Abortion and morality

[The Irish Ram]

We will actually throw the earth off of its axis, and not one living thing will survive on this earth .

Don't be ridiculous.

ok.

NASA: Japan quake shortened Earth’s day, shifted axis

 

[The Irish Ram]

Soooo..we shouldn't think so highly of humans, and to prove it, we should kill babies.

Kosher, I'm not sure what you mean. Humans leave a lot to be desired, but why would we need to kill babies to prove it?

 

[koshergrl]

That's not my stance; I'm restating the stance of those who are giving us long-winded diatribes about how evil and horrible mankind is...as justification for killing babies.

 

[mlw]

Wherever Jesus was, the Kingdom accompanied Him.
What it does NOT mean is that it resides in everyone. If you're right, then Christ wouldn't have said, "thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Cloud cuckoo land".

It says so, explicitly, in the bible. Jesus taught that "[t]he kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20-1). Of course, a 'kingdom within' is an effective antitoxin for the notion of an external materialistic paradise, be it a theocratic rule, a People's Republic, or a Third Reich. The 'kingdom within' means that the Christ resides within us, because He is the personification of the kingdom. Individuation is to realize Christ within. This is true Pauline Christianity.

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is
in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they
say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.
Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and
you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living
Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty
and it is you who are that poverty." (Thomas, 3).

Jesus is the personification of the Kingdom, who resides within. St Paul says: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." (Gal 2).

It is evident that Jesus is not out to establish the cloud cuckoo land on earth. He says, "My Kingdom is not of this world; if my Kingdom were of this world, my servants would be fighting that I would not have been delivered up to the Judeans, but now my Kingdom is not from here." (John 18:36).

So we must give up the idea of materialistic earthly perfection. What do you think it means when Paul says that he has been crucified with Christ? Do you really think it refers to "righteousness"? To lift up one's cross, eventually to be crucified upon it, means to open-eyedly face the darkness of existence. All nature is suffering. The Buddha taught that life is suffering and impermanence. In Christendom, we can put up with suffering because the kingdom is within us and among us. If we refuse to heed the Christian message of Christ within, then we become obsessed with mitigating suffering and establishing the materialistic cloud cuckoo land on earth.

Mats Winther

 

[ABikerSailor]

Quick question...................whose life is more important................the life of the woman who is 32 and has made friendships and connections, or the life of the child that has yet to be born?

A woman of Indian origin has died after doctors in Ireland refused to perform an abortion, telling her that “this is a Catholic country”, sparking widespread outrage and renewed calls for immediate reforms to the Irish law to allow termination if the life of the mother is at risk.

Savita Halappanavar (31), who was a dentist, was 17 weeks pregnant when she died from septicaemia, according to an autopsy carried out two days after her death on Oct 28. Her family said she asked several times for her termination as she had severe back pain and was miscarrying but doctors at University Hospital Galway refused on the grounds that abortion was illegal in Ireland.

Her husband Praveen Halappanavar said he was certain that his wife would have still been alive if the termination had been allowed.

It was her first pregnancy, he said, and she was “on top of the world” before she started suffering back pain. When the pain persisted, she asked her consultant if she could be “induced” but was told “no”.

“They said unfortunately she can’t because it’s a Catholic country. Savita said to her [consultant] she is not Catholic, she is Hindu, and why impose the law on her. But she said, ‘I’m sorry, unfortunately it’s a Catholic country,’ and it’s the law that they can’t abort when the foetus is [alive],” he said.

The hospital has launched an internal investigation in addition to a separate inquiry ordered by Ireland’s Health Service Executive.

Mr. Halappanavar recalled that Savita “was so happy and everything was going well” until she was admitted to hospital with back pain.

“On the Saturday [Oct 20] night everything changed. She started experiencing back pain so we called the hospital, the university hospital... I got a call at about half [past] twelve on the Wednesday night that Savita’s heart rate had really gone up and that they had moved her to ICU. “Things just kept on getting worse and on Friday they told me that she was critically ill.” Savita died on Sunday.

Ireland Prime Minister Enda Kenny did not rule out an independent inquiry as pro-choice groups demanded immediate changes to the law.

