thordaddy
Posts: 486
Joined: Jan. 2006
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Flint opines,
| Quote | | I'm starting to understand the contempt you have earned on this thread. You don't listen at all. |
I've already agreed with you on your basic premise and still you scorn me. I shall disagree with for now on because your premise may be reasonable, but from there your argument is quite pathetic.
thordaddy asks,
If laws are not based in morality and science, but simply precedent alone, then what are the precedents based upon? But even further, what are the original legal arguments, that will then become precendent for future case law, based upon if not morality and science?
Flint says,
Precedents man... You contemptible human life form!
| Quote | | Who said they weren't? Laws are based on the desire to avoid if possible, and if not then to resolve as painlessly as possible, any social conflicts. |
Is there a framework to work with? I mean, what constitutes a social conflict? What constitutes pain? Is emotional pain more aggregious than physical pain? Is the mother's SPECULATIVE PREDICTIONS about the future of HER CHILD represent greater pain than the killing of her child in an abortion?
| Quote | | I notice in your very next statement, you use the murder label. |
And so my statement was correct as I said nothing about using it further into the conversation. But if you'll care to notice, it was used in an entirely correct context and did not relate to nonpersons.
| Quote | | See, there it is! But you are correct, murder is a legal construct. Taking the life of another human being is not necessarily murder. If done in wartime, it produces heroes. If done in self defense, it's fine. If policement do it in the line of duty, it's not only appropriate but considered necessary. If done for abortion, it's considered the right of the pregnant woman. |
I agree with everything you have said. Unfortunately, the arguments for wartime and self-defense are infinitely greater than the mere choice of ALL INDIVIDUAL WOMEN to abort their children. The question then becomes, how has this been justified when the science is shining ever more light on what actually takes place in the course of an abortion. The moral argument is already strong and the advocates for abortion have relied upon the ignorance or shere obfuscation of "science" to justify at least in part their arguments for abortion. I think science in now abortion's greatest foe. Legal arguments will evolve to meet this new insight like they have done before.
| Quote | | However, I hope you notice that laws are not entirely arbitrary. They are intended (as I wrote above) to avoid and/or resolve conflicts. As we have learned the hard way (with drugs, with alcohol, with abortion, and countless other laws), the attempt to enforce unenforceable laws results in an increase rather than a decrease in conflict. |
Yet, one could easily argue that abortion has not decreased the conflict, but has in fact increased it. Are the children any less wanted? Are children treated with more or less compassion? Are women better women? Are relationships between women and men better? I see very little to suggest that abortion has been an OVERALL social good. In fact, abortion is, in MOST REGARDS, an abolition of responsibility. Hence, the increase in conflict.
| Quote | | Ultimately, the law is based on trial and error. Over the long run, we make laws, and see what the results are (often completely different from what's intended or expected). We modify the laws with the intention of improving the results. This process goes on continuously. What triggers the process is that too many people are too unhappy with the status quo, for whatever reason. And often enough, passing a law results in even MORE people even MORE unhappy with the change, and the modification cycle continues. |
Then the law will evolve to reflect the unprecendent scientific insight into what exactly an abortion constitutes. The moral arguments will only be strengthened and the law will bend to the will of the enlightened.
| Quote | | Nope, you have completely misunderstood. Science can tell us the facts, but science can NOT tell us what we ought to do with them or why. I can agree that laws work best if they are informed by the facts, because the consequences of the law are most predictable in that case. But even if science could tell us precisely what the consequences of every law would be, science STILL could not tell us which consequences to prefer. |
Science can obviously tell us what we can do or not do and they need not be explicit. The implication is clear to many that science is dragging its feet in this regard. The insights brought to us by science concerning abortion and the process of pregnancy cannot be hidden by the ideologues within science.
| Quote | | What entity is that? Evolution is a fact, and science is the appropriate way to determine this. Science has done so. What's your point? |
A fact based on the knowledge of an undefiniable entity seems undefiniable itself. Isn't this the argument against ID?
| Quote | | I don't know what you're trying to say here. Of course there is a scientific basis for human life. Which has absolutely nothing to do with a society deciding which lives to protect, which to terminate, and which to remain silent about in deference to the rights of the individual members of that society. Those are SOCIAL decisions. Science is irrelevant. |
You are claiming that human life is undefiniable and yet this human life form has defined all we know. If you don't know who or what you are then how can you know anything else let alone describe evolution as a "fact" for the rest of us. Your science is based on something undefiniable. Almost like an intelligent designer or something?
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) But most of the time we want to know how things work so we can manipulate and/or influence them for our own gain.