cloudy
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Torture poll
- Thread starter Pure
- Start date
shereads
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For another to tell the truth is all the torture you can stand. It is that Voltaire thing again.
Events taking place in the news in the discussion of torture seem to disagree with your point of view.
Pure
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a simple question
perhaps worth its own thread, but for now.
IF human life is a value that is absolute, self evident, unalienable, ultimate, etc.
WHAT gives a person--or a human institution, like the justice system-- the right to take another's life *in any case whatsoever*?
AND, aside from being on a jury, what gives a person the right to decide about another's *right to life*. For example, in Florida you don't have to believe a murder is about to be committed, you just have to believe a burglar is on your property with ill intent and may harm you in some way.
TAKING the most obvious and hard case. A appears to be about to end the life of my spouse. The standard argument is that A has LOST the right to life. *Isn't that odd*--- what the f*** does 'unalienable' mean.? does it mean, 'not to be taken except by folks whose property seems endangered.*' or, 'not to be taken except by folks whose loved ones seem *really* endangered.*'
All the arguements here seem to turn on 'guilt'. First: Courts and judges have been saying 'guilty, hang him/her' for centuries. And for a variety of things, e.g. insulting the King or Ruler. So, judicially decided "guilt" is a crappy foundation for the decision to take away this alleged 'absolute', but in any case, very important right.
[[ADDED: The behavior of most 'advanced' countries, in fact, supports my point, or at least makes it arguable; among the countries that say *a murderer has NOT forfeited a right to life* [or specify VERY narrow exceptions), are Canada, England, France, Germany, Israel. ]]
Second, the "guilt" folks almost always allow the ordinary person to decide that, e.g. in the case above, of a threat to family. And ordinary folks are rather fallible, aren't they. They decide the figure in the living room is a burglar and 'execute' and find it's their son.
The right of a common person to execute on the spot surely flies in the face of any claim that a human has an 'absolute' or unalieanable right to life.
[[ADDED: a more interesting example: You come upon a scene where John, holding a gun, is saying to Elmer, "i'm gonna f***in' kill you." Elmer appears scared and apparently is unarmed. You, the person of good will, decide to save Elmer; I.e. that John, making the statement of intent , is guilty. You shoot John. ..., unbeknownst to you, however, John was the intended victim: Elmer 'jumped' John and attempted to mug and rob him. HENCE, the ordinary person's *right to decide* about a *right to life* and its forfeit is kinda dangerous.]]
Third, another classic case is 'self defence.' What gives me that right? Of course, let's assume my life will end, otherwise [which is NOT always clear, e.g. in a kidnapping or rape]. WHY do i get to decide "he dies, rather than me"? Kind of 'playing God, isn't it?
If you want an argument consider Socrates' and Jesus'--- it's better to suffer a wrong than to inflict/commit a wrong. In moral terms, if i kill, *I* become guilty. If i allow my life to be taken, *I* remain innocent. Surely any xian sees the logic here, for NON self defence:
namely, i obtain the heavenly reward, follow the path of Jesus, etc. Socrates, non-xian, reached the same conclusion, however. If i'm about to die, WHY is it preferable that *I* become a murderer, rather than some scum Jack Smith?
perhaps worth its own thread, but for now.
IF human life is a value that is absolute, self evident, unalienable, ultimate, etc.
WHAT gives a person--or a human institution, like the justice system-- the right to take another's life *in any case whatsoever*?
AND, aside from being on a jury, what gives a person the right to decide about another's *right to life*. For example, in Florida you don't have to believe a murder is about to be committed, you just have to believe a burglar is on your property with ill intent and may harm you in some way.
