"NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

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henry quirk
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Pete

Post by henry quirk »

"Why is killing a human being wrong?"

I don't want to die. So much so, I will most surely try to kill the one who tries to kill me. This desire for life, this impulse to defend one's life, seems to be natural and normal. Most folks, most of the time, at any given place, at any given time, demonstrate this desire and this impulse.

It is a fact, then, humans want to live and will work hard to stay alive.

Now, any person you interrogate will tell you plainly in some way, 'it's wrong to kill me. If I've i've done nuthin' to forfeit my life, my liberty, then I belong to me and it's wrong for you to kill me'. The language, no doubt, will be all over the place, but the distillation will always be: 'I am mine and it's wrong for you to take me'.

So: it's natural & normal for a person to want to live and natural & normal to attempt to defend one's self. And it's 'wrong' to take a life because that life belongs to itself.

This conclusion of mine works either way...

Secularly: if morality is just long-term communal consensus, then killing a human being is wrong cuz most folks, most of the time, say it it's wrong.

Theologically (mine): Crom built me to live, to strive; Crom gifted me with 'me', you with 'you', and so on. Absolutely, it's friggin' wrong for me to off you and you, me, without justification.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: "IF embryos are people."

Post by Immanuel Can »

RCSaunders wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 3:48 pm I know there is no supernatural aspect to reality.
Interesting. How do you know that?
By the way, out of curiosity, have you studied the Bible?
Indeed, yes.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Immanuel Can »

Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 3:59 pm And there, in a nutshell, is the moral bankruptcy of your position. What a god, (for the existence, nature and opinions of which there is no evidence), says is good or evil is good or evil.
That is not what I said. You must be careful to read what I actually said, not to guess at what you think I might say and react to that.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Pete

Post by Immanuel Can »

henry quirk wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 4:36 pm Secularly: if morality is just long-term communal consensus, then killing a human being is wrong cuz most folks, most of the time, say it it's wrong.

Theologically (mine): Crom built me to live, to strive; Crom gifted me with 'me', you with 'you', and so on. Absolutely, it's friggin' wrong for me to off you and you, me, without justification.
I like it.

Of course, secularly, why do I owe it to care about community consensus?

RC says community doesn't matter in moral issues, and Peter says it's all subjective anyway. So where would it be written, secularly, that I have to care what anybody else thinks?

If I can get around their rules, why shouldn't I? Who will call me to account, when no one even knows what I did?
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henry quirk
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Mannie

Post by henry quirk »

"I like it."

Me too... ;)

#

"Of course, secularly, why do I owe it to care about community consensus?"

Beyond living bein' a bit easier workin' with others, and lovin' some' folks: no damn reason. Crom doesn't demand it (but then, he doesn't demand, or give, anything [beyond what he stuck each of us with from the start]).

#

"RC says community doesn't matter in moral issues"

He's kinda right, for all the wrong reasons. The hermit still has the moral obligation to not debase himself. He wasn't built for self-debasement. Crom won't punsh him (not directly, anyway). RC might say the self-debasing hermit isn't 'happy'.

#

"Peter says it's all subjective anyway. So where would it be written, secularly, that I have to care what anybody else thinks?"

If Pete is right, then he'd have to respect bio-imperative, if nuthin' else. Again: if most folks say, 'I belong to me and it's wrong for you to take me', he'd have to respect that, yeah? Democracy?

#

"If I can get around their rules, why shouldn't I? Who will call me to account, when no one even knows what I did?"

In a reality without a moral dimension, if the community catches you breakin' the rules: your ass is grass; if they don't catch you: you skate.

Same goes for a reality with a moral dimension with the added consequence of you pissin' on natural law or order (the nature of that consequence depends on your god,...yours has perdition, mine has oblivion).
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RCSaunders
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Re: "IF embryos are people."

Post by RCSaunders »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 5:14 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 3:48 pm I know there is no supernatural aspect to reality.
Interesting. How do you know that?
"Supernatural," means that which has no natural (real) attributes. Nothing exists that only has imaginary attributes.
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 5:14 pm
By the way, out of curiosity, have you studied the Bible?
Indeed, yes.
Would you say your views are Calvinistic (or if Catholic, Augustinian, since Calvin got most of his views on predestination from St. Augustine), or Arminianistic? I'm not trying to set up a false dichotomy here, there are other views which you may subscribe to, such as Universalism, (mostly based oh passages in Romans which emphasize that Christ's death payed for all sin), and Unitarianism (which denies that God is a committee of three), for example.

