AS200: Abortion Debate Followup

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:31 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 200. Yay! I'm your host, Thomas Smith. But, yeah, welcome to episode 200, thanks for listening. Wow, so, you just heard, in the last previous week, the abortion discussion slash debate with Tyler Vela. This has gotten a ton of comments, this is always a very contentious issue. I've had a lot I wanted to say. It's gotten a lot of messages, a lot of emails. I want to thank you. First off, thank you guys for your participation with all that. It's been way more than I can possibly respond to. I've tried to respond to as much as I can, but I've also kind of said I'm going to address a lot of it today.

0:01:17 Thomas: So rather than try to respond to each individual comment, I'm doing my best to address a lot of the concerns today and the points made. But thank you, I do want to thank you I like that I have a show where if I do a topic, if I bring someone like Tyler on, a lot of people seem to be interested in it and maybe you're just really mad at one or both of us. But either way, at least that means people are engaging and stuff like that. So I've enjoyed it a lot. Well, with that said, why don't I just get into some Tommentarying on this very thing.

0:01:58 Thomas: Well, where to begin with something like this, there are about two billion things I want to say, and there's no guarantee that I will say all of them in time, we'll see, it could just be too long, and I definitely, we've already done two episodes on it, so I'm definitely not doing any more than one commentary on this. So I got to get it all out in one. So I mentioned, I think, last episode that I was wrong about the moment of conception thing. I don't think I'm wrong about that. I think that was something I read that I may have either misunderstood or it was just a minority position that the moment of conception is sort of nebulous and not very easy to identify. But I think... I'm going to go ahead and... I'm a little worried that that position in my mind was done out of convenience or wanting that to be true or something.

0:02:49 Thomas: You know, I don't, I'm going to go ahead and just abandon that position. It's fine to say moment of conception is when the human life begins. I mean, it is sort of, I mean. I think there's a little bit of wiggle room there, I think, there's possibly some, like, in the case of twins, they can branch off and be twins, there are some interesting issues to look at there, but I don't, I don't know that it's, that there's any real point, or, or benefit in holding that position, I, I mentioned it to Tyler, because I had read it somewhat earlier, but, I-I don't think it's worth pursuing, I that's probably a minority position, and, in a field that I'm not an expert in, which is something that I would have to do a lot of research to hold. So I'm going to go ahead and I conceded that to Tyler and then he messaged me back and said, well, actually he said I should read this.

0:03:42 Thomas: So maybe this will help a little bit. I think largely we hit the wall of definitional disagreement. It's challenging to debate past the point where there becomes such a fundamental disagreement. You define person differently. I think your definition is wrong, as wrong as definitions can be if we consider them wrong and not just different, because I think it logically leads to inconsistencies with other areas of human rights like slavery and such. I think at that point of the disagreement, the conversation would have necessarily had to go back into the debate about the foundation of ethics slash human rights, which neither of us wanted to go into at that moment. He further said, I was trying to recap with some friends to talk it through, and actually doing that helped me understand your point a bit better, and I think I would have responded differently slightly by simply acknowledging the impasse that was outside of the scope of the topic to resolve.

0:04:35 Thomas: Feel free to read those comments as well in your recap, because the way I expressed it on air made it sound like I thought your definition itself was incoherent or inconsistent with itself. That was incorrect for me to say. What I meant was more of what I said about it being inconsistent once we start discussing things like moral ontology, applied ethics, and human rights above. So I do apologize for that because I think it contributed somewhat to the obstruction of the debate. Hopefully your listeners can accept that retraction for at least that small portion of our dialogue. So fair enough. I credit Tyler for saying that. I think I really did think that at the time that there isn't an inconsistency in my view of personhood, and I argued that, and he was right to argue about the human life starting a conception thing.

0:05:27 Thomas: I think he was right about that, so, you know, everybody makes mistakes, but now I think we should probably try to talk about what is important, and not just mistakes, but actual places where I think Tyler's wrong, and there's a lot of them. The animals being conscious stuff was a pretty glaring thing for me. I mean, that's just obviously true. Animals have some amount of consciousness, different animals have different amounts, and it's amazing that he thinks only the most advanced apes have consciousness, anything on the level of what we have. Well, okay, that is probably true, but anything on a level that you would want to look at for personhood, because I think it's important. And, oh boy, one issue jumps into a million others.

