Amputee-identity disorder

My latest exchange in the continuing abortion thread over at TGC blog:

steve hays

    November 3, 2012 at 10:09 PM

    i) You act like TGC advocates arranged marriage. If a woman doesn't want to have "habitual sex," then don't get married in the first place! No one is forcing them into marriage.

    ii) You have no concept of marriage. It doesn't even occur to you that marriage requires mutual accommodation. You seem to imagine that in a relationship with someone else, you should never ever have to do anything you don’t want to do. That doesn’t work in marriage–or friendship.

    ii) Paul's command (if that's what you’re alluding to) requires mutual accommodation (1 Cor 7:3-4). It's not a command to wives, but a command to couples. A command to husbands and wives alike.

    iii) Is it actually true that men want sex more often than women, or is that, itself, a sexist stereotype?

    iv) Take the hook-up culture on your average college campus. You can't have sexually active single men without sexually active single women. So why assume that women are less interested in sex than men?

    v) Or is that even though women are (allegedly) less interested in sex, they offer sex because that's the only way to hang onto their boyfriend? If they don't offer sex, he will dump them.

    But even if that's true, that's damaging to feminism. For that means women are so emotionally dependent on having a man in their life that they will do things to keep him which they find personally disagreeable.

    vii) Another explanation is that women are trying to keep up with other women. It's a female competition. Every girl has to have her own boyfriend.

    But if that's the case, it makes women look too emotionally weak to resist peer pressure.

steve hays

November 3, 2012 at 10:14 PM

[Lily] "To your other comment about different hierarchies in society somehow being a counter argument to my point. What you are citing is called the intersection of systems of oppression within a given society. It is one of the more basic ideas explored and analyzed within feminist theory and sociology. It is not a counter argument. The intersection of classism, racism, and sexism does not disprove their systematic existence. Seriously this is high school level sociology."

You fixate on "patriarchy" as if that's the dominant "system of oppression." But as I pointed out, that grossly oversimplifies male/female social dynamics.

    steve hays

    November 3, 2012 at 10:25 PM

    In that comment you said you were an atheist. If atheism is true, then women have no inherent rights. If atheism is true, then men and women are simply fleeting, fortuitous arrangements of matter. Society can confer rights on women, but that doesn't derive from the nature of women. Given atheism, women are just packets of matter which exist to groom their replacements.

steve hays

November 3, 2012 at 11:29 PM

Keith

"Yes, there are conclusions we might reasonably reach from the conclusion that gods don't exist, but those are entirely separate from whether or not atheism is true."

i) To begin with, I used a conditional (if-then) argument.

ii) Since Lily is an atheist, she thinks atheism is true–in which case, by your own admission, atheism yields those conclusions.

"In other words, just because you don't like where an idea leads does not mean the idea is any more or less true."

The question is whether Lily dislikes the logical implications of atheism.

steve hays

November 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM

Lily

“Ah yes, the right to remove something growing inside of my body…”

You make it sound as if a baby is a cancerous growth. Something alien to a woman’s body. Something harmful.

“A person wants the fetus out of them so desperately that they get an abortion.”

Frankly, that attitude resembles amputee-identity disorder (BIID). It’s pathological for a woman to feel that alienated from the natural, normal process of gestation.

“Making abortion illegal means the government is forcing citizens to forgo (all the things I listed) for another citizen. I do not think it should be within the governments power to force people to use their literal bodies as life support for other people.....”

You keep falling back on generic euphemisms about “citizens” or “people,” instead of the “mother” and “her baby.” That’s a rhetorical ruse to deflect attention away from familial obligations.

steve hays

November 4, 2012 at 10:54 AM

Lily said:

"Btw, about 1/5 of all American's women are raped so theres that. Rape is not some rare thing either."

Is that widely-cited factoid accurate?

"According to CIR, one in five women who attend college will be victims of rape or attempted rape during their college career. But when Haavik and Dill looked at their own campus, they found zero incidents reported in 2008, one reported in 2009, and two reported in 2010."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/youth-radio-youth-media-international/doesnt-add-up-1-in-5-coll_b_1875546.html

"Regarding this study, 41% (n = 45) of the total disposed rape cases (n = 109) were officially declared false during this 9-year period, that is, by the complainant’s admission that no rape had occurred and the charge, therefore, was false. The incidence figure was variable from year to year and ranged from a low of 27% (3 out of 11 cases) to a high of 70% (7 out of 10 cases). The 9-year period suggests no trends, and no explanation has been made for the year-to-year fluctuation."

Archives of Sexual Behavior

Feb 1994 v23 n1 p81(12)

False rape allegations.

by Eugene J. Kanin

DL

November 5, 2012 at 8:50 AM

rockingwithhawking (November 5, 2012 at 12:09 AM):

I complimented you earlier, but here I think I need to throw up the red flag.

