I consider zygotes to be zygotes, children to be children, adults to be adults, drunks to be drunks, and pointless inflammatory questions to be pointless and inflammatory.

Done. ng, ng.

finished

Done

Done

Dr Who, nobody is ever fine with abortion, it's the most awful and difficult decision any woman would have to make. The point is though it should be their decision. Yes there needs to be restrictions, but ultimately the woman must be the one to decide. Making her a criminal is wrong. With effective birth control these days, it is a sad fact that a high percentage of abortions are from rape, where the male ups and walks out avoiding his responsibility when he finds out or failure in the birth control. None of which should result in the woman having a criminal record. Of course it was a very important debate to have had but it was settled a long time ago in almost all civilised countries. Time to move on and tackle today's pressing inequalities and serious issues.

start

ding

Phil, I have a differing view. I believe killing a child is a serious issue. The choice, for most people, comes when you decide to have sex. Having sexual intercourse should not be entered into casually. It should come with commitment. If a child is conceived, it is not the child's fault that adults created the situation. Sometimes our actions have consequences that are difficult to face.

done

Denise, would you support a law requiring a father to donate an organ - or even a pint of blood - to save his infant child? If not, why support laws that require a woman to carry an unwanted embryo for 9 months?

ironic observation: the same people who are against abortion are fine with being against gun control. peopl with guns kill more "potential humans" than abortion doctors.

to clarify, every time anyone is killed by a friend, a neighbor, an enemy combatant, etc... Their ability to procreate is killed. That is what I mean by "potential human". The pro-life, pro-gun crowd seems to "love the fetus, disregard the child" <-to paraphrase Randi Rhodes.

I am also sick of "guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people" A stupid canard that is never used for anything else. Heroin doesn't kill people, people using heroin kills people. Also why isn't anyone defending cancer cells??? They are alive and yet countless cancer cells are being "murdered" every day! Who is to say that it is not Gods plan that cancer is to be the dominate organism on the planet?? :-)

The main reason for anyone being against a woman's right to choose is that person's loss of control. The religious objection to abortion and birth control is not for some holy, spiritual cause. It is more of a kosher law. A way to ensure the growth of the flock and to maintain the religion's control over that flock.

Wow - nothing like trying to enjoy a game and having someone insulting my beliefs and my religion and not even getting it right. Wish people would go back to chatting about the game the way it used to be.

Done, no greens. Have a great day.

go

din

er, ding even

I don't know what Gretchen's beliefs are and don't feel I was being insulting. I will say that beliefs are not facts.

Contrariwise, beliefs are facts for those that believe them.

TallMike that is how Religion can be seen as a form of mind control. If you believe the Earth is flat it must be. It gets flatter the stronger you believe it.

And that is how a religion can make you believe it is okay to murder innocent people in war against another belief but not allow a woman to choose what do with her body.

Sudoku kind of proves my point :-) Just because you believe an 8 goes in box 1:1 doesn't mean it does. And Sudoku has a way of puncturing those beliefs. It is called a fact.

Tuco - how do you know what anyone's reason for being against "a woman's right to choose" is? Who are you to decide what my reasons are for being against killing babies? That's what's insulting. You are entitled to your opinion which is just that - an opinion (also not a fact) but you are not entitled to decide what my reasons are for my opinions. All that aside - I don't think this is the place for you to air your political beliefs. Go do it on your facebook page if you must do it or your twitter account or whatever. I'm just here to play a game and read what others are saying about the game, not read your anti-religion diatribes which you try to couch as facts.

I didn't say what "your" reasons were. I said the main reason anyone is against it is religious based and the religious basis is based on increasing the flock.

if that is anti-religion so be it.

if it isn't okay to be anti-religion than it shouldn't be okay to be anti-choice. no?

Religion is a belief. That is why we have freedom of and from religion. You are free to believe anyway you want. But you cannot deny facts.

In science, a hypothesis is an idea, an assumption or a concept with no basis in fact. Theories are hypotheses that so far have proved to stand up to testing in narrowly defined, controlled environments within closed systems. Facts are theories that have endured the rigors of testing under multiple conditions and have been observed to have never been disproven in open systems and uncontrolled environments, but their determination is still subjective in that belief in them as fact made it so because they’ve endured over several lifetimes.

