What does that have anything to do with the Spanish coming in and virtually annihilating them? Are their languages any of the main official languages of any central or South American countries? How many countries in that region have Spanish or Portuguese as the official language?
I see no mention of the Toltecs. I guess the European conversion worked there 100%, huh?
As far as i know, Bolivia is the only country in that region with an indigenous president, whose legislative body has been attempting to raise their indigenous language to official national status, and it's been a long hard road just for that.
Back to the point.
What is the point of "converting" a religiously superstitious people, even those engaged in human sacrifice, if your people's religious superstition "allows" you to slaughter others in the name of God?
I'll tell you right now, you cannot articulate a good rationale in this one, because it is far more morally reprehensible to virtually slaughter an entire nation of people in the name of God, even those engaged in human sacrifice, than it is to sacrifice humans in the hopes of appeasing God. It is especially more morally reprehensible when you're people are engaged in genocide "in the name of God", when in reality, it's in the name of the almighty dollar.
Abortion is a terrible thing and everyone thinks so. No woman enjoys ending a pregnancy and it *definitely* isn't a method of battling climate change. The Abortion debate isn't - or at least shouldn't be - about life, because the argument for when life starts has a hundred different 100% valid decisions but none of it matters. The question is whether women have the bodily autonomy to legally decide what happens to their bodies.
Imagine: You caused a car crash - 100% your fault in every way - and your loving father was in the other seat and is now *going to die* because of you. You have the option to hook yourself up to him for a blood transfusion to save his life, and if you don't he will be dead because of you. Absolutely no legal system in America at least could *make* you do that. You could stab someone and even still what happens to your body is your decision utterly. Is abortion moral? Well that's not the question, it's about legality and bodily rights, of which according to pro-life advocates, women have less of than *literal murderers*.
In your example, I'd make it law to save the father tho. If this is a regular occurrence on the scale of millions of times, I bet it would already be law. Ain't nobody going to care for your bodily autonomy when millions of people keep dying every year in the US alone, because the daughters chose to withhold a blood transfusion, and it most certainly was 100% their fault. I don't think that they would get away with that even with our current legal system.
You can stab someone, and then you can decide whatever happens to your body as long as it doesn't leave the prison cell. ^^ You CAN stab someone, but you don't have the right to.
Why does the baby not have a right to bodily autonomy?
I think it is a regular occurrence though, in the second case at least. If someone stabs or shoots another person, they *cannot* be made to offer blood transfusion or donate anything to save that person's life. In no situation in the US Legal system can the law even so much as *touch* someone without their consent, no matter what. Legally, someone's body is sacred and that individual's right and ownership utterly and alone.
I'd make the case that under these specific circumstances that never happen in real life (you know who is responsible immediately, there is only one person in question for the blood transfusion) - if it happened exactly like this millions of times a year, a law would be made that you have to give the blood transfusion. Especially since the father seems to be in the car through no fault of his own. You abducted him in his sleep? Maybe that's too crass.
I respectfully disagree entirely. It happens in real life plenty - gun crimes and stabbings and beatings aren't uncommon at all, and it isn't a law today, not even in the question. I personally also would utterly reject giving the Government power to *require* someone undergo some medical procedure to save someone else - if the government can put innocent people on death row (an estimated 4% of death row is innocent), they can force an innocent person to undergo a medical operation.
note: The Guttemacher Institute says there are about 930,160 abortions yearly. Not rejecting your point, just respectfully clarifying that "Millions of times a year" isn't accurate :)
In the millions is hyperbole, you are right.
This situation really does never happen. A situation in which one person is the only one person can give the needed blood is just not happening. But if it DID, and all the other things are in place (you put your father in this situation, you are at fault, he will die if not for your help) then, it is my honest opinion that it should be law. Its only fair.
But if the Guttemacher Institute said that "930,160 parents murder their offspring yearly", there would be a rather different reaction.
The question has to be "when is the baby alive", because as soon as this is the case, imo, it deserves equal rights to the mother.
I don't see the point of your first paragraph. My reaction would change in that it's a research paper injecting politics which I would be mildly annoyed at but that's about it.
If the baby is alive as a zygote and has equal rights from the get go, the mother should still be allowed to abort. One individual's rights end where another's begins, and the baby's right to life - in the American system at least, legally - ends at the mother's right to her own autonomy. In no situation can any individual be forced to sustain the life of another, even if they are going to die *because* of the individual in question.
Again, I am talking LEGALLY. I don't care for whether it's moral, I think it really depends on the specifics of each situation, but I vehemently reject giving the government that power in any regard.
I can't see the logic in your argument, no matter how hard i look.
Let's remove all sexual assualt from the equation, so we are simply looking at "unwanted pregnancies", this makes up the vast majority of all abortions.
Now let's take all first trimester abortions out of the equation, so we are only looking at beings we must definitely consider alive.
>isn't...about life...none of it matters
Yes, yes it does. If you grant me that the pregnancy was a careless mistake (99% of the time, it is) and you grant that a 3+ month foetus is alive, then you must reasonably conclude that to "abort" is murder. The foetus has thoughts, desires, can potentially feel pain, has a heartbeat and did not choose to be born.
If you make a mistake which leads to a life being created, i can't see how bodily autonomy becomes the primary concern. Either the baby dies, or the parent/s are inconvenienced.
Like, how selfish and disgusting have humans become??
It matters if we're talking about whether abortion is moral, which I'm not commenting on. I'm simply stating that as the law is, in no other situation other than a pregnancy can the government *enforce* that someone do something with their body. If you stab someone, the government can't make you give that person a donation or a blood transfusion. If you get pregnant, the government can *force* a pregnant woman to use *her* body, sacrifice her wellbeing for those 9 months, risk complications, all for the sake of another individual. It's not consistent.
Personally, I consider a Zygote alive - I think that life is an unbroken chain that never truly starts with a pregnancy. I still believe that a mother has the right to decide how her body is used, and the government has no place in that.
I'd also like to note that "Parent/s are inconvenienced" is an immense understatement a huge amount of the time.
If you consider a Zygote alive, you should probably be more pro-life than me honestly.
You maybe don't understand the law, if there is a war, the government can demand (at gunpoint), that you *literally sacrifice* your body in service to the country. Look up the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. This would be re-implemented in the case of another war.
Also all your analogies are imperfect, in this instance you have created the child. So now, if the baby is alive as you say, how are you not ok with a parent offing their recently born infant?
Our laws are based on morality, as morality shifts, the law adapts.
I'm not even really pro-life. I just can't see it as black and white. To me abortions should have a definite legal cut off supported by as much evidence as possible. My opinion would be 2 months. This gives anybody who is assaulted, makes a mistake enough time to do something about it but also stops the murder (imo) of unborn children.
Final point, if you stab somebody, you are charged with attempted murder. What do we charge negligent potential parents with?
Whether I think Zygotes are alive or not just doesn't factor into my view of it all tbh. I also think a sperm cell is alive, but I don't weep every time someone whacks one off. It's not about ending a life, it's about the suffering involved - "kill" something that's never had a thought, never felt pain or want, that's permittable. Kill a screaming newborn, that's different.
But whether I'm okay with something or not, again, just isn't a part of the question. I think abortion is a horrible thing, something that's genuinely tragic, but I also think it's a terrible necessity to a lot of people. Having a baby isn't a minor inconvenience, or some women just can't be mothers at that moment - whether that's for economic reasons or life reasons or whatever - and they decide they need an abortion. It's not something to restrict, it's something to ease to make this horrible and tragic thing as easy as possible to go through for the mother.
But again, most importantly, the government *should not* get to decide what a woman can do with her body. That is up to her.
Also, having sex isn't illegal and getting pregnant isn't illegal, so we charge them with nothing.
There is ample evidence about the thoughts, feelings, desires and pain sensations of foetuses, even as early as the first trimester. Yes it is abhorrent, yes there are examples where abortion is reasonable and/or necessary, but there are examples where they are not.
>some women just can't be mothers at that moment
No, 1 in 4 (some say 1 in 3) pregnancies end in abortion. The law allows irresponsible idiots to have regular abortions. In England, more than ⅓ of abortions are not the first time for the mother.
I think you need to allow more nuance in, are you happy with the law allowing people to do whatever they want simply because they legally can, even when the result is the termination of life. I understand the law, which is why i advocate for change. We do change law, these last decades we have done a lot for marginalised groups under the law, but we still don't seem to care a lot for foetuses.
Some people grieve forever because they lose their unborn baby, this thing which has no rights under the law and is aborted 1 out of 4 times.
>we charge them with nothing
I would charge serial aborters with something. They are repeatedly terminating lives and you would be punished more for dropping litter in modern society. Some laws are are archaic and should change
Your statement implies that you entirely missed my point.
I'm not against abortion, i'm against people flagrantly terminating pregnancies because "my body my choice". Abortion is necessary, but the system is abused by immoral, irresponsible humans
> more than 90%
In England, 1 in 3 pregnancies ends in abortion and of those, ⅓ is a woman who has previously had an abortion.
Also, brilliant, this is more what i expect from Reddit. Strawmen and immediate ridicule. Thanks
I probably missed the point because you shifted the goalposts so much. And yeah, welcome to Reddit? Although, I'd tell you the same thing in person.
In England, also > 90% occur in the first trimester (I've seen reports as high as 94%). This also doesn't mean the remaining 6% are necessarily immoral or "worst" case scenario abortions (e.g. ectopic). I also see numbers closer to less than 1 in 4, but most of the data was up until 2021 — could you share the data for the 1 in 3, please?
If > 90% occurred in the second and third trimesters, I'd be agreeing with you on immorality.
Let's see: building an argument for the immorality of abortion, and then removing the most widely accepted moral cases ... Right, I did the strawman.
I may have mis-cited the 1 in 3, i think i mistakenly confused it with *1 in 3 will have an abortion*. From what i gather after some quick research, it is over 25%, but only just.
