651. Fleabytes

Comment #145927 by Sargeist on March 18, 2008 at 10:07 am

Digital camcorder? Copy of TGD to refer to? Copy of "Evolution" by Mark Ridley?

652. Fleabytes

Comment #145913 by Sargeist on March 18, 2008 at 9:49 am

It was bugging me... there was this niggling thought that I couldn't quite grasp... what was it?....

Then, there it was! Yes! This site it's..

... turning into eBay!

Refresh refresh refresh almost there! refresh...

Bugger :(

653. Fleabytes

Comment #145902 by Sargeist on March 18, 2008 at 9:37 am

Damn! Beat me to it, Tyler!

654. Ban anti-Catholic books in schools, says bishop

Comment #145777 by Sargeist on March 18, 2008 at 6:16 am

If anyone is interested, the uncorrected oral evidence of the testimony that includes the Bishop's comments is now available from the Parliament Committee webpage:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmchilsch/uc311-iii/uc31102.htm

655. Fleabytes

Comment #145758 by Sargeist on March 18, 2008 at 5:37 am

Re: 5897. Comment #145722 by Pathfinder on March 18, 2008 at 3:31 am

Whose Thora Hird?

656. The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing

Comment #145666 by Sargeist on March 18, 2008 at 12:22 am

Oh dear, you are indeed right, Eamonn. :( Now everyone can see what a bad proof reader I would make.

:'(

657. Fleabytes

Comment #145143 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 10:03 am

Whaat!? I missed that program! Waah! This is just typical, ever since I stopped buying the Guardian I never know what is on telly any more. :(

Anyone know if it is going to be repeated?

658. I don't believe in atheists

Comment #145105 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 9:06 am

Hang on, Steve. You and I were disagreeing, surely this is not something that we atheists do? We're all a big happy zombified family, all patting each other on the back and suchlike...

ack!

This is the sort of thing I like most about this site. When we can have a nice argument about something we're not sure about, or even are sure about, and it stays quite nice and civil :)

I hope you saw my earlier post about Baron Munchausen. Brilliant Gilliam film, and I was able to bring it up without being too off topic!

659. I don't believe in atheists

Comment #145091 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 8:35 am

Hi Steve,

Maybe I only read from Toad's post those bits that sounded like me. I find it hard to disagree with other people on certain topics because I can never be sure I've properly understood what they were trying to say :(

Anyway, in this case, I am basically going along with the position that everything comes down to definitions and consistency with goals.

Is this logical positivism? I am not sure, but I will say what I think anyway. Someone says "torture is wrong" and we know that this means they think it shouldn't be done. But why not? Well, maybe because they think it is unsuccessful. Could be a good reason not to do it, so one could find evidence that it doesn't work and use this to back up one's claim that it should not be done. But this only works if one has defined "wrong" as "does not get us to our goal". But we don't tend to do that.

So, maybe wrong means "makes me feel icky". Well, I worry that then it would be come a good thing to do if one got over one's revulsion. Maybe in the back of my mind I crave the apparent certainty that the god-given morality would lead to. Except that you'd still have the gut feeling that "hmm, this doesn't seem right".

In the end, then, where does morality come from? I am starting to think that it must just all be instinct. We've evolved to all share some basic emotional reactions to certain things, and we almost all prefer to be happy than sad, painless than pained, so is this all that morality is? The search for the set of all happiness-inducing behaviours?

Well, only if "good" means "makes us happy", and then you have all those problems with utilitarianism again. Goodness! It's a right old pain, this ethics stuff.

Every now and then I feel like veering off into a "you know, nothing actually matters, in the end" attitude. But I fear that I could be one of those atheists that can be held up as the perfect example of the gits we shall all become if we lose our faith.

660. I don't believe in atheists

Comment #145071 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 8:15 am

CommonToad has expressed, nicely, neatly and annoyingly well, pretty much what I wish I were able to say without rambling.

Damn.

