Pro-Life is not a Christian religious value

[TomC]

There is nothing in Christian Scripture suggesting, much less stating, that abortion(feticide) is a moral issue. It's just not in there.

On the other hand, "Life Cycle of a Primate" is solid elementary science. Basic biology. Unquestionably proven science. We living human beings are all individuals somewhere on the trajectory between conception and death. That's utterly unambiguous science.

I understand that primitive people, like the ones who created Scripture, didn't understand that. They thought that people were alive when they had breath. Not breathing meant they weren't alive.

Also, women and children weren't really persons. They were chattel, which isn't the same.

Then there was the fact that primitive people saw children as a huge asset. Children could be put to work, earning their keep, while in single digit age. Parents weren't expected to support them with education and medical care and proper nutrition and such. But kids were the "social security" of the time. Grow old without competent children and you'll probably die an unpleasant death.

The modern world is different. Christian culture is extremely Prodeath. Has been for awhile, but now there's no doubt. From preemptive invasions like Iraq and Ukraine, to environmental degradation, to "Build a Wall" so those central Americans die on their side,

really, the list is endless. Christians are the most Prodeath culture I know about. Have been for centuries.
A cursory knowledge of Western History will demonstrate that to any critical thinking person.
Tom

 

[prideandfall]

yup, and this is why the abortion issue isn't about life (conceptually) and it never has been - the abortion issue is about the fact that back in the 70s the KKK was freaking the fuck out that abortion was going to cost whites the breeding wars, and convinced the newly emergent 'moral religious right' that white genocide was going to destroy the dominance of christian moral values... and thus the abortion issue was created.

 

[Jarhyn]

yup, and this is why the abortion issue isn't about life (conceptually) and it never has been - the abortion issue is about the fact that back in the 70s the KKK was freaking the fuck out that abortion was going to cost whites the breeding wars, and convinced the newly emergent 'moral religious right' that white genocide was going to destroy the dominance of christian moral values... and thus the abortion issue was created.

To be fair it was more the one issue of many such fomented to create a wedge issue that they could sell to the faithful and as you say, drive religious conservatives to the polls.

And the church has always been a proxy for one's tribe and one's denomination always a proxy for race within the region.

 

[TomC]

the abortion issue is about the fact that back in the 70s the KKK was freaking the fuck out that abortion was going to cost whites the breeding wars,

Dayum.

That's quite an assertion.

Last I remember, abortion was genocide against black people.
Tom

 

[prideandfall]

the abortion issue is about the fact that back in the 70s the KKK was freaking the fuck out that abortion was going to cost whites the breeding wars,

Dayum.

That's quite an assertion.

uh no, that's simply historical fact.

www.npr.org/2022/05/04/1096154028/the-movement-against-abortion-rights-is-nearing-its-apex-but-it-began-way-before
www.thenation.com/article/politics/anti-abortion-white-supremacy
www.oah.org/tah/issues/2016/november/abolishing-abortion-the-history-of-the-pro-life-movement-in-america


those articles mostly speak to the fact that nobody in religious circles (excepts catholics) really gave a shit about abortion until the late 70s when suddenly the religious right did a 180 and went ape shit on the subject.
those articles don't mention it specifically, but i've read profiles on many prominent religious leaders of the era connecting them with KKK members and the beginnings of what is essentially the 'great replacement' theory.

fears that economically stable educated white women get abortions which will lead to whites being demographically replaced by not-whites is, and always has been, the beating heart of the anti-abortion movement.

 

[bilby]

On the other hand, "Life Cycle of a Primate" is solid elementary science. Basic biology. Unquestionably proven science. We living human beings are all individuals somewhere on the trajectory between conception and death. That's utterly unambiguous science.

Nope. That’s you trying to sneak your opinions in under the cloak of ‘utterly unambiguous science’.

Most living human cells are assuredly somewhere in that cycle, but “science” doesn’t support your opinion that humans are both ‘human beings’ and ‘individuals’ throughout. Nor your arbitrary choice of conception as the beginning of a ‘human being’. These are the claims you need to support; You aren’t entitled to use them as any part of your premise.

Nice try though. Next time, you need to stop the overcoat from giggling so much at belt-buckle level.

 

[TomC]

. That’s you trying to sneak your opinions in under the cloak of ‘utterly unambiguous science’.

I also believe in a heliocentric solar system.

Is that me trying to sneak my opinions in under the cloak of "utterly unambiguous science"?
Tom

 

[Elixir]

proven science

Thing is, Tom, “proven science” is a colloquial term, not a scientific one. In fact, scientifically, “proven science” is an oxymoron.
“Proof is for maths and alcohol”

 

[TomC]

proven science

Thing is, Tom, “proven science” is a colloquial term, not a scientific one. In fact, scientifically, “proven science” is an oxymoron.
“Proof is for maths and alcohol”

So, what do you mean by that?

Life Cycle of a Primate is not "proven science"?
Heliocentrism is a religious value?

Say what?
Tom

 

[Jarhyn]

proven science

Thing is, Tom, “proven science” is a colloquial term, not a scientific one. In fact, scientifically, “proven science” is an oxymoron.
“Proof is for maths and alcohol”

So, what do you mean by that?

