Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
While I‘ve been trying to take a break from all politics and news as I bask in the glow of my family staying with me this week, I’ve nonetheless been fascinated by the fall of Egyptian President Morsi, in what must be described as a military coup. I’ve never been a fan of coups as I expect is true of most of us, yet the fall of Morsi has raises issues that I think are far more nuanced than appear on the surface. The salient facts are that after too many years the corruption of the government of Hosni Mubarak (who had been installed by the Egyptian military) led to severe economic issues and dissatisfaction with totalitarian rule. This then led to such massive protest that the military felt compelled, or justified to remove him. Mubarak’s removal was cheered, but then the clamor for free elections arose and after 18 months of martial law elections were held, as the first step towards transitioning to democracy and formulating a constitution.
The Society of Muslim Brothers, or Muslim Brotherhood was:“Founded in Egypt in 1928as a Pan-Islamic, religious, political, and social movement by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna,” It’s stated purposes was to: “to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the “sole reference point for …ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood In a country such as Egypt, with its’ long history of totalitarian rule, the concept of political parties was not strong. Through its 85 years history the Brotherhood became the most stable opposition faction in the Egyptian political scene and was the main focus for opposition to whoever ruled Egypt by dint of the Egyptian Military’s backing. Such has been the success of the Muslim Brotherhood that it has branched out to have a significant presence in 20 nations around the world, many without a Muslim majority, such as the Russian Federation, the Indian Subcontinent, Great Britain and the United States. Therefore when the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 took place, the now legal “Brotherhood” was in an excellent position to vie for political power and formed the “Freedom and Justice Party” as its electoral arm. It won more than 40% of the parliamentary seats and its candidate Mohamed Morsi won election as President with 51.73% of the vote. His chief opponent had been a man who served as Mubarak’s Prime Minister. The Egyptian voters were faced, I think, with a “Hobson’s Choice” of Presidential candidates and chose what they perceived to be the lesser of two evils. Sound familiar? What I will attempt to examine here is a question which is framed as: “Are Religious Fundamentalists capable participating in a pluralistic democratic society?”The stated objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood through its’ “Freedom and Justice Party” politically were certainly ones that few of us could complain about and perhaps soothed the secular voters of Egypt and its non-Muslim Egyptians.
“We believe that the political reform is the true and natural gateway for all other kinds of reform. We have announced our acceptance of democracy that acknowledges political pluralism, the peaceful rotation of power and the fact that the nation is the source of all powers. As we see it, political reform includes the termination of the state of emergency, restoring public freedoms, including the right to establish political parties, whatever their tendencies may be, and the freedom of the press, freedom of criticism and thought, freedom of peaceful demonstrations, freedom of assembly, etc. It also includes the dismantling of all exceptional courts and the annulment of all exceptional laws, establishing the independence of the judiciary, enabling the judiciary to fully and truly supervise general elections so as to ensure that they authentically express people’s will, removing all obstacles restricting the functioning of civil society organizations,etc”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood
However, that statement is belied by the following objectives openly acknowledged by the Brotherhood:
“In the group’s belief, the Quran and Sunnah constitute a perfect way of life and social and political organization that God has set out for man. Islamic governments must be based on this system and eventually unified in a Caliphate. The Muslim Brotherhood’s goal, as stated by Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna was to reclaim Islam’s manifest destiny, an empire, stretching from Spain to Indonesia.[21] It preaches that Islam enjoins man to strive for social justice, the eradication of poverty and corruption, and political freedom to the extent allowed by the laws of Islam. The Brotherhood strongly opposes Western colonialism, and helped overthrow the pro-western monarchies in Egypt and other Muslim countries during the early 20th century.
On the issue of women and gender the Muslim Brotherhood interprets Islam conservatively. Its founder called for “a campaign against ostentation in dress and loose behavior”, “segregation of male and female students”, a separate curriculum for girls, and “the prohibition of dancing and other such pastimes … “
“The Brotherhood’s stated goal is to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the “sole reference point for …ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state.”
