(June 2, 2014 at 10:50 am)DeistPaladin Wrote: ...which was in response to your implied question of whether or not it's OK to kill infants because they don't 'think'.Yes...and?
Quote:I didn't dodge the question. I answered it. YOU keep dodging my follow up questions.No, you wrote stuff. You didn't answer it.
DeistPaladin Wrote:Eating animals is unfortunately part of the natural order and arguably required.Arguably? You can argue anything, I suppose, but the fact is that people don't need to eat meat.
Quote:It's a less than perfect world. I draw the line at gratuitous cruelty, such as tossing kittens over a cliff for fun. You keep dodging that question, by the way.No, I would find that to be immoral, because I think kittens are cute.
Is tossing kittens off a cliff for fun something that's OK to do since kittens don't have human DNA?
Quote:Let's say we encounter an unlikely planet called Pandora and find an equally unlikely alien race of giant catlike humanoids. Can we just bomb them and take their stuff because we can and they're not human?Seems no worse than eating them, which you would presumably allow.
Quote:You don't like Star Trek, how about the movie A.I.? If we create self-aware androids, can we continue to treat them as disposable property or what?Sure.
Quote:We're waiting.I didn't answer them specifically because I acknowledged in general that my position has problems. I've never seen a position on personhood that didn't. That's why it comes down to personal opinion.
We'll wait forever because you don't want to answer any of these questions because they'll expose your thinking as, at best, a sloppy post-hoc justification of your desire to deny women their rights or, at worst, a deeply amoral, arbitrary and selfish view of "rights".
Quote:By your "reasoning" on the rights of others, if you see a over-the-cliff kitten toss, meh, fuck 'em; kittens aren't human.And by yours, if someone finds kittens tasty, meh, fuck 'em - people need to eat.
Quote:But it gets worse than that. There's no legitimate reason, beyond arbitrary and bare assertion, that the line needs to be drawn at human DNA. Why human DNA? What is so special about human DNA? There really can be no answer better than "because we're human and that's what we want. Fuck everything else".And there's no legitimate reason that the line needs to be drawn at brain activity (except for stuff that's tasty to humans - their brain activity doesn't count).
Quote:OK, then why stop there? Could the line be drawn along gender lines? Only those who have y-chromosomes have rights. We're men and that's what we want, right? Or couldn't we draw them along racial lines? Or restrict that to your family? Or maybe just you?OK, why stop at any brain activity. Could the line be drawn at higher functioning? Why not allow infanticide? Why not allow, or require, execution of those below a certain IQ? Or maybe enslavement?