Why are "refugees" still having children?

[Crazy Eddie]

From the premise that the deliberate perpetuation of one's own family, community and species is a goal to be praised, it does not logically follow that a strategy that accomplishes this is also a goal to be praised. There are any number of non-praiseworthy strategies that accomplish praiseworthy goals.

You still haven't supported your insinuation that procreation in and of itself is a non-praiseworthy goal, hence you keep comparing it to things like genocide and theft. Procreation, however, is the act of deliberately creating new life; that act may be morally praiseworthy or it may be morally objectionable. It may even be normally neutral, with no inherent positive or negative beyond subsequent choices.

But like anything else, the morality of an act is not situational. One can balance competing moral imperatives and choose the lesser of two evils, yes, but those acts have an inherent value -- positive or negative -- all on their own.

Where, then, do you support the premise that procreation is morally objectionable?

That still doesn't eliminate the need to evaluate individual actions within the context of that strategy. Attempting to get people to exercise more frequently is a morally beneficent strategy for public health; breaking into people's houses with a chainsaw and chasing them halfway across town is a questionable application of that strategy.

And attempting to preserve your family is a goal to be praised; making a baby who'll probably have a miserable life is a questionable application of that strategy.

The key word there is "probably." Probabilities don't factor into moral judgements, only choices.

You can therefore question the morality of a parent whose child "probably" won't have a great life and your objection becomes moot with the words "Not if I have anything to say about it."

No. We've been through this already. A counterexample to an inference rule is not an implication of equivalence.

Of course it is. I'm telling you that oranges are fruit because they grow from flowers and have seeds; your counter example is "sunflowers are not fruit, therefore neither are apples."

And again, "not ideal" is a red herring. There's a continuum between ideal and terrible; to say you should not reproduce under terrible circumstances does not imply you should only reproduce when conditions are ideal.

If it's up to individual judgement whether or not conditions are sufficiently adverse to reproduce or not, then it's a practical consideration, not a moral one. "How great is the risk of harm and how hard would we have to work to reduce that risk?" Some people are more/less capable of that than others, and some people are more/less capable of that than they think they are.

We were discussing the practical utility of that particular reproductive strategy. The MORAL dimension depends on the choices of the parents in relation to their children and is a completely different issue. A billionaire may choose to create a child for the sole purpose of harvesting its organs for a fondu party, while a refugee in a war zone might choose to have a child with the intention of loving and nurturing that child as best she can.

Their respective conditions are not moral considerations, only their choices with respect to the new life they created.

Probability of harm coming to a victim is all it takes to make drunk driving immoral...

Argument by assertion. Is drunk driving "immoral" or merely reckless and dangerous? Your own category error is applicable here, since quite alot of things human beings do have a high probability of harm but are not considered to be immoral. Contact sports -- MMA in particular -- being the most obvious example, wherein the objective of the sport is to DELIBERATELY harm another competitor to the point that he can no longer compete.

There are simply too many cases where "probability of harm" is not sufficient to judge an action to be immoral; I suggest it is not sufficient OR neccesary, and even this example -- where the probability of harm is zero but violation of personal autonomy is guaranteed -- indicates it is neither.

I'm not comparing reproduction to crimes; I'm comparing your argument for reproduction to hypothetical arguments for crimes

Apples and oranges: the comparison would only be valid if reproduction were actually a crime.

Sure I can. So can credoconsolans et al. So can most people. Why can't you?

Because I recognize that too many of the things a normal person does over the course of a lifetime WOULD be immoral if "probably harmful" was a genuine moral concern. These include things like drinking alcohol in public, fornication, watching pornography, eating trans fats, farting in public, driving over the speed limit, paying taxes to governments that are prone to start wars, voting for Republicans, etc. Any one of a million actions have a chance of leading to GREAT harm, depending on how you evaluate those probabilities.

You are attempting to get around this fact by setting the threshhold for "probability of harm" at some arbitrary/imagined standard that makes it moral or immoral, which would essentially reduce all such moral judgements to entirely subjective value judgements based on inherently imperfect information.

In other words you are confusing practical considerations of risk management with dimensions of moral reality. Just because something is impractical and dangerous doesn't make it immoral; and just because something is immoral does not make it impractical or dangerous.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Obviously it's not logically mutually exclusive, but in the context of Derec's posts, he didn't seem to be attributing both, but rather, attributing different goals in different posts; I analized that problem in greater detail in this post.

