Michael Archer

I have no idea. But in this thread, we're talking about the theory of evolution: a scientific theory that explains the diversity of life. We're not talking about how life came to be. If you want to know about the origin of life, you should read some articles on abiogenesis.

We're not talking about history, we're talking about rights; I gather that you think that because you exercised one right poorly, another one gets taken away from you i.e. because you were careless when you used your right to have sex, you lose your right to liberty when you accidentally get pregnant. Using the same logic, is it safe to say if I'm some active speaker against something, if they find out I'm wrong and have been spreading lies am I no longer allowed to speak again? Or another one: if I invest all my money into a company that then crashes, am I then not allowed to rebuild by wealth and start over? Am I forced to remain poor/pregnant? It is probably my fault. But it's my body and I get to say what goes in and out of it. If you don't like it, then don't abort your fetus. You have no right to dictate what I do with my property. Similarly, if I want to donate my kidney, I have every right to the same way I have every right to get an abortion. You don't get to tell me what I do with my kidney. (For the record, I'm not a girl; the statement was worded as if it wanted a response in the first person) Congratulations, you have just written the most vicious and evil statement I've ever read on this forum. I dare you to tell your last sentence to a man getting lynched by the KKK. What's the problem? The Klan is the majority, they get to decide what happens whether you like it or not!

Are you implying that rights are not inalienable and that people may violate them or take them away at whim? Because if you are...well...that's anarchy...there's a thread for that. And one would be created if we gave animals rights. How do I stop a deer from eating my crop? The cheapest and most economically efficient way (I get tasty meat!), is to shoot it. I can't do this to a human if I see him raiding my house and he runs away when I see him; it's the government's job to decide what to do with him; a deer can't defend itself in court. If we give animals rights, I can no longer shoot the deer; I must treat him as a human; a deer eating my crop is fundamentally identical to a man raiding my house. I can't take the deer to court, nor can I shoot him, nor can I have a pleasant conversation and ask him to stop. This is a double standard. I too believe that it's morally wrong to catch a torture a deer eating your crop; it says a lot about yourself, how you view the world and other people. But we shouldn't do anything about it because it's not moral to initiate force on other humans and the only facility that should be allowed to use force is the government and only in retaliation to other people violating other people's rights. And animals don't have rights. Way to take me out of context. I never said living things get rights if they can contribute to society; it would be evil to take away someone's rights because they don't "contribute to society" (if that even means anything). Rights define and sanction rational beings' actions in a society when it interacts with other rational beings. That's all I said. Are you still following me? Hunting laws? You said earlier that we're talking about moral, not legal. I'm confused! We need animals not to go extinct for a very good reason: so we can exploit them. e.g. use food, have pets, make coats. We exploit them the same way we exploit all of nature for all our daily commodities. I agree; it would be devastating for them to go extinct. The existence of learned behavior in animals contradicts this. Please name one animal (not humans, obviously) that use the power of their reason to engage in peaceful trade with one another, to override their biological imperative, to establish a body to make sure their rights are protected. As a human, I can use my reason to decide whether or not I follow by biological imperative i.e. get my freak on. I can override my instinct; only reason allows me to do that. Reason would not let the male angler fish get absorbed by the female to become her portable sperm bag. Reason would not allow the male praying mantis to literally risk his head for the sake of procreating. Reason would not allow the flatworm to penis fence its mate and risk becoming the mother (I'm not making this one up. It's funny, I know!). Only if one type of animal is predatory towards another. There are plenty of species that do coexist without preying on one another. There are many examples of mutually beneficial relationships between different species. So like the anarchous autonomy in Monty Python and the Holy Grail! Heh, just kidding. But seriously, the crux of the argument for anarchy: "Humans are good, we get along fine! We don't need a government!". I'm sure there are many beneficial relationships that would come in anarchy. But there are also many bad ones. Even if animals are not predatory towards each other, they still partake in a lot of forceful actions which are completely normal. I've seen a seagull violently chase another away for a piece of moldy bread in the parking lot of a supermarket. My point is that even though animals may not theoretically be hostile towards each other; in the jungle, might always makes right. Just like in an anarchous society.