In correction to your reference above, Steve Hays has never actually answered the "violinist argument" in the previous thread or otherwise. The content of his responses have been limited to: 1) stating that the argument was a thought-experiment written by Judith Jarvis-Thompson and 2) that her argument is morally depraved and that no Christian should ever consider it seriously.

Sorry, but I'm not sure in what world one would have to live in order to see such logic and say, "gee, you've got a good point there!"

Please note: This comment is directed to rockingwithhawking, only.

steve hays

November 5, 2012 at 11:06 AM

This is an open comment thread. Any commenter is free to comment on someone else's comment.

i) Your claim is demonstrably false. I've repeatedly pointed out that her argument from analogy is vitiated by a fundamental disanalogy: the relationship of a female hospital patient to a perfect stranger is hardly equivalent to the relationship between a mother and her baby. Parents have duties to their kids which they don't have to adult strangers.

ii) In addition, I've discussed her argument elsewhere. For instance:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2005/12/defense-of-abortion.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/01/when-life-begins-and-ends-with-womans.html

steve hays

November 5, 2012 at 11:47 AM

David

“Steve Hayes, it's interesting how whenever someone brings up a question that you don't have an answer for…”

That’s demonstrably false. On this thread, no one has directed a question at me that I haven’t answered. You’re the one who’s ignoring the answers.

“However, it's intellectually dishonest for you to dismiss Lily's point as a deflection or a ruse instead of answering her. You've had some pretty good defenses on other points (not including the personal insults, of course).”

I didn’t merely say she was using a rhetorical ruse. I also explained the nature of the ruse. You’ve chosen to ignore the supporting reason I gave. So you’re the one who suffers from intellectual dishonesty at this juncture. Try again.

“At the end of the day, I think you (and all Christians) need to have an actual answer to this in order to complete your (our) defense.”

I have provided an actual answer. Either you’re ignoring the answer, or–for some odd reason–you’re unable to absorb the rudimentary distinction I drew. This isn’t difficult.

We’re not talking about the social obligations between two strangers. Rather, we’re talking about the social obligations between mother and child.

For instance, murder is evil. But not all murder is equally evil. Matricide, patricide, and fratricide are cases of aggravated murderous evil. It’s even more culpable than garden-variety murder because the murderer is taking the life of someone to whom he owes a special obligation to care about.

It’s striking that we have commenters on this thread who profess to be Christians, yet they are so morally obtuse that they can’t register these bedrock moral distinctions.

…you either call it a rhetorical ruse or resort to labeling their position mentally deranged, pathological, morally depraved, etc.. You do know that those are not actual arguments, right?

i) Characterizing your opponent or his position is not a substitute for argument. However, I haven’t used that as a substitute for argument. I’ve presented a slew of arguments on this thread.

ii) It is, however, legitimate to include that characterization, in addition to presenting arguments.

iii) There’s such a thing as the ethics of belief. Epistemic duties. Intellectual virtues and vices.

If a skinhead promotes Neonazi ideology, we should point out that his arguments rest of factually false assumptions regarding race and history.

However, we don’t have to stop there. We can rightly point out that his Neonazi ideology is morally reprehensible. Moreover, we can rightly point out that his adopted ideology is a reflection of his own character.

It’s not merely that he’s mistaken. We’re not dealing with an innocent mistake. Rather, it’s culpable for him to promote Neonazism.

iv) Likewise, the Bible isn’t merely concerned with truth and falsehood, but with the source of truth and falsehood. Not merely with being factually correct, but with moral formation. With character.

The Bible routinely traces evil behavior (e.g. murder) and evil beliefs (e.g. idolatry) to an evil heart. What you believe or do is mirrors the kind of person you are. There’s a cause-and-effect relation. You are what you do–or believe.

v) On the one hand, some commenters on this thread are atheists. According to the Christian ethics of belief, their advocacy of abortion isn’t merely misguided, but culpable. What they are doing is evil. It is evil for them to promote evil. And they promote evil because they are evil.

Of course they resent that characterization, but this is a Christian site. Christian commenters like me have the right to render Christian value-judgments.

vi) On the hand, some of the abortion proponents on this thread (or the parallel thread at Taylor’s blog) profess to be Christians. In that event, it’s proper to hold them to Christian standards vis-à-vis the ethics of belief. If you profess to be a Christian, yet you promote evil, then that’s contrary to your Christian profession. That’s impermissible. That’s inexcusable.

This isn’t a value free or morally neutral discussion where you can think whatever you please, but still claim to be a faithful follower of Jesus. If you follow Jesus, then you’re not at liberty to think whatever you please and call it Christian.