More Dawkins

[Glenn]

"Abortion to avoid birth defects is not about eugenics"
https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/were-nazis-more-tolerant-of-down-syndrome-than-some-european-countries-today/

Argue with this:

'They are unsatisfied with anything less than total erasure of these human beings who can in many cases do "productive work" but who also give abundant joy and love."

[RonO]

A lot of people have various views on the issue. With the new
technology it is easier and less invasive to detect fetuses with gross
chromosomal abnormalities.

Anyone can check out the statistics. Chromosome 21 trisomy is the most
common because it isn't fully lethal. The majority of other human
chromosome trisomies are lethal and they don't make it full term. It is
something that every mother has to deal with. The simple fact is that
the human reproductive system wasn't designed to produce children for as
long as humans are reproductive. By the time a woman reaches the age of
40 the frequency of Downs Syndrome is greater than 1 in 100 live births
and the increase in chromosome abnormalities is exponential with age. A
lot of people face this situation. Throwing religious beliefs into the
mix isn't going to change reality.

For whatever reason mammals arrest development of the egg cell at the
end of meiosis I. These cells start the process before puberty, and
then wait around for years before completing the final meiotic cell
division that produces the haploid egg cell just before the egg cell
matures and bursts from the folicle. Over time the egg cells lose track
of some chromosomes and there is a miss segregation at the second cell
division. A better design would have been to arrest egg cell maturation
after the second meiotic division so that you wouldn't have to worry
about some chromosomes getting lost or left behind when the chromosomes
move into the new daughter cells during completion of meiosis II.

My guess is that many people have prayed to the intelligent designer
asking why things are this way. The Discovery Institute doesn't have
that answer. In terms of the anti evolution stupidity the way nature
works has nothing to do with the moral and religious beliefs of IDiots.
The ancestors that evolved this system of reproduction didn't have to
worry about 40 year old egg cells. Mice reach sexual maturity at 6
weeks of age. Our primate ancestors started out as small shrew like
creatures. The design worked well for them, it just isn't that great
for humans.

The moral ramblings of a bunch of losers at the Discovery Institute that
have lied to creationist rubes for years obviously has nothing to do
with how nature works, and can't change what people have to deal with.
Exploiting nature's mess ups and the decisions that are forced upon
normal human beings every day by the design of our reproductive system
is tragically sad, but not unexpected coming from the ID perps.

Ron Okimoto

[*Hemidactylus*]

This is a messed up article. Two cites speculate based on lack of mention
of Down syndrome in the Nazi eugenic era. Richard Weikart said:

“I’m not sure to what extent the Nazis targeted people with Down Syndrome.
It was not one of the hereditary illnesses listed in the compulsory
sterilization law of July 1933. I suspect it may have depended on their
ability to do useful labor. The Nazis generally targeted people with
disabilities that were unable to do productive work.”

After checking another book Richard Weikart “found no mention of Down
syndrome” and “One factor influencing this may have been that the Nazis
only killed disabled people who were institutionalized, and many people
with Down Syndrome do not require institutionalization.

Now, it may well be that the Nazis sterilized and/or killed some people
with Down Syndrome (I would actually be surprised if they didn’t target
those with more severe cases), but I don’t know.”

After making speculative ungrounded comparisons with Dawkins and European
countries with an allusion to the Nazis the article backpedals:
“Comparisons with Nazi Germany are obviously perilous, and I think I would
have advised Pope Francis against this one if he had asked me, as I would
have advised former CIA director Michael Hayden against his foolish Nazi
comparison from a few days ago.”

Dawkins is still an asshole:

https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/502106262088466432

Who realizes the limits of babbling on Twitter yet does it anyway:

https://www.richarddawkins.net/2014/08/abortion-down-syndrome-an-apology-for-letting-slip-the-dogs-of-twitterwar/

And abortion is not the same as killing the born as Nazis did. False
equivalency there. Volitional abortion chosen by parents is a difficult
decision and not the same as the forced sterilization legislation found in
the US and argued before the SCOTUS in Buck v Bell.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

“The Court upheld a statute instituting compulsory sterilization of the
unfit "for the protection and health of the state."”

Compulsory sterilization is not the same thing as abortion as a difficult
chosen option of parents. The Nazi comparison the Pope and article you
cited made is even more heinous.

https://edition-m.cnn.com/2018/06/17/europe/pope-abortion-eugenics---intl/index.html

“"I have heard that it's fashionable, or at least usual, that when in the
first months of pregnancy they do studies to see if the child is healthy or
has something, the first offer is: let's send it away," Pope Francis was
reported as saying.
"I say this with pain. In the last century the whole world was scandalized
about what the Nazis did to purify the race. Today we do the same, but now
with white gloves."”- Pope Francis pontificates by invoking Godwin’s law.

[Burkhard]

*Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> "Abortion to avoid birth defects is not about eugenics"
>> https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/were-nazis-more-tolerant-of-down-syndrome-than-some-european-countries-today/
>>
>> Argue with this:
>>
>> 'They are unsatisfied with anything less than total erasure of these
>> human beings who can in many cases do "productive work" but who also give
>> abundant joy and love."
>>
>>
> This is a messed up article. Two cites speculate based on lack of mention
> of Down syndrome in the Nazi eugenic era. Richard Weikart said:
>
> “I’m not sure to what extent the Nazis targeted people with Down Syndrome.
> It was not one of the hereditary illnesses listed in the compulsory
> sterilization law of July 1933. I suspect it may have depended on their
> ability to do useful labor. The Nazis generally targeted people with
> disabilities that were unable to do productive work.”

If Weikart did not find any evidence, then it's for lack of looking - as
shoddy as much of his work.

Here a photo taken by the SS of children with Down Syndrom, they
perished in the "Aktion T4".

http://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/aktion-t4-program-children.jpg

But that was of course after 1933, so if Weikart only looked for that
year, he'd overlooked it

And here an article about Christa M, murdered in 1943, age 8

https://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/jugendwebsite/r_pdf/christa.pdf

You can see there also a scan of the medical document the Nazis made
when she was put into the facility where she would die - it does not use
the term "Down syndrom" but "Mongoloid", and the relevant category for
the decision made about her is (the scientifically wrong) "inheritable
defect" - if Weikart did nothing bit to google for "Down Syndrom" in the
digital repositories of patient files, he'd have missed it (a rather
charitable interpretation).

The relevant law that mentions explicitly people with Down (again using
"Mongoloid" was the Runderlass des Reichsministers des Innern vom 18.
August 1939 Az.: IVb 3088/39 – 1079 Mi

[Joe Cummings]

On Thu, 21 Jun 2018 20:34:24 -0700, "Glenn" <g...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

You're getting into deep water here, Glenn.

Science is now able to detect much more than it could in the 1930's,
and can provide action that would have been impossible then.

But do you think the question of abortion is a scientific or a moral
one?

Suppose a scientist discovers that she is going to give birth to a
Down's syndrome baby; she has as much right as anyone else to decide
what to do about it, and neither I nor you will have any say in
influencing her decision.

Like an idiot, you think that all scientists behave in exactly the
same way. They don't.

If your daughter was raped and she discovered that she was pregnant as
a result, what would you do,Glenn? Insist that she had the baby ,
which was coming into life through no fault or consent of her own?


Have a word with your pastor before you reply.


Joe Cummings

[*Hemidactylus*]

What about the moral ramblings of Dawkins? Steel-manning it Dawkins
fine-tuned his rather offputting tweet:

“Obviously the choice would be yours. For what it’s worth, my own choice
would be to abort the Down fetus and, assuming you want a baby at all, try
again. Given a free choice of having an early abortion or deliberately
bringing a Down child into the world, I think the moral and sensible choice
would be to abort. And, indeed, that is what the great majority of women,
in America and especially in Europe, actually do. I personally would go
further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to
increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to
deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort
it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view
of the child’s own welfare. I agree that that personal opinion is
contentious and needs to be argued further, possibly to be withdrawn. In
any case, you would probably be condemning yourself as a mother (or
yourselves as a couple) to a lifetime of caring for an adult with the needs
of a child. Your child would probably have a short life expectancy but, if
she did outlive you, you would have the worry of who would care for her
after you are gone. No wonder most people choose abortion when offered the
choice. Having said that, the choice would be entirely yours and I would
never dream of trying to impose my views on you or anyone else.”

https://www.richarddawkins.net/2014/08/abortion-down-syndrome-an-apology-for-letting-slip-the-dogs-of-twitterwar/

The offending tweet said:”Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to
bring it into the world if you have the choice.”

Either way is Dawkins’ preference something that rises to the level of a
general deontological moral imperative or even something that is
respectable consequentialist eudaemonia? Some people born with Trisomy 21
don’t express it severely and can live happy, though limited in ableist
eyes, lives.

Dawkins was not invoking a eugenics based argument comparable even to
compulsory sterilization in the US not to mention the malignant association
of him with Nazis. I really don’t like the guy, but making those allusion
makes the accuser more repugnant. In Dawkins’ own words:

“Those who thought I was advocating a eugenic policy and who therefore
compared me to Hitler. That never entered my head, nor should it have. Down
Syndrome has almost zero heritability. That means that, although it is a
congenital condition – a chromosomal abnormality that babies are born with
– there is very little tendency for susceptibility to trisomy to be
inherited genetically. If you were eugenically inclined, you’d be wasting
your time screening for Down syndrome. You’d screen for genuinely heritable
conditions where your screening would make a difference to future
generations.”

