Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Freakzilla wrote:Vote National Radical Meadow Party in 2012!

I might can get on that band wagon.

Baraka Bryan wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:

GamePlayer wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:Hah, pretty much how I feel - but I hated Klein. Respected that he was straight up, but was disgusted with his BS treatment of farmers and BS stances on animal rights. As well as his BS stance on gay marriage.

It's a universal law that we will forever be damned with worthless politicians that we almost completely despise on every level. If I agree with as little as 5% of what a politician stands for, I consider that a great achievement of epically heroic proportions. I think if I ever agreed with 10% of what a politician stands for, I'd fall in love with them, rape them and then the universe would explode

Wonderfully put.


I unfortunately have always felt that the only way to even remotely participate in democracy was to vote, not for who I liked the most, but whoever I was least afraid of at the time. I've only ever voted Liberal, and then later NDP (though neither part gets many points from me), but if I'd been voting age at the time of the PCs I might have voted for them in federal elections sometimes.

When the Naz-err... I mean Alliance party re-joined the Conservative party that was the end of me ever voting for them. I guess it's not totally impossible, hell, I'd vote for Bush if the other option was Hussien, but the other partys (and I mean ALL the other parties) would have to each do something absolutely evil for me to vote C, or the fundies would have to leave the party again.

psshh you libbies and your 'hidden agenda' bullshit again
TBH, there is less Reform influence in the current government's policies than PC. in fact many grassroots members are complaining about the party saying they're more like Liberals now.

That's what they want you to say so they can get more "middle" people to swing right. Not falling for it.

Baraka Bryan wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:

Baraka Bryan wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:

GamePlayer wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:Hah, pretty much how I feel - but I hated Klein. Respected that he was straight up, but was disgusted with his BS treatment of farmers and BS stances on animal rights. As well as his BS stance on gay marriage.

It's a universal law that we will forever be damned with worthless politicians that we almost completely despise on every level. If I agree with as little as 5% of what a politician stands for, I consider that a great achievement of epically heroic proportions. I think if I ever agreed with 10% of what a politician stands for, I'd fall in love with them, rape them and then the universe would explode

Wonderfully put.


I unfortunately have always felt that the only way to even remotely participate in democracy was to vote, not for who I liked the most, but whoever I was least afraid of at the time. I've only ever voted Liberal, and then later NDP (though neither part gets many points from me), but if I'd been voting age at the time of the PCs I might have voted for them in federal elections sometimes.

When the Naz-err... I mean Alliance party re-joined the Conservative party that was the end of me ever voting for them. I guess it's not totally impossible, hell, I'd vote for Bush if the other option was Hussien, but the other partys (and I mean ALL the other parties) would have to each do something absolutely evil for me to vote C, or the fundies would have to leave the party again.

psshh you libbies and your 'hidden agenda' bullshit again
TBH, there is less Reform influence in the current government's policies than PC. in fact many grassroots members are complaining about the party saying they're more like Liberals now.

That's what they want you to say so they can get more "middle" people to swing right. Not falling for it.

yup, you caught me.. i'm just another cog in the machinery that is the vast right-wing conspiracy

I don't call it a conspiracy, they're pretty open about being anti-gay rights and anti-womens rights.

Baraka Bryan wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:I don't call it a conspiracy, they're pretty open about being anti-gay rights and anti-womens rights.

i just love how pro-life has been re-termed to have a negative spin. hardly an open and honest argument when a position is turned into name-calling.

I'm not name calling, where are you getting that from? What's not honest or open about calling it a women’s rights issue? I call it a women's rights issue because that's what it is. It's also a fetus's rights issue. And a "father to be or not to be's" issue, but most importantly (to me, obviously not to you) a women’s rights issue.

It's not a negative spin, believe it or not, there actually is a non-debatably negative side to pro-life. There's no spin going on, I don't accuse pro-lifers of adding spin with such a sappy name, I acknowledge that there actually ARE two sides to this issue, and neither side is totally in the right. To refuse to acknowledge this is just ignorant, when it comes from either side.

I believe that pro-choice is more right, primarily because of the women's rights aspects of the debate. I don't see anything dishonest or open about this.

EDIT TO ADD:

Also, just for the record, I actually don't believe that abortion is always moral, but I do believe that it can be moral - and until we have some serious and time tested scientific answers on when an embryo becomes "sentient" (or even some serious answers to what sentient even means) I don't believe that anyone other than the pregnant woman should be in control of that woman's body.

