religion and morality

[henry quirk]

But should felons possess firearms?

Yep.

[henry quirk]

Next up: abortion (again)

tomorrow...I'm too whupped for anything major tonite

[promethean75]

"Yep"

You're goddamn right, mister.

[henry quirk]

"Yep"

You're goddamn right, mister.

You've done your time, yeah? Paid your debt? Then The State and Society need to bugger off.

[RCSaunders]

You are probably right about all of that

So, did I call it or what?

though I have come to the place where I have very little confidence in judging other's motives.

You hit the mark pretty often (but when you miss, you miss spectacularly [no offense]... )

Why would I be offended.

I'm just not a mind reader. While I can understand the nature of wrong ideas and choices, what actually motivates someone to intentionally evade evidence or clear reason escapes me. I'm sure it's usually some feeling or desire they surrender their reason and will to, but since I make no choices based on feelings, I cannot understand the choices made by those who depend on or allow desires, fears, sentiments, baseless impressions (like conscience and intuition) make their choices for them.

[henry quirk]

those who depend on...baseless impressions (like conscience and intuition)

Like me.

[promethean75]

"You've done your time, yeah?"

It wuddint my time, Haus. First bid was for crimes I didn't commit... second bid was for crimes I had to commit.

"Paid your debt?"

Naw, they got me on a payment plan for the rest of my life.

[henry quirk]

[iambiguous]

As I mentioned there is no relation between the truth and morality, whether the truth is God or a set of prepositions.

On the other hand, what does that have to do with the real world...the one that we live in and interact with others in? In fact, for the vast majority of men and women, they do believe that there is a fundamental relationship between truth and morality. Their own truth and their own morality, for example.

People believe in all sorts of different things. The burden of proof is on them to show that the is a relationship between truth and morality when it comes to philosophy.

I agree. But since both sides are able to convince themselves the other side has failed to provide that proof and, concomitantly, they are both able to convince themselves that they have provided it, nothing "for all practical purposes" changes.

If that hasn't been the "real world" now for thousands of years, what comes closer to it?

And then those here who take the discussion up into the clouds of abstraction and insist it is the dueling definitions and deductions that are what [ultimately] really matter.

And, of course, those who simply default to a God, the God, their God.

And it is what people believe about both that precipitates the behaviors they choose. And it is the behaviors that they choose that actually generates the consequences that can have a profound impact on our lives.

Belief is one factor. People change their beliefs all the time though. How? By facing the truth. Where we are heading? To find the truth and the truth sets us free.

For some, sure. But given my own experiences over the years with the objectivists among us...

And, for the most fierce moral objectivists among us, go ahead, try to reason with them...try to convince them into believing in moral relativism predicated on the assumption that there is no God.

Well, if they think that there is a link between objective morality and God then they should stop thinking so once one shows that there is no God. What is left is once objectivism is shown to be wrong?

Since what they believe [in my view] is predicated less on what it is that they do believe and more on the fact that, mentally, emotionally and psychologically what it is that they do believe comforts and consoles them, it is very, very rare for the objectivists to change their mind. Again, given my own experiences with them over the years.

[iambiguous]

Again, you completely miss the point. Any number of others can come up with arguments that rebut the assumptions -- political prejudices I believe are rooted subjectively in dasein, in the life you've lived --

You are probably right about most of the people in the world who never think for themselves, believe whatever they learn from their teachers, political leaders, religious authorities, and peers and go through life repeating whatever they've heard and seen other do without ever having an original idea. Thinking for oneself is difficult and discomforting because it means being responsible for everything one chooses and does. It is so much easier to just go along with what everyone else in one's click or community believes and does. It relieves one of the sense of responsibility. After all, if all one thinks and believes is determined by something else: their environment, their culture, their economic conditions, their education (or lack thereof), their genetics, their desires and feelings, or their dasein, whatever they do, it's not their fault. It used to be, "the devil made me do it." For you, "dasein made me do it," but it does not relieve you of responsibility for what you think and do.

Yes, but when the Devil makes you do something there is still the assumption that there is the right thing and the wrong thing to do. You did the wrong thing but it wasn't entirely your fault.

