Atheism: reason or circle jerk?
Offline *Note* It is not my intention to pick a fight, but to ask people to engage in a little self-examination. Please forgive me if I unintentionally provoke you to anger, it is not my intent.
From reading the posts on this site, the majority appear to be from people genuinely pissed off at religion in general, and Christianity in particular.
First, while I understand being angry at the self-righteous, unthinking, bigoted assholes we've all seen, and the horrendous inhumanity that religions in general have perpetrated, the hostility here seems a bit overblown.
While Christianity is the religion a giant majority of Americans claim, the number of people who for instance believe in a literal, wooden interpretation of the Christian Bible is something along the lines of 25%-ish IF THAT.
A huge number of attacks on religion I see here are arguing points that only the ignorant EVEN AMONG CHRISTIANS actually believe.
Get yourselves to some Episcopal churches, or UCC services and listen carefully. Talk to someone with an actual education from something other than Liberty Baptist or Oral Roberts "University" and you'll get a vastly different kind of religion than the shit that makes us all cringe in horror.
While I think their religion is equally as silly as the fundamentalists, I don't think it's worthy of hatred.
If someone is a Deist, while I may disagree with them, whats to really argue over? They believe in something unprovable and unfalsifiable that has little impact on their actions. If it makes them feel better, who cares?
And in fact, my experience is that a GIANT percentage of people who call themselves "Christians" are in fact, when you pin them down, Deists.
On balance, religion has been a bad thing. I don't think anyone can argue this point. The self-loathing, the perverted view of women and human sexuality in general, the concept of Hell, not to mention the pogroms, the burnings, the heretic hunts, etc. We could all list a thousand reasons why religion in general has been bad.
But that doesn't mean it has produced NO good.
Have you ever read Ecclesiastes? There's plenty there to move the heart of the most strident anti-theist.
Could Milton have written Paradise Lost without religion? I find it hard to imagine.
Say what you wish about the Salvation army, but I've worked in soup kitchens on Skid row in several cities, and precious few are the non-religious people offering any help. I was involved with a Catholic Group called Detention Ministries. A group devoted to following Jesus' admonition to "visit in prison." This group does just that, visits inmates in prisons all over the west coast, WITH EXPLICIT PROHIBITION ON PROSELYTIZING. you can talk about God, but only in response to questions, and NEVER to try and preach. I have never, in 25 years of working on inmate issues and prison reform issues, seen more than a very few overtly secular groups who would touch this stuff with a ten-foot-pole.
I could list hundreds of other explicitly religious people and organizations which have done good things and continue to do so.
I'm all for attacking the Fundies' continued attempts to impose theocracy in the USA. I'm all for disabusing people of illusions of "truth" that are nothing more than irrational beliefs. But basically a GIANT amount of what I read on this site is people arguing with positions that NO ONE IS TAKING except a relative handful of fanatics, pissing off every moderate or liberal Christian who reads them and thereby missing a lot of opportunities to actually accomplish something other than self-righteous, self-congratulation over how smart "WE" are vs the "Idiot Theists."
It's like the Abortion debate. Only a fanatic will take the position that a 5-day-old embryo is equivalent to a newborn baby. And only fanatics take the position that women should have an UNQUESTIONED right to have abortions without medical reasons at 8 months of gestation.
But that's the way the argument gets framed every fucking time. The "right-to-life" idiots claim abortion advocates are arguing for 8-month willy-nilly abortions, something not one in 100 abortion rights advocates would agree with, and then the abortion rights crowd defines all people who question the morality of abortion as wanting to make the morning after pill illegal, something a tiny percentage of people actually agree with.
What happens is that we get incredibly lop-sided, poorly thought-out policy decisions that change every time a new political party gets into office.
I'd like to see a world where religion no longer has meaning to people beyond a sense of history.
But we'll never get there for one, because some people will always fear their own death more than they love clear thinking.
And we won't even get close if the only two choices are made to be: "Fundamentalist Wacko" or "Anti-Theistic Fanatic"
Being open-minded isn't the same thing as being vacant.
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Babies can think, Matt. That's the deal. The higher brain functions kick in during the third trimester. If killing a baby is fine while it's higher brain functions are working, then killing people with Down Syndrome is also ok. Babies can think, even before they are born. There is your evidence.
What? Once the baby takes its first breath of air some magical thing transforms them?
