[ggggtez]

> Secular philosophy has failed to produce enough value for ordinary people living ordinary lives

Consider the situation: you want to get an abortion. Or you know someone who does.

I don't think I need to spell out the debate. But the secular world view is producing value for people who don't want to be afraid that they will spend literally INFINITY TIME being tortured. (And arguably it produces value for the religious, who do utilize secular services even when their religion forbids it).

The secular world view offers you freedom from judgement, both mortal and immortal. Many people find value in the freedom to not worry about superstition.

[dang]

Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. We don't want that here, and the last thing we need is abortion on top of it.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28656583.

[temp8964]

I am totally atheist, but I am against most abortion. You don’t have to be religious to be against abortion.

Be secular doesn’t make anybody free from judgement.

[hota_mazi]

I am pro choice and against abortion.

I don't like abortion. Nobody likes abortions. Women who feel that they need to get an abortion don't like it either. It's a horrible, traumatic procedure.

But it's a reality that it needs to be legal, regulated, and safe.

It's absolutely critical to civilization that women have a choice to undergo an abortion if they choose to. It's their body, their life, their future. Nobody else's business, especially not the government's.

The government should never require them to carry a pregnancy to term in much the same way that it shouldn't force you to give an organ (and it doesn't).

I am not pro abortion, I am pro choice.

People opposed to abortions are not pro life, they are anti choice.

[temp8964]

If it's a choice between the mother's life and the baby's life, because of the medical condition, I would say let the mother make the choice.

But if it's a choice between the mother's feeling / opinion and the baby's life, I would say the baby's life overwrites the mother's feeling / opinion. The reason is simple, nobody gets to decide to kill the other person just because he/she doesn't like it. And the existing of the baby is the consequence of the mother's behavior.

The only exception is the that the conception is a result of rape, in this case the conception is not a consequence of the mother's voluntary behavior. But I still struggle with this, because the baby does not become less human because it's a result of rape.

I don't think there is a valid choice between someone's life and someone's feeling / opinion. And remember, pregnancy is something totally normal for women to do. And many women do several times in their life. It's not a punishment, nor a definite suffering or torture.

Also the "nobody else's business" argument is wrong, murder is the government's business.

As for when is the OK time to conduct the abortion, this is the question for people who support abortion. I don't really see the point here. The development is a continuum process. I don't believe there is a definite cut point where the humanness changes from zero to non-zero. Even when it's a embryo, it's a human embryo living in its natural environment, with the full potential to grow to a full human. I also don't see the need of a spiritual concept like soul or whatever.

Typing the above paragraph leads me to think about lab-grown human embryo. Google leads me to this webpage: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02343-7 "Researchers are now permitted to grow human embryos in the lab for longer than 14 days." Of course I don't believe humanness changes from zero to non-zero on day 14. Also I don't believe it's ethical to experiment on some human to gain knowledge to save other human.

[michaelmrose]

> But if it's a choice between the mother's feeling / opinion and the baby's life, I would say the baby's life overwrites the mother's feeling

You are avoiding 100 percent of the actual dilemma. Nobody is OK with murder they disagree on what constitutes a human life. That is as they say the entire ball game which you have neatly sidestepped as if it were irrelevant. I suggest we return to it shortly.

> The only exception is the that the conception is a result of rape

This is a profoundly illogical position. It cannot possibly be OK to murder a baby regardless of whether its existence is the result of free choice of its mother. You say you "struggle with it" but how can you possibly struggle with the decision to allow infanticide? If its a person you can't kill it for your convenience.

> And many women do several times in their life. It's not a punishment, nor a definite suffering or torture.

Many people get kidney stones often multiple times. The fact that its natural doesn't mean that the experience isn't even when planned and desired torturous. Only the mother is in a position to make that judgment. Many people choose to live in small domiciles from which they only but rarely leave. This doesn't mean that for example prison isn't punitive. It is in many ways the denial of free exercise of the will over ones own person that is in fact punitive.

Let us return to the most important point.

At what point do you consider it a child and why? I think a reasonable person would agree that an unfertilized egg isn't a child but calling it a person 2 seconds after conception is very nearly as absurd. Any given egg and sperm has the potential to create life so potential wont serve as a dividing line. Some harking back to pre-scientific understanding would like to set the milestone at a heart beat but no matter how essential it may be to our existence a heart doesn't make you human. A mouse whose neck you snap in a trap to keep it from your larder has one.

There is one singular thing without which all characteristics that make you human are moot the brain. In fact one particular segment of the brain without which you would display zero meaningful human behavior, the cerebral cortex. Prior to the third trimester your brain is less meaningfully you than a squirrel. In the third trimester the surface area of the cerebral cortex increases by 30 times.

https://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/fetal-development/fet...

You seem to want to sidestep this once again.

> As for when is the OK time to conduct the abortion, this is the question for people who support abortion. I don't really see the point here. The development is a continuum process. I don't believe there is a definite cut point where the humanness changes from zero to non-zero.

This is a complete cop out. As human beings we deal with situations where there is a continuum all the time. There are reasonable strategies to deal with such. Given a situation where one must pick a hard line in a complex situation where one side of the line is safe and the other dangerous you select a position far enough towards the safe side as to be certain to avoid negative consequences. This is how we are able to hire some, fire others, declare some doctors, others dropouts.

For example if nearly all fetal brain development happens between week 27 and week 38 if you select week 24 as the limit or for example week 14 by which 92% of abortions that are going to happen, happen you won't be offing what we would properly think of a human.

I hold that a fertilized egg is zero on the humaness scale. Agree or disagree? I hold that a baby viable outside of the womb is a 1. Agree or disagree? I hold that a fetus in the 27th week of development is still nearly indistinguishable from zero with a nearly nonfunctional brain incapable of consciousness or thought as we know it.

I believe that it goes from near zero to 1 almost entirely between week 27 and 38 ergo someone taking a pill to stop their pregnancy from progressing at 9 weeks is unambiguously moral.

I think the most interesting statement in your post is the statement

> in this case the conception is not a consequence of the mother's voluntary behavior.

This hints at a moralistic view as opposed to a logical one.

I suggest if you intend to defend the position that life begins at conception without benefit of the fig leaf of the fiction of the human soul you need to beg borrow or steal a different argument than life is a continuum so we can't possibly apply argumentative tools developed over thousands of years to crack that egg.

[temp8964]

It seems you are trapped in the idea that humanness is defined by brain function. Which is obviously wrong to me, but I am not interested in expanding the discussion.

Also it is important whether it is a consequence of the mother's voluntary behavior, because if it is not then the human embryo would not have end up inside her body. So yes, it matters.

Thanks, I am just saying atheist can be against abortion. No more argument with me is needed.

[michaelmrose]

As an atheist it would seem dualism would be out of bounds so given that your brain is you in a very literal sense what other factor do you believe defines humanness? I think therefore I am seems like the strongest possible argument here.

[michaelmrose]

This is interesting insofar as most arguments against addiction seem to be philosophically connected with either spiritual guilt or assigning a clump of cells person status at conception due to the presumed presence of a soul. How precisely do you arrive at your stance in the absence of a soul?

Virtually all the actual brain development happens very late in the game and almost all abortions happen in the first or early second.

[temp8964]

See my response to the above comment.

[stevofolife]

Once you study Christianity, you will realize it actually offers you true freedom from the crap happening in the secular world.

[dang]

Please don't do this here.