So how much have things changed?

Bit of personal information, I've been extremely busy. I'm in the market for a trade-up on my car. (I think $600 blue book gives me a lot of room to trade up). I'm looking for a decent apartment unlike the two bedroom basement one advertised on Craigslist. Something about that term "basement apartment" tells me my romantic life will be dependent on streaming Internet video, which better be free.

Though, what made it tempting was that it did have some redeeming features: a free washer and dryer left by the previous tenant (the ad said) and a second bedroom for the price of one, along with a huge storage room. I wonder, in a basement apartment, can you really tell the extra bedroom from the huge storage room? Or are they the same room mentioned twice? I guess if you store a person there, and if they're alive, it's a bedroom, if they're dead, it's a storage room.

I won't know, because despite those tempting amenities, I'm not curious enough to look. By no means am I financially in great health, but moving into a basement apartment would feel something like making a crater. My mental health is important.

After days work, today I was just tired, and a little sick. My short story went over pretty well last night. I went to bed early, meaning, of course, that I'm up now in the late night.

So, waiting for sleep to hit again, I was guided by Twitter links to the Abolition Society of Oklahoma site. To see their latest: "Abortion-on-Demand Encourages Child Abuse."

I know I haven't answered Rhology or Vox Veritas' posts about my points, something I had to put aside. I'm trying to get that done. Unfortunately, if I post to the ASOs, I usually shoot from the hip, and I'm not disciplined about it, like right now. I answered them on impulse. I'm trying to answer them in a more thoughtful way.

Here they quote C. Everett Koop, MD's and Francis A. Schaeffer's 1983 book, Whatever Happened to the Human Race:

"Since 1970 it is conservatively estimated in the United States that there are probably over ten million fewer children who would now be be between the ages of one and seven. Since these ten million were 'unwanted' and supposedly would have been prime targets for child abuse, it would seem reasonable to look for a sharp drop in child abuse in this same period." He goes on to say, "In 1972 there were 60,000 child-abuse incidents which were brought to official attention in the United States. Just four years later, in 1976, the number that received official attention passed the half-million mark." This shows indisputably that the "every child a wanted child" pro-choice logic is patently false.

And here I quote my answer:

"'In 1972 there were 60,000 child-abuse incidents which were brought to official attention in the United States. Just four years later, in 1976, the number that received official attention passed the half-million mark.' This shows indisputably that the 'every child a wanted child' pro-choice logic is patently false."

I'm not only going to dispute it, I'm going to refute it. Take a look at the number of child abuse laws on the books before and after. Take a look at the press coverage of child abuse just beginning to come out in 1972, at the same time as Roe.

Yes, the "implausible" happened. The culture did change that much, and you are ignorant of it.

Not only legally, but about how the whole culture saw child abuse. You simply have no idea. It was so different, I bet many states had no child abuse laws in the 1970s.

This I know. I lived during the '60s & '70s. I happen to know there was no attention paid to child abuse at that time. People were told to mind their own business about family matters and it wasn't reported. Just like domestic abuse.

A case had to be really outrageous to be reported, and then usually as assault, not child abuse. There were no medical reporting law or ethical guidelines. A cover story by the abusing adult was believed.

The legal-cultural attitudes began to change in the mid-70s.
The same is true of two other social issues: drunk driving and sexual harassment. Before the '70s, if you killed somebody driving drunk, the fact that you were drunk was your excuse. The change in culture about child abuse has been that radical.

Roe was not the only big change. I was there. I saw it. It was the much maligned, post-Watergate "liberal activist" press that brought public attention to all those problems and changed the culture and laws. I saw exact stories in the press that began them. A major one about domestic abuse was broke by Linda Elerbee on "Weekend."

If you're going to compare child abuse statistics at the time to now, why not, for a control, compare drunk driving statistics then and now? Why not sexual harassment statistics? I challenge you to even find the term "sexual harassment" before 1976, or later. Look for any press story before 1978 that had that term in it.

I forgot to say, the same is completely true for domestic abuse. I somehow lost that in the edit. It simply was not in the public or legal mind at the time. Never.