I'm not really interested in your theology, just trying to understand what your views actually are. For example, do you believe the Bible is inspired, inerrant, and the final authority on theological questions?
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Peter Holmes »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 5:16 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 3:59 pm And there, in a nutshell, is the moral bankruptcy of your position. What a god, (for the existence, nature and opinions of which there is no evidence), says is good or evil is good or evil.
That is not what I said. You must be careful to read what I actually said, not to guess at what you think I might say and react to that.
I apologise. I took you to mean that whatever the Creator commands us to do or refrain from doing, we should do or refrain from doing, because that would be morally good. My misunderstanding.

So if the Creator commanded us to do something wicked, you wouldn't do it. Or would you? I'm not clear about this.
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henry quirk
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Post by henry quirk »

Supernatural: attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.

Wrong again, RC

#

"(I)f the Creator commanded us to do something wicked, you wouldn't do it. Or would you?"

As I understand Mannie's god, his nature is only to demand the right, the just, the good (which is a damned hard road to walk).

Simply: Mannie's god will never demand the wicked act cuz it's not in his nature to do so.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: "IF embryos are people."

Post by Immanuel Can »

RCSaunders wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 7:15 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 5:14 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 3:48 pm I know there is no supernatural aspect to reality.
Interesting. How do you know that?
"Supernatural," means that which has no natural (real) attributes. Nothing exists that only has imaginary attributes.
Hmmm... Taken literally, that explanation doesn't quite work. Supernatural entities are said to have real attributes, so that's not determinative. For example, a ghost is said to have a "pale face," perhaps. Ghosts are imaginary, but "paleness" is a real attribute. So it can't be that an attribute is, itself imaginary. There's something wrong with that explanation, then.

I think perhaps what you mean to say is that "natural" and "real" mean the same thing. But if so, that's just to rule arbitrarily against things that appear "supernatural," so it short-circuits the question, and doesn't answer it, really.

Got a clearer explanation?
Would you say your views are Calvinistic (or if Catholic, Augustinian, since Calvin got most of his views on predestination from St. Augustine), or Arminianistic?
Well, that's a Calvinist way of carving up the landscape, really. They tend to say that there is their own position, Calvinism, and everyone else is by default an "Arminian," even though most don't follow Jacob Arminius, or even know who he was.

In my case, I'm not a Calvinist. But certain aspects of Jacob Arminius's position, particularly his detente with the Calvinists on "depravity" is problematic, to me, so I can't really be much of an Arminian either, can I? However, I do believe in free will.
For example, do you believe the Bible is inspired, inerrant, and the final authority on theological questions?
Usually, such formulations of standard doctrine are loaded with terms that are often misunderstood. I'm reluctant to commit myself to pigeon-holes of prejudicial terms. Suffice it to say, I have a great confidence in both the factual and literary integrity of the Bible, and in its value as illuminating ultimate meaning and truth. I wouldn't limit it to merely "theological" questions.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Immanuel Can »

Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 8:00 pm I apologise. I took you to mean that whatever the Creator commands us to do or refrain from doing, we should do or refrain from doing, because that would be morally good. My misunderstanding.
Not a problem. It happens to us all.
So if the Creator commanded us to do something wicked, you wouldn't do it. Or would you? I'm not clear about this.
The assumption's problematic. I don't say that a thing is wrong because God commands it to be wrong.

Let me put it more technically. Ontologically, I say it's wrong because it's unharmonious with the Divine Nature itself; the fact that God also commands it to be wrong is sufficient to help with the human, epistemological problem. So both the question, "What makes something wrong," and "How do we know when something is wrong" are addressed in my answer.

But it is not the command that MAKES it wrong: God commands good because HE is good.

I hope that makes it clearer.
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Immanuel Can
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Re:

Post by Immanuel Can »

henry quirk wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 8:13 pm As I understand Mannie's god, his nature is only to demand the right, the just, the good (which is a damned hard road to walk).

Simply: Mannie's god will never demand the wicked act cuz it's not in his nature to do so.
Well, Henry, if you understand that, you're closer to that God than perhaps you would imagine.

Right, first time.
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henry quirk
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"Well, Henry, if you understand that, you're closer to that God than perhaps you would imagine."