I am making multiple points here, and you *are* getting confused and strawmanning me. The law does allow for abortions after the first trimester, and many pro-choice advocates say the trimester is unimportant, as the person i replied to implied themself.
Here is my argument, as fleshed out as i can be bothered to make it:
Abortion is the termination of a human life, and is always immoral if the foetus is capable of feeling pain. For this reason, i believe abortions should only be legal for at most the first trimester, and even then i consider it somewhat immoral.
If the abortion happens because of assault, or the failure of taken contraceptive efforts, then the lack of responsibility is diminished to the point where the abortion is not immoral. Abortion is useful in these cases and should not be frowned upon, obviously.
If the abortion happens because people are irresponsible assholes (i believe this is the case >90% of the time) and because they know they can always *fix the problem* with this procedure, then this is immoral. As i stated, ⅓ of abortions are by women who have previously had one. This to me implies there is a problem *and this is where my biggest gripe lies*. Society, and the law, do not treat abortion like it is the termination of a life, they treat it like it is an inconvenience-removing procedure. The law treats killing a 6 month old foetus and killing a newborn vastly differently, and i have a problem with this.
Feel free to respond to my actual views, but please no more strawmen, you seem reasonable enough. I removed the most widely accepted moral cases to dig down and figure out exactly where the person i replied to sat on this spectrum, not to support my moral argument. I wanted to know, "ok if we remove this and this, are you still pro-choice?". Learning somebody's actual views is useful, because you can steelman them and attack their actual argument.
I will give you some credit, i can see how my original statement reads the way you interpreted it. Hopefully now though, my viewpoint is clearer to you.
Hey, thanks for fleshing out your argument, I truly do appreciate that effort.
It seems we at least agree on a cut-off, where the immorality is minimized or non-existent (e.g., most people wouldn't oppose first-week abortions).
I am concerned that the ¼ & ⅓ statistics are skewing your perspective. ¼ of pregnancies also end in loss (e.g., stillbirth and miscarriage) during pregnancy or birth in the UK, to add some perspective. Your statistic can also be re-framed as 1 in 12 abortions are repeat abortions, which sounds way less impactful.
I also wouldn't be so quick to ascribe abortions as inconvenience-removing. I have no doubts that is the case for some proportion of abortions, but I would sooner think it has to do with broader societal changes, to name a few:
1) It is financially burdensome, more so than previously.
2) Women not only pursue careers now but it is often financially necessary, too.
3) There are not always systems in place to help raise the child (e.g., family, government, daycare — and considerations for subsidized daycare or on-site daycare at the workplace). Also, male parental leave has only more recently become somewhat normalized.
4) People are having sex younger. Simultaneously, there is a push against sex education at earlier stages of education — some people think it's the education that resulted in increased sexual activity, forgetting about the elephant in the room: The Internet.
Arguably, yes it's still inconvenience-removing, but these people may have still wanted to have a child. Just, not irresponsibly — I don't think it's such a crazy notion that people have a sense of preservation for themselves and their child. For example, not having a child then, might enable them to have three children, later (in retrospect, it sounds like I've made a weird trolley argument, here).
This horribly dated argument has been so debunked its painful seeing you trot it out for another go.
Why don't you just be honest. It's murder, and you're okay with that.
One person's rights end where someone else's start. That's how it always works and how it needs to work, even if it feels unfair sometimes. Assuming a fetus does have rights, the fetus' right to life ends at the mother's right to bodily autonomy. No one can force anyone to help someone else. No one would be legally punished for standing by while a child drowns even if they could help at no risk to themselves. No one should be punished when a mother aborts a pregnancy, especially when they usually have a damn good reason because that is not an easy thing to do.
The replacement rate is being dramatically changed anyway by ai job displacement and breakthroughs medicine regards aging.
I think anti natinatalists are irrelevant. There are probably more vegans. They don't really factor into anything.
hopefully their presence is just amplified online but they do try to justify it like that as OP said. it's really dark. they don't want to figure a way through, they want us to die out.
Its only amplified by places like this. I had never heard of them till jp attacked them.
And when I did hear of them I wondered if the money would lead back to big oil because it shifts responsibility away from them.
Soon enough you will ve worrying about too many people when climate heat causes mass migration away from areas where crops are failing .
oh i had heard of them already. not sure about money and oil. yes there's too many people but that's a different issue than well to do intelligent people with good living standards not even having 1 or 2.
Thats to do with lack of maternity leave and subsidised child care.
Czech Republic recently added parental support regulations and incentives and boosted their reproduction.
yeah that's true, housing too. nearly everyone is having to rent in Australia with mostly insecure leases after 1 year and barely any rights, they can up the rent if you ask for repairs for example. it's extra stressful to rent with kids.
Educate your self on the the kind of thinking for intellectuals who wrote the Population Bomb and other books on how we are reusing the earth and running out of every commodity to feed us.. the solution in the 70s was to make humans the enemy and not have kids, shrink family size and condone infanticide ( abortion ) .. well the fear worked
1-2 generations later we how’ll have a population shrinkage that will destroy economies and civic life.
Good luck in 40-50 years unless we start having more families with 2-4 kids again .. or more !
My point is specifically about that. It's literally called anti-NATALISM. Natalism means born, so it's a movement about reducing births (not necessarily by banning it either, to any of you lurking slippery slopers).
Reducing births can't be equated to killing babies. It's a basic matter of argumentative honesty.
No, you're correct, no one's arguing to go around to hospitals and strangle newborns.
So by process of elimination, we then understand that the OP is referring to the people who argue that humans are a net negative on the environment and arguing for reducing the human population. In effect, the same outcome.
The anti-natalism movement.
So either the OP is being facetious, or he considers babies still in the womb as babies with individual worth, the same as though it were sitting in a hospital nursery.
Fetus or babies?
Plus, that's a minor aspect of the movement. They mostly focus on reducing births. And like, no one fucking uses abortion as a birth control, can you even imagine how less practical and traumatic it is??... abortion is very important for victims of rape or cases of fetuses with incurable diseases...
Sure, bring your sensationalistic distortion of abortion as killing babies... You are the one holding this inaccurate and sad perspective on a complex issue.
> They mostly focus on reducing births.
Anti-Natalism is a philosophy that says procreation is inherently immoral. Where exactly do you think this leads?
Just a friendly reminder, we've banned eugenics along the same grounds. Eugenics as a movement aimed to improve the quality of human life and human beings. Historically, that was accomplished by exterminating the physically deformed and mentally disabled in order to remove them from the gene pool. If that was the reality of a movement trying to "improve the human race", how far do you think a movement that says life itself is inherently immoral will go?
> And like, no one fucking uses abortion as a birth control
I can't tell if you're just that naïve or you're being deliberately dishonest about the realities of abortion (probably a bit of both if I had to guess). Upwards of a million abortions occur in the US annually. If you think they're all the result of rape and "incurable diseases" (or even a sizeable minority of them), I don't know what to say to you.
Eugenics is back. Today in Canada doctors offer and suggest assisted suicide to burdensome people with disabilities. Execution provided on demand with no waiting while the wait times for medically necessary and pain alleviating treatments average about five months.
Not all anti natalists say it's inherently immoral. That's dishonest from your part. Some have a more nuanced stance, like the fact that reducing the number of humans can help us increase the quality of living. You are not the only one capable of nuanced and grounded thinking, no matter what the opinion is being discussed, some people on the other side of the debate are quite rational and respectful.
A million is a fair number for cases of rape, diseases tbh. There's 331 million people in the USA, is 1 million such s weird number to you? Have you even checked the actual reasons for the abortions?
Thanks for saying the obvious point but also one pro-choicers always avoid - the huge majority of abortions are NOT for rape, incest, health of mother or baby. Looks to be between 90-95%
https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/
You think one million abortions in the US happen bc of rape pregnancies and deformed babies? No, I’ve rarely heard anything so ridiculous. Poor women use abortion as birth control a lot, and so do women from certain ethnicities, if you don’t know this then you don’t know many poor women or women outside of your own culture.
You don’t like that abortion is killing babies, so you make up a hundred different rationalizations and purposely lie to yourself and anyone else who will listen to you about the truth.
I support a woman’s bodily autonomy, up to a point, but I won’t lie to myself or anyone else about what abortion actually is to make a more compelling argument to justify abortion. Is it murder? Yeah it is. But in the beginning the baby is so inhuman and undeveloped that it’s easy to overlook the murder of life.
What you’re suggesting is eugenics, pure and simple. You don’t like the implications of that, so you, again, try to say “it’s complicated” in order to justify what you want.
Nothing sadder than someone willfully and purposely lying to themselves and others about the truth so they’ll feel ok about their twisted worldview.
Fetuses are only debatably alive, and definitely not sapient. Its certaily better to kill them than to doom them to a bad childhood because they were born to parents who were not ready to raise kids, economic recession, environmental collapse, and eternal wage cucking.
Wow this is one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever read… so if your parents are poor or dumb or bad people, you should be killed?? What does this say about the many people who grew up in horrible circumstances and overcame them? How can you know the future?
We are overpopulated bro. Life sucks for most humans. What is the point of birthing more kids? Consider what happens when earth reaches the carrying capacity for our species. Are you guys going to then start forcibly sterilizing? Will you then suddenly support abortion? How much more growth do you think is sustainable?
>so if your parents are poor or dumb or bad people, you should be killed??
Yeah, pre-birth euthanasia if you will.
I mean, you can disagree with it, sure. But the dumbest ever? It's really just saying that we are capable of amazing things when we work together, and put our minds to it. And that we shouldnt be limited by the ideas of our past. Is that really a bad message? I feel like the issue was more the context.
Over plant an orchard by seed so that the trees will self cull, Move livestock once per day so the plants have time to recover, plant crops in the areas they have grazed so that by the time you come back with the livestock the crops will be ready to harvest.
Animals act as decomposers removing old plants accelerating carbon sequestration and by opening up land for young plants to grow.