Dawkins’ argument is not eugenic, but moral, and troubling. I cannot even
put myself into the shoes of parents in this difficult decision. I punt.

There are people who argue for various reasons that it is immoral to have
children at all. Life is suffering, especially that all are doomed to die
perhaps painfully. Giving birth imposes a death sentence on the children
and much physical and emotional turmoil.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism

“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone,
would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much
compassion with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of
existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden
upon it in cold blood?
Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Sufferings of the World

Some of the church fathers have taught that even marital cohabitation
should only be allowed when it occurs merely for the sake of the
procreation of children, epi monet paidopoiiai, as Clemens Alex. (Strom. 1,
iii. c. n.) says. (The passages referring to the subject will be found
collected in P. E. Lind. de coelibatu Christianorum c. i). Clemens (Strom,
iii. c. 3) attributes this view to the Pythagoreans. This is, however,
strictly speaking, incorrect. For if the coitus be no longer desired for
its own sake, the negation of the Will-to-Live has already appeared, and
the propagation of the human race is then superfluous and senseless,
inasmuch as its purpose is already attained. Besides, without any
subjective passion, without lust and physical pressure, with sheer
deliberation, and the cold blooded purpose to place a human being in the
world merely in order that he should be there this would be such a very
questionable moral action that few would take it upon themselves; one might
even say of it indeed that it stood in the same relation to generation from
the mere sexual impulse as a cold-blooded deliberate murder does to a
death-stroke given in anger.
Arthur Schopenhauer, Contributions to the Doctrine of the Affirmation and
Negation of the Will-to-live

The End of the World, here's salvation. Preparing the end, here's the work
of the sage and the supreme purpose of ascetic existences. The apostle of
charity, with effort, alms, consolations and miracles, succeeds with great
difficulty to save a family from death, now vowed to a long agony thanks to
his benefits. The ascetic on the other hand, saves entire generations not
from death, but from life.
Arthur Schopenhauer, Un Bouddhiste contemporain en Allemagne – Arthur
Schopenhauer”

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Antinatalism

Intergenerational pessimism?

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 06:44:05 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
<ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

[...]

>What about the moral ramblings of Dawkins? Steel-manning it Dawkins
>fine-tuned his rather offputting tweet:
>
>“Obviously the choice would be yours. For what it’s worth, my own choice
>would be to abort the Down fetus and, assuming you want a baby at all, try
>again. Given a free choice of having an early abortion or deliberately
>bringing a Down child into the world, I think the moral and sensible choice
>would be to abort. And, indeed, that is what the great majority of women,
>in America and especially in Europe, actually do. I personally would go
>further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to
>increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to
>deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort
>it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view
>of the child’s own welfare. I agree that that personal opinion is
>contentious and needs to be argued further, possibly to be withdrawn.

This, along with his comments a while back that teachers fiddling with
young boys isn't really all that harmful, shows that Dawkins really
has lost it.

[...]

[*Hemidactylus*]

He helped birth New Atheism then shot it in the head (or at least himself
in the foot on multiple occasions). I could unleash hell from my Dawkins
file, but that would detract from analysis of his moral argument for
aborting Trisomy 21 fetuses.

OK maybe something light hearted to improve the mood:

“Bin Laden has won, in airports of the world every day. I had a little jar
of honey, now thrown away by rule-bound dundridges. STUPID waste.”

https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/396956105869250561

[Burkhard]

I think there are two issues at stake here. One is a general problem
with utilitarianism. Its underlying intuition is sound, but if you put
it into a strict rule that determines ethical decisions, you inevitably
get problematic results. The problem is that it assumes a metric for
"happiness" and "suffering" that makes arbitrary life events comparable.
And if you then try to calculate the "happiness/suffering ratio" for an
entire lifespan, it gets totally ridiculous.

As we have here. What does it even mean to say that by not living a
life, the overall sum of happiness increases/decreases?

It also reminds me of discussions we had in ethics 101 - if you combine
utilitarianism with a traditional Christian belief in heaven and hell,
you do indeed end up with a moral duty to kill all babies directly after
birth (well, after baptism, to be precise)

So that's a general problem. But what makes Dawkin's position here more
problematic, and indeed rather abhorred, are the specifics of Down
syndrom, which after all is not something that leads to physical pain.
So he can only come to his "balancing" if he dismisses or downplays the
subjective experience of happiness, and it is at that point, where he
replaces subjective happiness by an external evaluation ("they ought not
to feel happy/their objective quality of life is less etc") when things
get indeed morally bad.

What might be ironic about the position, if I'm right, is that it is
based on the same type of fallacy that some abortion opponents make -
that is the driving intuition is probably something like this: if
something happened to me, as I'm now, that would turn my life into that
of a Downs person, that would be insufferable for me (as I am now).
Therefore having Downs equates to suffering, even in the absence of
physical pain, as a "life not lived to the potential my life has now".
But that of course is not "suffering". Simple thought experiment that
should work for an evolutionist: assume that in comparison to a species
that evolves from ours in a few billennia, we are lacking the ability to
fly (breath under water, have great orgasms just by thinking about it,
all the time; whatever). Now, for a member of that species, losing their
wings etc would indeed be terrible suffering. But that of course does
not mean that we, now, are "suffering from the inability to fly". Some
of the anti-abortion arguments work just like that when they take an
actual human being and say "imagine you'd never be born, would that not
be terrible for you".

[Glenn]

"Joe Cummings" <joecumm...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:q7ipid5cb5fcgnv0a...@4ax.com...

That was cute, Joe.

[Glenn]

"Burkhard" <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote in message news:pgieul$s37$1...@dont-email.me...

> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>> Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>> "Abortion to avoid birth defects is not about eugenics"
>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/were-nazis-more-tolerant-of-down-syndrome-than-some-european-countries-today/
>>>
>>> Argue with this:
>>>
>>> 'They are unsatisfied with anything less than total erasure of these
>>> human beings who can in many cases do "productive work" but who also give
>>> abundant joy and love."
>>>
>>>
>> This is a messed up article. Two cites speculate based on lack of mention
>> of Down syndrome in the Nazi eugenic era. Richard Weikart said:
>>
>> “I’m not sure to what extent the Nazis targeted people with Down Syndrome.
>> It was not one of the hereditary illnesses listed in the compulsory
>> sterilization law of July 1933. I suspect it may have depended on their
>> ability to do useful labor. The Nazis generally targeted people with
>> disabilities that were unable to do productive work.”
>
>
> If Weikart did not find any evidence, then it's for lack of looking - as
> shoddy as much of his work.

He didn't say he did not find any evidence, idiot.

"The form's sinister purpose was suggested only by the emphasis placed upon the patient's capacity to work and by the categories of patients which the inquiry required health authorities to identify. The categories of patients were:

—those suffering from schizophrenia, epilepsy, dementia, encephalitis, and other chronic psychiatric or neurological disorders
—those not of German or "related" blood
—the criminally insane or those committed on criminal grounds
—those who had been confined to the institution in question for more than five years. "

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005200

[*Hemidactylus*]

Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
> "Burkhard" <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote in message news:pgieul$s37$1...@dont-email.me...
>> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>> Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>> "Abortion to avoid birth defects is not about eugenics"
>>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/were-nazis-more-tolerant-of-down-syndrome-than-some-european-countries-today/
>>>>
>>>> Argue with this:
>>>>
>>>> 'They are unsatisfied with anything less than total erasure of these
>>>> human beings who can in many cases do "productive work" but who also give
>>>> abundant joy and love."
>>>>
>>>>
>>> This is a messed up article. Two cites speculate based on lack of mention
>>> of Down syndrome in the Nazi eugenic era. Richard Weikart said:
>>>
>>> “I’m not sure to what extent the Nazis targeted people with Down Syndrome.
>>> It was not one of the hereditary illnesses listed in the compulsory
>>> sterilization law of July 1933. I suspect it may have depended on their
>>> ability to do useful labor. The Nazis generally targeted people with
>>> disabilities that were unable to do productive work.”
>>
>>
>> If Weikart did not find any evidence, then it's for lack of looking - as
>> shoddy as much of his work.
>
> He didn't say he did not find any evidence, idiot.
>

From your OP link Weikart said: “I’m not sure to what extent the Nazis

targeted people with Down Syndrome. It was not one of the hereditary

illnesses listed in the compulsory sterilization law of July 1933.” What
evidence did he base that on? Burkhard points out “Mongoloid” was the term
of choice.

Weikhart looked at Friedlander’s book as reported in your article and
‘found no mention of Down syndrome.’ according to David Klinghoffer.
Weikhart actually said: “Now, it may well be that the Nazis sterilized

and/or killed some people with Down Syndrome (I would actually be surprised
if they didn’t target those with more severe cases), but I don’t know.”

Speculation based on no proffered evidence. What is your issue then Glenn?

