Outside the box. A rhetorical exercise on views concerning abortion

This is way outside the parameters of this site. So please feel free to skip it if you like. I thought it was well done, and perhaps this is a debate that needs to happen. Typically, this debate polarizes people so fast and so hard that more damage is done, at least to the pro-life side, than good. And as I really try and stick to irrational leftism and Islam as topics, this is a dangerous post for me. However, I think its worth seeing. I will not say if I agree with him or to what extent. But it is interesting to see how he speaks with people who have a knee-jerk, reflexive attitude about abortion on demand under any and all circumstances and for any reasons whatsoever.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

46 Replies to “Outside the box. A rhetorical exercise on views concerning abortion”

  1. The logic is inescapable: the second you knowingly accept one evil (yeah, I’m going there) as OK only because it was declared legal, you instantly lose any right to judge ANY other evil that’s declared legal.

    Maybe morality can’t be legislated, but immorality sure can.

  2. This is very interesting out side the abortion point.

    Granted they were baited and deceiving questions. If this wasn’t theater I have to give him credit for being a very good manipulator of thought but he couldn’t have done it without our school system.

    What I mean is this is a very good example of how our media works and why it is so dangerous. The narrative is to not teach kids history or anything of relevance than with just a little bit of information manipulate their thoughts.

  3. They were not baited and deceiving questions, it wasn’t manipulative, and it wasn’t theatre. Typical response of someone who doesn’t like what he said. He addressed peoples knowledge, or lack of, in certain areas. He was honest about his thoughts and beliefs. He then addressed the fact that many people hold to a distinct double-standard, often without even realising it, and gave his listeners classic examples of such. To their credit the people he talked to accepted they had not known as much about these subjects as they had previously thought, something that today in the Age of the Idiot is increasingly common, and changed their minds.

  4. Good job on the film. He asked questions to these young people that that never thought about, gave them food for thought. all they knew is that killing babies inside their Mothers was legal and therefore ok. And of course the old “I think its a womans’ choice” stmt is all they heard while growing up. Its ironic the same people who so widely promote “womens choice” are the same ones who so ardently try to “keep quiet” what really happens inside those abortion mills, all the while lying to the women that its not really a life UNTIL they decide it is (whenever that may be).
    Also ironic is the fact we have a man (Ray Comfort) who announces his Jewish background and yet it is the Jews (Margaret Sanger), the late Bernard Nathanson (who converted to christianity after slaughtering over 60,000 babies). At least he repented of his evil actions. Read up what Nathanson says about the Jews behind the billion $ Abortion industry. Good for Mr Comfort, hope he he continues to educate the people, especially the youth who have been so brainwashed and kept from the true facts of this evil of abortion killing.

  5. what a load of … it means that all our soldiers who have killed and are dead are in hell; all our freedom fighters still alive who have killed will go to hell.. . and who is that guy who thinks he knows what god will do? and he will have to hold hands with islam which also denies the right to abortion; his method is to overwhelm people who have never given a thought to the issue and than claim conversion. nobody has the right to take control of another persons body without permission. a life in the womb does take control of a womans´s body. and what about the childrens crusade? are they all in hell?

  6. @ whatdemocracy.

    The Commandment is not ‘to not kill per se’. The commandment is ‘to not commit murder’. When the Torah says “Lo tirtzach,” it means “You shall not illegally shed blood” i.e. murder

  7. @whatdemocracy
    Just war theory. And if it wasn’t a just war, the responsibility would be the nation’s leaders.

    As for a life in the womb taking control of a woman’s body, ????? Firstly, mother nature designed the female for that exact reproductive purpose, and the baby is a compliment to a woman’s design. Secondly, the baby doesn’t just jump in there, the baby is conceived by the wilful (usually) act of the mother with the wilful act of the father. Heterosexual sexual activity is reproductive, and abstinance or non-reproductive sexual activity is another option if pregnancy is a concern. Today, of course, there is contraception.

    Maybe in your Frankstinian Dystopia the female’s reproductive function is an assault on her body, hopefully the majority do not agree with you.

  8. Although the law reflects the morality of a nation; it has no business whatsoever in the private or in this case; the bed room affairs of the adult masses as the mullah classes of all stripes have a tendency to do. Legally, life begins; when it is capable of independent existence outside of the mother’s body. If it is argued that life begins before that then; an argument can easily be made out against all forms of contraception. Apart from that: Every one should be sovereign over his/her own body. After all that is where all sovereignty and morality begins. Abortion is not desirable, but worse, much worse than that: is mindlessly bringing children into the world without a care for their nuture, education or their future. That where the heart of the moral issue truly lies! My opinion only!

