The thesis of The Blind Watchmaker was that the process of evolution by natural selection is only impressive if we assume its lack of foresight or intent. That is, the process improves local fitness at the expense of a staggering amount of suffering, waste, and extinction; if God created the...
And for the last time, the fire extinguisher was a poor analogy. Fire extinguishers actually save lives when they're used in the home, whereas guns used in the home are statistically more likely to harm rather than protect. Fire extinguishers aren't worn on the person and kept within arm's reach...
The false equivalency claim is also rightfully directed at Christians who make it seem like their discrimination against homosexuals and women is no worse than society's "discrimination" against Christians for being bigoted against homosexuals and women.
I'm certainly not claiming that all...
As usual, the people calling for stricter gun control measures aren't displaying irrational fear, or trying to pretend that less access to guns will eradicate man's inhumanity to man. However, people who need to have guns within arm's reach at all times during the day are displaying irrational...
The matter of false equivalency came into play when the gun nuts accused gun control advocates of paranoia. I can't see how someone who can't feel secure unless he's armed 24-7 can accuse someone of paranoia for trying to balance second-amendment rights with concerns about public safety. The...
And that's what this debate has been reduced to: paranoid people talking about their fear of the bad guys and complaining that the government just wants to make them vulnerable to predation.
If we had been able to discuss this matter sanely and reasonably anytime in the past thirty years...
Oddly appropriate analogy from a guy who can't stand to be unarmed even while asleep.
Maybe we're dealing with a culture of paranoid people who've developed such a deep emotional attachment to the illusory security of guns that the weapons themselves are less dangerous than what they mean to...
Since we're fetishizing the sacred holy fetus, I wanted to mention that a fetus has no discernible brain wave activity until around ninety days after conception.
On this side of the uterine wall, if someone's brainwaves couldn't be detected through EEG, we'd consider them dead.
-Nato
Well, they're not offspring if they haven't been born yet. And a form of life that exists wholly inside another person's body seems pretty parasitic to me.
What I can't fathom is why people think it's perfectly acceptable to dehumanize a woman by making it seem like she's just some vague...
Uh, well, it's got a certain number of chromosomes, but all the genetic material hasn't expressed itself yet. The fact that it's the first stage of a human being is just the point: acorns aren't oak trees, are they?
Abortion is just making it so the "innocent human beings" aren't born in the...
I'd refer to it as a human fetus in the same way I'd refer to "human semen" or a "human thumb." It's not a human being ---with all attendant rights and privileges--- if it's still inside mommy's tummy.
-Nato
Just to remind people, this is what the OP said:
I thought it was pretty clear that we were supposed to be passing judgment on this hypothetical woman who had unprotected sex and got pregnant.
-Nato
What would evidence for God look like? What would evidence against God look like?
If the best we can say about the proposition is that nothing can be said for certain one way or the other, why is it reasonable to assume God exists?
-Nato
Um, well, if someone gets into a car accident, moralists don't force the emergency room to turn the person away on the grounds that "he should have known it was eventually going to happen." But when it's a pregnant woman, we seem to think our level of disapproval of her sexual activity has some...
And also no need to pretend that anyone has ever sainted them. As you rightly point out, the norm is to fixate on every detail of their behavior and demonize them as potential baby-killers. The only thing I've ever advocated is that we present them with choices and let them make the right...