>
> "The form's sinister purpose was suggested only by the emphasis placed
> upon the patient's capacity to work and by the categories of patients
> which the inquiry required health authorities to identify. The categories
> of patients were:
>
> —those suffering from schizophrenia, epilepsy, dementia, encephalitis,
> and other chronic psychiatric or neurological disorders
> —those not of German or "related" blood
> —the criminally insane or those committed on criminal grounds
> —those who had been confined to the institution in question for more than five years. "
>
> https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005200
>

We have now jumped from an Evolution News article to an article by the US
Holocaust Memorial Museum, which I guess substitutes for you doing any real
thinking.

We were talking about Klinghoffer’s article that cites Weikart. And the
damage is done. The tone was set by the title “Were Nazis More Tolerant of
Down Syndrome than Some European Countries Today?” The denouement was
achieved: “What this sounds like is the Nazis likely permitted people with
Down syndrome to live, if they could work, or if they could live outside of
an institutional setting. They do not appear to have been specifically
targeted. But Dawkins along with Iceland and other European countries today
aren’t impressed by that. They are unsatisfied with anything less than

total erasure of these human beings who can in many cases do “productive

work” but who also give abundant joy and love.” Is that a reasonable
characterization of Dawkins’ position in context of what was alleged of the
comparatively benign treatment of Downs children by Nazis? Are you OK with
that Glenn? I don’t even like Dawkins and I am aghast someone would malign
him in that manner.

Oh yeah, Klinghoffer backpedals: “Comparisons with Nazi Germany are

[Joe Cummings]

On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 08:07:55 -0700, "Glenn" <g...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

Why, thank you ,Glenn.

Now get along and see your pastor - I'm repeating my advice because he
may help you to break out of your one-liner fetish and actually make
an argument.

Have fun,


Joe Cummings

[Glenn]

"Joe Cummings" <joecumm...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:mkaqid571m2orcdif...@4ax.com...

You assume I have a pastor, or would accept a pastor's advice. This is typical of the posters here.
Tell me more.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Thanks for the shared knowledge. Where Dawkins was making a troublesome
moral argument and you dissected that elsethread, he was not making an
argument that can be compared to the situation for the developmentally
disabled in Nazi Germany. Crass comparisons to Nazi Germany do all the
heavy lifting in lieu of an actual argument. Nazis targeted for murderous
elimination born people for characteristics they deemed inferior. They also
mandated sterilization as did states in the US as upheld by SCOTUS. Dawkins
called neither for murder nor compulsory sterilization. He instead sees
abortion as an unforced choice but tries to intellectually compel it under
the auspices of morality.

[Glenn]

"*Hemidactylus*" <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote in message news:itKdna0au6XftbDG...@giganews.com...

It may have been, but that term applied to those with Asiatic features as well.
Burkhard's post does not support the claim that people with Down's were euthanized.
Adding a picture does nothing to change that.

>
> Weikhart looked at Friedlander’s book as reported in your article and
> ‘found no mention of Down syndrome.’ according to David Klinghoffer.
> Weikhart actually said: “Now, it may well be that the Nazis sterilized
> and/or killed some people with Down Syndrome (I would actually be surprised
> if they didn’t target those with more severe cases), but I don’t know.”
> Speculation based on no proffered evidence. What is your issue then Glenn?

Attacking Weikart instead of supporting an argument with facts.

>>
>> "The form's sinister purpose was suggested only by the emphasis placed
>> upon the patient's capacity to work and by the categories of patients
>> which the inquiry required health authorities to identify. The categories
>> of patients were:
>>
>> —those suffering from schizophrenia, epilepsy, dementia, encephalitis,
>> and other chronic psychiatric or neurological disorders
>> —those not of German or "related" blood
>> —the criminally insane or those committed on criminal grounds
>> —those who had been confined to the institution in question for more than five years. "
>>
>> https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005200
>>
> We have now jumped from an Evolution News article to an article by the US
> Holocaust Memorial Museum, which I guess substitutes for you doing any real
> thinking.

You're acting like a juvenile.

>
> We were talking about Klinghoffer’s article that cites Weikart. And the
> damage is done. The tone was set by the title “Were Nazis More Tolerant of
> Down Syndrome than Some European Countries Today?” The denouement was
> achieved: “What this sounds like is the Nazis likely permitted people with
> Down syndrome to live, if they could work, or if they could live outside of
> an institutional setting. They do not appear to have been specifically
> targeted. But Dawkins along with Iceland and other European countries today
> aren’t impressed by that. They are unsatisfied with anything less than
> total erasure of these human beings who can in many cases do “productive
> work” but who also give abundant joy and love.” Is that a reasonable
> characterization of Dawkins’ position in context of what was alleged of the
> comparatively benign treatment of Downs children by Nazis? Are you OK with
> that Glenn? I don’t even like Dawkins and I am aghast someone would malign
> him in that manner.

Neither Klinghoffer or Weikart said what Dawkins said, and what he said in his "apology".
The question raised in the article is not answered. Neither you or Burkhard have.
What something "sounds like" to you is irrelevant.
And it appears your brain cancer prevents you from seeing what the article is suggesting.

>
> Oh yeah, Klinghoffer backpedals: “Comparisons with Nazi Germany are
> obviously perilous, and I think I would have advised Pope Francis against
> this one if he had asked me, as I would have advised former CIA director
> Michael Hayden against his foolish Nazi comparison from a few days ago.”
>

"Backpedals"? There can be no discussion with you.
You're an idiot if you think that characterization would be swallowed by anyone other than like minded idiots like yourself.
And you do. You're an idiot.

[Burkhard]

I don't get why people still give this little troll so much oxygen. On
that specific issue, I linked to a site that has an actual image of the
actual medical record of a victim of T4, which clearly lists "mongoloid
idiocy". It has also the images of victims. And I cited the specific
law (well, statutory instrument, to be totally precise) that explicitly
included Down's

As for the new article, it is a summary of the condition that the
author found most interesting, but it is simply incomplete. The complete
list was, in the original version of the "Merkblatt" (instruction
leaflet) that came with it:

Schizophrenie
Epilepsie
senile Erkrankungen
Schwachsinn in verschiedenen Stufen
Syphillis (Lues and what we would call today Lissauer Paralyse, to be
precise, are listed )
Encephalitis
Huntington und andere neurologische Endzustaende

The entry relevant here is "Schwachsinn in verschiedenen Stufen" which
covers everything that we would today call "learning disabilities"
(literally, it means "weakness of the mind in various degrees") and
covered Downs, which as my previous link showed was classified as
"Mongoloid idiocy".

an example of the questionnaire is here:
http://www.denktag-archiv.de/typo3temp/pics/d4a5d11af7.jpg

So yes, even minimal research would show you that Down's children were
specifically targeted

[Glenn]

"*Hemidactylus*" <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote in message news:lMudnXIbTdmMsrDG...@giganews.com...

You seem to have assumed Burkhard's cite supports the claim that "people" with Down were euthanized.
Of course, nothing will change your mind.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.tenhumbergreinhard.de/taeter-und-mitlaeufer/dokumente/aenderung-des-auszugs-des-runderlasses-v-1881939.html&prev=search

The word "mongolism" is used, at least in that translation. "Mongoloid" was and is a term for those with what were seen as asiatic features.
And the article is directed toward reporting young children's conditions, not "people" as the Discovery article discusses.

"I suspect it may have depended on their ability to do useful labor. The Nazis generally targeted people with disabilities that were unable to do productive work."

This does not sound like referring to young children or abortion.

Your problem is profound, unbounded by facts or objective reasoning of the issues.

[Joe Cummings]

On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 10:11:54 -0700, "Glenn" <g...@invalid.invalid>

Sure.

I asked you about a person who is pregnant as a result of a rape.

You haven't addressed that question, so I urged you to get advice from
your pastor.

If you haven't got a pastor, fair enough, but what I'd like to see is
you addressing the moral question of pregnancy after and as a esult of
rape. I wasn't sure if you were able to do that without help.

Let's see.


Have fun,


Joe Cummings

[Burkhard]

*Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>> Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>> "Abortion to avoid birth defects is not about eugenics"
>>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/were-nazis-more-tolerant-of-down-syndrome-than-some-european-countries-today/
>>>>
>>>> Argue with this:
>>>>
>>>> 'They are unsatisfied with anything less than total erasure of these
>>>> human beings who can in many cases do "productive work" but who also give
>>>> abundant joy and love."
>>>>
>>>>
>>> This is a messed up article. Two cites speculate based on lack of mention
>>> of Down syndrome in the Nazi eugenic era. Richard Weikart said:
>>>
>>> “I’m not sure to what extent the Nazis targeted people with Down Syndrome.
>>> It was not one of the hereditary illnesses listed in the compulsory
>>> sterilization law of July 1933.

Overlooked that one. That's nonsense too. In fact, the very first entry
in the list covers it.

Para 1 (1) says "people with inheritable illnesses can be sterilised
and
Para 1 (2) then lists

(2) Erbkrank im Sinne dieses Gesetzes ist, wer an einer der folgenden
Krankheiten leidet:
1. angeborenem Schwachsinn

("an inheritable disease for the purpose of this law is everybody who
suffers from one of the following illnesses:

(1) inheritable mental disability")

That's wider than Down's, but covers it under the term the Nazis used,
Mongolian idiocy (and in fact everybody until the mid 1960s or so,
Down's himself had used "mongoloid", and the term became popularized by
the racist treaty of Francis Graham Crookshank, "The Mongol in our
midsts" from 1924. Took embarrassingly long to get rid of it, I vaguely
remember Gould writing about this.

