DaveScot, defender of terrorism...as long as you do it one innocent at a time

Huh, that's interesting. We obviously both searched for examples and came up with completely different ones. That does suggest that Dave didn't do much in the way of research.

Also, the article you linked to has this quote from Emily Lyons to Eric Rudolph:

"The joint in my middle finger had to be fused, and it is indeed an injury I have longed to show you."

Now there is a woman who knows how to rip the shit out of a cowardly murderer. Respect!

Just a thought: say that, for whatever reason, you strongly feel that aborting embryos does in fact constitute murder*. What is an appropriate action to take?

* I, and probably most of the people reading this, don't accept the premise - it's just a hypothetical.

DaveScott seems to think the comments are about body counts and not the fundamentalist motivations that inspired the body counts. It does rather sound like he is justifying murder as long as it's done a person at a time (oh, and I thought ID had nothing to do with religion...).
Corkscrew - I don't think it's a matter of DaveScott doing research as much as it is a matter of him (or any of the UD folks) knowing how to research something before they write...

Say that, for whatever reason, you strongly feel that using antibacterial soap does in fact constitute murder.

Say that, for whatever reason, you strongly feel that eating broccoli does in fact constitute murder.

Say that, for whatever reason, you strongly feel that taking the Lord's name in vain does in fact constitute murder.

The question isn't what to do when someone does something you consider essential to stop...it's how you defend the position in question.

I thought theirs was the side that was supposed to be against moral relativism. I guess you learn something new every day.

Just a thought: say that, for whatever reason, you strongly feel that aborting embryos does in fact constitute murder*. What is an appropriate action to take?

And what if you thought that killing a deer was murder?

What about eating a chicken somebody else killed?

What about swatting a fly?

What if you thought somebody committed murder because you were hallucinating, or you dreamt it in the middle of the night?

What if the voices told you to do it?

Faith and other mental illnesses can cause people to feel justified in killing. They should not be forgiven nor their penalties lightened just because they thought homicide was the right thing to do. If their condition really cannot be helped (as in some mental illnesses) then they can be treated, but if their illness is voluntary (like faith or an alcohol-induced rage) they should receive the same punishment as any lucid person would.

So, to answer your question, if somebody really believes that aborting embryos constitutes murder, the right thing to do is to check himself into a mental clinic before he hurts anyone.

The question isn't what to do when someone does something you consider essential to stop...it's how you defend the position in question.

That's kind of a shame, I was hoping there'd be some sort of silver-bullet answer.

In particular, I'm trying to figure out how, apart from social norms, doctors aborting sub-human embryos is different from Nazis killing "sub-human" Jews. In Nazi Germany, the majority considered the killing of Jews to not qualify as murder, because Jews weren't viewed as fully human. Today, the majority consider the termination of embryos to not qualify as murder for the same reason. I need to figure out a definitive difference between the two to be personally comfortable with this arrangement. Can anyone help?

(Disclaimer: I am pro-choice. I almost certainly agree with the conclusions of the majority of people here about both abortion and the Holocaust. What's bugging me is that I'm having trouble finding a justification for those conclusions that doesn't boil down to mob rule. This may just be a feature of exam stress.)

So, to answer your question, if somebody really believes that aborting embryos constitutes murder, the right thing to do is to check himself into a mental clinic before he hurts anyone.

I can imagine a Nazi saying this to a fellow Aryan who was bothered by the murder of Jews. That suggests that you're missing a premise that's needed for this conclusion to hold.

I guess what it boils down to is: how do we justify our limits on what's human, or at least deserving of being treated as a human?

I thought theirs was the side that was supposed to be against moral relativism. I guess you learn something new every day.

I personally am also against "moral relativism" in its strictest sense. The statement "X is good" is indeed subjective, but the statement "X is good for the prosperity of society" (for example) isn't. That means that, although morality will necessarily have some subjective aspects, it can also have objective components - preconditions for society to exist in any meaningful sense. These core components can be extended to a surprising extent, although that's a bit of a balancing act.