Untrue, untrue, untrue. Stop the discussion and go research this, Matt. Then come back and slam me with your evidence or admit that you were talking out of your butt. No harsh tone intended.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
Um, no... I'm not using the term as exaggeration. I mean it literally, and specifically I'm using the definition that means the intentional killing of one human by another. Though, I can understand how it could sound like hyperbole now that I actually look up the term in dictionary.com. It seems there are quite a number of other meanings as well, including the unlawful killing of another person, the brutal killing of another person... and apparently also a flock of crows. (Who knew?)
Actually, I didn't say it was wrong... I just said it was murder, which it is. Unless, of course, the baby was killed legally, humanely, and accidentally. My point is that babies are people too, therefore if it's wrong to kill people, it's wrong to kill babies. Now, if that baby pulls a gun on you, of course I would say that you have a right to defend yourself.
me...
I mean how can you not remember a group of animals being called a "murder"? That's just too intriguing not to remember.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
It's my understanding that memory is not fully developed at birth and takes a few years to achieve the ability to retain longer term memories. There is no magic time when that long term memory finally gels which is why some people can remember some things from super early in their lives but most people don't until they are about 3.
It's also my understanding that what Watcher wrote concerning the ability of newborns and late term babies to "think" is entirely correct.
Murdering newborns is just plain wrong. It's wrong cause I said so
I support a womans right to choose but after the sixth month it gets much more difficult to do so.
Respectfully,
Lenny
"The righteous rise, With burning eyes, Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies, To beat and burn and kill"
Witch Hunt from the album Moving Pictures. Neal Pert, Rush
Hi jubal
Looks like you'll have to make a separate thread to discuss the topic you wanted discussed in this one. The contributors seem determined to discuss only the illustration you made in your first post, not your point.
For what it's worth, when in a situation where I am obliged to debunk claptrap from a religionist trying to persuade me of the validity of her case, hell is one of the easier concepts to dismantle, I find. It has a most obvious function in the theocratic sense. It appeals to the fundamentalist because it itself is a (rather childish) manifestation of a very primal and very human fear and, most importantly, it patently doesn't work - either as a device for ensuring compliance or as an asset in selling the christian package. Most religionists try to skirt around the subject - it is simply so embarrassingly inept a ploy to the bulk of educated and aware people and its use reveals the religionist bullies in their true light. Propaganda has come on in leaps and bounds in the last few thousand years and hell as a concept just can't be upgraded accordingly.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
And if we're still demanding that morals be absolute, kill cows and pigs for the processed meats we eat is abhorrable too. As is laying traps for mice, killing-off colonies of ants with RAID, setting windows in highrises that birds often fly into... all sorts of stuff that it is completely unreasonable to demand we stop doing. If it's always wrong to kill things with higher brain functions, you and I ought to be thrown in a gas chamber.
I actually back Matt 100% here. Nobody can give so much as a single shred of evidence that killing babies is absolutely amoral. The best you can do is say, "It would not be a moral thing to kill X baby in Y circumstance, because of Z reaons." And that's perfectly sound, rational thinking.
This, of course, is the big difference between rational, atheistic morals (which most everyone actually abides by anyway), and irrational, absolute, theistic morals, that say, "It would not be a moral thing to kill any baby in any circumstance, because God says so." Note the removal of responsibility here, as well. I no longer even have to justify what I think is right or wrong - it just simply is, and that's that.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
You can't have evidence for morals, by their very nature. Evidence can only be used to determine what is and isn't. It can't be used to determine goals. Moral frameworks are philosophies invented by humans for the purpose of directing human behavior with the goal of producing or avoiding certain interpersonal dynamics. You can't have evidence for something like that. There isn't so much as a single shred of evidence that says we shouldn't nuke everything on the surface of the earth rendering our planet incapable of sustaining any life. We don't do it simply because we don't want to.
Kevin, I don't think that you and Matt are on the exact same page.
Matt seems to think that, until a human being reaches a certain level of cognitive retention, its life is utterly useless. As such, he proposes, there should be no moral issue with a mother killing a newborn child. Ever. No matter what the circumstances.
You seem to think that the moral question over killing a newborn is completely relative.
Matt drives his perspective in nihilistic fashion. In fact, this whole dispute is less about killing a newborn child, and more about killing any form of life, at any stage of development. I guess you already touched on that, though. Boy, you guys have really dug into some shit here.