Roe paralleled many changes in the culture that you would never argue weren't improvements. You would not recognize this culture if you saw it in the 1970s, and you'd generally think the attitudes now are an improvement.

End Quote.

Writers' block: Hit the books today

Today I just read. I got up late and discovered my day was blown anyway. So, I committed it to reading and learning. Mostly I'm doing research about Pius XII, or Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli during the rise of Hitler. I'm also reading up and studying writing mechanics.

I just read a blog by the Abortion Abolitionists that makes my blood boil, or would if I weren't so tired and so busy. I'll have write my response over the next several days.

Looks like I'll miss that deadline

Today was Mothers' Day, but I don't talk about family here. I will say I think my Mom appreciated my gifts.

Yes, today was a working day for me, but not a very successful one. I wanted to have the latest installment of my short story ready for the writers' group tomorrow, but the rewriting is taking a long time, and tomorrow time will be scarcer than usual.

Tuesday and Wednesday will be my "weekend." But if I get the latest installment up to spec, it means that I won't have the previous parts of the story rewritten until maybe the real weekend next week.

The frustrating part of fiction or any writing is it takes a long time and I can never tell how long it takes.

That goes for discussions online. I'd like to argue and read more of the ASO's blog, but I don't have enough time for that diversion. Really, I only go there led by Twitter and only start answering their blog out of pure impulse. It can be frustrating when I look at the blog to close my day only to stay up three hours doing it.

I don't respond well to lack of sleep. Usually, on a good morning, I need desktop or sticky notes to tell me what I should be doing. And sometimes, the work is a total waste because I'm too dazed to know what I'm doing. It's the nature of my illness. So, when I stay up answering a blog, I'm really wounding myself.

The ASOs like Rhology have it in their minds that I'm not knowledgeable about Christianity. Actually I am, but when they question me about dogma and doctrine, instead of telling them what their Church tells them, I tell them what I think about those doctrines and what I learned about them outside Christianity. The two do not match.

So, from now on, I'll at least start by telling them what they believe about it. It might take these confrontations down a different path, don't expect it to get any less confrontational, though. The ASOs are a cult.

Losing focus and arguing against an antichoice cult

I'm up too late and have to get up too early tomorrow. Writing fiction means a hard daily schedule.

I managed to take some time to answer the Abolition Society of Oklahoma, or as I call them, ASOs. They complained that some people weren't taking them seriously and were being snarky to them, to paraphrase.

http://is.gd/GJpD7l

I've had arguments in the past with this cult, who are trying to make antichoice a religious crusade by conflating the issue with slavery, despite several humongous differences. I can't see an underground railroad for fetuses. I just can't. I also can't see Canada going along with it . . .

Anyway, this is what I wrote:

Actually, I can see their point in not trying to engage you. I've tried. It hasn't done anything, and periodically I hear, "oh, you really said nothing to support your point."

Each time that was a lie. Fact is, you never engage in a discussion sincerely, that is, entertaining any thought that anything said can change your mind. You never ask yourself what information could do it, but instead look for things to prove yourself right, and you explain away the things that to prove your wrong. Though in these respects, you're not really different from anybody else.

However, you also make logical arguments with terms defined to bolster the conclusion you've already made, affirming the antecedent and making circular arguments regularly. You have a faith-based religion, which means you have a sworn duty to believe no matter what, and you've trained yourself to accept the weakest, flimsiest arguments and pseudoscience so you could keep your faith and not feel like idiots. Moreover, because you've connected your antichoice views to your religion you're committed to never changing your mind on it. Since you've also linked antichoice to an antislavery narrative, you've shifted the discussion from whether the fetus is actually a human being to winning rights for the fetus. Thus assures you will never say anything appropriate about abortion.

Even though I try to now and then, I guess because I'm human, I don't think there's any point in engaging any of you. It's like trying to engage the Moonies in a rational discussion about their beliefs. You are a cult, and more cultish than most Christian sects.

So, I'm pro-ridicule. If people aren't engaging you, but ridiculing you, maybe you shouldn't declare, claim and argue things that require proof of sanity.

It's fair to ask what would plausibly change my mind? Prove to me in a material way that there's something in a zygote besides a genome that makes it a human being. The reason I start with the zygote is that's where the antichoicers say "human life," or what I would call a "human being" begins.