TAKING the most obvious and hard case. A appears to be about to end the life of my spouse. The standard argument is that A has LOST the right to life. *Isn't that odd*--- what the f*** does 'unalienable' mean.? does it mean, 'not to be taken except by folks whose property seems endangered.*' or, 'not to be taken except by folks whose loved ones seem *really* endangered.*'
All the arguements here seem to turn on 'guilt'. First: Courts and judges have been saying 'guilty, hang him/her' for centuries. And for a variety of things, e.g. insulting the King or Ruler. So, judicially decided "guilt" is a crappy foundation for the decision to take away this alleged 'absolute', but in any case, very important right.
[[ADDED: The behavior of most 'advanced' countries, in fact, supports my point, or at least makes it arguable; among the countries that say *a murderer has NOT forfeited a right to life* [or specify VERY narrow exceptions), are Canada, England, France, Germany, Israel. ]]
Second, the "guilt" folks almost always allow the ordinary person to decide that, e.g. in the case above, of a threat to family. And ordinary folks are rather fallible, aren't they. They decide the figure in the living room is a burglar and 'execute' and find it's their son.
The right of a common person to execute on the spot surely flies in the face of any claim that a human has an 'absolute' or unalieanable right to life.
[[ADDED: a more interesting example: You come upon a scene where John, holding a gun, is saying to Elmer, "i'm gonna f***in' kill you." Elmer appears scared and apparently is unarmed. You, the person of good will, decide to save Elmer; I.e. that John, making the statement of intent , is guilty. You shoot John. ..., unbeknownst to you, however, John was the intended victim: Elmer 'jumped' John and attempted to mug and rob him. HENCE, the ordinary person's *right to decide* about a *right to life* and its forfeit is kinda dangerous.]]
Third, another classic case is 'self defence.' What gives me that right? Of course, let's assume my life will end, otherwise [which is NOT always clear, e.g. in a kidnapping or rape]. WHY do i get to decide "he dies, rather than me"? Kind of 'playing God, isn't it?
If you want an argument consider Socrates' and Jesus'--- it's better to suffer a wrong than to inflict/commit a wrong. In moral terms, if i kill, *I* become guilty. If i allow my life to be taken, *I* remain innocent. Surely any xian sees the logic here, for NON self defence:
namely, i obtain the heavenly reward, follow the path of Jesus, etc. Socrates, non-xian, reached the same conclusion, however. If i'm about to die, WHY is it preferable that *I* become a murderer, rather than some scum Jack Smith?
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amicus
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The visible flaw in all of 'Pure's' assumptions, is his inability to define human life, to begin with, and secondly, to place a value on it.
Pure also uses a backassward method to arrive at conclusions, that of struggling to find anecdotes that support his position, whatever it is, and demeans his opponents.
The acceptable scientific method, that of discovering the truth of an assumption or its fault and then proceeding to individual circumstances and events.
This, by the way, is called law and case law.
Pure continues to attempt to 're-invent the wheel', in every case, rejecting millennium long efforts to define and refine legal concepts and replacing them with his limited vision and imagination.
I suppose this is reflective of Pure's inner city, urban inability to conceive of individual rights, liberties and life itself, without referring to the hive he lives in.
When accosted by a burglar or thief, Pure instantly surrenders his property and perhaps his life as he cannot decide if it is, 'moral', to defend either.
That, my friends, is an example of a mental disorder.
Amicus
Pure also uses a backassward method to arrive at conclusions, that of struggling to find anecdotes that support his position, whatever it is, and demeans his opponents.
The acceptable scientific method, that of discovering the truth of an assumption or its fault and then proceeding to individual circumstances and events.
This, by the way, is called law and case law.
Pure continues to attempt to 're-invent the wheel', in every case, rejecting millennium long efforts to define and refine legal concepts and replacing them with his limited vision and imagination.
I suppose this is reflective of Pure's inner city, urban inability to conceive of individual rights, liberties and life itself, without referring to the hive he lives in.
When accosted by a burglar or thief, Pure instantly surrenders his property and perhaps his life as he cannot decide if it is, 'moral', to defend either.
That, my friends, is an example of a mental disorder.