0:06:14 Thomas: I already want to go into a billion other things. I just think, I even thought of an example at the time and of the alien race thing or whatever, but I think there are so many examples and so many ways to show that Tyler's criteria for personhood is just not good. Being a member of a species who at its adult form has the following. So he basically, here's the weird thing. He pretty much, I don't remember any debate about what qualifies as a person in terms of, you know, consciousness, sentience, all that kind of thing. I don't think he debates that at all. His thing is that as long as you're a member of a species that has those things in its adult form, then at any time in your life, you have full, you are a person, which it It just, I was flabbergasted by that because that seems so obviously wrong to me.

0:07:11 Thomas: I think I challenged it a little bit at the time, but I didn't focus too much on it, but it just seems so out of, just ridiculous to me, I mean, first off, you can think of so many hypotheticals that would violate that, I means, we could invent a robot, we can invent to AI, artificial intelligence, where it doesn't have any, it's not a member of any species, you know, it is a one-off thing. We could easily create a one off being that is a member of no species. And what you would have to do then is determine whether it is person or not. It wouldn't matter what stage of development it is in. There could be, yeah, there could be things where it is completely, especially when you are talking about AI, I mean something could literally just be lines of code.

0:07:59 Thomas: Well, this may not end up being literally true, but it could be. I could imagine it. Hypothetically, if we invent AI, it could pretty much be lines of code up until the last time when you push run, you know, and then it's running or something, you know. Who knows? Would you say that any of those lines of code, because it's kind of a member, a part of the development of the AI, it's a part, you you know, it doesn't make sense. It totally breaks down. His definition is very, very much dependent on things following this natural paradigm, this sort of, oh, well, you're born and, or you're conceived and you, you know you develop and then you grow and then you grow old. And it's like that, I mean, that could very easily someday not be the case or we could come up with a species where it's not the case.

0:08:46 Thomas: There could be a one-off genetic mutant creature we could make that doesn't, again, it's not a member of any species where you can look, well, what does this species look like in its adult form? And it's like, what if you didn't even know? What if you had one off alien species? You just have one alien being and it's a baby. It's whatever, a fetus. It's something like that. It's a very early stage in development. Now, that's the weird thing. In order for Tyler's criterion to be true, we'd have to wait to find out what it grows up into before we decide it's a person or not. And that's just very bizarre. I mean, imagine if there's only ever one of this and we literally do not know, we cannot know ahead of time what it's going to grow into.

0:09:35 Thomas: The odds that that somehow determines whether at at that time, this being as a person or not is ludicrous to me. I mean, it seems unnecessarily complex. I could, really, you could just think of as many examples as you want of why this doesn't make any sense. At least I can. I'm curious to hear what Tyler thinks of these examples. I'm pretty sure he's going to listen to this episode. So, Tyler, I could have pushed you more on that, on how you define a person. It really makes no sense to me now. Now, you gave the example of the hunter, and I suppose one response you might have, or Tyler might have—I should probably not speak directly to him when he's not here. It is a little weird, but it's also a little weird imagining the other way, where he's listening and I'm talking about him in the third person, but you're screwed either way.

0:10:23 Thomas: I'm sure Tyler will forgive me. But anyway, Tyler mentioned, oh, well, if you don't know—and this is a big point I need to talk about, by the way—but he had the example the hunter. Or if you don't know, if you're not sure, then you can't shoot because otherwise it's too dangerous. You might kill somebody.

And maybe he would apply that to my weird alien baby hypothesis where it's like, well, we can't be sure, so we can'T kill it or, you know, we have to treat it like a person until otherwise proven. And someone pointed out to me, very simply, this is something I could have easily said. This totally goes against Tyler's view on animals when he said, oh, animals don't have consciousness. It's like well, are you sure?

I mean, it's It is pretty funny, on one hand, to be saying, well, we better be safe, I mean, if you don't know it's not a person, you can't kill it, and then, on the other hand, eat all the animals you want, you're not a vegetarian, because you're just positive, somehow you know what's going on inside the animal's head, you know that it doesn't have consciousness,

0:11:19 Thomas: You especially when you talk about bigger animals. I mean, it would be one thing if you're saying, well, insects, we can be pretty sure that they're not people. It's like, okay. But when you're talking about, I don't know, bigger animals, cows, whatever, I mean they have a lot of inner experience and if you are going to apply this test of like you have to be 1000% sure otherwise you can't kill it, I think you'd have to think twice about animals and you wouldn't be so sure that they have nothing resembling consciousness. So that was pretty striking. Thanks to whoever ever pointed that out. It was a good point that I could have thought of and I admit I didn't think of that. And it's a good thing I have you listeners.

