Christian v. Atheist Debate: Peter Hitchens Slams Abortion

[beardedcollie39]

11:20 - 11:30 is hilarious

[billingtonmarc25]

From about 5:25 on Adam is really condescending to Peter.

[Thomist87]

even if a "fetus" is not quote on quote a human being why do we assume that therefore we have the right to "abort" it?

[TheCcrack]

since when was killing humans a bad thing? its human nature to kill one another

[Travis1365]

This guy Rutherford is a scientist, God help us. It is was too easy for Peter Hitchens, his opponent is entirely brainless. That said, regardless of his intellect, his position is one which no man, even those who are more intellegent than him (which I suspect is most men), could ever hope to rationally prove.

[erinl400]

ah i hate agreeing with peter hitchens

[JasonPMartin]

I am an atheist and I oppose abortion. I also believe the best form of contraception is abstinence. No deities no agenda just simple common sense.

[MrHaze56]

does anybody else notice the pic ture? that automatically makes the vid propaganda for proliferation

[mgigkgeg]

he sounds like his brother so much

[billingtonmarc25]

You always hard pressed to beat Peter Hitchens in a debate.

[historypoliticsbb]

Every single one of us commenting on this video was once a Zygote, a single cell human being.

The idea that my mother had the right to murder me on demand before I was 24 weeks old is quite disturbing.

Anyone born in the UK since 1967 is lucky to be alive.

[Ofinfinitejest]

@historypoliticsbb It's of no value to say we were each once a zygote; we were each once a set of random molecules as well. When you talk about your mother potentially "murdering" you, you are attempting to falsely tilt the debate through using the wrong term. Murder is taken to be the killing of a conscious being. You do kill human life when you remove a cancerous tumor, but we don't call that murder. Again, face the fact: what we value is conscious life, not merely human life.

[sooperfukker]

@Ofinfinitejest I think what you said was once said before by a man with the name Josef Mengele, when he was asked how he justified the killing of mentally disabled people as a doctor and medical researcher in concentration camps under Adolf Hitler and his Nazis.

[Ofinfinitejest]

@sooperfukker You have simply repeated the same mistake yet again. A mentally disabled person is still conscious. A fetus prior to 24 weeks has not even formed the neuronal connections to begin to have consciousness, which again, is what we identify as of value. A soldier with his brain blown out or a baby born anencephalic (with no brain) are both not kept alive on life support, because even though there is life there is no consciousness.

[sooperfukker]

@Ofinfinitejest You're juggling with a term which itself is much too soft to deliver any precise information.

- When seeing consciousness as the ability to recognise inner and outer circumstances, then it would occur between age 1 and 3 of the born baby.

- When seeing consciousness as the ability to transport information between nerve cells by neurotransmitters, then the earliest point would be week 20 of the development, but latest at week 30.

[cont]

[sooperfukker]

@Ofinfinitejest [cont] And now you want to poop along and manually set a date; by which knowledge, standard or justification?

And other funny questions arise:

If a fetus is not a "real human", anyone could go and kill it within the mother's womb, right? I mean, it's just a clump of cells, not worthy of protection.

And what about coma patients ? They're wasting bed space and electricity, so anyone could go unpunished after "not"-killing this "non-real non-human".

[sooperfukker]

@Ofinfinitejest [last] The truth:

The same way you pull your standards out of your *ss, so will other people at any given time. But with different agendas.

Personally, I have a very deeply rooted wish to eliminate certain sorts of people, maybe I could find a clever argumentation, come up with a nice term to declare them as not worthy of life or as not human - and we're good to go.

My first candidates would be abortion doctors, let's call them "baby killers". That sounds good.

[Ofinfinitejest]

@sooperfukker The difference in our positions is that yours is irrational--not based on any objective standard that different people looking at the same evidence could agree on, whereas my position is based on evidence (the incapacity of the brain at a certain point in development to yet have consciousness). My position could be (and is) agreed on by evidence, not appeal to irrational dogma which has no objective support. Some of what you write is irrelevant and nonsensical.

[sooperfukker]

@Ofinfinitejest Nagger, please. Ignorance is no card blanche for talking smack.

1) There is no consensus on that question. This issue has been vibrant since the 60s and is unresolved. The legal status quo doesn't make the problem go away.

2) You need to prove that "the point where consciousness arises" is a valid point to tell "life from no life".

But better than that: You would have to prove it in every single CASE, because generalisations are not valid in criminal courts.

