Mother Accused of Slitting Baby's Throat (feminist professor - expostfacto abortion)

Fox News ^

[RockChucker]

She's a feminist. I am sure her beliefs about babies made the dirty deed a little easier.

[Tabi Katz]

She was obviously in favor of choice (to kill); freedom (from responsibility); and rights (to do whatever she pleased with her own body, even if it was using it to pick up a knife and decapitate her own infant). Anyone surprised she was a feminist?

[cajungirl]

Yep to both of you. This is sad and sadder still is the mob. I usually avoid these threads for this reason.

[music_code]

Says who? Well, how about everything you see around you in nature, for starters. Or how about the human eye? Or a DNA molecule? Ever hear of irreducible complexity? How about the sun, 93 million miles away? Any closer and we'd all either burn up or drown from the melting of the polar ice caps...any further away, we'd freeze to death.

As I'm sure you can guess, my point is that the complexity in the world around us testifies to the presence and the intelligence of a Creator. Design requires a Designer.

[A_perfect_lady]

Nonsense. All you're saying is, "Gee, this world is so complicated, a big smart ghost in the sky MUST have made it because I can't think of any other explanation." It's hardly an explanation to say, in essence, "Well, it's here, so someone must have put it here." If everything that exists must have been made by someone, then "god" must have been made by someone. Perhaps another god? And who made that god? Oh, another god, I guess, it's all so complex it must be so cause I can't think of any other explanation." It's pointless to go on with this, you have accepted the silliest possible stance and are determined to believe it.

[moodyskeptic]

you wrote

"This thread is reason 4927 why I never tell anyone about Free Republic."

You need better friends, ones with a backbone. How could anyone living in America (and presumably watching TV ) be shocked by anything on Free Republic? Freepers react to sickness with humor, and those who accept sickness should be open to humor.

Coby, Chandra Levy, Clinton, Sex in the City, JackA**, these things are mainstream entertainment. Accepted as current event fodder.

[music_code]

Do you really imagine that you have just stopped the discussion cold by asking the MOAQ (Mother of all questions) - 'who made God'? Let me ask you a question.

Does space have an end? Obviously, it doesn’t. If there is a brick wall with "The End" written on it, the question arises, "What is behind the brick wall?" Strain the mind though it may, we have to believe (have faith) that space has no beginning and no end. The same applies with God. He has no beginning and no end. He is eternal. The Bible also informs us that time is a dimension that God created, into which man was subjected. It even tells us that one day time will no longer exist. That will be called "eternity." God Himself dwells outside of the dimension He created (2 Timothy 1:9, Titus 1:2). He dwells in eternity and is not subject to time. God spoke history before it came into being. He can move through time as a man flips through a history book. Because we live in the dimension of time, logic and reason demand that everything must have a beginning and an end. We can understand the concept of God’s eternal nature the same way we understand the concept of space having no beginning and end — by faith. We simply have to believe they are so, even though such thoughts put a strain on our distinctly insufficient cerebrums.

[A_perfect_lady]

No matter how you put it, you are describing something that does not exist. You want to believe there was a consciousness before an existence, and you ignore that a consciousness would have nothing to be conscious OF without existence. If it is conscious of itself, then itself must have an existence, which still shows that existence precedes consciousness.

I have no expectation that you will have understood anything I just said. So I will continue to deal with the real world. You do as you please. I'm going to let you have the last word because it's obvious that you are the type who just HAS to have it. So have it. I'm tired of this equivalent of arguing with a 4 year old about Santa Claus.

[music_code]

No matter how you put it, you are describing something that does not exist.

Before you have even begun to make a point, you have opened with a premise that is not yours to claim, and is therefore invalid. You keep doing this. You cannot, I repeat, YOU CANNOT make the claim that God doesn't exist. Only a being with all knowledge would have the authority to make such a claim. Creatures like you and I do not even know one-millionth of one percent of all the knowledge in the universe. Given that truth, isn't it at least possible that somewhere in the remaining 99+ percent of knowledge out there, that there MIGHT be some rather irrefutable evidence for God's existence? If you are intellectually honest, you have to allow for that possibility.

You want to believe there was a consciousness before an existence, and you ignore that a consciousness would have nothing to be conscious OF without existence. If it is conscious of itself, then itself must have an existence, which still shows that existence precedes consciousness.

Everything you have said here applies to created beings like you and me. It is what you might call "creature logic". It is good as far as it goes, but it can't be applied to the Creator, who is necessarily of a higher order than the creature.

I have no expectation that you will have understood anything I just said. So I will continue to deal with the real world. You do as you please.

I'm sorry, but it is you who do not know what you are talking about. You certainly are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not thereby free to create your own facts. The nature of reality is such that it functions without any regard for man's opinions, right or wrong.

As for your ad hominem...so typical. Back an atheist into a corner with logic -- she responds with a personal insult.

