The point is the degree to which you can use science (reason applied to the world around us) to decide what people ought to be doing.
Note this is not where this thinking has to go. But it can go to this place.
Your soul is your animating force, your potential. If you have a potential then you are trying to accomplish something by your very nature.
Can we use reason to figure out what that nature might be? Perhaps I see a woman’s reproductive anatomy and decide her purpose is to have children. After all, her potential is manifest in her womb and eggs. That is what her body wants her to do, and it is what she should do.
I’m not arguing for this view at all. But it is an interesting question, and actually very relevant to (and potentially dangerous for) the question of abortion rights.
It’s not a question of fact based in the way I and (probably) you are used to thinking. It is a challenge to that entire way of thinking.
OK.
The difference is that science and scientists don’t tell us what we MUST do even based on all the evidence. Like, say, two male whales having sex (saw that somewhere… SNL WU?)
The difference is that theology and theologists tell us what we MUST do, based on their beliefs, based on no science at all.
The interesting thing is that this debate doesn’t need to involve science at all, nor faith.
The person wants healthcare, which is available and on average safer than pregnancy. The onus is on the person opposing healthcare to say they shouldn’t have it. There is no science that will tell me if or when that fetus gains a flergl, so I will ignore its flergl or lack of flergl. I require a reason not based on religion or flergls that the person should be denied healthcare.
And the reason is because science moved away from the sort of considerations i mentioned, around the time of descartes.
i do think there is a cost, though. when an object doesn’t have a purpose, it loses all agency. it becomes only a potential tool, in other words. the line between studying it as it naturally is, and studying it as it might be exploited for economic gain, disappears. it opens the door for our culture to abuse the environment the way it has.
and when you start aiming that view at the human body, it has the potential to reduce the human being in the same way. to turn it into a machine for economic manipulation. to forbid treatments like IVF is an overreaction, in my view. but i do think this is a valid concern.
I think the question of the human soul and the morality of abortion and where we think the legal line should be are all pretty intricately intertwined and I would be opposed to splitting out that topic into a separate thread FWIW.
Understood; but there was also a valid comment about the drift as well. I just haven’t followed the discussion thoroughly enough to feel that I can split posts sufficiently (hence the comment about doing so tomorrow).
I don’t plan to move ALL posts relating to the discussion of the soul to a separate thread; but will review and see how far afield the drift actually goes from the OP and seek feedback from other moderators before making any moves.
People need to chill about thread drift in general and I think even calling this particular discussion “thread drift” in the first place is quite a stretch. JMO
I don’t know if anything needs moved. I somewhat forcibly course-corrected it due to my own annoyance at an important topic moving into the theological territory that’s already fucked up the current landscape.
