselves, aided by randomness and selection. And that will do for, say, oysters. I think it's consciousness that is the really deep mystery. Consciousness is what law seems to respect as "life", in that both the unquickened fetus and the brain-dead motorcyclist may be legally terminated, since the true component of "life" is arguably not there.

John

Life shouldn't end at all, ever; but until we learn to heal our own denials, it's better to prevent the incarnation of a spirit who would override its mother's Free Will, than to let another denial into Creation from the Void.

Cheers! Rich