Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
I don't see how cloning for the purpose of having babies is any more playing God than in vitro fertilization or surrogate motherhood, or for that matter, deciding whether or not to have children through conventional means. If the problem is uncertainties as to the effects, then the solution is to delay it until sufficient animal studies have been done, not an outright ban.
"What policy is that? That butcher Sharon has killed 10x as many innocent Palestinians? Is it the Israeli innocent civilians you only want to minimize or both?"
Both.
"If yes, then why aren't you screaming at the 10x as many innocent civilians on the Palestinian side?"
Because I haven't seen any confirmation of that statistic from a neutral source, and because Zeev, who has more credibility than you do, IMO, says that the Israelis have a policy of trying to avoid killing innocent civilians.
"Let me also go to 9/11. 2795 innocent civilians. How many more innocent civilians do you want till you are happy with your blood lust?"
I don't want any innocent civilians to be killed, but that's not possible. Unless we are to give up our right of self defense, some innocent civilians will get killed in spite of our efforts to minimize it.
"(and yet it is a blood lust if you kill any innocent people other than the ones responsible, Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda)"
Intentionally inflicting the maximum number of civilian casualties possible is blood lust. By that standard the Palestinian suicide bombers have blood lust, wouldn't you agree? If war is justified, and the tactics and rules of engagement are designed to minimize civilian casualties, that is not blood lust. I think the war with Afghanistan was justified. I'm not sure about war with Iraq.
"2795? 5,000? 10,000? 20,000? 50,000? 100,000? 200,000? What's your metric on minimizing and maximazing that blood lust number?"
I don't know where the exact dividing line should be, but I would guess that at least 90% of the casualties inflicted by Al Qaeda and the Palestinian suicide bombers are civilians, and I think that's way too high. I would prefer the percentage of civilian casualties to be less than 10% of the number killed, but I don't know what's possible in modern warfare.
I think it's fairly obvious by now that you think the 9/11 attacks were justified.
I think going to war with Afghanistan was justified, because their government was harboring and protecting our attackers. I'm not sure about Iraq. I think the legal justification may be there, in that they have been found to have prohibited weapons, and the fact that these were not declared gives us little reason to hope that the ones the inspectors have found are the only ones they have. On the other hand, I think Zeev has raised some good points about the possibility of unintended consequences and the setting of precedents.
My theory is that people have seen too many scare stories about clones in science fiction shows. Look at the title of one of the recent Star Wars prequels: Attack of the Clones. It's no wonder people have a knee-jerk reaction to it. It is one case where I think science fiction has done us a disservice by creating misconceptions about how cloning really works.
I really think the leaders of the scientific community ought to be doing some public education on this issue, with regard to what the real issues are and are not.
According to Zeev, the Israelis have a policy of "Purity of Arms," which as I understand it is for the purpose of avoiding the taking of innocent lives. If that policy is being violated, then the guilty parties should be punished.
You left yourself a big loophole by saying that nothing ever justifies the killing of the innocent, and then not answering the question as to whether you consider most of the 9/11 victims to be innocent. Why didn't you answer that question?
I guess cloning for medical purposes conflicts with the stance of some people that a human being exists from the moment of conception.
What reasons do people give for being against cloning as an alternative means of conceiving, for people who want to have a baby?
I'm not sure whether war with Iraq is justified. Even if it is justified, it should be conducted with a policy of trying to minimize civilian casualties. Al Qaeda and the Palestinian suicide bombers pursue a policy of trying to maximize civilian casualties.
According to Zeev, the Israelis try to minimize civilian casualties, but if he is wrong, then yes I would be against that.
I believe the U.S. tried to minimize civilian casualties in the Afghanistan war. I don't think it's rational to expect there will be no mistakes. The Bush Administration does not pursue a policy of trying to maximize civilian casualties, as far as I know.
Do you agree that most of the 9/11 victims were innocent, or do you think the 9/11 attacks were justified?
One thing I'm not clear on is why people are against cloning. What moral principle do they think it violates, or are they just afraid that something bad will come of it?
I am against trying to maximize civilian casualties.
Do you agree with me that most of the 9/11 victims were innocent, or do you think the 9/11 attacks were justified?
If nothing ever justifies the killing of the innocent, how can you condone terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians?
Do you think the 9/11 attacks were justified?
Here's a New York Times article on the Kiesling letter, including a link to the text of the letter. (I think it requires registration, but it's free.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/international/middleeast/27NATI.html
I did a search of your messages and can find no post where you have answered the question. Many of your posts appear to be based on the premise that people with grievances (or is it only Palestinians with grievances?) can do anything they want. You have also claimed that the Arab-Israeli conflict was the cause of the 9/11 attacks. So I ask you again: Do you think the 9/11 attacks were justified?
Sylvester, you still haven't told us whether you think the 9/11 attacks were justified.
About 1304. Amazing!
Seems like a really powerful demonstration of max pain this week.
I don't understand how you get that from the term "coming out of the closet." The necessity for being "in the closet" in the first place is created primarily by the non-acceptance of homosexuals by many people, not by anything intrinsic to homosexuality itself. If everyone accepted homosexuals and accepted homosexuality as being merely different rather than sinful, no one would need to hide the fact of their sexual orientation.
This maximum pain calculator gives it as QQQ 25 for March.
http://www.iqauto.com/cgi-bin/pain.pl
What is the best way to detect distribution?