Most of our law is based on conditions of this sort. Everyone has additional rules that they apply on top of this common core, but it's considered good form not to inflict those on everyone else.

Which I guess is sort of an answer to my question - if the Nazi murder of Jews can be considered to not be in the long-term interests of society but the termination of foetuses can't be so considered, that gives a good reason for considering it to be "good" to act violently to prevent the one but not the other. The question, of course, then becomes: how does one go about justifying that claim in such a way that abortion clinic bombers have no excuse for not accepting the validity of the justification?

he's attacking Padian because he thinks the religious fanatics who kill abortion doctors are contemptible. You read that right ...

Actually, no, I didn't. The reassignment of the pronoun "he" is confusing (especially as I didn't have the clue of knowing the people and their views beforehand).

I call strawman

This is the same f-c-tard that just posted a KKK cartoon to represent Padian. He's on a roll! What little credibility Dembski maintained is being slowly drained by these drooling sycophants. See the PT article about the KKK cartoon, esp the comments section.

Mmm... smell the moral clarity(tm).

Just a thought: say that, for whatever reason, you strongly feel that aborting embryos does in fact constitute murder*. What is an appropriate action to take?

Reporting them to the police (or equivalent authorities) of course. Doing anything else indicates that you don't genuinely believe it constitutes "murder" at all (or are profoundly ignorant of even the existence of any police or legal process, while still knowing the word "murder"!).

"Conversely, in the United States there have been only two abortion doctors murdered (AFAIK)..."

"AFAIK." As far as he knows. What a tool.

I guess DaveScot can't be troubled to spend two minutes searching google to find a real number. Just like an IDiot to not let pesky facts and simple research get in the way of a good "fact."

he's attacking Padian because he thinks the religious fanatics who kill abortion doctors are contemptible. You read that right ...

Actually, no, I didn't. The reassignment of the pronoun "he" is confusing (especially as I didn't have the clue of knowing the people and their views beforehand).

It took me a few reads, too. Pronoun, meet antecedent; antecedent, pronoun. I think it would read better as "he's attacking Padian for thinking that religious fanatics"

You are quite right.

Does anybody remember this?

http://www.steppenwolf.com/lyr/mnnster.html

I thought we had killed the monster a long time ago but apparently not. It is back and is nastier than ever.
The old one only weighed 500lbs and slept by the door. This one is bigger than King Kong and has killer lasers comming out of its eyes and is reproducing like Australian cloned rabbits.

Wake up America the alarm went off a long time ago and it seems like we just keep on hitting the snooze button so we don't have to hear it.

Just a thought: say that, for whatever reason, you strongly feel that aborting embryos does in fact constitute murder*. What is an appropriate action to take?

Well, I guess you should give the death penalty to every woman who's had an abortion. The fact that reactionaries aren't calling for wholesale execution of women shows that in some dim recess of their vestigial lizard brains, they know that there is no moral equivalence between abortion and murder.

Well, I guess you should give the death penalty to every woman who's had an abortion. The fact that reactionaries aren't calling for wholesale execution of women shows that in some dim recess of their vestigial lizard brains, they know that there is no moral equivalence between abortion and murder.

Actually, some of them do.

Link

Link (less explicit)

Link

I guess what it boils down to is: how do we justify our limits on what's human, or at least deserving of being treated as a human?
We don't. We take it as an axiom, or a definition. Or we accept someone else's axiom or definition without thinking about it.

Empiricism only resolves empirical questions - to resolve moral questions you need moral axioms. Since you can't observe "good" and "evil" directly, you have to define them in terms of something you *can* observe; then you can apply the definitions to a particular act and determine whether it's good, evil, both or neither. This is no different from defining "alive" (for animals) in terms of breathing, heartbeat, brain activity, etc. - except that there's a lot more consensus on what it means to be alive than what it means to be good.

If someone else starts with different axioms - they get different conclusions. The conflict can't be resolved by observation, either; it's not a genuine inconsistency, only a semantic one. The same act can be "Good and not evil in moral system A" and "Evil and not good in moral system B" without there being any logical contradiction; it just demonstrates that the two systems are not equivalent. (Depending on the systems, those descriptions are not necessarily redundant. Some moral systems allow an act to be classified as morally ambiguous, i.e. both good and evil.)