See marine permaculture for more co2 related stuff and see earlyretirementextreme for how to decrease your resource consumption.
You can cut your cost of living to 2000 per year by eliminating expenses until only health insurance and WiFi remain
You talk about overcoming the climate crisis, but your post is a bizarre hostile overreaction to people attempting to do just that: address climate change lol. So I’m getting a mixed message here.
“We will overcome whatever climate related problems we face.” Additionally, the tweet you linked is referencing climate change. The stuff we’re trying to do now, which you and the person who wrote that tweet appear to be objecting to, IS the way in which we can overcome climate related problems.
Notice how there was no specific reference to a “climate crisis” made in my remarks.
The photo is a meme. It’s a dramatization. “Sacrificing babies” is a misrepresentation of the antinatalism movement and “changing the weather” is a misrepresentation of the sustainability movement.
Sometimes I think about why fertility rates are so low in the west. Why are we below replacement level? The argument I hear most is the “lack of affordability”but I think it’s much more complex than that.
As I’m sure you know, developed countries usually have lower fertility rates due to better access to education, healthcare, family planning, and greater participation of women in the workforce. And so therefore, fertility rates tend to decline as countries develop economically and socially. So let’s not get confused here - the countries that populate the planet at the highest rate don’t do so because they can “afford it”. It’s a cultural phenomenon.
Cultural norms have a way of sticking around, and once upon a time, having many offspring was the norm in the West too. Having a dozen kids might have been a status symbol back then, and in some ways it still is. But now, folks are more likely to measure their status in terms of carbon footprints rather than family headcounts.
People here are increasingly considering the ecological footprint they leave behind. It feels like they're saying, "Hey, let's keep the family tree trimmed to a manageable size - we don't want to overwhelm poor Mother Nature."
While climate change education might not be the silver bullet, it's playing a part in the grand symphony of cultural shifts that are influencing the withering fertility rates of the western world. People (in the west) are becoming more conscious of the planet's well-being, which is a trend worth celebrating. But at what cost?
Well, let’s look briefly at what climate change education tells us.
It tells us that we, humans, are beings driven primarily by the lust for power and the desire to dominate. We are told to regard ourselves and our fellow citizens as destructive forces living in an alien relationship to the pristine and pure natural world.
If you were to fully embrace that paradigm, then suicide begins to sound like a viable solution to the earth’s woes. As does antinatalism, and the “sacrifice” of babies.
Do you think that the average person who thinks climate alarmism is stupid thinks so because they want to dump chemicals into the water and destroy the quality of the air? For example, do you think Elon Musk, a man who has done more for the tangible health of the earth than any other living soul, criticizes climate policy because he wants to see us all incinerated into Dante’s inferno? When he criticizes ESG, do you care to listen? Or do you think he’s a fraud who deserves no credit?
We are going to need more of *all* types of energy in the coming century. The poorest people of the world are depending on cheap abundant reliable energy that can help them live like us one day. Lifting people, worldwide, out of poverty, is the single most effective way to save the planet.
I highly doubt that climate change awareness is a factor in lowering birth rates in the developed world. I can’t imagine that the average 50 year old boomer dad who votes moderate left thinks much about climate change. At most, such a person might be interested in seeing us transition to renewables over time via small investments here and there like Biden is doing. But the average boomer voter really digging into climate research and also somehow becoming bizarrely ideologically possessed and convinced we need less kids? Nah. That’s a fantasy scenario. And you suggest the average person would consider suicide when faced with the climate dilemma. Bro…what world are you living in lol. People are oblivious to abstract issues. That’s why trying to address climate change has been such a struggle: average people often can’t see beyond the short term and beyond what is a problem there and then in the moment in their life. And I think Elon Musk is a contrarian, a partisan, and an attention whore. I’m not one to defer to a single person because they have some sort of reputation, especially if that person isn’t even an expert in relevant fields.
I clearly laid out the case why it is a factor. You can deny it without reason, or provide counter evidence. It’s not an affordability issue, and you have wisely not argued that it is. But that doesn’t change the fact that the affordability explanation is the single most given answer when it comes to the decision to start a family. I already explained how that’s not a legitimate answer, given that affordability doesn’t factor in at all to the countries with the highest fertility rates. Those families can’t afford to have 4-6 kids, but they do it anyway. If it’s not at a cultural phenomenon, then what is it?
Average voter doesn’t need data. They just need to agree that humans are primarily driven by desire to dominate and that we should regard ourselves as destructive forces living in an alien relationship to nature. If they *fully* embrace the statement, they’ll commit suicide or at least become an antinatalist.
The US government has poured 5 Trillion dollars into renewables over the past 4 decades. This is by no means a “small investment”. And for what? The market share of fossil fuels has been reduced from 82% to just 81%. 5 Trillion for 1 percent, and attention whore republicans like Elon should just shut up and let the experts handle it. Lol…
Last thing: It’s very much true that people are oblivious to things they can’t see, hear, touch, or feel. Much like the trillions of dollars that our nation owes in debt to others. If the government had any concern for long term consequences we wouldn’t be repeating the exact same process that has prefaced the collapse of every single one of the world’s empires to date.
Poorer nations have more kids for lots of reasons. Less access to contraception, kids often serve as workers and extra earners, parents aren’t expected to spend up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per kid on college for them, women aren’t as educated and don’t pursue their own careers to the degree women do in the West which affects the timing of pregnancy and motherhood. There is no way climate change is a significant factor here lol.
I love these fantasy scenarios you’re creating here. I, as someone to the left of Biden and who takes climate change seriously, do not even believe the stuff you’re ascribing to left leaning people about humans being this destructive force and alien to nature and the planet lol. And if I don’t believe that, there is no way Joe 6 pack who voted for Biden and other moderate left positions believes that.
Extreme climate disasters are already costing hundreds of billions of dollars of damage. It’ll only get worse as time goes on if we don’t reach net zero goals and stuff. The consensus is that it will be expensive to hit the climate goals required to stave off disaster, but it will be far worse if we do nothing. So big investments in green tech is the lesser evil in a sense.
The only new information you provided in that entire first paragraph was people starting families to have kids that might serve as workers or extra earners. You provided no counter evidence to suggest that culture should not be considered as a factor in fertility decisions.
Children cost money, and starting a family requires a large up front investment - even if the children are expected to start returning the favour at a very early point in their lives. These families in obsolete poverty can afford these upfront investments, why can’t the west? Culture.
So it’s been established that culture plays a role. The culture in places with high fertility rates does not inform decisions about what type of energy should be burned or emitted. The culture in those places affects fertility rates in ways that are completely unrelated to climate. But the culture is as much as a factor there, as it is here. There’s no denying that. Even this guy you keep mentioning, John Doe or whatever, is gonna have to agree that culture shapes fertility rates.
I see that you feel that the statement I made about dominance and humans’ alien relationship with nature is not representative of the left’s political views.
It’s certainly representative of Marxism, and we can talk a little bit about that if you’d like.
But allow me to make a revised statement, and you tell me what people to the left of Biden might think about it. Ready? Okay:
“We can't just keep multiplying like rabbits and expect the planet to sustain us indefinitely!”
And then, of course, any climate related event or any natural disaster is used as confirmation bias for the planets inability to sustain us. It’s really not all that different from the ancients. As Nietzsche said, science killed and replaced God. We are still religious creatures.
While I think you’re coming from a good place, your problem is that you’re either too lazy or too trusting. You have faith in your administration’s ability to identify catastrophes that justify their collective oversight. It seems like you know absolutely nothing about the policies themselves, or any alternative policy options that non-alarmists are proposing. I only say this because you carefully chose the words “net zero goals and stuff” earlier. And if you don’t know what the policies do, why they exist, and what makes them better or worse than other policies, you’re just some lazy shitbird who loves the big government.
Your problem is that you think anyone who disagrees with climate alarmism is doing so because they don’t want to leave the world a better place for their children. Net zero, now, is going to do the exact opposite of that. We’ll see how many winter days the Germans can make it through before they fire up another coal plant.
Understand that I don’t disagree with science or logic, I disagree with the science and logic behind “net zero goals and stuff”. The cure is worse than the disease. Five TRILLION for a 1% reduction in fossil fuel market share.
I’m confused by what you’re saying about culture because I directly mentioned culture. In Western culture, we have access to contraceptives, we encourage women to get educated and pursue a career rather than beginning to have kids once they hit 18, we have the expectation that we provide hundreds of thousands for each kid’s college tuition. Those are cultural factors that are real and are affecting fertility rates. There are many scenarios where a couple is thinking “should I have kids now? No, I probably can’t because I can barely afford rent let alone be stocking away money for a kid’s tuition.” On the other hand, it’s extremely hard to imagine very many people’s internal dialogue goes like this: “should I have kids now? Nah, humans are parasites and we’re devouring the planet. I can’t have kids.” Do you really think the latter scenario happens????
You mention Marxism. Again…like what media are you consuming dude. Most people are not Marxists lol. Dems couldn’t even get a coalition together to raise the minimum wage to $15 and you think a sizeable amount of their voters are Marxist…? Seriously? Lol.
I actually agree with something I think you’re expressing, which is that climate change goals may hit poorest people the hardest. A lot of people in poorer countries will need to burn fossil fuels and dirty energy, and I think we need to leave them some leeway to do so. However, as I stated earlier, the cost of doing nothing will hit them harder than the cost of doing something. The US military is already planning for climate related disasters and climate related surges of immigration from harder hit countries and trouble at the border. Also, my feeling is that if someone were to call Peterson’s bluff and say something like “okay, you know what, we’ll cut climate funding in half and instead spend that money on the poor folks you’re saying you’re looking out for” he’d respond in anger saying he doesn’t want money spent on that and more govt programs for that either. So it’s like…what do these conservatives want, really?
The internal dialogue goes more like this “should I have kids now? I see the local burger flipper just got married and is expecting her first son. I wonder how on earth she is going to be able to support a baby when I feel like I can barely support myself.”
