Richard_Halley

Alright... I stand corrected (about greek marriage). Perhaps legal marriage ought to keep the term, and religion should adopt another. There does, however, need to be a distinction between the two. This, however, is absurd. I have claimed nothing against legal marriage, I simply proposed calling it something else. In fact my reason in doing so was so that it could be made more distinctly seperate from the religious rites you speak of. RationalCop, my arguement is that using the same word to describe to simliar but distinct things allows for others to confuse the word. It is not that rational people cannot communicate with such words, but that people who want to be deceptive can do so more easily with such words. For example, many people are outraged at the concept of gay marriage because it will change their religious institution (obviously, it doesen't because gay (legal) marriage has nothing to do with religion what-so-ever). The churches, and the president, and others, perpetuate this by saying that such marriages would change the definition of the word. By deliberatly confusing the context, and thereby bypassing the fact that the term has more than one meaning, they cause the outrage which we today see about the concept of gay marriage (even when "civil unions" are going on with little concern).

Ash, the greeks may have had a concept which you can now compare to marriage... but it would have been more similar to the concept of slavery than of our marriage today. And more importantly, as Joe pointed out, the concern is not about the origins of the term but about the roots of its usage today. I agree. This is precisely why I am so amazed at your adoption of the term which has long denoted this mystical practice. I am not at all concerened with religious marriage, only with the distinction between it and legal marriage.

Since when is a marriage the legal acknowledgement of a union? Only reletively recently. First it was a religious pledge, absoultely controlled by the church. When we call something completly different--the legal acknowledgement of the union--marriage, the chruches mistakenly think that the government is fooling around with their domain and that, therefore, the should have some say in how that is done. Since you seem to not understand how my previous statments have already answered your questions--and so it is unlikely that you will see how the above does as well--I will tackle them individually. I agree here. I simply see no reason to call that legal document a "marriage" certificate rather than a "certificate of unionship" or something of the like. See above. How you figure that I am doing this is beyond me. I am addressing the problems with using a word which once denoted--and, in many minds, still does denote--a religious pledge to describe a legal recognition. When a preist performs a marriage there is a difference between what he is performing and what a justice of the peace performs. My concern is not over who performs it, but over what it means. Hopefully by now you recognise that there is a difference between a religious marriage and a legal one. My use of the quotes was to differentiate between the two (the reasons I chose to use the quotes arond the legal ones should be obvious by now). From a seperate post: Yes, it should be obvious that we both think that the legal recognition of a union should be attainable by anyone in such a union. Just to be perfectly clear, you are not responding to strange views of marriage (unless you are suggusting that there is no fundamental difference between a legal recognition and a religious pledge) as my views are on the useage of the word, not the marriage itself. Honestly, I really don't see why you think it is so important to use the church word to discribe non-church unions.

There is a way to consistantly be altruist... They call it suicide.

We should not be... this is my entire point. The marriages performed by the government are not to be confused with those performed by religious establishment. We only differ in that I see no point in calling a government "marriage" a "marriage" at all. If you called it--keeping the same legal benifits which currently exist--a "civil union" than there wouldn't be all this confusion about the two (specifically, churches would not claim to have any say in a "civil union," while they do claim to for a "marriage"). This should answer your question about my use of quotations (but than again, my previous posts should have, too). As for this: You will please note the qualifier at the end of the statment to which the above is responding. It states: "I am assuming that the same legal benefits apply to both, if not they should." The main point of the statment is to identify that a "marriage," as given by the government, is of no relation what-so-ever to those performed by churches. Using the long established church term "marriage" to denote something different is of no benefit, it merely confuses everyone.

JC... You are correct in saying that this is an important point about bush's anti-americanism. In fact, this is precisely why you should have placed it in the pre-existing topic covering that matter. Placing it in a new topic is confusing and accomplishes nothing except to remove all counter-arguments from the discussion, thus forcing all others to repeat themselves. Basically: There is nothing wrong with pointing out Bush's flaws. There is something wrong with making 4 different threads in which to do so. Especially when one already exists.

My criticisms of him were directed at his posts as a response to mine. This was perfectly clear in the refered to criticisms (using the word "topic" in the origional criticism was unclear, but this was clarified in my subsequent post). As such, those criticisms were completly valid. And, given that JC WAS trying to present an argument against my own view (as is mad clear on page 5 of this discussion)--that if one candidate is better than another, one should vote for the better candidate--and given that his argument had no relation what-so-ever on my position, I hold by my criticizisms as both appropriate and correct. See pages 4 and 5 of this discussion for evidence.

What about income tax?

A Fish Called Wanda

As my first post indicates, I agree. "Inherent" is a term which can mislead one not familiar with Objectivism into thinking that value exists seperate from a valuer.

MisterSwig: Take "inherent value" to mean that something is valuable to someone, not becuase it causes some other value, but because it is valuable to them as itself. Man's life must be inherently valueable since it is the standard by which all other values are to be judged. To live is not to value, but to value is to value life. One may either value life, or not value at all.

But the question of what is a person is a philosophic consideration. Science can only tell us when the criteria--which we discover with philosophy--have been met. The criteria is what Diana has disagreed with Rand (and I) about, not when the criteria has been met. It is a philosophic disagreement, and is enough to place her outside of Objectivism. Rand mentioned once that the late stages of pregnancy were not the issue--that one may argue about them, but that it does not change the primary conclusion (politically)--if that is what you mean. Her position was clear, however--and she stated it repeatedly--that one is not a human being until birth.

Kesg: You are being completly ignorent of the argument which Betsy (and the rest of the Objectivists here) is making--either that or you are DELIBERATLY putting up a straw-man here. I will give you the benefit of the doubt. When Betsy says: She offers you, not only a convinent point to draw a line, but an objective one; one which follows the rules about what may have rights and what may not; one which stays in line with the facts that give rise to rights to begin with. This is absurd. It has been repeatedly shown that a fetus is NOT a human being, it is a part of its mother. Her position is NOT a minority among Objectivists, it is not Objectivist at all, and nor is she. And your repeated claims that our argument is circular, or contradicting, or not defensible are inappropriate, because you have not even shown any sort of understanding of the argument. It would be circular, if we were not giving REASONS why. The claim is not only that a a human being must be born, but that it must be born because a physically dependant object cannot be a human being--it cannot have rights. Then we proceded to give you reasons for that: the nature of rights--the nature of the facts that give rise to rights--is such that a physically dependant object cannot have them. Surely you can see how this is not a circular argument, no?

Firstly, if you try to imagine an omnipotent, (or) omnipresent, (or) omniscient being, you will find that such is not concievable. Such would be like imagine, as was pointed out in another thread, a circle-square. And NO. There can exist nothing which is omnipotent, because such a quality would allow that being to be (or force something else to be) both a circle AND a square, to be A AND non-A.

Yes, by the nature of values, and by the nature of life, every valuer must hold (his own) life as his highest value, or he would not be able to value at all. Life DOES have inherent value, misterswig, just not intrinsic (meaning that value is not seperate from a valuer). I would have thought so, but Marc K. explicitly stated otherwise. He stated that life is a non-contextual value. Furthermore, he attributed the claim to you, so I'd think you would jump to correct him.