Side issue: the Nazis were massively confused about the illness - they
thought not only that it was inheritable which it isn't, but that it is
also caused by alcoholism in the parents and some other forms of
behaviour. Which probably proves that Lamark was responsible for the
Holocaust, or so Glenn's source ought to argue


<snip>

[Glenn]

"Joe Cummings" <joecumm...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:b3dqidpnklmkkgrkj...@4ax.com...

I'd like a ham on rye.

Now you "see", I'm sure.

[Glenn]

"Burkhard" <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote in message news:pgjc0r$o5b$1...@dont-email.me...

I knew you would be unable to see beyond your strawman.

[Mark Isaak]

On 6/22/18 10:17 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>
> [...] Dawkins

> called neither for murder nor compulsory sterilization. He instead sees
> abortion as an unforced choice but tries to intellectually compel it under
> the auspices of morality.

I find the term "intellectually compel" to be improperly derogatory.
The aim of an intellectual argument is not compulsion; it is voluntary
compliance.


Dawkins did make a point (albeit he could have made it more strongly)
which would be my own main argument on this issue: I have no right to
make this decision for you; you have no right to make it for me or for
anyone else. To pretend to such a right and then to act accordingly
*would* place one in the same category as the Nazis.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly
understand who we are and where we come from, we will have failed."
- Carl Sagan

[Glenn]

"Burkhard" <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote in message news:pgje9g$7eq$1...@dont-email.me...

> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>> Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>>> Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>>> "Abortion to avoid birth defects is not about eugenics"
>>>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/were-nazis-more-tolerant-of-down-syndrome-than-some-european-countries-today/
>>>>>
>>>>> Argue with this:
>>>>>
>>>>> 'They are unsatisfied with anything less than total erasure of these
>>>>> human beings who can in many cases do "productive work" but who also give
>>>>> abundant joy and love."
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> This is a messed up article. Two cites speculate based on lack of mention
>>>> of Down syndrome in the Nazi eugenic era. Richard Weikart said:
>>>>
>>>> “I’m not sure to what extent the Nazis targeted people with Down Syndrome.
>>>> It was not one of the hereditary illnesses listed in the compulsory
>>>> sterilization law of July 1933.
>
> Overlooked that one. That's nonsense too. In fact, the very first entry
> in the list covers it.

No, you infer it. "Mongolism" is not one on the hereditary illnesses listed. Period.

>
> Para 1 (1) says "people with inheritable illnesses can be sterilised
> and
> Para 1 (2) then lists
>
> (2) Erbkrank im Sinne dieses Gesetzes ist, wer an einer der folgenden
> Krankheiten leidet:
> 1. angeborenem Schwachsinn
>
> ("an inheritable disease for the purpose of this law is everybody who
> suffers from one of the following illnesses:
>
> (1) inheritable mental disability")
>
> That's wider than Down's, but covers it under the term the Nazis used,
> Mongolian idiocy (and in fact everybody until the mid 1960s or so,
> Down's himself had used "mongoloid", and the term became popularized by
> the racist treaty of Francis Graham Crookshank, "The Mongol in our
> midsts" from 1924. Took embarrassingly long to get rid of it, I vaguely
> remember Gould writing about this.
>
> Side issue: the Nazis were massively confused about the illness - they
> thought not only that it was inheritable which it isn't, but that it is
> also caused by alcoholism in the parents and some other forms of
> behaviour. Which probably proves that Lamark was responsible for the
> Holocaust, or so Glenn's source ought to argue
>

You haven't the faintest idea what the Discovery article is about.
>
So neither "downsyndrom" or "mongolism" or "mongoloid" was listed in the 1933 compulsory sterilization law.
None of the shit you just wrote is in the law or supported.
Children were not sterilized.

You idiots amaze me. And I will continue to encourage you to make fools of yourselves.

"In July 1933 "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring" prescribed compulsory sterilisation for people with conditions thought to be hereditary, such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, Huntington's chorea and "imbecility". Sterilisation was also legalised for chronic alcoholism and other forms of social deviance. The law was administered by the Interior Ministry under Wilhelm Frick through special Hereditary Health Courts (Erbgesundheitsgerichte), which examined the inmates of nursing homes, asylums, prisons, aged-care homes and special schools, to select those to be sterilised.[35]
It is estimated that 360,000 people were sterilised under this law between 1933 and 1939.[36] Within the Nazi administration, some suggested that the programme should be extended to people with physical disabilities but such ideas had to be expressed carefully, given that one of the most powerful figures of the regime, Joseph Goebbels, had a deformed right leg.[g] After 1937 the acute shortage of labour in Germany, arising from rearmament, meant that anyone capable of work was deemed to be "useful" and thus exempted from the law and the rate of sterilisation declined.[37]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4

Weikart is not in error, and his reference to Henry Friedlander's book supports the ref from the last line above.

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/were-nazis-more-tolerant-of-down-syndrome-than-some-european-countries-today/

[Burkhard]

Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 6/22/18 10:17 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>>
>> [...] Dawkins
>> called neither for murder nor compulsory sterilization. He instead sees
>> abortion as an unforced choice but tries to intellectually compel it
>> under
>> the auspices of morality.
>
> I find the term "intellectually compel" to be improperly derogatory. The
> aim of an intellectual argument is not compulsion; it is voluntary
> compliance.
>
>
> Dawkins did make a point (albeit he could have made it more strongly)
> which would be my own main argument on this issue: I have no right to
> make this decision for you; you have no right to make it for me or for
> anyone else. To pretend to such a right and then to act accordingly
> *would* place one in the same category as the Nazis.
>

If that had been the argument, that would be fine,but I'd say he is in
much more problematic ethical territory.

He says "It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the
choice” - that's what Hemidactylus means with intellectually compel I'd
say, a general normative statement: You "ought" to act in this way. Yes,
the reliance on persuasion rather than force makes it massively
different from what the Nazis did, and the article's comparison is as
morally odious as it is badly argued, but this goes beyond the "personal
choice" setting to a position that says that there is only one morally
right answer.

And that answer itself is morally dubious, and here he gets closer to
the Nazi ideology. The value of the life of the person in question is
externally determined, by him, not internally, from the position of the
Down's child. That makes Down's different from a condition that
necessarily involves permanent pain.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Mark Isaak <eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:
> On 6/22/18 10:17 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>>
>> [...] Dawkins
>> called neither for murder nor compulsory sterilization. He instead sees
>> abortion as an unforced choice but tries to intellectually compel it under
>> the auspices of morality.
>
> I find the term "intellectually compel" to be improperly derogatory.
> The aim of an intellectual argument is not compulsion; it is voluntary
> compliance.
>

I was thinking in terms of compelling argument, more than irresistible
force. Maybe not the best word choice on my part. But it is similar to his
rhetoric for the selfish gene view. When presented with such an argument,
who could possibly think otherwise.

When Dawkins gets down to brass tacks: “I personally would go further and

say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase
the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately
give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in
the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the

child’s own welfare.”...that seems to intended to induce a guilty
conscience to the point where the potential Trisomy 21 parent ought not do
otherwise. He doesn’t cross into must territory, but the guilting aspect I
see in the argument is pretty “compelling”. And when he adds the personal
inconvenience factor: “In any case, you would probably be condemning

yourself as a mother (or yourselves as a couple) to a lifetime of caring

for an adult with the needs of a child.” That makes his case stronger. Even
though he isn’t imposing his views as a “must”, he is engaging in very
strong morally and practically persuasive rhetoric. If someone lacked a
range of alternative views and options Dawkins could actually bulldoze
someone into a decision if he were their sole means of guidance.

And Burkhard has critiqued Dawkins’ moral argument:

“I think there are two issues at stake here. One is a general problem

with utilitarianism. Its underlying intuition is sound, but if you put
it into a strict rule that determines ethical decisions, you inevitably
get problematic results. The problem is that it assumes a metric for
"happiness" and "suffering" that makes arbitrary life events comparable.
And if you then try to calculate the "happiness/suffering ratio" for an
entire lifespan, it gets totally ridiculous.

As we have here. What does it even mean to say that by not living a
life, the overall sum of happiness increases/decreases?

It also reminds me of discussions we had in ethics 101 - if you combine
utilitarianism with a traditional Christian belief in heaven and hell,
you do indeed end up with a moral duty to kill all babies directly after
birth (well, after baptism, to be precise)

So that's a general problem. But what makes Dawkin's position here more
problematic, and indeed rather abhorred, are the specifics of Down
syndrom, which after all is not something that leads to physical pain.
So he can only come to his "balancing" if he dismisses or downplays the
subjective experience of happiness, and it is at that point, where he
replaces subjective happiness by an external evaluation ("they ought not
to feel happy/their objective quality of life is less etc") when things

get indeed morally bad.”

>
> Dawkins did make a point (albeit he could have made it more strongly)
> which would be my own main argument on this issue: I have no right to
> make this decision for you; you have no right to make it for me or for
> anyone else. To pretend to such a right and then to act accordingly
> *would* place one in the same category as the Nazis.
>

But his emphasis was on moral persuasion and maybe based on an improper
ableist view of Down syndrome.