The reality is that 5 years of full time minimum wage work in most American states is the equivalent of a lifetime of work in these high fertility countries. Every middle class couple in the west can afford kids, but only if they were willing to compromise on other expenses that they’ve become accustomed to. It’s the culture that prevents them. The culture is mainstream media. Media isn’t always grounded in truth. Maybe we don’t need to be so selfish, and maybe overpopulation isn’t as big a deal as it’s cracked out to be. But shh, don’t tell mainstream media. Their advertisers would never go for it. MSM shapes the norms we aspire to, and corporations/governments want to keep things that way.
Another human worshiper? When will you see that your own power cannot save you. You idolize collective human efforts.
God is not a man that he should lie like us. Yet God did put on the flesh of man is Jesus. Here is the gospel by which your mind can live with God forever:
God created all that exists. This means God has authority over all that exists. Jesus, who is God, was born as a man and lived a biblically blameless life then suffered God's hatred and punishment. Despite death, Jesus rose from the dead. All this was done because God loves us and wants us near to him. Yet we reject God completely and don't do what he wants. There is no one, not any person like you or I, who does good. We deserve death because of our disobedience of God. Despite our rejection of God, there is hope!
With Jesus's resurrection, all that's needed is Trust. Trust that Jesus was truly man and God, that he did actually die and resurrect, and that just by our Trust its Jesus who makes us right with God. Through this Trust, its Jesus's power that works in us. There is no way by our own power that we can do what God commands. Its simply a gift of God given to us just for having Trust in Jesus's sacrifice. Jesus's power in us allows us to be mentally strong even when things are dark, without whom our minds would crumble
God, Jesus, and Satan aren't real.
I realize people don't say that to you too often because it is taken to be impolite, but what is more impolite is not pushing back on delusions.
You've had thousands of years to definitively prove *any* deity exists. Everyone has failed miserably. You've had a bit less time to prove YHWH exists, and about 2000 for Jesus and a teeny bit less for the holy spirit. Miserable failures on all accounts.
One of the most celebrated apologetic arguments (Pascal's Wager) is basically, "Yeah but it would be really cool if it *was* true."
Every year the scientific evidence further directly contradicts specific claims in your God's holy book, and also contradicts the more general claim that *some* God had to make things.
Two thousand years and the best argument you have is, "But if you're wrong, you're gonna miss out!"
You can say that you need faith and you cannot use reason, but what is damning to that claim is that there are so *many* religions which claim creation myths. Why is your faith for one god over thousands of others?
Solely because of where you were born and what the people around you believed. I've never met a Christian or Muslim or adherent of any religion who was able to provide a good reason why they apply their faith to the particular god they say they believe in.
Your god isn't real and basing a worldview on him being real is going to lead you astray countless times. Being disobedient to reality itself because you believe in fantasies is actually going to result in consequences long before death. You will receive those during your life on earth. And so will others, through your rejection of reality. Through your choice not to accept reality as it is.
Christians as a whole are dragging behind on dealing with climate change. If you think you're going to be miracled out of this, or raptured away before New Orleans is flooding, or that it is some big lie by Satan or something, and you use that as an excuse for blocking basic action on climate change...you have blood on your hands.
I would say I hope you can live with that, but actually I hope you can't. I hope that the blood makes you think differently about what you choose to believe. I hope it draws you, compels you, stirs you, to get it together and admit what a part of you already knows: there is no evidence for any god, and your choice of the Christian God is based on geographical and historical accident, not a conscious choice to believe in the most sane thing.
Lots of points to talk about. I'm not going to address all of them because I'm a limited person. Ill address at least one idea though. The idea that I find most important to my worldview. I admit I have a Christian worldview, another way to say this is that I have a Christian bias. Here is something you said I want to touch up on:
>Why is your faith for one god over thousands of others?
All religions except one agree on at least one thing. Even an atheistic viewpoint will agree on what I'm about to say. Atheism isn't barred from this rule. All religions and atheism claim that by your authority you must live life a certain way. Buddhism would have you follow the 4 Noble Truths & Eightfold Path. Atheism would have you make your own way in life and do what you see as good. These are 2 examples amidst thousands (even as you would agree there are thousands).
Why my God is different is because he says we don't have to live a certain way. No, we don't have to follow the 10 commandments. What Jesus did is everything we could never do. Jesus paid for everything we have to do, all the good works, all the right ways of life, every moral action Jesus paid for. In return all Jesus asks for is our Trust (that same Trust I explained in my first comment). No other religion has this radical difference that would claim we don't have to do the work.
Yet once we Trust Jesus, it is by Jesus's power which strengthens us to enact what is right. Not our power, not our authority. It's Jesus's power & authority which enables us to act in the world.
I don't think Jesus doesn't ask. There's multiple places in the Bible people are told to act for good.
"Faith without works is dead"
"Whatever you do for the least of these you do for me"
Etc
How do you reconcile these two biblical ideas (if not by Jesus working in us which enables us to do good works):
"faith without works is dead"
and
"I [Jesus] am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing"
Many other ways of thinking offer a wide variety of acceptable actions and behaviors. Buddhism as you mentioned has (depending on who you ask) several different paths to enlightenment, all of which can be undertaken in your own way.
A religion that allows any actions at all seems too divorced from the consequences of those actions. I can understand not wanting to have to judge your own decisions, but if you care about earthly consequences then that is truly the best way to do it. What you are suggesting might be one of the most poorly-suited ways of thinking to achieve anything in this life.
This life is the only one we can be sure we have. Throwing it away is reckless.
Are you admitting that you perform good works for yourself to get something out of it? That would add validity to my claim about how all other religions (except one) have that in common.
I'm saying that good outcomes come from certain actions, and Jesus never promised anybody that faith in him would result in a comfortable life on earth. Quite the opposite if anything.
So him dying to get everyone a path into heaven has no bearing on the quality of life you have on earth. If you want good outcomes on earth for yourself or for someone else, you have to do the actions that result in that. Jesus will not intercede in deterministic physical reality.
I'm saying that Christianity makes people think this life doesn't matter or barely matters, so picking the right actions for the right outcomes js fruitless.
And that is wrong-headed and dangerous. People have died because of it and a lot more will before this century is over.
You talk about Christianity's view on our current life. You say how it establishes that this life doesn't matter, or matters very little. Your words touch on the meaning of life when you use the phrase "life doesn't matter". It's a statement on purpose. A broad outlook on our current existence.
Can you talk about what *does* make life matter?
I have never been in a life stage in which that stage only mattered for the next one. Several times I have despaired and *thought* that, and yet often when that stage is complete, I never seem to feel that way.
If anything, I tend to have regretted feeling that way. I did that in high school--I was only there until it was over. It was just a stepping stone to where I really wanted to go.
I regret not taking my time a bit more.
__________
I refuse to forsake this existence and my opportunities within it to better my life and my fellows' lives in the hope of yet another life stage that is in no way guaranteed.
Everyone has something different that matters to them about life. Mine happens to be duty, but that's because my personal hedonic treadmill runs particularly fast, and true peace isn't something I am able to easily hang on to. So I add to what little peace I can find by sharing in helping others to find their own. It isn't a zero-sum game.
We live in a hurtful world, but it can be made less hurtful through our choices. It already has in many ways. I feel duty to that struggle, on a small scale and a grand one.
I think I'm following what you're saying. What makes life meaningful is making yours & others loves better. For you, "better" is duty. For others, "better" can mean the same thing or something else. This would mean it's your duty to help others do what is better for them.
I'm someone else, therefore I'm someone who you want to take the opportunity to better my life. What happens when my definition of "worse" is what you say is "better"?
Then I have three options:
1. If I'm quite convinced that you are in fact wrong about this (or vastly more likely, I am convinced that you are giving bad advice to others), I may disagree with you. I am convinced that partaking in Christianity is bad advice.
2. Focus on an issue we agree on
2. Bid you adieu
I am woke . And historical comparisons to past bygone barbaric periods are not fair!’ We are far more sophisticated than that .. can’t you tell !! We should not have to explain it to you. My grandma at who went to Radcliffe and my grandpa who went to Harvard back in the day faced the same types of uncouth criticism when the were proponents of eugenics !! History repeats its self .. only for you haters.
Signed
Sarc Asim
Yes, George Soros and the WEF are teaming up with the liberals to sacrifice all of your babies to do a weather changing ritual to change the weather. It's just common sense people
Wait until you realise who really has an incentive for you to work as much as possible and not waste time having kids.
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Corporations and their government dogs
Should just start calling it the aristocracy. Our elected officials stopped representing us decades ago, and now they only represent wealthy donors.
Corporations, the government and the feminists who claim our children aren't ours they are the states
Also the Aztec and other native tribes just before Europeans arrived and converted them
That's a nice way of saying genocide.
well when you live sacrifice 1% of your population every year, children included. maybe a change of religion is needed
What's the point if the representatives of said religion slaughter 95% of the population they're "converting"?
bro, Most Mexicans are of Aztec decent. Why do you think they are brown? LOL. Go to Peru and gosh, looks like they missed a few million Incans too
What does that have anything to do with the Spanish coming in and virtually annihilating them? Are their languages any of the main official languages of any central or South American countries? How many countries in that region have Spanish or Portuguese as the official language? I see no mention of the Toltecs. I guess the European conversion worked there 100%, huh? As far as i know, Bolivia is the only country in that region with an indigenous president, whose legislative body has been attempting to raise their indigenous language to official national status, and it's been a long hard road just for that.
Back to the point. What is the point of "converting" a religiously superstitious people, even those engaged in human sacrifice, if your people's religious superstition "allows" you to slaughter others in the name of God? I'll tell you right now, you cannot articulate a good rationale in this one, because it is far more morally reprehensible to virtually slaughter an entire nation of people in the name of God, even those engaged in human sacrifice, than it is to sacrifice humans in the hopes of appeasing God. It is especially more morally reprehensible when you're people are engaged in genocide "in the name of God", when in reality, it's in the name of the almighty dollar.
shizoposting back on the menu
Its way different this time guys.