[sooperfukker]

@Ofinfinitejest

You think "consciousness" is a distinguishing mark between "life and no life".

Let's see how you answer these questions...

(1) A coma patient or a "brain dead" patient has no form of consciousness we know of.

Is this patient dead or alive ?

(2) Most lower animals have no consciousness. Are they dead or alive ?

Your "objective standard" isn't objective at all. It's an unsystematic approach, a special arrangement which is only there to fit your needs, it's crap.

[historypoliticsbb]

@sooperfukker Good stuff, you the case excellently.

Unfortunately most people have been so brainwashed by New Age philosophy and Aleister Crowley/Alice Bailey type thinking that they can not see that killing an innocent human being is wrong. They've been taught abortion is good since childhood, so it's difficult to change their minds.

[Ofinfinitejest]

@sooperfukker Now you make the mistake of falsely claiming the issue is life or death, and again you are in a cowardly way running away from points I've made. The reason you do this is because you have no response to actual issues. All you have is irrational dogma which is not supported in any way by reality. A cancerous tumor is also "human life" so life is not all we care about. We know when the brain is not yet capable of being conscious. Stop running away from the issues.

[sooperfukker]

@Ofinfinitejest

It is a question of human life : Yes or No. Either it is alive or it isn't.

You have nothing to say on that, because you know you'd have to admit it's alive.

The leftist strategy is then to attack the term "human", just like the Nazis did back then. ~It maybe life, but it certainly isn't human, that's why we can kill it~

Sperm + egg = Conception = Growth of human baby.

That's how nature makes humans and there is no honest detour around this simple truth.

[sooperfukker]

@Ofinfinitejest Your only chance in this farce is to shift categories.

Suddenly the Nazi-grammer changes to "a clump of cells", a "non-person"... What a despicable rhetorical tactic ...Shall we play that game ?

What are you then ?

You are certainly a clump of cells, all elements in your body worth around 1 USD. And if you can introduce alien categories, so can I. In my book, you're a careless, unintelligent babbler, clearly underdeveloped and therefor not a "real human".

[sooperfukker]

@Ofinfinitejest If you want to base your conclusions on your own standards, so can I. Since I concluded that you're not a "real human", you are fair game. And it would be better for us all to kill you, because you waste "real human's" oxygen.

BTW: According to your idiotic views, I could kick a pregnant woman in the stomach and if she loses that "clump of cells", so what? Nothing lost, no crime commited, because it was never "human" ...

Away with you, you deceitful misanthrope!

[Ofinfinitejest]

@sooperfukker Again, you are avoiding what I post. It's not "my" standards, it's objective knowledge about when a developing brain can even form conscious thought. If you kick a pregnant woman you're guilty of assault; if the fetus is past 24 weeks you should be guilty of murder. Your opinion is based on irrational dogma--that's what causes your angry childish insults, and perhaps your spelling errors. Respond to the actual issues or continue to look cowardly; it's your choice.

[sooperfukker]

@Ofinfinitejest You are such a -blah-, such an ugly shapeshifting moral relativist. You have run in large circles to avoid the conclusion that you don't have a single point.

A few sentences ago, it was about "being human", before that it was about "life" and now that you've got your ass drummed for your bullshit, now it's suddenly about "consciousness", again , a soft term with plenty of room for ill minded manipulative talks.

What a beautifully drawn circle of stupidity.

[sooperfukker]

@Ofinfinitejest

For all your non-arguments about "consciousness" getting debunked, check the comment log, it has all been done 2 weeks ago. I'm tired of you. You have failed.

From now on, I will charge you 1$ for every single word you direct at me and expect an answer to. My time is too precious to be wasted on moronic social Darwinists.

[Ofinfinitejest]

@sooperfukker You continue to run away from the issues, to use moronic insults, and to become so angry that you make yourself look foolish with bad grammar and botched phrases like "Ignorance is no card blanche," The irony of that one is superb. Now you've taken to lying about what I said, which can be found below. I didn't make the mistake of conflating life with consciousness, YOU did.  We need objective standards to decide these issues, not irrational dogma.

[sooperfukker]

@Ofinfinitejest I have every right to be upset. You keep on making the same mistake.

Not only did you introduce several different criteria to tell "legally protected" from "fair game", but you switched between them whenever I showed to you that a particular criterion is unfit to deliver satisfying overall results.

Your problem is that you have a pre-defined goal, but the criteria you have to apply to achieve them, will deliver unjust results when applied systematically.

