[PLUG-TALK] Being plonked on plug...

Jeme A Brelin jeme at brelin.net
Fri Nov 14 21:27:54 UTC 2003


On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Michael C. Robinson wrote:
> How do you know a fetus is dumb, and what difference would
> that make?

A fetus is dumb because it has very few neurons and, hence, very few
possible brain-states.

It is many weeks before a fetus has more neurons than a fruitfly and
months before it has more than a frog.  Is it a great sin of murder to
cease the life of a fruitfly or a frog?

> I suppose a fetus never sucks it's thumb, never responds to his/her
> mother before birth.  No mention that a heart starts beating before
> birth, eh?

And I suppose a cow doesn't run away when it's scared or come running when
a friendly voice is in the pasture.  And I suppose chickens don't have
beating hearts.

All of those arguments are totally spurious and boil down to your belief
that human beings are different because there is some magical,
undefinable, undetectable thing called a "soul" that was put there by a
magical, undefinable, undetectable thing called "God".  This is the crux
of your distinction between murder and acceptable slaughter.

> By saying the definition of people is yours to play with Heinlein, you
> can refuse to recognize anyone as falling under it.

No, the definition of "people" is not at question.  It is the definition
of "valuable life" that is at question.

> What would Jefferson say about unrestricted lawsuits against a religious
> body?  People came here for religious freedom, yet the punishments in
> the priest abuse scandal go far beyond what justice demands.

I don't care if the corporation is religious in nature or some other
commercial pursuit.  Restriction of lawsuits is equivalent to instituting
unchecked power.

> Bankrupting a religious body with members that are predominantly
> innocent of crimes which happened over thirty+ years ago is wrong.

Tell that to the forty-year-old men who were buggered by the person on
this Earth they were taught to trust most.

And I hardly think someone who believes in eternal damnation in Hell for
those who do not accept The One Truth has any room to talk about a
punishment being wrong.

> Various protestant faiths will be next,the money train will not stop
> until the legal system is fixed.

Which protestant faiths force their clergy to be unmarried and pretend to
not be human beings with sexual urges in order to keep their jobs, thus
forcing them to act out unnaturally due to their unnaturally repressed
humanity?

See, it takes some kind of perceived wrongdoing to file a lawsuit and it
(hopefully) takes some kind of proof of that wrongdoing for the suit to be
greatly damaging.

> You are coward for stopping your quote of Jefferson where you did
> Heinlein.  There's a reason Jefferson put God in there, but you have
> completely missed it.

Jefferson's God was not your God, Michael.  You are just interpreting
Jefferson conveniently and sentimentally when you substitute your God for
his.

> The fetus is a person provable very early on by the presence of brain
> waves and from conception on the argument that humanity is contained in
> an immortal soul.

Brain waves do not a person make, sir.  And there is no proof for "an
immortal soul"... unless you're talking about the timeless work of Marvin
Gaye and James Brown.

J.
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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