  9. I wonder why he didn’t ask the question :”In today’s welfare oriented western societies, having all these kids born means that probably a good 75% of them would end up living miserable lives, on your taxpayer’s money. Are you willing to subsidize that?”

  10. This is a good example of how to deprogram someone who’s been brainwashed, or indoctrinated. By forcing someone to think outside of the box they’ve been limited to live within, the truth comes out. It has nothing to do with your private affairs or what lusts you wish to pursue as an adult in your own bedroom. Such man-made legalisms fall flat on their face as is demonstrated by 180, don’t they? Everyone knows that ‘life’ begins at the moment of fertilization which is a ‘law’ of nature and not of man. To those of us who know we have a spirit, a soul within our fleshly vessels the ignorant, and selfish argument that life isn’t life until it can exist independently is a mute presupposition made by someone to justify the murder of another human being. The soul and spirit of a person is created at the moment of their inception. Another ridiculous argument is that a person shouldn’t be allowed to live if they can’t be provided for. This is just another example of the evil nature of Leftists who’ve never had a lack of excuses for murdering other people. Which they do after first dehumanizing them. Another fact which history has also barred out for all of us to see. The other cogent point being that the “true believers” can never be ‘deprogrammed’ since they are the willingly ignorant instead of the duped and indoctrinated ‘Useful Idiots’ who still can utilize their own common sense.

  11. And the greatest fallacy is to think that things imperatively HAVE to be. That’s fascism.

  12. Not engaging in your discussions, I liked watching that and will probably share it.

  13. whatdemocracy according to the Bible (Old Testament) soldiers who kill for their country aren’t committing murder. It gives very common sense descriptions of what is and isn’t murder. descriptions that were the bases for our laws on murder. Granted today the left has distorted them so that most are unrecognizable.

  14. what a fantastic response i got! the right to abortion is not about god or morality. it is about woman`s right to her own body. women´s rights have existed for less than 100 years; before that women belonged to their husbands in christian law… women who got preggy outside marriage got thrown out by good christian familys; women who brought wealth into the family had to give it up to the husband; women were denied the right to file for devorce; women were denied the right to education. there existed a littany of issues imposed on women by religious men (and women). in the meantime men have been sowing their wild oats and boasting about it for ever and aye, and still doing so. being forced to bear a child against your will by the law of land or by the law of god is absolutely despicable. might as well be muslim.

  15. “The soul and spirit is created at the moment of inception” How very abstract!

    Neither a soul or spirit can exist without a human body. The mind and the heart which we call the soul is housed in the body. There cannot be one without the other. What the individual soul becomes thereafter is then determined according to the live lived.

    Furthermore; it is very important to be able to provide for a child to the very end. A hungry man/woman is not much concerned for higher matters such as that of the soul. This is only an indulgence among the well fed and the priviledged.

    The sovereignity of the individual over his/her body is at the basis of all morality. This is subjective of course, as long as it does not impose upon the rights of others! Take the one parent family rule in China which led to state enforced abortions was at one extreme. At the other extreme is the inability for fear of prosecution of a woman or a girl regardless of the circumstances to an abortion which invariably happens in the mullah ridden lands. God only knows how many souls were and are actually murdered in such a set up and to the benefit of whose soul, certainly not that of some unwanted child or the mother!

  16. What’s abstract about instinctively knowing when a person becomes spiritual being? What a sick thought. I see all of the excuses being given here that were already proved as fallacies in the flick. A mother instinctively knows another life is growing inside her. It no longer is just her body. Which is why when someone kills a pregnant woman they’re charged with committing two murders. The rationalizations to murder these children show the same dehumanization of human life that went on in Germany before the murdering began. The Nazis went after anyone they had decided were ‘inferior’ such as the mentally disabled. This was a point of “180” which condemns anyone who uses such ‘excuses’. My dad, who was an American Infantryman in 1944-1945 Europe told me how they had dealt with any German who was a member of the ‘SS’ even after they had surrendered. Those of the ‘SS’ units were the true believers of the Nazis, believing themselves to be Hitler’s ‘supermen’, totally brainwashed into the Nazi ideology. Such are some people even when they’ve been exposed as believing in the most despicable of lies that give ‘excuses’ for murdering defenseless children and permanantly scarring their mothers with mental anquish, and guilt, sterility, and sometimes even death in botched procedures. Oh, and I’m real proud of what my dad did too. Really, really proud.

