Non sequitur.

Anti-natalism (the philosophical position of assigning a negative value to birth) isn't a Catholic position. I know that because I'm an atheist and we statistically know more about people's own religions. At least in this case, that is.

Mike :-P

It sounds as if that author is in agreement with the Catholic Church, procreation might be immoral if the man and woman are not open to the possibility of life.

This does not mean he is arguing for death of full human beings (partial human beings like fetuses do not make the grade for the most part).Anti-natalism is the position he defends.

I recently listened to an interview with him and his logic and reasoning held me, despite my evolutionary-directed optimistic brain. It's quite thought provoking. What if he's right?

He has a book that's been around for a decade now, Better to Have Never Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence. Have you read it? I am tempted to buy it.

Mike
Edit done.

I really don't understand why sexual conduct is so rarely discussed alongside abortion. It is as if the dilemma of aborting a developing human fetus exists in a vacuum without any cause or social atmosphere. We can't just talk about abortion. We need to talk about human sexuality at large as well as human personhood.

Thank you for your remarks. I d like to clarify that when I talk about pornography and prostitution I'm referring to the consumer/producer in the former case and to the pimp/client in the latter. I consider that prostitutes are the actual victims, they are who are turned into objects for the pleasure of others.

My point is that it's immoral to use persons as objects period. I leave criminology to the lawyers.

When you say "ethically neutral things" you are just begging the question. You must put forward the arguments that sustain your belief that they are neutral.

Maybe you consider that destroying a zigot is ethically neutral just because you are drawing an arbitrary line that separates the less-than-human thing from the actual human person.

The willingness to draw that line is supported by a non neutral ideology

the line could be drawn by anybody with sufficient back up power

in that case the line could be drawn wherever and whenever it may be needed according to the ends that want to be accomplished.

I don't say the line can't be drawn, I said it shouldn't.

Lets be pragmatic, we wouldn't want to be caught in the wrong side of the line

Dear El Suscriptor Justiciero:

Nice to meet you! :-)

Lemme check... yup, nothing but apologetical assertions. False dichotomies and false analogies aplenty.

The irony is that you accuse me of making assertions by assertion. You should explain how such assertions are somehow false, otherwise it is just an undefended assertion.

Anyway, I explained in more detail in the post you are responding to.

"Nothing but apologetical assertion" is very funny though, as it sounds as if you are dismissing an argument for a religion on the basis that it is an argument for a religion, as if an argument is wrong by default if it is in defense of a religion :-)

No! You misunderstand the argument. The thing is that the difference between an acorn and an oak is comparable to the difference between a human zygote and a real person.

As long as we recognize that what you call "real person," really means "adult real person," and the category "real person" applies to both zygotes and adults, then I agree.

The question itself is wrong.

Yes, one can completely avoid this question by rejecting the foundations of it. However, the person I was debating seems to accept those premises, which means the question does apply to his philosophy.

Strawman fallacy. We argue against the false claim that there is an magical Great Juju outside the universe artificially giving meaning and value to everything; which is, as you can see, very different from your statement.

Ignoring the nonsense about "a magical Great Juju" (which misunderstands the Judo-Christian understanding of God anyway), do you think value is objective, that is, that things have meaning and goodness intristically?

I also wish to note that "outside the universe artificially giving meaning and value to everything" sounds a lot like how modern thinkers tend to understand the relationship between God and the universe. Traditional Christianity has a much deeper understanding of the relationship between the universe and God, although we don't deny how the moderns understand it: we just think the moderns' understanding is incomplete, which led and leads to errors.

WTFBBQ. This bullshit is fractally wrong on so many levels that I don't even.

Let me clarify myself: when I say "evolutionary worldview" and the like, I mean Darwinism, and the philosophies like it, that seem to adapt a quasi-Heraclitus metaphysics to the biological theory of evolution. This is not an attempt to reject evolution as a fact, or natural selection as a theory.

Now, what I wrote is NOT bullshit, as I just took secular "humanism," wedded to Darwinism, to its logical conclusions. The evolutionary worldview does see species as an artificial idea, as a subjective convenience. To quote Darwin:

"From these remarks it will be seen that I look at the term
species, as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience
to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and
that it does not essentially differ from the term variety,
which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms.
The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual
differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for mere
convenience sake (The Origin of Species: Chapter II)."

I don't agree with him at all. I think evolution does not demonstrate that species are arbitrary, but rather that nominalistic thinking is read into the facts. However, Darwinism does hold this view, that all "species" are really just one thing in flux, from what I understand (also don't mistake natural selection for Darwinism. Natural selection (which I think is, in part, a good theory explaining evolution) is included in Darwinism, but Darwinism is more than mere natural selection). I'm not attacking the science side of Darwinism; I'm attacking its philosophical side.

Christi pax.

But, nothing changes as far as the essential nature of the biological human being, the human individual, throughout his life - he is the same individual his entire lifespan. As time passes, he simply ages...abilities and appearance may change, but the being does not. Either he has "human rights" at all times he is this being, or he does not. Your hypothesis is simply a line drawn on shifting sand...and amounts to nothing more than age and/or disability discrimination.

This is a bit older thread than I typically respond to, but I'm very curious. What's the evidence?

If that's the only "evidence" you can muster in support of your ideas, so be it.

You start on the wrong foot by equating ethically neutral things like euthanasia, abortion, pornography and prostitution with crimes like slavery, human trafficking, genocide, racism and forced prostitution.