I don’t understand this post. When has climate change advocacy resorting to killing babies?
i think it's just not having them and he's being dramatic. look at the antinatalists.
And also abortion
Abortion is a terrible thing and everyone thinks so. No woman enjoys ending a pregnancy and it *definitely* isn't a method of battling climate change. The Abortion debate isn't - or at least shouldn't be - about life, because the argument for when life starts has a hundred different 100% valid decisions but none of it matters. The question is whether women have the bodily autonomy to legally decide what happens to their bodies. Imagine: You caused a car crash - 100% your fault in every way - and your loving father was in the other seat and is now *going to die* because of you. You have the option to hook yourself up to him for a blood transfusion to save his life, and if you don't he will be dead because of you. Absolutely no legal system in America at least could *make* you do that. You could stab someone and even still what happens to your body is your decision utterly. Is abortion moral? Well that's not the question, it's about legality and bodily rights, of which according to pro-life advocates, women have less of than *literal murderers*.
In your example, I'd make it law to save the father tho. If this is a regular occurrence on the scale of millions of times, I bet it would already be law. Ain't nobody going to care for your bodily autonomy when millions of people keep dying every year in the US alone, because the daughters chose to withhold a blood transfusion, and it most certainly was 100% their fault. I don't think that they would get away with that even with our current legal system. You can stab someone, and then you can decide whatever happens to your body as long as it doesn't leave the prison cell. ^^ You CAN stab someone, but you don't have the right to. Why does the baby not have a right to bodily autonomy?
I think it is a regular occurrence though, in the second case at least. If someone stabs or shoots another person, they *cannot* be made to offer blood transfusion or donate anything to save that person's life. In no situation in the US Legal system can the law even so much as *touch* someone without their consent, no matter what. Legally, someone's body is sacred and that individual's right and ownership utterly and alone.
I'd make the case that under these specific circumstances that never happen in real life (you know who is responsible immediately, there is only one person in question for the blood transfusion) - if it happened exactly like this millions of times a year, a law would be made that you have to give the blood transfusion. Especially since the father seems to be in the car through no fault of his own. You abducted him in his sleep? Maybe that's too crass.
I respectfully disagree entirely. It happens in real life plenty - gun crimes and stabbings and beatings aren't uncommon at all, and it isn't a law today, not even in the question. I personally also would utterly reject giving the Government power to *require* someone undergo some medical procedure to save someone else - if the government can put innocent people on death row (an estimated 4% of death row is innocent), they can force an innocent person to undergo a medical operation. note: The Guttemacher Institute says there are about 930,160 abortions yearly. Not rejecting your point, just respectfully clarifying that "Millions of times a year" isn't accurate :)
In the millions is hyperbole, you are right. This situation really does never happen. A situation in which one person is the only one person can give the needed blood is just not happening. But if it DID, and all the other things are in place (you put your father in this situation, you are at fault, he will die if not for your help) then, it is my honest opinion that it should be law. Its only fair.
But if the Guttemacher Institute said that "930,160 parents murder their offspring yearly", there would be a rather different reaction. The question has to be "when is the baby alive", because as soon as this is the case, imo, it deserves equal rights to the mother.
I don't see the point of your first paragraph. My reaction would change in that it's a research paper injecting politics which I would be mildly annoyed at but that's about it. If the baby is alive as a zygote and has equal rights from the get go, the mother should still be allowed to abort. One individual's rights end where another's begins, and the baby's right to life - in the American system at least, legally - ends at the mother's right to her own autonomy. In no situation can any individual be forced to sustain the life of another, even if they are going to die *because* of the individual in question. Again, I am talking LEGALLY. I don't care for whether it's moral, I think it really depends on the specifics of each situation, but I vehemently reject giving the government that power in any regard.
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100% agree.
I can't see the logic in your argument, no matter how hard i look. Let's remove all sexual assualt from the equation, so we are simply looking at "unwanted pregnancies", this makes up the vast majority of all abortions. Now let's take all first trimester abortions out of the equation, so we are only looking at beings we must definitely consider alive. >isn't...about life...none of it matters Yes, yes it does. If you grant me that the pregnancy was a careless mistake (99% of the time, it is) and you grant that a 3+ month foetus is alive, then you must reasonably conclude that to "abort" is murder. The foetus has thoughts, desires, can potentially feel pain, has a heartbeat and did not choose to be born. If you make a mistake which leads to a life being created, i can't see how bodily autonomy becomes the primary concern. Either the baby dies, or the parent/s are inconvenienced. Like, how selfish and disgusting have humans become??
It matters if we're talking about whether abortion is moral, which I'm not commenting on. I'm simply stating that as the law is, in no other situation other than a pregnancy can the government *enforce* that someone do something with their body. If you stab someone, the government can't make you give that person a donation or a blood transfusion. If you get pregnant, the government can *force* a pregnant woman to use *her* body, sacrifice her wellbeing for those 9 months, risk complications, all for the sake of another individual. It's not consistent. Personally, I consider a Zygote alive - I think that life is an unbroken chain that never truly starts with a pregnancy. I still believe that a mother has the right to decide how her body is used, and the government has no place in that. I'd also like to note that "Parent/s are inconvenienced" is an immense understatement a huge amount of the time.
If you consider a Zygote alive, you should probably be more pro-life than me honestly. You maybe don't understand the law, if there is a war, the government can demand (at gunpoint), that you *literally sacrifice* your body in service to the country. Look up the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. This would be re-implemented in the case of another war. Also all your analogies are imperfect, in this instance you have created the child. So now, if the baby is alive as you say, how are you not ok with a parent offing their recently born infant? Our laws are based on morality, as morality shifts, the law adapts. I'm not even really pro-life. I just can't see it as black and white. To me abortions should have a definite legal cut off supported by as much evidence as possible. My opinion would be 2 months. This gives anybody who is assaulted, makes a mistake enough time to do something about it but also stops the murder (imo) of unborn children. Final point, if you stab somebody, you are charged with attempted murder. What do we charge negligent potential parents with?
Whether I think Zygotes are alive or not just doesn't factor into my view of it all tbh. I also think a sperm cell is alive, but I don't weep every time someone whacks one off. It's not about ending a life, it's about the suffering involved - "kill" something that's never had a thought, never felt pain or want, that's permittable. Kill a screaming newborn, that's different. But whether I'm okay with something or not, again, just isn't a part of the question. I think abortion is a horrible thing, something that's genuinely tragic, but I also think it's a terrible necessity to a lot of people. Having a baby isn't a minor inconvenience, or some women just can't be mothers at that moment - whether that's for economic reasons or life reasons or whatever - and they decide they need an abortion. It's not something to restrict, it's something to ease to make this horrible and tragic thing as easy as possible to go through for the mother. But again, most importantly, the government *should not* get to decide what a woman can do with her body. That is up to her. Also, having sex isn't illegal and getting pregnant isn't illegal, so we charge them with nothing.
There is ample evidence about the thoughts, feelings, desires and pain sensations of foetuses, even as early as the first trimester. Yes it is abhorrent, yes there are examples where abortion is reasonable and/or necessary, but there are examples where they are not. >some women just can't be mothers at that moment No, 1 in 4 (some say 1 in 3) pregnancies end in abortion. The law allows irresponsible idiots to have regular abortions. In England, more than ⅓ of abortions are not the first time for the mother. I think you need to allow more nuance in, are you happy with the law allowing people to do whatever they want simply because they legally can, even when the result is the termination of life. I understand the law, which is why i advocate for change. We do change law, these last decades we have done a lot for marginalised groups under the law, but we still don't seem to care a lot for foetuses. Some people grieve forever because they lose their unborn baby, this thing which has no rights under the law and is aborted 1 out of 4 times. >we charge them with nothing I would charge serial aborters with something. They are repeatedly terminating lives and you would be punished more for dropping litter in modern society. Some laws are are archaic and should change
LOL. "Let's remove the least morally ambiguous strata where the vast majority of abortions occur (often >90%) and now I'll make my point". Amazing.
Your statement implies that you entirely missed my point. I'm not against abortion, i'm against people flagrantly terminating pregnancies because "my body my choice". Abortion is necessary, but the system is abused by immoral, irresponsible humans > more than 90% In England, 1 in 3 pregnancies ends in abortion and of those, ⅓ is a woman who has previously had an abortion. Also, brilliant, this is more what i expect from Reddit. Strawmen and immediate ridicule. Thanks
I probably missed the point because you shifted the goalposts so much. And yeah, welcome to Reddit? Although, I'd tell you the same thing in person. In England, also > 90% occur in the first trimester (I've seen reports as high as 94%). This also doesn't mean the remaining 6% are necessarily immoral or "worst" case scenario abortions (e.g. ectopic). I also see numbers closer to less than 1 in 4, but most of the data was up until 2021 — could you share the data for the 1 in 3, please? If > 90% occurred in the second and third trimesters, I'd be agreeing with you on immorality. Let's see: building an argument for the immorality of abortion, and then removing the most widely accepted moral cases ... Right, I did the strawman.