[Joe Cummings]

On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 11:14:00 -0700, "Glenn" <g...@invalid.invalid>

No,Glenn, All I "see" is the same vapid one-liners of old.

No attempt to come to grips with a diefficult moral issue. The
impression you give is of a nervous, fearful individual who isn't
convinced of he rightness of his position _ he wants to be counted
among the faithful, but hasn't the confidence to enter a discussion.

That's why I strongly urge you to see a pastor for advice and
encouragement.

Do try to ensure that he isn't on the make; if he asks you for a
donation to help his church's work, just check that he hsn't a luxury
jet in the churchyard.

Why, we may make a rational debater out of you yet.


Have fun,

Joe Cummings

[Earle Jones]

> Why, we may make a rational debater out of you yet....

*
In fact, Glenn, you might even become a master-debater.

earle
*

[Glenn]

"Joe Cummings" <joecumm...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:q9kqidt6j37nujbg3...@4ax.com...

You're insane.

[Glenn]

"Earle Jones" <earle...@comcast.net> wrote in message news:2018062215414934220-earlejones@comcastnet...

You assume I care about debating you idiots.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Merriam-Webster's definition of
"mongolism"http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mongolism

You were saying? You excel at pointless word games.

>
> And the article is directed toward reporting young children's conditions,
> not "people" as the Discovery article discusses.
>
> "I suspect it may have depended on their ability to do useful labor. The
> Nazis generally targeted people with disabilities that were unable to do productive work."
>
> This does not sound like referring to young children or abortion.
>
> Your problem is profound, unbounded by facts or objective reasoning of the issues.
>

“From August 1939, the Interior Ministry registered children with
disabilities, requiring doctors and midwives to report all cases of
newborns with severe disabilities; the 'guardian' consent element soon
disappeared. Those to be killed were identified as "all children under
three years of age in whom any of the following 'serious hereditary
diseases' were 'suspected': idiocy and Down syndrome (especially when
associated with blindness and deafness); microcephaly; hydrocephaly;
malformations of all kinds, especially of limbs, head, and spinal column;
and paralysis, including spastic conditions".[61] The reports were assessed
by a panel of medical experts, of whom three were required to give their
approval before a child could be killed.[i]”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4

So no children with Downs syndrome were euthanized under the Nazi regime?
Adults?

[*Hemidactylus*]

You put up a cite that goes Godwin on Dawkins and when called on that you
accuse people of having brain cancer. You are a very special piece of work.

[Glenn]

"*Hemidactylus*" <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote in message news:jY-dnXjJV4DuF7DG...@giganews.com...

I said nothing of the sort, imbecile.

[Glenn]

"*Hemidactylus*" <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote in message news:-vWdnZ5aSIZjF7DG...@giganews.com...

That makes no sense. You usually don't, though.

[Glenn]

"Mark Isaak" <eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote in message news:pgjh94$riv$1...@dont-email.me...

> On 6/22/18 10:17 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>>
>> [...] Dawkins
>> called neither for murder nor compulsory sterilization. He instead sees
>> abortion as an unforced choice but tries to intellectually compel it under
>> the auspices of morality.
>
> I find the term "intellectually compel" to be improperly derogatory.
> The aim of an intellectual argument is not compulsion; it is voluntary
> compliance.
>
>
> Dawkins did make a point (albeit he could have made it more strongly)
> which would be my own main argument on this issue: I have no right to
> make this decision for you; you have no right to make it for me or for
> anyone else. To pretend to such a right and then to act accordingly
> *would* place one in the same category as the Nazis.
>

A "right"?

“And it’s a frightening aspect of this whole initiative that that process has been effectively taken out of the hands of the medical staff and decided by a federal agency, which has now determined who can and can’t do it, who will and won’t do it and who must participate,” he said."
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/1/judge-blocks-obama-mandate-forcing-doctors-to-perf/

"Speaking earlier in the week the actress Sally Phillips, who has a son with Down's Syndrome, said women were "over and over told by implication but also overtly that they will not be able to cope with a Down's Syndrome baby".
She told a small group of Synod members that a pregnant friend had been "rung nine times during her pregnancy to be offered and offered and offered a termination in case she changed her mind".

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/10/rate-downs-syndrome-abortions-uk-europe-akin-nazi-eugenics-church/

[*Hemidactylus*]

“You seem to have assumed Burkhard's cite supports the claim that "people"
with Down were euthanized. Of course, nothing will change your mind.”- You

[*Hemidactylus*]

It is an accurate accounting of the facts. You are estranged from reality.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
> "Mark Isaak" <eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote in message
> news:pgjh94$riv$1...@dont-email.me...
>> On 6/22/18 10:17 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>>>
>>> [...] Dawkins
>>> called neither for murder nor compulsory sterilization. He instead sees
>>> abortion as an unforced choice but tries to intellectually compel it under
>>> the auspices of morality.
>>
>> I find the term "intellectually compel" to be improperly derogatory.
>> The aim of an intellectual argument is not compulsion; it is voluntary
>> compliance.
>>
>>
>> Dawkins did make a point (albeit he could have made it more strongly)
>> which would be my own main argument on this issue: I have no right to
>> make this decision for you; you have no right to make it for me or for
>> anyone else. To pretend to such a right and then to act accordingly
>> *would* place one in the same category as the Nazis.
>>
> A "right"?
>
> “And it’s a frightening aspect of this whole initiative that that process
> has been effectively taken out of the hands of the medical staff and
> decided by a federal agency, which has now determined who can and can’t
> do it, who will and won’t do it and who must participate,” he said."
> https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/1/judge-blocks-obama-mandate-forcing-doctors-to-perf/
>

The Moonie Times. I will NOT click on that crap. Strangely another fringe
sect managed to develop a far more respectable news outlet...The Christian
Science Monitor.

>
> "Speaking earlier in the week the actress Sally Phillips, who has a son
> with Down's Syndrome, said women were "over and over told by implication
> but also overtly that they will not be able to cope with a Down's Syndrome baby".
> She told a small group of Synod members that a pregnant friend had been
> "rung nine times during her pregnancy to be offered and offered and
> offered a termination in case she changed her mind".
>
> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/10/rate-downs-syndrome-abortions-uk-europe-akin-nazi-eugenics-church/
>

If true that is not cool. But your article also says:

“The Bishop of Carlisle James Newcome, called for parents to be provided
with "full information about the support available and the future prospects
of those with this condition, with no implied preference for any
outcome"... Mr Newcome resisted efforts from some members to introduce
clauses calling for pregnancies not to be terminated on the basis of Down's
Syndrome, arguing that the move "could be seen as putting pressure on women
and even criticising them".”

So pressure could go both ways and this Bishop seems level headed in his
approach.

[Burkhard]

Apparently, "people" - and Glenn is now saying children aren't people.
Apart from being bizarre even by Glenn's low standards, his own source
(the second one) says explicitly that "Using a practice developed for
the child "euthanasia" program...", so they'd used the same approach
across the board.

As for his other silliness to claim that the technical, if outdated
medical term "mongoloid idiocy" referred not to the medical condition,
but to Asian looking people, what can you say? You know, the Nazis
really hated Asian looking folks, especially the Japanese - made it
their aim to eliminate them from the face of the earth. Which is why
among a list of medical conditions, that was the only ethnic category
they felt worth mentioning. And the doctor who filled in the form in my
link, and had put "mongoloid idiocy" as diagnosis in the category
"weakness of the mind" must just have been mistaken. Should have asked
Glenn.

As I say, troll, oxygen...

[Glenn]

"Burkhard" <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote in message news:pgkf3m$krv$1...@dont-email.me...

Bzzt. Idiot alert. No, I'm not saying children aren't people.

[*Hemidactylus*]

You are a manchild. Nyikos will be here to burp you and change your diaper
on Monday.

[*Hemidactylus*]

He and JTEM is a zero are worthless twits.

[Glenn]

"*Hemidactylus*" <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote in message news:rtSdnROPEPTPRbDG...@giganews.com...

" Nazi propaganda and Nazi leaders repeatedly labelled the Soviet Union as an "Asiatic state" and equated the Russians both with the Huns[1] and with the Mongols,[2] describing them as Untermenschen ("sub-humans"). German media portrayed the German campaigns in the east as necessary to ensure the survival of European culture against this "Asian menace""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural_Mountains_in_Nazi_planning

> >especially the Japanese

"Despite these views, the Japanese were still subject to Germany's racial laws, however, which – with the exception of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, which specifically mentioned Jews – generally applied to all "non-Aryans". Hitler's government began enacting the laws after taking power in 1933, and the Japanese government protested several racial incidents involving Japanese or Japanese-Germans that year."

>> - made it their aim to eliminate them from the face of the earth.

You're like a child who only wants to know why they are told to do something so that they can argue their way out of it.

> >Which is why
>> among a list of medical conditions, that was the only ethnic category
>> they felt worth mentioning.

Support that.

> >And the doctor who filled in the form in my
>> link, and had put "mongoloid idiocy" as diagnosis in the category
>> "weakness of the mind" must just have been mistaken.

You don't think the Nazi's were mistaken, eh?