Life Cycle of a Primate is not "proven science"?
Heliocentrism is a religious value?

Say what?
Tom

Correct, the life cycle of a primate is not "proven science". There is no such thing as proven science.

There is only science with a great deal of evidence, and disproven science.

And science doesn't even discuss when life starts because that is not science, nor math. Life starts 4b years ago give or take, and also on any planet where conditions are ripe, usually only once or twice best we can tell.

And it absolutely doesn't answer when it's ok to stop an instance of it, or where it's OK that is a secondary consequence of the thing it is most certainly OK to do no matter what and thus a sad, but still ultimately OK consequence.

 

[TomC]

Correct, the life cycle of a primate is not "proven science". There is no such thing as proven science.

Got it.
Reality might be 6000 y/o, it might be 13.8 billion y/o.
Nothing can be proven. There is no proven science.

Believe anything you want. As long as it makes you feel good and superior to believe it, reality doesn't matter.

That's so religious.
Tom

 

[Jarhyn]

Correct, the life cycle of a primate is not "proven science". There is no such thing as proven science.

Got it.
Reality might be 6000 y/o, it might be 13.8 billion y/o.
Nothing can be proven. There is no proven science.

Believe anything you want. As long as it makes you feel good and superior to believe it, reality doesn't matter.

That's so religious.
Tom

No, that's what I was taught in a science class by an atheist.

There is no such thing as proven science, and anyone who says there is, is trying to sell you something.

Science holds up a theory and says "disprove this", and when someone tries and fails it doesn't mean they have forever succeeded.

Usually the disproof consists of an elaboration upon the assumption rather than an invalidation of it. Other times it soundly throws out the establishment with a better model.

Circular orbital were disproved with noncircular orbits. Perfect elliptical orbits were disproved with wobbles which according to current scientific theory says orbits are elliptical with gravitational disruption from near neighbors.

I'm not sure that one will ever be disproved again at this point but it doesn't mean we stop looking.

What you call religion, actual science calls the rejection of "perfect truth" in favor of the acceptance of imperfect evidence which yields better, more useful knowledge in any regard.

In many respects science says "it's not a ____. We don't know what it is. But regardless, for now, we say it looks like a ____."

 

[Elixir]

Correct, the life cycle of a primate is not "proven science". There is no such thing as proven science.

Got it.
Reality might be 6000 y/o, it might be 13.8 billion y/o.
Nothing can be proven. There is no proven science.

Believe anything you want. As long as it makes you feel good and superior to believe it, reality doesn't matter.

That's so religious.
Tom

Your ignorance is glaring here, Tom.
Science doesn’t “prove” anything at all, it supports or falsifies hypotheses.
Falsified hypotheses are discarded. Supported hypotheses are further tested and every attempt is made to falsify them. Hypotheses that are extraordinarily well supported and that nobody has been able to falsify, eventually rise to the level of theory (especially if they show considerable powers of both explanation and prediction).
A theory is the highest level of scientific certainty. “Proven science” is in fact an oxymoron.
That doesn’t make 6000 yo earth as likely as a 4byo earth; only evidence can do that.
The life cycle of primates isn’t even a consistent observation between individuals of a species, let alone between primate species.

 

[Elixir]

A theory is the highest level of scientific certainty. “Proven science” is in fact an oxymoron.
That doesn’t make 6000 yo earth as likely as a 4byo earth; only evidence can do that.

Fwiw, @TomC the “earth is 6kyo” hypothesis has been falsified on numerous fronts (and it only takes one).

 

[bilby]

. That’s you trying to sneak your opinions in under the cloak of ‘utterly unambiguous science’.

I also believe in a heliocentric solar system.

Is that me trying to sneak my opinions in under the cloak of "utterly unambiguous science"?
Tom

The part of my post that you snipped clarifies my position on your question.

Perhaps you could read it.

Or continue pretending it doesn’t exist, if that saves you from the discomfort of considering the possibility that you might be badly mistaken about things you really really want to believe.

 

[pood]

There is nothing in Christian Scripture suggesting, much less stating, that abortion(feticide) is a moral issue. It's just not in there.

On the other hand, "Life Cycle of a Primate" is solid elementary science. Basic biology. Unquestionably proven science. We living human beings are all individuals somewhere on the trajectory between conception and death. That's utterly unambiguous science.

I take it this is intended as a non-religious argument against abortion?

The religious argument, as I understand it, is internally consistent. It posits the existence of a God, who then grants something called a “soul” to each individual human (though not to other animals, apparently). Moreover, it holds that God “ensouls” humans at conception, so a zygote has a soul. Ergo to abort a zygote or early-stage fetus is basically to murder a human being because a human is defined as an entity with a soul, full stop.

Despite its internal consistency, the claims are without a shred of evidence. There’s no evidence for God (and plenty of evidence against even the possibility of such a being) and no evidence for souls. It’s not even clear what a soul is supposed to be. Finally even if you could adduce evidence for God and souls you would then have to show that God ensouls at conception as opposed, say, to at birth, or even at age five. Or maybe sperm and unfertilized eggs are already “pre-souled,” in which case masturbation, for example, is murder.