Angra, is there anyone in the op having 5 children in an overcrowded situation that in context was being compared to the Maggie and Glenn Zombie Apocalypse situation? Is there something here that isn't clear to you about what Derec is saying?

Of course there is plenty that isn't clear to me, which is why I'm asking him.
In most posts he seem to be talking about one thing, in some about another.
See this post of mine for more details.

Maybe he will answer, and I will know what he meant.

In that post you wrote this:

That looks like blaming her for allegedly being irresponsible, not for being a successful enemy combatant.

I don't think being an Islamist is exactly the same as being a "successful enemy combatant." In other words, unsuccessful Islamists in theory (to Derec) could be leaving Syria. Moreover, I don't see any evidence that an economic migrant prioritizing economics would be spitting out babies. More often than not, it's a criticism of religion telling people to spit out babies as opposed to economic migration.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I don't think being an Islamist is exactly the same as being a "successful enemy combatant." In other words, unsuccessful Islamists in theory (to Derec) could be leaving Syria. Moreover, I don't see any evidence that an economic migrant prioritizing economics would be spitting out babies. More often than not, it's a criticism of religion telling people to spit out babies as opposed to economic migration.

First, the "successful" part would be to reproduce in Europe. If reproduction is their weapon of choice and an effective one at that - the one by which they're making Europe more Islamic -, then she would be successful in her deployment of her weapon. But that's not how that post of Derec's seems to be blaming her.
Second, while having children is sometimes done for economic reasons (e.g., so that they will take care of her when she's old), I don't think Derec is saying that she's having children for economic purposes. Rather, my point was that he seemed to be blaming her for the irresponsibility of having children in those conditions (for whatever reason), while he might be thinking she probably migrates for economic reasons (not that she has children for economic reasons).
Regardless, criticism of Islam for telling her to reproduce at a high rate would not be the same as thinking she's reproducing at a high rate to make Europe more Islamic. For example, he said "But the high birthrate is not something that only appeared with the Syrian civil war. Muslims tend to have 5+ children as a matter of their culture - they never adopted to the modern world with much lower mortality. I don't think the West should constantly bail them out when their own countries get predictably overcrowded as a result of such high birth rate."
That does not seem to be a criticism based on an apparent attempt to Islamicize Europe, but just to follow the irrational demand of their religion on the matter.

 

[Derec]

You are right Angra. I do think the people in Idomeni having all these kids are doing so because of their islamic culture. They are also migrating to EU (and demanding to go to Germany) mostly for economic reasons, even those who initially left homes as legit refugees (and that is only some of the migrants taking the Aegean route since a lot of people from places like Pakistan or Burma are among the migrants).
The creeping islamization is a consequence, not an conscious goal of most of them. That said, it is certainly the conscious goal of islamst leaders like Ghadaffi.

 

[Derec]

I see a number of holes here. I bet Angra will comment on them.

If you see any "holes" in what I wrote here, please kindly point them out.

 

[Derec]

By the same logic, the US troops who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan should be de-barred from returning to the USA.

No, that is not the same logic at all. It is soldiers' job to fight and they are US citizens (or permanent residents).
That you have to resort to such silly argumentation shows how far removed from reality apologetics for violent migrants is.

They have shown themselves to be violent, and there is just as much reason to expect them to be violent in the US as there is to expect these refugees to be violent in Germany. Because violence is a personal trait that someone either has or does not have, and it is not a result of circumstances at all.

The violent migrants are engaging in violence to get what they are not entitled to by peaceful means. US soliders' job is to fight. The two do not even have a passing resemblance.

You might as well equate a police officer shooting a bank robber with bank robber shooting a teller. Oh wait, many police haters do just that!

 

[angelo]

Both of the above are correct. Only a blinkered view would suggest otherwise.

 

[whichphilosophy]

No, that is not the same logic at all. It is soldiers' job to fight and they are US citizens (or permanent residents).
That you have to resort to such silly argumentation shows how far removed from reality apologetics for violent migrants is.

They have shown themselves to be violent, and there is just as much reason to expect them to be violent in the US as there is to expect these refugees to be violent in Germany. Because violence is a personal trait that someone either has or does not have, and it is not a result of circumstances at all.

The violent migrants are engaging in violence to get what they are not entitled to by peaceful means. US soliders' job is to fight. The two do not even have a passing resemblance.

You might as well equate a police officer shooting a bank robber with bank robber shooting a teller. Oh wait, many police haters do just that!

The job of some soldiers is to fight. However, illegal invasions of other countries, or aiding and abetting turmoil and mayhem which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths amounts to genocide. However no one has been charged yet for war crimes.

