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Posted 2008-04-29, 01:53 PM in reply to Demosthenes's post starting "Right, but this thread isn't really..."
Parents being incapable or unwilling to raise a child is a completely different matter. There are plenty of people (perhaps most of the Earth's population?) who are WILLING and CAPABLE, but still do a shit job of it

The analogy isn't specious. For off-the-cuff attempts, it was clear enough, and you get the idea, you simply disagree with it. This isn't a debate as to which analogy is best. So far as your alternate gun analogy goes, how about walk through a danger zone with a gun every day, or just find a new home? If the issue is practicality, then finding a new home may not be an easily attainable option, but if your life and safety is the primary concern, I'm sure one could find a way.

"Sex is a natural, and essential part of the human condition. Enjoy it."
There are many things in life that are as natural and essential as sex, but all of them benefit from responsible moderation as well. Another fun analogy, heheh: Let's say peanut butter is your most favorite food of all, but you're dangerously allergic to it. Are you going to continue to eat it like a fool, spending a week in the hospital each time, or might you limit yourself, perhaps take some sort of allergy medicine, and get to enjoy good health AND good food?
Plain and simple, sex results in babies, so unless you are willing to take the risk, maybe you shouldn't be having it. I enjoy sex as much as most people, but abstinence isn't the worst thing in the world either. Many of us were unwillingly abstinent at some point in our lives anyhow, I'm sure And we survived! Life offers much more than the simple animal pleasures of sex, anyways. I don't understand how "no sex" is all that offending a thought.

Since you asked, yes, I would not kill a roach either. As it happens, I am a vegetarian, and while I'm aware that my very existence and living is at the cost of some sort of life or another, I feel it a good deed to try and, at the least, limit how may lives I willingly take. One of humanities greatest strengths is the power of our will.

Accepting textbook material isn't faith, but bible text is? Textbooks have little more standing in my eyes than works of fiction inspired by a person's observations. THAT is why I don't wholly accept what science offers me (for the record, I don't wholly accept for main-stream religion offers me, either). Science is based on measured and recorded observations, but observations are relative. Observations depend on one's perception, and perception is relative. For many things, every man and woman on Earth may share the same perception on an issue, but that STILL does not PROVE that observation.
The universe is large enough to essentially be considered infinite (without getting in to a discussion about the physical/observable universe and that of the void in which it resides). Anything that is infinite, or even so much greater in scale than we, can not be entirely observed by us. Sure, we can observe minute pieces of it, make some recordings and measurements, extrapolate some predictions, and compare these predictions to what happens later on, but that nonetheless does not prove anything, to me. All that we can conclude is that something APPEARS to work a certain way. We can not, and perhaps will never be able to, summarily define what IS the universe and reality, because due to our natural limitations, we can not perceive it all. For me, that is enough doubt for me to be skeptical about anything and everything. Sure, on the surface, I make it through each day assuming things are a certain way, but I never let myself make the presumption that I know or understand much of anything to be immutable and permanent and fact. Everything is and always will be a mystery to me, no matter how much any of us know about it all.

Your linked article was interesting, although I still disagree with you on an almost fundamental level, lol. Not that I think you're not smart and without valid points, and you do indeed seem very eloquent and good with grammar, especially. If anything, I would say that you seem to have closed your mind to the inherent mystery of existence, possibly even become somewhat self-affirming in your beliefs. Anyhow, I enjoy the discussion!
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krisvek is neither ape nor machine; has so far settled for the in-betweenkrisvek is neither ape nor machine; has so far settled for the in-between
 
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