I reject the argument out of hand that it's a human being/person just because it's human life with a complete, distinct, diploid human genome. Though a human being must have such, the arrow of inference only goes one way: because something has a complete, distinct, diploid human genome, it does not mean that its a human being, according to Bayes Law. For a zygote, there are a lot of necessary things missing. Like a brain and body, like any functional senses or emotions. No emotional or sensory life can be inferred from it.

So, what quality does it have? According to the ASOs say a zygote/fetus "possesses the Image of God." They don't say it's in God's image or that it looks like God, because that would immediately underscore how absurd their claim is. A zygote, a fetus and a middle-aged human cannot all be in God's image, if God is perfect and unchanging.

Now, in Genesis, Man was created in the image of God (and women from Man's rib, slightly less dignified.) Genesis 9:5-7 says, “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind." A zygote doesn't have blood. I don't think I'm stretching this point: a zygote, purportedly where "life begins," cannot not be what that passage is talking about. The presumption, if you're going to use it as a moral guide, is that human beings have blood and if you shed it the human being dies. If we're going to take the poetic language about "image of God" we should take the whole thing literally. If you could kill somebody without spilling blood, it shouldn't offend God or anyone else. Poisoning might be recommended.

Now, for their exact statement, nowhere does the Bible use the phrase "possess(es) the image of God." We don't say that in the English language. If somebody looks like somebody else, we never say one possesses the others' image. In fact, if we were to say that, it means one person carries a picture of the other. It means the fetus is committing blasphemy, and probably we should stone its mother. If one is made in the others' image, we say it just like that or have. Their saying that the zygote/fetus "possesses the image of God" just avoids the questions that would normally be raised if they said it the regular way. They know this.

In doing this, the ASOs cannot be using an understood definition of "image," which is where their tactic enters the Orwellian realm. It's a statement that's meant to guide opinion, not make a proper, logical argument based even on their own faith.

Using the "image of God" argument, in other words, can be rejected outright, and it still first has to be a human being, with a completed "image of God" to apply.

So, what would I accept? I would need material proof that despite all it lacks, a single-celled zygote is something that the later, developed human being could recognize as themselves, by appearance or behavior. If it's a unique, individual human being, the unique, individual human being should be able to look at videos on how it behaves along side other zygote/fetus videos and say, "That's me!" In fact, anybody should be able to study zygotes/fetuses, study the later people, and pick out which zygote/fetus is which person, just from behavior, or perhaps appearance.

Or, I would need some physical quality that proves it's as conscious in a way that the fully developed human is. A good test: does it dream yet? If it dreams, it means that it's ready to take sensory information and synthesize a narrative from it.

Or, I would need physical proof that a soul exists, that human beings have one, and the zygote/fetus possesses it, too.

"Possessing God's image" doesn't cut it.

Atheist Morality, part 2

First I'll recap part 1

In Western Civilization, the concept of morality originated hand and hand with the concept of theism, with a concept of piety being central even for pagan cultures. Therefore, it is difficult to formulate an atheist concept of morality that's explicable to the religious, who presume that no morality could exist without God, or at least, the self-deception that there is a God.

They are wrong. As social animals, human beings are born with an inclination to find out what behaviors others expect of them and what behavior they should expect from others. More than that, find out what behaviors other people will cooperate to stop or punish, or reward. There are, of course, those who are deficient in morality, sociopaths and psychopaths, but for the most part, human beings are born to learn this.

To explain anything about atheist morality I first have to define it in a way that's not dependent on belief in God and show how it functions in a Godless universe. Like God, though, morality only exists in the mind of human beings. Unlike God, it's not an illusion. It's a behavior we all depend on.

A person is born to look for what behaviors are expected or prohibited from others, but also they are born with their own desires behaviors and so must alter their behavior and learn what the social group expects from everyone. From the interplay of these two, the person will eventually form a moral code.

(Last paragraph altered.)