0:12:07 Thomas: But, now, I think we'd better talk about it, that hunter example was completely a mess, and I think this is somewhat what Tyler was acknowledging in the messages I read, I had the hardest time figuring out what was happening, because we were, first, we were talking, he was granting things, or, sorry, I was granting things for argument. I was saying, okay, this is a person. And then he said, how do you know it's a person? I said, well, because we just said it was. And there was some miscommunication there, to be sure. But in the end, I mean, what he was looking for is some way of saying, if you're not absolutely sure something's not a person, then you can't, you ought to be very, very cautious about killing it. And it just didn't, he never got it on my terms.

0:12:55 Thomas: Like he never argued that in terms that would make sense to me. And I tried to figure out what those terms would be. I tried to say, well, look, I think I started going back into how you ground your whole morality, because I said, I can be reasonably certain of that. You know, I mean, this is how I ground my morality. And under that definition, I mean, if we're going with how I say personhood works, then I am reasonably sure it's not a person. I mean I'm as sure as it gets really for anything. But he kept confusing me with, well, do you know? Do you know?, and it's like, well... I mean, and then later he said, well we have a reasonable belief, and if he had just asked that from the beginning, I would have said, oh, well yeah, I have a a reasonable belief that it's not a person.

0:13:41 Thomas: But he fixated on, "Do you know?" And that really threw things off. And I'm sorry, Tyler, I'm kind of blaming you for that. I don't think you ever got that argument on terms that I would ever accept. And it doesn't really work to try to do a gotcha or to catch someone in an argument when you're arguing in terms that they're just not even seeing. So I think that sort of failed and that derailed a little bit. So I apologize to you guys for that.

I did my best but I wasn't fully sure what he was getting at. I think I know now, but I wasn't sure how to convert that into terms that I would understand. Another thing I maybe could have done, possibly, and someone commented on this, someone emailed and said, look, you were letting Tyler ask all the questions, and so he was, you know, kind of controlling the argument for that reason, and my response to whoever emailed me that was, and sorry, because I got, really, I got a ton of messages on this and I'm not able to keep straight who said what, but my response was, when I'm having these dialogues, I know you guys pretty much all already agree with me.

I mean, if I had to guess, I would say 90 plus percent of my listeners, if not higher, are probably pro-choice to some extent. Maybe they're, I don't know, maybe there's some wiggle room in there for different exceptions or something. I don't know. But I would says that I'm not trying to win, and this is important, I think, this is important to say.

0:15:13 Thomas: Day. I'm not trying to win a debate with anything but answering the arguments. Like, I'm not trying to, and this is something, and maybe you'll think I'm being too noble or thinking I'm too noble or something, but I really don't think that's going to do me any good in an audience where everyone already agrees with me. The only good, the only thing I could possibly do is, and I don't think this is going to happen. But it's still the only thing worth trying to do is to get Tyler to agree with me or to get him to at least challenge what he thinks. And he's not going to do that if I try to dominate the argument and like ask questions and, you know, avoid answering his questions or try to win in some rhetorical way that's not really winning.

0:16:02 Thomas: You know, like, Like I'm not going to, and, And this is something, and I'm sorry, I don't think it makes for as entertaining listening, I'm no, I know Christopher Hitchens, I am not going to make it a brilliant rhetorical point and, and Hitch did address people's arguments, of course, to varying a sense, but a lot of times he was kind of just talking to himself, I mean, in a way that I loved and was very entertaining and I liked a lot, but I don't know that Hitch ever did a lot trying to address people on their terms, you know, which is, which which is what I'm trying to do. I mean, and it's hard. I don't know that I'm doing a good job of it. I'm dying. I'm not trying. I'm going to do my best, but that's why I let Tyler ask a lot of questions. I'm happy to, you know, if he's going to try to gotcha me with a series of questions, like I don't care.

0:16:47 Thomas: I mean if that's what happens, then I'll have to figure out why I painted myself into a corner. I don't' t think I ever did, really, but if that'' s the case, then I'' ll have to think about it and say, hmm, why did I get painted into this corner? Was it just some verbal trick? Was it maybe a position of mine that I need to examine? Maybe I'm wrong or maybe I gave the wrong answer on something and I need to think more clearly through it. I'm not interested in trying to just dominate the discussion and put things in my terms. But one thing I maybe should have done is I I should have asked just like, where, where do you, where does Tyler get his definition of personhood? Because that was sort of just assumed. I mean, I, I referenced it briefly, but really like, how would he answer that?