Amicus
Pure
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torture: its efficacy
http://www.newsweek.com/id/195089
‘We Could Have Done This the Right Way’
How Ali Soufan, an FBI agent, got Abu Zubaydah to talk without torture.
By Michael Isikoff | NEWSWEEK
Published Apr 25, 2009
From the magazine issue dated May 4, 2009
The arguments at the CIA safe house were loud and intense in the spring of 2002. Inside, a high-value terror suspect, Abu Zubaydah, was handcuffed to a gurney. He had been wounded during his capture in Pakistan and still had bullet fragments in his stomach, leg and groin. Agency operatives were aiming to crack him with rough and unorthodox interrogation tactics—including stripping him nude, turning down the temperature and bombarding him with loud music. But one impassioned young FBI agent wanted nothing to do with it. He tried to stop them.
The agent, Ali Soufan, was known as one of the bureau's top experts on Al Qaeda. He also had a reputation as a shrewd interrogator who could work fluently in both English and Arabic. Soufan yelled at one CIA contractor and told him that what he was doing was wrong, ineffective and an affront to American values.
At one point, Soufan discovered a dark wooden "confinement box" that the contractor had built for Abu Zubaydah. It looked, Soufan recalls, "like a coffin." The mercurial agent erupted in anger, got on a secure phone line and called Pasquale D'Amuro, then the FBI assistant director for counterterrorism. "I swear to God," he shouted, "I'm going to arrest these guys!"
D'Amuro and other officials were alarmed at what they heard from Soufan. They fretted about the political consequences of abusive interrogations and the Washington blowback they thought was inevitable, say two high-ranking FBI sources who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.
According to a later Justice Department inspector general's report, D'Amuro warned FBI Director Bob Mueller that such activities would eventually be investigated. "Someday, people are going to be sitting in front of green felt tables having to testify about all of this," D'Amuro said, according to one of the sources.
Mueller ordered Soufan and a second FBI agent home. He then directed that bureau personnel no longer participate in CIA interrogations. In the corridors of the White House, Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies, heated debates ensued. Three months later, on Aug. 1, 2002, Justice lawyers issued a chilling memo blessing everything the CIA contractors had proposed—including waterboarding, or simulated drowning, a ghoulish technique that was administered to Abu Zubaydah 83 times.
This was a decisive moment in the campaign against Al Qaeda—the point at which, in the eyes of many critics, the Bush administration took a fateful step away from the rule of law. The administration, believing it faced an extraordinary threat that justified extreme measures, shifted toward what former vice president Dick Cheney once grimly called "the dark side." But the debates that began in that spring of 2002 never really ended.
Last week Soufan, 37, now a security consultant who spends most of his time in the Middle East, decided to tell the story of his involvement in the Abu Zubaydah interrogations publicly for the first time. In an op-ed in The New York Times and in a series of exclusive interviews with NEWSWEEK, Soufan described how he, together with FBI colleague Steve Gaudin, began the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. They nursed his wounds, gained his confidence and got the terror suspect talking. They extracted crucial intelligence—including the identity of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the architect of 9/11 and the dirty-bomb plot of Jose Padilla—before CIA contractors even began their aggressive tactics.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/195089
‘We Could Have Done This the Right Way’
How Ali Soufan, an FBI agent, got Abu Zubaydah to talk without torture.
By Michael Isikoff | NEWSWEEK
Published Apr 25, 2009
From the magazine issue dated May 4, 2009
The arguments at the CIA safe house were loud and intense in the spring of 2002. Inside, a high-value terror suspect, Abu Zubaydah, was handcuffed to a gurney. He had been wounded during his capture in Pakistan and still had bullet fragments in his stomach, leg and groin. Agency operatives were aiming to crack him with rough and unorthodox interrogation tactics—including stripping him nude, turning down the temperature and bombarding him with loud music. But one impassioned young FBI agent wanted nothing to do with it. He tried to stop them.