“The Brotherhood’s credo was and is, “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”
This is then the dichotomy of beliefs that the Brotherhood’s political party presented to the Egyptian voter. On the one hand it had denounced violence and agreed to work within the framework of a democratic political process. Yet its’ core beliefs are that (at least within predominantly Islamic countries) they should be ruled by the beliefs of Islamic law and justice in accordance with their interpretation of the “Qur’an” which they believe is perfect. Part of the task of the Morsi government was to create and implement a Constitution for Egypt. It was also promised that his government would include all factions of Egyptian society including the large group of Egyptian Coptic Christians. What occurred though was that Morsi only brought in Brotherhood political allies into the various Ministries of government and created a Constitution that was decidedly Islamic in content. Egypt, which was one of the most enlightened countries in the Mid East in the treatment of women, was being pushed into a far more fundamentalist outlook. This decidedly religious obsession of the Morsi government failed to pay attention to improving Egypt’s collapsing economy, growing poverty and the social unrest that goes with those conditions. Rapes of women increased in alarming increments and crime soared as people sought the wherewithal to feed their families. Cairo, that great and venerable city, increased to a population to more than twenty teeming millions the majority living in horrendous slums. City services in Egypt’s capitol collapsed under the weight of those numbers. The elation of the 2011 Revolution led inexorably to the despair of 2013 as millions of Egyptians, many with nothing to lose took to the streets and gave the Egyptian Military the tacit permission to remove Morsi and arrest the top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is not my intent to paint the Muslim Brotherhood as evil, nor is it to give a litany of their history of violence and terrorism. Such a view is in my opinion one sided and ignores the reality that led to the Brotherhood’s creation and to its success in surviving for 85 years in a hostile Egyptian climate. Historically, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Mid East has been an area controlled by wealth and Western imperial power. While wealthy rulers lived in luxury, the middle classes were relatively small and the masses lived in abject poverty. No doubt from the perspective of the Brotherhood’s founders they were mandated by their beliefs to aid their brother Muslims and to return them to the “perfection” of Islamic Law. Intermingled with those beliefs was the memory of Islamic empire and the determination to return to its’ glory. However, noble their motives may have been and are, within their beliefs is this inherent problem. If you see that everything you believe is “perfect” and mandated by God, then the idea of compromising those beliefs is blasphemy and sacrilege. How indeed can you live in a pluralistic society, when those who reject your beliefs, are by your definition “evil” and “sinful”?
There are two thoughts that arose in my mind and caused me to write this piece. The first is that the entire concept of “Democracy” has been deconstructed through the years by ours and other governments to mean the ability to vote and little else. How often throughout the world have we seen dictatorships legitimized simply because elections were held? A democratic government needs to be supported by democratic institutions and the agreement of its citizens to abide by the results of the electoral processes. Beyond that it needs an overall conceptual structure that provides the framework for the existence of a government that will protect the rights of all the people, not just the ever changing majority. It requires a legal system and a judiciary that protects its conceptual framework (constitution) and with it the rights of the individual. It’s of course more complicated than that, but if you’re a regular visitor here I’m sure you get my meaning and could on your own flesh it out beyond my brief offering. The point is that when the world saw the welcomed upheaval of the “Arab Spring” it had been conditioned by years of propaganda that made simply holding a vote appear to be the acme of a democratic process. There is much more to developing a democratic society than simply voting for a “leader” and the election of Morsi, given his subsequent actions, did not a democratic Egypt make. This leads me to my second thought on this subject.
I seriously wonder whether it is possible for Fundamentalist religionists to actually be able to take power in a democratic society and wield it in a way that allows people of differing beliefs their freedom to have those differing beliefs? When you have a belief system that you not only see as “perfect”, but as the road-map for a perfect society, how can you make the compromises that are necessary to maintain a pluralistic, democratic society? From the perspective of the Muslim Brotherhood, indeed it is their stated goal; you can only build a “perfect” society based on Islamic law and justice. In this respect they are not really very different from other Fundamentalist true believers that see “their way” as the only way towards true righteousness.
