^ You cons will always be like that.

You will always extol the sanctity of life until you find yourself in that position: facing an unwanted pregnancy.

Suddenly your views will change very drasticly when it is you, or your sister, or your daughter.

But that won't stop you from shitting on people in the interim.

Never has.

The sanctity of life ends when babies stop being cute.

>> ^MarineGunrock:
How the fuck can you claim to be pro-life and kill someone? Isn't one of the tenants of being pro-life respecting the sanctity of life?


Please look at my past posts to know my respect for you, but considering your formerly-active marine status, I find your confusion over the idea of killing to save lives a bit strange.

How the fuck can you claim to be pro-life and kill someone? Isn't one of the tenants of being pro-life respecting the sanctity of life?

I know that death is a natural part of life, but I have to admit that the concept of my own death is a little baffling to me. Among other things, death involves permanent loss of consciousness, and it's just hard for me to wrap my puny human brain around the concept that my awareness will stop one day. I'm an atheist, but I can see how humans developed the concept of an immortal "soul," or "ultimate reality," or what have you. It's just hard for some to believe that one day your body will be like a stone - inanimate, devoid of life, no consciousness - with nothing at all remaining, not even a conscious soul that goes to a magical place somewhere.

That's why the fact that religious people seem more scared of dying than the non-religious is truly bizarre. Now it's no crime to be scared of dying. Many people, both religious and atheist, are scared of it. But if I were dying from a horrible affliction I'd much rather be whisked away to Heaven if I knew for certain it existed. To quote from the New York Times article:

“People think that spiritual patients are more likely to say their lives are in God’s hands — ’Let what happens happen’ — but in fact we know they want more aggressive care,” said Holly G. Prigerson, the study’s senior author and director of the Center for Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care Research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

“To religious people, life is sacred and sanctified,” Dr. Prigerson said, “and there’s a sense they feel it’s their duty and obligation to stay alive as long as possible.”

But do you really think they want to stay alive because of their belief in the "sanctity of life," or could it possibly mean that the religious are secretly afraid that there is no afterlife? Or are they afraid that they just might end up in Hell? The article never mentioned if the religious patients were quizzed about precisely why they wanted heroic measures taken to make them last as long as possible. I'm curious.

>> ^BillOreilly:
good job Obama, let more millions of innocents die, that's the liberal way


Yes, lets do everything we can to protect the sanctity of life of a collection of undifferentiated cells, yet start needless wars which costs the lives of millions of innocents. Because Jesus forgives us when we murder Muslims, but not when it's Christian embryos. That's the conservative way.

Every day that I'm pregnant with this child, I contemplate how I can protect it from dangerous, stupid people like you.

In reply to this comment by thepinky:
I don't know how your feel about profile comments so I'm sorry if this offends.

Why do I have to make a point to have a discussion? Can't I ask a simple question without pissing people off around here?

I have never failed to speak up in a Mormon thread that I came across, but I don't go around looking for them. I don't spend enough time on the Sift to do that. Which threads are you talking about and why are they tricky?

I don't see how this was evangelizing at all. That really was not my intention. Even when I am honestly trying to have a nice quiet philosophical discussion and promote some thought and improve my own mind, you get all uppity about it.

Could you just leave me alone? Become a silent downvoter like UsesProzac if you don't like something that I say instead of clouding up my discussion thread with insults.

In reply to this comment by MINK:
thepinky, if you want a discussion you actually have to make a point.
you would be surprised how "discussy" i can be if you actually said something and backed it up.

my problem with you is that you never turn up in the mormon threads that are a little bit tricky, and you hide behind "discussion" when really you want to evangelise.

that's cool, gradually you are learning that you don't know anything. that's the first step on the path to wisdom.

Congratulations! Your comment has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

I don't know how your feel about profile comments so I'm sorry if this offends.

Why do I have to make a point to have a discussion? Can't I ask a simple question without pissing people off around here?

I have never failed to speak up in a Mormon thread that I came across, but I don't go around looking for them. I don't spend enough time on the Sift to do that. Which threads are you talking about and why are they tricky?

I don't see how this was evangelizing at all. That really was not my intention. Even when I am honestly trying to have a nice quiet philosophical discussion and promote some thought and improve my own mind, you get all uppity about it.

Could you just leave me alone? Become a silent downvoter like UsesProzac if you don't like something that I say instead of clouding up my discussion thread with insults.

