Tough Question for Religious Orientated People

[GePap]

Originally posted by Azazel

Well, it's caused by the silliness of the woman. It's her complete disagreement to reproduce that has left me with no choice. Oh, and that "1/11th of humanity" is a worthless argument.

The thing is, its her choice to make. After all, in no species is a female bound to procriate with males whose genes she might not care to propegate.

we lost? we are done? we lost to whom? and what's the point of giving up? what do you think you'll get? a consolation prize? This is esp. silly if you consider there IS a chance left. might as well make the best of it.

A miniscule chance ( I mean trully miniscule) built upon the back of violence. Sorry, but trying for a 1 in a trillion chance of a slight outcome (becuase at best, all you get is a few more women to turn into breeders, to try yet agains for what is now a 1 in a billion chance, then in another generation maybe a one in a million chance...) vs what you know to be certain suffering.

Honestly, were is the utalitarian sense in that? a 100% chance of misery for a .00000000000000001 chance of less misery next geenration, so forth?

[MrFun]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


BTW, thanks for the condolences and good wishes, everyone.

no problem

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Azazel

But on its own it seems absurd that we should be required to propagate at all.

Why is that? 'cept the fact that you don't want to?

Because it is one thing to say that we have obligations to creatures that we do bring into being, or am likely to bring into being; but something else to say that I have an obligation to bring beings into being.

The former accounts for our intuition that we must take the interests of future generations into account - so the latter is not required to explain it. So if you want an argument why we have to propagate, appealing to the interests of merely possible people isn't going to work.

You asked why we should take the interests of future generations into account. I've given you an answer. As to why we should be required to propagate, I don't know. I can't think of a reason why, although it makes me laugh to think of poor Boris being forced to mount some buxom young lass to fulfil his moral duty.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Theben


Enslaving? Raping? Destruction of family? You're taking a leap of faith here.

Given the historical treatment of females of the species and their status, it's a leap of faith to assume anything benign would happen to them. Rather, it's a leap of faith on your part (or a belief in the ability of a coercive male-dominated program of "education" to "mold" the girl's will to become breeding stock) that the baby / girl / eventual woman would want to simply crank out kids nonstop as long as she has the physical capacity to do so. What if she likes one guy, who happens to be a sensitive, caring guy with crappy genes, alone among us real he-men, and she decides when she feels like she's old enough, she wants to have a kid or two just with him? Sorry - once you bleed, you breed, and nobody asked your opinion, *****, the survival of the species is at stake here. The woman is not enslaved and not raped only if her desire coincidentally happens to be to serve as a baby factory for whoever is selected to breed with her. Assuming that result is a leap of faith.

The women I highly doubt would be enslaved, any more so than any other person in the community, just trying to survive.

There is a huge difference between an individual trying to survive on her own terms, and being "obligated" to breed en masse to perpetuate the species, or a family line, or a tribe or clan.

Most probable that they will be conferred with an exceptionally high status in the community, if not made the leaders.

Why bother? They're going to do what the majority of males want, or they're going to die in the process. Why any pretense? And it's hard to be the leader when you're flat on your back from puberty til menopause.

The breeding need not be forced (except the 1st woman) and it is just as likely if not more likely that the women will accept the responsibility and status given to them.

Pregnancy is difficult, childbirth painful - why do you assume a girl will want to grow up to crank out kids from the moment she's able to do so until the moment she's no longer able to do so, especially if the fate of the girls she would bear is more of the same, and and boys shoe would bare are non-essential. (and likely to be killed off when young and weak, so that when they're in their prime, they don't displace the existing power structure in the original survivors.

And the familial concept would only change from nuclear/extended to communal, which already exists and isn't a bad one. It's found in many 'primitive' societies and that's what this would be.

A communal family system still considers the needs and desires of the individuals within it.

As for the males who've lost "breeding opportunities", well, in your scenario they lost them anyway, right?

It's not the same - in my scenario, everyone lives out their remaining lives as best they can. In the other scenario, one group appoints itself the "select" and reserves breeding opportunities to itself, and the other group can go jerk off in the bushes. Or fight.

[Az]

The thing is, its her choice to make. After all, in no species is a female bound to procriate with males whose genes she might not care to propegate.

bloody irrelevant, since it's quite obvious that it's not the procreation of the species that's on her mind. It's the thing that differentiates us from regular animals. But that doesn't mean that we aren't animals as well, and that continuation of the species isn't an important goal.

A miniscule chance ( I mean trully miniscule) built upon the back of violence.

The violence against this woman is completely negligble in comparison to the immense importance of the task.

Sorry, but trying for a 1 in a trillion chance of a slight outcome (becuase at best, all you get is a few more women to turn into breeders, to try yet agains for what is now a 1 in a billion chance, then in another generation maybe a one in a million chance...) vs what you know to be certain suffering.

It's not a one in a trillion chance. The odds are way better. It will be much better after the first 10 generations or so.

Honestly, were is the utalitarian sense in that? a 100% chance of misery for a .00000000000000001 chance of less misery next geenration, so forth?

Well, the next generation will be much less miserable. Unless you claim that the lives of countless generations of early evolution and pre-evolution people have lived their lives in vain.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Azazel
Oh, and another thing, Boris:

How is this relevant? Is there any need in the here-and-now to set a bomb with a time trigger for 100 years later? Will it somehow alleviate suffering today to plant a bomb like that? What a ludicrous scenario.

That's not ludicrous. That's the point. It's a BAD thing to do. but is it immoral to this now to people who aren't born yet?

Actually, it is ludicrous, because you're comparing two drastically different futures.