661. I don't believe in atheists

Comment #145064 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 8:11 am

Geoff:

When I was having an argument about torture and other things with a guy I used to know at my previous workplace, I was saying that I wasn't sure if torture was wrong or not in all circumstances. His opinion was that, of course it was always wrong. I asked him to demonstrate to me why it was, objectively, wrong. I used my usual position (which I really do hold most of the time) that I don't think ethics are things that can be demonstrated as being clearly true, because you would have to be able to point at something and say, there *that* is why it is always definitely, objectively wrong.

I started picking holes and generally being annoying, and eventually he said: "At the end of the day, torture doesn't work anyway".

My view is that, a lot of the time, this is the kind of thing people are *actually* thinking when they say certain things are wrong. Either that, or it's the "that's why they call it faith" position of moral debate.

662. I don't believe in atheists

Comment #145053 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 8:04 am

Steve, to save you time:

Baron Munchausen: What's this?
Vulcan: Oh, this is our prototype. RX Intercontinental, radar-sneaky, multi-warheaded nuclear missile.
Baron Munchausen: Ah! What does it do?
Vulcan: Do? Kills the enemy.
Baron Munchausen: All the enemy?
Vulcan: Aye, all of them. All their wives, and all their children, and all their sheep, and all their cattle, and all their cats and dogs. All of them: all of them gone for good.
Sally: That's horrible.
Vulcan: Ahh. Well, you see, the advantage is you don't have to see one single one of them die. You just sit comfortably thousands of miles away from the battlefield and simply press the button.
Berthold: Well, where's the fun in that?

663. I don't believe in atheists

Comment #145031 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 7:37 am

Steve:

have you seen the Vulcan scene in Adventures of Baron Munchausen? It is vaguely relevant to what you were pointing out!

664. I don't believe in atheists

Comment #145022 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 7:28 am

Al-Rawandi presents a point I have often thought about. I think I agree, for a given definition of consistency. Why is it permissible to kill people in a dictatorship during the attempts to remove that government, when those people are known not to have had the opportunity to choose that government?

If people accept the deaths of those who had to no say in the bad acts of the government we are attacking, then why not attack more strongly the people in those countries that had an elected government?

Now, I think that the bombing of civilians in both options is wrong, but the first one does seem to be accepted in general. Maybe it is just that, deep down, most of us don't really care that much about "those other people"?

I used to try out a thought experiment with myself, when I lamented the boring state of the news on TV. How about if something truly enormous occurred? Such as, waking up on morning and finding that China had vanished. How would I feel? 1 billion people, just gone like that. I'm kind of ashamed to say, that I'd probably be thinking "oh god, I hope that doesn't happen *here*", and not caring too much about the people I didn't know before.

665. I don't believe in atheists

Comment #145006 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 7:01 am

My feelings about systems of ethics are that a lot of us look for an algorithm that tells us the right thing to do. But there might be different algorithms in different circumstances, and then we need algorithms to tell us which algorithms to use. Pah!

In answer to the bombing raid: I think you've raised some interesting questions. The way I would respond would be this: was it a nicely localised event that would have a very large reduction in casualties in other ways? So, I'd be utilitarian here. But I still wouldn't want to be the person making the decision.

On the other hand, I was appalled by the bomb attack by the US on the "house where Saddam's sons might have been". So... some bad people, who aren't actually causing any harm right at the current time, *might* be in a particular place, which we now contains civilians, so we blow it up and hope for the best?

Er... that didn't sit right we me at all.

Maybe it's all a consistency argument? (speaking to myself now) If we had just shot Saddam when we found him, this would have been more consistent. Why is it ok to kill "bad" people who are no threat to us when they are bombed, but not ok to just shoot them without trial when we have them in front of us, being no threat?

666. Fleabytes

Comment #144999 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 6:52 am

I really do want to read through all of clearthinker's response, but the trouble is that here at work I can only really write short little nonsensically type things every now and then. Damn.

Anyway, I will no doubt read it all at home tonight. I just wanted to express my surprise at being responded to (in brief) in his comment.

The reason I did not want to be viewed as an absolutist anti-abortionist is not because I actually am one and ashamed of it. And I infer from your comment on my (5180) that you might think that I feel that atheists have to be pro-abortion. I don't think a lack of belief in god entails thinking that way at all.