So when does is it become "rationally" wrong to kill someone? That is, at what age or state of development? (or is it some other characteristic that determines it?)
Why kill it ? Thats is the bigger question, isn't it ? Go Hamby ..... Go science
My Aspergers tends for me to take things too literally and miss subtle humor.
This is a joke, yes?
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
Holy De-Rail!
Well since you brought it up, I'll answer from I think a widely accepted position.
First, Kevin is 100% correct. By its nature, all philosophy subjective, rather than absolute. Some people have made claims to the contrary, but it doesn't seem to hold a lot of water. That's the difference between the DISCIPLINE of philosophy and the BELIEF of religion.
Only religion can claim to have "absolute" codes of conduct which are True with a capital T.
The best philosophy can do (which is one hell of a lot) is to formulate a system or systems by which to judge good or the best, and evil, or the worst.
We don't routinely allow random killing of infants because we don't allow random killing of any human. No society could long survive without such rules, which may make said rule self-evident, but not necessarily "absolute."
Societies have managed, if not well, with random killing, but even then it wasn't really random. Patricide, for instance is pretty well taboo everywhere and at all times. There have always been limits on what was lawful vs. unlawful killing. Killing unwanted infants has often been allowed where killing of adults was not. So history can't be the only argument. Hopefully we come to conclusions of what we think a rational person would call good, look at past practices and re-formulate their correctness, and re-adjust as necessary.
As for the argument about newborn babies not having development sufficient to be called human, this is right out of Peter Singer's work (I think he's a fucking nutjob) which made the argument that killing animals is no better than killing infants.
I view Singers arguments in this area as pretty repellent, but in fairness, at least Matt is partly backed by one school of philosophy.
So in sum, we don't allow UNLAWFUL killing of humans. We have a huge number of ways in which we allow LAWFUL killing, however. Execution for criminal offenses, killing in war-time, killing in self-defense or defense of another, etc.
We make these rules based on philosophy, which is by its nature at end, the best (hopefully) answer we can derive using logic. I would inject here that any rational person's life is their own possession, so to take it I would hold to be immoral unless there was a necessity to do so. And that means a necessity the society makes collectively. Those are social constructs, and social contracts we all live by, whether we know it or not. Those who can't live by them have always been regarded as rebels, lawbreakers, etc. ....And some are just plain sociopaths.
As I said, it's a fanatic position to take that a fetus capable of living outside the womb without heroic medical intervention should be able to be aborted at random decision by the mother. But its NOT absolutely forbidden. No law forces a woman to give birth if she will likely die in the process. Different states have fewer or more restrictions. And as I recall, Singer didn't make a case for killing babies at random at 9 months gestation or 5 months of age. He made the case that the killing of something we would mostly regard as human (a newborn) is little different from killing animals.
(I could be wrong here, but I seem to remember his argument being taken out of context by a mob-mentality a while back when he came to Boston to lecture).
Being open-minded isn't the same thing as being vacant.
That's based on a lot of factors. 'Age' should certainly not be a sole determinate.
Again, every day, we go through the same abstractions when we interact with other people. Example:
I presume that you like having a lot of money at your disposal (if you're in western society)? Almost every day, you interact with cashiers that have plenty of money in front of them (and the fact is obvious). Have you ever killed one and taken the register money? If you haven't, why? I mean, you do like money, don't you? If you murdered every cashier you came across and took ll the register money you came across, you'd be thilthy stinkin' rich!
The thing is, you almost definately like being able to interact with other people far more than you want money. And if you start killing cashiers, your ability to maintain social interactions with people plummets. Even if there were no justice system to enforce punitive consequences for murder, our desire for company and companionship (among other things) would 'keep us in check', as it were (...and this is why sociopaths, incidentally, are so dangerous. They don't give a shit about companionship or social interaction. They are motivated only towards what will give them personal gratification).
(On something of a silly note, if you happen to be a fan of video games, RPGs like The Elder Scrolls titles are actually quite good at modelling this. If you happen to own a copy of Morrowind or Oblivion, fire up a new game try playing as nothing other than a roving kill machine (...you might want to use some mad haxz for the former title). See how long you can keep at it before you get bored and disinterested. The quests and NPC interactions are the meat of the game, and you miss out on all that content when you just go out there and maim everything in sight).
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
You haven't addressed the question of when it becomes not ok to kill babies.