When we apply this to America the abortion debate comes to mind. There is no doubt that the majority of Americans do not believe that women should be denied the right to choose what they do with their own bodies, yet in the years since Roe v. Wade this has been one of the flashpoints of the American political scene. The only conceivable, immutable ending for those anti-abortionists to this national controversy, is the complete end of abortions. Compromise of positions can only be temporary and must include small gains for their side. If and when those opposed to abortion finally gain power they will not hesitate to end it completely, regardless of the equity of the situation and a sizable opposition to their actions. I use abortion though as merely an illustration of this problem. There are many other areas, prayer in schools for instance, where the same dynamic would apply. The problems is that when someone sees their views not only as perfect, but also as the only way to live, compromise becomes ugly and unacceptable.
My contention is that without the ability of people to compromise, maintaining democratic institutions becomes impossible. This is true whether in Cairo, or Washington. The nature of much of today’s religious fundamentalism, be it Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Judaic, is that compromise is impossible, because one cannot compromise “God’s Word”. If you are a true believer than that is an obvious fact of existence and you would cease to be a “true believer” without that philosophy. This brings me back to Morsi and Egypt. I hate the idea of military coups anywhere, but what was to be done in Egypt. There is strong evidence, that contrary to their platform, once in power those of the Muslim Brotherhood returned to their stated principles and were moving quickly to establish the version of Muslim Law upon Egypt, while at the same time denying equality of treatment to others. This fanaticism in the application of their beliefs distracted them with dealing with the economic and social problems that plagued most Egyptians and led inevitably to the Egyptian Military’s coup. I think this is a quandary that is at the heart of the difficulty of maintaining a democratic, pluralistic system in many countries, including ours. While is certainly is not the only difficulty, it ranks high on a list of contributors to political dysfunction. The question is what to do about it and the answer is quite difficult. The problem is that if you exclude religious fundamentalists from the political process due to their authoritarian views, then you no longer have a pluralistic society because of that exclusion. In a pluralistic society religious fundamentalists should also have a voice, or when do you stop excluding. Please help me out here because while I can frame the problem I admit that I don’t have the “perfect” answers.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
leejcarol: DavidM has the “bias bias” of most fundamentalists; if people do not agree with him, he preferentially presumes they have some bias that prevents them from seeing things his way.
Reading his words, he hints I must have some unrevealed agenda or secret that would explain (for him) my adamant defense of same-sex marriage; that my insistence upon rejecting God is emotional rather than rational, and that others are biased in their opinion too: In essence that in any argument HE is the only rational actor and all others are infected with secret agendas that prevent them from admitting he is right.
It is pathetic ego-protection. He can’t win the argument because logic, science and evidence are not on his side, so he instead resorts to ad hominem attacks that accuse his opponents of being biased, or blind to his phony “logic,” or arguing from a concealed self-serving opinion.
David you want this to be the way it is so you are unable to read it in any other way (more’s the shame). A debate requires at least some level of an open mind.
There is no question. The statement is unequivocable: It says that 78% want it to remain legal “at least under some circumstances.” Most pro-life people want to exempt cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is at stake. The poll said that only 25% want abortion completely legal regardless of circumstances.”
Therefore 78% are prochoice.
Some want limitations but that above statement is more true then your misrepresentation of: “Expressed another way, this poll shows that 74% of Americans want abortion illegal in certain circumstances” presenting it as anti-choice and what an anti-choice person states it so it represents their viewpoint.
You need to practice critical thinking. Those are your own words to GeneH. Is it that you are a Believer that you are not so doing? I doubt it, but for some reason if someone is an atheist then they cannot think critically by your own statements. (And I know you will then respond I misunderstood you and can’t comprehend your level of thought. But I am of Faith, so I must be able to follow your reasoning.