All religions are based on hypotheses. Though many have claimed, no one has ever offered any proof they’ve spoken to any god. There is no basis in fact or theory of the existence of any gods. Facts are antithetical to religion. Followers must accept the tenets of their church on faith. The faithful would never deign to question this illogicality lest they be shunned by their community. They’ve been told their god has given them free will. Practicing this free will might lead to changing religions or abandoning belief, so exercising free will is frowned upon. All followers should assume they were born into the only true religion from the very beginning. Why do people fear death? Is this the final test? If they in fact do, might one assume they aren’t true believers?

Serious conflicts in religious ideologies almost always result in wholesale murder, or put out of context using politically correct terminology, war. This often has been considered an acceptable and justifiable consequence by a majority of religious leaders with opposing views. Survival of the religion is imperative; it supercedes adhering to the tenets of the religion. People who practice their religion faithfully will go on to becoming reincarnated on another plane of existence in a blissful nirvana where they can worship their narcissistic god for all eternity. Those that don’t are doomed forever. Sounds like they may have it backwards. The human comedy.

tuco, I think you have it only half right when you say the Earth gets flatter the stronger you believe it. I agree that beliefs may be held at different levels of conviction, but I would suggest that higher levels of conviction result in greater difficulty in recognizing the possibility that the belief is wrong. In the not-so-rare extreme, if someone holds a belief at the very highest level of conviction, that person experiences the belief as a truth, as a fact, and is incapable of considering whatever evidence there may be for an alternative belief.

I also think it is possible to hold two conflicting beliefs at the same time. Believing involves both thoughts and feelings, and most of us know we can have conflicting feelings. That is part of what makes life so interesting.

go

done

done

TallMike your first paragraph was exactly what I was trying to say. You said it much better. I also believe in God. I was given last rights. I am not a non-believer. I am adverse to being manipulated.

EZPZ. 12.

go

done, ng

tuco, I am glad you understand. I once went through some training which included a lot of experiential learning related to beliefs. Most of the participants in the training saw their central objective as learning how to believe with more conviction in order to become more focused and less easily distracted from their goals. They took the seed idea that your beliefs create your reality to mean that you can create any reality you choose by selecting and totally believing the necessary beliefs. Maybe they were right, but that's not the issue that bothers me. They seemed to miss entirely the value of learning to spot the ways in which each of us can be manipulated, seduced, imprisoned, terrified, etc. by beliefs. My attempts to preach the necessity for skepticism as a protection from manipulation through beliefs mostly fell on deaf ears.

To me, increasing one's awareness of the basic human vulnerability to beliefs, whether those beliefs be self-generated or acquired from others, is a learning path of immense value. If you can recognize a belief you are already ensnared by, realizing that it is only a belief is likely to bring instant relief, or at least open a path towards better understanding of how you are choosing to remain trapped. And the more you observe the process of other people incessantly offering you beliefs they want you to accept and using a wide variety of methods to achieve their goals, the more effectively you can protect yourself from that process, have a few chuckles, and perhaps start to help others do the same.

Tuco: I anticipated that you or someone would try to turn my ironic observation on its head. No, I am not okay with gun violence. But there is no evidence that gun control solves that problem.

Tuco and TallMike re. faith: Can you name anything that you know to be a fact with absolute certainty? If you can the next question is prove it! In fact every "proof" eventually rests on uprovable assumptions.

Re. abortion: one of the things everyone here believes (I hope!) is that murder is wrong. Hence if you believe an unborn baby is a human, abortion is murder. But not everyone here believes the unborn baby is a human.

I don't want to start a debate on when a baby becomes a human. But if we aren't sure when that is, which is more important, preserving the mother's right to control her own body or protecting the life of what is certainly a potential human being?

Almost forgot, difficulty score 12. No green.

Dr Who: Certainly, absolutely, completely the former. Bodily autonomy is crucial here. That's the way it is in literally every other scenario where these things come into conflict.

If there were an infant dying in a hospital right now, and you were the only person on earth who could donate the kidney, liver, bone marrow, and blood needed to save that infant's life, there isn't any where that has a law saying that you would be forced to give those things and spend ohhhh, I don't know, let's just pull a number out of the air here and say *nine months* in recovery in order to save that child.

In fact, our protections in favor of bodily autonomy are so strong that we wouldn't take those things from you even if you were literally already dead, if you had said before you died that you didn't care to be an organ donor.

We literally give more respect to dead people's wishes, even when they can save the lives of the currently living, than we do to pregnant women. We won't take those steps even if they are necessary to preserve the lives of ACTUAL human beings.

Add in the fact that childbirth remains one of the single most dangerous things an American woman can do--look up causes of death among American women of child bearing age--and the answer writes itself.

We protect the people that are already here.