For dasein [my own rendition of it] there is no right or wrong set of behaviors, only moral and political prejudices derived subjectively/existentially from dasein. In fact for "me" it results in thinking and feeling that "I" am "fractured and fragmented" in an essentially meaningless and purposeless world. At least in regard to myself in the is/ought world.

Thinking for yourself doesn't make that part go away. Only the acknowledgment that how I construe all of this "here and now" is no less an existential contraption rooted subjectively in dasein. It's not like I can demonstrate that others ought to think as "I" do.

[henry quirk]

Abortion...

Let's knock this out first...

https://www.l4l.org/library/mythfact.html

The piece is long, so I won't cut and paste it. I thought I might provide excerpts but decided instead to wait till the objections roll in, then post excerpts.

On to it...

Mary, the woman supposedly responsible for Biggy's existential fracture, chose to abort becuz her child, in her, was inconvenient. Her life was not in danger. Her health was not in danger. She was not forcibly impregnated. She was inconvenienced.

She is a murderess. She took a life without just cause.

Just cause?

Quick recap...

Biggy has been sayin' over and over folks have no common ground to agree on anything outside of what a god imposes.

Me: I say there is, as fact, common ground -- that may be god-derived, but doesn't have to be -- that all men stand on and that can be the undergirdin' for a basic, minimal, commonsense ethic for everyone.

Bahman nailed that basic, minimal, commonsense ethic with this: you have all rights when it comes to your life and have no right on the lives of others. That is: you have a right to your life, liberty, and property and no one else's. If you go about muckin' around in the life, liberty, or property of another, you're wrong and that person has a right to defend himself (he has just cause to stop you).

Mary had no just cause. In context, what would be a just cause? If her life or health were endangered. If the pregnancy would kill her. If she's made pregnant against her will.

What's not just cause? In context: the inconvenience of a potential consequence she tacitly agreed to when she chose to lay with John. She got busy knowin' pregnancy was a possibility, even with birth control (she used *birth control, accordin' to Biggy, which failed), and when Nature bit her in the keister -- again, sumthin' she was aware could happen -- she was unwillin' to accept the consequence and inconvenience of nine months.

John, on the other hand, recognized in some way the life Mary carried was not his or hers to dispose of. He lobbied against abortion.

Biggy would have you believe Mary's and John's positions are equivalent. Viewed thru the lens of Bahman's rule of thumb (you have all rights when it comes to your life and have no right on the lives of others) there obviously is no equivalence. Mary, after consentin' to the possibility of pregnancy by choosin' to have sex and consentin' to the possibility of pregnancy in usin' birth control which is never 100% guaranteed effective, rubbed her kid right out...not becuz her life or health was in danger, not becuz she was raped, but solely becuz she inconvenienced.

Pregnancy, and how the natural rights of mother and child weigh against each other, is a unique context. Questions and challenges on when human life begins, when human personhood is applicable, how to balance the mother's liberty against the child's life, and on and on will continue no matter where science takes us or what ethics we craft for ourselves. But to insist, as Biggy does, there is and can be no coherent ethic all can agree on and live with is foolish, and incoherent.

As I say (in many posts, across multiple threads, goin' back for a long time): it is each and every man's experience of himself that he belongs to himself, that his life, his liberty, his property are his, and that it's wrong to kill him, to enslave him, to steal from him, to injure him. Bahman, quite concisely, summed it up as you have all rights when it comes to your life and have no right on the lives of others. It's a coherent statement undergirded by the common/universal self-assessment and intuition of each person that he belongs to himself, no matter where, no matter when. You don't have to be rational & virtuous, as Biggy sez, to grasp it. You do have to be honest and self-responsible to adhere to it. And it's so simple even a nihilist can do it.

Now, Biggy will claim I'm clingin' to skyhooks, but this is not so. I've directly addressed Mary and her circumstance and I've offered a minimal, commonsensical, practical, utterly comprehensible, standard by which to assess Mary.

Can't get no more real than that, bub.