In your example, it appears the only reason not to kill someone is because of the benefit to social interaction (i.e. people are more likely to talk to you if you don't kill them). So then why is it wrong for people who don't care about social interaction to kill people? You haven't given any reason that someone who is a sociopath shouldn't kill someone. In fact, your reasoning suggest that they should (since they value the fun of killing over the benefits of being socially acceptable).
I would actually suggest that the genes that allow you to kill someone with no feelings of guilt, compassion or empathy (i.e. sociopathic/psychotic genes?) would have a lower chance of being passed on because after killing all those cashiers, the community you belong to would make sure you were stopped, either by killing or incarcerating you. This is why we have morals. They most probrably evolved. The idea of killing someone makes me feel extremely bad, and this emotional response is most probably hardwired into my brain via evolution.
Just read the goddamn morality section in the God Delusion, it makes alot of sense. I'm not an expert in the subject, so I base my opinions on people who are.
Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first.
That's a damn good way of stating it, Jello. Thanks for putting it out there. I completely agree with that.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
You have been told why, over and over, Matt. Killing a baby is murder, by any reasonable definition of the term. Murder is wrong, according to everything measure that we use to determine what is right and wrong.
If you do not feel a viscereal disgust at the notion of killing a baby I seriously think you should seek help. Seriously. It is such a severe breakdown of empathy that I don't think it could be considered healthy.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
Circular reasoning and ad hominem. Any reasons that aren't logical fallacies?
I was talking about a pre-birth fetus by the way. Using the terms "baby" and "murder" are utter hyperbole and am shocked to see such emotional nonsense from atheist. This is what I'd expect from a fundie! Everything so far is "It's just disgusting" "It's wrong", etc. Nothing the slightest bit logical. Same as we hear from fundies about religion - what does that tell you that you can't come up with a non-emotional and logical reason? If you have any sense it tells you you are wrong.
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
Matt, it's been explained.
I went out of my way to give you the framework by which we arrive at conclusions of ethics. This society, and pretty much all others at this point, consider infanticide to be murder, which is unlawful killing. Killing of a fetus, which, barring it being KILLED would survive outside the womb is generally considered infanticide, for what should be obvious reasons.
As to WHY infanticide is considered murder, go read some books on the subject, it's been explained much better than you're likely to find in this forum, by many many bright people, making no appeals to God whatsoever.
I've defined murder quite clearly. UNLAWFUL KILLING. That's a damned dictionary definition. Calling it hyperbole doesn't make it so, no matter how many times you say it is. We define babies as newborn babes up to about 1 year old or so, and no, calling a totally viable fetus baby is not hyperbole. You haven't come up with a valid reason to support what I would consider re some fairly outrageous statements.
I think when you say that it's perfectly ok to kill an healthy, 8-month old fetus, something most people find morally repugnant, it's yup to you to come up with an argument to support your position, rather than being up to everyone else to dispute it.
I WILL point out, that NO restrictions on killing infants is contra-survival. There's a damn good reason mothers get all gooey and emotional over their infants: without such emotions, they would not do what is necessary to care for them, and the human race would have gone extinct.
If you have place no value on the lives of your fellow humans, we have a word for that. It's called sociopath. I'm not using an ad hom, that's actually one of the biggest signs of Anti-Social Personality Disorder.
Being open-minded isn't the same thing as being vacant.
It come down to this: who's making the most extraordinary claim here?
Isn't everyone going to think that their claim is not the most extraordinary? That seems like a rather subjective thing to try to pin down.
Correct. And I wasn't planning to.
'When', like I said, is never going to be the sole factor. On average, most people (myself included) are going to say, "Well, exceptional circumstances notwithstanding, a full-term baby still inside the womb should be birthed without aborting," and we're all going to have different reasons for it (though some reasons will be likely to overlap. We call that a 'consensus'. But, again, this is not 'absolute', since we've established that:
a) People will have different reasons, even if there are degrees of consensus, for seeing a late-stage abortion as amoral
...And...
b) There are still exceptions to the rule. Note that almost every single person here has added the qualifier, "...Except if the mother's own life is jeopardized," creating an exception that has a large consensus.
If we're not dealing with a full0term baby, but still just an early stage fetus, we'll find a much larger consensus that says allowing the abortion is more or less a no-brainer (again, myself included), given that we have no real reason to equate a fetus with a fully developed baby at an early stage. But even here, it's still not absolute - because everyone is still going to have their own reasons for saying that the abortion is alright (and some people are still going to disagree, for their own reasons).