The agent, Ali Soufan, was known as one of the bureau's top experts on Al Qaeda. He also had a reputation as a shrewd interrogator who could work fluently in both English and Arabic. Soufan yelled at one CIA contractor and told him that what he was doing was wrong, ineffective and an affront to American values.
At one point, Soufan discovered a dark wooden "confinement box" that the contractor had built for Abu Zubaydah. It looked, Soufan recalls, "like a coffin." The mercurial agent erupted in anger, got on a secure phone line and called Pasquale D'Amuro, then the FBI assistant director for counterterrorism. "I swear to God," he shouted, "I'm going to arrest these guys!"
D'Amuro and other officials were alarmed at what they heard from Soufan. They fretted about the political consequences of abusive interrogations and the Washington blowback they thought was inevitable, say two high-ranking FBI sources who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.
According to a later Justice Department inspector general's report, D'Amuro warned FBI Director Bob Mueller that such activities would eventually be investigated. "Someday, people are going to be sitting in front of green felt tables having to testify about all of this," D'Amuro said, according to one of the sources.
Mueller ordered Soufan and a second FBI agent home. He then directed that bureau personnel no longer participate in CIA interrogations. In the corridors of the White House, Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies, heated debates ensued. Three months later, on Aug. 1, 2002, Justice lawyers issued a chilling memo blessing everything the CIA contractors had proposed—including waterboarding, or simulated drowning, a ghoulish technique that was administered to Abu Zubaydah 83 times.
This was a decisive moment in the campaign against Al Qaeda—the point at which, in the eyes of many critics, the Bush administration took a fateful step away from the rule of law. The administration, believing it faced an extraordinary threat that justified extreme measures, shifted toward what former vice president Dick Cheney once grimly called "the dark side." But the debates that began in that spring of 2002 never really ended.
Last week Soufan, 37, now a security consultant who spends most of his time in the Middle East, decided to tell the story of his involvement in the Abu Zubaydah interrogations publicly for the first time. In an op-ed in The New York Times and in a series of exclusive interviews with NEWSWEEK, Soufan described how he, together with FBI colleague Steve Gaudin, began the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. They nursed his wounds, gained his confidence and got the terror suspect talking. They extracted crucial intelligence—including the identity of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the architect of 9/11 and the dirty-bomb plot of Jose Padilla—before CIA contractors even began their aggressive tactics.
sr71plt
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What you depict here, Pure is also a classic "Good cop/bad cop" technique used (often quite successfully) in interrogations. Just sayin'. Giving the subject something they want--a friend and someone who will "understand" him right through the "spilling your guts" phase.
Pure
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reply to amicus
amicus said,
The visible flaw in all of 'Pure's' assumptions, is his inability to define human life, to begin with, and secondly, to place a value on it.
this is pretty vague, but my assumptions were laid out in the posting of the objective, utililitarian case against torture.
#246, above: http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?p=30744684#post30744684
fwiw, i define human life as follows.
pure says: Human life is the totality of processes that keep the individual human person breathing, walking about, desiring, seeking happiness, loving others, talking with them, planning, imagining, thinking, etc, In other words, it’s the physical, physiological—and higher, [e.g. psychic and mental]-- processes that allow that person to maintain himself as such and carry out typical human activities.
In the narrow/basic sense, human life refers to the just the basic physical and physiological processes in the human individual, in his/her brain (including cortex), nervous system and body (esp. those of metabolism) which sustain him as such, allowing the existing, higher, typical human functions to occur. IOW the person in a coma without brain degeneration/atrophy still has (basic) individual human life, as does the helpless newborn whose main and typical human activity is grasping and suckling.
amicus said,
The visible flaw in all of 'Pure's' assumptions, is his inability to define human life, to begin with, and secondly, to place a value on it.
this is pretty vague, but my assumptions were laid out in the posting of the objective, utililitarian case against torture.