0:17:37 Thomas: You know, because he's just saying is the whole time he would just say, he would just assert it. Well, it's, it's a human, a person, human is a person. Like, that's it. That's what he would say. I think I did ask him. He said, Oh, well, it's easy. It's a human. You know, it's like, well, where did you get that? I mean, how, if I ask him, if I keep pressing him, how do you know, or where do you get, rather, your moral belief that a human at the beginning, at the very beginning stages, as soon as sperm and egg join, like, that's a person, where do You get that?" I mean I really don't know. It's something I sort of took for granted. See, I took for grounded that it comes from some religious thing, like, Like, oh, I just believe that that's, you know, but really, I mean, if he's allowed to challenge the foundations of my belief and he's allowed to question down to like, well, how do you know that?

0:18:26 Thomas: How do you know that how do I ought to be able to be allowed to do the same thing? And I might in the future. I mean, I might have to do a better job of challenging him and saying, okay, where do you get that? How do you know that? And if it comes down to, well, it's my belief that that's what a person is, I mean that doesn't do anything.

I mean he can't, he's really not arguing anything at that point, he is just asserting something. So, So that might be something to press him on a bit because I don't, I'm not totally sure what he would say because at bedrock, you just hit bedrock and it's like, well, I know this, this is what I know. I mean, I know a human's a person.

I'm not, I don't know that he would say that for sure, but I can't imagine unless he just wants to say that God told him or that, you know, the Bible or something tells him that any single, any possible member of the human species at any phase is a person, But even then we'd have to argue that.

0:19:23 Thomas: So I think I did let him get away with too much in terms of that without challenging him on like his fundamentals. But really, it all comes down to your system of morality. And I really, this is something I think a lot about. And it's things I thought about before Sam Harris's book, but I think Sam Harris is moral landscape helped me a bit on some of these issues.

Issues and I'm sure there's other moral philosophy that would be better or at least as helpful or if not better. But that's where the real work's done, I mean, it's not, you're not going to get at the definition of personhood from any sort of religious angle, it just not going help you at all. So I'd be very curious to hear where he gets that. God.

One thing I thought of, this is sort of a side topic, but when he was questioning me on is it okay to abort all gay people, all women, all whatever, that's a time where it occurred to me later like, yeah, this why I'm so big on consequentialism as a system of morality. I really think it is the best way. And this is, again, this This is not entirely related, but it kind of is. I had that podcast episode I did with Ryan Bourne, and I know there are other philosophers who listen to me, maybe still, we'll see, who tend to agree like, no, there's problems with consequentialism, it breaks down, etc., etc. I still don't think that's true. And I actually think, and not just being a Sam Harris fanboy because of plenty of things I disagree with him on. I really think, personally, I think consequentialism is key because if you look at that, the right to abort, the Right to Abort, that if you just apply, let's say you're pro-choice, which most of you are, and you say, yes, a woman has a right to do whatever she wants.

0:21:13 Thomas: She can abort any baby for any reason. Well, if we get to the point where you're aborting every male baby, let's Say, I mean, there just is an obvious, it's completely impractical. I know this is a ridiculous example, but even if it wasn't every male baby, even if he was getting to the point, let's say people are aborting female babies for no other reason, but then they're female and the population starts skewing to like 70, 30, you know? I mean, that would cause serious issues. I mean that would, men would be killing each other over women. I mean, just, there would be a massive shortage and there would be horrendous consequences. And I really do think at a certain point, we would need to step in and say, look, for the greater good, we just can't abort for this reason anymore.

0:22:00 Thomas: And I know you all have a right to do it, I understand, but at a certain point there are inevitable cases, and abortion might not even be the best one. Any other rights, I think you can going to extend them to the extreme in the same way, I'm pretty sure, there comes a point where wider consequences just can eventually trump the rights no matter what. And I just think that the consequences and consequentialism are so fundamental, and they're the most important thing. And the reason we use rights and we speak in those terms is I think it's an easy shorthand. I think it's an effective shorthand. I think it's a very effective way to guarantee we're never going too crazy.

0:22:49 Thomas: I mean, putting things in terms of rights. But I'm curious how many of you guys agree with me on this. I don't really think there's such thing as rights in any abstract way. And I know that blows the minds of every Christian every time I say it. I've argued with another friend about this, but they're like, whoa, you don't believe in human rights? And it's like, no, not really. Am I alone on this? This is something I didn't get any feedback on. So I think I'm trying to encourage that now, especially if anyone listening, I mean, if someone's more keen with philosophy than I am, because Because this has all just been me theorizing and thinking and philosophizing on my own and, and, but I, I'm curious to hear why I might be wrong about this because, like I said to Tyler, I mean, take the example of humans 100,000 years ago when we just killed each other and died and, et cetera, and that's all that happened.