There are some violent migrants but most are not. The complete opening of Europe's borders as decided by unelected committees, the promises of smugglers and the Western backed genocide in the Middle East has not only brought legitimate asylum seekers but economic migrants from other parts of the world.

The US and its allies need to stop the destruction of other countries, while Europe needs to filter the genuine from non genuine refugees. In some cases criminals from countries such as Morocco could have been prevented from entering if there was a proper border force in Europe and there were adequate walls and fences.

 

[Derec]

But that's not relevant to my reply, which was a reply to what appeared to be a suggestion on your part that their willingness to do violence indicated they weren't actual refugees fleeing violence. People who flee violence may well be also prone to do violence.

People who flee violence because they are themselves peaceful civilians are refugees. People who flee because they think their opponent is too strong are not refugees in my book.
In any case, that is semantics. What's important is that it is in the vested interest of EU not to allow in migrants who have shown themselves to be willing to use violence to get what they want.

Do you think most of the people are the camp are economic migrants, or those "many" + the ones from Pakistan, etc., don't make up most of them?

I think they are all economic migrants at this point, given their demands to be allowed to go to Germany or elsewhere in Western Europe, when they were safe in Turkey and would be safe in camps in Greece.
That said, many of people at Idomeni have never been in a war. They have never been refugees.

Also, do you believe a significant percentage (if so, how significant?) are not only Muslims, but Islamists who travel to Europe in order to spread Islam?

If you look at the photos from Idomeni you will find out that vast majority of adult women camping there wear an islamic headscarf.
That means they are not only Muslim but fairly religious Muslims at that. So the consequence of letting them in by the million will be to spread Islam in Europe, whether or not they travel for that purpose. I do not happen to think most of them travel for that purpose, although Islamist leaders are using them as pawns to islamicize Europe.

Just to get this straight: your take is that those are also (at least mostly) economic migrants - as I also said you thought -, not something else, right?

Not quite understanding your question there.

Thanks for confirming part of what I've been saying for that you believe.
Maybe you should try to more explicitly say that you believe they're economic migrants when you imply they're not refugees, lest other people not insist that you believe they're something else.
I also think we should further clarify (see Don2's reply) whether you believe mots are economic migrants, or in any case, whether you think many (or a significant proportion) are going to Europe not for better economic conditions, but in order to spread Islam or Islamism.

I hope I was able to clarify my position here.

 

[Derec]

The job of some soldiers is to fight. However, illegal invasions of other countries, or aiding and abetting turmoil and mayhem which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths amounts to genocide. However no one has been charged yet for war crimes.

What you think about these wars is irrelevant to bilby's comparison being ridiculous.

There are some violent migrants but most are not.

Being violent should forfeit any refugee status/protections they might have.

The complete opening of Europe's borders as decided by unelected committees, the promises of smugglers and the Western backed genocide in the Middle East has not only brought legitimate asylum seekers but economic migrants from other parts of the world.

Complete opening of Europe's borders is exactly what far-left wingers are demanding. It's suicidal insanity.

 

[Derec]

Can you give an example of these people in their new countries forcing Europeans to not eat pork?

Parents fury as pork sausages are banned from the school menu and replaced with halal meat
Yes, same Rotherham whose leaders ignored child sex abuse for years because it was Muslims doing it.

Also, German female German students urged to dress modestly.
School Warns Parents To Dress Daughters Modestly To Avoid Offending Muslim Refugees

Is it any wonder Merkel is being depicted in a Muslim headscarf these days?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Air strikes on a camp housing Syrians uprooted by war killed 28 people near the Turkish border on Thursday, a monitoring group said, and fighting raged in parts of northern Syria despite a temporary deal to cease hostilities in the city of Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the dead included women and children and the death toll from the air strikes, which hit a camp for internally displaced people near the town of Sarmada, was likely to rise.

Footage shared on social media showed rescue workers putting out fires which still burned among charred tent frames, pitched in a muddy field. White smoke billowed from smoldering ashes, and a burned and bloodied torso could be seen in the footage.

"There were two aerial strikes that hit this makeshift camp for refugees who have taken refuge from fighting in southern Aleppo and Palmyra," said Abu Ibrahim al-Sarmadi, an activist from the nearby town of Atmeh who spoke to people near the camp.

Nidal Abdul Qader, an opposition civilian aid official who lives about 1 km (half a mile) from the camp, said around 50 tents and a school had burned down.