Correct. Well, sort-of. It's more than simply 'other people will talk to you'. By singling yourself out by acting violent, you've effectively cut yourself off from the ability to create any kind of social contract with anyone. Even if you aren't jailed, you're still in a sort of 'psuedo-confinement', given your inability to form bonds and networks at such a point. Confinement is extremely hazardous and cruel for any social animal - and humans are more or less the social animal, so behavior that risks this sort of ostracizing we try to avoid.
The impression I'm getting from you is that you don't really like the notion that there is no inherent 'good' or 'evil' moral grounds, and that there must be some other explanation for what you percieve as right and wrong other than the fact that what 'right' is what is socially beneficial to you and what's 'wrong' is socially detrimental. I find that a bit silly. That are always perfectly sound reasons for anything - peceptions of behavior included - and it shouldn't be threatening that the concept of 'universal morals' is, by and large, total garbage.
Correct. And, mostly, that's what they do. Since they have no fear of losing social contracts or being cut from the herd, they arbitrarily go about killing people for self-gratification (...if that's how they satisfy themselves. Some sociopaths get by just being general dicks or manipulators without actuallly killing anyone themselves). You and I, of course, are going to be rather disgusted by the behavior of sociopaths (they're destroying our social networks and killing-off our social connections, effectively undermining all the co-operating we're so attracted to doing!), and will likely have a plethora of reasons and a large consensus as to why it is why find the actions of, say, Ted Bundy, absolutely intolerable.
Note that we're still not left with 'just because' absolutes. Consider why you don't like the actions of someone like Ted Bundy. Consider why you'd never do the things he did. Now, consider the fact that everyone is going to do the same mental excercize, and that everyone's list is going to be different (again, there'll be areas of consensus - but still no absolutes).
I agree. We're community animals, and evolved as such through cooperation. Those that didn't cooperate found themselves without mates, and likely without much of a lifespan. So we'd have successful behaviors related to cooperation being passed-on.
This is perfectly in line with what I've been stating here. Our complex abstractions and social constructs require that you don't just go on murderous rampages, so you don't. Besides that, you gain pleasure from socializing, so you avoid social behavior that would cut you out from such pleasure. The next logical step, of course, is that if you aren't a positive participant in the social abstraction and if you are isolated from a peer group, you don't get to reproduce. Which means your behaviors aren't passed along, which effectively 'weeds-out' (in theory) sociopathic genetic material (in reality, sociopaths are probably pretty good reproducers, actually. Even Ted Bundy spread his seed around to his share of women, and sociopaths not actively engaged in murder are terribly good manipulators who would have no qualms with having multiple affairs at a time).
I shall. Thanks for the recommendation.
You'll, of course, note that everything stated anywhere on this site by mean is merely a layman's perspective. In terms of academic credentials, mine are the equivalent of 'fuck all'.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
From your earlier posts, it seemed that you wouldn't object to killing newborn children either, since they're not really people:
Your argument appeared to be that young children don't think, don't feel, and aren't really people. People objected to that assertion, and you have failed to explain what the difference between a 9-month old person in the womb is magically different from a 2 minute old person who was just born.
This is all referring to an unborn child. Matt's post, with which you appeared to be agreeing. Killing a baby after it is born is slightly different (probably).
The rest of your post is an attempt to explain why people have morals, which isn't really a description of what your morals actually are. I'm not really interested in your self-rationalization for morality as much as if you think it's ok to kill babies (actual babies, as in, already born), which is what it seemed your argument was, since you were agreeing with Matt.
As I understand it, Matt's position is that there is no one overwhelming rule that must be applied to killing or not killing babies (and I agree, for the reasons I mentioned). Now, I myself would disagree on the issue of whether or not killing a baby arbitrarily is morally sound, for a number of personal reasons:
- Killing babies creates tensions and negativity in the life of the people who had the baby
- Killing babies jeopardizes the continued survival of the human species, if it is done often enough.
- Killing babies without a sound reason will cut me out from my peer groups, creating misery in my own life.
- Killing babies will lose me most employment opportunities, financially capsizing me.
- Killing babies will eliminate nearly any oppotunity for me to find a significant other and establish intimate relations.