(I don’t mean to be snarky but your repeated devil’s fork thrown because of atheism is really beginning to gnaw on me.
leejcaroll wrote: ” It says that 78% want it to remain legal “at least under some circumstances.” Most pro-life people want to exempt cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is at stake. The poll said that only 25% want abortion completely legal regardless of circumstances.”
Therefore 78% are prochoice.”
Your conclusion is completely illogical. A pro-life person who wants abortion prohibited in all cases with exceptions for rape, incest, and when a mother’s life is in danger are part of that 78%. The Nov. 2005 data in the link Gene provided breaks down as follows:
26% – legal under any circumstances
16% – legal under most circumstances
39% – legal only in a few circumstances
===
81%
Illegal in all circumstances was 16% with 3% having no opinion.
Are you really going to argue that those 39% who want abortion legal only in a few circumstances are pro-choice?
The only thing this dialogue has demonstrated thus far is how effective liberal propaganda is in brainwashing the uneducated masses. Apparently the number of people who can think independently and look at the data for themselves is far less than I had previously expected.
O who is he who is so wise in the ways of science?
It’s Tony, King of the Britons.
DavidM: I do not argue that Gene has made a mistake, because my interpretation is that he is responding to your loaded meanings of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” which is wrong; your statements are written to suggest “pro-life” means the only exceptions are incest, rape, and the mother’s life being in danger.
I wrote to correct that false impression, whether in your mind or in the mind of readers that believe your interpretation of the poll.
In fact, for 87% of people (not just 78%), choice rules for the first few weeks of pregnancy. 68% of people, when polled, would not overturn Roe-v-Wade; they believe in choice, and about 70% of people are pro-choice in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy.
Gene is roughly correct, most people do not believe the only exceptions are rape, incest, or the health of the mother; most people are not “pro-life” in the narrow sense that you suggest. A super-majority of people are “pro-choice” in the first three to four months, and after that, a super-majority remain pro-choice for reasons beyond the one’s you list: Such as severe physical deformity, genetic abnormalities, conditions that signal mild to severe retardation, conjoined twins, malformed placenta, and complications that produce increased (not necessarily severe) risk to the mother.
The reason I take you to task, and not Gene, is that your claims are misleading and reflect or produce a false picture of reality; while for Gene the difference between 68%, 70%, 78%, and 87% is not material, and Gene’s quote is in the middle. In scientific studies about polling such differences can be down to the choice of language used, or unintentional “priming” by previous questions (which the mind cannot help but use as context), or even the pollster’s voice, inflections, pauses and word stressing while reading the question (and when recorded those effects are no longer random but consistent).
Gene’s poll and writing reflect reality; your’s does not. I am not that pedantic; I am not going to waste time pointing out misspellings and nit-picking statements that are mostly right.
Instead, I choose to write to correct views that present a false picture of reality, whether that was done intentionally or not.
Tony C wrote: ” I do not argue that Gene has made a mistake, because my interpretation is that he is responding to your loaded meanings of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” which is wrong; your statements are written to suggest “pro-life” means the only exceptions are incest, rape, and the mother’s life being in danger.”
None of my statements suggest that “pro-life” means that the ONLY exceptions are incest, rape, and the mother’s life being in danger. These are just the most common exceptions identified by the pro-life agenda and I use them to convey that most people with the pro-life agenda, people who picket abortion clinics, are part of that 78% statistic. These are people who Gene H would clearly NOT consider to be pro-choice. I myself identify as pro-life, but I would accept additional exceptions beyond these mentioned in terms of legal prohibitions (but not for my own personal life). I would respond in an almost identical way to the way you would respond to these polls, except for the poll on whether I identify as pro-life or pro-choice.
Your manipulation of other data than being discussed to defend Gene H in an effort to create a smokescreen and avoid answering my question causes me to be more incredulous regarding your honesty in statistical analysis and our dialogue here.