"Actually, there is already peace with Jordan which is 70% Palestinians, I never understood why there is a need for two Palestinian states, but Hussein did not want to deal the the West bank Palestinians (Jordan had enough apparently for 20 years of controlling the West bank and "nothing" good came of it...)."
Seems like you answered your own question there. Jordan doesn't want them and so Israel is stuck with dealing with the issue.
If you posted evidence that Powell is lying about Iraq having prohibited weapons programs, I must have missed it. If they have such programs, that does not automatically make the case for war, in my opinion. I still hope that a way can be found to avoid it.
Actually I think I am making some progress in that regard. What Jar said about the experience of looking into a child's eyes has some merit, IMO, not in the sense of disproving evolution, but in the sense that the best evidence for the existence of God is likely to be in our experience of living, i.e., what it's like to be alive.
The laws of physics seem to be able to explain what happens, within their range of applicability, but there is something about the experience of being alive that they seem inadequate to address.
Do you honestly think that God could not create the laws of physics in such a way as to make the evolution of human life inevitable?
Forget about what I think. You keep talking about liars without giving any specifics or evidence.
ex, there is little potential for abuse in a law requiring child seats. Compare that to letting the government decide who can have children, which will inevitably involve either subjective judgements, a complex nightmare of bureaucracy and regulations, or both.
You didn't answer my question: How will you deal with unlicensed women who get pregnant?
Sounds like more of Big Brother to me. How are they going to stop unlicensed women from getting pregnant? Or are we going to have forced abortions? Haven't our freedoms been eroded enough?
E*Trade allows buying mutual funds right up to the close, with the effective price being that day's closing price, but they don't have the first hour trading as far as I know.
Which brokerage lets you trade Rydex within the first hour?
By the way, your racial slurs against the Secretary of State are not helping your case one bit.
"Stare deeply into the eyes of your child and try to tell yourself: "atoms banging around for millions of years produced this magnificence". You will not be able to tell God you had insufficient proof of His existence and majesty."
That is a much better argument than assuming that the incompleteness of the laws of physics proves divine intervention.
I am well aware that governments tell lies, including ours, but the accusation that Iraq is hiding prohibited weapons programs is going to need more than a plausibility argument to refute at this point.
Now the question of whether war is the best way of handling the problem, that is a subject much more open to question, IMO.
I think your questions are well worth considering. I wish I knew the answers. Better yet, I wish the Bush Administration knew the answers.
"I think they do have programs to develop WMD. So do 26 other countries. Many of which are not our friends. However the key is how far are they? What are their capabilities and what danger are they to us."
Maybe the Administration wants to go after Iraq as a warning to the other 26? If so, their reason for going after Iraq and not the others could be that Iraq is the one that is prohibited from having WMD by specific U.N. resolutions, and there is still no peace treaty ending the Gulf War, so they may feel that the legal and political underpinnings are best in Iraq's case. I have also not heard within the past decade of any aggression from other countries on the scale of what Iraq attempted.
"Why do you think if we believe one country is not telling some half truths that the other country must be telling the truth."
Because the question of whether Iraq has prohibited weapons programs is one that has a yes or no answer.
"With all that said I still don't think it gives us the right to go to war unilaterally."
Maybe resuming the war with Iraq is the right thing to do, and maybe it's not. It's been said that "Success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan." However, if we do resume the war, it will not be unilateral, regardless of what position France, Germany, and Russia decide to take.
"I'm concerned that we have lost focus on the war on Terrorism."
According to media reports, Powell was one of the Administration members who was arguing that Iraq should not be our first priority now. He seems to have changed his tune on that.
"So I look at some of what Powell said with a jaundiced eye."
Do you think the Iraqis are telling the truth about not having prohibited weapons programs?
"After which I then say - so what if everything is true? What should our next course of action be - just what we are doing now. Let inspectors inspect and expand the number of inspectors. Keep the pressure on as it is doing us no harm and we are not sacrificing our young."
Personally, I am unsure if attacking Iraq is the right thing to do, but on the other hand if it turns out to be true that they are trying to develop nuclear weapons, one has to ask for what purpose. What do you think Iraq's purpose in that would be?
The idea of expanding the number of inspectors has appeal, but a big unanswered question is how close is Iraq to succeeding in their nuclear weapons program? Without knowing the answer to that, waiting for the next time the weather is favorable for a military action, i.e., till next year, runs the risk that they could be closer to success than we think.
What do you suppose would have been the result if Nazi Germany had developed nuclear weapons in time to use them in World War II? Is Saddam Hussein any better than Adolph Hitler? Remember, his role model is Joseph Stalin, who was another of history's prime examples of a bloodthirsty tyrant.
"You've already shown that you will ignore any physical data or laws that require the existence of God."
Maybe that's because you try to use situations that violate the laws of physics as proof of Divine Intervention. That argument doesn't hold water, because in the past when situations were discovered that violated then-known physical laws, eventually new laws were discovered.
The laws of physics can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God.
If you succeeded in proving the existence of God, what then would be the purpose of faith?
All governments lie at one time or another. That does not mean that they are always lying. Why do you think Iraq has more credibility on this issue than the U.S.?
Do you have any evidence to back up your claim that Powell is a liar?
Are we supposed to just take your word for it?