The problem is that adherents of either moral system will use "Good" with no qualifiers to mean "Good in the system I personally believe in", which makes the combination of their statements (without inserting the appropriate qualifying phrases) equivocation.

Some people apparently believe that it's possible to identify an *objectively* correct moral system (and by implication, all other non-equivalent systems are objectively wrong), but I have never seen such a claim that could bear scrutiny. Usually they're holding personal beliefs as unexamined axioms, without explaining what makes them "objectively true".

"I personally believe X, therefore X is unchallengeable objective truth" is one of the most common, and dangerous, human errors. Almost nobody *knows* that's what they're doing, of course; once you look at it it's obviously wrong. But surprisingly many people follow exactly that "logic" without even realizing it.

"X is good for the prosperity of society" isn't objective either. At least not until you define "prosperity" and "society". For that matter, even the decision to use the prosperity of society as a measuring stick isn't objective.

I don't want to accept moral relativism (or I think a more accurate term would be, moral nihilism) either; I just haven't yet found an intellectually honest way to avoid it. As a human being, I of course have emotional reactions about the morality of various acts; but as a rational thinker, I recognize that these reactions are not grounded in reason. The arbitrariness of accepting any particular system and proclaiming it superior to other systems bothers me; but otherwise you're left with the unsatisfying position that no moral system is truer than any other.

Once again, DaveScot has seen fit to censor my posts at Uncommon Descent, so I am forced to post in other forums. Like here. This is what I intended for DaveScot to post at Dembski's site:

DaveScot says: "Suicide bombers kill/wound as many as possible, they don't know who the victims are, they don't care whether the victims have done anything wrong (perceived or real), and in their indiscrete targeting even kill people of their own creed."
You must mean "terrorists" DaveScot, not all suicide bombers. Suicide bombing is a monthly event in places like Iraq, where the relevant distinction between suicide bombers that attack military and civilian targets is clear:
1. Suicide bombing against military targets is classified by Military Historians as a form of armed violence in assymetric warfare.
2. Suicide bombing against indiscriminate or chosen civilian targets is called terrorism.

Even though you claim to have been a Marine, I'm not surprised you didn't know that, DaveScot. Your ignorance on multitudes of subjects -- as well as your hypocrisy -- seems unlimited. Quote:

Islam is a cancer growing on the planet. It needs to be killed not accomodated. It's an ugly,
dysfunctional belief system even in milder forms, that subjugates the female half of the population. However, since we can't just kill them all (we can kill the worst offenders though) we have to put a more attractive alternative in place... It won't go down without a fight so there must be some bloodshed before it's a closed chapter in history. Comment by DaveScot - November 5, 2005 @ 6:01 am

Don't bother making excuses for this, DaveScot. I know you can, but why bother? Your accusations are amazingly hypocritical. Yes, I know you claim to have said this due to Islam's alleged "subjugation" of women due to their inability to vote. You'll conveniently forget that women in the United states only got the right to vote less than 90 years ago (1920). You'll conveniently forget that women in Islam do have the right to vote in many democratic and even monarchical Islamic states. You'll forget that women in the U.S. recieve unequal pay for equal work to this day.

But that's not the point, is it, Dave? The point is that you, as a petty tyrant, have a minor position of power and brook no dissent from your simpleminded claims. And, as an innately status-concious, insecure, simple-minded "tough guy," you won't have the ethics neccessary to post this. That is pretty funny

Hi. Scott Hatfield here. For what's it worth, I'm an affirming Christian and an enthusiastic evolutionary biologist and I had an interesting experience that might bear on this thread.

I attended a talk given by Dr. Padian in Modesto earlier this year. The talk was sponsored by MAPS (Modesto Area Partners in Science) and facilitated by Modesto Junior College Professor Richard Anderson, who as fate would have it, I discovered, was a Methodist like myself. The event was well-attended, and there were more than a few church groups there.