Please answer this question for me with either Yes or No. Do YOU interpret the CNN statement (A full 78 percent of Americans want abortion to remain legal, at least under some circumstances, according to a new poll released by CNN/ORC; 25 percent want abortion completely legal, regardless of circumstances) to indicate that 78% of Americans are pro-choice? Yes or No?
DavidM: the country is pretty much split down the middle with the scales slightly tipped …
And slightly tipped in reverse some years ago; which supports the idea of (what your link says) is +/- 4% error.
In statistical polling, this kind of coin-flip result is often a result of a poorly phrased question in which the choices do not accurately capture the spectrum of opinion. If you ask me to choose between Democrats and Libertarian candidates, I cannot truthfully answer, but will check off Democrats. But the truth is for all judges, DAs, and other elective law enforcement offices I routinely vote Libertarian if that is an option and I believe the candidate is not corrupted.
I believe this pro-life, pro-choice falls into the same category. I am pro-choice for the first 4-5 months of pregnancy, because I do not think the fetus has developed the brain structures that would make it a person. It may appear human, but so does a mannequin, or a monkey fetus of equivalent development, or indeed the body of a brain dead patient being kept alive by machinery. To me person-hood is a brain-centered phenomenon and in early pregnancy aborting a fetus is not killing a person, it is killing a potential person — But so does a woman’s sexual abstinence that results in menstruation. She has the choice to abstain from sex, and she has the choice to abstain from continuing a pregnancy.
However, the brain structures I believe DO signal person-hood are maturing and coming online by the fifth month, a fetus is in transition to an unborn person, so if development is normal I become exponentially more opposed to arbitrary abortion, because now a mixture of rights is at stake; I do not believe a mother should be required to take an abnormal risk of continuing pregnancy, but I also do not believe the person in the womb has no rights at all.
So am I pro-life or pro-choice? In reality both, so I fall on the side of pro-choice because of the loading of the word, not because of the definition of it.
Consider this Poll on Plan B, aka “the morning after pill.”
Only 13% of people would actually BAN Plan B altogether, another 20% would make it a prescription drug (which leaves the decision up to the discretion of a doctor).
That indicates 87% of those polled believe this is a woman’s choice, or a private choice between the woman and a doctor (for whom she can shop, which in most circumstances will effectively make it the women’s choice).
For 87% “some circumstances” go beyond rape, incest, or mother’s health, they include the circumstance that the intervention occurs very early in the pregnancy.
In this poll 68% of Americans believed that first trimester abortions should be the woman’s choice (and medical studies show that while pregnancy is not exactly high-risk anymore, first-trimester abortion are 14 times safer for a woman than continuing a pregnancy).
I quote those polls to show that the 50/50 split between pro-life and pro-choice to which you refer effectively disappears when questions become more specific, using words with greater accuracy and less loading (political party correlations or connotations).
When we get more specific, most Americans believe as I do. Probably not for the same rational reasons; since in my experience their articulated reasons differ from mine. But in this case I think the statistically significant majority gets it right; whether they heads or tails on the coin flip, their underlying belief on abortion is that very early in the pregnancy abortion is the woman’s choice, and as the pregnancy progresses into the second and third trimester that choice diminishes, requiring medical concurrence or severe deformity or a life-or-death for the mother or something highly unusual to warrant abortion, because the fetus has matured into an unborn person with rights.
Tony C wrote: “When we get more specific, most Americans believe as I do.”
I do not see any significant difference between the number who identify as pro-life versus pro-choice. This means the country is pretty much split based upon these types of polls. Is there a problem with these polls and have you identified some of them? Yes. I could have easily made the exact same arguments you did.
Be honest with me on this one point. Do you agree with Gene H’s statement that “78% of Americans have indicated they are pro-choice”?
