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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 216 responses total. |
brighn
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response 160 of 216:
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Oct 14 18:07 UTC 2000 |
Rane> In ANOTHER item, in a now dead thread, somebody other than me sggested
that there was evidence for the Afterlife. You and I discussed the nature of
spirituality, faith, and evidence, during which you asked me for evidence and
I responded by saying I don't have any that you would accept, and never did
I pretend that I had.
Your question: Provide scientific evidence for the souls survival after death.
My answer: I cannot.
In case you hadn't noticed, Rane, everyone else is getting on with their
lives.
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rcurl
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response 161 of 216:
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Oct 14 18:23 UTC 2000 |
You keep bringing it up. Why can't you let it go and move on?
Re #160: we kill some felons because they are an inconvenience. Eventually
more people will understand that since society makes the rules, it has
made rules allowing killing humans for a variety of reasons. The newest
ones appear to be abortions, simply because it is the mother's inherent
right up to a certain term of gestation, for any reason she wishes (new
rule #1), and medically supervised euthenasia (ala Oregon), because it
is an old, ill, person's inherent right (new rule #2).
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mary
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response 162 of 216:
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Oct 14 20:05 UTC 2000 |
Re: 159. There are inconveniences and then there are inconveniences.
Having a baby you don't want is getting up there on the scale.
But I do admire men who prize life to such a degree that they wouldn't
think of having sex unless they have made a conscious decision to make a
baby. They would have discussed this with the sperm receiver, at length,
and worked out a plan for both emotional and financial support through the
age of 18. If you are one of these guys, kudos. You can talk high
and moral about the holocaust of abortion.
If you squirt and run, well, you're part of the problem and
not very righteous afterall.
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jp2
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response 163 of 216:
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Oct 14 20:13 UTC 2000 |
This response has been erased.
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brighn
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response 164 of 216:
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Oct 14 20:14 UTC 2000 |
#161> You're accusing me of something I'm not doing, i.e., failing to answer
a question. And, to my perception, you're the one who keeps bringing it up.
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rcurl
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response 165 of 216:
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Oct 14 20:43 UTC 2000 |
Let's see, how can we both get the last word? It seems to be the willard
infection.
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mary
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response 166 of 216:
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Oct 15 01:27 UTC 2000 |
You have my permission, jp2, to kill your boss if he insists on
crawling into your abdomen and staying there for nine months.
You don't have to take that. Good thing, eh?
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russ
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response 167 of 216:
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Oct 15 02:11 UTC 2000 |
Unfortunately for Mary's appraisal (with which I concur, mostly)
there are issues which don't exist in the context of an individual
decision which arise when such techniques become widely used.
Case #1 of response 125 is one of these. If one yuppie couple
decides to select for a boy, it has no impact. But suppose that
several million yuppie couples do this? All of a sudden the
normal gender ratio of a cohort is skewed. Assuming that the
usual number of these extra boys are heterosexual, where are they
going to find mates 20 years ahead? They won't be there. India
and China are already seeing the spectre of this problem; there
are so many unwanted girls in China, adoption of Chinese girls
into America is a profit center for Beijing.
Maybe the yuppies should have to participate in a sex-selection
auction or something, where people who want a child of a particular
sex bid for the right to select and their payment goes to subsidize
someone willing to select for a child of the opposite sex. If you
have a market in sex-selection rights, the sex-ratio issue goes away.
(Making people pay for the priviledge of selecting is another issue.)
Cases 2 and 3 don't create any difference from a lack of conception
in the first place, and don't raise such issues.
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drew
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response 168 of 216:
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Oct 15 03:47 UTC 2000 |
My solution for the gender ratio problem is to teach the kids "share and share
alike". Get over the Exclusive Sex Fetish.
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mary
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response 169 of 216:
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Oct 15 12:22 UTC 2000 |
Folks can already select for sex, it's done all the time,
although mostly to avoid certain gender-specific genetic
diseases. But even when sperm is selected for artificial
donation a by-product of the preparation is more male
than female-making sperm.
Rane, do you think that within about a generation all
that fuss over boy children will not be so important when
young women become rare and valuable commodities?
I had heard that was already happening.
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brighn
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response 170 of 216:
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Oct 15 20:44 UTC 2000 |
Rane> you can have the last word. Say something to me, and I won't respond,
and then this whole thing can die its death. =}
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rcurl
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response 171 of 216:
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Oct 15 22:17 UTC 2000 |
Duh!
