And you guys thought *I* was nuts.

[williatw]

Ah yes, a country where the citizenry is armed never experiences riots (and of course, should the unthinkable happen in such a country, only the good guys would use guns).

London Riots 2011 deaths: 1

LA Riots 1992 deaths: 53


Did I mention that the homicide rate is four times higher in the US than here in the UK?

Four. Times. Higher!

Well I believe a female MOP said something to the effect that she would rather have all of London burned down then shoot looters to save the destruction. After all you can rebuild a shop(or city) but you can't give the precious darling alex-delarge wannabe rioter his life back. Well if you are happy with that kind of reasoning it is after all your country. After all you obviously think it is more "civilized" for a man to watch an intruder break into your house rape your wife or daughter in front of you while you are a good witness for the police, than the barbaric american who would rather shoot the SOB...your life your country. After all you could always say to her: "well dear our homicide rate is 1/4 that of the US...just take it up the *&^% for England" Tony Martin got just what he deserved I am sure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer)

The law in self-defence in this country is balanced pretty well at the moment. If you kill an intruder in your home you will be OK, unless the force you use is quite disproportionate to the threat. We have the weird idea that if somone taunts you in the street it is not good to draw a pistol and shoot him. Proportionality. It is accepted that people may be reasonably afraid in their own homes, and use violence in self-defence. The cirumstances are always taken into account by the court.

You have a right in theory to use deadly force in self-defense, of course your citizenry is thoroughly disarmed and therefore has little effective means to exercise the right they supposedly still have at the discretion of the state. "In 1997, in response to the terrible Dunblane massacre, all handguns were banned and those already owned were confiscated. No exception was allowed for Britain's crack Olympic shooting team or for handicapped target shooters. The result has not been what the proponents expected. Gun crime had doubled a decade later with the very weapon banned. Indeed, in London gun crime in 2010 had doubled in one year. While gun crime climbs, the police are intolerant of any innocent contact with a gun. Sounds like the 1997 law has been a big success. Understand your national homicide rate spiked upward for several years after the law was passed, peaking and finally going back down to about where it was before the law was passed. Yeah I know our rate in the US is still several times higher than yours(but steadily declining),

Preliminary Crime Stats For the First Half of 2011 indicate big drop in crime:
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/de ... ats_121911

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... ted_States
It was 4.8/100,000 in 2010. So that works out to a rate in 2011 of 4.54/100,000. The lowest rate in the US in the last 100yrs was 4.0 in 1957. So we are currently only about 12% above the lowest rate in the US in the last 100yrs. This is at a time when there are more guns around than ever to say nothing of concealed carry permits.

How far above your century low point is your current homicide rate? Gotten better since the 1997 law?

[Diogenes]

Even if we accept the natural/artificial false dichotomy, Diogenes' argument is an example of Hume's is/ought problem.

First we are told the 'is', how things are - in this case the 'natural' state of affairs. Then, without any explanation or justification, the 'is' becomes 'ought'. The natural state of affairs is how things ought to be - that which is natural is good.

But without an intermediate step this is a non-sequitur.

Of course, one might claim "the natural state of affairs is good" as a priori knowledge or choose to take it as a maxim, but then we're back to Tom's observation that everything is natural.

In fact the natural good/artificial bad argument gets introduced in an attempt to sort out inconsistencies in the "killing zygotic cells is murder" argument.

You guys are tripping on the usage of the term "natural" which you apparently cannot discern from the context contained herein to mean "in the normal course of things absent intentional interference. "


You will allow the killing of a creature, that in the normal course of events absent interference, would be able to talk to you.

After killing, it is easy to say it was "nothing", but had you not interfered, it would be apparent to anyone that but for your tampering, it would have been a person.

Short sighted and dumb is no way to go through life son.

For diogenes, the fertilisation of an ova by a sperm (naturally) marks the start of a new life, any interference with this, or denial of the blastocyst the correct environment to thrive, counts as murder.

It counts as responsibility for the death of a person. "Murder" is defined as the Unlawful killing of another human being. Back during the days of slavery, Slaves could be killed on their master's whim, and it wasn't called "murder."

It is a legal quibble as to whether or not the killing of a human being constitutes murder or not. As you can see, sometimes the law is ambivalent about it, as in the case of Abortion or Slavery.

It is not entirely clear whether he accords artificially fertilised ovas with the rights: but if not, logically, he would reckon anyone born of IVF to be killable without moral qualms. So I guess IVF is OK. But then it becomes unclear exactly how much "artificial" intervention is required before it is no longer a natural process and interference with it becomes murder.