My perspective is that he has misinterpreted statistics to draw an erroneous conclusion. Why have you not brought him to task on this? Why do you continue to try and paint my statements in a negative light but ignore this glaring mistake by Gene H? And furthermore, when it has been established clearly that Gene H was wrong and he continues to parrot this foolishness, why have you not either questioned whether he is knowingly lying or somehow too stupid to understand the arguments put before him? I do not find Gene H to be stupid, so he must be lying. You are intelligent enough to judge this single issue between Gene H and me. Why have you decided to ignore the lie and create a smokescreen that might make Gene H comfortable maintaining his conviction about the CNN poll indicating that 78% of Americans are pro-choice?
As I have stated previously, I think it is your atheistic paradigm coupled with your own bias and prejudice that causes you to behave in this questionably dishonest way. I could be wrong and I am open to hearing your rational explanation concerning Gene’s representation of the 78% statistic. To ignore the issue only causes me to further question your ability to judge matters objectively and impartially. It impinges upon my consideration of other statements you make in matters more open to interpretation and speculation.
Oh, and where are those other arguments you don’t want to present?
While you’re at it, answer the question. What is your position:
Pro-choice or “anti-choice”?
And you failed miserably, David.
You didn’t address jacksquat about the statistics provided. You just rambled on about biology some more and then proceeded to ignore the information. But calling me a liar for relaying valid accurate information you willfully choose to disbelieve is a nice touch. That’s not how you disprove a statistical assertion at all, but it is a way to annoy people. Thanks for being consistent.
Here’s a direct link to the poll itself. The relevant questions and data are on page 4. The methodology is standard for a survey of this type and the MOE is +/- 3% (which in turn shows 78% to be statistically significant if you know how to properly interpret statistics – which apparently you have a problem with).
You’re going to have to do better than calling me (and CNN) liars.
Gene H wrote: “You didn’t address jacksquat about the statistics provided. You just rambled on about biology some more and then proceeded to ignore the information.”
Here is the quote from the CNN poll, which was obviously worded in a way to deceive people who are uninformed and do not practice critical thinking:
Cnn wrote: “A full 78 percent of Americans want abortion to remain legal, at least under some circumstances, according to a new poll released by CNN/ORC; 25 percent want abortion completely legal, regardless of circumstances.”
Direct quote follows of what I said:
“As for the abortion issue you raise, you need to read that link you provided more carefully. It says that 78% want it to remain legal “at least under some circumstances.” Most pro-life people want to exempt cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is at stake. The poll said that only 25% want abortion completely legal regardless of circumstances.”
You need to practice critical thinking with the media and read between the lines at times. This only works when they report honestly. Sometimes they actually do lie, as when NBC edited the Zimmerman call to police to present him as someone who was racist. They took out the dispatcher’s question of race and made it appear that Zimmerman was bothered by his suspect being black and was targeting him because of that. In this CNN case, they did not lie, but they presented the information in a deceptive way.
Most people agree that there needs to be some kind of government regulation of abortion. According to this poll you quote from, there are only 25% who think abortion should be legal in all circumstances, and only 21% think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. Expressed another way, this poll shows that 74% of Americans want abortion illegal in certain circumstances (1% had no opinion).
In regards to whether people identify as pro-life or pro-choice, the country is pretty much split down the middle with the scales slightly tipped toward more people identifying themselves as pro-life rather than pro-choice.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/154838/pro-choice-americans-record-low.aspx
DavidM:
dont you have to look by gestation time? Most people probably are pro-choice in the first trimester but then I would guess it falls off and by the time you are talking partial birth abortion it probably falls of to a very small percentage.
“I have both biological and religious theological arguments for this philosophy that I am not going to get into right now.”
Why not? Think they’ll be demolished like your other arguments?
“However, such should give you pause not to stereotype me into that nice little box of yours which makes me an evil religious man trying to outlaw abortion. Such is far from reality.”
Did I call you evil? No. That’s a word reserved for special people. Dick Cheney is evil. You’re just annoying.