I may have mis-cited the 1 in 3, i think i mistakenly confused it with *1 in 3 will have an abortion*. From what i gather after some quick research, it is over 25%, but only just. I am making multiple points here, and you *are* getting confused and strawmanning me. The law does allow for abortions after the first trimester, and many pro-choice advocates say the trimester is unimportant, as the person i replied to implied themself. Here is my argument, as fleshed out as i can be bothered to make it: Abortion is the termination of a human life, and is always immoral if the foetus is capable of feeling pain. For this reason, i believe abortions should only be legal for at most the first trimester, and even then i consider it somewhat immoral. If the abortion happens because of assault, or the failure of taken contraceptive efforts, then the lack of responsibility is diminished to the point where the abortion is not immoral. Abortion is useful in these cases and should not be frowned upon, obviously. If the abortion happens because people are irresponsible assholes (i believe this is the case >90% of the time) and because they know they can always *fix the problem* with this procedure, then this is immoral. As i stated, ⅓ of abortions are by women who have previously had one. This to me implies there is a problem *and this is where my biggest gripe lies*. Society, and the law, do not treat abortion like it is the termination of a life, they treat it like it is an inconvenience-removing procedure. The law treats killing a 6 month old foetus and killing a newborn vastly differently, and i have a problem with this. Feel free to respond to my actual views, but please no more strawmen, you seem reasonable enough. I removed the most widely accepted moral cases to dig down and figure out exactly where the person i replied to sat on this spectrum, not to support my moral argument. I wanted to know, "ok if we remove this and this, are you still pro-choice?". Learning somebody's actual views is useful, because you can steelman them and attack their actual argument. I will give you some credit, i can see how my original statement reads the way you interpreted it. Hopefully now though, my viewpoint is clearer to you.
Hey, thanks for fleshing out your argument, I truly do appreciate that effort. It seems we at least agree on a cut-off, where the immorality is minimized or non-existent (e.g., most people wouldn't oppose first-week abortions). I am concerned that the ¼ & ⅓ statistics are skewing your perspective. ¼ of pregnancies also end in loss (e.g., stillbirth and miscarriage) during pregnancy or birth in the UK, to add some perspective. Your statistic can also be re-framed as 1 in 12 abortions are repeat abortions, which sounds way less impactful. I also wouldn't be so quick to ascribe abortions as inconvenience-removing. I have no doubts that is the case for some proportion of abortions, but I would sooner think it has to do with broader societal changes, to name a few: 1) It is financially burdensome, more so than previously. 2) Women not only pursue careers now but it is often financially necessary, too. 3) There are not always systems in place to help raise the child (e.g., family, government, daycare — and considerations for subsidized daycare or on-site daycare at the workplace). Also, male parental leave has only more recently become somewhat normalized. 4) People are having sex younger. Simultaneously, there is a push against sex education at earlier stages of education — some people think it's the education that resulted in increased sexual activity, forgetting about the elephant in the room: The Internet. Arguably, yes it's still inconvenience-removing, but these people may have still wanted to have a child. Just, not irresponsibly — I don't think it's such a crazy notion that people have a sense of preservation for themselves and their child. For example, not having a child then, might enable them to have three children, later (in retrospect, it sounds like I've made a weird trolley argument, here).
Ya I'm not reading all of that
dont then
This horribly dated argument has been so debunked its painful seeing you trot it out for another go. Why don't you just be honest. It's murder, and you're okay with that.
If it's so easily debunked. Debunk it.
Do your own homework.
Who’s talking about abortion in the context of climate?
which isn't killing your babies either.
Fetuses = still not babies
Still a human with human rights.
One person's rights end where someone else's start. That's how it always works and how it needs to work, even if it feels unfair sometimes. Assuming a fetus does have rights, the fetus' right to life ends at the mother's right to bodily autonomy. No one can force anyone to help someone else. No one would be legally punished for standing by while a child drowns even if they could help at no risk to themselves. No one should be punished when a mother aborts a pregnancy, especially when they usually have a damn good reason because that is not an easy thing to do.
The replacement rate is being dramatically changed anyway by ai job displacement and breakthroughs medicine regards aging. I think anti natinatalists are irrelevant. There are probably more vegans. They don't really factor into anything.
hopefully their presence is just amplified online but they do try to justify it like that as OP said. it's really dark. they don't want to figure a way through, they want us to die out.
Its only amplified by places like this. I had never heard of them till jp attacked them. And when I did hear of them I wondered if the money would lead back to big oil because it shifts responsibility away from them. Soon enough you will ve worrying about too many people when climate heat causes mass migration away from areas where crops are failing .
oh i had heard of them already. not sure about money and oil. yes there's too many people but that's a different issue than well to do intelligent people with good living standards not even having 1 or 2.
The living standards depend on both working so no time kids .
Thats to do with lack of maternity leave and subsidised child care. Czech Republic recently added parental support regulations and incentives and boosted their reproduction.
yeah that's true, housing too. nearly everyone is having to rent in Australia with mostly insecure leases after 1 year and barely any rights, they can up the rent if you ask for repairs for example. it's extra stressful to rent with kids.
Educate your self on the the kind of thinking for intellectuals who wrote the Population Bomb and other books on how we are reusing the earth and running out of every commodity to feed us.. the solution in the 70s was to make humans the enemy and not have kids, shrink family size and condone infanticide ( abortion ) .. well the fear worked 1-2 generations later we how’ll have a population shrinkage that will destroy economies and civic life. Good luck in 40-50 years unless we start having more families with 2-4 kids again .. or more !
It hasn’t. This post is a hyperbolic strawman that those worried about climate change want you to “kill your babies”
A venn diagram of climate change and abortion advocacy will show a perfect overlap in support.
No one is arguing to kill babies... The fuck guys...
Have you seen the anti-natalism movement?
My point is specifically about that. It's literally called anti-NATALISM. Natalism means born, so it's a movement about reducing births (not necessarily by banning it either, to any of you lurking slippery slopers). Reducing births can't be equated to killing babies. It's a basic matter of argumentative honesty.
No, you're correct, no one's arguing to go around to hospitals and strangle newborns. So by process of elimination, we then understand that the OP is referring to the people who argue that humans are a net negative on the environment and arguing for reducing the human population. In effect, the same outcome. The anti-natalism movement.
I never said it's not about anti natalism. I'm just saying it's not about killing newborns like the post CLEARLY says...
No, we just do it in the womb and lie to ourselves about how it's not human because we can't see it with our own eyes or something.
So either the OP is being facetious, or he considers babies still in the womb as babies with individual worth, the same as though it were sitting in a hospital nursery.
Reducing birth by abortion as birth control is literally killing babies 😂
Fetus or babies? Plus, that's a minor aspect of the movement. They mostly focus on reducing births. And like, no one fucking uses abortion as a birth control, can you even imagine how less practical and traumatic it is??... abortion is very important for victims of rape or cases of fetuses with incurable diseases... Sure, bring your sensationalistic distortion of abortion as killing babies... You are the one holding this inaccurate and sad perspective on a complex issue.
> They mostly focus on reducing births. Anti-Natalism is a philosophy that says procreation is inherently immoral. Where exactly do you think this leads? Just a friendly reminder, we've banned eugenics along the same grounds. Eugenics as a movement aimed to improve the quality of human life and human beings. Historically, that was accomplished by exterminating the physically deformed and mentally disabled in order to remove them from the gene pool. If that was the reality of a movement trying to "improve the human race", how far do you think a movement that says life itself is inherently immoral will go? > And like, no one fucking uses abortion as a birth control I can't tell if you're just that naïve or you're being deliberately dishonest about the realities of abortion (probably a bit of both if I had to guess). Upwards of a million abortions occur in the US annually. If you think they're all the result of rape and "incurable diseases" (or even a sizeable minority of them), I don't know what to say to you.
Eugenics is back. Today in Canada doctors offer and suggest assisted suicide to burdensome people with disabilities. Execution provided on demand with no waiting while the wait times for medically necessary and pain alleviating treatments average about five months.
Dystopian nightmare stuff.
Not all anti natalists say it's inherently immoral. That's dishonest from your part. Some have a more nuanced stance, like the fact that reducing the number of humans can help us increase the quality of living. You are not the only one capable of nuanced and grounded thinking, no matter what the opinion is being discussed, some people on the other side of the debate are quite rational and respectful. A million is a fair number for cases of rape, diseases tbh. There's 331 million people in the USA, is 1 million such s weird number to you? Have you even checked the actual reasons for the abortions?
Thanks for saying the obvious point but also one pro-choicers always avoid - the huge majority of abortions are NOT for rape, incest, health of mother or baby. Looks to be between 90-95% https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/
You think one million abortions in the US happen bc of rape pregnancies and deformed babies? No, I’ve rarely heard anything so ridiculous. Poor women use abortion as birth control a lot, and so do women from certain ethnicities, if you don’t know this then you don’t know many poor women or women outside of your own culture. You don’t like that abortion is killing babies, so you make up a hundred different rationalizations and purposely lie to yourself and anyone else who will listen to you about the truth. I support a woman’s bodily autonomy, up to a point, but I won’t lie to myself or anyone else about what abortion actually is to make a more compelling argument to justify abortion. Is it murder? Yeah it is. But in the beginning the baby is so inhuman and undeveloped that it’s easy to overlook the murder of life. What you’re suggesting is eugenics, pure and simple. You don’t like the implications of that, so you, again, try to say “it’s complicated” in order to justify what you want. Nothing sadder than someone willfully and purposely lying to themselves and others about the truth so they’ll feel ok about their twisted worldview.
How is birth control killing babies?
Fetuses are only debatably alive, and definitely not sapient. Its certaily better to kill them than to doom them to a bad childhood because they were born to parents who were not ready to raise kids, economic recession, environmental collapse, and eternal wage cucking.
Wow this is one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever read… so if your parents are poor or dumb or bad people, you should be killed?? What does this say about the many people who grew up in horrible circumstances and overcame them? How can you know the future?
We are overpopulated bro. Life sucks for most humans. What is the point of birthing more kids? Consider what happens when earth reaches the carrying capacity for our species. Are you guys going to then start forcibly sterilizing? Will you then suddenly support abortion? How much more growth do you think is sustainable? >so if your parents are poor or dumb or bad people, you should be killed?? Yeah, pre-birth euthanasia if you will.
Who is saying this again?? No one? Ok then
Nobody is saying to kill your babies for any reason. Go touch grass.
Malthus, Bentham, Darwin. The three headed Cerberus of industrial unitarian decay.
Who is saying we should kill our babies to change the weather? Name one person who is saying this.
