• Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I hate to do this, but I gotta.

    What about religion? There are atheists who don’t understand why people seek religion, but the basis of believing in God is not harmful to others. So why the anti-theism in so many subs here?

    To take this even further, you say others have a responsibility to stop you from harming/killing your child. To extend this further, this can be taken to say that others have a responsibility to prevent aborting a healthy fetus.

    • Dagrothus@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      To take your last point even further, others have a responsibility to prevent you from sterilizing yourself. To take it even further, they have a responsibility to force you to reproduce as long as you have the potential.

      A fetus is not a child.

      • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Cant believe this descended into this rabbit hole, but justify to me why the hell it wouldn’t count as a human life

        • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          A body having a pulse is not what matters.

          Cancer cells are also genetically human and also alive.

          If it isn’t sentient, its life is irrelevant.

          If it isn’t sapient, furthermore, it does not matter as much as the sapients its existence imminently effects.

          A fetus is neither.

          A baby, once capable of surviving without parasitically siphoning off the body of a host through a direct persistent flesh attachment, is either sentient or shall imminently be if left to its own devices

          (Whereas a fetus without a host, when left to its own devices, shall imminently be dead and never to attain sentience nor sapience)

          Those are where the lines are drawn.

          • Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’ve not seen many neonates capable of surviving without external intervention. Yes, there is more involvement that an umbilical cord, but left to its own devices, a neonate will not survive.

            • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              it meets the definition on the minutes to hours basis.

              a fully grown sapient human with experience and valuable expertise who is otherwise ready and able to immediately benefit their community, if “left to their own devices” naked on the surface of the moon, will also die in moments. However, with the use of equipment, with the ability to depend on machinery to survive instead of the active blood supply of another sapient being, such a human can survive.

              similarly, a neonate can survive with the aid of equipment without burdening a single exclusive host.

      • Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve been told that about sterilization as well by people. So while you present it at a theoretical argument, I’ve seen it as a lm real argument used in legitimate conversation.

    • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The anti-theism is in reaction to the terrible shit justified by religion.

      Edit: posted early on accident.

      Edit 2: I personally believe people’s morals shouldn’t require unprovable belief in the afterlife to work. Religious people often argue that religion is necessary for morality, but an agnostic approach is the only one people should live by.

      If you sincerely believe you can be denied eternal life by going against God’s will, keeping others from committing sin is a rational, moral thing to do. You’re saving them by outlawing homosexuality or other similar shit. However, there’s no evidence that God even exists, let alone what he wants you to do or that he can grant eternal life. Therfore, we should make sure our morality works without the existence of higher powers we have no way of detecting.

      Belief in things that don’t affect our material world can make behaviors that cause great harm seem rational. There are amazing people with strong faith, and terrible people with none at all. I just recognize that our common ethical principles cannot be determined by unfalsifiable ideas. Laws shouldn’t be guided by religion.