Some vague hunches about when a hypothetical soul is implanted in a human/embryo/fetus/zygote by a god that may or may not exist is not a good enough reason in my mind to start taking people's rights away, nor to grant rights (which would take priority over other people’s rights) to a bundle of cells that we haven’t even decided as a society is or isn’t human.

I apologize if that comes off as harsh or insulting, but I tried to make a simple statement of indisputable facts as they apply to my stance, in the interest of having an honest and open debate without name calling.

Baraka Bryan wrote:it's less you redefining the stance than the entire pro-choice side. It always used to be pro-life vs pro-choice and then became pro-choice vs anti-choice, now pro-women's-rights vs anti-women's-rights... no matter how well-intentioned your use was, it is still buying into the effort of demonizing the pro-life position by using negative terms...

anyways, semantics aside, I think there are cases where abortions are morally justifiable, when carrying the baby to term would threaten the life of the mother, or where the pregnancy was the result of a crime. Aside from those cases, abortion is simply being used as a more elaborate form of birth control, which I see as wrong. The heart of the fetus begins to beat around 5 weeks. despite the fact that it could not survive without the mother at this point, (a compelling argument for saying it's part of the mother's body, yes), it has separate organs that function separately from the mother's. In my opinion it is a separate and distinct life. No less human than the mother herself, and deserves the same right to life as any other human being.

I know there are arguments for the pregnancy interfering with the mother's goals and dreams and that this justifies removing the 'problem' but a woman's inconvenience does not supercede that life's right to live in my opinion.

I'm not attempting to demonize anyone, just to remind people of the true (IMO) issue. I don’t believe this is demonizing any more so than when pro-life uses it’s own name to remind people that on some level pro-choice is anti-life. Is that demonizing people who support abortion, or is it just stating an obvious negative side to supporting abortion? Is calling pro-life anti-women’s rights an attempt to demonize? Only if you answered that pro-lifers demonize pro-choicers to the question before that one.

I agree with most of what you said about when it is and isn't moral, aside from it being immoral as a form of birth control, though I do not consider that the most responsible form of birth control… that is a very grey area – but a beating heart does not a human make IMO, a human being is a mind. Nothing more, and nothing less. A brain dead body on life support is a dead human being. A body that does not yet have a mind is not yet a human. A life yes. A human life no. In my mind it’s actually less moral to kill an animal than it is to kill that clump of life you refer to as human.

I do understand your position, don’t doubt that. And, if I held your beliefs I might also be swayed towards pro-life. But I don’t, I respect your position but I’d fight to the death over the issue.

Baraka Bryan wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote: I'm not attempting to demonize anyone, just to remind people of the true (IMO) issue. I don’t believe this is demonizing any more so than when pro-life uses it’s own name to remind people that on some level pro-choice is anti-life. Is that demonizing people who support abortion, or is it just stating an obvious negative side to supporting abortion? Is calling pro-life anti-women’s rights an attempt to demonize? Only if you answered that pro-lifers demonize pro-choicers to the question before that one.

I agree with most of what you said about when it is and isn't moral, aside from it being immoral as a form of birth control, though I do not consider that the most responsible form of birth control… that is a very grey area – but a beating heart does not a human make IMO, a human being is a mind. Nothing more, and nothing less. A brain dead body on life support is a dead human being. A body that does not yet have a mind is not yet a human. A life yes. A human life no. In my mind it’s actually less moral to kill an animal than it is to kill that clump of life you refer to as human.

I do understand your position, don’t doubt that. And, if I held your beliefs I might also be swayed towards pro-life. But I don’t, I respect your position but I’d fight to the death over the issue.

well then, my friend... Pistols at dawn!

on the semantics issue, yes both sides have used the names of their positions to demonize the other, which overall I don't see as a productive manner of debating, which is the only reason I brought up the term you had used in the first place. I'd rather both sides just call it what it is: supporting abortion and opposing abortion. done.

instead of getting into a big debate that we know won't sway anyone anywhere, I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I like your arguments about the mind, and will have to look into when the brain is fully formed/functioning as it's also a compelling argument.

Oh, I knew from the start we would have to dissagree, you believe things that don't allow you to support abortion, I believe things that don't allow me to agree with outlawing it.