The fact that it will develop into a full grown person is irrelevant. Using the same logic, I can say that because I know that an adult will become a lifeless corpse eventually, I can treat him as if he already is e.g inter him, cremate him, give away all his assets according to his will. You want to treat a fetus like a baby and give it the same rights, do you not? And if you read the rest what I said after I said "Are you implying, just because it's alive, it has rights?", I used reductio ad absurdum to explain that life does not have inherent rights. True, but at that point, the guardian has decided that their wish is to become the guardian and this is their own free will. No rights are being violated. Who are you to say at what time and under what conditions other people should do their family planning? Who are you to say what they do with their own property? Do you think that some people have the right to initiate force on other people? If yes, then you have no idea what a "right" is. Not true, but I can see what you mean. It's a common misconception. *ahem* Your basic right is the right to life; this is where all other rights come e.g. right to liberty, freedom of speech, property, pursuit of happiness etc. Note that these are all rights to action, or rather freedom from action. The freedom of speech does not mean that the government must provide me with a microphone or a radio channel; it simply means that an individual or the government can not stop me from speaking my mind. The right to property does not mean others are forced to give you a house; it means that you can work and someday buy the house you desire without anyone stopping you. You cannot have a right "to" things, since this would violate property rights of others e.g. to imply a "right of education", you would imply the right for a government to seize property from other people in order to pay for it. Goods and services are valuable and anything of value must be paid for. To give someone a right "to" something would be the government has to secure that right and the only way they can do that is to forcibly seize it from someone else, thus depriving them of their property rights. This is why when you "deprive" someone of a limited resource, you're not taking away any of their rights. Read the Bill of Rights, Deceleration of Independence, or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: you'll notice that they're all rights to action. Coincidence? Actually, don't read the Canadian Charter: Section 1 redefines the word "inalienable" to mean exactly the opposite...that's not related. What am I getting mad about again? Oh yeah: That was a rhetorical question, but even so, your first sentence is not true. "Entity" is, "being, existence; especially : independent, separate, or self-contained existence" (taken from the Merriam-Webster dictionary); a baby is not independent, separate, or self-contained. Your second sentence is irrelevant, as I explained in the beginning of this post and your third sentence is just plain wrong, as I explained in my rights rant. Forcing a woman to remain pregnant against her will deprives her of her right to liberty. Liberty, comes from the right to life. So you are invalidating her life by invalidating her right to liberty and property. Even if rights could violate other rights (WHICH THEY DON'T), who's to decide who's rights are better? Who decides who's rights supersedes another? Such decisions made, has led to the oppression and destruction of many societies. (the 'rights over other rights', I mean. I'm not saying that the anti-abortion movement has led to the destruction of many societies. Honest)

"rights can be dynamic"? No they can't! Rights are inalienable; didn't you learn this in civics class? It's mandatory here in Canadian high schools...that's not related. Giving animals rights would create a double standard; we would have to act differently towards them while they would not have to act differently towards us. That means I am not allowed to stop that deer from eating my crop or invading my house. How is that fair? If a human does that, I can bring them to court. I don't want to see animals suffer; it hurts me to see animals suffer, but pain is not the basis of rights, nor is it the basis for why humans have rights. Humans need rights to function socially, since humans use reason to survive. If someone initiates force on a human being, they are rendered helpless. Force and mind are opposites; to survive the human mind needs to be free from force, so this is where rights come in. Animals don't use reason to survive; evolution gave them the power to initiate force on other beings. You can't really blame them for that; that's how they survive. That is what separates us from animals: humans survive and interact by peaceful trade using the power of reason; animals survive by killing each other through the initiation of force.