>>Should have asked
>> Glenn.
>>
>> As I say, troll, oxygen...

Idiot.

>>
> He and JTEM is a zero are worthless twits.
>

Idiot.

[jillery]

On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 13:02:35 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 06:44:05 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
><ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>>What about the moral ramblings of Dawkins? Steel-manning it Dawkins
>>fine-tuned his rather offputting tweet:
>>
>>“Obviously the choice would be yours. For what it’s worth, my own choice
>>would be to abort the Down fetus and, assuming you want a baby at all, try
>>again. Given a free choice of having an early abortion or deliberately
>>bringing a Down child into the world, I think the moral and sensible choice
>>would be to abort. And, indeed, that is what the great majority of women,
>>in America and especially in Europe, actually do. I personally would go

>>further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to
>>increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to
>>deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort
>>it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view

>>of the child’s own welfare. I agree that that personal opinion is
>>contentious and needs to be argued further, possibly to be withdrawn.
>
>This, along with his comments a while back that teachers fiddling with
>young boys isn't really all that harmful, shows that Dawkins really
>has lost it.
>
>[...]


Even if Dawkins actually said as you say he said, I suspect many Roman
Catholic priests had mixed feelings to hear of an atheist minimizing
the consequences of their favorite extracurricular activity.


--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

[jillery]

Since you mention it, your use of past tense wrt US laws is
misleading.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#United_States>

******************************************
Some states still have forced sterilization laws in effect, such as
Washington state.
*****************************************

<http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states/>

******************************************
More recently, California prisons are said to have authorized
sterilizations of nearly 150 female inmates between 2006 and 2010.
This article from the Center for Investigative reporting reveals how
the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform tubal ligations that former
inmates say were done under coercion.
*********************************************

[Martin Harran]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2018 02:38:39 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/richard-dawkins-defends-mild-pedophilia-again-and-again/311230/

https://tinyurl.com/ycofksnp

[Joe Cummings]

On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 16:41:10 -0700, "Glenn" <g...@invalid.invalid>

Voilà!

I was exspecting Glenn to reach the bottom of the barrel and scrape
out "You're insane."

I mean the bottom of the barrel figuratively, he's run out of ideas,
but needs to give out a meaningless squawk to show he"s still there,
if not able to continue the discussion.

Let's sum up:

He's accused scientists of being like the nazis on the basis of some
morally unacceptable remarks by Dawkins,

He has been unable to answer any of the valid points made in this
thread,

When I suggested that the question was not a scientific one but a
moral one, he wasn't able to reply,

He's characterised (I think) everyone who has contributed to the
thread as insane or imbecilic. (There's a difference, Glenn)

I've recently been to Berlin and took the opportunity to visit
Sachsenhausen- look it up, Glenn. There was a selection of nazi
propaganda in one section, and what struck me forcibly was the appeal
to ignorance and prejudice. One example: "How to tell a Jew, a study
of Jewish noses."

Whar worries me about people like Glenn is that they'll be appealed to
on the grounds of ignorance and prejudice, and, without any
reflection, will accept the claims.

Anyway, I've done with Glenn, so I'll end on a lighter note:

He reminds me of a little bird on a tree, chirruping to his heart's
content; we can hear him, but he adds nothing to the discussion.

Of course, to say I've done with Glenn doesn't mean to say that Glenn
has done with me.

I expect him, as usual, to want the final word. Guesses anyone? I'll
go for "You're insane."


Have fun,

Joe Cummings

[Burkhard]

Not sure about the take by the Atlantic here. It is a very common coping
mechanism for survivors of sexual abuse to downplay its significance,
and to convince themselves that "it was not a big deal". I don't think
any third party has the right to tell them how they "ought to feel"-
that's exactly the denial of agency and the search for the "perfect
victim" that bedevils social responses to sexual crime. So they are
doing what they accuse Dawkins of, only more so. Dawkins didn't say, as
far as I can see, that everyone should feel like him and shrug it off.
He is making an existential claim, and for that anecdotes are perfectly
appropriate evidence: for some forms of sexual violence, the impact on
some victims is minimal (in comparison to other psychological harm they
may suffer, and about which society cares less, or so his wider claim).
And we should take that actual harm caused into account when designing
social responses - as we do, in varying degree across jurisdictions,
through things like victim impact statements that to to tailor
punishment to the specific harm caused in the individual case, rather
than the average harm that the law inevitably uses.

It's only that as victim, you are only supposed to say how bad it was,
to enable harsher punishment (the policy is a child of penal populism)
not that it was for you no big deal - if you do you are a "bad victim".

[Martin Harran]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2018 09:18:56 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

He said other children in his school peer group had been molested by
the same teacher but concluded: “I don’t think he did any of us
lasting harm.”

How on earth does he know what harm it did to other people, bearing in
mnid that the biggest barrier many victims of child abuse have to
overcome is admitting that it happened and the impact on them?

He went on to say the most notorious cases of pedophilia involve rape
and even murder and should not be bracketed with what he called “just
mild touching up.”

I understand the point he was trying to make, that there is a scale
from bad to worse in every form of evil behaviour, but I don't know
anyone involved in the aftermath of sexual child abuse who would
regard any form of molestation as being "mild".

He caused similar outrage some time later when he used the expression
“mild date rape”.

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 07:24:58 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
<ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

>Martin Harran <martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 06:44:05 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
>> <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> What about the moral ramblings of Dawkins? Steel-manning it Dawkins
>>> fine-tuned his rather offputting tweet:
>>>

>>> ?Obviously the choice would be yours. For what it?s worth, my own choice

>>> would be to abort the Down fetus and, assuming you want a baby at all, try
>>> again. Given a free choice of having an early abortion or deliberately
>>> bringing a Down child into the world, I think the moral and sensible choice
>>> would be to abort. And, indeed, that is what the great majority of women,
>>> in America and especially in Europe, actually do. I personally would go
>>> further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to
>>> increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to
>>> deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort
>>> it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view

>>> of the child?s own welfare. I agree that that personal opinion is

>>> contentious and needs to be argued further, possibly to be withdrawn.
>>
>> This, along with his comments a while back that teachers fiddling with
>> young boys isn't really all that harmful, shows that Dawkins really
>> has lost it.
>>

>He helped birth New Atheism then shot it in the head (or at least himself
>in the foot on multiple occasions).

Dawkins and Jerry Coyne both frustrate me. They are two of the most
exceptionally talented writers around on science matters but seem to
toss their rationality out the window when it comes to religion.


> I could unleash hell from my Dawkins
>file, but that would detract from analysis of his moral argument for
>aborting Trisomy 21 fetuses.
>
>OK maybe something light hearted to improve the mood:
>
>“Bin Laden has won, in airports of the world every day. I had a little jar
>of honey, now thrown away by rule-bound dundridges. STUPID waste.”
>
>https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/396956105869250561

[jillery]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2018 08:18:02 +0100, Martin Harran

How clever of you to ignore my reference to the decades, perhaps
centuries, of tacitly approved sexual abuse and cover-ups within and
without the RCC, and to ignore Dawkins' point of comparing the
consequences of what he experienced as a child to the even greater
emotional abuse experienced by other children due to dogmatic
religious beliefs. Your attitude is one of the reasons why these
things continued in the RCC as long as they did, and still continue in
the name of religious practice.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Coyne tends to worst case things— from his crusades against Templeton,
“postmodernism”, to what he is now calling the “Control Left”. He is a
strong advocate for free expression and has his forum set up as an echo
chamber of sycophants (who fawn over PCC’s every word) and will ban people,
including apparently me. Strange cat.

[Martin Harran]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2018 06:37:51 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

My discussion with Hemi was about Dawkins, not the Catholic Church.
You suggested that what I said about Dawkins might not be accurate so
I gave you a link to confirm that what I said was accurate.

I have told you time and time again that I have no interest in
engaging in discussion of any matters with you other than dealing with
your lies and insults. I realise that your obsession with me prevents
you from coming to terms with that but I'm sorry, dear, that's your
problem not mine.

End of story.

<snip irrelevant Jillshit>

[jillery]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2018 12:11:06 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> wrote:

<snip points which you conveniently ignored>

>I have told you time and time again that I have no interest in
>engaging in discussion of any matters with you other than dealing with
>your lies and insults.

And yet you replied anyway, which demonstrates your obsession with me.
Too bad for you that you keep conveniently forgetting to identify all
those lies and insults...

>I realise that your obsession with me prevents
>you from coming to terms with that but I'm sorry, dear, that's your
>problem not mine.
>
>End of story.
>
><snip irrelevant Jillshit>

... or that irrelevant Jillshit. Can you say cowardly liar? I knew
you could.

[Peter Nyikos]

Hemidactylus has falsely accused me of not being concerned about
the context of a statement Glenn made about him. The truth is that
the context makes a recent libel of me by Hemidactylus even worse
than it is. A link to documentation of that libel appears at
the end of this post.

On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 12:50:03 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> >

> > "Burkhard" <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote in message news:pgieul$s37$1...@dont-email.me...

