Growing in the Womb | Through the Wormhole
Yeah, yeah...I know. This is science channel, not remotely mystical. What we actually know matters when we derive postilion. Questioning our premise from time to time is necessary to validate our stances and not a bad thing.
This is not an attack on Objectivism. This is actual information, should anyone be interested enough to watch it. Its 2:54.
This is not an attack on Objectivism. This is actual information, should anyone be interested enough to watch it. Its 2:54.
We'll never reach agreement on this issue, So as someone on the site suggested to me, let's sit down around a campfire, enjoy a drink (or more) and the conversation.
In that context, rights are a societal construct used to define the responsibilities an individual can keep. Only in a society does an Objectivist need rights, just like everyone else. It's the only reason why an Objectivist needs a Constitution.
You're swinging at windmills, again—most of your criticisms have been of ideas that are not Objectivist or Ayn Rand's. In fairness, at least convey an understanding of the Objectivist ideas you disagree with, or discussion comes to an end.
As for calloused, it wouldn't matter much how I said it or even if I asked it in Ask the Gulch, there would be those going for my throat.
I wasn't in any way being sarcastic in anything I wrote. I just approach things in a different way.
No more on the subject from me.
I posted this because it was a secular reminder about when life began. I thought it did a fine, but brief, job of inserting reason into the process of life.
For those who are serious about understanding Ayn Rand's philosophy, which Ashinoff contemptuously admits "I am not sure I even want to", the video is an elementary summary of basic biology known for a very long long time. It summarizes the development of a human embryo from fertilization of an egg through the development of the fetus as a potential person before birth. It says that the genetic structure contains "all the information needed to create a human being", which everyone has known for a very long time. It does not support Ashinoff's ongoing anti-abortion, anti-Ayn Rand campaign.
The well known development of the fetus from living cells with a genetic structure is based on science. The attribution of a "right to be born" to a fetus is religious thinking based on feelings, not science. The anti-abortion campaign typically package-deals them as it screams over and over, "look, look, living cells, it's life; don't you dare not have a child or you are irresponsible; 'science' makes you do it". Genetic "information needed to create a human being" and the developing fetus as a potential human being are not a person with rights. "Human" cell and "human" fetus do not mean "human person".
There is no "responsibility and accountability", i.e., unchosen duty as a mandate, for a woman to give birth to a child she does not want. That is an authoritarian religious injunction violating the rights of the woman to her own body. The "science video" does not address the anti-abortionist mandate and does not support it.
This does not, obviously, mean Ayn Rand "opposed individual responsibility and accountability". Evidently Ashinoff does oppose it -- for himself -- as he snidely tries to pretend that this was not another attack on Ayn Rand with sarcastic insinuations and sweeping generalizations posing as merely promoting "science" as a means of "questioning" unmentioned "premises". It is not innocent, all of this has been explained to him many times.