Peter Hitchens debate – Show 15 May 2010

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by manicstreetpreacher on May 17, 2010 at 21:34

Permalink Reply by manicstreetpreacher on May 17, 2010 at 21:34

Sam Harris, from his lecture at Beyond Belief 2006, on the absurd reverence the religious have for the “souls” three-day-old fertilised human embryos that is preventing potentially life-saving stem cell research.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUwnMX8ht3U

Permalink Reply by manicstreetpreacher on May 17, 2010 at 21:35

The debate poor liddl’ Petee doesn’t want you to see.

Hitch Snr tears his baby brother a new one during their clash at The Hauenstein Center in April 2008 on the Iraq War and religion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4eT0fFcqEs

Permalink Reply by Billy Squibs on May 17, 2010 at 21:53

But we aren't just talking about the moment a sperm meets an egg, are we?

Assuming we are strictly discussing legal abortions in the UK, I gather termination is at any stage up to 24 weeks. Perhaps you can reflect this by replacing the bottom right picture with this?

While I don't share many of his views or his outlook, I largely enjoyed what PH had to say on abortion.

Permalink Reply by manicstreetpreacher on May 17, 2010 at 22:05

I was amazed that PH said that Christianity would the only effective weapon against the onset of radical Islam in Britain.

Perhaps he had forgotten that the Archbishop of Canterbury not all that long ago suggested that Britain adopt certain aspects of Shaira law for Muslims in order to appease the fundamentalists.

Let’s give him a terse reminder from his older brother, shall we?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AHivWxHX2s

Permalink Reply by Todd Pitner on May 17, 2010 at 22:07

MSP, why did you have to outswim your 28 million competitors to your mom's ovum?

Why weren't you part of all those crops of false alarms?

Why weren't you aborted?

Why?

Because God intended otherwise.

Beats me as to 'Why?'...but He deems you and your unique ability to savor the ridiculous somehow worthwhile.

Todd

Permalink Reply by Dan Carollo on May 17, 2010 at 22:10

Category mistake, and reductionist fallacy.

Potentiality and Actuality are not difficult concepts, either. I'm surprised we still make this mistake.
An acorn cannot become anything else but an oak tree. (The silk cocoon -- and maybe that grade AA Tesco egg?, do not belong in this picture!)

I still think we could learn some lessons from Aristotle:
From Standfard Encyclopedia of Philosophy (summary from Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book 7)

(3) Aristotle argues for the priority in substance of actuality over potentiality in two ways. (a) The first argument makes use of his notion of final causality. Things that come to be move toward an end (telos) — the boy becomes a man, the acorn becomes an oak — and “the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired ... animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they may see ... matter exists in a potential state, just because it may come to its form; and when it exists actually, then it is in its form” (1050a9-17). Form or actuality is the end toward which natural processes are directed. Actuality is therefore a cause in more than one sense of a thing's realizing its potential. As we noted in Section 11, one and the same thing may be the final, formal, and efficient cause of another. Suppose an acorn realizes its potential to become an oak tree. The efficient cause here is the actual oak tree that produced the acorn; the formal cause is the logos defining that actuality; the final cause is the telos toward which the acorn develops — an actual (mature) oak tree.

Permalink Reply by Billy Squibs on May 17, 2010 at 22:11

There is more to Christianity than the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Permalink Reply by manicstreetpreacher on May 17, 2010 at 22:17

Let’s hope there’s more to Catholicism than Pope Benedict XVI, otherwise the Roman confession really is up a creek of something brown and nasty without a paddle.

Permalink Reply by Steven Carr on May 17, 2010 at 22:20

TODD
Why weren't you aborted?

Why?

Because God intended otherwise.


CARR
I see.

So if no abortion happens, then that is because Todd's imaginary god had planned no abortion?

I don't think Todd can actually understand what he is saying, which is that god plans who is and who is not aborted.

Permalink Reply by manicstreetpreacher on May 17, 2010 at 22:21

Right, so God intended me to beat my other tadpole-like competitors and survive my mother’s womb in order that I could rage against his probable non-existence on Christian radio stations and Internet debate forums?

Either I am an instrument of him testing the faith of his flock, or if you are a fan of John Calvin, he has predestined me to an eternity in hellfire after I depart this Earthly life because he has a morally sufficient purpose as part of his great plan.

Sometimes I wonder what the theologians are taking and hope that I don’t get spiked with any of it...

MSP

Permalink Reply by Steven Carr on May 17, 2010 at 22:25

According to Unbelievable , 'Peter is a committed Christian...'

Who signed the committal papers?

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