I, personally, do not believe it okay to arbitrarily kill much of anything - babies included. I get not gratification from it, it would be a waste of time and energy and it would have negative consequences on a social level. Since those things really matter to me, it doesn't make sense for me to strike out into the world and slay whatever crosses my path.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I'm assuming you forgot to include the fact that you care about people, and empathize with their will to live, along with empathizing with their loved ones' who would be extremely upset at their loss.
Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first.
Can mother earth happily support 100 billion ? , Sure it can .... but who the heck wants that many kids anyway ! So what's the real problem to enjoying this thing we call life ? ......
CANNED HEAT - Let's Work Together (1970)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwVwQVtPZRw
Atheism Books.
Well, I did say:
...Which sort-of encompasses what you mentioned, and I think is a tad closer to the truth. I don't 'empathize' with ants that are accidentally crushed underfoot as I pass, because there are no social consequences (and yes, of course, because I have a more difficult time relating to the life of an ant than I do another human being's). Perhaps I'm not giving people enough credit, but I don't buy the concept of 'empathy'. I cannot somehow share your pain, from a literal standpoint (I may have my own pains regarding the same issue - but the notion of a real 'connection' is absurd, in my opinion. Since we're both human beings, I can have a pretty good idea of how a particular stimuli will affect you emotionally (thanks to our ability to abstractly comprehend the world) and act based on that (which, hey, I do all of the time) - but that hardly addresses why I would bother to do things beneficial for you. I'm conditioned to think about your needs, having evolved as a community creature that is dependent on the benefits provided by our complex social structure.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
To know yourself , is too know all others, that is "empathy", well so I thought. Damn words ..... errrrr , the babel .....
Atheism Books.
I disagree Kevin, it doesn't encompass what I said at all. There's quite a difference. And if you don't buy into the concept of empathy, I'm speechless. All it means, is that you recognize that other people have feelings, and you know what it's like to have those same feelings. Therefore, when someone is experiencing a particular emotion, you can imagine what it's like for them quite accurately, since you've experienced the same emotion.
Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first.
So this is what happens when a thread degrades from its original topic into the pointless exchange of nearly one hundred posts about something discussed, apparently without resolution, so many times before?
I feel like I might be reading a condensed thread on numerous issues, all-be-these issues now tried and tired and utterly void of any point. My bleeding eyes beg for some cessation to the repetition. The amount of emotion here has blinded everyone, at least in my reading, to the fact that they all basically agree and have turned to making arguments out of semantics and nuance. This I find abhorrent.
Aborting a human foetus for whatever reason is a judgement best left to the people who are aborting the human foetus, regardless of how developed the unborn human may be. Can it be argued that an unborn human (strictly using human in the biological sense) has had at least some experiences past a certain point in its gestational development? I think it can be, and quite successfully. Does this make it wrong to abort such an unborn human past this developmental point? I think it could be successfully argued that it can, sometimes, not be. These decisions are not absolutes, they cannot be, for that would insult the complexity of each individual situation. I think it is fair to say that unborn humans are not often aborted for any reason that does not seem necessary to the people (or at least to one person) involved in the abortion.
Killing a post-natal human (again, strictly human in only the biological sense) would typically be said to be wrong, but this is not absolute, for again insults abound. Richard Dawkins may have written on morality and I cannot recall if he brought up a particular scenario where a post-natal human must die, but any number of particular scenarios could be imagined where morality would require a post-natal human to be killed. Simply the inability to imagine such a situation is not a defense against this killing and citing that empathy should effectively nullify such a situation would be to insult the reality and the empathy that ought to be owed to the humans (not necessarily only biologically speaking) who must carry out this act to, perhaps, save themselves and others.
Wrest your world upon moral absolutes and there can be terrible consequences, but as others have suggested here logic and reason and perhaps even a greater understanding of what it is to be moral, social and empathic creatures allows us as humans, in the latter sense described, to make the decisions we must. Our morality is flexible and we should flex with it. Many of us will not encounter situations that will test our ability to act as we must to survive or to aid in the survival of others, even many, but to outright deny this flexibility to people because of our lack of imagination is disgusting, worse still is condemning them.
To be repulsed still, even understanding the necessity of an act we would typically deem unacceptable, would be disappointing, even pathetic, when understanding should be accompanied by empathy.
Disclaimer: I agree, with reservations, with Kevin's understanding of empathy and use the word here according to that quite mutual understanding.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."