Dr. Padian's talk was excellent, but the moment in his talk which got the strongest response was when Dr. Padian asserted that fundamentalism might be the greatest threat to civilization in this century. It was very clear to me that Dr. Padian was speaking of fundamentalism in general, rather than this or that Christian sect. He made the point that there were Islamic fundamentalists, for example. Nevertheless, it was equally clear that some of the Christians in attendance seemed unable to parse that distinction and interpreted Dr. Padian's remark as a frontal assault on what they consider to be (ahem) fundamental.

I have no sympathy for these folk. Christianity itself does not occupy a privileged position within science, much less a sectarian view held only by a minority of Christians. As a Methodist, I would like to encourage my fellow biologists to make that distinction early and often in public presentations, and take the time to explain why fundamentalists of every faith represent a threat not only to science, but our civil liberties.

I am interested to hear what other people think about this.

Sincerely,

Scott Hatfield
epigene13@hotmail.com

Just a thought: say that, for whatever reason, you strongly feel that aborting embryos does in fact constitute murder*. What is an appropriate action to take?

Easy one. You stop acting as if it's appropriate to view children as a punishment for having sex--and you absolutely stop trying to pass such a child-hating position off as "pro-life." Or "pro-family."

To that end, you do what you can to see that everyone old enough to have sex has access to contraceptives and is encouraged to use them, on the one end, and that parenting has the support it needs on the other end: After-school programs, family-friendly housing, decent neonatal care, etc. You want to stop abortion? Make unexpected single motherhood something besides a quick, permanent drop into poverty.

To Continue:

My Point is quite simple,DaveScot, and I know you read the posts here: You excoriate Kevin Padian (again, wrongly) for saying that religious fundamentalist fanatacism that leads to murder...is wrong.

You then take that simple idea and twist it to mean that Kevin Padian somehow hates all fundamentalists and lumps all killers together unfairly, according to your erroneous redefinitions of what a suicide bomber is. As I noted, SOME suicide bombings are considered legitimate military actions when directed against military targets. But you say :

"If Padian can't tell the difference between a mass murdering suicide bomber indiscriminately blowing up crowds of people and a gunman carefully selecting a single target for murder then Padian simply isn't playing with a full deck and one has to hope he never decides to murder anyone because he isn't able to distinguish between killing a crowd of strangers and a single person against whom he holds a grudge."

Let's be quite honest, DaveScot: from what I have read at Uncommon Descent and other forums, your only interest in attacking Kevin Padian is not because he is a "racist" or that he "hates fundamentalism" because he said no such things. What you hate is that Kevin Padian testified in the Kitzmiller case, so you have embarked on what one writer at Panda's Thumb has called a "SwiftBoat" campaign.

You rail at Padian for trumped-up claims that he NEVER said and then excuse your own murderous statements about killing Muslims. This is hypocrisy. You fail to allow others to point out your errors. This is called hubris. Here is what I really think, DaveScot -- a person here, in the "After the Bar Closes" section analyzed you to what I think is a tee: You are at best a mediocre mind that was able to get in on the ground floor of a company which took off. But it was not due to your innate mental abilities--you don't *really* know math, or stats or information theory, or genetics, or much of anything. It was simply luck. You have an overweening sense of your own self-importance however, and now seek the attention of others via your imagined mental abilities, but you fail in direct debate and exchange of ideas. So you used troll tactics at "Darwinist" sites until you got the attention of William Dembsky, who used what little computer skills you have to appoint you "gatekeeper" and you now feel all filled with self-importance, but still cannot manage a coherent supported debate.

So what is left for you but to pose and preen and attack people like Padian dishonestly and hypocritically while disallowing any disagreement...while others laugh at your inanity and point out your errors and fallacies and utter lies by the boatload at places like...here.

I will vote with my feet. In Mark 6:11 says that when one is not welcome or unheard, "shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them." I believe I'll do just that.

And to the above poster, Scott Hatfield: Kudos on your honesty and unwillingness to bend your ethics to serve propagandistic purposes

Just a thought: say that, for whatever reason, you strongly feel that aborting embryos does in fact constitute murder*. What is an appropriate action to take?

