atheism and children

[Catholic_Lady]

Fair enough. Some of your comments and the way you said things sounded condescending and like you were getting mad/frustrated, but perhaps I misunderstood. 

And I find your use of smilies to be sometimes rather condescending but the way you intend your smilies to be interpreted has no bearing on the content of your arguments so the point of commenting on them before now was neither here nor there.

You wanna chalk it up to the nature of online discussion forum anonymity and carry on?

Eh, I don't think it's specific enough to just say "it's ok to kill someone who might kill you." It sounds way more open than what I actually believe, and can definitely be a different meaning. It can mean you can just go to someone's house and murder them in their sleep if you feel threatened by them. And that's not in line with what I believe. Sounds like it's just a matter of semantics though, so as long as you fully understand what I mean, that's fine. It sounds like you do.

I think we've both been reasonable enough to understand the the context in which the "it's acceptable to kill someone who might kill you" sentiment is being used in this discussion and it's not the "I can go murder someone in their sleep if I feel threatened by them" context.

I've said before that I'm not trying to trick you and this qualifies as one of those sorts of statements.

I think you're having a hard time understanding my views on this because you're not seeing "an embryo" as a human being. You have to understand that I do. So let's take a five year old, for example (whom I'm sure you see as human), and let's say I was his mother. If the both of us got captured by terrorists and as a means to torture me, they held a gun to my head and said "either you kill your five year old, or you both will die." Would it be moral for me to do it? Is it moral to directly kill one innocent person in order to save another?

That's a false analogy.

I think you are missing the point that in an ectopic pregnancy the embryo has to be aborted in order for the mother to survive at all, so if we put this in terms of your analogy it would be more like the terrorist telling the mother "I'm going to kill your kid no matter what, but you have a choice of either taking a cyanide pill or having me flay you alive" and even that doesn't work as a cogent analogy of an ectopic pregnancy.

(BTW, your analogy also equates the doctor treating the woman with the ectopic pregnancy to a terrorist.   )

I'm not saying they realize they're doing it, or that they understand what they're doing. But nonetheless, a person running after you with a knife, trying to stab you to death, is still a person running after you with a knife trying to stab you to death.

We're not talking about what weapon this mentally impaired innocent might use against you, if they even have an implement in their hand at all, we're talk about intent.  I understand you to have said that an embryo in an ectopic pregnancy doesn't intend to kill its mother, therefore the mother/doctor is not justified in directly aborting it.  Well, likewise, the innocent doesn't intend to kill their victim, so why is it acceptable (again, to use your words, "tragic not immoral") to directly kill the innocent but not the embryo?

It's up to the jury to figure out if this person is innocent for reason of insanity or not, but you still have the right to defend yourself against someone who is trying to murder you, even if they're insane and don't even realize they're doing it.

Wait, what??  Now this innocent is committing murder?  You do realize that "murder" means that the death was premeditated, right??  It means that the person who caused the death had to plan the death or intend to kill (in legal terms it's called "malice aforethought").  So how can a person who doesn't understand what they're doing or understand the consequences of their actions murder someone?