I don't think most pro-choice people are actually pro-abortion though (I'm not in 80% of the cases), which is why that name isn't used. Pro-choice people tend to feel that it is a grey area as to whether or not abortions are immoral, but that forcing either side down a woman's throat is pretty much black immoral, so it's a lesser evil type thing.

I'm not even morally that strongly against some regulation against certain situations of abortion - the reason I'd fight to the death over it is more about keeping religion out of politics.

With the mind thing you run into trouble with whether or not matter = mind, as in can the brain itself cause the mind.

But very interesting discussion nonetheless...

From a biological point of view, life is ill-defined as far as I know as it is considered to be a set of characteristics. Also interesting is this idea of a dividing line between a foetus being alive or not yet alive. In biological processes there rarely is a nice set line. For example take the process of mitosis, wherein there are several stages (metaphase, prophase etc.). None of these are individual stages; instead they blend 'softly casual' ( ) into each other.

Love hearing all your viewpoints.

Pro-life is a stupid term. As if the opposition is pro-death. Stupid.

I've never been able to reconcile abortion. I don't believe anyone else has either, we just choose sides because we have to be decisive as moral, well-adjusted people (*chortle*). I've never heard any pro-life/pro-choice argument stand up to scrutiny and I think I've heard them all. Ultimately the issue is one of mankind's existential dilemmas. Your freedom or your life. Smarter people than you couldn't solve it, so good luck

And speaking of emotional blackmail, I always loved these word plays on the abortion issue (from both sides of the fence):

"If it's not a baby, you're NOT pregnant"
"Abortion clinic: We care, so you don't have to"
"Your boot has killed more complex organisms"
"Your indifference has ended more lives than abortion"

GamePlayer wrote:I've never been able to reconcile abortion. I don't believe anyone else has either, we just choose sides because we have to be decisive as moral, well-adjusted people (*chortle*). I've never heard any pro-life/pro-choice argument stand up to scrutiny and I think I've heard them all. Ultimately the issue is one of mankind's existential dilemmas. Your freedom or your life. Smarter people than you couldn't solve it, so good luck

And speaking of emotional blackmail, I always loved these word plays on the abortion issue (from both sides of the fence):

"If it's not a baby, you're NOT pregnant"
"Abortion clinic: We care, so you don't have to"
"Your boot has killed more complex organisms"
"Your indifference has ended more lives than abortion"

I like that last one, makes a good point.

SadisticCynic wrote:With the mind thing you run into trouble with whether or not matter = mind, as in can the brain itself cause the mind.

But very interesting discussion nonetheless...

From a biological point of view, life is ill-defined as far as I know as it is considered to be a set of characteristics. Also interesting is this idea of a dividing line between a foetus being alive or not yet alive. In biological processes there rarely is a nice set line. For example take the process of mitosis, wherein there are several stages (metaphase, prophase etc.). None of these are individual stages; instead they blend 'softly casual' ( ) into each other.

Love hearing all your viewpoints.

Matter + energy make the mind, that's not really a question to anyone other than people who believe in some kind of soul, so yes, the brain does cause mind. Mind is the brain running, just like windows is your computer running.

As for a "clean line" between mind and no mind - you are of course correct, there would be a whole spectrum of grey between a a blob of cells with no mind and a conscious fetus.

To be honest I haven't read much about mind-brain philosophy etc, just came across a mention of it once. Some apparently argue for things like subjectivity, restricted access and intentionality being indescribable by simply matter. Haven't made up my mind on this one yet but it's fun to think about . And yes I imagine people would link it to a soul.

Incidentally matter + energy = same thing. (E = mc2)

If you haven't read Destination: Void, you should. FH explores the idea of consciousness.

You are all my dream creatures, BTW.

You have dreams about me? In what context?

SadisticCynic wrote:To be honest I haven't read much about mind-brain philosophy etc, just came across a mention of it once. Some apparently argue for things like subjectivity, restricted access and intentionality being indescribable by simply matter. Haven't made up my mind on this one yet but it's fun to think about . And yes I imagine people would link it to a soul.

Incidentally matter + energy = same thing. (E = mc2)

Yes, I would have pointed that out, but it just tends to confuse people who haven’t sat down with a book on particle/wave duality!