It's not being "punished", it's being removed because it's unwanted. You can't make someone want something. "Punished" implies that the government took action for a wrong doing. Are you implying, just because it's alive, it has rights? That's something totally different; I urge you to check the "humans over other animals" thread. If you don't want to, here's a simple argument against that: your skin cells alive and life has rights. So if you pop a zit, you've committed murder. Rights only apply and pertain relevantly to human beings. (keyword: being. i.e. separate entity) A baby is a physical separate entity; the government has no right to tell a woman how to use her body, but if she decides to let it be born, then she claims guardianship, and then leaves it in a dumpster; she has attempted murder. It that case, I better hope the government does something about it. "Infringement of rights" is if it's not wanted. If someone wants to house a baby in their uterus and to claim guardianship, it's not infringement. If I choose to commit suicide, I'm not violating my right to life. Rights don't infringe on rights all the time; if they didn't, they wouldn't be rights. Please name one right that infringes on another. Even if they did (which they don't), we wouldn't be fixing the problem by making more "rights" that infringe on real rights like the right to life. Rights can't violate other rights. The fetus cannot have the right to life because that would infringe on the woman's right to life. Why is it ok to put her life in favor of the fetus? Remember: just because something is alive, does not mean it has rights. You should read what I wrote previous to this. It's selfishness to put my well-being first? If a woman is pregnant and dying and all her reason is screaming at her to preserve her own life and get an abortion, that's selfishness? If I was a hobo who moved into your house during a brutal, Canadian winter and totally trashed your place, would you be offended if I called you "selfish" if you tried to kick me out? The opposite is selfishness is altruism which means that your actions are only moral if they benefit someone other than you. That means altruism says that it's a virtue to give food to your neighbors while you're starving until you eventually die. Now tell me: which is truly evil?

Sorry for breaking you brain Waldo; come back when you get it fixed. Here's a parting thought: If you don't like the company making their prices so high, why don't you just not buy from them and buy contraceptives that are cheaper? Condoms are pretty cheap and easy to get nowadays, I hear. Just because you can't afford the new contraceptive, does not mean that you have the right to tell them how to price it. You do not have a right to the product they produced. A democrat is pursuing them? Why am I not surprised that a member from one of the more statist parties are pursuing them? You know, the same party that passed that socialistic health care bill? When you say a democrat from Ohio is stopping them, that's not helping your case. I'm still confused about when you say "granted monopoly"; the only way a government can "grant" a monopoly is if they subsidize a company, or outlaw its competitors, but you said they did neither. Oh well. See you later. Also, for the record, please don't put quote blocks around things I didn't say and then imply I said them; putting words in my mouth offends me and doesn't paint you in the best light. Right. Here in Toronto, the monopolistic power company is called "Toronto Hydro" and recently, they just released a pamphlet saying how the price of electricity will be very expensive during certain times and at others, electricity would be dirt cheap. If us Torontonians were fed up with this, we would normally go to another power company to get a more reasonable plan, but we can't because the government outlawed all Toronto Hydro's competition. That is bad for competition and the free market. Sometimes, a company will get so successful, that they'll drive all their top competitors out of business. In this case, it's still possible to compete with this company; if the "monopoly" drives their prices as high as they want, people will go to the smaller company since people would rather pay less for things. A harmful monopoly like you described and like I described two paragraphs earlier can only be created by the government giving it subsidies, or outlawing all its competition. I agree with what you say the purpose of the government is, but the fact that you made that analogy makes me think I didn't make myself clear enough: Capitalism is a system where the initiation of force is banned; rights can only be violated from the initiation of force, like in your analogy. That's why murdering someone is illegal; you're depriving them through the initiation of force, the right to life. In capitalism, you're allowed to do anything you want as long as you don't violate anyone's rights. The property situation I described is an abuse of government power. What I meant to say is that if I have property, the government should not be allowed to tell me how I use it if I'm not using it to violate anyone's rights. Do you know what liability is? If I get hurt because of someone's else's negligence, they have to pay me in damages. "Safe" means that the employer makes sure they weren't negligent in anything i.e. nothing they did will hurt their worker. Of course only the government can take legal actions; did I say anything to the contrary? If my "regulate safe practices" you mean "make workplace codes in what the government believes is a safe workplace and shut down any company that does not comply", then no, it's not the government's job to do that. The government is supposed to protect rights; it's not up to them to decide if a workplace is safe or not. If you feel your workplace is not safe, take it up with your employer or go work for someone who does have a safe workplace. If not and you decide to continue working and you get hurt, you can sue your employer for negligence since it was his fault you got hurt. What do you mean by "without regard for others?" Do you mean to say that the attitude, "I'm going to rob this bank; I don't care how many people I'm hurting" is bad? If so, then I agree with you, and that would be illegal under capitalism. Do you mean "My company is so successful; we provide so many products to so many people at such low prices and we're making so much money that my inferior competitor can't compete and has to close down and find another, usually lower-paying job." is evil? Then no, there's nothing evil in being successful. The inferior competitor does not have the right to compete with me. That's another thing about capitalism: it doesn't support and condone mediocrity. If the government made me stop producing so much, make me make my prices so that the inferior business man can compete, take away the money that I earned "for public good", all in the name of "justice", they would be initiating force against me. THAT is true evil.