I think that I eventually made my own feelings about abortion reasonably clear(?) I think 38 weeks is too late, and I think that 24 weeks is a bit late. But I can't really get worked up at all about killing some blob-like-thing at about 10 weeks or so. Maybe my views are entirely to do with "does it have a face?" or "does it have a brain?", but many of us have opinions about things like this for those sorts of reasons.

My feelings about ethics are always a bit mixed up: I have always preferred there to be a definite answer about things. Even if that definite answer is "there is no definite answer". But this is why ethics is interesting. If there were an obvious right or wrong thing to do, then I think it would be possible to demonstrate it.

I think that Sharon's expression of female autonomy is not a position I agree with in its most absolute terms, but it is still, to me, a better position than saying "you cannot have an abortion, full stop".

Phew! Ramble ramble (sorry)

667. I don't believe in atheists

Comment #144992 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 6:30 am

Much as I often like to try to think myself into a sociopathic frame of mind (it seems more interesting than being entirely normal), my girlfriend assures me that I wouldn't be able to do any of the nasty things I often advocate, because I wouldn't be able to stand the cracking and the squelching noises.

The antidote to moral behaviour is clearly a good set of earplugs.

I thought Harris's argument was coming from: why do you find the idea of deliberate killing so wrong, when we are killing so many through badly placed missiles etc. And there may have been some mention of the thousands dying from treatable illness and malnutrition.

Is it just the active vs. passive difference? I' bad if I shoot you, but not if I don't stop that guy from shooting you?

Gah, I've rambled again.

668. I don't believe in atheists

Comment #144988 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 6:26 am

Steve is indulging in the sort of thing that I always like: pushing ideas till they bend and possibly break.

I like the taking of ideas to extreme situations, or similar. In some thread or other recently I was getting into the mire of abortion reasoning, wondering if a woman who was 38 weeks pregnant would be allowed to kill her unborn just cos she wanted to. If most people would agree that that would be wrong to let her do, then it would show that there really was a boundary of acceptability when it comes to the oversimplified (in my view) idea that women should be given total sovereignty over their bodies.

Similarly, these thought experiments about torture, or those train tracks with fat people on, may never crop up in actuality, but they're a) fun to think about; b) help us to understand *why* we think the way we do.

Steve is just being a modern day Socrates!

669. The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing

Comment #144894 by Sargeist on March 17, 2008 at 2:28 am

Hi Sheepscarer:

Matt Ridley actually has 2 articles in the book, and one of those is an excerpt from Genome (another great book).

670. The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing

Comment #144443 by Sargeist on March 16, 2008 at 5:00 am

There also appears to be a peculiar, stunted "from" problem in a couple of places.

671. The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing

Comment #144314 by Sargeist on March 15, 2008 at 3:27 pm

Although I quite like the typeface [:P] I remember from browsing through the book this morning that Dawkins' introductory parts are in an entirely different font from the reproduced articles themselves.

Whether these fonts are different from the one used in the intro, I'm afraid I do not remember.

672. The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing

Comment #144299 by Sargeist on March 15, 2008 at 3:00 pm

I feel the same. I've been back to Amazon and looked again at the intro pdf. Hyphens all over the bloody place!

Still, the typeface is nice...

673. The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing

Comment #144274 by Sargeist on March 15, 2008 at 2:21 pm

I'm ashamed to say that I only knew of this book when I saw the image of it appear in the right hand side of the web page. I don't know how long it has been there, but I only noticed it yesterday. Then nipped off to Amazon for a quick peek, and then looked for it in one of those "real shop" things in town today.

Being a bibliophile, I like nice thick books with lovely paper, and a nice typeface, often even before I consider what's actually printed in them!

674. The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing

Comment #144268 by Sargeist on March 15, 2008 at 2:08 pm

If you go to the Amazon page for the book, you can read the page-and-a-bit introduction and see the list of titles and authors.

I saw this book in Waterstone's today, and it really does look great, even though I already have quite a few of the books from which extracts are taken.

Just need to work out when to nip out of work to buy it on Monday!

675. Fleabytes

Comment #143887 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 2:50 pm

Steve,

Well, seeing as stem-cell research is now a mortal sin, we might be able to look forward to millions of catholics becoming apostates in order to get treatment. Yay!