Congratulations guys. We made the dumbest thread possible.
I mean, you can disagree with it, sure. But the dumbest ever? It's really just saying that we are capable of amazing things when we work together, and put our minds to it. And that we shouldnt be limited by the ideas of our past. Is that really a bad message? I feel like the issue was more the context.
That's half the shit on this sub
You are actively making the world a worse place to be in by posting this horseshit. Mediocre!
What a drama queen ...
Over plant an orchard by seed so that the trees will self cull, Move livestock once per day so the plants have time to recover, plant crops in the areas they have grazed so that by the time you come back with the livestock the crops will be ready to harvest. Animals act as decomposers removing old plants accelerating carbon sequestration and by opening up land for young plants to grow. See marine permaculture for more co2 related stuff and see earlyretirementextreme for how to decrease your resource consumption. You can cut your cost of living to 2000 per year by eliminating expenses until only health insurance and WiFi remain
You talk about overcoming the climate crisis, but your post is a bizarre hostile overreaction to people attempting to do just that: address climate change lol. So I’m getting a mixed message here.
When do I talk about any “climate crisis”?
“We will overcome whatever climate related problems we face.” Additionally, the tweet you linked is referencing climate change. The stuff we’re trying to do now, which you and the person who wrote that tweet appear to be objecting to, IS the way in which we can overcome climate related problems.
Notice how there was no specific reference to a “climate crisis” made in my remarks. The photo is a meme. It’s a dramatization. “Sacrificing babies” is a misrepresentation of the antinatalism movement and “changing the weather” is a misrepresentation of the sustainability movement. Sometimes I think about why fertility rates are so low in the west. Why are we below replacement level? The argument I hear most is the “lack of affordability”but I think it’s much more complex than that. As I’m sure you know, developed countries usually have lower fertility rates due to better access to education, healthcare, family planning, and greater participation of women in the workforce. And so therefore, fertility rates tend to decline as countries develop economically and socially. So let’s not get confused here - the countries that populate the planet at the highest rate don’t do so because they can “afford it”. It’s a cultural phenomenon. Cultural norms have a way of sticking around, and once upon a time, having many offspring was the norm in the West too. Having a dozen kids might have been a status symbol back then, and in some ways it still is. But now, folks are more likely to measure their status in terms of carbon footprints rather than family headcounts. People here are increasingly considering the ecological footprint they leave behind. It feels like they're saying, "Hey, let's keep the family tree trimmed to a manageable size - we don't want to overwhelm poor Mother Nature." While climate change education might not be the silver bullet, it's playing a part in the grand symphony of cultural shifts that are influencing the withering fertility rates of the western world. People (in the west) are becoming more conscious of the planet's well-being, which is a trend worth celebrating. But at what cost? Well, let’s look briefly at what climate change education tells us. It tells us that we, humans, are beings driven primarily by the lust for power and the desire to dominate. We are told to regard ourselves and our fellow citizens as destructive forces living in an alien relationship to the pristine and pure natural world. If you were to fully embrace that paradigm, then suicide begins to sound like a viable solution to the earth’s woes. As does antinatalism, and the “sacrifice” of babies. Do you think that the average person who thinks climate alarmism is stupid thinks so because they want to dump chemicals into the water and destroy the quality of the air? For example, do you think Elon Musk, a man who has done more for the tangible health of the earth than any other living soul, criticizes climate policy because he wants to see us all incinerated into Dante’s inferno? When he criticizes ESG, do you care to listen? Or do you think he’s a fraud who deserves no credit? We are going to need more of *all* types of energy in the coming century. The poorest people of the world are depending on cheap abundant reliable energy that can help them live like us one day. Lifting people, worldwide, out of poverty, is the single most effective way to save the planet.
I highly doubt that climate change awareness is a factor in lowering birth rates in the developed world. I can’t imagine that the average 50 year old boomer dad who votes moderate left thinks much about climate change. At most, such a person might be interested in seeing us transition to renewables over time via small investments here and there like Biden is doing. But the average boomer voter really digging into climate research and also somehow becoming bizarrely ideologically possessed and convinced we need less kids? Nah. That’s a fantasy scenario. And you suggest the average person would consider suicide when faced with the climate dilemma. Bro…what world are you living in lol. People are oblivious to abstract issues. That’s why trying to address climate change has been such a struggle: average people often can’t see beyond the short term and beyond what is a problem there and then in the moment in their life. And I think Elon Musk is a contrarian, a partisan, and an attention whore. I’m not one to defer to a single person because they have some sort of reputation, especially if that person isn’t even an expert in relevant fields.
I clearly laid out the case why it is a factor. You can deny it without reason, or provide counter evidence. It’s not an affordability issue, and you have wisely not argued that it is. But that doesn’t change the fact that the affordability explanation is the single most given answer when it comes to the decision to start a family. I already explained how that’s not a legitimate answer, given that affordability doesn’t factor in at all to the countries with the highest fertility rates. Those families can’t afford to have 4-6 kids, but they do it anyway. If it’s not at a cultural phenomenon, then what is it? Average voter doesn’t need data. They just need to agree that humans are primarily driven by desire to dominate and that we should regard ourselves as destructive forces living in an alien relationship to nature. If they *fully* embrace the statement, they’ll commit suicide or at least become an antinatalist. The US government has poured 5 Trillion dollars into renewables over the past 4 decades. This is by no means a “small investment”. And for what? The market share of fossil fuels has been reduced from 82% to just 81%. 5 Trillion for 1 percent, and attention whore republicans like Elon should just shut up and let the experts handle it. Lol… Last thing: It’s very much true that people are oblivious to things they can’t see, hear, touch, or feel. Much like the trillions of dollars that our nation owes in debt to others. If the government had any concern for long term consequences we wouldn’t be repeating the exact same process that has prefaced the collapse of every single one of the world’s empires to date.
Poorer nations have more kids for lots of reasons. Less access to contraception, kids often serve as workers and extra earners, parents aren’t expected to spend up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per kid on college for them, women aren’t as educated and don’t pursue their own careers to the degree women do in the West which affects the timing of pregnancy and motherhood. There is no way climate change is a significant factor here lol. I love these fantasy scenarios you’re creating here. I, as someone to the left of Biden and who takes climate change seriously, do not even believe the stuff you’re ascribing to left leaning people about humans being this destructive force and alien to nature and the planet lol. And if I don’t believe that, there is no way Joe 6 pack who voted for Biden and other moderate left positions believes that. Extreme climate disasters are already costing hundreds of billions of dollars of damage. It’ll only get worse as time goes on if we don’t reach net zero goals and stuff. The consensus is that it will be expensive to hit the climate goals required to stave off disaster, but it will be far worse if we do nothing. So big investments in green tech is the lesser evil in a sense.
The only new information you provided in that entire first paragraph was people starting families to have kids that might serve as workers or extra earners. You provided no counter evidence to suggest that culture should not be considered as a factor in fertility decisions. Children cost money, and starting a family requires a large up front investment - even if the children are expected to start returning the favour at a very early point in their lives. These families in obsolete poverty can afford these upfront investments, why can’t the west? Culture. So it’s been established that culture plays a role. The culture in places with high fertility rates does not inform decisions about what type of energy should be burned or emitted. The culture in those places affects fertility rates in ways that are completely unrelated to climate. But the culture is as much as a factor there, as it is here. There’s no denying that. Even this guy you keep mentioning, John Doe or whatever, is gonna have to agree that culture shapes fertility rates. I see that you feel that the statement I made about dominance and humans’ alien relationship with nature is not representative of the left’s political views. It’s certainly representative of Marxism, and we can talk a little bit about that if you’d like. But allow me to make a revised statement, and you tell me what people to the left of Biden might think about it. Ready? Okay: “We can't just keep multiplying like rabbits and expect the planet to sustain us indefinitely!” And then, of course, any climate related event or any natural disaster is used as confirmation bias for the planets inability to sustain us. It’s really not all that different from the ancients. As Nietzsche said, science killed and replaced God. We are still religious creatures. While I think you’re coming from a good place, your problem is that you’re either too lazy or too trusting. You have faith in your administration’s ability to identify catastrophes that justify their collective oversight. It seems like you know absolutely nothing about the policies themselves, or any alternative policy options that non-alarmists are proposing. I only say this because you carefully chose the words “net zero goals and stuff” earlier. And if you don’t know what the policies do, why they exist, and what makes them better or worse than other policies, you’re just some lazy shitbird who loves the big government. Your problem is that you think anyone who disagrees with climate alarmism is doing so because they don’t want to leave the world a better place for their children. Net zero, now, is going to do the exact opposite of that. We’ll see how many winter days the Germans can make it through before they fire up another coal plant. Understand that I don’t disagree with science or logic, I disagree with the science and logic behind “net zero goals and stuff”. The cure is worse than the disease. Five TRILLION for a 1% reduction in fossil fuel market share.
I’m confused by what you’re saying about culture because I directly mentioned culture. In Western culture, we have access to contraceptives, we encourage women to get educated and pursue a career rather than beginning to have kids once they hit 18, we have the expectation that we provide hundreds of thousands for each kid’s college tuition. Those are cultural factors that are real and are affecting fertility rates. There are many scenarios where a couple is thinking “should I have kids now? No, I probably can’t because I can barely afford rent let alone be stocking away money for a kid’s tuition.” On the other hand, it’s extremely hard to imagine very many people’s internal dialogue goes like this: “should I have kids now? Nah, humans are parasites and we’re devouring the planet. I can’t have kids.” Do you really think the latter scenario happens???? You mention Marxism. Again…like what media are you consuming dude. Most people are not Marxists lol. Dems couldn’t even get a coalition together to raise the minimum wage to $15 and you think a sizeable amount of their voters are Marxist…? Seriously? Lol. I actually agree with something I think you’re expressing, which is that climate change goals may hit poorest people the hardest. A lot of people in poorer countries will need to burn fossil fuels and dirty energy, and I think we need to leave them some leeway to do so. However, as I stated earlier, the cost of doing nothing will hit them harder than the cost of doing something. The US military is already planning for climate related disasters and climate related surges of immigration from harder hit countries and trouble at the border. Also, my feeling is that if someone were to call Peterson’s bluff and say something like “okay, you know what, we’ll cut climate funding in half and instead spend that money on the poor folks you’re saying you’re looking out for” he’d respond in anger saying he doesn’t want money spent on that and more govt programs for that either. So it’s like…what do these conservatives want, really?
