A couple of things caught my eye today, so instead of one post on one subject, I’ll just mention a few of them.
The first news item of significance is that a recent study shows that a fetus (or as they spell in in the UK, a foetus) feels no pain before the 24th week of gestation.
The studies suggest that late abortions, permitted for serious abnormalities or risks to a woman’s health, do not result in foetal suffering because of increasing evidence that the chemical environment in the uterus induces “a continuous sleep-like unconsciousness or sedation”.
Interesting. So, are we talking about “murder” here, as the anti-abortion people like to call it? Or is it a medical procedure that is no different than removing a tumor? Or something in between?
Me? I’m still pro-choice, and this news simply reinforces my attitude. The living, breathing woman is of paramount concern, and it’s her choice. I was inclined to say something along the lines of “Well, I don’t condone waiting 24 weeks before having an abortion”, but I won’t even take that stance. The stance is not mine to take.
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Australia can now claim a woman, and maybe more importantly, a self-described “nonreligious” Prime Minister. This is not to say that in addition to being the first female PM, she’s also the first atheist PM, but it’s damn close. Her religious belief, or lack thereof, is not specifically known, but she’s not an outspoken god-botherer, pandering to the theists and their superstitions for votes. Which is as it should be.
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Down in North Carolina, atheists have another billboard fired off in the so-called billboard wars. This one, for some unknown reason, is also creating controversy. Why, it is unclear. The billboard sports the words One Nation Indivisible across a red, white and blue flag background. So the objection from the religious wing-nuts is not about what it says, but about what it doesn’t say. Apparently, with the words Under God not being there, the billboard is incomplete, even though the rest of the Pledge of Allegiance is not there either.
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In Texas, home of some of the most irrational logicians in the universe, a federal judge in Austin struck down an attempt by the Institution for Creation Research (a religious organization trying to convince us that it is a scientific institution) to be certified to give Master’s degrees in science. Their attempt was a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
“It appears that although the court has twice required [ICR] to re-plead and set forth a short and plain statement of the relief requested, plaintiff is entirely unable to file a complaint which is not overly verbose, disjointed, incoherent, maundering and full of irrelevant information,” Judge Sam Sparks wrote.
They’re so incompetent, they don’t recognize their own incompetence. Can you imagine living in a country where you can be taught science by a person holding a Master of Science degree in Creationism?
That’s just a little bit of All the News Fit to Print.
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SPANISH INQUISITOR 
I hadn’t read about the British study. Thanks for the update. As for the strange goings-on in Texas, it appears that Judge Sam Sparks was barely able to keep a civil
tonguepen when he wrote that decision. He’s more than just a tad annoyed with the idiots at the ICR.It never was about the fetus’ pain, was it? It was about your pain in thinking of a wee wittle baby being murdered. Conscious or not, it has wee wittle fingers and toes to make you all squeamish and cry and think it’s murder and wrong.
I think the billboard is brilliant, because to oppose it shows clearly that you’re a hater.
…and sucks its little thumb.
if the issue, or crux, is whether we should be entitled to end a life according to the foetus capacity to feels pain – then to terminate any person’s life whilst they were anesthetised, would be… what?
I would suggest this ‘finding’ contributes nothing to the debate.
As for your comment ‘wee wittle fingers’… quite distasteful, nasty, and a bit inhumane, for a humanist?
‘stance is not mine to take’
of course, but then you’re entitled to an opinion – which you’ve expressed already. So, why bother to make that statement, unless you simply want to trumpet your liberal credentials
“‘wee wittle fingers’… quite distasteful, nasty, and a bit inhumane, for a humanist?”
It’s what humanism is all about, draining the humanity out of anything. When you reduce man to a mere blob of protoplasm that just happened along by accident after first creating itself from absolutely nothing, what accountability is there, then, or deterrent for slaughtering fetuses, especially if they get in your way in climbing the politically-correct social ladder?
I wish that the world infidels envision with their demented science could actually exist, for a time, for them and them only. It would give them their first view of the consequences their reasoning inevitably points to. Sadly, they are going to have to learn the hard way, with no recourse after they do.
the Dunning-Kruger Effect
I know I’ve quoted this before, but Yeats is always worth quoting again:
As far as the North Carolina billboard goes, I’m not overly fond of it. It’s jingoistic claptrap, just like the Pledge of Allegiance itself. If a person supports his or her country, why is it necessary to take a pledge to that effect? If a person doesn’t support his or her country, in what way is saying the pledge a deterrent against rebellion? (See, for instance, this.)
And whether or not fetuses feel pain is not really an inportant issue in the abortion debates — although it’s been used by the pro-forced-maternity crowd to give extra ammunition to the idiots. If a living person were numbed up sufficiently so that he didn’t feel a lethal stab, wouldn’t that still be murder?
Yeah, it’s potentially good news that the Australian P.M. is nonreligious. But I’m not gonna start toasting her until I see how that “nonreligiosity” plays out in practice.
So: Bah! Humbug!
Signed: Your friendly neighborhood cynic
There, I fixed it for you. Needed to nail down the locale, since you’re not in my neighborhood.
Well, now that Australia has a nonbeliever PM, it’s only a matter of time until that once fine country goes the way of the Soviet Union and Mao’s China. How many millions of people you think her government will slaughter? More importantly, how many churches will be shut down?
Thank very good post
Douglas,
You missed the point of the pain issue. The point is thought; essentially, does it have the barest sign of thought, which is pain response. The answer is no. No mind, no person. At 7 weeks, the brain is the size of a pinhead. The wiring isn’t complete until somewhere between week 26 and 34, but you probably think the mind isn’t a product of the brain, but rather of a soul, right? Well aside from the fact that that’s demonstrably false and souls are as real as Nessie and Jehovah, making such an argument is essentially arguing for religious law, and that’s not Kosher in the US. 😉
Lastly, fetuses don’t look like that picture. Anti-abortionists consistently misrepresent the facts and use fully formed fetuses, long past the legal age for abortion, to illicit an emotional response wit wee wittle fingers and toes, so get over it. The joke is at the expense of those who need to lie to get their way.
“Well aside from the fact that that’s demonstrably false and souls are as real as Nessie and Jehovah, making such an argument is essentially arguing for religious law, and that’s not Kosher in the US.”
I guess from that statement we can then conclude that you don’t exist, Chief. As usual, your ‘knowledge’ isn’t based upon biblical fact.
The “soul” refers to a living being, e.g. you, me, a fetus. It may not have the ability to reason that it is alive or communicate in any way we can perceive or understand, however, it is nevertheless alive in at very least the sense that any lower-scale life form is alive.
Getting back to the soul, if you were to read Genesis 2:7… “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”(emphasis supplied) … you would see the emphasis on the fact that a combination of earthly matter WITH God’s Spirit PRODUCES a living soul. There is no inference that a soul by itself was imparted to man, rather he BECAME a living soul. So, as usual, your ignorance of scripture has you distorting facts.
Also, going by infidel science’s performance in screwing up origins and natural history, we can no more place any confidence in what it says about a fetus’s awareness of it’s surroundings than we can about it’s complete failure in explaining the other things.
So, while you’re getting over being wrong, yet again, I’ll just add that the joke is on infidels, being played like cheap violins by other infidels consumed with the nonsensical theory that man is a product of amoeba shit mixed with water, shaken not stirred, having progressed through various stages of underdevelopment to the epitome of greatness that he is, today.
Also, thanks for contradicting yourself (again) by admitting that religion as touted does not have the control over American society that you earlier said that it did.
🙂