676. Fleabytes

Comment #143879 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 2:37 pm

All the god stuff is quite sickening really. When talking to people who are overtly religious I find myself almost unable to disguise my contempt for them. It is quite bad, I admit, but I really do end up feeling superior.

I know that everyone behaves irrationally to some extent, but to actually believe that, e.g., floods occur to punish people for homosexual behaviour; or that a priest in Indonesia made the sign of the cross on a beach and made the approaching tsunami subside; or that a landslide killed a wedding party held by a man who had slandered the mother of god; etc etc etc (all of which I have had people tell me) is so far beyond any form of sense that the mind almost has to shut down entirely to be able to think into the same section of "reality".

677. Fleabytes

Comment #143873 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 2:27 pm

Reminds me of the old joke about KFC.

*ahem*

I'm worried about trusting god with my finances, though. There he is, existing outside of time, looking at the FTSE100 at the wrong point, investing my bloody money. Damn him.

678. Fleabytes

Comment #143869 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 2:22 pm

From that quiverful site:

Here is a thought. My dad was #7 in his family. If my grandparents decided not to have more kids after #2 or 3, I wouldn't be here, our kids wouldn't be here. Who are we to choose? If we trust God with our finances, with our very SALVATION, how can we not trust Him with our fertility. He knows the very number of hairs on our head. What box are we putting Him into. He is big enough to create the entire universe, but not big enough to give this to.

679. Fleabytes

Comment #143849 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 2:00 pm

Hmm, well.... I am quite fond of ninjas, so maybe that would be ok.

I remember reading some time ago that it is pretty universal that when women gain some kind of control over whether they have to conceive, birth rates always drop, families become smaller, and women generally get a better life. By which I mean that they are happier, which is what I'm going to take as an objective definition of "better life".

I don't see how anyone could really argue with wanting this to come about. Even my, earlier presented, mild qualms about abortion don't come into it: the mere prevention of fertilisation can lead to such a better world for so many people. It saddens me that the Catholic church has such a hold over people.

680. Fleabytes

Comment #143838 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 1:47 pm

If you've got to eradicate poverty, then isn't it pretty certain that this comes from permitting contraception, which lead to women having control over their reproduction, allowing them to become better educated, which leads to greater wealth and happiness?

Bloody bloody stupid. It's enough to make one weep.

681. Fleabytes

Comment #143833 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 1:38 pm

Quetz has hit the nail on the head (meaning: I agree). Ludicrously, it was only when I was reading Sam Harris's "Letter" where he mentions (I'm doing this from memory) that Christians who advocate abstinence-only sex education etc aren't really interested in saving lives that it all suddenly came home to me. I mean, it is entirely obvious, but I'd just never realised it so clearly. The Catholic Church doesn't *really* care about people on this earth at all. They don't actually *want* to save people's lives, give them happiness, make them feel better in the here and now.

Of course, they are, I suppose, being consistent with their belief in an infinitely long life to come, but in that case, why bother claiming that you want to, say, eradicate poverty? Why all this emphasis on charity and good deeds? Do they want to help? Make the world a better place? Then why go around knowing that billions of idiots will slavishly follow your edicts and spout utter rubbish?

Rargh!

682. Fleabytes

Comment #143665 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 9:42 am

Dammit! I wrote some fabulous post all about the glory that is Lemmy and Motorhead, and finished off with some highly cogent stuff about black metal being the most sublime musical form that there is, and the bloody comment disappeared!

Grr. Anyway, I agree: motorhead = sex.

Black metal = Even more sex

Devil horns ahoy!

683. Fleabytes

Comment #143590 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 8:18 am

MPhil,

Hmm, I see what you mean. I think that what I am trying to get at is that I am thinking of words as just a means to get ideas across, and if the ideas are just "where's my food?", "don't steal my woman" and "can I eat your fleas?" then I was hoping these would still count as words in some sense.

But I realise I am just wildly opining, here. I may have lost the thread of this thread!

684. Fleabytes

Comment #143570 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 7:57 am

I'm with Steve on this one, although I have no formal education in philosophy (caveats ahoy!)