#246, above: http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?p=30744684#post30744684
fwiw, i define human life as follows.
pure says: Human life is the totality of processes that keep the individual human person breathing, walking about, desiring, seeking happiness, loving others, talking with them, planning, imagining, thinking, etc, In other words, it’s the physical, physiological—and higher, [e.g. psychic and mental]-- processes that allow that person to maintain himself as such and carry out typical human activities.
In the narrow/basic sense, human life refers to the just the basic physical and physiological processes in the human individual, in his/her brain (including cortex), nervous system and body (esp. those of metabolism) which sustain him as such, allowing the existing, higher, typical human functions to occur. IOW the person in a coma without brain degeneration/atrophy still has (basic) individual human life, as does the helpless newborn whose main and typical human activity is grasping and suckling.
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Reply to Pure's definition of life.
The above definition of life includes the idea that the life that can walk best, breath better, plan, imagine and think better is the more superior form of life. Mental functions are physical functions. There are, in this sense, better persons than others. It is possible through biological inheritance to be a superman and be able to be a god among men. The superman for sure would be able to make his own laws and would be a moral relativist.
At one time the German people thought they were a race of supermen. They trusted themselves to make their own decisions and to carry out their will on the world. They considered their moral code to be strong and created by a superior human race. They could out run, out think, and out govern all other peoples that did not have white skin and blond hair. They were evolution's best product.
The type of reasoning that makes you proud and feel superior is often based on feeling and emotion alone. Correct logic, however, plays only a secondary role in this type of reasoning. Liberals tend to accept this type of process (walking, talking, thinking better) as a mark of superiority that supports their right to be relativist and therefore superior. It is a type of selectivity that is useful in breeding cattle and horses but it falls miles short of being logical whatsoever.
Real moral progress does not depend on evolution. All progress depends on the scientific method that man discovered and uses to discover more things. It is good logic, which man also discovered. Improvement in morality comes from understanding the concept to love better. Improvement in cities, roads, churches, schools, colleges, medicine, astronomy, space travel and all things, is the product of man making discoveries (through the scientific method, correct reasoning and logic).
Moral relativist are not equipped to make moral and spiritual decisions. They can not justly decide an issue like torture or the true quality of life. It has been agreed that there can be as many moral codes as there are people in the world for a relativist, millions of moral codes. Since nothing is self evident, absolute, and measurable, there can be no premises and not only is this true in the cosmological world, to the relativist, it is true in the world of morality. There are no premises upon which to base moral reasoning other than man.
It is for this reason that the relativist is unwilling to refute a very hideous remark that I made. I stuffed it down the throat of the relativist. "The pedophile uses the same logic to justify his behavior as the homosexual, rapist, murder, or abortionist does to support his behavior. All these have the same flawed reasoning as does the pedophile.
It is true that being either a relativist or an absolute moralist does not make a person a pedophile, an evil or good person. It is most people's belief, I think, that people are what they do. Both the relativist and theist believe this. But why they do what they do things is very important when explaining good and bad behavior.
The above definition of life includes the idea that the life that can walk best, breath better, plan, imagine and think better is the more superior form of life. Mental functions are physical functions. There are, in this sense, better persons than others. It is possible through biological inheritance to be a superman and be able to be a god among men. The superman for sure would be able to make his own laws and would be a moral relativist.
At one time the German people thought they were a race of supermen. They trusted themselves to make their own decisions and to carry out their will on the world. They considered their moral code to be strong and created by a superior human race. They could out run, out think, and out govern all other peoples that did not have white skin and blond hair. They were evolution's best product.
The type of reasoning that makes you proud and feel superior is often based on feeling and emotion alone. Correct logic, however, plays only a secondary role in this type of reasoning. Liberals tend to accept this type of process (walking, talking, thinking better) as a mark of superiority that supports their right to be relativist and therefore superior. It is a type of selectivity that is useful in breeding cattle and horses but it falls miles short of being logical whatsoever.
Real moral progress does not depend on evolution. All progress depends on the scientific method that man discovered and uses to discover more things. It is good logic, which man also discovered. Improvement in morality comes from understanding the concept to love better. Improvement in cities, roads, churches, schools, colleges, medicine, astronomy, space travel and all things, is the product of man making discoveries (through the scientific method, correct reasoning and logic).