The White House said the victims were innocent civilians who had fled their homes to escape violence. "These individuals are in the most desperate situation imaginable, and there is no justification for carrying out military action that's targeting them," spokesman Josh Earnest said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-truce-idUSKCN0XW0C3

Syrian "refugees" are risking a lot by staying in or near Syria.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

refugee - a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.

==> a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war is a refugee.

Since the life expectancy of a person living in Syria is 54 years and the poverty rate is 80% and healthcare infrastructure, educational infrastructure etc has deteriorated, it is a practical imperative to seek refuge elsewhere, if not a moral imperative for sake of one's children and dependents. Therefore, such persons from Syria are indeed forced to leave their country and meet the definition of refugee.

Reclassifying such persons who meet the definition of refugee and who are staying in a refugee camp as "economic migrants" is not only unexpected to readers trying to interpret a thread, but it's also illogical in this instance because they still meet the definition of refugees.

 

[Derec]

Syrian "refugees" are risking a lot by staying in or near Syria.

They were not "near Syria", they were in Syria.
"near the Turkish border" - not across the border in Turkey, i.e. still inside Syria
"internally displaced" - i.e. displaced within Syria.
"near the town of Sarmada" - a town in Syria
This story does not prove that staying in Turkey is dangerous, much less that Germany is the only place safe enough.

 

[fromderinside]

Syrian "refugees" are risking a lot by staying in or near Syria.

They were not "near Syria", they were in Syria.
"near the Turkish border" - not across the border in Turkey, i.e. still inside Syria
"internally displaced" - i.e. displaced within Syria.
"near the town of Sarmada" - a town in Syria
This story does not prove that staying in Turkey is dangerous, much less that Germany is the only place safe enough.

Of course not. Nor does your selective parsing and interpreting prove staying in Turkey is not dangerous nor that Germany isn't the safest place available to these acknowledged refugees.

Putting mud in a pot when trying to make chocolate stuff doesn't help at all. So why do it?

Moving on dot org.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

You are right Angra. I do think the people in Idomeni having all these kids are doing so because of their islamic culture. They are also migrating to EU (and demanding to go to Germany) mostly for economic reasons, even those who initially left homes as legit refugees (and that is only some of the migrants taking the Aegean route since a lot of people from places like Pakistan or Burma are among the migrants).
The creeping islamization is a consequence, not an conscious goal of most of them. That said, it is certainly the conscious goal of islamst leaders like Ghadaffi.

Thanks for explaining that. You should be more careful explaining the motivations you attribute to different agents. Else, in case of ambiguity, your left-wing opponents will almost invariably and sincerely attribute the least likely/worst position to you, and they will have some of your words to back them up.

People who flee violence because they are themselves peaceful civilians are refugees. People who flee because they think their opponent is too strong are not refugees in my book.
In any case, that is semantics.

But the word "refugee" has a meaning, and if you use it, you could expect other people to understand it under its usual meaning, not the one that you might prefer. A rapist or a gang member who flees Syria because he's afraid of the Russian bombings and Al-Assad's/Hezbollah/Iranian/Russian troops and gets to a refugee camp in Lebanon is a refugee, even if he's a violent evil man.

What's important is that it is in the vested interest of EU not to allow in migrants who have shown themselves to be willing to use violence to get what they want.

That depends on what they used violence to get, and who is "EU". But sure, allowing those violent people is likely to make things worse rather than better for most of the population that ends up living close to them.

I think they are all economic migrants at this point, given their demands to be allowed to go to Germany or elsewhere in Western Europe, when they were safe in Turkey and would be safe in camps in Greece.
That said, many of people at Idomeni have never been in a war. They have never been refugees.

Thanks for clarifying that.

If you look at the photos from Idomeni you will find out that vast majority of adult women camping there wear an islamic headscarf.
That means they are not only Muslim but fairly religious Muslims at that. So the consequence of letting them in by the million will be to spread Islam in Europe, whether or not they travel for that purpose. I do not happen to think most of them travel for that purpose, although Islamist leaders are using them as pawns to islamicize Europe.

And again, thanks for clarifying that. That was my first assessment, but you shouldn't expect your left-wing opponents to entertain that interpretation if you're not very clear.

Not quite understanding your question there.

It was suggested that maybe you believed they were both economic migrants and migrants trying to make Europe more Islamic (i.e., dual motivation). I think only a small minority are trying to make Europe more Islamic, though of course their migration is making Europe more Islamic.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Syrian "refugees" are risking a lot by staying in or near Syria.