“It would be very appropriate that we don’t rule anything out here, but there are two reports and investigations going on at the moment,” Mr. Kenny said.

Ireland’s strict anti-abortion law means that women routinely go abroad for abortion. Earlier this year, the government set up an expert group to make recommendations in response to a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights judgment that Ireland had failed to implement existing rights to lawful abortion where a mother’s life was at risk.

Left-wing MPs Clare Daly and Joan Collins, who had introduced a bill in Parliament earlier this year to allow an abortion in specific life-threatening circumstances, said that had their proposals been accepted, Savita would have been alive.

“A woman has died because Galway University Hospital refused to perform an abortion needed to prevent serious risk to her life.

“This is a situation we were told would never arise. An unviable foetus — the woman was having a miscarriage — was given priority over the woman’s life, who unfortunately and predictably developed septicaemia and died,” Ms Daly said.

A woman of Indian origin has died after doctors in Ireland refused to perform an abortion, telling her that “this is a Catholic country”, sparking widespread outrage and renewed calls for immediate reforms to the Irish law to allow termination if the life of the mother is at risk.

The Hindu : News / International : Indian woman dies after being refused abortion

So..................do we allow abortion in the case of saving the life of the mother? Personally, I'd say abort the child, because it's going to be stillborn anyway.

Save the life of the mother. She has more to live for.

 

[koshergrl]

Again. The woman in this case died of septicemia, not "lack of abortion". This took place in a place where abortion is LEGAL if it is needed for the health and safety of the mother INCLUDING mental health.

So tell me where it says in there that the woman died BECAUSE she didn't get an abortion? I'm pretty sure it says she died of blood poisoning. My guess (again) is that she was sick when she came in and they refused to operate on her until they had the blood poisoning under control. Then she died. You don't do surgery on ppl with raging septicemia.

 

[Glensather]

 

[ABikerSailor]

Again. The woman in this case died of septicemia, not "lack of abortion". This took place in a place where abortion is LEGAL if it is needed for the health and safety of the mother INCLUDING mental health.

So tell me where it says in there that the woman died BECAUSE she didn't get an abortion? I'm pretty sure it says she died of blood poisoning. My guess (again) is that she was sick when she came in and they refused to operate on her until they had the blood poisoning under control. Then she died. You don't do surgery on ppl with raging septicemia.

You apparently didn't read the link that I included.

She died because abortion is illegal if the fetus has a heartbeat.

She was told that the fetus was going to miscarry.

They forced her to wait until it did.

BECAUSE of being forced to wait, she caught an infection.

She died because of the infection, that was caused by miscarriage of the child. She could have lived if she could have had an abortion.

 

[koshergrl]

You're a doctor?

So tell me...do doctors regularly operate on people who have high fevers and raging infections?

Nope.

She didn't die from lack of abortion. The article does not say that. The article says she died from blood poisoning. It doesn't even say from what. The law states that abortions can be performed in Ireland to save the life of the mother.

So obviously, they didn't think the baby was what was killing her.

My guess is she came in very ill, and crashed. You DON'T perform abortions on women who are crashing. Do you know what septicemia is? You can't even get a dentist to pull a tooth if you have an infection...even when the tooth you want pulled is CAUSING the infection. And when people have septicemia, doctors do NOT perform surgery or any other procedures on them UNTIL they have been treated for the infection.

The myth of the "killer fetus" is getting old.

 

[Unkotare]

We will actually throw the earth off of its axis, and not one living thing will survive on this earth .

Don't be ridiculous.

ok.

NASA: Japan quake shortened Earth’s day, shifted axis

You're still being ridiculous.

 

[The Irish Ram]

Your right. NASA and I are wrong.

 

[Unkotare]

Your[sic] right. NASA and I are wrong.

NASA was not referring to your silly notions. NASA talking about an earthquake in one specific location that released energy more than 4,000 times stronger than the strongest nuclear bomb ever tested all at once. Even at that, the dramatic "thrown off its axis" resulted in a dramatic "shortened the day" by about 1.8 microseconds.