  17. Abortion is murder of a child, when you start taking any stand other then that one you end up with the medical ethicist who are saying that parents should have a year after the birth to decide if their child should live. Abortion was the starting point on a slippery slope to eugenics, the left still dreams of eliminating all “inferior” people from the world.

  18. death is part of life. killing has always been an action of mankind. there exists killing allowed by law and killing not allowed by law which we call murder. when a soldier goes out to war and kills the enemy he is not committing murder. if the same soldier kills ourside of war theater he commits murder. in your country you have execution; the hangman kills but does not commit murder. in our country we have got rid of capital punishment but abortion is legal therefore it is not murder.we human beings have not reached the state of evolution where nobody kills; until then we will go on killing according to the law or against the law of individual culture, nation, religion etc. abortion is about the removal of an unwanted person within my body; the right not to be forced to bear a child against my will is suprerme to all morality conciderations.

  19. Whatdemocracy:

    In my world there is a critical difference between execution of someone who has forfeited the right to life for his actions. Serial murderer for one example, and the execution of a person who has not yet made a single decision in life, nor has had even the opportunity to make a decision.

  20. What the Nazis believed was that “we human beings have not reached the state of evolution”, therefore they decided it was all “about the removal of an unwanted person” that was within their domain. If you don’t want the ‘burden’ of children then please go get yourself sterilized just like the Eugenicists believed you should do instead of advocating the murder of little defenseless children. As you can all see that while some people were repulsed when they realized they had been desensitized to think as the Nazis did, there are some who couldn’t care less. Thinking that killing during combat as an act of personal survival or executing cold blooded murderers who’ve been convicted in a courtroom is the equivalent to prenatal infanticide is just a malignant, degenerate, and despicable excuse for a reprobate mind. Or someone who hasn’t even watched the “180” movie.

  21. Where to begin in addressing all of the logical fallacies and erroneous presumptions in regard to morality, rights and ‘god’ committed by the interviewer and the interviewees in this dangerously misleading video.

    It is clear that not a single individual in this video is committed to rational thinking; that not a single individual has proper conceptions of the nature and source of objective morality and the nature and source of rights. To draw a moral equivalence between the Nazis’ murdering of six million Jews and any number of women choosing to abort their pregnancies is ludicrous in the extreme. The crucial fact to grasp here is that a fetus, no matter what its stage of development, is a potential person, not an actual person, and therefore has no rights. Personhood and rights begin at birth, not before. A potential person can have no claim to the life of an actual woman. Abortion is a moral issue, not a legal issue. For a clear and objective perspective on the issue of abortion, I strongly urge you to read ‘Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person’ by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh:

    http://www.seculargovernment.us/docs/a48.pdf

    Belief in god is belief in the absence of evidence and – more importantly – in defiance of logic, the latter confirmed by the validity of the metaphysical principle of the primacy of existence. Thus, belief in god is both arbitrary and irrational, and it follows that all of the customs and practices derived from god-belief and designed to serve god are both arbitrary and irrational. God (and all of its attributes) is nothing more than a product of man’s imagination, in the same way that Superman (and all of his attributes) is. Notwithstanding their very real effects within the real world of material existence, both god and superman exist only as floating concepts in the cartoon world of man’s imagination. Virtually all people realise this fact in regard to superman; but in regard to god, billions do not – and the cost of this in terms of human life and happiness is clear for all who choose to see.

    Incidentally, for those who believe in god (arbitrarily and irrationally), it is worth bearing in mind that for every pregnancy aborted as the result of a woman’s choice, numerous are aborted naturally – i.e., in accordance with god’s will. This fact makes god (for those who believe in it) by far the biggest abortionist of all.

  22. To say that people arbitrarily and irrationally believe in god nullifies any subsequent opining on the subject. Such as a ludicrous assumption of knowing what is in accordance with god’s will and then calling god a baby killer shows a total lack of intellectual integrity. There isn’t anything dangerously misleading in the “180” Movie. The only thing dangerously misleading has been in some of the pseudo commentary being foisted by people who didn’t even watch the “180” Movie. I think most of us here can tell when someone is talking about something they have absolutely no knowledge of. But perhaps it also shows the convoluted thinking of those who couldn’t grasp its meaning even if they did watch it.

