It's the First Amendment.

I was raised in a cultural setting that would likely go with "God puts the soul in the little-bitty babies the moment the sperm touches the egg". I was capable of questioning my indoctrination with skepticism and critical thought. Technically, everyone is capable of it, though few seem to make the effort.

Historically, the concept comes from the Catholic religion and was adopted quite quickly, ironically enough, by evangelical sects of Christianity. The concept that the early zygote or embryo is anything equivalent personhood was based solely on the idea that it has a soul. Otherwise, there is nothing being-like about it. Prior to that, a good number of religions and traditions held that the fetus was a person once the quickening had happened, and not before.

I was pinning the origins of the idea on particular Christian sects, in the US anyway, not all Christian sects. In fact, there were some Christian sects specifically opposed to it. Arguably, it isn't far fetched to call unrelated sects different religions. I'm sure the Catholics, Lutherans, and Protestants would agree.

I don't know. I see how they look at me!

No it isn't.

Your moral intuitions are not derived from reason. You sit on top of a great mound of moral intuitions that have come out of thousands of years of religious tradition. That tradition has been in dialogue with reason and experience the whole time. You may have rejected one collection of beliefs derived from that tradition for a somewhat different set.

Sure, there are variable viewpoints on this. Since, as with any other moral injunction, there is no purely rationalistic foundation to it... the question is not rationally resolvable. But then again, that is true of all moral questions.

Do you genuinely have no familiarity with the First Amendment's Establishment Clause? Or are you being contrarian because it does not literally use the phrase "no-no", even though I was paraphrasing and never stated it as a direct quote?

Or, perhaps, are you being credulous of the oft-repeated claim that there is no separation between church and state?

Speak for yourself. I may have not analyzed every minor moral stance through the lens of critical thinking, in which case, I may fall back on cultural tradition, but don't for a minute believe that moral stances cannot be derived from reason.

I reject your premise entirely. Moral foundations absolutely can be rational.

It is certainly possible that a person came to believe that preteen girls should be forced to give birth to their rapist's baby for reasons other than christian beliefs. (Yes, there are some members of other religions, or even atheists, who are anti-choice.)

But, christians (in particular evangelical christians) appear to make up the biggest demographic in the anti-abortion movement, and it is unlikely that the republicans would have bothered suppressing women the way they did without the influence of christians. As such, I have no problem linking christian with anti-abortionists.

Or because there's only one amendment that matters to the Religious Right in today's America.

Even if Christians did not invent the idea they are linked if they take it on. And I think very many Christians would be happy to take the credit, as they are very happy to consider their position in the context of their faith. It would seem a disservice to many Christians to suggest that their argument should be seen as secular.

I highlighted the propaganda talking points spouted incessantly by the right wingers.

Police, fire, Medicare, Social Security all "socialist" programs. Are those OK with the majority of voters?

Instead of repeating and therefore amplifying the nonsense that those of us on the left, including Progressives are evil socialists try actually being specific. Oh, no one liked the ACA... until the GOP tried to take it away. Such evil.

Do you even know what socialism is? I doubt it.

Sorry this is off-topic and I'll leave it at this instead of going further. I'm in a blood-boiling mood and sick of hearing this socialism NONSENSE.

Link them all you like, but it's not a legally relevant argument. Separation of church and state isn't actually implicated just because of the correlation.

Of course, neither is an individual right to keep and bear arms. That's only about 14 years old and could just as easily be overturned by the right court as bodily autonomy.

No, not at all.

You are incorrect. It's like trying to build mathematics without any assumed truths. Some basic moral axioms have to be assumed, rather than derived from reason. The sorts of assumptions you are likely to choose will vary significantly to those that would have been chosen in other times and in other places. Maybe one could argue some kind of perennialist position, but those are still not moral axioms derived by reason.

I've never seen it done, and I don't see how it could be done. "We hold these truths to be self-evident...". Self evidence truths aren't the product of reason.

If you asked more specific questions, like "In exchange for guaranteed health coverage, would you pay higher taxes that are lower than your current health insurance premiums?," or "Would you pay higher taxes to ensure that every child had affordable access to higher education?," I think you would still find the majority in support.