 

[The Irish Ram]

Wherever Jesus was, the Kingdom accompanied Him.
What it does NOT mean is that it resides in everyone. If you're right, then Christ wouldn't have said, "thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Cloud cuckoo land".

It says so, explicitly, in the bible. Jesus taught that "[t]he kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20-1). Of course, a 'kingdom within' is an effective antitoxin for the notion of an external materialistic paradise, be it a theocratic rule, a People's Republic, or a Third Reich. The 'kingdom within' means that the Christ resides within us, because He is the personification of the kingdom. Individuation is to realize Christ within. This is true Pauline Christianity.

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is
in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they
say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.
Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and
you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living
Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty
and it is you who are that poverty." (Thomas, 3).

Jesus is the personification of the Kingdom, who resides within. St Paul says: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." (Gal 2).

It is evident that Jesus is not out to establish the cloud cuckoo land on earth. He says, "My Kingdom is not of this world; if my Kingdom were of this world, my servants would be fighting that I would not have been delivered up to the Judeans, but now my Kingdom is not from here." (John 18:36).

So we must give up the idea of materialistic earthly perfection. What do you think it means when Paul says that he has been crucified with Christ? Do you really think it refers to "righteousness"? To lift up one's cross, eventually to be crucified upon it, means to open-eyedly face the darkness of existence. All nature is suffering. The Buddha taught that life is suffering and impermanence. In Christendom, we can put up with suffering because the kingdom is within us and among us. If we refuse to heed the Christian message of Christ within, then we become obsessed with mitigating suffering and establishing the materialistic cloud cuckoo land on earth.

Mats Winther

Then you have to explain what Christ meant by you must be born again to enter the Kingdom. Why execute a process when you're already hooked up?

What Kingdom was within the priests, for Christ to remark that they have their father, Satan, within? Are we born with two Kingdoms each or is it a roll of the dice which one we are born with?

To where did Christ ascend after instructing His disciples to wait for the power of the Lord to come upon them? Cleveland? Where did Christ go when He left the upper room? He said He was going to His Father in Heaven. And would send the third part of the Trinity to empower them to go boldly and proclaim the gospel. Was He just confused?

And why did He bother to show up here at all if He was already within? What about those that were born and died before Jesus lived and died?
Why did the disciples have to wait if the power of the Lord was already within them all? Can the Jesus within, pack up and move without? Where did Judas' within go?

Act 1: 8 -- ....the Holy Ghost [holy spirit] is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

An action your religion would find unnecessary. According to you, the power of the Lord was already within, and also within the people they were suppose to enlighten!
I fear you have the role of Christ and the role of the Holy Spirit confused.

Why bother with this?

John 20: 22 -- And when Jesus had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost

If you are right, this was unnecessary.

And, If you are right then I should be able to go raise the dead, speak in foreign languages, remove someone else's sin, and I have no Father in Cloud land.

So where is my Father? And my brother Christ? Can you supply an address?

What do I do with all of the verses in the Bible with Jesus talking about His Father in Heaven? Is Heaven code for within? Why did Christ say He would return? From where? and why? He's already within. Return would be redundant in your religion.

Paul took up where Christ left off. His within was Satan and Paul persecuted Christ's followers UNTIL Christ confronted him.

Christ said that good and evil cannot dwell in the same house. How is it that we commit atrocities, with Christ embedded within? If Christ is correct, Satan would have no choice but to leave us alone, to flee.

When Christ was on trial He said the Kingdom of God was within.< the cornerstone of your premise. He was definitely not saying that His accusers were the Kingdom, He said the Kingdom is in the midst of them. obviously not within them. Christ made it clear that Satan was within them.

Jesus said His Kingdom is not of this earth. We are of this earth. Yet in your version, you insist that His kingdom is here. And He lied about Heaven.

What you have done is cherry picked a few Bible verses and created your very own religion by taking them out of context, or just plain misunderstanding of them. What you are indwelled with does not sound like Jesus. If it did, your beliefs would be perfectly in line with the Bible, not contrary to it.

That a person needs to be reborn to have the Kingdom within, sort of dispels the theory that it was there all along.

Do you have a Jesus book of your own? Because if you are right, the Bible is garbage and should be burned.