[A_perfect_lady]

You can't even define "God." As soon as you try you come up with internal contradictions. That's why it can't exist. The very definition is impossible. Get it?

[music_code]

You can't even define "God." As soon as you try you come up with internal contradictions. That's why it can't exist. The very definition is impossible. Get it?

I don't have to define God. He has done that for Himself. What you're really saying is that the nature of God's essence goes beyond the limits of logic as we know them in our minds. Since you refuse to acknowledge the possibility that God might be wiser than you are, you dismiss Him with your pretended logical dilemma.

[r9etb]

Didn't you just issue an opus?

[Curt Monash]

It so happens that the father of the baby was my roomate one year in graduate school, and I just heard of the tragedy, so I'm poking around looking for info before contacting him. And I run across this filth.

I haven't read the whole thread, so I don't know whether you're aware of the following, but:

1. The mother killed herself after killing the baby (and tried to kill herself unsuccessfully before succeeding).
2. The baby's ancestry was 1/4 Turkish, 1/4 Finnish (or something similar), and 1/2 Israeli. Knee-jerk religious prejudices are NOT applicable here.

I also see that the thread eventually degenerated into something resembling the Modal Ontological Argument for the existence of God, only less coherent. Well, that argument is IMO bunk. And even if it weren't bunk, it wouldn't prove the existence of anything resembling any one of the many rival conceptions of God espoused by fundamentalist believers in the Old Testament, New Testament, Koran, or Book of Mormon.

[Curt Monash]

Re: Well, this woman was doomed by her own politics. You can't care about women's lives and immerse yourself in Islamic culture without being plunged into depression. You can't publish anything on either topic without being a lefty (or faking it well). You can't be a lefty these days without hating the US, so here you have someone who must embrace a vicious culture that victimizes women, hate a culture that empowers them, and make herself believe that she's holding a defensible position. This is a recipe for depression and madness.

Sorry, but that's nonsense. I have plenty of unambiguously liberal and feminist friends who love this country.

They may criticize it from time to time, but that doesn't mean they don't love it.

This includes at least one top scholar on Turkish affairs (whose work is very popular in the current Administration).

[Curt Monash]

Re: Because neither theism nor atheism is what endangers us. Marxism and Islam are.

Well, I agree about Marxism. As for Islam, check out what Erdogan has to say. He's the Prime Minister of Turkey; I happen to have heard him talk Friday. He's a pious Moslem, but if all Moslems believed as he did, Islam wouldn't be a threat to us at all. And I'm nearly confident he speaks sincerely on the point.

Most evil in the history of the world has been done by Christians, who have often done it in the name of Christianity. But that doesn't make Christianity or Christians inherently evil; perhaps the reason is just that, with the great success of European culture and its American offshoot, most power in the history of the world has been held by Christians. (The world is a lot bigger place than it was in the millenia before Christians held most of the power, so I think my claims are correct.)

The same goes for Islam. Much evil has been done by Moslems, and for ostensible or genuine religious reasons, but that doesn't make the whole religion inherently evil.

Unless, of course, you think ALL dogmatic and missionary religions are evil, which is a view I'm sometimes sympathetic to ...

[It's me]

Most evil in the history of the world has been done by Christians,

---

Really? Think: Stalin. He was no Christian.

[dennisw]

What the heck is this woman doing killing her baby. It's known as M U R D E R !!! What excuses are you making for this murderess??

[Curt Monash]

A woman murdered the child of one of my oldest friends. No, I'm not making excuses for her action.

I'm merely disagreeing with certain nonsense -- some of it vile nonsense -- I happen to have run across in this thread.

[Curt Monash]

Notwithstanding Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Mongols, the long-running Islamic empires, and others, I think Christians still get the evil-doing prize. This is principally because Christians get the power prize, and the greatest evil is typically done by the powerful.

Also, I look very harshly upon those who destroy knowledge and art, such as the Christians who destroyed the records of the various American cultures, the Moslems who burned the Library of Alexandria, et al.

[R. Scott]

(feminist professor - expostfacto abortion)

I think the proper term would be “postnatal abortion”.

[Curt Monash]

As for the atheism debate:

The reason atheists care whether or not there is a God is because theists claim (in many cases credibly) that their belief in whichever God they happen to believe in drives large portions of their behavior, including behavior which affects the rest of us.

I really don't like the idea that what I do in my own bedroom should be controlled on the basis of a 2000 year old mistranslated set of barely coherent books of what at best are opinion columns and at worst are deliberately dishonest propaganda.

If I wanted to live my life according to the dictates of often well-written essays -- which I don't -- I might prefer Ellen Goodman's or, to pick more conservative options, Gary Becker's and George Will's.

I don't actually have an opinion as to whether some kind of God or other exists. I just don't believe that the God people talk a lot about exists or that, if he did, he would be worthy of worship.