This is just crap! And Moscow Mitch hasn't compromised on one single thing. He makes sure he blocks everything.

More crap.

We can make moral judgments based on practical assessments of what's best for the community as a whole and the individuals within it. We can agree that we are all better off if we don't murder each other or assault each other or steal each other's stuff. We can agree that if somebody else needs help, the rest of us should provide it, secure in the knowledge that we will get help when we need it. Etc., etc. We don't need stone tablets to know what's right. And the premise of our democracy is that we decide as a community who can hold power and how they can exercise it.

ETA: Keep in mind that from WWII to the beginning of the Reagan administration, we did pay higher taxes in exchange for affordable college and broader social services. In the '70s there was actually bipartisan support for universal health care, for example, but the Repubs and the Dems couldn't agree about single-payer vs. closely regulated private insurance. The right-wing anti-tax movement is a part of what is fundamentally a long-term anti-government worldview. Where we are is not only not where we have to be, it's not even where we have been in recent history.

Self-evidence

Maybe, but you are still talking about each little thing in isolation. People are just bad at answering these kinds of questions. If you ran things based on what people say they want, you'd crash the economy. In as much as it has any meaningful existence, the "will of the people" is wildly incoherent in what it wants, has a memory of about 5 minutes, can maybe hold 2 things in it's head at once and has never read a book.

Also, your framing of the questions is fundamentally progressive.

Yeah! That's the wrong kind of self-evident. All men being created equal isn't true in any logical sense. It is just asserted.

With all the same depth and consideration: yeah-huh!


Perhaps, but like with mathematics, these do not have to be taken unquestioningly on faith. They can be merely granted for the sake of argument but do not limit them from further investigation, if a reason arises.


Again, speak for yourself. Do not presume to be speaking for me.


Argument from incredulity: Just because you don't understand how something works, doesn't mean it doesn't work.


A quote you are taking grossly out of context. That is a linguistic flourish in a document whose primary purpose was to tell the King of England to go :rule10 off. The actual philosophy behind those self-evident truths were argued and debated and took quite a while to be understood before actually being adopted. If anything, those "truths" are a great example of reason and rational thought, especially the parts deconstructing the sovereignty of royal birthright.

Absolutely, if the community has a common culture and a common set of moral assumptions, you can absolutely do this. That isn't the issue, though.

On purely rationalistic grounds? No you can't. You may end up with some kind of utilitarian contract where everybody agrees not to murder everybody else, but that isn't morality. You might just as equally come up with a contract that said nobody could murder anybody, except for some group nobody liked. Morality has to be more than just reaching an agreement on a set of laws.

We could equally well agree to enslave the weaker members of our group and steal their women.

None of this is deriving morality from reason.

You're making some pretty broad judgments about the entire population. If you think "the will of the people" is "wildly incoherent," maybe you think there shouldn't be elections at all. Maybe the Kochs should just appoint a ruling council. Would you be okay with that?

And I don't use "progressive" as a sneer. "Would you pay higher taxes for better services?" is a straightforward proposition. And that's way before you get to the fact that our current tax codes and enforcement favor the wealthy in ways we haven't seen since the Golden Age.

shuttit, are you claiming that your position on abortion is, at its heart, irrational and void of reason?

Police and fire are government emergency systems, medicare and social security are SOCIAL programmes. They are not Socialism. I wonder if you yourself know the difference.

You suggested I think there is no separation between church and state, I said that isn't what I thought.

People in this thread seem to be very certain in their position on abortion given that it is all based on assumptions that have merely been taken for the sake of argument. Other people have other moral assumptions and they disagree. What is the rational process for determining whose assumptions are correct?

Sure, but if you do understand how it works, maybe you could explain.

Name a self evident truth that your morality is founded on then. Religious people have revealed truths, atheists have "self evident truths".

There is a quote from David Starkey about growing up amongst Quakers, and sitting there as the heavenly spirit spoke through them. He describes remembering thinking how amazing it was that God clearly read the Manchester Guardian. It is similarly a remarkable curiosity how closely the self evident truths that the the Founding Fathers discovered resemble religious beliefs that came out of the English Civil War.