 

[mlw]

Then you have to explain what Christ meant by you must be born again to enter the Kingdom. Why execute a process when you're already hooked up?

Now you reason like Nicodemus who could only think concretely and thought that one needs to be reborn in the physical way. But it is obvious that Jesus refers to a spiritual awakening that occurs in this life. Jesus answered, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows wherever it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3).

Jesus said His Kingdom is not of this earth. We are of this earth. Yet in your version, you insist that His kingdom is here. And He lied about Heaven.
What you have done is cherry picked a few Bible verses and created your very own religion by taking them out of context, or just plain misunderstanding of them. What you are indwelled with does not sound like Jesus. If it did, your beliefs would be perfectly in line with the Bible, not contrary to it.
That a person needs to be reborn to have the Kingdom within, sort of dispels the theory that it was there all along.
Do you have a Jesus book of your own? Because if you are right, the Bible is garbage and should be burned.

In fact, I have insisted that the Kingdom is not of this earth. This is exactly what I have emphasized. We must abandon the ambition to create the earthly materialistic welfare paradise, nor must we place it in the Beyond. It is neither here nor there, because it is a spiritual presence. The notion that the Kingdom is within us and in our midst is a spiritual notion. It means that the individual can live with God in the spirit, as Adam and Eve lived with God in the Garden. On the surface, the individual is an ordinary person leading life on this evil earth. But, in the spirit, he/she walks with God. Jesus insists that the Kingdom of Heaven is neither a material kingdom nor a kingdom in the Beyond. It is a living spiritual reality, here and now.

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is
in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they
say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.
Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and
you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living
Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty
and it is you who are that poverty" (Thomas 3).

M. Winther

 

[Cecilie1200]

Earlier in history the baby acquired status as a human being only at the moment of birth. As a fetus it hadn't yet taken its first breath, which was regarded as the moment when it became inspired with the life spirit. In fact, during epochs in history, the child had to undergo a ritual, similar to baptism, before it acquired full status as a human being. Before this, the parents could get rid of the child. This was, of course, due to factors of poverty. Historically, people had recourse to a symbolic and religious worldview. The "rule" was that human life begins when the child is born. This is the moment when it takes its first breath and starts life as a separate organism. We still celebrate this as our birthday, when our life began. We don't view it as beginning a few months before. Astrologers have always regarded this as the moment when life begins. Although we have lost this "naive" worldview, I don't think it's possible to live without a symbolic outlook. We must still have recourse to symbolic rules to live by. The moral burden gets too big, otherwise. We cannot expect scientific definitions to resolve all moral problems.

I think we should be less sentimental about abortion. Up to a few months, abortion should be legal. It is true that it is cruel, but we cannot expect to remove all the dark aspects from life. Most importantly, human life isn't holy. There is a tendency of putting the human being on a pedestal, as if he were a divine being. But homo sapiens is the most destructive and evil creature that has ever existed on this earth. There is no grounds for worshipping human life. There is a conflict between qualitatively valuable life (intellectual life, spiritual life, artistic life) versus vegetative life, i.e., the life of the child; motherhood and the rearing of children, etc. Among simple people in the Third World there is really no alternative to a vegetative life, so they tend to give birth to many children. But in the Western population there are people who have greater horizons than a mere instinctual and unconscious life, which implies a qualitatively valuable life, capable of enhancing the conscious dimensions. The meaning of human life isn't simply to propagate the species. For instance, if a woman wants to pursue a career as a musician, it might be necessary to do an abortion. Thus, something spiritually valuable can take root. Life isn't only about quantity. Quality is equally important. So this is a conflict which we have to live with. We have to put up with the painful and conflicting sides of life, and not simply remove that which is morally difficult, as in the Islamic countries. Arguably, a single meaningful human life is worth hundreds of unconscious and mechanical lives (in a metaphorical sense).