  23. Roopods6, yes, it is a fact that belief in god is arbitrary (belief in the absence of evidence) and irrational (belief in defiance of logic). But notwithstanding this fact, if one chooses to evade reality and to believe in god, then surely one must believe that all natural phenomena are ultimately willed by god. And since spontaneous human abortion is a natural phenomenon, then surely one must believe that all spontaneous human abortions are ultimately willed by god. And since for every planned (chosen) human abortion there are numerous spontaneous human abortions, then surely one has to believe that god has over the course of human history willed a very large number of human abortions (running into the many millions at least, I should think), which would surely make god the biggest serial abortionist in history by quite a massive margin. But, of course, this argument applies only if one happens to believe in god.

    And if we next consider spontaneous animal (non-human) abortions, then the numbers really begin to stack up.

  24. George, your opinions in no way represent fact, or logic here. It’s your beliefs which are arbitrary and irrational that you’ve written here. But notwithstanding those facts, you deny the existence of God and then claim to have an intimate knowledge of His will or how He might operate. This only gives us the evidence that you prefer to lecture us on things you know very little, or nothing at all about. It’s always amusing to me that atheists-materialists spend an inordinate amount of time doing exactly what you’ve just done. That you completely miss this irony will ensure the continuation of your condescendingly lecturing of us all on the things you say don’t exist but which you know everything about.

  25. the whole thing is very interesting: the anti-abotionists call me, a pro-abortionist, nazi,then they join me and call muslims nazi, but muslims are anti-abortionists…!

  26. ‘…you deny the existence of God and then claim to have an intimate knowledge of His will or how He might operate.’

    I deny the existence of god, but I do so objectively, i.e., on logical grounds. I do not claim to have knowledge of that which does not – and cannot – exist; such a claim would be a contradiction, and therefore illogical. I merely claim to have knowledge of a particular generally held conception of god, i.e., an entity of consciousness that has, amongst other attributes, omniscience and omnipotence and is by an act of will the source of all existence and the physical laws by which that existence operates. If this does not fit your conception of god, then please explain how it does not.

    My intention in this thread, as elsewhere, is to promote a commitment to rational thinking, i.e., the consistent application of logic (the art of non-contradictory identification) to one’s perceptual observations of reality. Such a commitment requires the virtue of honesty (which means never faking reality), a virtue gravely lacking in the world of men today and throughout history. It is not my intention in my arguments to be ‘condescendingly lecturing’ or hurtful to anyone in any way, and I endeavor not to be so; it is merely my intention to expose irrational and harmful opinion for what it is and to counter it with reason.

    No, I am not a materialist, I am an objectivist.

    So, is there a god, or isn’t there? No, there is no god. And what follows is my reasoned (and, I hope, clear) explanation for why there is no god.

    All of the conceptual knowledge that you possess is ultimately formed by your mental isolation and integration of specific units of your perceptions. All of your perceptions are formed by the automatic integration by your brain of sensations it receives from the sensory apparatus of the material body in which it and your consciousness – your mind – reside. And all sensations are triggered by stimuli from physical entities that exist out there in the universe. In short, all of the knowledge (perceptual and conceptual) that you possess is knowledge of that which is out there in the universe. In the absence of a universe, a hypothetical consciousness (a god, say) could have no content, i.e., no knowledge. And since to be conscious is to be conscious of something, a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of could not exist (it would be a contradiction). The crucial point here is that a physical universe (existence) must precede (be primary to) any consciousness. This fundamental truth about reality constitutes a metaphysical principle known as the principle of the primacy of existence – a principle that very few people are aware of, and fewer still fully understand. And it is this principle that excludes all possibility of the existence of an all-creative god, benevolent or malevolent or indifferent. So, not only is there no evidence for a god, there can never be any evidence for a god, because god is a concept – a floating concept – with no basis in the facts of reality.

    The key to understanding why the existence of an all-creative god is impossible is to identify what the nature and requirements of a consciousness – any consciousness – are. The nature of a consciousness is to perceive reality (not to create it); the basic requirements of a consciousness are some means of perceiving reality (some form of sensory apparatus) and – crucially – some object of perception, i.e., some entity (an existent) separate from itself for it to be conscious of. Both the means of perceiving and the objects of perception must already exist before any consciousness can exist. It should be clear at this point that a consciousness with no means of perceiving and no objects to perceive would have no knowledge, and a consciousness with no knowledge – no content – is a contradiction, and reality abhors all contradictions. An all-knowing, all-powerful god that is by an act of will the source of all existence is a contradiction. This specific contradiction, like all contradictions, can exist only as a floating concept within the minds of men, i.e., as a product of imagination with no prior conceptual or perceptual links to anchor it to the facts of reality.