0:23:41 Thomas: I mean doesn't, it doesn't really make any sense to say people had rights back then. I I mean, it just couldn't be more irrelevant. It's a state of nature. Rights are something that once we form a society, once we can realize like, okay, this is what's best for us. This is what creates the least suffering. This is What Enables the Most Well-Being. It's to have these things called rights and to, for the most part, they're something you can't violate, although there will be exceptions. Exceptions. Once again, that's why I think consequentialism is better. But for the most part, these will be things that you can count on. You'll be able to thrive because you can count on having these things called rights, you know.

0:24:28 Thomas: And I know that's, here's the weird thing that I've been thinking a lot about lately. That's not the reasoning that went into it. That'S the reasoning that goes into it in my brain. But the reasoning THAT went into IT is probably something like, well, God gave us rights, so we have rights. And it's funny how that works because it turned turned out pretty well. I mean, that's the basis, I think, for the Constitution. Not that it's Christian or anything, but it does, I do believe it says that we are given by our creator inalienable rights. And it's interesting to me that that was the foundation of it, but its something I would disagree with. But it still works so well.I've been thinking a lot about that. It's just fascinating to me. But I'm curious if anyone agrees with me, disagrees with me of my listeners that we don't have rights.

0:25:13 Thomas: I don't think we do, really, unless we can grant them. And Tyler's objection, every Christian's objection is always, well, if rights are just something people give, well, then all of a sudden they can decide they're going to take them away from you. And this couldn't be more obvious. The answer is yeah. No, they could. We'd best be careful, because they could totally do that. So we need to try to make sure everyone understands that rights are a good idea, because in the past, people have taken them away from black people. People have taken away, or rather not granted them to begin with, I guess, to certain groups of people. So that's something we gotta look out for. It's the weirdest thing. It couldn't be stranger. Like when people say, if there's no God, then how can you ground your morality?

0:26:01 Thomas: It's that same thing. I mean, just look at human history. Human history is nothing but people being horrible to each other. I means, that just is the reality. God hasn't helped. That's what I keep thinking. In Christians' minds, God is this anchor that somehow will make one system of a belief's right and another wrong, but I want to know how that works. Like, when does he tell us? How do we ever find that out? Even if we know there's a right answer somewhere, if the person who knows the right answer is never ever going to talk to us because he just, I got news, sorry, bad news Christians, God has never actually talked to us. Even if we know there is a God, if he never tells us anything, how does that help?

0:26:47 Thomas: It doesn't help at all, because if your theory behind morality is, okay, we need to find what God knows to be the right answer, if that's how you base your morality, you have no tools through which to find that. You have none. You think you can look at the Bible, but you can't. There's nothing in there. The Bible is madness. There is no way you can get a set of morals from the Bible. You could get a bunch of contradictory things. You can get a bunch of evil things, but it's not going to come anywhere close to granting you morality. And if your question is, what does God think, and you can't talk to God, you have no basis for morality. Absolutely none. The only way, I would say the only way you can get an objective morality in the world we live in, which is one in which God doesn't talk us.

0:27:39 Thomas: Now, granted, if there were a God, and if he did talk to us, and he knew everything, he could just tell us, yeah, this is the best morality right here. Do the following things. That would be fine. Like if that happened, the minute that happens and it's, you know, we can all verify it and we're all on board, I'll be totally happy and that's fine. That'll be the morality that's granted by our creator. But until such time, and since there is no creator and we can't talk to any creator if there were, or they haven't talked to us, the only way I think you can have an objective morality is to ground it in something like well-being, is to find, okay, what are the parameters? What are we looking to maximize here? Okay, now that we have that set of rules, similar to chess or any other game, once the rules are set, there's pretty much an objective way to do things right, or at least there's a lot of objective ways to do thing wrong.

0:28:34 Thomas: There are far more ways to be bad at chess than there are to be good, but there are a number of different openings that work in chess. There are a number of strategies that work. Work. There's not one opening that's just decided, okay, the kingpon opening, you got to do that, and then it'll be the best way. It's not really how it works, but you can objectively say some are better or worse than others. You can say, given these parameters, some systems of morality, some certain moral decisions are better and worse, and it's the only way it will work. Sorry I've gone off on a tangent about this, but I think about this a lot. It's really fascinating to me that the other side, in my view, Tyler's side, that side on morality, is just so absolutely wrong.

