Hello

[DogmaticDownSouth]

Thanks so much for the support and welcome. I hail from SEC country - S-E-C S-E-C.
I hope to contribute with a varied and different view. I do not intend to insult others who are honest and courteous and intellectualy honest. I welcome honest disagreement because if I change my mind it means I learned something new, and that is ALWAYS a good thing.

I try to expalin my own personal thoughts and conclusions, but rarely try to impose my views on others. For example I am also a vegetarian (how I have not been run out of the south I don't know) but that is a personal decision and I never judge another for their decision or impose I belief on them (unless they are making me dinner, then ofcourse it is about me) If asked, I will explain my rationale, but if not then I wouldn't give it.

Unless you are causing objective harm to another, I rarely feel it's my place to impose my beliefs on others.

Thanks.

PS Still wasn't sure if folks here would be interested or willling to look at the email thread I alluded to earlier. The other party stated they too are interested in an indepedent evaluation because they insist they have addressed my arguements and been intellectually honest, but again the echo chamber of my personal brain can't see it despite re-reading them. Again, if no one is interested I will not mention it again, but thought I would ask as I personally do'nt have other avenues of independent verification.

Thanks so much

[Minimalist]

add atheist and I'm going to hell for sure.

There is no hell.  Welcome aboard.

[ignoramus]

Posting someone's personal email to you on a public forum may not be legal/moral?

If you feel it's OK to post it, we're always happy to comment.

[DogmaticDownSouth]

@ ignoramus

I have asked for and recieved permission from the other participant and they actually want it reviewed as well by some one independent.
As I stated earlier, I would redact all idenifying information such as email address, names (except for public figures, in particular Matt Dillahunty who is well known and this was a email to the Atheist-Experience, though Matt didn't participate.

The whole thing started when I called into the show asking the same question I asked the group -> I have this moral arguement that leads to this conclusion. I am hard pressed to find a flaw, but would like you to let me know if and where I could be wrong. Again if I am then I learned something and learning is always good,
Matt's response was unless I wanted to change laws on abortions, he didn;t care, which is odd to me because they talk about moral issues and all kinds of things that are not about changing laws all the time. So I posted a comment to the chat room to that effect and was asked to send my email to them. I did so and honestly as I stated the discussion I received was disappointing. To be clear, I called 30 minutes before the show and he took my call prior to the live show and hung up on me prior to the show, was I was never on air. Honestly, as near as I can tell he didn't run it by his co-host either so he kind of made the Matt D show instead of the Atheist Experience. Beyond that, as I told him, his co-host was female and I was interested in hearing her opinoin.

That's how I got here.

Sorry, long story that you probably didn't need to hear, but wanted to explain where this came from and I was't surreptitiously posting something without permission. You would see in the email thread they explicitly give permission, ask to be notified when and where it will be posted, and feel confident they will be exhonerated.
I personally have re-read the thread a few times and still cannot get over points of intellectual dishonesty that I personally thought were there, but again independent verification is the corner stone to determining reality from delusion so would love to know if I need more meds

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@ ignoramus

I have asked for and recieved permission from the other participant and they actually want it reviewed as well by some one independent.
As I stated earlier, I would redact all idenifying information such as email address, names (except for public figures, in particular Matt Dillahunty who is well known and this was a email to the Atheist-Experience, though Matt didn't participate.

The whole thing started when I called into the show asking the same question I asked the group -> I have this moral arguement that leads to this conclusion. I am hard pressed to find a flaw, but would like you to let me know if and where I could be wrong. Again if I am then I learned something and learning is always good,
Matt's response was unless I wanted to change laws on abortions, he didn;t care, which is odd to me because they talk about moral issues and all kinds of things that are not about changing laws all the time. So I posted a comment to the chat room to that effect and was asked to send my email to them. I did so and honestly as I stated the discussion I received was disappointing. To be clear, I called 30 minutes before the show and he took my call prior to the live show and hung up on me prior to the show, was I was never on air. Honestly, as near as I can tell he didn't run it by his co-host either so he kind of made the Matt D show instead of the Atheist Experience. Beyond that, as I told him, his co-host was female and I was interested in hearing her opinoin.

That's how I got here.