    All of the preceding is not my subjective opinion, but objective fact. Existence is independent; consciousness is dependent upon existence. Existence is what it is independent of any consciousness. Reality is what it is, not what anyone subjectively desires or wishes it to be.

  27. George, you’re full of distinctions without differences and seem really confused as to the difference between your own subjective opinions. All of your fantastical conclusions have nothing to do with the observable world. That most of what you’ve just stated is pure bunk shows us the true state of your own character. I’ve already heard the same crap over and over again from such people who like to put themselves and others into the simplest of terms, and in the most convenient of definitions. You call that rational thinking, and the consistent application of logic? Yeah, right! You believe what you want to believe and that’s all that you’ve shown us here. Go ahead and mock and denigrate those of us who’ve made the observations around us and come to a conclusion that there is a Creator, there was a flood, His Word is 100% accurate, and eternal life is available only through His Son. Noah’s ark has already been found in eastern Turkey, Mt. Sinai where Moses met his Creator is in western Saudi Arabia just east of the Gulf of Agaba, the Ark of the Covenant has been located under Golgotha hill in Jerusalem where His Son completed the perfect atoning sacrifice for the whole world, and meanwhile you run around saying you have facts when you don’t in order to convince yourself all of His Word isn’t true. Your intellectualization is pathetic George, truly and honestly pathetic. Maybe you should just watch the “180” Movie and give it a rest.

  28. Roopods6, the primacy of existence is an inescapable and unassailable principle (the term ‘principle’ here referring to a general truth upon which other truths depend hierarchically); it is the very principle upon which one stands (at least implicitly) whenever one asserts any truth (whether that asserted truth is true or not). It is not a ‘belief’ in the sense that one accepts it on faith (such as a belief in the existence of a god or angels or fairies or ghosts, etc). When one asserts that god exists, one is asserting the primacy of consciousness, and yet implicit in that assertion is the presupposition of the validity of the primacy of existence. In other words, the assertion ‘god exists’ refutes itself. Whenever one asserts the primacy of consciousness, one commits the logical fallacy known as the fallacy of the stolen concept. Below, I have provided a link to Nathaniel Branden’s essay ‘The Fallacy of The Stolen Concept’ to enable you to gain (should you desire to do so) a clear understanding of the source of your error of logic. Note also that any attempt to deny the validity of the laws of logic entails the fallacy of the stolen concept, and thus defeats itself.

    http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/sapient/philosophy_and_psychology_with_chaoslord_and_todangst/6715

  29. Well George, I’m sorry to say I’m not a sophist in training, but I’m beginning to see where some of your flawed presuppositions come from. Nor can I ascribe to your particular version of Philosophistry. I decided long ago to not follow the circular reasonings of such vain musings which you’ve entangled yourself in and lead to nowhere. Your own error of logic is referring to your general truths upon which other truths depend hierarchically. You’ve built your house on a sandy beach. But now I’ll give you a simple assignment in the vain hope you might stumble across the truth; watch and listen to several Ray Comfort videos starting with the “180” Movie.

  30. Roopods6, I should urge you to read carefully Nathaniel Branden’s argument ‘The Concept of God’, which addresses the two basic fallacies in the question ‘Since everything in the universe requires a cause, must not the universe itself have a cause, which is god?’ – the two basic fallacies that constitute the ‘sandy beach’ upon which unreasoning men mystically build their imaginative concept of god:

    http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/branden.htm

  31. George, the Humanistic Psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden doesn’t have any credibility writing on something he doesn’t even believe in anymore then you do. This is akin to an ethnocentric anthropology slur of another culture you know very little about. You’re now just flailing around as you sink into that sandy beach. Two unreasoning men whove mystically built their mythic houses in the sand and replaced their Creator with several cunningly devised fables (i.e. Evolutionism). An age old story which apparently you’ve missed while you were growing up. While I know you think it to be an impressive venture, I see it as a sad, sad spectacle to behold. Now, be a good little pupil, and watch the “180” Movie, and Ray Comfort’s other videos.