Moral relativist are not equipped to make moral and spiritual decisions. They can not justly decide an issue like torture or the true quality of life. It has been agreed that there can be as many moral codes as there are people in the world for a relativist, millions of moral codes. Since nothing is self evident, absolute, and measurable, there can be no premises and not only is this true in the cosmological world, to the relativist, it is true in the world of morality. There are no premises upon which to base moral reasoning other than man.
It is for this reason that the relativist is unwilling to refute a very hideous remark that I made. I stuffed it down the throat of the relativist. "The pedophile uses the same logic to justify his behavior as the homosexual, rapist, murder, or abortionist does to support his behavior. All these have the same flawed reasoning as does the pedophile.
It is true that being either a relativist or an absolute moralist does not make a person a pedophile, an evil or good person. It is most people's belief, I think, that people are what they do. Both the relativist and theist believe this. But why they do what they do things is very important when explaining good and bad behavior.
romeothethird
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I'd like to know if anybody can tell me the kind of torture the Americans used on Japanese and German prisoners of war that helped us save American lives and win World War II. I don't recall ever hearing about that.
The best examples I hear of torture working to gain useful information is in fictional television shows. If we believe that is the way the world works, then we're all stuck on Gilligan's Island.
The best examples I hear of torture working to gain useful information is in fictional television shows. If we believe that is the way the world works, then we're all stuck on Gilligan's Island.
G
Guest
Guest
Wow, wrms -
Your grammar is much better on this post.
So either you're quoting directly from another source, or a different person is using your ID to make this argument.
Another personality?
Your grammar is much better on this post.
So either you're quoting directly from another source, or a different person is using your ID to make this argument.
Another personality?
cantdog
Waybac machine
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I can't see it. English teachers still wince. Logicians too, I bet.
It's all very relative. Compared to some of its more incoherent posts, this is really quite advanced. Still lacking in the logic department, but at least here we have polysyllabic words and a stab at punctuation.
xssve
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So in other words, you are the real superman?
Just out of curiosity, on what scientific grounds do you oppose homosexuality, or even rape murder, abortion or pedophilia?
It should be very good, since you are already able to justify torture, which rational analysis has already established is largely gratuitous from an empirical standpoint.
shereads
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I first read these verteran interviews at Washington Post. Google turned up this version http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/240810
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shereads
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shereads
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I laughed at the John Gunther Dean quote. He was the ambassador in Thailand when I was there last, and we all left the Country Team meetings he ran feeling like we'd been tortured.
Did you give up the codes?
sr71plt
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I could never remember the codes. I couldn't even remember names from cocktail parties. My torturers would be more frustrated by what I couldn't remember than by what I wasn't telling them.
On John Gunther Dean: I never met a person who thought they were God more than Saint John (as we called him) did of himself. I do remember one fun Country Team meeting he ran, though, where he was memorable in a fun way.
The first AIDs case reported in Thailand unfortunately was of a U.S. diplomat--one who had scandalously brought his male lover from the States as the "tutor" of the man's children (who promptly went back to the States). The guy, a hairdresser, had a diplomatic passport too, which sent the embassy community all a buzz, because the passports (a government passport being the norm for anyone not representational) were very hard to come by.
Dean stonewalled all of this buzz, as he didn't want to get into a discrimination case (and Washington, after all, had sanctioned the arrangement).
The diplomat and his hairdresser got into a snit and the hairdresser trounced off to Hong Kong and contracted AIDs and came back and gave it to the U.S. diplomat, who then was diagnosed as the first official case of AIDs in Thailand--a real black eye for the U.S., especially considering what an open sex pot Thailand is.
Now the hairdresser was a good hairdresser and so all of the embassy wives were going to him and both he and his diplomat lover were heavily involved in the theater world in Bangkok--as was I--so the hairdresser was doing all of the makeup work in Bangkok entertainment circles.