> >> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> >>> Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> >>>> "Abortion to avoid birth defects is not about eugenics"
> >>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/were-nazis-more-tolerant-of-down-syndrome-than-some-european-countries-today/
> >>>>
> >>>> Argue with this:
> >>>>
> >>>> 'They are unsatisfied with anything less than total erasure of these
> >>>> human beings who can in many cases do "productive work" but who also give
> >>>> abundant joy and love."

You never tried to argue against this, did you, Hemidactylus? You went
off on a tangent below.

> >>> This is a messed up article. Two cites speculate based on lack of mention
> >>> of Down syndrome in the Nazi eugenic era. Richard Weikart said:
> >>>
> >>> "I'm not sure to what extent the Nazis targeted people with Down Syndrome.
> >>> It was not one of the hereditary illnesses listed in the compulsory
> >>> sterilization law of July 1933. I suspect it may have depended on their
> >>> ability to do useful labor. The Nazis generally targeted people with
> >>> disabilities that were unable to do productive work."
> >>
> >>
> >> If Weikart did not find any evidence, then it's for lack of looking - as
> >> shoddy as much of his work.
> >

> > He didn't say he did not find any evidence, idiot.

You go off on a tangent within the tangent:

> From your OP link Weikart said: "I'm not sure to what extent the Nazis

> targeted people with Down Syndrome. It was not one of the hereditary

> illnesses listed in the compulsory sterilization law of July 1933." What
> evidence did he base that on?

That's not the kind of evidence you were hinting at earlier, idiot.
Are you actually claiming that it WAS one of the hereditary illnesses
listed?


<snip of two things dealt with by Glenn in reply to this post of yours>


> > "The form's sinister purpose was suggested only by the emphasis placed
> > upon the patient's capacity to work and by the categories of patients
> > which the inquiry required health authorities to identify. The categories
> > of patients were:
> >
> > —those suffering from schizophrenia, epilepsy, dementia, encephalitis,
> > and other chronic psychiatric or neurological disorders
> > —those not of German or "related" blood
> > —the criminally insane or those committed on criminal grounds
> > —those who had been confined to the institution in question for more than five years. "
> >
> > https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005200

Unable to summon any evidence that people with Down syndrome were
targeted as a class, you turn to an ad hominem attack on Glenn:

> We have now jumped from an Evolution News article to an article by the US
> Holocaust Memorial Museum, which I guess substitutes for you doing any real
> thinking.

Evidently this *ad hominem* attack is an adequate substitute for
evidence in your eyes. Now you turn to an ad hominem attack on
Klinghoffer and/or Weikert:

> We were talking about Klinghoffer’s article that cites Weikart. And the
> damage is done. The tone was set by the title "Were Nazis More Tolerant of
> Down Syndrome than Some European Countries Today?" The denouement was
> achieved:

"What this sounds like is the Nazis likely permitted people with
> Down syndrome to live, if they could work, or if they could live outside of
> an institutional setting. They do not appear to have been specifically
> targeted. But Dawkins along with Iceland and other European countries today
> aren’t impressed by that. They are unsatisfied with anything less than

> total erasure of these human beings who can in many cases do “productive

> work” but who also give abundant joy and love." Is that a reasonable
> characterization of Dawkins' position

Well, isn't it? You've been cherry-picking from the article
and avoiding the way Dawkins' own words justify Glenn's OP quote:

Dawkins advised such families to just "Abort it and try again" in 2014
when one Twitter follower asked what to do about her Down syndrome
diagnosed baby. "It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you
have the choice," he said.
-- from the article linked by Glenn, see url above

It's never too late to argue against Glenn's OP quote. Would you
try to do so now, or are you content with having characterized
a far less offensive tweet by Dawkins by calling it "rather off-putting"?


Evidently the only "context" you care about is that ONE feature of
Nazi Germany was suggested to be not as bad as Dawkins' unequivocal
statement above.

> in context of what was alleged of the
> comparatively benign treatment of Downs children by Nazis? Are you OK with
> that Glenn? I don't even like Dawkins and I am aghast someone would malign
> him in that manner.

And I am aghast that you would malign me with a libel that I endorsed
a comment Glenn made to you in reply to this post of yours. This rises far
above the mere guilt by association which you had enthusiastically and
copiously indulged in before you hit me with that libel.

Here is where I laid bare your phony rhetoric against me, and
showed you how I DO care about the context of what went on in
this thread:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/jI6KRtcqX30/n8dqXs2PCAAJ
Subject: Re: Potential answers to the Fermi Paradox
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2018 18:46:51 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <7aea0093-aa42-4485...@googlegroups.com>

Two whole days have passed, and no one has replied. Nor do I
expect anyone to reply to it, nor to this post of mine.


> Oh yeah, Klinghoffer backpedals:

Actually it is you who are backpedaling from your earlier "aghastness"
at an unrefuted comparison.

>"Comparisons with Nazi Germany are
> obviously perilous, and I think I would have advised Pope Francis against
> this one if he had asked me, as I would have advised former CIA director
> Michael Hayden against his foolish Nazi comparison from a few days ago.

Let's see you try to *rationally* describe what you allege Klinghoffer
to be backpedaling FROM. You have not demonstrated any use of reason in
this post, so I am not holding my breath.


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 7:45:03 AM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:

> > On 6/21/2018 10:34 PM, Glenn wrote:
> >> "Abortion to avoid birth defects is not about eugenics"
> >> https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/were-nazis-more-tolerant-of-down-syndrome-than-some-european-countries-today/
> >>
> >> Argue with this:
> >>
> >> 'They are unsatisfied with anything less than total erasure of these
> >> human beings who can in many cases do "productive work" but who also
> >> give abundant joy and love."
> >>
> >

> > A lot of people have various views on the issue. With the new
> > technology it is easier and less invasive to detect fetuses with gross
> > chromosomal abnormalities.
> >
> > Anyone can check out the statistics. Chromosome 21 trisomy is the most
> > common because it isn't fully lethal. The majority of other human
> > chromosome trisomies are lethal and they don't make it full term.

There are two trisomies whose victims have survived for several months
after birth: Trisomies 13 and 18. I have seen a heartfelt outpouring
of love by the parents of one, in a website called "A Thousand Balloons."

<big snip of irrelevant ramblings>

> > Exploiting nature's mess ups and the decisions that are forced upon
> > normal human beings every day by the design of our reproductive system
> > is tragically sad, but not unexpected coming from the ID perps.

There was no evidence of such exploitation in Ron O's irrelevant
ramblings.

> What about the moral ramblings of Dawkins? Steel-manning it Dawkins
> fine-tuned his rather offputting tweet:
>
> "Obviously the choice would be yours. For what it’s worth, my own choice
> would be to abort the Down fetus and, assuming you want a baby at all, try
> again. Given a free choice of having an early abortion or deliberately
> bringing a Down child into the world, I think the moral and sensible choice
> would be to abort.

Unfortunately, most women carrying Down syndrome babies don't have
that choice. That is, unless Dawkins is going by the irrational
definition of "early in the pregnancy" given in Casey v. Planned
Parenthood, to mean "prior to viability."

Viability doesn't come until after the developing human is able
to feel excruciating pain. Here is what I told Hemidactlyus
about that:

Down's syndrome children...are [usually] torn limb from limb in the womb
without benefit of anesthesia.

The method almost invariably used is called "D&E" and is every bit as
barbaric as the medieval method of execution by drawing and quartering.

Let THAT sink in.

Also let the fact sink in that you never breathed a word about your
attitude towards this barbaric custom in all your baseless accusations
that I don't care about the context of your disputes with Glenn.
from:
--https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/jI6KRtcqX30/n8dqXs2PCAAJ

Subject: Re: Potential answers to the Fermi Paradox
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2018 18:46:51 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <7aea0093-aa42-4485...@googlegroups.com>

> "And, indeed, that is what the great majority of women,
> in America and especially in Europe, actually do. I personally would go
> further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to
> increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to
> deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort
> it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view
> of the child's own welfare. I agree that that personal opinion is
> contentious and needs to be argued further, possibly to be withdrawn."

But the point of view of the woman's welfare is not contentious, is it,
Hemidactylus? Look at what Dawkins wrote next:

> In
> any case, you would probably be condemning yourself as a mother (or
> yourselves as a couple) to a lifetime of caring for an adult with the needs
> of a child. Your child would probably have a short life expectancy but, if
> she did outlive you, you would have the worry of who would care for her
> after you are gone. No wonder most people choose abortion when offered the
> choice. Having said that, the choice would be entirely yours and I would
> never dream of trying to impose my views on you or anyone else."

Except by condemning those who do it as "immoral".

>
> https://www.richarddawkins.net/2014/08/abortion-down-syndrome-an-apology-for-letting-slip-the-dogs-of-twitterwar/
>
> The offending tweet said:"Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to
> bring it into the world if you have the choice."
>
> Either way is Dawkins' preference something that rises to the level of a
> general deontological moral imperative or even something that is
> respectable consequentialist eudaemonia?

In Dawkins' eyes, it rises to labeling anyone who does not
abort "early in the pregnancy" (whatever that means) -- if given
the choice -- as immoral.

Deal with it.