What...seriously? That's your response? Ok... The burden of proof is put on whoever makes the claim. This is basically the fundamental basis of all conversations. e.g. If I claimed that I could use the sheer power of my legs to jump to the moon, wouldn't you make me prove beyond all reasonable doubt that I could do that? In other words, a lack of proof is not proof. And now you're calling me a troll i.e. you're insulting me and my intellengence. In those short sentences, you've not only shown that you don't know how a formal argument works by telling us that you think the burden of proof is on the negative side, using the fallacy of argument from ignorance multiple times, and are now using argumentum ad hominem to defend your point that you cannot prove. Are we done here, or do you actually have proof for your argument? All you have right now is very tentative lack of proof for your opposing side. Yeah, it's not random and no one says it is, except for creationists who don't understand evolution. Random mutations do occur, but the mutations that survive and you see today are not randomly selected. What you choose to believe in is very different than what actually is. Please stop saying there's no evidence for evolution; there are entire Ph.D. theses written on the subject. Just because you don't know what the evidence is, doesn't mean there is none. There's creation, which you take entirely on faith, and then there's evolution: a theory created by science, backed by evidence, research and empirical studies; the theory is created on this basis which is also the basis of science. Reality is objective, even if you don't think so and that's what the theory of evolution is: a model of how to explain how things work in real life based on evidence gathered from the perception of reality.

Ross, I hope the video is a bit less than 120 gig when it's compiled and put on your website.

What's wrong with profit motive? When you say benefit to the person, what benefit? And to whom? By whom? Who decides what that benefit is? What gives them the right to decide what that benefit is and initiate force against the citizens to get the fruits of their labor? Now, by corporate monopoly, I assume you mean a business that's so successful in the free market i.e. it's able to provide better goods to more people at better qualities at lower prices, that its competitors can't compete. What's wrong with that and how is it bad? Why would it fail? Keep in mind, throughout history, there has been no pure capitalist system. I mean pure lassiez-faire capitalism. During the Stalin years, USA was a mixed-economy. Are you saying that would fail? "Market share" belongs to the few individuals who's time and effort is the reason why it's there. It's private property. Why does the government have the right to tell them how to use their own property? This does not work. You can't be advocating two completely opposing ideas. Cost-of-entrance can't be low while also mandating wage minimums and safety minimums. Safety standards and minimum wages are expensive. So much for your low cost-of-entrance. Remember FDR's raise of the minimum wage to fight the depression? He just made things worse! Smaller businesses couldn't continue to run; workers became too expensive. I agree that it should be assumed that a workplace won't kill a worker who doesn't know the risks. That's why if a person is harmed in the workplace, they should be able to take legal action against their employer. Therefore, it's up to the employer to make sure it's safe. But it's not up to the government to decide what's safe and what's not. It's arbitrary manipulation of private property. I assume by "granted" you mean government subsidies and the government made it illegal to compete against this company. If this is the case, then that's a problem with mixed-economy and government intervention in the free market, not capitalism. So greed and profit motive is inherently evil. Why is that exactly? Why is the desire to be prosperous and successful using the power of your mind "evil"? If evil is that which is detrimental to man, making money to sustain your life and flourish cannot possibly be considered evil. The opposite of greed and profit motive is altruism and loss motive. Altruism is the theory that the purpose of your life is to sustain other lives at the cost of your own. I consider this to be one of the greatest evils. It is also insane to think that it's a virtue to feed another life but a vice to feed your own. Loss motive is just stupid and nihilistic. Also, it's anti-life. Yeah, but at what cost? All these "public" offices are run by the government. The government does not produce anything; their only form of income is taking it from their citizens. Are you advocating robbing one man to pay for the unearned benefit of another? Why do you think you're entitled to someone else's hard earned money? The wait time is bad. My dad is a doctor in Canada and he says the waiting rooms are packed. One of his colleagues went to the United States for some routine test, just so she wouldn't have to wait four months. There's no such thing as the latter. That's what you called socialism or communism, depending on the degree and structure.