Rather than continue to hammer on the definition of murder, I would say you could save yourself a lot of confusion in understanding my perspective if you would just apply your thinking to a chicken egg. Consider the Chicken egg as my philosophical stand in for a human, and apply all your questions to the chicken egg.

At what point does the contents of that egg radically change in such a way that one stage constitutes nothing, while the next stage constitutes the protected stage? (Yes, I know it's silly, but you people apparently need visual aids to understand the obvious.)

That is the problem - as we get better at molecular genetics we can in principle make artificial life, the results (and the DNA) of which will be indistinguishable from natural humans. How do we treat these people? Like IVF children (ie the same as everyone else)?

I think the whole natural/artificial thing is a red herring. Diogenes perhaps wants to say that formation of a zygote capable of growing into a human, however it is done, marks the start of priviliged life. Zygotes and blastocysts have human rights. Pre-zygotic cells do not, and so interfering with anything before a zygote is formed is Ok, and also it does not matter how a zygote is formed. But once you have a working zygote it counts as human.

See, now was that so hard? Yes, you've got it. Once the program is loaded and run, it is then an individual entity, notwithstanding the fact that it relies on another to supply it with material.

Thinking in this way, God arranges for 25% of humans to die naturally within a few weeks of conception.

Defective program. Nobody's fault.

Coil contraception is murder.

Killing of a human being. Legal systems allow the killing of human beings without calling it "murder." See previous commentary on slavery and abortion, and add to that war or law enforcement casualties.

Tying off fallopian tubes means likely mass murder.

And you were doing so well up till that point. How is preventing the creation of something which does not already exist, murder?

the 1 day after pill is murder. Removing the ovaries however is never murder, and there is no restriction on experimentation with eggs as long as they are not fertilised.

Not "murder", as it is legal, unless of course the woman says she wanted it, then it is "murder." But you got the second part right. Funny how you missed the fallopian tube comment completely.

Fertilising eggs is not itself bad, but the resulting human must be treated properly. Possibly fertilising eggs in the knowledge that the result cannot properly be treated is murder.

Killing of a human being currently allowed by law.

In that case a women who cannot not conceive due to a genetic problem with the implantation process is potentially committing manslaughter whenever she has unprotected sex. If she persists in unprotected sex however she is comitting murder.

Accidental homicide.

What about a woman told that she can conceive, but that implnatation fails 80% of the time so it will be difficult. Is she morally entitled to try for children? For every living birth there will be 5 blastocyst murders.

You certainly like to use the term "murder". I suppose you must consider it deliciously wicked or something. Did you not get my post about mens rea?

Many people unknowingly committed fratricide in the womb because shortly after one blastocyst implants it stops others from doing so (like coil contraception). Since even unimplanted zygotes are human, and multiple eggs can be fertlised, this is fratricide. (Actually I don't know if this is true - but it could well be!).

Morally I find all this difficult, but then since I don't accord blastocysts with human rights I don't have this problem.

Your problem seems to be one of precision and definitions. You attempt reductio ad absurdum, but your efforts fall short because you are arguing from a distorted premise of understanding.

I point out the obvious. I see little evidence of a clear line defining one condition from another. As you are the advocate of the clear line, it is your responsibility to demonstrate it's existence and how it might be discerned.

You can simply proclaim that you "don't have this problem" but that is simply ignoring the logical fallacy of the position you hold. I think that were we discussing physics, your position would be categorized as "hand waving."

[Diogenes]

Diogenese wants moral choices to be simple. Murder of humans / not murder.

My point, made rather elaborately above, is that we never have this simplicity. You cannot make these binary distinctions without ending up with ludicrous results one way or another.

I would say the shoe is on the other foot. You want things to be simple. When something is a nuisance, you want to define it differently. (so as to justify abating the nuisance.)

I recognize a consistency of definition from start to finish, you have a magical and subjective point at which you regard it as first one thing, then something else. (And you characterize *MY* position as ludicrous. )

I, at least, am not offering magic numbers based on whim or convenience. I refer to this as "objectivity."

[Diogenes]

You cannot make these binary distinctions without ending up with ludicrous results one way or another.

Oh, I quite agree - not that such a reasoned argument is likely to persuade Diogenes.

But then his hyperbolic, logically fallacious, scatter-gun arguments aren't likely to change minds either (as if that's ever been his motivation here).

