Abortion is a force for moral good.

If you think organized gang rape is morally better than saving a billion lives, vote for my opponent. -- I know there's more of a burden here, but I don't want the vote of anybody leaning towards the moral superiority of gang rape. I'm not pulling this out of a hat. He argues that God and the Bible is the only way of telling right from wrong. Number 31:7-18 describes God ordering Moses to make sure all the men are dead but of the virgin girls be sure to keep them for some raping. Leviticus 19:19 prohibits the mixing of seeds which renders unholy the hybridization of plants which allowed for the Green Revolution and staved off the starvation of India and Africa, saving a billion lives. -- If you believe his argument than you must accept that organized gang rape is more good, holy, and desirable than making the world a better place. -- My opponents argument is thus: 1) I'm talking about moral absolutes. 2) I'm not allowed to do that. 3) That's contradictory. 4) Therefore, I'm wrong and he's right. 5) The Bible says abortion is wrong. 6) Abortion is wrong. The problems with the argument are that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 are all false, and the argument does not follow. I'm not talking about moral absolutes, I'm talking about being a force for moral good. I'm talking about creating a better society. If I wanted to discuss moral absolutes there's every reason to suppose that Kantian universal maxim or various moral theories can and do allow us to consider the betterment of society as objective in the universalized sense. Talking of such things would not be remotely contradictory, there's every reasons to have absolutes without God. In fact, there's every reason to believe things become subjective and contradictory with the introduction of God. And, even if I were wrong, there's no way of concluding he's therefore right. The entire argument is premised on a false dichotomy. Worst of all, the Bible doesn't actually say anything against abortion! This debate was suppose to be about abortion not my opponent's odd view of the world. It was a gutsy argument to make. My opponent doesn't care if abortions provide more peace of mind, relief, and societal health down the road by preventing unwanted children by terminating unwanted pregnancies. I didn't ask for objective truth, just that abortion is a force for good. I'm not talking about morals given from on-high or absolutes. I'm saying that within the nitty-gritty of societies, like ours since the 1970s, things are better because of abortion, while those like El Salvador where if a woman comes in showing signs of perhaps having an procedure done she is handcuffed to the bed and treated like a crime scene. To this day some women have been enduring decades of prison for not wanting to be beaten to death for being raped or worse. Societies without the option of terminating an unwanted pregnancy are barbaric. Those with the option are less so. The act of terminating unwanted pregnancy also spares our streets unwanted children and unwanted crime and the exasperation of poverty. Rather than hear arguments on these grounds, we are treated to a long and tiresome tirade the happiness of people is a pointless metric of a good society. He contends this on the ground that some dusty book says so... when ironically it doesn't. You can save a billion lives and double the human lifespan through a few key improvements but if the compiled texts of some bronze-aged tribe can be construed to suggest that 'sky-father who likes the smell of burnt goat' isn't pleased, then even the best society be damned (literally). -- He also maligns empiricism as worthless. The best source of true knowledge is not simply an assumption, rather it's a time tested idea. I can name thousands of mysteries solved by careful and reasoned analysis of the evidence. Can you name one which was solved via faith sans evidence? If we want a better society. If we want a society that is happier. If we want a safer society. If we want to live in a world where we are less likely to be hurt, raped, murdered, killed, and more likely to be loved, respected, honored, and live productive lives, then we should do these things. One of those things is to allow abortion to be a viable choice in society. What if God were in hell? The only way to be near God and receive eternal torture and be near God was to do what the Bible says not to? Should we want to be damnable and suffer torture forever to be near God in hell? What metric are you using to make the choice to be closer to God? Do you not want to to blissfully happy in a godless heaven? Or would you rather suffer torture forever in a godful heaven? How can you even consider these questions without your own metric for determining what you should want? If you want a better society, couldn't you apply the same metric? -- The real problem I have with my opponents arguments is that of obfuscation. Let us mire ourselves in philosophical banter in order to avoid the question of whether abortion actually makes the world a better place. Is everybody better off? Rather than arguing the point my opponent simply tried to make a silly and false presupposition argument and magic his opinion into fact, the bible into the ultimate arbiter, and the Bible into opposing something it actually doesn't. I'm not taking an absolutist approach. Certainly the world would be better off if every pregnancy was a planned pregnancy by individuals who are loving and have the resources and fortitude needed to care for a child. My contention isn't that abortion is a moral good, rather that abortion is a force for moral good. When you take the good and the bad, society is better off with abortion than without abortion. That abortion isn't just a fluke in the right to privacy, but it actually makes society a better place to live. My opponent can create his false dichotomies and suggest that there's a standoff between my view of the world and the Biblical view and dub my view contradictory and thus the Bible an instant authority. I haven't heard anything so silly in a good long while; it's patently absurd. But, it's sadly all he has. He only came here to pitch his very poor argument. Observe. Grimbolb the magic goblin of the universe has said that abortion is a force for moral good. You're using some subjective, translated book that doesn't even say what you say it says, to claim that your subjective will is moral truth. You're contradictory notions are thus wrong as you could claim anything and aren't objective at all but really subjective. Grimbolb is the only choice! Abortion is a force for moral good! I win! -- That's how silly his argument is! Anybody who accepts his argument, must equally accept that one on the basis of logic alone. -- As for the Bible, In Exodus, the miscarriage of the child is assumed, the injury refers to the woman. If it's just the loss of the unborn then it's a fine. If the woman ends up dying then it's eye for an eye. It is straight forward. The Bible gives no moral or criminal weight to the pregnancy except as the woman's husband's property. Further, Leviticus is pretty clear as to the value of individuals and those less than 1 month are not worth anything. This would be due to their likeliness to die. Most pregnancies and infants do not result in people. If they live, they become useful and have a value, prior to that they did not. -- My opponent has offered no substantive arguments on the topic at hand. He offered obfuscation whereas I knocked down his arguments, pulled them apart, and offered the proper claims the topic demands. http://www.youtube.com...