In reply to this comment by MINK:
thepinky, if you want a discussion you actually have to make a point.
you would be surprised how "discussy" i can be if you actually said something and backed it up.

my problem with you is that you never turn up in the mormon threads that are a little bit tricky, and you hide behind "discussion" when really you want to evangelise.

that's cool, gradually you are learning that you don't know anything. that's the first step on the path to wisdom.

There is no sanctity of life. We'd like to say there is but there isn't really. What sanctity of life can there be when the most powerful, christian some would say, nation on the planet argues endlessly about religion, abortion and vegetable patients while raining down death in bombs and bullets on others in the name of peace and democracy, approving the waging of oppression and violence of it's allies and in those key moments when it can do something it chooses to fold it's arms ruminating on what response it should and shouldn't take in the world council while genocide is carried out; years later producing movies that poignantly show just how terrible life is in other places.

"sanctity of life" needs some deconstruction.

As already mentioned sanctity has problems in being theistic (therefor not amenable to verification), so I'm going to go with value, which exposes one of the fundamental flaws in the question at hand, since value is by it's vary nature subjective, the question needs to be phrased "value of life to you|me|john|The Pope|etc". We have no obvious need to agree, just as with anything value is not transitive, I don't need to base my valuation on yours, and vice versa, you may feel that a bucket of fried chicken is worth $10, while I, being vegan, value it at $0(or less).

The more absurd issue is "life". Before the last millennium humanity seemed to have a pretty solid grasp of what constituted life and none life, people from all over the world could agree on general categories to some extent, their mythology around this was different, but we understood that a lion is not like a rock in some meaningful way.

The problem is that the way we tended to make this distinction , as "life force" is demonstrably wrong, life is not magic, it's chemistry. The knowledge of this fact is extremely new in the course of human history, and we have certainly not integrated this fact into our general cultural context or language, and so part of the problem is that our language, our tool for making and analyzing distinctions, is fundamentally flawed in this regard, and so should be expected to be wrong.

"life" is not a thing or an attribute, it is an arbitrary categorization which we use in an attempt to save our old, cherished, incorrect notion from being discarded.The category life basically comes down to something along the lines of:

"that which we value more than a rock"

Of course this could be "life" in the standard bible-belt sense of "Christian life", or more magnanimously "human life", but neither of these get us a clearer picture. How much "living stuff" which is "human" does it take to get human life? Skin cells, a kidney, a decapitated body on life support, a brain on life support, a group of cell which have the "potential" to become a living breathing adult human? How many "humans" are in a zygote? What if it splits into twins/sextuplets?

And in the end the question is what "should" be the value, so if we put it all back together we get:

What should be the value, to all entities, of an non-clearly defined category of objects of which all the entities seem to be members?

You can tweak the clarifications on that question to make ANY conclusion follow, but their is NO BASIS on which to tweak the clarifications to begin with.

All answers are bound to be meaningless and unsatisfying, because the question is meaningless and unsatisfying.

Societies decide in subtle and organic ways what is valuable and what is unacceptable, and it's a good thing™. I much prefer our current society to euro-diaspora society 100, or even 50 years ago.

>> ^gwiz665:
I disagree. I have no moral objections to the Death Penalty for certain crimes, as long as there are no doubts about the guilt. It is not wrong, you think it is wrong.


You got it all backwards mate. Just because you don't have any problems with demanding the death of a fellow human being doesn't mean it isn't morally wrong.

>> ^thepinky:
My question is more about what about life is worth preserving? Life or quality of life?


Barring some sort of domino or "pinch of sand, is it a mountain" argument, Pinky, what do you think?

Would you rather live 100 years as a slave or 11 years as a princess?

>> ^thepinky:
I know you have a personal problem with me and I blame myself for that, but just cool it with the insults.

What the fuck are you talking about? In order to have a personal problem with someone, I'd have to know them on a personal level. Also, I don't know what insults you are referring to. Calling you an idealistic college girl is an insult? Or was it the fact that I linked you to the Christian faith? Oh, you know what, I actually get your point on that last one. If you took it as an insult to your intelligence that I assumed you base your values on the bible then I take that back.

I just find it irritating how hung up you are on the abortion issue. Is it ethical for someone to have an abortion? There's no straight answer to that. Is it any of your damn business what other women do with their fetii? No. Unless you're the father and since you take the fact that MINK called you a girl as an insult maybe that's the kind of involvement you're looking for.

And no, the death penalty is not a "tricky subject", it's very simple. It is wrong.

>> ^thepinky:
Don't know why I started a silly discussion when I'm so busy.


I could tell you why, but you'd call it "unkind and uncalled-for"...