  32. “George, the Humanistic Psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden doesn’t have any credibility writing on something he doesn’t even believe in anymore then you do.”

    What you are essentially saying here is that before one can attempt to refute the existence of god, one must first believe in the existence of god. And that in the case of Nathaniel Branden, his being a “Humanistic Psychotherapist” somehow further disqualifies him from attempting to refute the existence of god. More logical fallacies, I’m afraid.

    “This is akin to an ethnocentric anthropology slur of another culture you know very little about.”

    How is this not a false analogy?

    “Now, be a good little pupil…”

    A typical crude ad hominem fallacy by one who implicitly knows his argument has no substance.

    When I strip from your posts your incoherent, fallacy-ridden assault on my refutation of the generally held concept of god and lay bare the essentials of your case for god, this is the argument that I find (and if you think I’m building a straw man here, let me know by stating explicitly what your case for god is): There is a god, because I believe there is a god, and only an idiot would not believe there is a god.

    Neglecting the circular argument fallacy entailed by the first two clauses of that argument, one should be able to see that each clause itself entails a logical fallacy, which respectively are these: the fallacy of the stolen concept, the subjectivist fallacy, and the fallacy of the argument from intimidation.

    However, that any attempt at defence of the generally held concept of god should necessarily entail logical fallacies ought not to be at all surprising, if one realises that the generally held concept of god entails the biggest logical fallacy of all – the fallacy of the contradiction (the contradiction here being the primacy of consciousness). Such realization, however, requires unwavering rational thinking.

    In light of the above, I shall leave you to reflect upon the validity of this rather apposite quotation from an earlier post of yours:

    “True believers can never be deprogrammed, since they are the willingly ignorant.”

  33. Since pro-abortionists can’t say precisely WHEN “the product of conception” becomes a person (however one defines that), they likewise cannot tell anyone precisely when it is NOT a person. Thus they cannot say, with precision, at what stage of gestation aborting “the product of conception” is NOT murder. Given that imprecision, the reasonable assumption would be that “the product of conception” is a person from the moment of conception.

    Imagine it someday becomes possible not only to detect a pregnancy immediately upon conception but to also terminate it at that point. A person is still being murdered.

  34. “What you are essentially saying here is that before one can attempt to refute the existence of god, one must first believe in the existence of god.” -George

    A classic religion of Atheism response. No, wrong again George, as usual. You’re not refuting anything you say doesn’t exist for you. You don’t refute anything except your own beliefs, over and over again. This is the whole point that an idealogue will never be able to understand due to their own religiosity which is solely based on trying to refute the existence of something they CLAIM doesn’t even exist. It always devolves into the childish exercise of rationalizations and into the psychological defense mechanism of intellectualization. The fact of the matter is that in your inner heart, in your subconscious mind you know He exists, and that your spirit exists only because He does. The result is you have to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to explain Him away, and we all see your futility in trying to accomplish this exercise in vanity. This ridiculous rant of attempting to use what you presuppose to be ‘logic’ only validates the idea that “God” exists. Or in terms of brevity let me put it simply; you’ve failed.

  35. I do not believe in faeries, leprechauns, biological alien entities or Bigfoot. If I ever meet someone who does believe in them, the LAST thing I would do is waste my time trying to disabuse them of their cherished hokum. I’d just shake my head in pity and walk away.

    If, on the other hand, I spend hours arguing with them about why Bigfoot doesn’t exist, it would serve only to make me appear to be a closeted Bigfoot believer suffering the deep psychic turmoil of unreconciled denial; a coward afraid to face his own beliefs head on and so lashes out at those who are honest about them.

    In short, I’d look like an ass.

  36. gorgo:

    Just out of curiosity, if there were 2 or more factions, all of whom had beliefs that were not empirically provable and all dismissed by you, but each group on the strengths of their convictions of these various beliefs, created radically different cultures with varying degrees of acceptability to your own chosen way of life.

    Lets say that they went to war. That the group that believed in leprechauns, the dominant meme in the place you live, that actually has a culture of political freedom and allows you your own choices to worship leprechauns or not, went to war with the Dwarf people who’s culture was one where you had to fake believing what they did pretty much 24/7 or find your head sent to your family in a box with a nasty note about it.

    What would you do?

    Just curious if the truth of beliefs is more important than the results of those beliefs based on the actions of the various believers.

  37. “What would you do?”

    Before I answer, why don’t you tell me what YOU have already done since apparently this is what you consider to be your own situation?