A meaningful human life is a life that can reach its potential. Think of the many women in history who had to sacrifice their individual talent for the sake of motherhood and kitchen duties. An immense number of philosophers, musicians, artists, poets, scientists, and spiritual personalities, were never given a chance. It is very painful not to be able to develop one's personality, and instead be confined within a suffocating space. Many people, not only women, have been driven insane by the stifling morality of society. It has created immense suffering in human history. When I speak of "meaningful life" I don't mean to say that all other human life is worthless. I mean that people who have an impetus in themselves, to manifest their inner nature, will experience life as meaningless if they are confined within too narrow constraints. Such people have an urge to live a meaningful life, whereas the majority just take a seat on the train, visit all the stations in life, and then die. Of course, their lives are probably meaningful in some religious sense, but their lives aren't meaningful in the personal sense of the creative individual. There are different variants of meaning.

It is not an easy decission to terminate the life of fetuses, but nor is it self-evident to always let them live. We must accept that life is wrought with difficult moral problems. Don't swallow the fundamentalist argument, that abortion is always wrong. We are unceasingly taking the lives of living beings. A pig, for instance, is a vastly more intelligent creature than a fetus, and it has a full spectrum of feelings. We mustn't elevate human beings to divine creatures that under all circumstances must be kept alive, whereas other living creatures can be killed as if they had no value at all. Today, we overvalue vegetative and unconscious life and underestimate spiritual and individual life. We ought to acknowledge the moral conflict involved between these two forms of life. Sometimes one must leave room to the growth of the individual at the price of vegetative and unconscious life. The notion that all human life is always divine and must be protected at all costs is what underlies the expansive population of the Third World and their immigration to the Western world. In Sweden, the majority of them lead passive lives. Most Western people seem to think this is ideal. The more humans there exist on earth the better it is, whether or not they are merely vegetating. But this policy is catastrophic. Population growth devastates the earth.

The lack of appraisal of the principle of individuation is dismaying. The advanced conscious life of the individual is truly valuable life. It is the only thing which is divine, whereas unconscious and mechanic human life is not only meaningless, it is destructive to life on earth since it uses up so much resources and gives rise to criminality. The individual is like a tree that has a strong urge to blossom out. If this force is stymied, it generates an enormous anxiety and suffering in the individual. Life must be lived, and there are always costs involved, such as the sacrifice of a fetus, or the sacrifice of a loving relationship. Life always involves sacrifice. (That's why all higher civilizations in the Bronze Age made an abominable ritual of this truth and instituted the human sacrifice). We don't need to spare every embryo, nor do we need to keep every Third World child alive. Let's stop worshipping human life, as such. In the modern age the human being is elevated to divine proportions. This is a severe misunderstanding of the Christian message. To follow the path of Christ means to achieve emancipation from unconscious and vegetative life and to realize one's inner potential.

Lao-tzu says: "Life is spirit" (Tao Te Ching, 6). The life of the spirit mustn't be confined within a box where it is suffocating. This is what happens when the vulgar notion of life in the flesh is elevated as the highest principle. Let's cease the materialistic worship of human proliferation. It is time to understand that life is spirit. The maximization of human lives on this planet has no value at all, it only destroys the planet. It asphyxiates the life in the spirit, which is the only real life.

Mats Winther

Before I dignify the rest of your speech with a comment, let me ask you a question regarding your initial premise. How many OTHER relics of primitive scientific and medical knowledge do you adhere to in spite of modern-day advances in our understanding of how things actually work? You seem to think we should subscribe to the belief that a baby is not a human being until the moment of birth because ancient people believed that, so do you also . . . I don't know, believe that we should perpetuate the notion that the Earth is flat, because people used to believe THAT before they learned better? How about the primitive medical belief that health was due to the four "humors" of phlegm, blood, black bile, and yellow bile? Should we still bleed people with leeches for every ailment?

If you find these other suggestions ludicrous, as I would hope you do, please tell me why the medical beliefs of uneducated barbarians in the ancient past should have any bearing on medical science regarding abortion today.

 

[AmyNation]

Again. The woman in this case died of septicemia, not "lack of abortion". This took place in a place where abortion is LEGAL if it is needed for the health and safety of the mother INCLUDING mental health.

So tell me where it says in there that the woman died BECAUSE she didn't get an abortion? I'm pretty sure it says she died of blood poisoning. My guess (again) is that she was sick when she came in and they refused to operate on her until they had the blood poisoning under control. Then she died. You don't do surgery on ppl with raging septicemia.

