the benefits of legalized abortion
I've been reading Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's book Freakonomics. A particular passage strikes me as fascinating and I wanted to know what you out there think.
A bit of backstory. As you'll recall, crime and gang violence was paramount in the minds of all Americans in the early and mid 90s. Teenage violent offenders and violent ( Read more... )
A bit of backstory. As you'll recall, crime and gang violence was paramount in the minds of all Americans in the early and mid 90s. Teenage violent offenders and violent ( Read more... )
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Do you support the death penalty? Innocent people have likely been killed due to corporal punishment.
What about war? Innocent people have been killed in wartime, too.
What about peacetime? Innocent people are killed every day.
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I was talking about innocent people being killed in car accidents, murders, and such. In peacetime.
If it has been proven that abortion directly causes a drop in violent offenders, then why would you oppose it?
Or, if you do oppose it...let's say abortion because illegal and the crime rates rises as a result of it...what do you propose to do to limit violent crime?
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Crime and vice have always existed and I don't know a good way to circumvent human nature.
Every instance in human existence requires new solutions. I'm not being a wiseass, I'm just curious to know what you'd do about it.
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I don't think the author was proposing anything to do with eugenics. And, I, having posted such a thing don't believe in eugenics either.
We have a problem. The problem is human nature. The problem is also that it has been proven that unstable family lives breed criminals.
How is religion not then eugenics? Religion emphasizes peace, tolerance, and compassion. Do you believe that if there was no religion then criminals would be deprived of their right to be violent?
Do you believe that criminals are born inherently violent and thus we need to have them in society because they have a right to exist?
Do you believe that criminals exist in society to thin out the herd? What about serial killers? Do they serve a fundamental purpose?
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I would suggest things such as: a better social security system so that children don't grow up in such poverty, better state education so that children from poor backgrounds can find ways to improve their economic circumstances in ways other than crime, better free healthcare for children, parenting classes and mentoring for disadvantaged parents, better sex education and free contraception so that poor young women are less likely to have unplanned pregnancy to begin with.
Crime and vice have always existed and I don't know a good way to circumvent human nature.
But interestingly crime rates differ considerably in different countries and their crime rates are not correlated with their abortion rates so either Scandinavians are genetically more law abiding than Italians or there are factors other than killing poor people's fetuses that affect crime rates.
The problem is also that it has been proven that unstable family lives breed criminals.Maybe we could have government policies that ( ... )
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Yikes.
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We have a problem. The problem is human nature. The problem is also that it has been proven that unstable family lives breed criminals.
How is religion not then eugenics? Religion emphasizes peace, tolerance, and compassion. Do you believe that if there was no religion then criminals would be deprived of their right to be violent?
Do you believe that criminals are born inherently violent and thus we need to have them in society because they have a right to exist?
Do you believe that criminals exist in society to thin out the herd? What about serial killers? Do they serve a fundamental purpose?
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I do not agree with this.
The problem is also that it has been proven that unstable family lives breed criminals.
You confuse correlation with causality. No form of science, criminology including, offers proof. Proof is confined to systems, such as logic and mathematics, where the axioms are pre-defined.
How is religion not then eugenics? Religion emphasizes peace, tolerance, and compassion.
Eugenics is a social philosophy and/or a scientific movement to create "better" human beings by various interventions. Urging living people to better themselves is not the same.
Do you believe that if there was no religion then criminals would be deprived of their right to be violent?
You are begging the question. I do not believe that anyone has a "right" to be violent, at all.
Do you believe that criminals are born inherently violent and thus we need to have them in society because they have a right to exist?
No.
Do you believe that criminals exist in society to thin out the herd?I believe that criminals ( ... )
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I do not agree with this.
What do you perceive human nature to be? Inherent what? Selfish? Good? Evil?
The problem is also that it has been proven that unstable family lives breed criminals.
You confuse correlation with causality. No form of science, criminology including, offers proof. Proof is confined to systems, such as logic and mathematics, where the axioms are pre-defined.
Agreed. Nothing has been proven. What do you think bad family lives produce?
How is religion not then eugenics? Religion emphasizes peace, tolerance, and compassion.
Eugenics is a social philosophy and/or a scientific movement to create "better" human beings by various interventions. Urging living people to better themselves is not the same.
I have a much more skeptical opinion of free will than you do. I see free will as having serious limitations. I see the excesses of religion rather than the benefits. I don't advocate making better human beings, per se, but I do believe in evolution of human society. I just ( ... )
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