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Re:Bills seek end to farm animal abuse videos by marknadal on Monday March 18, 2013 @07:48AM (#5393558)
The unedited version of wikipedia says something different (that is, if we really are using wikipedia as proof).

I am sure you were discontent with the summary, and had to scroll down to some other section which was closer to your bias.

I am also not sure how you can claim to know that the author /was/ drawing a moral conclusion, when he (just as you note about math) never said anything about it.

You asserted morality to trivialize his comment, I was merely pointing out the logical error in jumping from "biology and genetics" to "morality".

Throw morality out the door, and the point still remains.

Re:Bills seek end to farm animal abuse videos by aneth4 on Monday March 18, 2013 @08:03AM (#5393604)
Unedited version of wikipedia? No idea what you are talking about. Isn't wikipedia all edits? Are you implying I edited wikipedia?

I scrolled down to the part titled "Defining ethics," which happened to be the first section, thinking that would be applicable to defining ethics.

If you read author's comments in the thread, you will see he is clearly making the point that destroying a zygote is a moral issue, as he says:

> It's the destroying of a genetically unique individual human that is the issue

in response to a question about whether destroying a zygote is "wrong".

Throw morality out the door, and he is stating that a zygote is genetically unique for some strange reason in a thread about the morality of abortion.

Besides, his implicit point is also wrong - that a zygote is distinctive in being genetically unique. Each sperm is also genetically unique, so it's a rather inapplicable statement to the context of the thread, unless masturbation is also a sin against the universe.

Re:Bills seek end to farm animal abuse videos by aneth4 on Monday March 18, 2013 @09:09AM (#5393852)
Mark, your response is dead, so I can't respond to it.

I don't do much voting honestly.

> I don't understand how if one is viewing the subject from a evolutionary genetic perspective, why it is wrong to say that mechanisms that go against evolutionary development (abortion) are wrong

If anything goes against "evolutionary development" it is using technology to increase genetic diversity without regard to fitness.

Anyway, abortion does not go "against evolutionary development" any more than celibacy or monogamy.

Re:Bills seek end to farm animal abuse videos by marknadal on Monday March 18, 2013 @10:21AM (#5394301)
Wouldn't that be natural selection, not evolution? Although I know many people are commonly "directional" Evolutionists (forget the technical term) that evolution is progressing int a certain direction, rather than randomly in no direction.
Re:Bills seek end to farm animal abuse videos by aneth4 on Monday March 18, 2013 @11:51AM (#5394910)
Evolution is natural selection. They are precisely the same theory.

Directed evolution is a whole different ball game that presupposes an active god or a detailed master plan. Either way, that is not evolution as most scientists would view it or as Darwin theorized. And regardless, humanity is not at risk of spoiling such plans.