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The internet has drastically changed western culture. It has opened up new avenues of communication and ways for people to share information and ideas. Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society and Author of Free Culture a work the essay is based on. Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, I used his article Siren Songs and Amish Children: Autonomy, Information, and Law to look at issues of autonomy, freedom and how they intersect with the digital world.
It is a long essay, so I will post it in 3 parts over the next couple of days.
** Note, this essay and other essays on the site are for educational purposes only. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense. This blog is not going anywhere so cite a reference if you use my work. Plus, if you can google this essay, so can your prof. **
The introduction and thesis: Read the rest of this entry »
If there is a standard I aspire to, it would be to the level of Pharyngula. A quote from one of his posts on Ken Ham and Creationists…
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/06/a_little_sympathy_for_the_snoo.php
“I sympathize with all their secular neighbors most of all. What will happen? They will live in a country where their schools are third-rate, because the creationists will suppress education not just for their own kids, but for everyone else’s, too. They will see their school boards populated with the products of such fare as the Creation “Museum”, and they will get to vote in elections where their options are Insane-Fundie-Wackjob vs. Slightly-Less-Crazy-God-Botherer. And the lesser-of-two-evils won’t always win, because their neighbors all think the fundier, the better.
I sympathize because they are all missing the awesomeness of reality for the awfulness of some narrow Bronze Age theocratic bullshit.
But there are also some for whom I have no sympathy at all.
I have zero sympathy for intelligent people who stand before a grandiose monument to lies, an institution that is anti-scientific, anti-rational, and ultimately anti-human, in a place where children are being actively miseducated, an edifice dedicated to an abiding intellectual evil, and choose to complain about how those ghastly atheists are ruining everything.
Those people can just fuck off.”
Thank you PZ. :)
Once you start down a path, the goodness just keeps on coming. Did you want another argument to use against the anti-woman, anti-choice zealots? Here is one from the American Journal of Bio Ethics. Bust it out and let the squirm. :) Please note I did a rough job of paraphrasing,quoting and using text from the article. I will link to the original here… 
Here is what I have posted once in the comment section already, but I think it is worthy of a post of its own.
The argument begins as such, a common pro-life position, human fetus/zygotes/cells have the moral equivalent to a adult human being…summarized below.
Embryos are human beings.
All human beings have equal moral status.
Therefore, embryos have full moral status.
This has been the pro-life stance pretty much all through the debate in part I , rhetoric and ad hominum attacks aside. This study comes to some interesting conclusions about the above conclusion.
The majority of embryos die within a few weeks of conception. See studies by Hertig (1967) and French and Bierman (1962).
The results of these studies graphically represented below.
Intrauterine life: Graph of survival and weeks since conception. (Click link below for graphs)
https://deadwildroses.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/graphs-for-reference-sake/
During the early stage, 8-10 days only 50% of embryos survive. Those that successfully implant, the risk of death becomes much less significant. These numbers show that spontaneous abortion is an everyday phenomenon. A mother of three children could be expected to have also five spontaneous abortions. The embryo’s survival to term is the exception rather than the norm. This next graph shows the effects of spontaneous abortion on human lifespan.
Graph of mortality in the United States from conception through to death. (Please click link below for graphs)
https://deadwildroses.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/graphs-for-reference-sake/
In the first few months, more than 60% of the entire population dies due to the effects of spontaneous abortion (approximately 220 million per year).
IF you accept the first claim:
Embryos are human beings.
All human beings have equal moral status.
Therefore, embryos have full moral status
THEN: Each of these deaths must have just as much weight as an adult human (which you so frequently harp on about). Spontaneous abortion is by FAR the greatest killer of them all.
Some conclusions drawn from that data: Spontaneous abortion kills more than 200 million each year, it accounts for ¾ of all deaths per year, reduces life expectancy in the developed world to mere 29 years, kills only the very young and innocent: those who are powerless to save themselves.
IF you contend that an embryo has full moral status as a human being, then you must agree that spontaneous abortion is clearly the greatest problem facing humanity.