Reporting them to the police (or equivalent authorities) of course. Doing anything else indicates that you don't genuinely believe it constitutes "murder" at all (or are profoundly ignorant of even the existence of any police or legal process, while still knowing the word "murder"!).

Well, I was thinking of "murder" in a rather fuzzily-defined moral sense rather than a legal sense. And now I've had a proper night's sleep I can probably articulate the problem a bit better.

We have two scenarios here:
1) An abortion clinic gets attacked by a nutjob in an effort to prevent the abortion of foetuses
2) A concentration camp gets attacked by La Resistance in an effort to prevent the murder of Jews

We have the following similarities:
1) The entities being fought over are not considered to be real humans by the antagonists (and a decent chunk of the rest of society)
2) In fact, an excess thereof is considered to be a societal problem that leads to a reduction in quality of life for the real humans
3) They are considered to be real humans by the protagonists, though
4) The protagonists are using deadly force against the antagonists to defend these "subhumans"

We have the following difference in perception:
1) In the case of the abortion clinic, the killer is considered evil and his victims are considered to be, if not heroes, then at least good people
2) In the case of the concentration camp, the killers are considered to be heroes and their victims are considered to be evil murderers.

Now, having had the aforementioned good night's sleep, I can get my head round the reasons to think that concentration camps are nastier than abortion clinics. However, I'm still having trouble getting to terms with the fact that in one case the protagonist is considered evil, whereas in the other case it's the antagonist. Surely, given the similarities between the situations, only one of them can be classed as "evil", with the other just being misguided (from our perspective) for mistaking one situation for the other?

Corkscrew wrote:

Just a thought: say that, for whatever reason, you strongly feel that aborting embryos does in fact constitute murder*. What is an appropriate action to take?

Murder can be broadly defined as the intentional and unlawful killing of a human being. The key word here is "unlawful". An individual cannot decide unilaterally what is unlawful and take action to prevent it, only society can. The alternative is a recipe for chaos.

I happen to believe that hunting, injuring and killing other animals purely for pleasure - and I include fishing in this category - is immoral. That does not entitle me to go out and shoot all the hunters and fishermen that I can find. (The fact that they can probably shoot better than I can is neither here nor there).

If individuals believe that a specific act should be prohibited by law then they must try to persuade a majority of society of the justice of their cause. That majority view may then be enacted as statute law by the legislature - although, being cynical about politics, I have to say that this does not necessarily follow.

* I, and probably most of the people reading this, don't accept the premise - it's just a hypothetical.

I believe that abortion for any reasons other than preventing a threat to the mother's life is wrong and I would prefer that it is not performed. But, as far as I am aware, it is not defined as murder in law so neither I nor anyone else is entitled to take any action against medical staff who carry out the procedure.

The Christian who kills an abortion doctor is a murderer and betrays his own faith by that act.

Corkscrew: Well, in order to make decisions, plan for the future and so on one needs certain features of a nervous system. At some point these are developped sufficiently that one can say they are frustrated by external influence at certain times. Thus the victims in the concentration camp are such, whereas the embryos are not. (This is shorter than it could be, but you should get the idea ...)

Keith: thanks, that sounds like the key to my ethical conundrum. Will need to give it some more thought. There's still a few fringe cases, of course - if humanity is primarily a matter of development then is it unethical to kill a monkey who's as advanced as, say, a human 5 year old?

Keith Douglas wrote:

Corkscrew: Well, in order to make decisions, plan for the future and so on one needs certain features of a nervous system. At some point these are developped sufficiently that one can say they are frustrated by external influence at certain times. Thus the victims in the concentration camp are such, whereas the embryos are not. (This is shorter than it could be, but you should get the idea ...)

Why draw the line at 'sentience' given that it cannot appear unless all the preceding stages of development are completed? If we treat a human being as an event in four-dimensional spacetime, rather than just an object in three-dimensional space, why is terminating the unfolding of that event at one point worse than terminating it at any other?

