jeskill

Great find!

You thought what was a biological fact? Interesting idea. I agree that personhood is a moral and social construct. To me this suggests a definition of personhood can not be made using scientific evidence alone. But you've touched on an important issue, which is, what is the most ethical way to define personhood? I don't feel like I've come to a conclusion on this one yet, and I think that there are probably multiple criteria that should be taken into consideration.

When you hand in essays, do you just hand in the bibliography with a one word sentence?

Darryl8, instead of attacking with ad hominim fallacies, why not respond to Arete's question? I think this is a great question, as it's the main reason why most people aren't agreeing with you here.

Are you looking at other methods of measuring population density besides quadrats? What size are your quadrats and what size are the clumps?

Mooeypoo, I have to disagree with you. You keep on saying that a fetus isn't "alive". From a biological perspective, it is alive. So are, for that matter, sperm and eggs. The abortion issue really has nothing to do with whether or not a fetus is alive. The question has to do with when the fetus should be considered a person. But I do agree with you that these emotional fallacies aren't contributing anything. From his posts, it seems that Anders is assuming that once fertilization occurs, a blastocyst should be given personhood. Plainly, you or I don't agree with that. Maybe we should ask him why he believes this to be so, and how he feels about miscarriages then.

BACK TO THE ORIGINAL QUESTION: Is abortion an advance towards freedom? Here's an interesting article that suggests the answer is yes. This article is a summary of a scientific study on what happens to women who are denied abortions. Some interesting results: 1) The main reason these women wanted abortions is they lacked money. 2) 76% of these women, a year later, were on welfare. Also this: The take-away I get from this is that women who weren't denied abortions were more likely to get/keep a job, and more likely to get out of an abusive relationship. Being dependent on welfare restricts economic freedom, and being in an abusive relationship can is detrimental to your freedom from violence. Hence, in these cases, abortion does seem like an advance towards freedom for women. [EDIT] link was missing [/EDIT]

I wrote a whole bunch of stuff, and then lost it. So I'll just ask this: On talkorigins, they say this about the Modern Synthesis: My question to you: How do endosymbiosis, HGT, and phenotypic plasticity (to use a few examples) NOT fall into this definition of the Modern Synthesis? As a suggestion, you may want to consider responding specifically to queries, and using your citations to BACK UP your arguments. Randomly posting a whole bunch of links that lack context is not useful on the internet, or when you hand in a scientific paper, for that matter.

Very sad.

hmmmm. "loons" "old farts" "what you are doing is no different than what creationists do". That sounds pretty troll-ish to me, darryl88. Hint: if you want to be taken seriously, you should consider not calling people names, or making assumptions about the other forum members. After all, we all know what happens when we assume .... This whole hubabaloo you're trying to create kind of reminds me of a story a former prof told about the "classification wars" taxonomists used to get into. It was basically all over how best to create clades. Apparently it devolved into fisticuffs at one conference, I kid you not. People always get so riled up about semantics/taxonomy/general word definitions in science. Probably because it's hard to debate a p-value, but easy to debate whether or not we should allow paraphyly in a tree (or HGT into the modern synthesis, as it may be.)

Professor Spencer Barrett? Awesome. He co-taught the first year evo/eco course I took waaaay back when I was an undergrad. I'm beginning to think darryl88 is a troll.

If sex-education is well-done, and both men and women are taught the legal definition of consent, then there is no difficulty in defining consent. This often has more to do with the unwillingness to police sex-crimes than the logistics of doing so. Intolerant attitudes towards sex can also make it difficult to police sex crimes. Don't forget: in most cultures that have strict norms for sex, women are expected to be the gatekeepers of their chastity. Women who are raped are often afraid to speak out, making it difficult to police sex crimes. http://www.wisemusli...tizationofrape/ I disagree. If a woman has a good understanding of her rights, and a good understanding of the legal definition of consent, then she will be more likely to speak out. Your white paper is not an example of a "sex-positive" culture. It's an example of an exploitative culture. BIG difference. Given what he has written before in previous threads concerning "race", my instinct is that Zapatos' explanation is correct.

As an aside, since when does "I can't afford to have a child" equal "a woman feels it's inconvenient to have a child"? Do you have any idea how much it costs to raise a kid?

72 % of women not using condoms is not the same as "46% of women did not use contraception the month they conceived". By-the-by, why is it that you write about women not using condoms, (those harlots!!!) when the man is the partner who actually wears them? And we've dissected this data in depth in the "Ethics of Abortion" thread quite recently ( I think it starts up on the 3rd or 4th page) ... you may want to read it, as I sure as hell don't want to spend my time regurgitating past arguments.

So the way to "fix" women is to create a totalitarian state that enforces its worldview on all via brainwashing/coercion? Yeah, that'll work.