So, at the first Country Team meeting after the AIDs case bombshell hit the national Thai papers, all of the Country Team members were clamouring over why they weren't told already about the AIDs business because their wives had been exposed by going to the hairdresser.
Dean looked at the counsel general, the only woman present, and she dryly said "Don't look at me, I do my own hair." And then, for some unknown reason, he looked at me--I suppose thinking I had some responsibility as I was the theater director and worked closely there with both the diplomat (who, of course, was in the hospital at that point rather than in the Country Team meeting) and the hairdresser. I just gave him a "why me?" look, as I hadn't known before now about the AIDs business (although I knew something was wrong--I have a story here on Lit. that relates to this--"Rude Awakening" I think it's titled).
And then Dean turned to the worried natterers and declared in his Charlton Heston voice, "Unless Tommy has been having sex in your wives' hair, they have nothing to worry about," and he stormed out and the meeting was over.
So, who says diplomacy can't be fun?
/I'd apologize for the thread jack, but the discussion wasn't going anywhere anyway./
amicus
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Post #309:
~~~
Please consider Pure's motive; that of defining life in such a way as to justify abortion, the taking of life. Unfortunately, that 'motive' is rampant throughout the 'pop' scientific community as they diligently search for terms to obfuscate the definition of both, 'life', and 'human life'.
For your own gratification, do a search for, "definition: human life", and, "Definition: life"
What you will discover, in a broad generalization, is that, 'science' cannot provide one single axiomatic truth in terms of defining, 'life' in general, that has a moral component. You will also discover that when you search, 'human life', the terms are couched in such a way as to carefully avoid placing 'value', on human life, except through religious terminology.
Thus it falls to the category of Philosophy, and specifically, Metaphysics, beyond the physical, to conduct a study of human life; values, ethics and morals.
Pure and Xssve are among the local cohorts that direct others to 'science' to determine the nature of human life, but are the last to admit that science cannot answer, by definition, the basic question.
This is where the fundamental dichotomy begins concerning the question of 'when' human life begins.
Pure defines human life in such a way that if an individual cannot play the game of Marbles, then that individual is not human. Attempting to define life by listing the things a living human being can or cannot accomplish, is silliness to the nth degree.
It becomes more insanely difficult when Pure and company cannot decide whether human life exists one minute before birth or one minute after; or nine minutes, nine hours, or nine months before birth.
Religious belief offers man an absolute answer by stating that each life is created by God and sacred from the instant of conception and even before, as to intercede by contraception is to interfere with the works of God, and thus immoral and unethical.
For those of us who disagree, or hold there is no God, we must consider the entire range of Metaphysical questions using only the mind and our sensory perceptions of reality.
As 'human life', sentient, self aware, our species is the only known species to possess the full range of mental acuity to reflect upon our individual existence. That ability, that potential, exists in no other species and sets man apart from all others.
This particular post of mine will provide no absolute answers, but will provide, should you follow the provided links and expand the search to satisfy your own quest for truth, a means by which you can exercise your cognitive ability to reach a decision concerning the value of human life.
~~~
http://www.scitopics.com/Definition...Life_can_be_anwered_simply_and_logically.html
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/9a.html
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bio99/bio99171.htm
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life
Good hunting!
Amicus
~~~
Please consider Pure's motive; that of defining life in such a way as to justify abortion, the taking of life. Unfortunately, that 'motive' is rampant throughout the 'pop' scientific community as they diligently search for terms to obfuscate the definition of both, 'life', and 'human life'.
For your own gratification, do a search for, "definition: human life", and, "Definition: life"
What you will discover, in a broad generalization, is that, 'science' cannot provide one single axiomatic truth in terms of defining, 'life' in general, that has a moral component. You will also discover that when you search, 'human life', the terms are couched in such a way as to carefully avoid placing 'value', on human life, except through religious terminology.