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flem
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response 172 of 216:
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Oct 16 13:19 UTC 2000 |
(Peeve: Why, when people feel the need to quote dictionary definitions to
support their point, do they almost invariably pick the American Heritage?
Does no one besides me find their definitions to be childishly naive,
oversimplified to the point of being actually deceptive, and frequently
irrelevent to the word being defined? Or is it perhaps some kind of American
supremacy thing?
Pet Peeve: Why do people feel that quoting a dictionary definition helps
support their point? I've yet to see it be effective as anything other than
a pure rhetorical device. )
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md
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response 173 of 216:
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Oct 16 13:57 UTC 2000 |
I agree. The only reason to quote from a dictionary is to make a joke,
and the only dictionaries an educated person would quote from are the
OED and Merriam-Webster.
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jp2
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response 174 of 216:
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Oct 16 14:26 UTC 2000 |
This response has been erased.
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jazz
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response 175 of 216:
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Oct 16 14:29 UTC 2000 |
I'll hit him for you, for free, even.
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jp2
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response 176 of 216:
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Oct 16 14:31 UTC 2000 |
This response has been erased.
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jazz
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response 177 of 216:
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Oct 16 14:32 UTC 2000 |
I meant you.
And I wouldn't hit anyone with the OED that Keats used to have.
Perhaps a cheap American Heritage.
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gull
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response 178 of 216:
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Oct 16 15:00 UTC 2000 |
Re #167: Well, it might help the population growth problem...
I usually use Merriam-Webster because it's freely accessable online. It's
not as good as the OED but it's cheaper.
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brighn
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response 179 of 216:
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Oct 16 16:25 UTC 2000 |
I quote from the dictionary when somebody questions my use of a term, if I've
said my use follows the dictionary definition. ;}
My dictionaries of choice:
Chambers or any major "College" dictionary for current definitions
OED for etymology
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russ
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response 180 of 216:
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Oct 18 01:46 UTC 2000 |
Re #169: Perhaps people using schemes which select for sex as
a byproduct should have to buy some fraction of a selection right,
depending on the probabalistic outcome of their procedure. Or
maybe the government should pay for it, as a public-health measure.
It's feasible to select sperm for either sex. There are fluorescent
dyes which mark DNA, and sperm can be sorted by the amount of DNA
they have (the X chromosome is bigger than the Y chromosome, so XX
sperm have more DNA than XY sperm). If you want to select, you can.
It's just a question of wanting to.
Lois McMaster Bujold has already seen the "precious girls" thing
coming, and written it into Barrayar. Thumbnail sketch: long
isolated, feudal, barely industrial planet is rediscovered by
galactic civilization and goes through some huge upheavals as a
result of the cultural shifts. One of the advances is the uterine
replicator. In "A Civil Campaign", the Koudelka family has four
girls, the first two naturally, the last two quite deliberately
by way of replicators. The mind-set of the parents was, with the
male-primogeniture emphasis of the culture (put into sharp relief
by another sub-plot) there was an oversupply of boys in the upper
classes, and *great* opportunities for girls.
Great book. Read at least some of the previous books in the series
before tackling it.
The real issue is, by the time a problem becomes obvious by the
unavailability of mates it's about a generation too late to do
anything about it. Thus my suggestion of a market in selection
rights for the here-and-now, to even things out before that happens.
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rcurl
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response 181 of 216:
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Oct 18 05:44 UTC 2000 |
Doesn't that fluorescent dye disable the sperm? After all, it it
coupling chemically to the DNA, which can't be much good for it.
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jep
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response 182 of 216:
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Oct 18 14:42 UTC 2000 |
re #180: James Blish did it, too, in "And All the Stars a Stage" (1974).
He describes families as generally choosing to "start out with a boy",
then in a generation women are in demand and in control of most of
society.
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polygon
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response 183 of 216:
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Oct 18 16:12 UTC 2000 |
Re 180. You mean, the X sperm (which create XX offspring), and the
Y sperm (which create XY offspring). XX or XY sperm would be abnormal.
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russ
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response 184 of 216:
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Oct 19 04:23 UTC 2000 |
Re #181: I doubt it, else it couldn't be used for sex selection.
Re #183: You are correct.
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