Although, when you said:

Chimps negotiate. They offer things to each other. They play. They warn. All without words.

685. Fleabytes

Comment #143542 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 7:37 am

Thanks, MPhil. I find that your posts require me to pay attention, so I will try to read them more thoroughly tonight!

al-rawandi: Last time I checked the PM it was some moody looking bloke who used to be chancellor (boom boom etc)

686. Fleabytes

Comment #143525 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 7:25 am

My girlfriend is (nominally) Muslim, in the sense that that would be the caption underneath her picture in the Dawkins' Nativity Photo thought-experiment. Although I was quite heartened to find, after I'd lost my heart to her, that she was often punished at her Islamic school for "being disruptive" (i.e. asking questions they didn't like). She believes in god, I can't understand why, but she seems to hate all the things about religion and religious people that I hate, so it has caused no real trouble so far.

With the exception of all that shite going on with her family, who would probably like to have me shot. Ho hum. I hate religion because I not only think its claims are untrue, but people seem to take the most absurd and hurtful attitudes because of it.

687. Fleabytes

Comment #143514 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 7:16 am

Looking back at my comments today, I tend to use a lot of:

"brings to mind"
"seem to recall"
"reminds me of"


I quite like "it seems to me", but I often overuse "to me, personally", as if people would assume I was declaiming THE TRUTH if I didn't qualify it enough. But I can quite often be very dogmatic. Usually when boring my girlfriend with talk of stupid religious people.

688. Fleabytes

Comment #143505 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 7:00 am

Ah, sorry Steve! It has been such a long time since my physics education, so I was worried that I'd got it all wrong.

But, in any case, my analogy might be a little flawed.

MPhil: Thanks for the refs, I shall try to look at them.

This brings to mind the Chinese room thingy that I remember reading about. I can't remember who came up with it. But I could never understand what the problem with it was: if you have a book of rules that tells you what to do when you receive certain inputs, then that, to me, *is* all that our brains are doing when we do, well, anything. It seemed to me to be a bit of a cheat that the guy in the room with his cards of Chinese translations was an actual person, with therefore a brain that wasn't being described by the thought experiment.

I'm rambling again... maybe a philosopher could pick up on this?

689. Fleabytes

Comment #143498 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 6:53 am

Tyler: I can't believe I didn't expect that!

690. Fleabytes

Comment #143495 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 6:51 am

Steve,

Phonons are to do with vibrations in matter. You can get individual photon "particles" - quanta of vibrations that act very much like the familiar particles of matter - electrons, protons and so on)

691. Fleabytes

Comment #143489 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 6:46 am

It seems to me that we tend to assume that other humans think like we do and experience things like we do, just because they look like we do. I don't think I really have any more evidence that my girlfriend is in pain when she makes "painy noises" than a dog is when it does the same.

692. Fleabytes

Comment #143484 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 6:41 am

Steve,

Having read the 4 Space Odyssey books recently, I am reminded of how ACC gets around having to explain how HAL could be conscious: it turns out that, as you mention, intelligence and self-awareness simply "pop out" when the complexity is right. I sincerely hope that this is true, cos it would be "cool".

Whenever I read about how, supposedly, neurons cannot lead to consciousness because one could take the brain apart and not find a small bit of "mind" in there, I think of phonons. Phonons exist, but take a solid apart into its constituent atoms and, pow!, where have those damned phonons gone?! Clearly they cannot have existed in the first place!

693. Fleabytes

Comment #143468 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 6:21 am

irate:

If I had some coffee handy, I would fill my keyboard up with it in your honour!

694. Fleabytes

Comment #143467 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 6:20 am

I used to have a pretty long foresty walk to my old workplace, and in the summer I would get fascinated by the really HUGE ants that made nice little trails along one of the paths I would cross. And I would always try very hard not to tread on them. Somehow it just seemed really wrong not to care if I killed some when I could avoid doing so.

This now seems a little silly, because I just had some nice ham sandwiches, and am rather partial to a nice big burger. Yum. Perhaps ethics are just what most people feel comfortable with at a particular time. Reading Stephen Baxter's "Time's Tapestry" books lately, there were some rather graphic depictions of what the Norsemen would do to people. If it were obviously "wrong", wouldn't they all have felt so guilty after the first time, that they wouldn't be able to rape/pillage again?