I have long given up hope of changing minds. It has been my observation that people will believe what they want once their minds are made up, regardless of the facts. I have the pair of you as prime examples of the point.

Neither of you can provide any SCIENTIFIC reason why the first third of a creatures life ought to be the dividing line between killing it and protecting it.

No, my purpose is to demonstrate to open minds how silly are the opposition arguments, and also to produce a "gun shy" effect on proponents of evil rationalization. That you cannot see the silliness of your own arguments is because you are too deeply wedded to them.

Evolution favors my side. That alone should be clue enough for the scientifically minded, but bad memes die hard sometimes.

[Diogenes]

The point is that the steps taken by your government in the 20th century i.e. the gradual systematic banning of firearms and practically speaking self defense have not helped the British people in fact they have made things worse. All you are saying is well your homicide rate is still much lower than the US so there. They were lower before your gov did anything, the point is that the things they have tried has only made things worse for you not better.

I never like proof by asertion. Do you have evidence to back up this idea? Like historic homicide rates in UK? Noting also problems caused by lack of reporting a long time ago?

Did I mention that the homicide rate is four times higher in the US than here in the UK?

Last time I read up on this (~20 years ago), the murder in the UK was reported to be 1/10th that in the US. However, that held true across ALL murder methods, poison, knives, hands and feet, etc. Which, if you tried to use the data to prove that there were many fewer murders per capita because there were many fewer guns per capita, it would also necessitate that the UK was a land of quadra-plegics (many fewer hands and feet per capita).

Oh, by the way, CKay's quote shouldn't be used as eveidence that the murder rate in the UK has gone up since it is well known that the rate in the US has gone way down. (Two factors mainly; loosening of gun restrictions and aging of the population.)

Another factor which never seems to be recognized is the consequence of the Lyndon Johnson Presidency, and the expansion of the Welfare state. A trillion dollars was spent making sure that women didn't need husbands to help them raise their children and all those fatherless bastards ended up behaving in exactly the manner that any reasonable person would have predicted.

Government policy which discouraged the creation of normal stable families resulted in the creation of millions of "Urban Jungle" inhabitants with a "Lord of the flies" understanding of morality.

To sum it up, many murders of today are the result of stupid Democrats polices in the past.

Here is a bit of common sense from the other side of the pond. Too bad some of it hasn't rubbed off on a couple of inhabitants there.

http://nightjackarchive.blogspot.com/20 ... -poor.html

[Diogenes]

@tomclarke: I normally don't like to get involved here, but let me just point out that live human -> dead human is not necessarily morally equivalent to no human -> live human -> dead human, particularly if the second step is unintended/uncertain...

Leaving now; 109% thrust in 3... 2...

Exactly the point I made, albeit not so succinctly.

[Diogenes]

And your Trayvon Martin comment/reaction-bait just proves what a truly nasty troll you are ("nuts" really is far too polite a term). Rolling Eyes

Picture of George Zimmerman's head after the incident in question.


http://abcnews.go.com/images/US/ht_geor ... _wmain.jpg

[Diogenes]

Um, the murder rate in the US is only ... only ... four times higher than in the UK? Thats not too shabby considering we have about five times the population.

Haha.... priceless!

Please keep the comedy coming everyone.

Actually I think he's playing the Bud Abbot to your Lou Costello.


Linear thinking would argue the percentage should remain the same with population size, but studies have indicated that overcrowding produces a disproportionate response, i.e. non-linear.

[Diogenes]

Diogenes.

I don't know if you've ever reflected much on statistics, and what they mean.

The highest correlation with all crime is income: low income => more crime. So given US demographics (blacks are poorer) I would need to look really closely at the figures to determine what is the real racial correlation when other factors are controlled.

I can't find the relative black/white murder rates in this country. So, since you appear obsessed with racial difference, how about comparing US african american rates with Botswana African rates? The latter is 11.9/100,000 comparing with US - what was your figure again? a lot higher!

It is all tied together. (Remember, there ARE no boundaries, just perceptions of boundaries.)


The social polices of the Johnson Administration had adversely affected blacks in this nation disproportionately with all other races. This effect was noticed during the 1960s when it first started occurring, by Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Poverty (caused by lack of opportunities ostensibly due to racism) may have been the reason so many blacks were originally snared by these programs, but it is the consequences of these governmental polices that created the lack of Decent male role models in the family households.

The public dole allowed women to engage in reckless sex and as a result produce copious quantities of unwanted children. Margret Sanger's Eugenics inspired abortion clinics were illegal at this time. (Planned Un-Parenthood.)