So are you saying now that you are pro-choice? There really are only two sides to the legal question: either you think a woman should be able to have an abortion legally as her choice in determining her healthcare as a basic right of self-determination and privacy or you don’t. It’s not a false dilemma. Those really are the only two choices although there are gradients within the reasoning between those two answers. So which is it?
Pro-choice or “anti-choice”?
So far you’ve been demonstrably anti-choice even though I do applaud your condemnation of the violent fringe elements of the “anti-abortion” crowd. An evil person would embrace the idea of killing doctors.
DavidM: However, I did not make a single argument that they expected, so they never used one of them. The president of the group expressed amazement at how the debate went. They found my reasoning interesting and thought provoking.
Hard to believe, I thought UF was better than that; certainly my atheist group is better than that. Your “reasoning” is banal and trivially exposed as riddled with fatal flaws. I suspect the “amazement” was at the extent of your delusion, and I suspect the reason they never used any of their books is because you never made a decent argument that required them to leave long familiar territory, and you mistook polite civility for in inability to respond.
Of course it doesn’t surprise me in the least you saw things as you wanted them to be instead of how they actually were; that is what theism is all about.
davidm2575:
I’m so sorry to hear about your close encounter with the enraged atheist. Clearly, without the soporific effect of the opium of the people to restrain his baser instincts, he was simply out of control. As we all know, atheists pretend to be rational, logical beings, but at their core, they are ravening beasts, ready to pounce on the faithful at any opportunity.
This was clearly not justified under the facts as you describe them. On the other hand, I’ve always felt that if half the people in a room agree that someone who has assaulted me was justified in doing so, I might want to brush up on my public relations skills. Did you ever consider that there might be something about you that just pisses people off?
You know…. I was listening to a radio station yesterday…that was talking about the evils of polyamory relationships…. And how eventually they will target children living in the homes….. And these relationships must be destroyed….. And they went on to talk about how evil homosexual are and the deviancy of those relationships…… David, can people really be that stupid…… Or do we all build towers to reach heaven….. What do you think…. Can that be done?
Tony C.,
No problem…
DavidM: Please, try to understand that I do not hate atheists. It is the philosophy of atheism that I find very detestable.
Sure. You find atheism very detestable, but claim you would convert to it in a heartbeat if only you had some “proof” of the impossibility of God. Of course all the science in the world would not convince you, because you will just deny it, because you know there is a deity because you believe in it!
I’m not sure if you are lying to yourself first or just to me, but I certainly know you are not being truthful; you are not open to being an atheist, ever.
Or to be more straight to the point, attempting to foist religious mores of a small but vocal minority group upon others who don’t share their particular religious views is an attempt to usurp process in which 78% of Americans have indicated they are pro-choice. 78% is a number that is statistically significant and a wide margin over a simple majority.
Reminds me of that old saying about urination and wind direction.
Gene H wrote: “78% of Americans have indicated they are pro-choice. 78% is a number that is statistically significant and a wide margin over a simple majority.”
Please try to stay in reality. I’ve already addressed the link to this statistic for which you try and make this false statement. The 78% includes a lot of pro-choice people like George Bush. The fact that you continue to lie and falsely claim that 78% of Americans are pro-choice makes dialogue with you impossible.
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/07/05/morsi-democracy-and-problem-with-fundamentalist-politics/#comment-604581
“An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).
Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?”
“Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a “right to life.” A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable. . . . Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives. The task of raising a child is a tremendous, lifelong responsibility, which no one should undertake unwittingly or unwillingly. Procreation is not a duty: human beings are not stock-farm animals. For conscientious persons, an unwanted pregnancy is a disaster; to oppose its termination is to advocate sacrifice, not for the sake of anyone’s benefit, but for the sake of misery qua misery, for the sake of forbidding happiness and fulfillment to living human beings.”
