Quote:
Originally Posted by TSGracchus
Yes, I read it, and the answer, by definition, is NONE. Because if a killing is tolerable and allowable, then by definition it's not murder. For purposes of the present discussion it's acceptable (to me anyway) that we use a moral definition of murder rather than a purely legal one, but any such definition must recognize that there are types of deliberate killing that are NOT murder, and some of the classic ones are things you are saying ARE: execution of criminals, killing in self-defense, killing by soldiers in combat. These are not "tolerable and allowable murder," they are NOT murder, plain and simple.
But in fact, even that's beside the point. This entire argument of yours is a sideshow and addresses nothing that is really in dispute.
No. What some people consider unlawfully killing a person is now the lawful killing of a non-person. It was once the unlawful killing of a non-person. Didn't you understand what I was saying earlier? You're going to get absolutely nowhere with an argument like this, because you're completely failing to address the key point of disagreement, which isn't over whether something is being killed, nor whether it's being done intentionally, nor whether it's being done in self-defense, but whether the organism being killed is a person .
That's what you need to address, and what you are completely failing to even TRY to address as far as I can see.
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I did address that much earlier:
What we're really arguing about is our opinions of when a human becomes a human.
Some of us beleive that when we slide out of the holiest of holies, we're sprinkled with a sort a magic dust that makes us human. Others beleive that a human is formed when the male sperm and female egg combine their DNA to make a separate entity.
A separate entity that is genetically a human.
It's really an argument about how much each of us values life.
One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)
You said:
What some people consider unlawfully killing a person is now the lawful killing of a non-person.
If we call what we're killing a "non-person" it's then ok to kill it.
Do you see how language use, redefinitions etc. can be used to make almost ANYTHING seem right, just and "rational" ?
IF a population of people is willing to accept such convenient changing of terminologies and definitions that is. IF a population of people has lost its ability to make rational and common sense judgements.
You can make almost ANYTHING
seem sensible and ok in these conditions.
That doesn't MAKE them sensible and ok.