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Showing posts from May 19, 2019

What Do You Really Want?: Abortion Reflections, Continued

We must ask, "What is an abortion?" The reason we have to do this is because the nature of any action determines the licit range of solutions or responses to it. In general, if an action is by its nature immoral, (that is, intrinsically evil) then it falls to every person to oppose it, to understand why it is evil and to show others the truth about it. This means of course that intention or circumstances might change the culpability of a person who participates in the evil act, but an intrinsically evil act can never become a good act, no matter what good is intended from it, or what difficulties surround the commission of the act. Therefore, I propose this definition: "An abortion is the deliberate taking of the life of a human person at some stage of development before birth." Consider also this definition: "Murder is the deliberate, unjustified killing of an innocent human person." The definition of "murder" rules out self-defense, justified

"If Pro-Lifers Really Wanted To Lower Abortions..."

Let me stop you right there, because I do. You don't have to wonder, or speculate. So you can stop the ad hominem. If we are discussing the deaths of vulnerable people for dubious reasons, I have no other motive, but to make it stop. It's a tactic, you know. It's not really a discussion about the prudent way to solve the problem. Hundreds of thousands of children potentially died yesterday, and the person I'm talking to doesn't favor any restrictions on this practice at all. I'm not the one who feels guilty, and we both ought to know it. But if this person can make you feel like any sort of ethically flawed person, they'll do it. They're participating in a genocide; I don't think who I may have voted for in the last few elections compares with that. But in case it comes up, I didn't vote for Trump, and I can't in the future. I find him so appallingly unqualified to be president that doing anything other than not participating in that decisi

Notes For The Dense, I Guess

Some secularists are constantly worried about Christians, and other religious believers, calling down a Dark Cloud of Theocracy over everything. I've seen this for a solid 25 years. It hasn't happened. In fact, it's only some poor beleaguered nuns and other unfortunates in court, fighting not to be told how to live, by the government. At the risk of being glib, I'll say this: Revealed religion doesn't tell you that killing a child in the womb is wrong; revealed religion tells you that you will burn in an unending torrent of flames, for eternity, for disregarding that dictate of conscience. If you wish to ignore the frame story of death and judgment, be my guest. We're still accountable to reality, even if it were safe to ignore what God had purportedly revealed. Which is to say, a great many people are engaged in reality-denial, and somehow need to blame the Jesus people for their troubled consciences. After all, if everything about abortion were perfectly a

"Control Is An Illusion, You Infantile Egomaniac!"

One of the great quotes in any Tom Cruise movie, spoken by Nicole Kidman, trying to convince his character that driving 200 MPH in circles with 42 other infantile egomaniacs isn't maybe the safest career choice. Man, I love Tom Cruise. I just do. Anyway, they say we want to control women's bodies. In fact, we argue that a woman is rational enough to control her own body, up to the moment where she becomes a parent. I don't know why this is so hard for people. Well, I do know why. A disordered sexuality leads people to do almost anything in service to it, including murder. "Uncle Tony" is right this time.