0:29:23 Thomas: They're accusing me of something, which is having a morality that is inconsistent, or that's going to lead to slavery and all that. They're accusing me something that's not only not true, it's true of them. It couldn't be more backwards. The minute God told you slavery was okay, well, then it would be okay. There's nothing you can do to say it's not as long as God tells you. It's so simple. I mean, it really is. But it's also, well maybe it's not that simple. It's actually pretty difficult now that I think about it. Sam Harris had to write a whole book about it and people didn't like it. So that was how complicated it was. But I do think he's roughly speaking correct. And I want to know if anyone agrees, disagrees, what you think on the matter of rights, what do you think about that?

0:30:11 Thomas: Do we really have rights? I don't think we do. I think we grant what rights we think is best for everybody, that we think are best for humanity and best for people to thrive. Those are the rights that matter, and those are the ones we grant. All right, with what little time I have left here, I'm going to try to switch the discussion a little bit and now talk about things that I possibly disagree with other pro-choice people on. And this is, I want to emphasize, this is tentative. I'm not 100% sure on this stuff at all. But a lot of people reference the, I think Matt Dillahunty had a video, or at least a part of Atheist Experience, where it's an example that a lot lot of people use. It. I'll just say, you can't force a mother to donate a kidney to a two-year-old, to her two- year-old.

0:31:02 Thomas: You can't for her to do that. So, therefore, you cannot force her to stay pregnant. You cannot force to provide her body for the baby, for the fetus, regardless of whether or not it's a person. And this, to a lot of the people, is just the knockdown argument. And a lot lot of people have told me, a ton of people have messaged and commented saying, hey, personhood doesn't matter. It doesn't even come into it, because even if it was a full person, the mother's right to bodily autonomy trumps that. Now, I want to say I have a lot of sympathy for this, and it's possible it's right, but I have some issues with it, and I'm going to hash them out a little bit here and let me know what you think. But I just, please know it's in the spirit of, I'm genuinely genuinely confused, or I don't mean confused, but I'm genuinely not sure.

0:31:55 Thomas: I'm not going one way or the other, but, I think there are some interesting consequences of those thoughts. Now, first off, I want to say that one thing we need to do as skeptics and as rational people is be worried, because I really want this conclusion to be true. That's something that worries me a little bit. I really would like the conclusion to be true that we that we have a knockdown argument for abortion. It's 100% the woman's choice to do anything she wants at any time of any pregnancy. I would like that to be true because that would just make things so much easier. And I support women, I support... and you guys know, you guys know I am pro-choice, so it sounds like I'm arguing against you.

0:32:42 Thomas: I'm not really. So keep in mind that I, like, I'm not, I don't want your argument to not be true for any other reason other than I'm a little concerned about the logic of it, is all. So that, that's the point I want to make. And I think as skeptics we, we need to be concerned when we really want a conclusion to be true, and we believe that conclusion, we at least need to be concerned and careful, because otherwise we're doing the same things that we accuse other people of. So I just want to put that out there, these are things that I question in my mind, because I know I want that answer to be true. So, here's my issue with the kidney thing. Lots of things. First off, think about how differently we really would treat it if it was a real person inside the mother.

0:33:28 Thomas: And really, I mean, if every abortion was killing an identifiable person inside The Mother, I think we would approach it a lot differently. First of, off, we wouldn't just kill the fetus. I mean, it would be, okay, we, ma'am, I understand you don't want to support this living human, this being, like this person that we fully, it could be someone, you know, just imagine someone, seriously, just for the sake, I'm trying to separate the personhood part because that's what Matt Dillahunty was doing as well with his example. So imagine a fully formed person that you know is in a woman, in a women's womb. I know it's kind of ridiculous. But just to imagine what that would be like, would you be okay with saying, yeah, just murder, just vacuum him out.

0:34:16 Thomas: He's dead. He is a dead man. I mean, wouldn't you approach it a little differently? Wouldn't you say, well, okay, I understand it's your right to bodily autonomy. We need to take him out, but we need to do everything we can to keep this person alive. Live. I mean, we need to invent some sort of artificial kind of womb for this fetus to live in. We need to, if at all possible, to be somehow, I don't know, somehow inseminated into another willing mother. You know, like maybe if someone wants to save this person's life, if there's any way we can do that, if There's any way I probably not because most abortions, by the way, I think this is important to emphasize something I should have emphasized to Tyler. Most abortion, 90% of abortions are in the first 12 weeks, so there's not much there.