Thus it falls to the category of Philosophy, and specifically, Metaphysics, beyond the physical, to conduct a study of human life; values, ethics and morals.
Pure and Xssve are among the local cohorts that direct others to 'science' to determine the nature of human life, but are the last to admit that science cannot answer, by definition, the basic question.
This is where the fundamental dichotomy begins concerning the question of 'when' human life begins.
Pure defines human life in such a way that if an individual cannot play the game of Marbles, then that individual is not human. Attempting to define life by listing the things a living human being can or cannot accomplish, is silliness to the nth degree.
It becomes more insanely difficult when Pure and company cannot decide whether human life exists one minute before birth or one minute after; or nine minutes, nine hours, or nine months before birth.
Religious belief offers man an absolute answer by stating that each life is created by God and sacred from the instant of conception and even before, as to intercede by contraception is to interfere with the works of God, and thus immoral and unethical.
For those of us who disagree, or hold there is no God, we must consider the entire range of Metaphysical questions using only the mind and our sensory perceptions of reality.
As 'human life', sentient, self aware, our species is the only known species to possess the full range of mental acuity to reflect upon our individual existence. That ability, that potential, exists in no other species and sets man apart from all others.
This particular post of mine will provide no absolute answers, but will provide, should you follow the provided links and expand the search to satisfy your own quest for truth, a means by which you can exercise your cognitive ability to reach a decision concerning the value of human life.
~~~
http://www.scitopics.com/Definition...Life_can_be_anwered_simply_and_logically.html
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/9a.html
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bio99/bio99171.htm
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life
Good hunting!
Amicus
Dragonlipz
Deep Fried and Sanctified
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2008
- Posts
- 2,096
Never fear:
The codes are safe. Nancy, Harry, Hillary, and I put them in a plastic bag and that bag into a gallon Tupperware container before we buried it in an 'undisclosed location'.
Reply to Shereads, sweetsubsarahh, cantdog, freshface, & Dragonlipz
I try to reply to each in kind to their comments. Here is a little something for all of you. You have made great “show and tell” exhibits whenever I needed to explain what a trolling RABD was. Keep up the good work. You have helped me to destroy the image of the members of RABD as intellectually honest people. Many of your kind have fallen by the way side and many others are on the edge of destruction.
All of you are in need of mental health care but I do not think you will be able to hang on tile help arrives. You keep obsessing about my English, spelling, and character but seem to never be able to retort my strong logical positions. Perhaps, I thought, I should find some of your post that are wreaked with mistakes but I do not want to waste my time. Cantdog, you even write with a stutter and an accent.
Some of you, I do not expect to have to deal with much longer. You keep promising to commit suicide on the depression thread. You complain that you keep cloaking in and out of depression but you never do anything to help yourselves. When you do end it all, I will use your example as “show and tell” to illustrate the futility of lives that were lived without reasoning but only with hate and animosity. Shame on you! You really think you are authors and intellectuals.
I try to reply to each in kind to their comments. Here is a little something for all of you. You have made great “show and tell” exhibits whenever I needed to explain what a trolling RABD was. Keep up the good work. You have helped me to destroy the image of the members of RABD as intellectually honest people. Many of your kind have fallen by the way side and many others are on the edge of destruction.
All of you are in need of mental health care but I do not think you will be able to hang on tile help arrives. You keep obsessing about my English, spelling, and character but seem to never be able to retort my strong logical positions. Perhaps, I thought, I should find some of your post that are wreaked with mistakes but I do not want to waste my time. Cantdog, you even write with a stutter and an accent.
Some of you, I do not expect to have to deal with much longer. You keep promising to commit suicide on the depression thread. You complain that you keep cloaking in and out of depression but you never do anything to help yourselves. When you do end it all, I will use your example as “show and tell” to illustrate the futility of lives that were lived without reasoning but only with hate and animosity. Shame on you! You really think you are authors and intellectuals.
G
Guest
Guest
You have logic?
