"With respect to those meanings of "human" that are relevant to the morality of abortion, any fetus is less human than an adult pig".Now, now, Richard, your desperation is truly pitiful.
This is a conclusion without any premises. It is not an argument it is a papal encyclical. It is a declaration of belief without any evidence, without any empirical support much less any rational, deductive syllogistic argumentation. In short, it is blind belief type of religious nonsense.
Let’s count the ways:
1. Adult pigs are not in possession of human DNA.
2. Adult pigs (nor pigs at any stage of development) will ever, ever, ever, ever turn into humans at any stage of human development.
3. Although female Atheists might consider Dawkins a Male Chauvinist Pig, that designation is purely in honor of his porcine resemblance in attitude and not in genetics.
4. His statement is a dictum of degradation and devaluation from a position of arrogance and presumed elitist superiority to all other humans, whom he is at liberty to compare to other animals, lower life forms, or minerals as he declares them available for elimination as is convenient.
5. This is the same Dawkins who could find no moral basis for declaring that “Hitler was wrong”.
6. This is the same Dawkins who very cowardly protected his own life by “…not knowing much about the God of Islam” when pressed for a position on Al Jazeera. He always has courageous positions about Christianity, of course. Abortion of himself is not as issue, since he didn’t have his own skull scissor-stabbed and crushed, and his arms ripped off to ease the abortion.
7. This is the same Dawkins who considers himself to be a biologist and evolutionary expert/hero; so he probably knows that a pig is not more human than “any fetus”, since a pig is not human under any interpretation, even the loose interpretations of evolution. So he is declaring rather that a fetus is in no manner a human, regardless of the fact that it is alive and growing; it is a fully defined individual human with its unique human DNA; all humans (1) are unique and go through the stages from fertilized egg through developmental transitions to birth, and onward.
Richard Dawkins has stepped on himself, but it likely will be hardly noticed amongst his aficionados. Logic is not their bag. Conclusions without premises is what works for them.
(1) Split cell twins, etc. excepted, of course.
ADDENDUM:
In a subsequent tweet, Dawkins clarifies his criteria for being human vs. non-human:
“Human” features relevant to the morality of abortion include ability to feel pain, fear etc & to be mourned by others.Dawkins has added one incredibly revealing feature: "to be mourned by others". The fact that Dawkins adds this indicates that he actually believes that the loss of certain classes of preborn humans cannot be mourned. Cannot be. His presumptuousness is massively arrogant. He knows no such thing. And I personally know differently; all it takes is observation of living things (an empirical approach apparently not familiar to evolutionists). (1) This criterion is too absurd to be considered a rational statement. What it reveals is the callousness and the total lack of empathy which Dawkins has, not just for the preborn human, but also for the adult humans who lose preborns. Let's repeat: total lack of empathy. And let's add this: total ignorance of the psychology surrounding the death of preborns, including mourning.
These criteria, of course, can be applied to postnatal humans too, under certain circumstances. For instance, anyone who is under sedation. (2) And Trotsky likely never felt anything when the icepick ended his human existence.
The abortion lovers will continue to word-shop around for terminology which they think suffices to allow them to devalue humans. The fact is that they are engaged in devaluing living, unique, growing human individuals at necessary and therefore legitimate stages of human development. They do this using false intellectualism and false moral declarations, the exact tactics of totalitarians.
The specious arguments made by the abortionistas illuminates how desperate they are to preserve eugenics and their right to devalue humans to enable their killing. They are passionate in their defense of eugenics to the point of demonstrating fully that their passion completely destroys their remnants of rationality.
(1) I had a cow that miscarried twins at a very early stage of development. She was hysterical, and went berserk when I tried to remove them. So I left them there for a while for her to mourn. She licked them and licked them, and hours later she was still at it.
(2) which is transparently why Dawkins added the absurd “mourning” requirement, while neglecting the unintended consequences of adding that criterion, which in turn demonstrates that it is ideology and not biological science.