*no birth control, outside of abstaining, is full-proof

[iambiguous]

Again, you completely miss the point. Any number of others can come up with arguments that rebut the assumptions -- political prejudices I believe are rooted subjectively in dasein, in the life you've lived -- you make about private citizens owning guns.

Nope: never said diddly about private citizens. We ain't dickin' around with your intellectual contraptions. This is real, bubba: I own a gun and I won't give it up. Convince me why I should (hint: demonstrate how my ownin' a gun deprives you of life, liberty, or property [or, as Bahman might say, how I'm not respectin' the rule of thumb]).

Sure, if you live in a community with other men and women, and you want to make owning guns all about you versus the world, fine. As long as you insist that no one can ever be right about it unless they think exactly like you do about it, you can't lose. That's precisely what the fulminating fanatic objectivists do. My way or the highway. Period. Their rule. Their thumb.

Who here doesn't get that mentality?!!! Hell, there are those on the other end of the political spectrum who want to turn all the swords into plowshares who can be just as arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and authoritarian as you are.

And what about chemical and biological weapons, grenades, rocket launchers, tanks, artillery pieces, mortars, weapons of war...same thing?

If you own them, it's your property. End of story?

Absolutely! If I want a bazooka, can locate the owner of one, can meet his price, I will own a bazooka.

If I'm not deprivin' you of life, liberty, or property (in other words, I'm respectin' Bahman's rule of thumb), I can't see how it's any your business. In fact: any objection you have that isn't rooted in my demonstrably deprivin' you of life, liberty, or property means you're infringin' on my life, liberty, and property which means you're the bad guy.

Lay out your reasonin' why I'm wrong.

All the reasons others raise. That human interactions can result in conflicts where emotions take over and having a bazooka can result in catastrophic consequences. That others might steal it and use it for their purposes. That, in a world where any weapon at all is acceptable, children might get their hands on them. That once you go down the road where nothing is off limits if you can afford to buy it, the law of unintended consequences will soon prove to be devastating. That the more military grade weapons are in the hands of libertarians of your ilk the greater the likelihood of "collateral damage".

One thing I believe we can be absolutely certain of: only a fool refuses to think exactly like you do about, well, everything under the sun?

Right?

Nope: if you don't want a gun, don't own one...makes me no nevermind.

Your hatred or fear of firearms is none of my business till you decide I'm supposed to share in, support, your hatred or fear and disarm myself. In other words: it's none of my biz till you decide I'm a fool for refusin' to think exactly like you and then move to hobble me, to make me do what you think is right.

I don't either hate or fear firearms per se. In fact I own a Smith and Wesson revolver myself. Instead, I focus more on the part in the Second Amendment here in America that calls for a...

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In other words, citizens may be permitted to keep and bear arms, but the government has a right to regulate just how far that goes. Indeed, some insist that the key word here is Militia..."a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency".

And thus that this excludes private citizens.

You talk about rebuttals: but, really, you're talkin' about pokin' around in my business becuz you don't like what I do.

Again, as always, it depends on the context. On whether you going about your business has consequences for others even though it wasn't your intention to bring those consequences about. Like laws against smoking in certain situations.

Suppose for example back in the 1980s the AIDS virus was as easy to catch as the common cold. And the government demanded certain restrictions on citizens behaviors. Nope there to? There is absolutely nothing that the government can tell you to do or not to do as long as you yourself are convinced it's your right to do it.

As though that has anything at all to do with the complexities embedded in human interactions out in the real world.

And of course you don't dare to focus in on how your self-righteous moral and political prejudices/dogmas may well have been derived from the manner in which I construe the acquisition of value judgments as the embodiment of dasein.

Nope, there is absolutely nothing about yourself that, as with those like Ayn Rand, you aren't entirely, unequivocally certain about.

[RCSaunders]

Abortion...

Let's knock this out first...

https://www.l4l.org/library/mythfact.html

The piece is long, so I won't cut and paste it. I thought I might provide excerpts but decided instead to wait till the objections roll in, then post excerpts.

On to it...

Mary, the woman supposedly responsible for Biggy's existential fracture, chose to abort becuz her child, in her, was inconvenient. Her life was not in danger. Her health was not in danger. She was not forcibly impregnated. She was inconvenienced.