  38. “A classic religion of Atheism response.”

    The definition of atheism is as follows: the absence of belief in a god or gods. And that is all there is to it. To assert that atheism is some sort of religion, i.e., some sort of mystic belief system (and in this manner akin to Christianity or Islam), and to imply such mystic association by capitalizing the word ‘atheism’, is absurd and, as I’m sure you are well aware, dishonest and deceitful.

    “No, wrong again George, as usual. You’re not refuting anything you say doesn’t exist for you. You don’t refute anything except your own beliefs, over and over again. This is the whole point that an idealogue will never be able to understand due to their own religiosity which is solely based on trying to refute the existence of something they CLAIM doesn’t even exist. It always devolves into the childish exercise of rationalizations and into the psychological defense mechanism of intellectualization. The fact of the matter is that in your inner heart, in your subconscious mind you know He exists, and that your spirit exists only because He does. The result is you have to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to explain Him away, and we all see your futility in trying to accomplish this exercise in vanity. This ridiculous rant of attempting to use what you presuppose to be ‘logic’ only validates the idea that “God” exists. Or in terms of brevity let me put it simply; you’ve failed.”

    Yet more incoherence.

  39. “Since pro-abortionists can’t say precisely WHEN “the product of conception” becomes a person (however one defines that), they likewise cannot tell anyone precisely when it is NOT a person. Thus they cannot say, with precision, at what stage of gestation aborting “the product of conception” is NOT murder. Given that imprecision, the reasonable assumption would be that “the product of conception” is a person from the moment of conception.

    Imagine it someday becomes possible not only to detect a pregnancy immediately upon conception but to also terminate it at that point. A person is still being murdered.”

    Gorgo, you appear not to be aware of the difference between a potential person and an actual person: a fertilized ovum, an embryo or a fetus is a potential person, and a potential person becomes an actual person only at birth, whereupon he or she begins life as a separate entity – an entity that can be sustained not only by the mother but by any other carer. An embryo or a fetus is attached to the woman’s body; it is thus a part of the woman’s body and directly dependent on it (and only it) for its supply of oxygen and nutrients, for the removal of its waste products, and for its physical protection. The woman owns her body, including whatever is growing at her expense within it. And she is the only person with the right to decide what happens to her body, even when her body includes an embryo or a fetus (or a fertilized ovum, or a blastocyst). A part of an actual person cannot have rights over the whole actual person. A potential person has no rights; actual persons are the only entities that have rights.

    For more information on this subject, and for a good account of what the implications would be of assigning rights to a fertilized egg, I would urge you to read this document:

    http://www.seculargovernment.us/docs/a48.pdf

    N.B. It may surprise you to know that IUDs (intra-uterine devices), or coils, as they are often known, actually work by preventing implantation of the blastocyst (a very early stage embryo consisting essentially of a hollow ball of cells) from implanting within the endometrial lining of the uterus. An IUD thus works, not by preventing conception, by causing the abortion of a few-day-old embryo.

  40. I think George is still trying to become that ‘potential’ person. Good luck with that. Let us all know when you’re able to achieve that goal. But in the meanwhile, please continue to amuse us with your ‘incoherent’ and long winded rantings. It may also suprise you that George will continue to make comments here long after anyone will visit this webpage to read them. Such is the fate of the fanatic ideologue.

  41. Roopods6, I’m still waiting for your clear account of the nature (attributes and actions) of your god and how you know it to be true – i.e., in accordance with reality.

  42. “I do not believe in faeries, leprechauns, biological alien entities or Bigfoot. If I ever meet someone who does believe in them, the LAST thing I would do is waste my time trying to disabuse them of their cherished hokum. I’d just shake my head in pity and walk away.

    If, on the other hand, I spend hours arguing with them about why Bigfoot doesn’t exist, it would serve only to make me appear to be a closeted Bigfoot believer suffering the deep psychic turmoil of unreconciled denial; a coward afraid to face his own beliefs head on and so lashes out at those who are honest about them.

    In short, I’d look like an ass.”