To go on now:

So, the person's internal, subjective morality is then compromised with the social group's, whose code may more accurately be called inter-subjective rather than objective. The social group, by the way, might be a religion, a gang, a nation, or a political party. It might have a written code of laws that fit everyone's subjective morality just approximately. A person if free to explore, will look for one that compromises with their subjective morality the best. If a person is stuck in an authoritarian society, such as Saudi Arabia, they will generally conform their morality to it, and might become as stern as the society they are in. Since people are very adaptable.

Some of these social groups will have the morality written out in laws, such as in Christianity. In these cases, the moral code would be only a rough approximation of the inter-subjective morality of its members. The believers buy the entire package, including parts they might not personally like. Such as a believer might not have anything personally against gays & lesbians, but in Christian mythos, God, not humankind, dictates what's moral. Therefore, the believer must buy the whole code, and because they need most of it, they'll pretend to go along with all of it. Or do their level best to find reasons why being gay is sinful as murder.

Leaving psychopathic personalities out of this, atheists form their moral code exactly the same way Christians do, which is why atheists tend to be no more criminal than Christians, in fact, probably less.

So, that's a very general description of how a person forms a sense of morality or moral code.

To a large degree, people can agree on what is right and wrong, due to the fact that we're the same sort of social animal. Every moral facet also has an evolution-adaptive reason behind it, such as a disgust or outrage toward murder. It's because for any social group to be advantageous to its members, they have to be safer from each other than they would generally be without each other. Human beings evolved in strong social groups, hence, our brains create averse feelings in us regarding murder, and we act our feelings to prohibit and punish it.

Nevertheless, it's notable that there are exceptions allowed, and I'm not talking about abortion, which I will get to in the last part of this essay. Exceptions are made in the Bible. In case we think those are behind us, one was made just recently in the case of Osama bin Laden.

RIP Osama b. Laden

After all this time, of course I was surprised our forces actually killed Osama bin Laden. At this point nobody saw that coming. I also didn't foresee the degree of duplicity from Pakistan. There is no way everyone in their government didn't know where he was hiding, or at least couldn't find out without asking the right people.

I can't be surprised, though, that we didn't take him alive, and not because he went down fighting. He was the most widely and extremely despised man in our country, and you knew anybody we sent was going to be trigger happy once they pointed a gun at him and looked him in the face. So, I forgive and will forget that, as did the officers in charge of this raid.

Try as I might to object about an assassination raid, I simply can't in this case. Here is a man who has killed thousands, who would have killed thousands more if he could, and who inspired others to do the same. He was murderously sick and contagious. That's far worse than any serial killer. He killed children, I'm certain, and created orphans.

Even if they found some soldier-saint who could look him in the eye and not follow it with a bullet, he would have been a one man strain on justice. Where in this country would you find a jury to be impartial about him? Even if you could get ove that barrier, he'd need his own jail, or you'd be turning justice over to inmates. He would require about a billion dollars worth of security just to get him to court and back. Not that I'm for cutter corners with justice, I'm only wondering what a trial of ObL would have been like.

The point is, our justice system wasn't made to handle a crime as big as his. I mean, he mass produced corpses, all the while inspiring others to do the same. To try to pretend to give him a fair trial would have been a mockery of justice more damaging than having a soldier shoot him and acquitting the assassin.

Unfortunately, this can be damaging to our country's justice system which has already been so damaged from the years after 9/11. Once an exception has been made to justice, even if everybody pretends it was necessary to shoot him unarmed, the temptation to create other exceptions to normal justice is stronger.

We ought to remember at those times just how far bin Laden went to make himself not just an extreme outlaw, but also someone who placed himself outside the protection of the law.

Like having a toothache removed, I look forward to the rest of my life without Osama bin Laden.

Writers' block blog: the sequel.

I ordered a book, "The Joy of Cooking" tonight. I'll be moving in a few weeks. I have to get better at cooking than I was when I last time I lived alone, and take more responsibility for my nutrition.

It's going to be difficult living solo on disability. Somehow I have to make ends meet. It will help if or when I begin to sell my writing, but I don't expect anything substantial, that is, more than a thousand dollars, in the next three years. I hope I'm an established author, but it's crapshoot. I know the odds are low, but I never should have let anybody talk me out of taking them. Authorship is my destiny.

Had a delightful time at the writers' group last night. People there are very talented, and one of them in particular has such a flare for comedy writing.