Why I Now Think Abortion Should be Illegal

To start out there is a lot of rubble that should be cleared first. First, probably very few if no people will ever read this; although I don’t know why anyone should have heard of this tiny blogpost from nowhere and no one. Second, I have been on the fence a long time about this issue as I have heard no argument from any side that had appeared completely reasonable to me. In fact, I simply did what many humans fail to do nowadays, and that is think for oneself. Now, I must abash myself here because I have been wrestling with this issue for many years and even when I came upon the simple solution a few days have passed since I have realized just why it matters.

Into the meat of the matter. The reason I now believe abortion should be criminal is so simple, I almost wonder why I or no one else has thought of it before. First, let me ask you, are you atheist? Second, do you think abortion should be legal? Mill that over for a moment to before I tell you just why those things are incongruent.

If you answeed yes to both questions, then the obvious answer should appear—on the atheist conception of the universe and life, abortion fairs the worst. How so you ask? On the Christian prrspective these unborn children go to heaven or purgatory or limbo at worst. They lose their chance on earth, but live on in the next world. And this fairs exceptionally well if the Christian believes they would go straight to heaven. But, either way they will not suffer torment or torture because although they might not have been blessed by baptism, they have not sinned. In Buddhist culture, they will simply transmigrate once more into another body. Look, I don’t know what cosmic misfortune befalls all of the parties, but anyways it is safe to say they would be somewhere.

Now, let’s look at it from an atheist perspective. The human being that would have been brought into the earth never makes it— 100% of one possible person’s entire existence is wiped out. In fact, on the atheist conception the worst outcome befalls the aborted, the one chance they had to live anywhere at anytime is completely obliterated by destroying this precious embryo.

Look, I’m not saying that this is an easy realization, nor am I saying it is even absolute. However, when the cards are put on the table it seems impossible at this point to ever deny a fetus the right to live, and especially when considering all things from an atheist standpoint.

Why do we have Consciousness?

This will be my last post on this cite, as this blog is moving to http://archgeof.weebly.com/ where I will give semiweekly posts. The question I will end on is what is the purpose of being aware of the world around us and in our own mind? If you ask an evolutionary theorist, they will tell you it enhances our survival chances. If you ask a Christian thinker, they will tell you it is so you can be a witness to God's wonderful plan. If you ask a Buddhist, they will tell you not to fret, but rather to try to free yourself from such distractions. The answer I would like to give is similar to the Buddhist, it is not important, what matters is how we use are experience to improve our world and the world(s) around us. But, this topic is not about how to use it properly, but what is it for.

The universe is made of energy and that clumps into matter, so we are aggregates of matter and energy located in space and time. That is what we are, but what are we doing experiencing and thinking. There must have been that first being who said, "Hey I have a thought." Then that creature must have wondered what was going on. We began using this thought for whatever purpose it sought fit. Apparently most used it for a survival advantage, the ones who didn't might have been selected out. Then man began wondering, "How should I treat others who think," and ethics was born. Some used this to manipulate others, others used it to work with others, and still others used it to search deeper into reality for answers. The first ones we called evil, the second good, and the last sages/mad.

I think the answer that comes to what is the purpose of having conscious thought is that it is to be able to determine your motivation for acting and thus giving yourself purpose. In other words, the purpose of awareness is to create purpose. As thought becomes more advanced, we will become more adept at harnessing its powers and reaping its rewards. We should be careful and take the Bodhisattva pledge to not forget the welfare of even one being, so that no rewards come at the expense of another. In other words consciousness arose somehow, it drives purpose and it is a power we possess. Even though it is interesting how it arose, this satisfies a mere curiosity, it is what we do with it that matters in the end.

Fallacies and Validity

This post is based on a Debate.org challenge. The question is can a statement based on an informal fallacy be true? The answer I give is it matters how you look at it. For instance, if Jim says what is going on in Ferguson county is appalling--the cops have been given a raw deal--you could say, "I know Jim to be a racist and therefore does not know what he is talking about." This is an ad-hominen attack. There are two ways to look at this--his racism is important in this context, since it is about race, or it is not since it is not about Jim. The first way suggests an informal fallacy can be valid since Jim being a racist might color his worldview. On the other hand, if one says this is not valid, they are saying Jim's being a racist does not matter and you should only listen to his argument. Oddly, the notion of informal fallacies, as opposed to formal ones, suggest such an argument is not valid, but this just doesn't feel right. Of course Jim's racism is important in this situation. My argument is this, Jim's racism does not lead to a valid argument, but can be an important factor nonetheless. It should be weighed as evidence, but cannot be used alone for determining correctness. Extrapolating this we get, no informal fallacy can be used, on its own, to determine the correctness of an argument and in a vacuum of other information cannot be valid. Just because Jim is a racist at other times does not mean he will be this time, but it offers evidence that he might.