    I’m struggling, gorgo, to follow your reasoning in your second paragraph. To aid clarification, let me apply your reasoning to the concept of square circles. The concept ‘square circle’, I think you will immediately appreciate, is internally incoherent or self-contradictory. It is a clear example of contradictory identification, because in reality a circle cannot at the same time be a square (and vice versa). If you recall that logic is the art or skill of non-contradictory identification, you should immediately grasp that square circles (entailing self-contradiction) are illogical, and that belief in square circles is thus irrational. Now, were I to encounter an ardent believer in square circles, and to expend hours of my time trying to convince him that square circles are a logical impossibility, would you say that my efforts would serve only to make me appear to be a closeted square circle believer “suffering the deep psychic [?] turmoil of unreconciled denial; a coward afraid to face [my] own beliefs head on…”? If this is what you would say, would you be able to explain the logic in your reasoning, preferably in stepwise (hierarchical) manner?

    In your first paragraph you appear to liken belief in faeries and leprechauns to belief in Bigfoot and biological alien entities (by which I presume you mean extra-terrestrial life forms). I, however, would not do so, on the basis that the concepts ‘faerie’ and ‘leprechaun’ entail contradictory identification (in the form of supernatural attributes and actions), and consequently faeries and leprechauns could not exist in reality; the concepts ‘Bigfoot’ and ‘extra-terrestrial life form’, however, do not necessarily entail contradictory identification, and consequently Bigfoot and extra-terrestrial life forms could exist in reality. In other words, faeries and leprechauns, like square circles, are refuted logically – on the basis that they entail contradictory identification – whereas Bigfoot and extra-terrestrial life forms can only be refuted empirically (on the basis of an absence of direct sensory evidence) – by scouring, in the case of Bigfoot, the whole of North America and finding no Bigfoot, and no irrefutable evidence of Bigfoot.

    “In short, I’d look like an ass.”

    Were I to make a protracted attempt at convincing an ardent square circle believer of the irrationality of his belief, I probably would look like an ‘ass’, but surely only for expending hours of my valued time attempting to enable the manifestly unable to grasp what all able people grasp immediately as a self-evident truth. The problem with god-belief, however, is that its irrationality is not grasped immediately as a self-evident truth; to grasp its irrationality requires a clear understanding of the validity of the metaphysical principle of the primacy of existence – an understanding that, although well within nearly everyone’s capability, is achieved only through the time-consuming effort of mental focus and reflective thought. I’m quite happy, however, to expend more than a few minutes of my time to assist anyone to see the logical light, so to speak.

    “… a coward afraid to face his own beliefs head on and so lashes out at those who are honest about them.”

    It is, of course, always nice to know that someone is honest about his or her beliefs, and one could not justifiably “lash out” at anyone for being so. But what is important here is whether those beliefs are in accordance with reality or not (whether they are fact or fantasy), and – most importantly – whether they are harmful to innocent others or not.

    For this reason, it is crucial that one makes a clear distinction between people who believe in, say, faeries or leprechauns, and people who believe in gods: the former, as a consequence of their irrational belief, do not usually pose a threat to anyone’s individual rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness; the latter, however, not infrequently do. How individual rights are threatened by belief in the Muslim god and the consequent acceptance of the tenets of Islam (and the subjective morality that is their source) needs no elucidation here; and for just one clear example of how belief in the Judao-Christian god can threaten individual rights, one need only consider the subject matter of this thread – anti-abortion activism – and for clarification of this threat, read the document to which I linked in my first post in this thread, preferably within the full context of reality.

    Here it is again: http://www.seculargovernment.us/docs/a48.pdf

    As much as I hate to see good (or potentially good) people blindly diminish their lives by laboring under misconceptions and delusions, it is primarily the threat to my and my loved ones’ individual rights in particular, and the rights of all others in general (because it is the free efforts of productive others that significantly determine my standard of living), posed by god-belief that selfishly motivates my attempt to persuade (not force) people, by reasoned argument, that god-belief is irrational, that it is as internally incoherent and self-contradictory as the concept of a square circle, and that one’s only means to knowledge is thinking rationally – the recognition and protection of individual rights depend upon it, and consequently the unimpeded furtherance of one’s life and happiness depend upon it.

  43. George the ideologue, you have a serious problem when you feel the constant need to dispute the existence of something you don’t even believe in. That you really do know there is a God is what drives you to go to such lengths in denying Him. I don’t even have to read your posts to already know what you’re saying now. I’ve heard it all before, and I have to say it’s a pathetic endeavor that you partake in. You have nothing; not one convincing argument. You only argue against yourself. You’ve made a spectacle of yourself. You beg me to explain the nature of God when you already now the answer can be gotten with a few keystrokes. Go get a life and stop trying to ruin the lives of others. Savvy? No, I didn’t think so.