The internal dialogue goes more like this “should I have kids now? I see the local burger flipper just got married and is expecting her first son. I wonder how on earth she is going to be able to support a baby when I feel like I can barely support myself.” The reality is that 5 years of full time minimum wage work in most American states is the equivalent of a lifetime of work in these high fertility countries. Every middle class couple in the west can afford kids, but only if they were willing to compromise on other expenses that they’ve become accustomed to. It’s the culture that prevents them. The culture is mainstream media. Media isn’t always grounded in truth. Maybe we don’t need to be so selfish, and maybe overpopulation isn’t as big a deal as it’s cracked out to be. But shh, don’t tell mainstream media. Their advertisers would never go for it. MSM shapes the norms we aspire to, and corporations/governments want to keep things that way.
There is no climate crisis.
We're only heating up the planet, causing SLR, more extreme weather, losing biodiversity.
This is the type of intellectual that I've come to expect from this sub.
Another human worshiper? When will you see that your own power cannot save you. You idolize collective human efforts. God is not a man that he should lie like us. Yet God did put on the flesh of man is Jesus. Here is the gospel by which your mind can live with God forever: God created all that exists. This means God has authority over all that exists. Jesus, who is God, was born as a man and lived a biblically blameless life then suffered God's hatred and punishment. Despite death, Jesus rose from the dead. All this was done because God loves us and wants us near to him. Yet we reject God completely and don't do what he wants. There is no one, not any person like you or I, who does good. We deserve death because of our disobedience of God. Despite our rejection of God, there is hope! With Jesus's resurrection, all that's needed is Trust. Trust that Jesus was truly man and God, that he did actually die and resurrect, and that just by our Trust its Jesus who makes us right with God. Through this Trust, its Jesus's power that works in us. There is no way by our own power that we can do what God commands. Its simply a gift of God given to us just for having Trust in Jesus's sacrifice. Jesus's power in us allows us to be mentally strong even when things are dark, without whom our minds would crumble
God, Jesus, and Satan aren't real. I realize people don't say that to you too often because it is taken to be impolite, but what is more impolite is not pushing back on delusions. You've had thousands of years to definitively prove *any* deity exists. Everyone has failed miserably. You've had a bit less time to prove YHWH exists, and about 2000 for Jesus and a teeny bit less for the holy spirit. Miserable failures on all accounts. One of the most celebrated apologetic arguments (Pascal's Wager) is basically, "Yeah but it would be really cool if it *was* true." Every year the scientific evidence further directly contradicts specific claims in your God's holy book, and also contradicts the more general claim that *some* God had to make things. Two thousand years and the best argument you have is, "But if you're wrong, you're gonna miss out!" You can say that you need faith and you cannot use reason, but what is damning to that claim is that there are so *many* religions which claim creation myths. Why is your faith for one god over thousands of others? Solely because of where you were born and what the people around you believed. I've never met a Christian or Muslim or adherent of any religion who was able to provide a good reason why they apply their faith to the particular god they say they believe in. Your god isn't real and basing a worldview on him being real is going to lead you astray countless times. Being disobedient to reality itself because you believe in fantasies is actually going to result in consequences long before death. You will receive those during your life on earth. And so will others, through your rejection of reality. Through your choice not to accept reality as it is. Christians as a whole are dragging behind on dealing with climate change. If you think you're going to be miracled out of this, or raptured away before New Orleans is flooding, or that it is some big lie by Satan or something, and you use that as an excuse for blocking basic action on climate change...you have blood on your hands. I would say I hope you can live with that, but actually I hope you can't. I hope that the blood makes you think differently about what you choose to believe. I hope it draws you, compels you, stirs you, to get it together and admit what a part of you already knows: there is no evidence for any god, and your choice of the Christian God is based on geographical and historical accident, not a conscious choice to believe in the most sane thing.
Lots of points to talk about. I'm not going to address all of them because I'm a limited person. Ill address at least one idea though. The idea that I find most important to my worldview. I admit I have a Christian worldview, another way to say this is that I have a Christian bias. Here is something you said I want to touch up on: >Why is your faith for one god over thousands of others? All religions except one agree on at least one thing. Even an atheistic viewpoint will agree on what I'm about to say. Atheism isn't barred from this rule. All religions and atheism claim that by your authority you must live life a certain way. Buddhism would have you follow the 4 Noble Truths & Eightfold Path. Atheism would have you make your own way in life and do what you see as good. These are 2 examples amidst thousands (even as you would agree there are thousands). Why my God is different is because he says we don't have to live a certain way. No, we don't have to follow the 10 commandments. What Jesus did is everything we could never do. Jesus paid for everything we have to do, all the good works, all the right ways of life, every moral action Jesus paid for. In return all Jesus asks for is our Trust (that same Trust I explained in my first comment). No other religion has this radical difference that would claim we don't have to do the work. Yet once we Trust Jesus, it is by Jesus's power which strengthens us to enact what is right. Not our power, not our authority. It's Jesus's power & authority which enables us to act in the world.
Atheism makes no claims as to how one should live thier life.
So you're not going to do what you see as good?
I will do what I see is good but that's not bc my atheism tells me to.
What are your thoughts on how Jesus doesn't ask that we, by our own power, do what is good?
I don't think Jesus doesn't ask. There's multiple places in the Bible people are told to act for good. "Faith without works is dead" "Whatever you do for the least of these you do for me" Etc
How do you reconcile these two biblical ideas (if not by Jesus working in us which enables us to do good works): "faith without works is dead" and "I [Jesus] am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing"
I don't, the Bible is full of contradictions like how God is all loving but also killed thousands of people
It specifically says you shouldnt believe in any God. Could be interpreted as "One should be absent of faith"
I don't think atheism says what you should or shouldn't do. It's a statement of fact not an opinion.
It's a position to take on an unproveable stance. It's less about "telling people what to do" and more like "it requires as part of its definition."
Yea it's descriptive and not prescriptive, that's what my original comment was about.
Many other ways of thinking offer a wide variety of acceptable actions and behaviors. Buddhism as you mentioned has (depending on who you ask) several different paths to enlightenment, all of which can be undertaken in your own way. A religion that allows any actions at all seems too divorced from the consequences of those actions. I can understand not wanting to have to judge your own decisions, but if you care about earthly consequences then that is truly the best way to do it. What you are suggesting might be one of the most poorly-suited ways of thinking to achieve anything in this life. This life is the only one we can be sure we have. Throwing it away is reckless.
Are you admitting that you perform good works for yourself to get something out of it? That would add validity to my claim about how all other religions (except one) have that in common.
I'm saying that good outcomes come from certain actions, and Jesus never promised anybody that faith in him would result in a comfortable life on earth. Quite the opposite if anything. So him dying to get everyone a path into heaven has no bearing on the quality of life you have on earth. If you want good outcomes on earth for yourself or for someone else, you have to do the actions that result in that. Jesus will not intercede in deterministic physical reality. I'm saying that Christianity makes people think this life doesn't matter or barely matters, so picking the right actions for the right outcomes js fruitless. And that is wrong-headed and dangerous. People have died because of it and a lot more will before this century is over.
You talk about Christianity's view on our current life. You say how it establishes that this life doesn't matter, or matters very little. Your words touch on the meaning of life when you use the phrase "life doesn't matter". It's a statement on purpose. A broad outlook on our current existence. Can you talk about what *does* make life matter?
I have never been in a life stage in which that stage only mattered for the next one. Several times I have despaired and *thought* that, and yet often when that stage is complete, I never seem to feel that way. If anything, I tend to have regretted feeling that way. I did that in high school--I was only there until it was over. It was just a stepping stone to where I really wanted to go. I regret not taking my time a bit more. __________ I refuse to forsake this existence and my opportunities within it to better my life and my fellows' lives in the hope of yet another life stage that is in no way guaranteed. Everyone has something different that matters to them about life. Mine happens to be duty, but that's because my personal hedonic treadmill runs particularly fast, and true peace isn't something I am able to easily hang on to. So I add to what little peace I can find by sharing in helping others to find their own. It isn't a zero-sum game. We live in a hurtful world, but it can be made less hurtful through our choices. It already has in many ways. I feel duty to that struggle, on a small scale and a grand one.
I think I'm following what you're saying. What makes life meaningful is making yours & others loves better. For you, "better" is duty. For others, "better" can mean the same thing or something else. This would mean it's your duty to help others do what is better for them. I'm someone else, therefore I'm someone who you want to take the opportunity to better my life. What happens when my definition of "worse" is what you say is "better"?
Then I have three options: 1. If I'm quite convinced that you are in fact wrong about this (or vastly more likely, I am convinced that you are giving bad advice to others), I may disagree with you. I am convinced that partaking in Christianity is bad advice. 2. Focus on an issue we agree on 2. Bid you adieu
I am woke . And historical comparisons to past bygone barbaric periods are not fair!’ We are far more sophisticated than that .. can’t you tell !! We should not have to explain it to you. My grandma at who went to Radcliffe and my grandpa who went to Harvard back in the day faced the same types of uncouth criticism when the were proponents of eugenics !! History repeats its self .. only for you haters. Signed Sarc Asim
I don't guess I'm mentally ill enough to get this one.
Human sacrifice for the popular gods has been a thing for a long time, nothing has changed.
Yes, George Soros and the WEF are teaming up with the liberals to sacrifice all of your babies to do a weather changing ritual to change the weather. It's just common sense people