They were not "near Syria", they were in Syria.

Correct.

"near the Turkish border" - not across the border in Turkey, i.e. still inside Syria

"internally displaced" - i.e. displaced within Syria.

"near the town of Sarmada" - a town in Syria

This story does not prove that staying in Turkey is dangerous, much less that Germany is the only place safe enough.

Strawman.

The story does show that being near the borders in either Turkey or Syria is a very dangerous place, i.e. in or near Syria.

Collectively, with other observations made in the thread, both Germany and Sweden remain among the best places for refugees to go.

Meanwhile, NOT leaving Syria, even remaining in a camp is dangerous.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

They were not "near Syria", they were in Syria.

Correct.

"near the Turkish border" - not across the border in Turkey, i.e. still inside Syria

"internally displaced" - i.e. displaced within Syria.

"near the town of Sarmada" - a town in Syria

This story does not prove that staying in Turkey is dangerous, much less that Germany is the only place safe enough.

Strawman.

The story does show that being near the borders in either Turkey or Syria is a very dangerous place, i.e. in or near Syria.

Collectively, with other observations made in the thread, both Germany and Sweden remain among the best places for refugees to go.

Meanwhile, NOT leaving Syria, even remaining in a camp is dangerous.

It does not actually matter where they finally end up or why they ultimately go there; they are defined as "refugees," not for their intended choice of refuge, but for the conditions that caused them to leave their homes in the first place.

Consequently, those people could just as easily hop on a plane to Disneyland and pitch near Splash Mountain; they're still refugees, because they were driven out of their homes by war and chaos. Their choice of refuge may be questionable and inconvenient, but that alone does not change their status from "refugee" to "tourist" or "economic migrant."

Old urban joke: It's only "camping" when you've got a home to go back to.

 

[Bomb#20]

You still haven't supported your insinuation that procreation in and of itself is a non-praiseworthy goal, hence you keep comparing it to things like genocide and theft. Procreation, however, is the act of deliberately creating new life; that act may be morally praiseworthy or it may be morally objectionable. It may even be normally neutral, with no inherent positive or negative beyond subsequent choices.

But like anything else, the morality of an act is not situational. One can balance competing moral imperatives and choose the lesser of two evils, yes, but those acts have an inherent value -- positive or negative -- all on their own.

Where, then, do you support the premise that procreation is morally objectionable?

That's no premise of mine or my argument. That's something you created within your own fantasy-riddled mind. You're imputing it to me because you keep making a reasoning error that I have repeatedly pointed out to you but that you appear to be unable or unwilling to be corrected on. You have decided you know better than I do what my position is; you are putting words in my mouth; you refuse to stop doing that. It's becoming evident that my effort to fix your problem by software modification is futile and I have to conclude it's a hardware problem.

No. We've been through this already. A counterexample to an inference rule is not an implication of equivalence.

Of course it is. I'm telling you that oranges are fruit because they grow from flowers and have seeds; your counter example is "sunflowers are not fruit, therefore neither are apples."

Of course it isn't. Your example is not parallel to what I said to you. If it were parallel then you'd be able to exhibit a detailed point-by-point correspondence. You won't be able to do that. All you did was make up something stupid and assert without evidence that that's what my counterexample is.

Probability of harm coming to a victim is all it takes to make drunk driving immoral...

Argument by assertion. Is drunk driving "immoral" or merely reckless and dangerous? Your own category error is applicable here, since quite alot of things human beings do have a high probability of harm but are not considered to be immoral. Contact sports -- MMA in particular -- being the most obvious example, wherein the objective of the sport is to DELIBERATELY harm another competitor to the point that he can no longer compete.

But the guy who gets hurt isn't a victim, provided the guy who hurts him doesn't cheat. He's what you said he is: another competitor. He's a guy who volunteered to take that risk.

I'm not comparing reproduction to crimes; I'm comparing your argument for reproduction to hypothetical arguments for crimes

Apples and oranges: the comparison would only be valid if reproduction were actually a crime.

Go learn some logic. Come back when and if you ever understand why what you said is incorrect. I think we're done here.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Your example is not parallel to what I said to you. If it were parallel then you'd be able to exhibit a detailed point-by-point correspondence. You won't be able to do that. All you did was make up something stupid and assert without evidence that that's what my counterexample is.

You've done similar by providing an alleged counter-example that did not have a point-by-point correspondence. Whether you intended it to or not isn't an issue but instead what the logical implications of it not having such a correspondence means to the thread.