You know what really grinds my gears? RAPE-UBLICANS

[Statler Waldorf]

Statler, my computer is in the shop and my mobile doesn't like long posting but I will get back to you as soon as I can

I shall wait patiently for your response with great anticipation sitting in front of my computer and refreshing the browser every ten seconds!

Hey Stat, could you do me a favor and just discuss my entire position from now on, and not just the little bit that you quote? Because I'm pretty sure you read my post before you replied, and so you know that this isn't my entire position.

Whether it is your entire position or not is irrelevant, you have yet to provide any basis as to why personhood requires the organism to be self-aware and conscious. People are not always conscious and do not become self-aware until around the age of two; so that cannot be part of the definition of a “person”. An organism is either a person or not regardless of whether it is aware of it.

Fair enough. I still disagree, and evidently so does the government in many places, but if you want to subscribe to a self-serving definition solely because it supports your argument on a single issue, that's fine. I'm not obligated to do likewise.

Many governments agree with me, so that point was irrelevant. You’re right though, you are not required to be logical, but I prefer to be. I have presented a definition that is consistent and defensible; you have done no such thing.

Good thing the world doesn't run on Stat logic then, huh? Oh, and PS: if I inject a chicken with my blood, does that make it a person?

You mean sound logic? I wish the world did. What does this have to do with abortion? Unborn babies are composed of human DNA, not injected with it.

Yeah, and Hitler ate sugar. Are you going to keep up this dishonest tactic, or are you going to actually argue the merits of the argument. Because even if I'm wrong, that doesn't automatically make you right.

It’s not a dishonest tactic, if your rationalizations can be used to rationalize that which you do not accept then you’re being inconsistent in using them. Additionally, there is nothing wrong with using disjunctive reasoning. The unborn are either persons or they are not; if I can prove that the position arguing that they are not persons is false then it proves that they are indeed persons.
“A” or “Not A”, Not “Not A”, therefore “A”.

Again, please address my entire argument, and not the fragment of it you've quoted. I don't understand what you hope to gain from this; people can still see my initial post, it's right there for everyone to see. I can demonstrate that what you're doing is dishonest just by linking back to that.

Then do it! I have not intentionally misrepresented your argument in anyway (if I have, then show me how I have, do not merely assert that I have). I asked you why the unborn are not people, and you answered with because they are not self-aware or conscious. Now I have given you two examples: one of organisms that possess human DNA that are also not self-aware (toddlers), and one of organisms that possess human DNA that are not conscious (a sleeping adult). Are they or aren’t they people?

Seriously, do you have some kind of selective amnesia?

I don’t remember….

Or did you just go to the Ray Comfort school of selective editing? You do understand that my position in its clear entirety is available in this same thread, right?

Perhaps you should lay it all out in one paragraph. Right now what I have is…

A person is an organism with human DNA that is self-aware, conscious, can survive on its own, and morphologically looks like a human. Accurate?

That little monologue thing was kind of sad, wasn't it? Think you could maybe try something a little more mature than schoolyard reinterpretation of the other party's motivations?

Motivations? Says the guy who asserted that the only motivation I have for being pro-life is because I am religious…? I personally thought the monologue was rather cute.

Once it reaches a certain developmental threshold, sure. That's also, incidentally, around about the time I would cut off access to abortion (outside of saving the mother's life, of course.) But a little bundle of cells? No.

How are we anything other than little bundles of cells? I thought you were a materialist.

I'll get the syringes, you get the chickens. Let's make some people.

No that’s fallacious reasoning, “A” being placed inside of “B” does not make “A” part of “B”; inject all the blood you want but it will never be part of the chicken and will only kill it. Nice try though! You really don’t want fetuses to be people.

It's only absurd if you desperately address fragments of my argument one at a time, and not the entire thing.

Apparently you’ve yet to present the entire thing because as it stands now it’s not defensible.

No, that's how a false dichotomy works. Unless you can address why a series of biological classifiers- the same ones that have worked for every other organism in the world without any of this arbitrariness you think is inherent- would be insufficient? Just asserting it isn't enough.

You’re not using biologic classifiers, you’re using arbitrary standards. There is no biologic classifier stating that a deer must be self-aware and conscious in order to be a deer. I assure you, when deer sleep they are still deer. A deer is any organism possessing specific deer DNA, just as a human being is any organism possessing human DNA. It’s very simple.

I never even used the words human-looking, so those quotation marks are a tad inaccurate. Why don't you go and read a book on taxonomic classifications, hmm? Maybe it'll help you out.

You never used that term? Did someone else sneak onto your computer and post this for you in Post#78 on 30th August 2013, 10:52?

Is a dead body a person? Because that's all you're really arguing, that it's the flesh that ascribes personhood, and given that a fetus isn't in any way human looking as it develops, this is hardly the best definition you should be using.

[Emphasis added by SW]

Perhaps rather than me misrepresenting your position what is really happening is that you’re forgetting your position?

There is nothing in taxonomy requiring a human to be self-aware and conscious. It’s all genetics now.