Post by henry quirk »

Nah, I just read too much.
Nick_A
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Nick_A »

Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 9:13 am Nick_A

You quote Muggeridge with approval: 'The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment.'

Perhaps this is supposed to mean that a woman should suffer on the cross of an unwanted pregnancy. The familiar bad smell of Christianity.

And you claim without justification that a moral value is or can be a fact - when that is precisely the moot point here.
You've missed the point. The Cross represents conscious freedom from psychological captivity made possible by the power of imagination. PLato described it as if in a cave attached to shadows on the wall. Part of what keeps people subject to the power of imagination is the nature of sex energy which is the creative energy, Unfortunately it can be used also to intensify imagination keeping a person in psychological slavery.

This is not a matter of morals but of human biology. Some women feel it which is why they don't want to cheapen what is naturally valuable in themselves for the sake of social approval. Abortion enters the picture when the woman doesn't value the life process and uses herself for the purposes of vanity and invites pregnancy. The consequences of vanity are justified by society.

The reality is that society as a whole has lost recognition of the objective value of the life process from conception to death and responds instead to vanity intensified by sex energy.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Immanuel Can »

Nick_A wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 10:26 pm
You quote Muggeridge with approval: 'The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment.'
You've missed the point.
Alas, Nick...so have you. Muggeridge meant something very specific, and it had nothing to do with Plato.

Here is the entire section in which Muggeridge's quotation is found.

"Never, it is safe to say, in the history of the world has a country been as sex-ridden as America is today. And the rest of us, all eagerly emulating the American Way of Life, are going the same way. Sex has become the religion of the most civilised portions of the earth. The orgasm as replaced the cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfilment; the old pagan admonition, Do What Thou Wilt, has superseded the Pauline teaching that, since spirit and flesh lust contrary to one another, Ye Cannot Do the Things that Ye Would Do. In the beginning was the Flesh, and the Flesh became Word. Sex is the mysticism of materialism. We are to die in the spirit to be re-born in the flesh, rather than the other way round. Instead of the cult of the Virgin Mary we have the cult of the sex symbol - the busts, the thighs, the buttocks, of jean Harlow, a Marilyn Monroe, a Carrol Baker displayed in gloggy photographs, on cinema and television screens, to be feasted upon by countless hungry eyes, the physical tensions thereby set up being subsequently relieved into auto-eroticism or in the squirmings and couplings of with an available partner."
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Nick_A »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 10:54 pm
Nick_A wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 10:26 pm
You quote Muggeridge with approval: 'The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment.'
You've missed the point.
Alas, Nick...so have you. Muggeridge meant something very specific, and it had nothing to do with Plato.

Here is the entire section in which Muggeridge's quotation is found.

"Never, it is safe to say, in the history of the world has a country been as sex-ridden as America is today. And the rest of us, all eagerly emulating the American Way of Life, are going the same way. Sex has become the religion of the most civilised portions of the earth. The orgasm as replaced the cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfilment; the old pagan admonition, Do What Thou Wilt, has superseded the Pauline teaching that, since spirit and flesh lust contrary to one another, Ye Cannot Do the Things that Ye Would Do. In the beginning was the Flesh, and the Flesh became Word. Sex is the mysticism of materialism. We are to die in the spirit to be re-born in the flesh, rather than the other way round. Instead of the cult of the Virgin Mary we have the cult of the sex symbol - the busts, the thighs, the buttocks, of jean Harlow, a Marilyn Monroe, a Carrol Baker displayed in gloggy photographs, on cinema and television screens, to be feasted upon by countless hungry eyes, the physical tensions thereby set up being subsequently relieved into auto-eroticism or in the squirmings and couplings of with an available partner."
It is the same idea. Why doesn't humanity recognize the struggle between our higher and lower natures or spirit and flesh if you prefer. At one time it seems that society expressed a quality of metaxu which enabled people to be more aware of the struggle and the attraction to higher quality and universal values. Now it is obvious that secular society is doing what it can to cheapen the psych of man so as to become a better atom of the Great Beast or society itself.
"The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact." Malcolm Muggeridge
He was right IMO but what I don't understand is why the obvious is continually denied? Maybe it is because it invites discussion as to the reality of the consequences of the fall of man and how it relates to original sin. Such discussion cannot take place in secular society. The poor snowflakes may have to hide under their desks. Yet if we could be honest as to the depravity of Man it may clarify why abortions of convenience are so easily justified.
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