I'm sorry? You created the thread. You are contradicting decades of science and research. You brought up this topic. I'm pretty sure the burden of proof is on you. It's not the other way around. Again: Do you have a cite for this claim? If you're starting the topic, you have the burden of proof. Don't throw around "facts" without citing them first, please. No, it wouldn't. If you take a statistics course in high school, you'll learn that going into the field of statistics requires years of training and education. One of the things they learn is to eliminate bias. It's ridiculous to say that because what they believe, it's not true, or biased. What's the alternative? Obviously, not a creation "scientist", so that leaves us with agnostic. Agnostics believe there is no objective reality and that all theories are equally valid; they wouldn't be able to argue any point. But the person who wrote the article? I could say her Ph.D is in biomedical sciences, therefore she has no business to say what a scientific theory is, but I won't. All I will say is that she's taught graduates and college biology students. The entire study biology depends on evolution being true; I highly doubt any good university would hire her if she didn't believe in evolution. But that doesn't matter, like I said. Yup. DNA definitely supports evolution. How does it not? The rest of the paragraph is just one big scarecrow argument. I won't entertain that. What exactly are you implying? Are you saying that the number of people who believe in a theory somehow impacts the credibility of the theory? I hope not. I never said anything about method of origin. You do know the difference between evolution and abiogenesis, right?

It's not an issue of what happened in the past; it's a matter of rights. Does a fetus have the right to consume a woman's resources without her consent? Does it have the right to take what it wants, even at the expense of the woman's life, mind and reason? "Murder" is the taking of a human being's life through the initiation of force. A fetus is human, but not a "human being" per se, since it's dependent entirely on its mother. A baby is a physical separate entity, so killing a baby would be murder. Removing a fetus, would not be, since there is no right to exist on another human as a parasite. Not "kill it", "remove it" which usually results in fetal death. The way you phrased it sounds like I'm advocating the initiation of force against other human beings at the whim of another, which I'm not. You own your body, do you not? How would you feel if the government forced you to give a kidney to a complete stranger? The stranger would die without it; using the anti-abortionist arguments, the "donor" will commit murder if he does not give his kidney. A fetus resides in a woman by her permission only. You do not have the right to tell a woman how she will use her body, her resources, or her property, nor does the government have the right to use her as a breading pig. To outlaw abortion would be contrary to the right to life. The right to life includes the right to freedom of mind, reason and action for yourself. Forbidding a woman to get an abortion would be contrary to her reason, that tells her it would be detrimental to her own life to keep the fetus. This is why it angers me that the anti-abortionists have the audacity to call themselves, "pro-life".

Oh, ok. I didn't understand your point of view. You're a subjectivist. You believe that it's up to people to decide what reality is. I'm talking as if no one decides what reality is; reality just is, and it's up to people to perceive and understand it using reason and logic. You know, the objective theory of reality and values. There's a lot of problems with the subjectivist theory, that I won't go into in this thread. You should read the torture scenes in the book Nineteen Eighty-Four. George Orwell does a great job in exposing flaws in subjectivism.

Heh. It looks like Minecraft! Still, I think it's an abomination. Half-Life 2 is one of the prettiest games I've ever played! I could never play it like that.

I'm worried that the world is sinking into statism, especially with election of Obama and his socialist policies. (Not a republican: just pointing that out) Statism is any theory that some men have the power to rule over and initiate force on other men. So, any theory but capitalism in the poll is statism, or at least some elements of statism. I say that if you love life, reason and mankind, and you believe reality is objective, you have no choice but to pick capitalism. Capitalism is the only system where initiating force is banned from all human relationships and all property is privately owned. The only organization that is legally allowed to use force is the government and they can only use it in retaliation. (e.g. punishing murders since they initiated force against other men by killing them. Remember: the initiation of force is banned, even by the government!)