She is a murderess. She took a life without just cause.

Just cause?

Quick recap...

Biggy has been sayin' over and over folks have no common ground to agree on anything outside of what a god imposes.

Me: I say there is, as fact, common ground -- that may be god-derived, but doesn't have to be -- that all men stand on and that can be the undergirdin' for a basic, minimal, commonsense ethic for everyone.

Bahman nailed that basic, minimal, commonsense ethic with this: you have all rights when it comes to your life and have no right on the lives of others. That is: you have a right to your life, liberty, and property and no one else's. If you go about muckin' around in the life, liberty, or property of another, you're wrong and that person has a right to defend himself (he has just cause to stop you).

Mary had no just cause. In context, what would be a just cause? If her life or health were endangered. If the pregnancy would kill her. If she's made pregnant against her will.

What's not just cause? In context: the inconvenience of a potential consequence she tacitly agreed to when she chose to lay with John. She got busy knowin' pregnancy was a possibility, even with birth control (she used *birth control, accordin' to Biggy, which failed), and when Nature bit her in the keister -- again, sumthin' she was aware could happen -- she was unwillin' to accept the consequence and inconvenience of nine months.

John, on the other hand, recognized in some way the life Mary carried was not his or hers to dispose of. He lobbied against abortion.

Biggy would have you believe Mary's and John's positions are equivalent. Viewed thru the lens of Bahman's rule of thumb (you have all rights when it comes to your life and have no right on the lives of others) there obviously is no equivalence. Mary, after consentin' to the possibility of pregnancy by choosin' to have sex and consentin' to the possibility of pregnancy in usin' birth control which is never 100% guaranteed effective, rubbed her kid right out...not becuz her life or health was in danger, not becuz she was raped, but solely becuz she inconvenienced.

Pregnancy, and how the natural rights of mother and child weigh against each other, is a unique context. Questions and challenges on when human life begins, when human personhood is applicable, how to balance the mother's liberty against the child's life, and on and on will continue no matter where science takes us or what ethics we craft for ourselves. But to insist, as Biggy does, there is and can be no coherent ethic all can agree on and live with is foolish, and incoherent.

As I say (in many posts, across multiple threads, goin' back for a long time): it is each and every man's experience of himself that he belongs to himself, that his life, his liberty, his property are his, and that it's wrong to kill him, to enslave him, to steal from him, to injure him. Bahman, quite concisely, summed it up as you have all rights when it comes to your life and have no right on the lives of others. It's a coherent statement undergirded by the common/universal self-assessment and intuition of each person that he belongs to himself, no matter where, no matter when. You don't have to be rational & virtuous, as Biggy sez, to grasp it. You do have to be honest and self-responsible to adhere to it. And it's so simple even a nihilist can do it.

Now, Biggy will claim I'm clingin' to skyhooks, but this is not so. I've directly addressed Mary and her circumstance and I've offered a minimal, commonsensical, practical, utterly comprehensible, standard by which to assess Mary.

Can't get no more real than that, bub.




*no birth control, outside of abstaining, is full-proof

The whole of the so-called abortion issue can be reduced to the simple terms: it is either never right to interfere in another human being's life uninvited or some pretext sometimes does make it right. If it is never right to interfere in another human beings life, than however wrong abortion might be in anyone's own view, what individuals choose to do about it is no one else's business and any attempt to force their view on anyone else against their will is a violation of that individual's sovereign life.

If it is ever right to interfere in another's life on any pretext, then the idea of an individual's life being inviolable and off-limits to anyone else's interference is out the window, and anything goes. Those who choose to control how others live their lives can always find some pretext for forcing others to live as they choose.

Just because what one chooses to do with their life and what is exclusively theirs is considered wrong or evil or self-destructive by others, unless those others are directly and negatively affected by other's actions, what others do is just none of their business. One my choose to waste their life by refusing to work and make something of themselves, or become a drunk or drug addict, or fail to support themselves, their family, or their children and everyone might agree that is wrong, but it does not justify using force to interfere in their lives if one truly believes individual lives are their own and no one else's.