Cancer in all forms kills 7.6 million people per year, while spontaneous abortion kills 30 times this number. Finding a means to save even 5% of embryos from spontaneous abortion would save more lives that a cure for cancer. To remain consistent in your views you must accept the following:
The embryo has the same moral status as a adult human life.
Medical studies show that more than 60% of all people are killed by spontaneous abortion (a biological fact).
Therefore, spontaneous abortion is one of the most serious problems facing humanity, and we must do our utmost to investigate ways of preventing this death – even if this is to the detriment of other pressing issues. (See the current pro-life loonery)
The only way to avoid this conclusion is to abandon the conclusion that full moral status begins at conception.
So really, if you are so concerned about life, what the heck are you doing trying to fix the relatively minuscule amount of human choice aborted fetuses? I am guessing that really…you (pro-life zealots in general) are just about disenfranchising women in service to your silly notion of a god as you adhere to your inconsistent, incoherent beliefs.
Please note again: The article in full can be found in The Scourge: Moral Implications of Natural Embryo Loss by Toby Ord. The American Journal of Bioethics, 8(7): 12-19, 2008. I have taken excerpts, quotes and text from the article and used them in my post.
This does not make much sense on its own. However it is an integral part of an argument designed to illustrate how inconsistent and incoherent the pro-life position really is.
This post has to do with god and how the concept is framed by the concept of evil. Epicurus stated the problem elegantly with this argument.
- If a perfectly good god exists, then there is no evil in the world.
- There is evil in the world.
- Therefore, a perfectly good god does not exist.
Another conclusion that can be drawn from this is that god is either impotent or uncaring as this video from FFreethinker so brilliantly points out – its called God’s Divine Plan.
I wanted to mention the case of Joseph and Elisabeth Fritzl. This is the case in the media of the Austrian Father who held his daughter as a prisoner/sex slave for 24 years until she finally escaped.
Many religions claim there is a god watching over us, listening to us, and answering our prayers. My question is this, where the frack
was god for Elisabeth Fritzl? What greater good could come of someone being incestuously assaulted for 24 years? The god people worship stood back, with arms crossed, for almost a quarter century and did absolutely NOTHING.
Why would you hold such a being as holy? How perfectly monstrous. We can talk of his inaction when it comes to rape, genocide, murder etc. Why would a being that supposedly cares for us allow evil of this sort to exist.
The answer is that he is fictitious, a man made construct, built to keep the gullible in line. Endorse this delusion at your own peril.
Woo, a real argument with premises and conclusion. A tight argument I stumbled over on the Killing the Afterlife blog. (http://killtheafterlife.blogspot.com) A neat thread to look at if ya have the time.
1) A person owns themselves
2) Self ownership implies the right to free will
3) In having free will, you cannot have a duty to perform any affirmative actions.
Conclusion– You have no duty to provide another with the means to live.
Therefore it is permissible to remove anything classified as a separate entity from your body.
As my partner edified for me in talking about abortion on a feckless youtube thread. Do not even go down the ‘personhood’ road. It starts and ends with a persons right to their own body. I think this particular argument does a nice job of augmenting that sentiment.
I do not know how I missed it but in 2004, the Bush regency passed the unborn victims of violence act (UVVA). The UVVA codifies the assertion that life essential begins at conception it defines as follows:
“ d) As used in this section, the term “unborn child” means a child in utero, and the term “child in utero” or “child, who is in utero” means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.”
-Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unborn_Victims_of_Violence_Act)
This is some scary legislation at first glance. However, the frothing at the mouth anti-choice advocates seem to miss sub section c :
“(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed to permit the prosecution—
(1) of any person for conduct relating to an abortion for which the consent of the pregnant woman, or a person authorized by law to act on her behalf, has been obtained or for which such consent is implied by law;
(2) of any person for any medical treatment of the pregnant woman or her unborn child; or
(3) of any woman with respect to her unborn child.”
At the same time, the right to get an abortion is still firmly in the hands of a woman. So go ahead, define a mass of cells as an unborn child (in the US), define it as the damn Pope, if the woman wants it gone, it remains her right to have it removed.
Hopefully Obama can make some of this go away and soon.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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