Ross, please upload the full version to your website! I want to watch it again, start to finish, the way it was meant to be watched. This is by far my favorite Civil Protection episode by far. I don't mind waiting if it takes you a while to upload it, though. My only hope is that you do eventually wrap up the story and return to the status quo. Civil Protection is awesome. Keep up the great work! It was well worth the wait.

I play this! A little bit, anyway. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, AVOID THE LINEBATTLE SERVERS. Not really, but especially the 29th one and any other run by a "professional clan". They are so militant in their line battles (e.g. stabbing you in the back of the head if you fire a millisecond before the commander says to) that it takes all the fun out of the game.

Wow, Ross, I can see this is bothering you quite a bit. I'm not an expert in this, but all I can say is that there have been many oil scares in the past. Also, oil and the lack thereof is perpetuated by the environmental movement which has its roots in anti-capitalism. It's just no one would take them seriously if they marched around with the hammer and sickle.

Yes, we should put ourselves above other animals. To survive and live happily, we need our reason to exploit the earth and use its resources. We can't do that to each other because humans have the right to life and to kill them would deprive them of that. Animals don't have the right to life because rights only apply to rational beings in a social context. Humans deal with each other very differently than to how humans deal with animals or how animals deal with each other. If a man breaks into a farmer's crop, the farmer can take legal action against him. You can't do this with a deer. It would be insane to apply rights to species that can not understand them nor can abide by them. A man is acting immorally for killing another man, but a lion is not acting immorally by killing a man or another animal. The lion can not reason and that's the way it survives. No one wants to see animals suffer needlessly and we should morally condemn people who abuse animals. We shouldn't do anything about it, though. The government's job is to protect rights and since animals don't have rights, the government should do nothing.

Abortion? Well, the issue is whether or not a fetus has a right to live in a woman's body with or without her permission. This is where I see a lot of my fellow pro-abortionists fault and make the entire pro-abortion case look bad. A lot of them will say "Oh, there's no brain activity until blah blah blah", "it's not human!" and the like. They're completely missing the point. The issues is just a matter of rights. Does the fetus have the right to live in a woman's body with or without her permission? No. Why? Rights cannot infringe on other rights. To force a woman remain pregnant, means to force a woman to go against her reason, what she thinks is best for her, and what she can do with her own body. This violates her rights to life (and the nourishment thereof), liberty (to choose what she does for herself) and property (remember: her body is her property!). This is why a fetus does not have rights and only lives within a woman by her permission. Even if the fetus was a fully conscious human being, all of the above would still apply.

Ok...let me straighten one thing out first. Just because it's called the theory of evolution, does not mean there is doubt in it. A scientific theory is a model to explain how things work in real life, based on facts, observations and the perception of reality. What about gravitational theory? Does that mean it doesn't exist? I guess it doesn't according to you. Using this logic, I can pretty much ignore that entire thing you copy-pasted, since it is all based on atomic theory. Carbon dating isn't perfect; that's why when you see a date on something, it's not like a milk carton expiry date; they usually give a few thousand to a million years of error. So is creationism. So that means you shouldn't take that as fact either. You're actually helping my point, by saying you'll never take it as fact. This means that you can be shown tremendous amounts of evidence and have evolution proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, yet you would still believe the opposite. This a complete rejection of objective reality, and that's something totally different that we can talk about on a later day. Really? DNA seems like a big one. I challenge you to find a biologist who says that the discovery of DNA actually partially refutes the theory of evolution. O RLY? Click me! Do you have a cite for this claim? No you haven't. The text you provided has no citations, nor any scientific references. They accuse the carbon daters as "biased" while their entire site is dedicated to disproving and ridiculing scientists. But even if you did find a small inconsistency, that doesn't mean we throw out the theory; that's not how science works. As we obtain more knowledge and facts, the model "updates", similar as to how you download computer program updates. Does this mean the older program has no use and was completely wrong? We should never teach creationism in schools. Evolution has withstood the test of time and has been scrutinized by the scientific community to death without being ridiculed. It is supported by years of facts and evidence while creationism is supported only by blind faith. (LOL, I just noticed the E=MC^2 in the cartoon. What's that doing there?)

Great episode, Ross and whoever else helped! Extremely atmospheric and I loved it from beginning to end. I can't wait for you to put in on your website so I can download it.