“I cannot project the degree of hatred required to make those women run around in crusades against abortion. Hatred is what they certainly project, not love for the embryos, which is a piece of nonsense no one could experience, but hatred, a virulent hatred for an unnamed object. Judging by the degree of those women’s intensity, I would say that it is an issue of self-esteem and that their fear is metaphysical. Their hatred is directed against human beings as such, against the mind, against reason, against ambition, against success, against love, against any value that brings happiness to human life. In compliance with the dishonesty that dominates today’s intellectual field, they call themselves “pro-life.”
By what right does anyone claim the power to dispose of the lives of others and to dictate their personal choices?”
That is Ayn Rand writing but she was a sociopath and mean evil bitch so abortion probably is wrong. She is wrong about everything else.
Does that mean that people who are pro-choice are sociopaths too?
Yeah, well loving the sinner and hating the sin sure isn’t stopping you from trying to force people to not have the option to sin legally and with proper medical care vis a vis abortions, David.
If you hate the sin so much?
Don’t get an abortion.
Because forcing women to seek unqualified and potentially unsafe underground abortions and thus risking their lives for your religious sensitivities sure as Hell sounds like hating the sinner.
Gene wrote: “sure isn’t stopping you from trying to force people to not have the option to sin legally and with proper medical care vis a vis abortions, David. … forcing women to seek unqualified and potentially unsafe underground abortions and thus risking their lives for your religious sensitivities sure as Hell sounds like hating the sinner.”
This is getting crazy. I really tire of having people misrepresent what I think about issues. Do you really think you are an authority of my position on abortion?
I have already said that I do not agree with the standard mantra of the pro-life movement that a human person exists at the moment of conception. I have both biological and religious theological arguments for this philosophy that I am not going to get into right now. However, such should give you pause not to stereotype me into that nice little box of yours which makes me an evil religious man trying to outlaw abortion. Such is far from reality.
I don’t know, Porkchop.
I kinda like the nice truthful ring of “anti-choice”.
davidm2575:
“When I referred to them as “pro-life,” the posts began coming in about how insensitive I was to their position, and how I was purposely calling them pro-life to insult them and win the argument using emotion instead of logic.”
This is among the more ridiculous things I have seen from you, and certainly, there have been plenty. Those opposed to abortion embrace the term “pro-life”. “Pro-life” was adopted by anti-abortion groups precisely because it appears to give them the moral high ground. (Much better than, say, “anti-choice”.) The opposite side is by necessity, then, “anti-life’ — and, therefore, evil.
Porkchop, I understand your incredulity. However, please understand that I am not making this up. Those who are aggrieved over the high rate of abortion in our country are not monolithic. Most believe in using the democratic process to change it. Such generally describe themselves as pro-life. Often they believe in exceptions for abortion, like in cases of rape, incest, and when the mother’s life is at risk. George Bush is a pro-lifer of this stripe.
Some individuals, however, believe in using force to stop the abortions being performed. They strategize about methods that range from putting super glue in the locks of the clinics where abortions are performed, to killing the doctors who are authorized to perform the abortions. Killing doctors who perform abortions is considered the most noble and magnanimous effort. These individuals do not want to be associated with the pro-life movement in any way. They describe the pro-life group as cowards and ineffective. It is like the way Osama Bin Laden described the Muslims who did not wage Jihad. Have you ever heard of the group, Army of God? These are the kind of people that I am talking about. They are offended if called pro-life. They insist on being called anti-abortionists. They want to be viewed as taking a militant stand against abortion. They view themselves to be at war with the doctors who perform abortions. Their perspective of the doctor is like one might view the Nazi doctors who did human experiments on people. They see them as an aggressor who for money will kill defenseless human beings, and they think it is their duty to protect the unborn from them. Those who have not yet killed often admit under debate that it is because they are cowards and afraid of being caught, but they consider the ones who have killed to be heroes and martyrs of their cause, who will receive great reward from God as ones who have sacrificed their lives for another.