As a result, immense numbers of children were reared by more permissive mothers without their passions being tempered by an active adult male role model.

It is no mystery that they turned to crime, drugs, and killing to substitute as a result of their lack of discipline.

England is following the same course, and is slowly achieving the same result, albeit with mostly poor whites.


My point is, the crime statistics you cite for America are not representative of areas which did not succumb to the stupid democrat polices of the 1960s. Unfortunately, the crime ridden Cities and Ghettos are the fruit of those policies.

[Teahive]

As I have mentioned, Egg laying certainly clarifies the distinction between one creature and another.

It creates a distinction, but that distinction does not by itself create a moral obligation of the mother (or any other creature) to care for the egg. That's a separate issue.

One of my long standing laments (on this forum and elsewhere) is that people imagine boundaries where none in fact exist. You are trying to create an artificial boundary between a mother's consent to create a child and a mother's consent to care for a child.

The one is implicit of the other. In nature, they are the same thing. Creatures that do not follow this natural instinct are eliminated by the process of evolution. Survival dictates morality, and by objective standards, as that conduct of behavior which survival necessitates, abandoning offspring is immoral. The issues are not separate, they are exactly the same thing.

You are mistaken. I'm describing a boundary that exists in reality. In nature, survival sometimes dictates that offspring has to be abandoned to wait for better conditions.

The survival of a species does not depend on all offspring surviving, nor on all members having offspring. The human race is hardly at risk of dying out. As to survival of an individual's genes, that's up to the individual. Having no children is not immoral.

And having an abortion doesn't mean having no children, either.

The argument that we are all part of the Universe, and that anything we do is therefore "natural" is a justification for Stalin, Hitler and Mao. There is a bigger picture, and every piece fits into it. The actual positions of those defending the practice are not based on any real concern for accuracy or scientific method, they are simply rationalizations of self-indulgent behavior. I will argue that evolution will decide the abortion question and I have little doubt as to how it is going to eventually come out.

Natural (as opposed to artificial) does not mean justified, so where does a justification come from?

It is a philosophical point. All I do is point out that one behavior is no different from another behavior, and if we accept the premise that the first behavior is okay, then we cannot condemn the second behavior either.

It is a method of demonstrating that one is engaging in false reasoning. In logical terms, if "A"="B", and " B"="C", then "A" must also equal "C."

And I point out that you use the false equivalence of "natural" = "okay". Whether something is natural is not a moral judgement.

I also have little doubt as to the outcome - tampering will prevail as it outpaces natural evolution.

And you presume to think that natural evolution will have no retort? Well, the people who built the Titanic thought it was unsinkable. Hubris seems to be a characteristic of people who think they are too smart to miss something.

Despite failures, building ships has turned out to be vastly more successful for crossing the Atlantic than waiting for evolution to give us gills or wings. I'm not presuming human design to be infallible. Just slightly better than random mutation with incredibly long cycles.

The issue here is causality. If you don't do anything, you have no responsibility for the consequences.

If a mother doesn't do anything, the child dies.

[CKay]

The Naturalistic Fallacy

[CKay]

Hubris seems to be a characteristic of people who think they are too smart to miss something.

Projection bias:

"a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people"

[tomclarke]

I point out the obvious. I see little evidence of a clear line defining one condition from another. As you are the advocate of the clear line, it is your responsibility to demonstrate it's existence and how it might be discerned.

I can't understand your position here. Your "zygotes are human" position is because you can't find a clear dividing line other than zygot/pre-zygote.

You adopt this because you don't allow the reasonable position that there is a continuous progression from not-human to human. Thus, most people think that aborting a 1 month foetus is much less harmful to mother, and less morally objectionable, than aborting a 5 month old foetus.

You further misunderstand me: I have been arguing consistently against clear dividing lines. But I don't have your cognitive inability to imagine shades of grey. All courts do this, if allowed by legal system, even in cases of murder.

[KitemanSA]

A question to the "zygotes are human" crowd:

If a woman has sex and it happens that there is a joining of gametes, and that evening the woman drinks... marigold tea (or whatever she knew that ancient method was) and the zygote fails to implant. Is she guilty of murder?

[Skipjack]

People like Diogenes think in black and white. They do not understand that the real world does not work that way. They live in some fantasy reality that only exists on TV. In my experience the world is a variation of shades of dark grey, I have not seen any white anywhere, other than in babies and even that is sometimes debatable.