As for being indescribable with only matter(or energy), that to me is a dead-end argument because we simply don’t understand the brain and consciousness even CLOSE to enough to start jumping to (unfounded) conclusions about requiring something beyond matter/energy to explain consciousness. It's really not unlike me (knowing very little about computers' innards) insisting that the components in a computer cannot explain what it does, because to me it just doesn't make sense. Until I understand in great detail how a computer works, such an argument becomes automatically invaild. Same goes for consciousness and the brain.

Not that we’ve disproven a soul, nor will we ever, but there’s not even the tiniest reason to suspect that we might have evidence for such a thing at this point in the game. Maybe in 20 years this can be a valid discussion, until then we will just have to assume that matter and energy DO completely explain consciousness, because that is the simplest answer and we have absolutely no reason to believe otherwise at this point in time.

Fun to discuss though.

SadisticCynic wrote:Incidentally matter + energy = same thing. (E = mc2)

Not in practical terms.

Ever try to power a light bulb with sand?

And while we're at it, ever sift sand through a screen?

SandChigger wrote:

SadisticCynic wrote:Incidentally matter + energy = same thing. (E = mc2)

Not in practical terms.

Ever try to power a light bulb with sand?

And while we're at it, ever sift sand through a screen?

Yeah I couldn't find anything! (Am I not human, maybe inhuman?)

To ATOE: Yeah the consciousness thing is interesting, especially as Freak mentioned, in Destination: Void. I quite liked the idea of it as a relationship as opposed to an actual thing. I especially enjoyed the description of a "threshold of awareness", something I'd never really given thought to beforehand. (D:V really blew my mind [ironically] when I first read it). I think I can agree that there is nothing extra to the mind. At least, the concept of a soul as I understand it is quite different from the common interpretation.

One of the things I had read was that the idea of the brain causing mind implies determinism because then the proteins etc floating around in the mush are determined and thus no free will. I disagree with determinism, but then we have quantum indeterminacy. But then we have to wonder is that indeterminacy effective at the 'macro' level.

Can't wait to study this stuff in more detail.

Freakzilla wrote:...

You are all my dream creatures, BTW.

Why then, or Noodle One, couldn't you have dreamt me prettier and taller.

SadisticCynic wrote:

SandChigger wrote:

SadisticCynic wrote:Incidentally matter + energy = same thing. (E = mc2)

Not in practical terms.

Ever try to power a light bulb with sand?

And while we're at it, ever sift sand through a screen?

Yeah I couldn't find anything! (Am I not human, maybe inhuman?)

To ATOE: Yeah the consciousness thing is interesting, especially as Freak mentioned, in Destination: Void. I quite liked the idea of it as a relationship as opposed to an actual thing. I especially enjoyed the description of a "threshold of awareness", something I'd never really given thought to beforehand. (D:V really blew my mind [ironically] when I first read it). I think I can agree that there is nothing extra to the mind. At least, the concept of a soul as I understand it is quite different from the common interpretation.

One of the things I had read was that the idea of the brain causing mind implies determinism because then the proteins etc floating around in the mush are determined and thus no free will. I disagree with determinism, but then we have quantum indeterminacy. But then we have to wonder is that indeterminacy effective at the 'macro' level.

Can't wait to study this stuff in more detail.

Try reading Dan Dennett, he is a compatablist, he (supposedly) can reconcile determinism and freewill.

Umm, yeah well, the racist British National Party now have two MEPs. Oh well, serves me and everyone else right for not voting, we've let the neo-Nazis in.

I voted for Greenleft which is the green party in the Netherlands. But that did not stop four MEPs from the racist Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders from being elected. But then again I guess I should be happy that Greenleft got three MEPs elected. They held their two seats and gained one more. I helped one incumbent (or rather person replacing a retiring incumbent) keep their seat. Overall the greens did well all over Europe.

This all makes me feel not quite so bad that we elected The Annointed One.

Hmm ... Crypto-Muslim socialist or Neo-Nazi racists ... my, my, what a lovely choice!

Give me your credit card number and I'll reserve a handbasket in your name for our trip to hell...

Do you have a nice one with scarlet pimpernels? I do so love scarlet pimpernels. As a matter of fact, I was saying to Bint just last night, "Woman," I said, "what we really need out in the yarden now is some of them there scarlet pimpernels. 'Cause I really love scarlet pimpernels!" And she just looked at me sweetly and said, "Go to bed."