In this world, we assume there will be lots of people in future generations, because there are lots of people who now, happily and voluntarily, crank out lots of babies. And we figure there's enough babies to go around so that when they grow up, enough of them will want to crank out more babies, so that we have no problem in assuming that there will be many people in those future generations.

In the scenario given - there is no assumption that there will be any "future generations" at all, unless we take action to force an attempt to create those future generations.

[Az]

Because it is one thing to say that we have obligations to creatures that we do bring into being, or am likely to bring into being; but something else to say that I have an obligation to bring beings into being.

The former accounts for our intuition that we must take the interests of future generations into account - so the latter is not required to explain it. So if you want an argument why we have to propagate, appealing to the interests of merely possible people isn't going to work.

That's not so simple. Why do you have an obligation for the future generations? as with all ethics, due to reasons of utility/welfare/whatever.

Not having that future generation means that this utility will not be there, that means less utility that means less ethical.

[Ben Kenobi]

That's why family planning is extremely ethical ; it allows for a reasonable number of people in the next generation,

So who determines what counts as reasonable? I would argue that the only ones qualified to set the standard would be the parents themselves. Otherwise, you get into forced sterilizations and abortions as we have right now in China in order to enforce a one-child policy.

[Az]

So who determines what counts as reasonable? I would argue that the only ones qualified to set the standard would be the parents themselves. Otherwise, you get into forced sterilizations and abortions as we have right now in China in order to enforce a one-child policy

Or, you can have a wiser method of enforcing this through financial insentives. The parents themselves are certainly NOT the only ones qualified for this. Some ( stupid) parents think that it's a good idea to have 11 kids, let me share a secret with you: IT'S NOT.

[Az]

In this world, we assume there will be lots of people in future generations, because there are lots of people who now, happily and voluntarily, crank out lots of babies. And we figure there's enough babies to go around so that when they grow up, enough of them will want to crank out more babies, so that we have no problem in assuming that there will be many people in those future generations.

In the scenario given - there is no assumption that there will be any "future generations" at all, unless we take action to force an attempt to create those future generations.

That's the whole goddamn debate:

Does the next generation have a right to exist? of course not. Rights do not exist. Would it be WRONG to prevent from the next generation to exist: yes, of course. Would it be right to create such a next generation: Yes, obviouisly.

[Ben Kenobi]

I don't think you can move from saying that we have moral obligations towards likely future existents, to a position that says we must propagate in order to ensure their existence. That would lead to an absurd view in which we were obliged to have as many children as we could in order to maximize the welfare of future generations (there being more of them to be happy).

First off, maximising welfare, is just another flavour of utilitarianism, afflicted by the same problems associated with other forms of utilitarianism.

Secondly, I think that all duties to future persons can be better expressed as duties to persons. For example, not wanting to destroy the environment for your children.

Propagation is a funny thing. Usually, it is a non-issue because people who wanted to have sex would have kids, and who would want to do away with sex? It is only when you decouple sex from pregnancy, do you start to need further 'duties' and justifications to ensure the propagation of man.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Azazel
bloody irrelevant, since it's quite obvious that it's not the procreation of the species that's on her mind. It's the thing that differentiates us from regular animals. But that doesn't mean that we aren't animals as well, and that continuation of the species isn't an important goal.

Actually, the ability to conceptualize is what separates us, meaning man has, unlike any other naimals, the ability to imagine a world without himself as individual, or species, and perhaps even choose such an ending. Yes, we have a innate drive to spread our genes, but that is it, only OURS- the notion of spreading the species as well, that is a conception of MAN, not an inbuilt drive- other individuals of any other species could not give a crap about "the species", since they can;t even conceptulize that.

negligble in comparison to the immense importance of the task.

What importance? There is no importance to mankind surviving, anymore than there is any importance to mankind ending. Certainly in your mind it is critical, but not a universal notion, not when we get to this situation.

It's not a one in a trillion chance. The odds are way better. It will be much better after the first 10 generations or so.

The odds are stagerring: first, you may have a series of problems that make the woman less than fertile-for example, the simplest one-she happens to be 35 or so, near the end of her viable reproductive life...
The porblems with the males and thier reproductive fitness
Problems in childbirthing and rearing
An newly inhospitable environment perhaps
Lack of food and dangers of accidents

It is beyond me how any event that could lead to 99.9999% annahilation of any species would leave a situation hospitable for the rest. Do you honestly think that when those great mass extinctions occured every sinlge member of those species got hit? And yet, they didn;t make it back- half a billion years of vertebrate life shows that if you get to a point were 99.9999% die off, honestly there is NO coming back

Well, the next generation will be much less miserable. Unless you claim that the lives of countless generations of early evolution and pre-evolution people have lived their lives in vain.

Why will they be much less miserable? lets say this woman is raped repeatedly andf finally produces a female (accepting that baby boys born would have to have been killed of). Now, the womna can no longer have any babies- so she raises a daughter in the full knowledge that once she gets to 13 years of age, the rapes will start -unless somehow the girl luckily fell in love with someone-hopefully for genetic diversity not her father. And then this one girl, unlike her mother who at least had some years in her life of not being a breeder, will spend the rest of her life (if it lasts long) as a breeder herself...yeah, much less suffering for the next generation....

[Az]

First off, maximising welfare, is just another flavour of utilitarianism, afflicted by the same problems associated with other forms of utilitarianism.

want to challenge utilitarianism? open a new thread.

[Ben Kenobi]

The parents themselves are certainly NOT the only ones qualified for this. Some ( stupid) parents think that it's a good idea to have 11 kids, let me share a secret with you: IT'S NOT.

Supposing you met Bill Gates. Would you tell him not to have 11 children? Why or why not?

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Supposing you met Bill Gates. Would you tell him not to have 11 children? Why or why not?

I'd tell him to adopt 11 children.