These sorts of ideas bother me.

695. Fleabytes

Comment #143464 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 6:15 am

I am now concerned about why I am not a vegetarian. Damn! If only we could just artificially grow the meat without the brain.

Hungarian:

You reminded me of an old Twilight zone episode where a man and his dog were walking down the road to heaven, being tempted through a particular gate, but the man chose not to enter (what turned out to be hell) because his dog wasn't allowed in. But, it turned out, dogs were welcome in heaven.

Isn't TV much nicer than reality? :)

696. Fleabytes

Comment #143457 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 6:06 am

Hi Sharon,

Yeah, sorry, I was getting into the old "what-ifs" again. The law in the UK is probably still 24 weeks, which I tend to think is a bit long, being 4 months or so. But, you're right, in my reading of various blogs and articles about this sort of thing, I've not seen anyone trying to say "we want the right to abort all the way up to when the labour starts", and so I was bashing around with an implausible hypothetical.

And I do know, anyway, that one *can* abort all the way up to birth if the mother's life is in danger. And that seems perfectly sensible to me.

And the Irish case recently of the young girl pregnant with a baby that had no brain made me almost weep with anger. I could not understand even the theistic reasoning behind not letting her abort a clearly non-viable, non-living object.

gah!

697. Fleabytes

Comment #143449 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 5:53 am

Bonzai,

I agree entirely. I am often just one of those annoying types who likes to ramble around in the mire of ethical "what-ifs" just for the fun of it. While at the same time often being accused of being quite black and white. Ho hum.

Steve,

I recall reading that Peter Singer once made the point that some retarded humans could consistently be regarded as having fewer "rights" than some great apes. I've not read any Singer at first-hand though, so this is all reported speech, as it were.

I am a supporter of the idea that the Great Apes should be protected, though. But, then, I tend to agonise about my girlfriend keeping goldfish in a tank that is, apparently, of a perfectly good size for them. Still kind of makes me uneasy at times though. And I'm not even a vegetarian! Bah, I am a conflicted mess.

698. Fleabytes

Comment #143446 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 5:48 am

Steve,

I was recently looking at some of the sample questions from the UK citizenship test, on behalf of my beloved, and there was a question in there about when all people (both sexes, over 18) got the vote, and I was horrified both to get the answer wrong and to find out how recently it had happened.

I'll bugger off now and stop trying to change the topic...

699. Fleabytes

Comment #143441 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 5:46 am

Maybe, in the end, it all comes down to a kind of instinct? The discussion in TGD about the different types of moral dilemma (about train tracks and people in the way etc) and people's reactions to them rather shows that ethics are, to some extent, built-in. We think certain things are wrong "just because we do". So, perhaps my (slightly woolly) views on permitting abortion up to a certain time limit (with exceptions for mother's health etc) is just pretty much the same as the prevailing one because of instinct.

Does this make ethics pointless? Maybe one day we will be able to read the brain and find out why we think all these things. And then maybe get some mental Tippex to change our instincts...

700. Fleabytes

Comment #143439 by Sargeist on March 14, 2008 at 5:43 am

The idea about being able to develop into a person is an interesting one. Not something I had really thought about before. It would bring up the interesting prospect of future technology being able to carry out in some mechanical way, all the steps in the full gestation period. Which would suggest that abortion would always be wrong, since the fertilised egg would always be able to become a person.

But, by then, we'd probably have much better ways of preventing pregnancy anyway, so perhaps none of these things would crop up.

I kind of hesitate to say this, because I am male and on shaky ground with some people when it comes to this topic, but I don't agree with Sharon's position. Only because I can't see that the *current* views on the autonomy of an individual are necessarily obvious and absolute truth. I don't remember the proper word for this sort of philosophical point, sorry.

However, clodhopper's point about how abortions still will go on even if they were banned is a reasonable one. But it always makes me think "well, people will always steal things, so maybe we should just let them". Which I know must be a poor analogy, but it bothers me that I can't always see quite why it is...