0:35:03 Thomas: But still, if we're separating personhood, and we are, I want to remind you, we are. We're saying this is a full person. And the violinist one does this too. This is a whole person and the mother. We would approach things a lot differently. And say one day, this is not impossible to imagine, say one day we invent some sort of artificial womb. Someone invents, okay, I've invented this chamber that we can put the fetus in, we can take it out of the mother at any time, we can pop it in this little thing, and it does everything it needs to do to raise the child, to raise The Fetus to full term and being a healthy baby and all that. Imagine we invent that. Honestly, I don't think it's going to happen, but it's not impossible in my mind.

0:35:48 Thomas: That could happen. I could see it being a useful tool if there's ever a premature birth, that sort of thing. So, it's not the most science fiction-y of things. It's somewhat believable. If that were ever the case, and if the kidney example and the bodily autonomy argument is all we needed, you would still need to treat that fetus like a person. And if it's a real person, you'd be required, I think you would be mandated to save its life if you can. Again, imagine it's A real person. Sure, you have to remove it from the mom because she has a right to bodily autonomy, but that does not mean you have to kill it. And here's another odd thing. If you're, again, once again, using the example of a real person, it's interesting to say you have a right-to-bodily autonomy.

0:36:37 Thomas: I get that part. But what that translates to is having a right, to someone else having to kill a person. Isn't that interesting? Thing. Again, these are all things that when I say them, I imagine, oh, people are going to think I'm being anti-woman or trying to take away a woman's control. It has nothing to do with that, and I want to emphasize once again, I am pro-choice. So just to remind you guys before you get too mad at me or something, I'm just exploring these issues in my mind, and I'm exploring the logic of them. That's all I'm doing. Apologies if it sounds like anything else to anyone, but I am Pro-Choice, so just rest assured I'm not taking away any woman's right to choose, but I'm just interested in the way we argue about these things.

0:37:23 Thomas: It's very interesting to me in the And the consistency is interesting to me. So yeah, back to what I was saying, it is fascinating that you could, again, imagine it's a full person. Now, the mother or whoever it is has come into the state of affairs where she has a living person, someone you know, pick a friend of yours, and that friend is in her, and she says, I don't want this person in me. I have a right to bodily autonomy. And, you know she's got a good point. I'll grant her that. But isn't it interesting that in the case of abortion, so that's a right, right? Okay, so we've agreed, for the sake of argument, the right to bodily autonomy is a right. But isn't that interesting that in order to enforce that right, someone else has to kill a person for you?

0:38:12 Thomas: If we're going with, again, granting personhood, and if we're looking at it from that angle, isn'tthat interesting? What is someone's response to that? Go ahead and feel free to let me know what your response to that would be, but, and I guess you can say, well, someone's going to volunteer to kill a person for you, but it still seems, it still Seems crazy. I genuinely, these two rights, I think are just in conflict.

And I don't, it's weird that you can have a right that grants you someone else will will murder someone for you, will kill a person for you. Here's some other miscellaneous thoughts on this, I'm just gonna put them out there, and I want to, again, emphasize, these aren't, in my mind, these are not knock-down arguments for anything, I just, things I'm exploring, and reasons I'm a little hesitant about, just the kidney, bodily autonomy example, it's so funny, here's just an observation I had, make of it what you will, but, in that little video, Matt Dillahunty said, no one has a right to life, If, At anyone else's expense. And I thought that was odd. And it's so funny that, I mean, it makes sense, but it's funny that liberals tend to be the ones who are pro-choice, pretty much universally pro- choice. But they're also pro-healthcare.

So it's the same people who say you don't have the right to live at someone else's expense. The same people say everyone has a right to free healthcare. And make of that what you will. But I think it's funny. And it may tie in. I mean, especially if, again, once again, going to this hypothetical, we invent a machine where it's able to keep any fetus alive.

0:39:48 Thomas: Then, especially, if you support free healthcare, when you look at the fetus and someone says, a mother says, I don't want this fetus anymore. If you're granting full personhood, we would be obligated to keep that fetus alive, I think. We would have to put it in our little fetus machine and bring it for full term because we, I mean, healthcare is a right granted to all persons, again. So I thought it was funny, kind of odd that the same people who think that no one has a right to live at someone else's expense also say people have a right to live at other people's expense. I mean, what is universal healthcare but granting healthcare to everyone at someone's expense, at someone else's expense, essentially, or you share a part of that.