One can call abortion murder and the mother who has one a murderer, but except for the woman whose child it is, it is no one else's business what she does with her own body and whatever is in it. The same is true of children, as well. Except for those who actually produce the children, provide the clothing, food, shelter, and whatever else they have, if they do, those children are no one else's business. It is no one else's business how they are fed (or not fed), how they are clothed, how they are educated, how they are sheltered or treated, and it is not up to anyone else to provide any of those things for children that are not their own. No matter how much one dislikes what others do with their own life and what is theirs or how evil they think it is, it is not up to them to interfere in anyone else's life, no matter how evil they are.

Of course that is only true if one does not buy into the collectivist philosophy that no individual's life is their own and everyone is the mutual slave of everyone else and that an individual's life has no meaning or purpose in itself and is only a means to some other end such as the the, "good of the community," the state, society, or mankind, or some such thing. That is what most people believe, it seems, since almost everyone believes the way to decide what is right for everyone to do is to vote on it. Whatever most people want is right and may be forced on everyone else, and if you don't happen to be one of most people, then it's just too bad for you.

Suppose you get most people to agree that in the case of abortion it is alright to use force to prevent it. Exactly how will that be done. Are you going to execute women who have abortions? Put them in jail? Beat them? I know most Christians will be all for executing women who have abortions because they call abortion the, "sin of murder," and believe justice means inflicting as much pain and suffering as possible on anyone they deem is a sinner. Quite frankly I cannot see how killing an adult woman is not murder, but killing an unborn thing is. If one believes abortion is wrong just don't ever have one. Otherwise the issue is none of my business, or yours.

[henry quirk]

RC,

As I say: a person's life, liberty, and property is his own...any person you care to name belongs to himself...that includes the floatin'-in-the-womb person.

As I say: how the natural rights of mother and child weigh against each other, is a unique context. There's no other like it. Mom is her own; the child is his own.

Some folks, like yourself, say mom trumps child: it's her body, and the child has no claim on her. It's an appealin' argument 'cept for one glaring detail: she, along with her partner, is responsible for the creation of that person she carries. If the child spontaneously erupted within her, if she exercised no control in his comin' to be, I'd agree with you 100%. Rape, for example, is a real life example of pregnancy forced on a woman. In such a circumstance the child, innocent as he himself is, truly has no claim on her. She consented to nuthin'. Askin' or demandin' she carry the child is a clear violation of her, a violation laid atop a violation. It's too much and it's not right.

But, again usin' Biggy's Mary (the woman who consented to sex and who aborted simply becuz the child, in her, was inconvenient), she is responsible for that child's coming to be. She chose, consented to, the possibility of him when she lay with her partner. The child didn't a'fix himself to her like a tick. In a very real way, she invited him into the world, into her body. Seems to me, if the child belonged to himself in the same exact way Mary belongs to herself, and if Mary invited him in, the very least she could do is recognize his life was not hers to rub out.

The sticky wicket, of course, is: was what Mary carried a person or just meat? My argument hinges on the possibility (probability?) that Mary carried a person inside of her, one with the same right to himself as she had/has to herself. You, a man of good conscience, probably disagree.

The link I posted up-thread explores that question.

Again, though, let's not lose sight of the original debate: Biggy, insistin' there is and can be no common ground between folks (cuz everyone is drivin' around in, or is bein' driven around by, his Datsun) vs me, who sez there is common ground between folks and a sensible, minimal, practical ethic applicable to all can be derived from that common ground.

I think I've illustrated -- by way of my gun & abortion posts -- this common ground (each man knows he is own) and ethic (a man has an inalienable right to hs life, liberty, and property). And Biggy? He's illustrated he's broken, static, stuck in one place, self-stymied. He's offered nuthin' but polaroids of his Datsun and claims that brand is all there is.

[henry quirk]

Biggy,

I wrote a rather lengthy post addressin'...

...and lost the whole damn thing when I tried to preview it. For some reason, hittin' the preview button caused the forum to prompt me to sign in again, I hit the back button instead, thinkin' I could capture my post as a copy and *poof* the post was gone. I'm mildly pissed at myself. I'll reconstruct that post in the morning.