Obviously there is no place in science for this superstitious jibber-jabber. So what’s the scientific argument against abortion?

There isn’t one.

The argument in your OP suffers from two fatal defects. The first is the self-canceling designation of “proven science,” which as others have pointed out doesn’t exist. If you want to argue this point you need to wade into the waters of the philosophy of science, with its demarcation problem, theory underdetermination, Popperian falsificationism, pessimistic meta-induction (we should expect all our current theories to be false because all our past theories have been false) and so on.

The second fatal defect is your use of the word “individual.” Individual what? Is a zygote an individual? Well, its an individual clump of cells with its own DNA, so, yeah, in that sense, it’s an “individual” … but in the same way, each snowflake is an “individual” in the sense that no two are exactly alike (assuming this old saw is true) but no one would characterize obliterating a snowflake as “snowflakicide.”

“Feticide” of course is a loaded term, but its very use countermands its scary force, because using the word implicitly concedes that it does not mean the same as infanticide, the killing of a newborn.

In the abortion debate, when we talk about “individuals,” what we really mean are individual persons. I don’t think I need to list the commonly accepted characteristics of a person. Is zygote a person in any of those characteristics? Manifestly not.

Science cannot help your position because individual personhood is an ill-defined concept, with degrees of truth that insensibly elide into one another, but a zygote at best is a clump of cells lacking any characteristics of a person. When personhood actually begins is ultimately scientifically untestable. Therefore it reduces to a matter of politics, culture, convention, ideology and ultimately opinion, all of which like religion are scientifically otiose.

 

[Elixir]

 

[Bomb#20]

. That’s you trying to sneak your opinions in under the cloak of ‘utterly unambiguous science’.

I also believe in a heliocentric solar system.

Is that me trying to sneak my opinions in under the cloak of "utterly unambiguous science"?

Yes. The sun is not actually at the center of the solar system. Geometrically, the solar system has some weird nonspherical shape for which it's not clear what "center" even means. And the sun is about a half a million miles away from the solar system's center of mass. The "heliocentric solar system" was a theory Copernicus came up with that was an important advance on the previous theory, but has been superseded by more accurate theories in the centuries since Newton realized the sun moves too.

 

[Bomb#20]

On the other hand, "Life Cycle of a Primate" is solid elementary science. Basic biology. Unquestionably proven science. We living human beings are all individuals somewhere on the trajectory between conception and death. That's utterly unambiguous science.

We living human beings are somewhere on the trajectory passing through oogenesis, ovulation, conception, what we might call for lack of a better term "individuation", quickening, the beginning of consciousness, the development of consciousness to beyond the level of dogs and cats, and death. That's utterly unambiguous science. Why do you leave out all those points on the trajectory before and after conception? What makes conception more special to you than those others?

In particular, you're painting a verbal picture of a common but hardly universal topology for the trajectory: the topology of a line segment. About thirty million of us individuals are on a different sort of trajectory, one with a branching topology, one in which a single line flows from oogenesis past conception until individuation, and then two lines flow from that one individuation point through two quickenings and two beginnings of consciousness, to two deaths.

So if you think the part of that branching trajectory between conception and individuation was "an individual" on the trajectory between conception and death, which individual was he? Was he the same individual as identical twin 1, or the same individual as identical twin 2? Or are the two identical twins the same individual? Or did the pre-individuation individual meet his own death at the point of individuation, while two new individuals formed at that time? Does science tell you the answer to that?

 

[TomC]

I take it this is intended as a non-religious argument against abortion?

I appreciate getting one substantive reply.
But no, I've not made any argument against abortion in this thread.

The religious argument, as I understand it, is internally consistent. It posits the existence of a God, who then grants something called a “soul” to each individual human (though not to other animals, apparently). Moreover, it holds that God “ensouls” humans at conception, so a zygote has a soul. Ergo to abort a zygote or early-stage fetus is basically to murder a human being because a human is defined as an entity with a soul, full stop.

Despite its internal consistency, the claims are without a shred of evidence. There’s no evidence for God (and plenty of evidence against even the possibility of such a being) and no evidence for souls. It’s not even clear what a soul is supposed to be. Finally even if you could adduce evidence for God and souls you would then have to show that God ensouls at conception as opposed, say, to at birth, or even at age five. Or maybe sperm and unfertilized eggs are already “pre-souled,” in which case masturbation, for example, is murder.

I understand that, sort of. It's one religious argument, there are others. I don't much care about any of them.

I've annoyed religionists before by taking it to it's logical conclusion. If unborn humans have souls and are completely innocent and innocents go to heaven. Good parents are trying to get their children to heaven. Obviously, abortion is the ideal child rearing method. Keeping the baby alive at the risk of their soul is quite selfish. God will understand.

So what’s the scientific argument against abortion?

There isn’t one.

Correct.
Science doesn't have any moral messages to give. Information is all science can offer.
Tom

P.s. There's lots more in your post to discuss, but I've gotta go now