It's based on my feelings about the world that I can't rationally justify. It takes a few steps from my core beliefs to get to abortion, but those are the foundations. If we demand that everything must justify it's purpose, meaning and worth in terms of cold rationalism.... then we end up with nihilism.

I gave several of different possibilities, only one of which was that you didn't think there is a separation of church and state.


Given your recent selective reading comprehension, I'm not sure I could.


For example:
You didn't actually read what I wrote, did you? About the "self-evident truths"?

I did read what you said. You said the "self evident truths" in that document were a literary flourish. None the less, you claimed you can derive your moral stances from reason. OK. Is it reason all the way down, or is there a turtle somewhere towards the bottom that all this is built on? If so, what is it? The turtles that liberalism came from, mostly came from the beliefs of religions sects around the English Civil War.

No amount of reason will dissuade someone from a position that they reached through irrationality.

...go on. What else did I write?

If you had actually read what I said, you would not have been referencing self-evident truths like it was an actual thing, or that the founders found to be an actual thing.

Well, no indeed.

Enlighten me. Is it reason all the way down, or are there turtles somewhere down there?

:rolleyes:

Here's the definition. You need to read it. It's off-topic in this thread.

Crap all you want, it wasn't a Republican who was the final nay in the 51-49 tally against the Women's Health Protection Act, it was Democratic Senator Joe Manchin. The bill had previously been introduced in 2021, 2019, 2017, 2015 and 2013. It wasn't Mitch McConnell who was campaigning for anti-choice Rep Cuellar (D) just after the scotus announcement, it was Nancy Pelosi. As much as abortion rights have formed a pillar of their campaign rhetoric, that sure as **** hasn't been translating into action.

Right now, of course, everyone on my primary ballot down to the city dog catcher has "will fight for womens' right to have abortions" on their soap boxes. And maybe they will. Good on them if so. It really shouldn't have had to come to that. If moderate Dems want to help turn this around going forward, they're going to need to learn from their mistakes, not gaslight themselves into believing they've never made any and it was always someone else holding them back.

Yeah, that's how it works. Democrats compromise, McConnell takes their concessions and demands more while giving nothing back. The progressives and the extremists and the purity testers you treat with such contempt have been telling you that for years.

I don't think I scoffed at it. I asked, what would that look like?

Personal responsibility is a good thing. We'll take that as a given. Now: A woman is six weeks pregnant and she wants to end the pregnancy. Should she have that right? Should she only have that right if she used birth control?

To me, at that point, it seems like making her bear the kid to teach her a lesson just isn't good policy.

What would an abortion policy that emphasized personal responsibility look like? Just saying you'd like to see it emphasized doesn't tell me anything.

I don't care now. Roe is dead. Children can be made to carry rape and incest babies to term for all I care. Complete abortion bans will not cause me to blink an eye. I do not care if all sex education is eliminated from schools, nor if birth control is outlawed.

I now have zero interest in seeing politicians working towards reasonable compromise on this matter. I don't care how many suffer now due to this ruling, either. As far as I am concerned liberals have brought this upon themselves through their loser political actions and ever-increasing demands for relaxed abortion law.

You don’t support Trump, but you repeat his points almost word for word. Seriously, you expect others to believe that?

What a cop-out. You can't answer Minoosh so you hide behind, "I don't care." :rolleyes:

And now you blame liberals?

I see a pattern here. The pregnant woman is to blame. The liberals are to blame because the system is set up to allow tyranny by the minority. And in this case that minority is an extreme right-wing white Christian minority that has worked very hard using a lot of propaganda and fear mongering to impose their Christian Taliban on the rest of us.

How very Christian of you. Oh, I'm sorry. Am I picking on Christians now?

" ever-increasing demands for relaxed abortion law"

Since Roe v Wade in 1973, exactly what 'ever-increasing demands for relaxed abortion law" have liberals made? They've fought against ever-increasing restrictive abortion laws like the one TX enacted. Get a grip on reality.

The Taliban say similar things about their mothers and sisters and aunts and daughters too in defense of their THEOCRACY.


And now we can see how a Theocracy works.

I think yes, your comment is intended as being derogatory towards Christians.