Why do you keep saying this when you have already been proven wrong.

 

[koshergrl]

Nobody proved me wrong, abortion zealot.

 

[AmyNation]

Nobody proved me wrong, abortion zealot.

Here, let me prove you wrong, again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/21/opinion/an-antiquated-abortion-law-in-ireland.html?_r=0

" in 1992, a suicidal 14-year-old rape victim (publicly identified only as “X”) was forbidden by the attorney general in Ireland to travel to Britain for an abortion, an order her parents appealed. As a result, the Irish Supreme Court ruled to permit abortion whenever a woman’s life was at risk. However, the ruling has since been caught up in a legal quagmire and has yet to be decisively legislated. In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Ireland must clarify the terms under which abortion is legal, something the Irish government repeatedly postponed."

I'm not even sure why you keep asserting that Irish law clearly allows for abortion for the life of the mother, when every article I've read posted on the matter shows that the law is anything but clear.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Abortion and morality

is an oxymoron.
If God took the time to place the individual hairs on the heads of those aborted children, I'll bet He meant for them to have a life. When He judges the Nations, we'll be paying for this mistake.
Possibly, the number of Americans killed during the tribulation period may equal the number of His children we have killed, I don't know, but I doubt he overlooks it.

Those who view abortion as an inhumane act of cruelty must bear in mind that we cannot expect to remove all the dark aspects from life.

Those who make remarks like this must bear in mind that the mere fact that evil cannot be eradicated does not make it moral to stop fighting it.

We must stop pretending that life could be perfect, and void of moral difficulties.

We must stop pretending that a lack of perfection makes it acceptable to stop aspiring to it.

The conclusion is that we cannot avoid dirtying ourselves.

I get dirty every day of my life. It doesn't mean I stop showering, and it definitely doesn't mean I go out and roll in the mud.

We must try to remain as morally untarnished as possible, but we mustn't believe that it is possible, except for Jesus.

Where did Jesus ever say, "You can't be perfect, so just give up trying"?

If we think that we are perfectly good, we are also very prone to castigate others as deviants, just as religious zealots do.

Straw man. Striving to be good does not equal thinking we are "perfectly good". And the idea that the "hypocrisy" of not meeting higher standards is worse than never having higher standards is utterly ludicrous.

It is nothing but zealotry to believe that there are ways of remaining a perfectly clean and moral upstanding citizen.

It is nothing but sophistry to dismiss the struggle for moral improvement as "believing there are ways to remain perfectly clean and moral". That all-or-nothing crap is nothing but rationalizing immorality. If you want to be a bad person and give into your baser instincts, I can't stop you. But don't expect me to applaud and congratulate for how "smart" you are to do it.

It makes people very judgmental towards others.

You'll have to excuse me if I resist your attempt to impose your personal "moral" standard - if it can even be called that - of "only judgementalism is wrong. As long as you're not judgemental, do whatever you want" on me. I would rather be judgemental than a false prophet, thank you so very much.

I discuss the acceptance of dark nature in my article Symbolic Poverty, here.

Remind me to boycott this site. I have enough evil in my life without looking for it.

 

[Cecilie1200]

'Earth' cannot be devastated, because devastation is merely a human illusion. The planet has been transformed countless times by huge occurrences. We would call it devastated. The earth calls it nothing as the earth is not something that uses thought, words or concepts.

Over population is only bad because it is undesirable to humans, unless it isn't. I don't want it and don't think it expresses the highest and best attributes of 'humaness', but that is my view. Humans determine what has value, what is precious, what has rights, etc. Reality is what we choose to acknowledge.

That it a horrible rationalization, void of the moral perspective. Not to acknowledge the moral responsibility that human beings have for the earth and its species is utter relativism and complacency.

M. Winther

That "whooshing" noise is the point going over your head.

I'm laughing, though, at the idea of Mr. "Rationalizing away moral responsibility for unborn children" actually getting his panties in an outraged ruffle over a lack of "moral responsibility" for animals and a planet that we couldn't destroy, even if we wanted to.