On Heaven and Hell

I was watching a debate between Glen Veltum and Emery Wang called "Straight to Hell with Glen Veltum" (with Wang as the host) that discussed the notion God would send people to Hell eternally and how that place should not exist if God is all good. Wang reasons (in my own words) Hell is a place to punish sin, so how can someone suffer eternally in Hell when his sin is finite? Another way of putting it is--Why would God permanently etch sin into the universe (and in fact be a reciprocal cause of it) if he is perfectly loving? To start with Veltum labeled himself as sympathetic to Calvinist thought that, as he describes, God creates wicked people only to be contrasted with the good. There are some problems I see with this at first glance, such as the notion God uses people for the good of others and that he creates people only for them to inevitably suffer. But let's put that aside for this post. Instead let's attempt to address this problem of Hell by reciting some solutions that philosophers have argued for over the years. One is suggested by Irenaeus (that should be the correct spelling) that Hell is not eternal, instead it is a part of a growing process to one day meet and become one with God. Another, suggested I think by C.S. Lewis, is that one only loses what they never had in the first place--a relationship with God. In this manner one only goes to the afterlife without, as Wang put it, a common relationship with God. One would, in this picture, go to a place of cold, quiet despair. As I've already stated the main problem with the fire and brimstone Hell, what supports it is this is the picture of Hell described in the Bible. Ireneaus offers a partial solution, one that is abound in a partial universe, that we are a work in progress with the ultimate goal being God. It does not explicitly (though it does implicitly) state that it is not possible for the fire and brimstone Hell, but I will have to appeal to authority because I do not know if this interpretation of the Bible is accurate. This is my favorite one (maybe because I'm Buddhist) because everybody eventually reaches God and becomes whole and nobody needs to suffer eternally (which coincides with an all loving God). The idea C.S. Lewis puts forth does not seem to be the correct interpretation of the Bible, as Veltum argues, because it is more wishful thinking than anything else. We want to believe while we are in Heaven the damned don't suffer 'too' much (after all they did earn it!), but it does not seem to coincide with the Biblically described Hell. The best solution, which actually addresses Wang's concern that the damned be annihilated, is ingeniously constructed by Dante. His notion of Hell is of eternal suffering, that is until the Final Judgment, when God (through a certain action) destroys Hell and every soul living in it. This seems to be the best interpretation in consideration of Veltum and Wang because it coincides with Biblical literature and it evokes a merciful God. With Dante's interpretation we can see God can possibly be all loving because the suffering in Hell has an end. Although, when he came in the flesh he told people to turn the other cheek (I guess cause his Father would gun them down in the afterlife). If I were to give my own opinion on the matter, I'd say because God is all loving his construction of the Biblical Hell is contradictory. I would hope this is a problem Christians toil with because as Veltum put at one point in the interview (again in my own words) that those in Heaven should not (and indeed possibly may not be able to) think about those in Hell. I cannot accept that a truly compassionate person would be able to 'forget' about others so easily. But I think to talk about this it would be necessary to lay out two types of forgetting--forgetting others in your mind and forgetting others who just don't happen to be there. I would imagine a mother losing her son would sometimes in Heaven lament and wonder where her son could be, but then at another moment laugh with the laughter of the angels.

P.S. If you ever get the chance, find out how Dante destroys Hell, it is truly the work of a great artist.

Best System of Government

What is the purpose of government and what would be the best form for it to function?