0:40:35 Thomas: You could share a parte of that that, but you could not. I mean, you could pay nothing into it, but then you're granted the right to live. People have to do work for that. People Have to, you know, pay money for that, and that's another thing that's interesting to me with this bodily autonomy thing, because we all pretty much, everyone pretty much agrees that that doesn't extend to once the baby is born. So, once the Baby is born, the mother is pretty much obligated, and everyone agrees with this to do all kinds of things for this baby. I mean, maybe you're not obligated by law to breastfeed, but you're, you pretty much are screwed. You have to stay up all night. You have to feed it. You're up nonstop. You are exhausted. A lot of your earnings, your money, a lot of food off of your table has to go into this frigging thing.

0:41:25 Thomas: You know, and it's funny that that there's such a difference in our minds between the bodily autonomy when the baby's in the mother, and then once it's out of the mother. I mean, you're required to do all kinds of things. And maybe it's not quite bodily autonomy, but your body is required to provide for the child, to feed the child to clothe the child. Your body. And by that, I mean You need to move your arms and legs and do a lot of things that you're forced to do for this child. And I don't see it as like that dissimilar. And Tyler pointed out that the right to bodily autonomy is not something in the Constitution, which is another thing to think about. It's not a right that we're constitutionally granted.

0:42:15 Thomas: So there may be something there. Now, again, these are all these are thoughts I'm having. Feel free to give me your feedback. I would like to know what you think of these thoughts. If they're not significant, if they are significant. But I think that I may be wrong to suggest that personhood is the only thing that matters. Maybe I was wrong to say that. And I've learned from your comments and I appreciate them and hopefully we're all learning something here. But, I still don't think that the kidney bodily autonomy thing is the Only Thing That Matters. Because then, like I said, there are a lot of weird consequences to that. We would need to treat the fetus completely differently if we grant that it's a person. I mean, our mindset would really have to change. Even if we still allowed abortions, it would totally change.

0:43:02 Thomas: So maybe you need both arguments. But I do think that the personhood sort of nips everything in the bud. I means, once we grant it's not a person, that's just tissue. You really don't need to worry about anything else. I mean, the mother then does have a right to do whatever she wants with the fetus because it's not a person. So I think it sort of solves both problems. And that's why I tend to argue from that perspective. All right. I didn't even get too close to what I wanted to get to. So sorry for that. I have a lot of things to say on this, but I think, I think we're good on this for now for a little bit. We can, I'll take your comments. I'll take your links. If anyone has links for things to read, etc., I'm happy to read them.

0:43:50 Thomas: I'd be curious to hear. And maybe Tyler and I'll get back together at some point, or maybe, I don't know. If you guys would like, feel free to voice your opinion. If you'd like me to have Tyler back at a later date, I'll give it some time, of course. If you'd like me to have him back and maybe clarify some of these debate points, maybe see where he gets his morality. Maybe we could just debate grounding of morality, that would be something we could do. Feel free to let me know what you think. I'm happy to accept your vote, although I don't guarantee that it makes a difference. I'm happy to hear it. So, thank you so much for listening. Thanks again for all the feedback. This has been fun. It's been informative. I've learned a ton. I hope that you have learned something as well, even if you didn't ultimately agree with either of us or whatever.

0:44:37 Thomas: I mean, maybe you brought something, another argument to your arsenal, or honed another argument that you were using or something. I'm hoping it was a benefit to you. Alright, as usual, I want to thank my patrons at patreon.com/atheist. This episode, this show, this entire podcast is brought to you by those lovely patrons. Got a lot of new ones. Steve Siegmund, Elizabeth Kerin, thank you. Sarah-Kate, thank you. Scott The Rat, thank you. David, thank you. And the Recovering Gringo, cool name. Thank you so much for pledging. Much appreciated.

I hope you get a lot out of it, and I know that the show would not be the same if not for my lovely patrons, and now I gotta thank my all-time greats. Kyle, uh, sorry, yeah, Kaile Riser, Zimu, Zinu, Adrian Borschoff, Michael, Jonathan Moyet, Jay Aldenwalt, Bangs Naughty Bits, Christian, uh, Peter Skelton, Brian Gerfort, Dale, Matt Garrett, Samantha, and that's it. Thank you guys so much. It really means a lot. Keeps the show going. Patreon.com/atheist. And I like this thing we've been doing where I give you content early before everyone else, because it's just a good way to thank you guys. And I'm glad that people have reacted to it. So thanks again for supporting.

And, And, of course, have a very happy holiday this coming weekend. Merry Christmas, and Merry War on Christmas as well. Good luck with that. I know we're all going to fight very hard, as hard as we can, to eliminate Christmas once and for all, because that's what we do as atheists.

0:46:10 Thomas: So, have good Christmas. Thanks for listening. I love you guys more than I can say. I'll see you on Monday. Day.