Abortion

I'll begin this Round by continuing the examining of Con's larger argument-statements. If space permits, I'll cover some of her Round-4 responses to my Round-3 post. "The baby is not assaulting the mother." It most certainly is, as previously described, especially when a pregnancy is unwanted. However, if the pregnancy is actually wanted, then the woman can choose to forgive the assault, as also previously described. If she goes farther and considers that she is giving the unborn human a gift of her resources, it makes no real difference (in neither case will an abortion be sought). "Imagine what would happen if every women who became pregnant thought that her baby was assaulting her and had an abortion. The human race would die out!" You say that like it was a bad thing. I doubt you can prove it in a Debate. Anyway, regardless, your statement is most extremely unlikely. Huge numbers of women want to have babies, and they won't care about any old "assault" description. It is one of those "genetic programming" things previously described. "... vampires aren't real!" I did state they came from the realm of fantastic fiction. There is a thing known as "the willing suspension of disbelief" which is very often invoked in order to enjoy a fantastic story. It means that lack-of-reality is irrelevant to talking about something within the context of the story. So, if some story included both vampires and abortions --a not-unreasonable thing-- then the analogy I introduced becomes perfectly reasonable. "... there is something wrong with killing unborn babies, because they are human beings with value ..." And still you mis-use the word "being". Tsk, tsk. Unborn humans are no more --and no less-- than only animals. Much like mosquitoes. To think they are special just because they are human is to exhibit prejudice. Tsk, tsk. Also, all valuations are entirely arbitrary. To a woman who wants an abortion, the value of the unborn human she carries is less than Zero, because she has to pay to get rid of it. "There is nothing horrific about an unborn child implanting ..." --only if it is wanted. "As for what you said there about there being ... no evidence for God" --Actually, I stated no such thing. I actually wrote: "So far, all the evidence favors Evolution as the origin of humanity, not God." That is, there are only claims that God created humans. No evidence. "Show me evidence for macroevolution ..." Look at the fossil record, and see for yourself. The longer the paleontologists look, the more evidence they find. Including some of the classic "missing links", like whales with legs. Other transitional species remain to be found, of course. Just because we haven't found all of them yet, that doesn't mean they won't ever be found. There is still a lot of the Earth's uppermost layers remaining to be scrutinized for fossils. Plus, we have the tools of molecular biology and gene-mappings, to "follow the DNA" across species, in spite of still-missing fossils. htt.....ww.newscientist.com/article/dn14952-missing-link-fossil-stuck-its-neck-out.html htt.../berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/01/24_hippos.shtml htt.....ww.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/science/09fossils.html?pagewanted=all "The orderliness and design of the universe demands a Designer." Actually, the universe is chock-full of randomness and chaos, including its foundations in Quantum Mechanics. And it is very possible for order to arise from disorder. htt.../math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/bells_inequality.html htt.....ww.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/philosop/design.htm htt.....ww.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/339488/title/Order_from_disorder Also, you seem to have somewhere missed a key notion that can be expressed like this: "The complexity of God demands a Designer of God." That is, if a created-complexity argument can be true for the universe, then logic demands it to be true of God, also. "... we can have a different debate about the existence of God ..." I'm not against the existence of God. The evidence simply suggests that God is not necessary to explain the universe. I personally see nothing wrong with the notion that the two things, God and the universe, had independent origins. I don't insist that that is the Truth of the matter --maybe God caused the Big Bang and, being smart and knowledgeable, knew that the particular parameters associated with this universe would include Evolution, which in turn would produce intelligent beings like humanity --all without any additional effort on God's part. (Look at my profile page; there is a reason why I wrote, "God is smart; Religions are STUPID.") But if "separate origins" did turn out to be true, it wouldn't bother me one bit. "... mutilation ... I mean intentionally harming oneself, without just reason ..." Ear-piercing falls into that category more than does abortion. It is very "just" to stop any unwelcome assailant. "Am I killing? yes I am; I know that." I completely agree that abortion involves the slaying of a living animal body. And, as of this point in your posts, the only reason you've offered why an unborn human qualifies as more than a mere animal, is, in essence, "Duh ... it looks something like an adult human person, so I believe, without any other evidence, that it must qualify as a person." Well, see this: htt.....ww.smartplanet.com/blog/smart-takes/uncanny-valley-when-robots-are-too-life-like-humans-dislike-them/17704 We can make robots that mimic human physical appearance and behavior enough to get humans to think the robots are persons, even though at this time no robot can match the average adult human in terms of "mental behavior". Logically, it takes more than mere looks to qualify as an actual person! Well, it is Scientific Fact that no unborn human, just like today's robots, has the necessary "more than mere looks", to qualify as a person. "... membership in the human species is what makes someone a person ..." That is Bad Logic. It implies that no other species, anywhere in the universe, including God, can qualify as a person. (Note the logic: If God created the physical universe, then God could not have had a physical body of any sort, much less a human body, at that time. Are you silly enough to say that God couldn't qualify at least as a person until Jesus was born?) Your definition is pure "particularly appalling prejudice". Next, if you change your mind and accept the idea that various non-humans (perhaps including dolphins) might qualify as persons, then you need a generic definition of "person", that can distinguish persons from mere/ordinary non-human animals. It is that definition which will preclude unborn humans from qualifying! Next, developments in Artificial Intelligence research strongly indicate that at some future time (possibly sooner than 20 years from now), we will be able to copy every aspect of the human mind, that qualifies us as a person, into a computer. It will then qualify as a True Person-Class Artificial Intelligence. I posted a lot of links about this at: htt.....ww.debate.org/debate/23507/ --so I need not repeat them here. Now see this link: htt.....ww.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1252440/von-Neumann-machine When we build a True Artificial Intelligence into a von Neumann machine, one result can be small machines that can add stuff to themselves until each one qualifies as a person. This copies the way humans grow from the blastocyst stage. I won't consider any such "small machine" to qualify as a person before its self-construction project is finished. How about you? What will you think if one robs your own personal computer for parts? And why can't such logic apply to unborn human construction projects? (to be continued)