Government is made to improve the lives of the governed and to harness their energy collectively as one being. Thus the state's purpose is twofold, first to improve the lives of the people that comprise it and second to preserve its existence into the future. As men are animals at heart, society has deemed it necessary to use force in some circumstances to preserve order. This must be balanced with the inalienable rights that cannot, and should not be taken by force. But, as the purpose of the state is twofold, some people lose rights they should not lose, they become less than people. The ideal state, on the contrary, would leave no such people behind, as is for instance obligated by our constitution through minority rights. Essentially the best way for a society to function is to balance the necessity of the state's existence with the necessity of the individual's existence. A government accomplishes this goal through the values and ideals of its people and to a great degree the structure from which it is constructed. The ideals of Democracy are to let people decide who will run the country and give input into how it will be run. Values are how these ideals come about, but also the structure shapes these ideals. For instance, in a conversation with my father, it became apparent that a Dictatorship cannot promote the same values a Democracy does. The reason for this is a dictator must be highly ambitious to become dictator (much more than one should argue for president) and also must fight others who would like that power on unpeaceful terms. In that way the structure of government allows either for a peaceful or violent overthrow of a government. For a Dictatorship power must come at the expense of life, whereas in a Democracy power is shifted on a consistent, peaceful basis. There may be other forms of government better than Democracy, nonetheless I will argue for some fixes that may improve our current system to be better than it is--that is I'll use that structure as a basis and give suggestions to improve it. A Democracy's best form comes about when everybody gets an equal say in what this country does, including the people who run it (they should weigh other's opinions just as highly as their own). Ideally a Democracy would have a council of people to head the state. People to decree, administer, and enforce laws and regulations. They would have to be accountable to values and morality in some manner or another. Ideally they would be unpaid except by the cost of living. One thing a Democracy could do is not hold regular elections, but rather hold state, local, and federal elections only when people have decided they want to change who is in charge (maybe with some sort of minimum and maximum term limit)--in other words lawmen would be appointed for indefinite terms with some minimum time to serve only to be revoked by a majority of voters or at the end of their allotted term, who would then vote on candidates other than the current serving or vacated seat. The biggest change would be to change the two party system to one where candidates run on the issues they care about and their character that they will get those things done. This is already what is supposed to happen, but you know all too well politicians that put party politics ahead of our nation. It would be wiser to replace the two party system with a multiparty system instead of removing parties completely; but that would require eliminating a winner take all system and for the constituency to heed politics and become informed with reasoned opinions and reasoned reasons. If one believes democracy is the best system of government, then they must believe the animal, both above and below, work better when each smaller animal gets an equal voice on the workings of the larger animal as a whole.

On Great Philosophers

It seems throughout history their were a few minds that changed its course, we can think of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant. How does it come that they rise so far above "the common rabble?" What makes them so great? The biggest thing that they seem to have in common is that they were not afraid to ask tough questions and they didn't just stop at someone else's answer. Two common things seemed to drive these philosophers (especially the first two) and those two things are truth and morality. Some, like Descartes were more seekers of truth and others like Kant were more seekers of morality, but every one of those philosophers studied both. So what is truth and what is morality and how are they related? Truth is the idea that the ideas we have about the world 'in our head' match up with the ideas 'in the world.' Morality seems to be the idea that we act so as to increase some sort of good thing and decrease some sort of bad thing. But why are these concepts so important to philosophers? It seems that wanting to increase good things and decrease bad things is so natural it needs not an argument but just an understanding of language. Morality defines what those good and bad things are and truth sets out ways in which one knows the results of ones actions. If one knows the truth and has a good system of morality, all they have to do is implement it and the world will be better. Thus we come to the final thing that separates the greatest from "the common rabble" and that is will, the will to implement good intentions to turn them into reality. But, why do I put the common rabble in scare quotes, it is because anyone, if given the opportunity can rise above the common rabble, yet they are the common rabble--the greatest philosophers do not overcome the world, they overcome themselves.

Homosexual Marriage

There is a heated debate that rages between conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats--they cannot agree on whether gay marriage should be allowed under the law or not. But, the reason it cannot come to any resolution is both sides believe they are right without a deeper explanation. Now I do not want to fan the flames, but rather attempt to cool them--I'll define the debate as follows, homosexuals believe it is their right to marry other homosexuals at the same level as heterosexuals due to the 14th Amendment's protection of equal rights and on the other side is the belief in the inherent wrongness of homosexuality and that inherent wrongness corrupts the institution set forth generally citing God. The question should be redefined to ask not whether or not homosexuals should get married, but rather what marriage is and if a homosexual couple fits such a picture. Unfortunately, I do not believe marriage was defined to accommodate this purpose to begin with and so the arguments are left to fill a void unfilled. So what is marriage? It is a familial institution, used to endorse socially the viability and stability of a family that rears healthy and well adjusted children who turn to adults only to continue the institution. With this definition in mind we have to consider under what conditions a child can grow to be strong, independent, and happy. They need nurturing and structure, they need love and support, encouragement and accountability, visions and values. One light to look at the institution is how it is crumbling to some degree, divorce rates are high and unwed pregnancies are high as well. People are marrying with no plan for a family and many are raising children with no spouse or someone else's father. Nurturing, a parent needs to provide material and emotional support for their children and sometimes cannot provide the latter after a long, hard days work coming home too exhausted for that kind of support. Love, a child needs to know he is wanted, that someone is out there who cares--some may find love in a overlooking being, but nearly all need a being who lives on this Earth. Encouragement, a child needs to know that whatever her dreams are there will be people to support her and even if she doesn't reach them to make sure she tries. Values, this is where the institution is key, for the values one lays in marriage have a far reaching effect for that child's own prospects into adulthood. So here are some thoughts, you decide do you vote for homosexuals to marry or do you not?