"I don't want to accept moral relativism (or I think a more accurate term would be, moral nihilism) either; I just haven't yet found an intellectually honest way to avoid it." "

The key word you're looking for is humility. Moral humility represents a recognition of the fact that while you have your own morality, so does everyone else. While you may value your own moral system highly, that doesn't mean that you have the Complete and Utter Truth.

A basic part of a modern, "cosmopolitan" society is that individuals are limited in what they're allowed to do to each other. In fact, the current trend seems to be for the state to claim a monopoly on violence. (This has not always been true!) Of course, the state in turn has limited resources and powers to enforce their monopoly. For example, the custom of dueling had been outlawed in New York by the time Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in 1804.

"As a human being, I of course have emotional reactions about the morality of various acts; but as a rational thinker, I recognize that these reactions are not grounded in reason."

This is not necessarily a problem. Emotions and "instinctive" (loose definition) responses represent "verdicts" by the less verbal parts of your brain, which includes both a "summary" of your own life experiences, and also another "memetic complex" which was constructed in your infancy, courtesy of your evolutionary and developmental history. (The latter includes true "instinct", "imprinting", and "prepared learning".) That "native" material deals with the issues that were faced not so much by our immediate ancestors, but by *all* our ancestors back into prehuman stages. Oddly enough, a good deal of it concerns... dealing with others of your own species. Remember, we've been living in tribes rather longer than we've been walking on two legs! And as we got smarter, we've more and more been the "most interesting things" in each other's environment. And those behavior patterns provided the original basis for development of morality, now residing as a sort of basement for the complex structure of modern civilization. Emotional reactions may not be "reasoned", but they do provide useful information and advice, which you can then filter through reason. (Or not.... ;-) )

"The arbitrariness of accepting any particular system and proclaiming it superior to other systems bothers me; but otherwise you're left with the unsatisfying position that no moral system is truer than any other."

That assumes there is a single heirarchy of "true morality", where any morality can be judged according to its similarity to a single ideal. As my phrasing suggests, I don't buy this for a minute.

As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of morality is to allow individuals to trust and cooperate with each other, which allows them to form groups capable of feats no individual could accomplish. That purpose sets up an open-ended standard for judgement of morality, yours and other people's -- how well does it work, especially as compared to other moral systems? So for example, we can look at the Discovery Institute, with their repeated embarassments, backbiting, and fraud, not to mention having to change their name every so often.... Then compare that to the scientific community, with people working cooperatively across the world to produce a steady stream of discoveries and achievements that's continued for centuries. Whose moral system is working better?

Of course all this begs the real question, which is not "whose morality is better", but "what can, or should, you do, when you think someone else's morality is inferior?" That would be a whole post in itself, but the "modern" response can be summed up by a Thomas Jefferson quote, which I'm probably mangling: "If my neighbor says there are twenty gods, or no god... it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket". That is, what matters isn't what they believe, but what they do with respect to yourself.

There's still a few fringe cases, of course - if humanity is primarily a matter of development then is it unethical to kill a monkey who's as advanced as, say, a human 5 year old?

Where are you going to find a monkey as advanced as a human 5 y/o? Very few monkeys have multi-thousand word vocabularies, the ability to read simple words, and, most importantly, self-awareness. A chimpanzee as advanced as an 18 month old human, on the other hand, is possible. And yes, I'd feel that killing either would be highly unethical. One could easily make the argument that the intentional killing of any sentient being is murder, regardless of the species, and some chimps (as well as at least some dolphins) are demonstrably sentient.

Corkscrew: Thank you, and be sure to think about it. I wouldn't want anyone to take what I say as gospel. :)

Ian H Spedding: The position I sketched does not rely on sentience, but rather on having interests that can be frustrated. It is a matter of degree (this is important - I think a lot of problems in ethics can be made managable by realizing that [completely] right and [completely] wrong are "ideal types") , though the gist is the "anticipation" aspect of our lives - we can plan and so on. I realize this is vague, too, which is why it has to be cached out in a lot more detail to be usable. But it is a start.

If anyone is still reading this page, I have started a discussion about objective morality over at AtBC:

http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=4469d4be…