[kzearo]

I am terrified for the future because of people like 'Ofinitejest'.

He really believes that with this chimera called "science" we can brush aside our juvenile world of human concepts and start basing our dealings on proper "objectivity" instead, like adults.

But "science" helps us achieve our ends sir, it doesn't nothing to inform them. How could we ever know where we want to go stripped of our poky human concepts?

We'll learn more about our condition from novels than we ever will from science.

[kzearo]

@kzearo

That should of course say "it does nothing to inform them".

With this space I'll say another thing.

To you it seems unthinkingly obvious that "science" is a commonsensical way to get behind the human world and shows us its "objective" workings.

But this is a mirage.

The fact is we can never get behind the human world, we're stuck here - forever.

This was the insight of Wittgenstein & others.

Plus, why would you *want* to get there? What will we do in our dehumanised Brave New World?

[happyhippymorgan]

@Aireysghost1 it's common sense. A foetus cannot be sentient or concious because it has no experience! You can't draw comparisons between worthiness of life of a foetus and of a person because the foetus only has the potential for life, it has no life in the way we as humans have it - through sense experience, concious thought, emotions... it is human only biologically. A foetus has a life in the way a tumour does - it feeds off the carrier to aid it's own growth

[happyhippymorgan]

@CettoTheCesco you can't grant the fetus rights based on it's potential to be capable of all the things that developed people do. A bbeing is defined by it's qualities, there is no escaping that. What is more ethical: forcing a woman (who is concious and sentient) to give birth regardless of the effects it may have on her emotional and physical wellbeing, or to abort a non-sentient, non-concious being who is human only by biology?

[Aireysghost1]

@happyhippymorgan And just who is qualified to decide at what stage a developing human being is sentient or conscious? or when a human being through injury, disease or defect is worthy of life? What if someone superior and more powerful than you were decide that you're not worthy of life,and could through persuasive reasoning justify a very very late abortion?

[Ofinfinitejest]

There are several mistakes Peter Hitchens makes here. One is the conflation of "human life" with a person, the second is a fetus with a person, and a third is with the killing of conscious human beings (as in the Holocaust) with killing of human life which is not yet conscious (as with a fetus), and a fourth is conflation is of a "baby" with a fertilized egg or a fetus. What we morally value is consciousness (the sense of self), and it fades into existence long after 24 weeks of gestation.

[TheBobmarleyfan1]

I am a young atheist and though everyone says god is real bitch, what proof do you have? Just think about it Christian's.... was "god" there the entire time?

[dunnsriver]

give me a break......a woman has a right to choose

[MrMedia34]

@dunnsriver Since when women want to have a miserable life after abortion?

[XSC3]

@dunnsriver based on what?

[Fleshious]

Well done, Peter.

[animefan2k9]

fetus is a baby

[MineCraftMrMoo]

im an atheist and i dont belive abortion is right unless u were raped and dont want the baby because of the level of mental harm

[kangtheconqueror]

Peter's contention that there is no circumstance that adoption would not be a preferable choice to abortion is an extremely valid point.

It's all very well to present (extreme) scenarios for example: rape, etc., but the fact of the matter is that they make up only a very small percentage of the total number of abortions.

The truth is that most abortions are done because it's 'not convenient' to continue with it.

Question: It's okay to kill a baby when...

Justify your answer. K

[TomFynn]

@kangtheconqueror Bullshit: "In contrast to the

perception (voiced by politicians and laypeople across the

ideological spectrum) that women who choose abortion

for reasons other than rape, incest and life endangerment

do so for “convenience,”13 our data suggest that after carefully

assessing their individual situations, women base their

decisions largely on their ability to maintain economic stability

and to care for the children they already have."

[kangtheconqueror]

@TomFynn Er, no... it's not b/s. It's fact. Over 97% of abortions are for 'social reasons' category 'C'. You can check out the statistics yourself on the Dept. of Health web site. K

[TomFynn]

@kangtheconqueror Exact link or it didn't happen.

[TomFynn]

@kangtheconqueror Quote taken from : Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2005, 37(3):110–118

[happyhippymorgan]

@CettoTheCesco a foetus is biologically human, of course it is. No human person becomes pregnant and gives birth to something that isn't a human, do they? But for as long as the foetus is inside the womb it isn't a person. A foetus does not have any experience. There is nothing immoral/inhumane about terminating a foetus, it will not be aware of it. A termination is a medical procedure, as is the removal of a tumour (which is also technically "alive", but nobody has a moral problem with that)

[CettoTheCesco]

@happyhippymorgan So what if it isn't able to socialise :S that's the next step of the human. It's still a human that would have been killed and not even given a chance to experience the external life. You are still terminating a human and i dont think you have the right to give a certain part of being a human such as socialising more value than the physical existing human as a whole. It's incoherent to give more value to a property rather then the existing being itself.

