On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 09:59:57 -0700,

patrick.bar...@standardregister.com wrote:

On Sep 19, 2:15 pm, Al Klein <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote:

On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:13:59 -0700,

patrick.bar...@standardregister.com wrote:

On Sep 19, 11:36 am, Al Klein <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote:

On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 05:40:03 -0700, Sound of Trumpet

In the Harris Poll, the death penalty came in with the most support of
any topic

Anti-choice but pro-death penalty is an incoherent position. People
holding it should be prohibited from voting, since they demonstrate an
inability to think.

Fetuses are not guilty of any crimes. Convicted criminals are.

Those aren't the arguments, though. Stop moving the goal posts.

Yes, they are the arguments.

Then abortion to save the mother's life shouldn't be allowed, even
though the fetus dies in either case. (Even if the mother dies, the
fetus isn't guilty of any crimes.)

Fetuses are human beings.

Since there's no coherent definition of "human being", that's an
incoherent statement. (The literal meaning of "incoherent".)

Human beings have a right to life.

Nowhere is that guaranteed.

Human beings who commit the most heinous of crimes forfeit that right to
life.

Totally irrelevant since, as you claim, the fetus hasn't committed ANY
crime.

Those are exactly the arguments.

Then your stance is inconsistent, unless you're willing to condemn
women to certain death if the pregnancy is killing them.

Next time, try making the argument you meant to make - the argument

you did make doesn't even need to be destroyed - it destroys itself.
If the reason abortion should be illegal is that the fetus didn't
commit a crime, then it holds REGARDLESS of the reason the fetus dies.

And while I personally do not agree
with them, they are certainly not evidence of any "inability to
think".

They are, if made by people who aren't completely against abortion
under any and all conditions - including spontaneous abortion caused
by action or inaction on the part of the mother (smoking, drinking,
not seeking prenatal care, etc.)

Most people support the death penalty only for people who are guilty of
heinous crimes.

It doesn't deter crime. It's more expensive than life imprisonment
(appeals are VERY costly to defend). It accomplishes nothing but to
fulfill a desire for revenge - which, as a Christian, you should be
against.

I am against the death penalty and against abortion. Neither one of
those stances has anything whatsoever to do with religion. I held
both opinions when I was an atheist long before I converted.

You never were an atheist, except when you were so young that you had
no concept of language.

How you feel about the death penalty is irrelevant to whether it is
possible to support it and still be said to be engaging in rational
thought.

If you oppose the death penalty on the grounds that it's wrong to kill
a human being, and you oppose abortion EXCEPT in certain circumstances
(and you hold that a fetus is a human bei9ng), you're demonstrating
an inability to think rationally, since the position IS irrational
(or, at least, incoherent).

You didn't say the death penalty was wrong. You said that
being anti-abortion and pro-capital punishment demonstrated an
inability to think. It does not.

Anyone who can think can see that being opposed to killing human
beings but not being opposed to killing human beings is an incoherent
position.

EVERYONE is anti-abortion. (Except maybe some government
functionaries in China.) The entire pro-choice abortion would prefer
that no abortion was ever needed.

Prefering that no abortion was needed is not being anti-abortion. I
would prefer there wasn't any war, but I am certainly not anti-
military.

You're pro-war, then. (That's your argument, so don't blame me for
it.)

(in what pro-life advocates say is a biased wording) while
only 39 percent supported "physician assisted suicide" (which is also
labeled as biased).

Since only ONE person is involved in assisted suicide, why should any
opinion but the one of the person wanting the assistance count?

Possibly because that person may be responsible for a number of
others. If dad kills himself and leaves mom and the kids with no
income, that's more than one person affected.

If Dad is incurably ill, he's not supporting them, he's draining the
family finances. That argument won't wash.

Sure it will, because if Dad had an income to begin with, he probably
has insurance and he's probably also getting disability.

You sure like moving the goal posts, don't you?

In any case,
if you remove the financial part of it the argument still applies as a
dead father isn't raising his children,

A father who is barely able to take his next breath (the condition
most people get to before actively seeking help in committing suicide)
isn't raising his children either.

and fatherlessness is one of
the primary factors in juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, pregnancy,
and other social ills.

Oh, please. If that were true, everyone over the age of about 50
would be a pregnant drug addict.

The fact that EVERY SINGLE drug addict drank milk as a kid DOESN'T
mean that drinking milk caused drug addiction. (The fact that most
juvenile delinquents grew up in single family homes doesn't mean that
fatherlessness is a CAUSE of juvenile delinquency. Confusing the
direction of causation is a particularly good sign of an inability to
think.)

What "therapy" can you get for an excruciating, debilitating
soon-to-be-fatal illness? That argument won't wash.

Those two arguments were about suicide in general and not specifically
about suicide by terminally ill people.

Assisted suicide has nothing to do with "suicide in general."

About the only one left is "Christianity considers it a sin" - and
that argument is totally incompetent outside Christianity.

Figures don't lie but liars sure spin figures.

Your choice to interpret them as deliberate spin does not make it so.

The fact that the numbers don't add up does make it spin.

No, it doesn't.

Yes it does.

What people believe is not absolute and what people
act on doesn't necessarily reflect their beliefs.

The definite conclusions drawn on non-definite data (and you've just
now said that polls represent non-definite data) *IS* spin.

answers which disagree with how other people think are not proof of spin.

Drawing definite conclusions on what even YOU claim is non-definite
data is one of the definitions of spin.

--
Al at Webdingers dot com
"They laughed at Newton, they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at
Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan- Hide quoted text -

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