Sorry, long story that you probably didn't need to hear, but wanted to explain where this came from and I was't surreptitiously posting something without permission. You would see in the email thread they explicitly give permission, ask to be notified when and where it will be posted, and feel confident they will be exhonerated.
I personally have re-read the thread a few times and still cannot get over points of intellectual dishonesty that I personally thought were there, but again independent verification is the corner stone to determining reality from delusion so would love to know if I need more meds

Truth be told, I get very frustrated at her for what I perceive as intellectual dishonesty and acting on bad faith. After she starts calling names, I lose all respect for her and the last few emails are pretty insulting. I should probably have been more mature, but I stand behind the content of each and can laugh about a lot of the burns I give her so I'm not really ashamed of them but objectively I was getting pretty rude near the end, but besides questioning her intellect and interity and dropping f-bombs i don't think its so bad, and again given the responses she was giving me I thought (and still think) that her intellect and/or integrity are insulting so I stand behind the content, may the context could be more PC.
Again being honest and know I can and reasonably should be critized for this.

[ignoramus]

We're always happy to look at it.
I find the abortion topic overlays many fields of science/morality.
Eg, politics, personal freedoms, human biology, etc and the big elephant, religion!
Always a heated topic, even amongst us walking atheist meat bags....

[DogmaticDownSouth]

Thanks for getting back to me. I too find it an intereting discusison because it juxtaposes conflicting moral beliefs (eg right to life, right to bodily autonomy, ect) and makes us ask and answer hard questions even before tackling the basics of it. Of course, I don''t think religion is in anyway necessary to address it. Religion address this moral arguement as it addresses all moral arguments, with arbitrary commands.
Rather, I believe that morality is an algorhythm we each use to help us determine what we should do or what is right to do and the more basic and fundamental your arguements, the more widely they can be utilized to address multiple issues that may not have been prepared for initially.
In the famous words of Alton Brown - I do not want a unitasker in my kitchen.
Same for me for morality. Abortion isn''t moral because it's moral (of course that's a tautology but I hope you get my drift). There should be some more fundamental moral arguements that lead to that conclusion, or to the converse. That's were I come.
I have my moral arguements, and they lead to a conclusion there, but I use the same toolset to determine other parts of my life, so obviously I would like to know my tools works, that's where I;m coming from.


Would it be best to post the emails as a new thread somewhere (they are of course kinda long) or PM you? thanks again for responding.

[Minimalist]

So what 'morality' do you assert that enables you to suggest that a woman you do not even know should or should not have a child that she does not want and probably cannot afford?

[DogmaticDownSouth]

So what 'morality' do you assert that enables you to suggest that a woman you do not even know should or should not have a child that she does not want and probably cannot afford?

What morality do I assert that you should or should not eat meat? I have what I feel is a sound moral arguement for being a vegetarian and would be happy to try to convince you if you want. Just like that I feel I have a sound moral arguement (2 seperate ones actually) that lead to conclusion that in most situations (and exceptions are built into the framework of the arguement, not post-hoc or ad-hoc) a woman has a moral obligation to the fetus, her desire to want it or not is independent of that. That's what a moral arguement is.
If you are asking me what justification do I have to dicated to a woman that she must complete her pregnancy (or conversely that she must have an abortion as folks in China can tell you), I would say none, because morality is not an arguement for compulsion. That is what the law is for. I am not, nor have I, advocated for a legal arguement restricting abortion. That is the role of the government as a reflection of the society. I am a member of the society but not of the government.
However, if I have a sound arguement that convinces a woman not to have an abortion and she convinces some one else and so on then the law doesn't really matter does it?
Again this is the difference between what I believe morality is (what we should do) and legality (what we must or must not do). Laws can be moral or immoral and morality can be legal or illegal.

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@ Minimalist
I could be wrong, but the tone that I percieve is that you are attacking the arguement without hearing due to the conclusion ( my perception is based on your inclusion of words that seem to be meant to trigger emotional responses rather than logical ones as I state I am trying to promote : "you do not even know should or should not have a child that she does not want and probably cannot afford.") Again, I will be forthwright and say this is my perception of your statement, but I cannot say for certainity that it is your intent.

[ignoramus]

Let's do it. Either here or start a new thread.

There is a recent long thread on objective morality. Have you gone through that yet?
In fact there many on this forum on his hot topic. Just so we won't rehash the same stuff.

Catch.

[DogmaticDownSouth]

or

Will see. I will clean up the posts in the next few days and delete the information that should be redacted and start a new thread, which forum is best?