What if the man was raped?

Interesting question... the utilitarian answer is that the child should be aborted because the woman should be in prison and therefore unable to care for it. I don't know what I would say... I think you'd have to actually be the man in that situation to make that call.

This post was edited by Scaly on Oct 3 2014 11:18am

Point noted.

I should have made it clear that I was reffering to female rape. Once again it has to be a case by case basis, but anything extreme (including your scenario) I can say that abortion is one of the options to go about it.

I think of it like a crutch when man was less civilized he needed these rules to live by. But as people have adapted they've held onto the crutch because it makes them feel safe, right, or superior.
kind of like 10 year old's with night lights they know there's nothing in their dark room, they just like it when their mom turns it on.

Religion is man's salvation from nihilism and existential despair.

Atheists are evolutionary failures; no one, on the outside looking in, could call the pursuit of self-extinction progress.

So, simply by possession of consciousness, one becomes a moral agent? It seems to me the only consciousness really apparent at that early stage of gestation is a response to pain. Does the ability to recoil from attempts at abortion make one moral? Or do you mean the response to stimuli imposes a moral burden upon others?

I think he meant to say that the being cannot be a moral end without consciousness.

Moral agency refers to the ability for a being to behave morally.

While I agree that consciousness is required for value judgments to be meaningful, this becomes a slippery slope because the baby in question will eventually develop consciousness if it is allowed to live. What's the difference between killing it and preventing it from ever being conscious and killing an adult in deep, unconscious sleep and preventing him/her from being conscious ever again?

This post was edited by Voyaging on Oct 3 2014 11:53am

As for the exact definition of consciousness and when it actually developes, that's up to debate and I'm not a medical professional. What I'm saying is that prior to development of consciousness the embryo, fetus, whatever stage it is at, is simply an object and as such cannot be wronged.



We talked about this the first time I brought this up with you and it was answered. An adult who is asleep has not exactly lost their consciousness in my opinion. It may be suppressed, or not expressed, but we are capable of remembering experience when we sleep which indicates our consciousness is not gone. However we can not have memories from before we developed consciousness. There is no "me" before my consciousness developed at all.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Oct 3 2014 03:12pm

It's technically still a living object though right, why shun and kill the innocent that have no choice? It doesn't need to develop a conscious for it to be considered innocent. Most definitely doesn't need to develop anything you've said to not be granted life...

What's the point of stopping the process of life?

This post was edited by HighschoolTurd on Oct 3 2014 03:16pm

Whether something is alive or not is irrelevant. We give no credence to bacteria and they are definitely alive and innocent.