[happyhippymorgan]

@Raelatsu because as soon as the baby is outside of the womb other people can take care of and nurture the development of that child. You don't need to have a womb to bottle feed a baby or hold a baby do you? Time and commitment, money and emotional support are not resources provided only by the biological mother of a child.

[happyhippymorgan]

@Raelsatu 1) it is not a baby whilst it's in the womb, it is scientifically still a foetus 2) of course they get paid, an abortion is a medical procedure 3) Do not even dare to tell me what my own logic is. My argument was that the foetus is not biologically autonomous - it needs the mother's body to develop, and as long as it is in the mother's body, whether it has the potential to survive outside or not, she decides whether it can be there. Killing a living baby is a different moral issue.

[ladicius]

silly christians...

[KnightOwl2006]

We need more people like Peter Hitchens.

[Raelsatu]

Just finished listening to this, and it's pretty sad hearing the "atheist" point of view. It seems like most atheist stick by this idea that pro-life is a religious only stance and so you take the pro-choice stance by default..very illogical. Premarital sex and gay marriage are religious vs non-religious issues. Abortion is a matter of taking/giving life, and people like Adam Rutherford who so desperately cling to these non-factual justifications for killing a developed fetus...really disturbed.

[Voxnulla]

If the "beginning" of life if so important, then we'd need to protect every single celled life form out there. I suspect he's particular about human cells here. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the moments at which "humanity" are achieved, which are events that are tied to developments in the brain, is well after 6 months and possibly even after birth.

[CettoTheCesco]

@Voxnulla Why is when "humanity" is achieved you give them the value of the right to life? What happens to mentally ill people who don't have the same mental capacity of a normal human being? Can we kill them too?

[Voxnulla]

@CettoTheCesco The term humanity is a bit vague, but it is sort of a place holder for a material state of being where the brain "boots up". Alas a brain without experiences does not self reflect. Self awareness comes really late to the game. When the concept of "I" is activated you can finally speak of a human. Now certain higher mental capacities are developing before birth, but only in the last stage. Unable to properly quantify these processes the term 24 weeks is reasonable.

[Birdieupon]

in the tags section, put:

yt:crop=16:9

to fix the borders.

[MrShazoolo]

@Birdieupon Thanks! It worked. Wasn't aware of how to resolve that annoying problem until now. Have a few more vids on the other channel that need the same treatment.

[happyhippymorgan]

"Will grow until a human being" - BUT ISN'T, you can't grant a foetus rights based on it's potential to become a human being.

"Killing unborn babies" - FOETUSES, it is not a baby until it has been born which makes the entire point invalid

The point about abortions being carried out for convenience - how can you speculate on the motivations for "most women" to have an abortion?

This guy is infuriating.

[CettoTheCesco]

@happyhippymorgan Foetus is a human - it is just another part of the development in the life of a human lol or maybe being an old man isnt human .. its an old man...

[happyhippymorgan]

Seeing as Peter Hitchens doesn't have a vagina, or a womb, and even if he did that would be his womb and vagina to decide what to do with, how does he have the right to tell women what they should be doing with theirs?

[happyhippymorgan]

Abortion and murder aren't the same thing, therefore the justifying of abortion is not the same as the justifying of murder, and all of what Peter Hitchens says is extremely over sensationalized and offensive.

You cannot attribute human characteristics to a foetus, it is not an autonomous or concious being, it's existence is dependent upon the mother until it is born. Forcing a woman to give birth is against her human rights as an autonomous, concious being. Foetus' don't have those rights

[Raelsatu]

@happyhippymorgan If you kill a baby in the womb the day before it's born, it's considered legal and the doctor gets PAID. Let's say the day after it's born the mother becomes depressed, and during the night after listening to the baby scream, smothers it with a pillow. After all, it'll save her alot of time and commitment? Your logic is that any human being, physically, financially, or emotional dependent on another, can be killed at any point. And also, a developed fetus IS alive.

[ybra]

So bringing an unwanted child in to an overpopulated world is the moral thing to do?

I would understand the argument against abortion if you also is for contraceptives and good sexual education. But I find most Christians are against that too.