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 1:40:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> >>
> >> "Burkhard" <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote in message news:pgieul$s37$1...@dont-email.me...
> >>> *Hemidactylus* wrote:

> >>>> Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> >>>>> "Abortion to avoid birth defects is not about eugenics"
> >>>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/were-nazis-more-tolerant-of-down-syndrome-than-some-european-countries-today/
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Argue with this:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 'They are unsatisfied with anything less than total erasure of these
> >>>>> human beings who can in many cases do "productive work" but who also give
> >>>>> abundant joy and love."
> >>>>>
> >>>>>

> >>>> This is a messed up article. Two cites speculate based on lack of mention
> >>>> of Down syndrome in the Nazi eugenic era. Richard Weikart said:
> >>>>
> >>>> "I’m not sure to what extent the Nazis targeted people with Down Syndrome.
> >>>> It was not one of the hereditary illnesses listed in the compulsory
> >>>> sterilization law of July 1933. I suspect it may have depended on their
> >>>> ability to do useful labor. The Nazis generally targeted people with
> >>>> disabilities that were unable to do productive work."

In my reply to Hemidactylus, I did not notice that the following
was due to Burkhard.

> >>> If Weikart did not find any evidence, then it's for lack of looking - as
> >>> shoddy as much of his work.
> >>
> >> He didn't say he did not find any evidence, idiot.
> >>
> >

Now we come to Hemidactylus again:

> > What
> > evidence did he base that on? Burkhard points out "Mongoloid" was the term
> > of choice.

[Glenn earlier wrote:]

> >> "The form's sinister purpose was suggested only by the emphasis placed
> >> upon the patient's capacity to work and by the categories of patients
> >> which the inquiry required health authorities to identify. The categories
> >> of patients were:
> >>
> >> —those suffering from schizophrenia, epilepsy, dementia, encephalitis,
> >> and other chronic psychiatric or neurological disorders
> >> —those not of German or "related" blood
> >> —the criminally insane or those committed on criminal grounds
> >> —those who had been confined to the institution in question for more than five years. "
> >>
> >> https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005200
> >>

> > We have now jumped from an Evolution News article to an article by the US
> > Holocaust Memorial Museum, which I guess substitutes for you doing any real
> > thinking.

Burkhard's response ignored the fact that Hemidactylus's words
constituted an irrelevant *ad hominem* attack, and seems to
be reinforcing it.

> I don't get why people still give this little troll so much oxygen.

Perhaps because Glenn is less of a troll than Hemidactylus,
in my experience.


> On that specific issue, I linked to a site that has an actual image of the
> actual medical record of a victim of T4, which clearly lists "mongoloid
> idiocy".

Yes, but to what effect? The medical record did not cite any orders
which mandated that the victim be killed, did it?

I suppose Burkhard is referring to a memorial to Christa M.
which is undated but was obviously written many years after the
end of WWII:

> https://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/jugendwebsite/r_pdf/christa.pdf

The following excerpt is certainly not an official 1941-1945 description of
the program:

5 Aktion T4 – Euthanasiemorde
Staatlich organisiertes Programm zur Ermordung von körperlich und geistig behinderten Menschen, Psychiatriepatienten sowie nicht
mehr arbeitsfähigen, kranken Häftlingen in Konzentrationslagern.

The lack of an official contemporary document makes this secondary
(at best) source inconclusive for purposes of this dispute.
Moreover, I find it difficult to believe that all patients of psychiatrists
were targeted for extermination. And there is no reason to think that
anyway: the words "Ermordung von" are not followed by "alle".


> It has also the images of victims. And I cited the specific
> law (well, statutory instrument, to be totally precise) that explicitly
> included Down's

...but did not quote from it. How are we to know whether it refers
to extermination, or just sterilization?

Is the film "Judgment at Nuremberg" totally fictitious when it depicts
a "feeble-minded" person testifying that he was merely sterilized and
not exterminated? I don't think so.


> As for the new article, it is a summary of the condition that the
> author found most interesting, but it is simply incomplete. The complete
> list was, in the original version of the "Merkblatt" (instruction
> leaflet) that came with it:
>
> Schizophrenie
> Epilepsie
> senile Erkrankungen
> Schwachsinn in verschiedenen Stufen
> Syphillis (Lues and what we would call today Lissauer Paralyse, to be
> precise, are listed )
> Encephalitis
> Huntington und andere neurologische Endzustaende

Burkhard omitted Malaria. The Nazis did terrible things, but I don't
think searching out malaria patients for extermination was one of them.


> The entry relevant here is "Schwachsinn in verschiedenen Stufen" which
> covers everything that we would today call "learning disabilities"
> (literally, it means "weakness of the mind in various degrees") and
> covered Downs, which as my previous link showed was classified as
> "Mongoloid idiocy".
>
> an example of the questionnaire is here:
> http://www.denktag-archiv.de/typo3temp/pics/d4a5d11af7.jpg
>

It seems not to say anything about the official policy towards
people with those "disabilities". It looks like a medical record,
nothing more.


> So yes, even minimal research would show you that Down's children were
> specifically targeted

I see no real evidence that they were specifically targeted for
extermination.


Burkhard temporarily un-killfiled me in the thread on Pastafarians,
but that might not apply to this thread. That is why I have not
addressed my words to him, but to the general readership.


I'm deleting drivel by Hemidactylus that Burkhard did not address,
and which I dealt with in detail in my first post to this thread.


Peter Nyikos

[Burkhard]

Ad hominems are invalid inferences where an argument is dismissed
because of an irrelevant attribute of the person making that conclusion.
Nothing of this type here - just criticism of a poster's behaviour.

>
>> I don't get why people still give this little troll so much oxygen.
>
> Perhaps because Glenn is less of a troll than Hemidactylus,
> in my experience.
>
>
>> On that specific issue, I linked to a site that has an actual image of the
>> actual medical record of a victim of T4, which clearly lists "mongoloid
>> idiocy".
>
> Yes, but to what effect? The medical record did not cite any orders
> which mandated that the victim be killed, did it?

The medical form was developed specifically for the Action T4 project,
which was indeed designed for extermination, a well known and
meticulously documented historical fact. The first accout was as early
as 1948 by Alice von Platen-Hallermund: Die Tötung Geisteskranker in
Deutschland. Standard texts include Götz Aly (Hrsg.): Aktion T4:
1939–1945. Die „Euthanasie“-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstraße Edition
Hentrich, Berlin 1989 Thomas Beddies, Kristina Hübener (Hrsg.): Kinder
in der NS-Psychiatrie. Schriftenreihe zur Medizin-Geschichte des Landes
Brandenburg,Berlin-Brandenburg Wissenschaft Verlag, 2004, or in English
Evans, Suzanne E. (2004). Forgotten Crimes: The Holocaust and People
with Disabilities. Trying to deny this is getting precariously close
to a version of holocaust denial, I'd say.

>
> I suppose Burkhard is referring to a memorial to Christa M.
> which is undated but was obviously written many years after the
> end of WWII:

The photo of the document on the website that I linked to is indeed
dated - 20.2.1940 to be precise. Are you claiming the image of the
document on that website is a forgery?

>
>> https://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/jugendwebsite/r_pdf/christa.pdf
>
> The following excerpt is certainly not an official 1941-1945 description of
> the program:
>
> 5 Aktion T4 – Euthanasiemorde
> Staatlich organisiertes Programm zur Ermordung von körperlich und geistig behinderten Menschen, Psychiatriepatienten sowie nicht
> mehr arbeitsfähigen, kranken Häftlingen in Konzentrationslagern.

No, it is the historical evaluation that is shared by every single
historian of that period, and only right wing extremists with a website
and a bizarre conspiracy theory would deny it. Between over 200,000
people were killed during T4 with some estimates going over 300000 (the
discrepancies are the result of less meticulously documented killings in
Poland and the occupied territories, for Germany the Nazis collected
all the evidence that's needed - notorious e.g. the so called
"Hartheimer Statistik", which documented the killing of 18269 people
between the May 1940 and 1. September 1941 in one of the six hopitals
used by T4 on German territory. It also contained an explanatory note
that calculated that with 70.273 killings and a life expectancy
otherwise of 10 years, food at the value of 141.775.573,80 would be
saved.

>
> The lack of an official contemporary document makes this secondary
> (at best) source inconclusive for purposes of this dispute.

That is getting yet another step closer to holocaust denial.

> Moreover, I find it difficult to believe that all patients of psychiatrists
> were targeted for extermination.

good thing then that nobody said this. Discussed here are people with
learning disabilities, especially Downs syndrome.

And there is no reason to think that
> anyway: the words "Ermordung von" are not followed by "alle".

yes, and concentration camps were only there to help people concentrate.

>
>
>> It has also the images of victims. And I cited the specific
>> law (well, statutory instrument, to be totally precise) that explicitly
>> included Down's
>
> ...but did not quote from it.

Yes I quoted from it - it's in the part you snipped without indicating

How are we to know whether it refers
> to extermination, or just sterilization?

and the final solution was just to send them all to Madagascar, sure.
What T4 did is matter of historical records, complied to a large extend
by the Nazis themselves

>
> Is the film "Judgment at Nuremberg" totally fictitious when it depicts
> a "feeble-minded" person testifying that he was merely sterilized and
> not exterminated? I don't think so.

T4 was abandoned on German territory in 1941, not the least because of
the public protest by the Bishop of Muenster, August von Galen, and a
public sermon he held. So finding survivors is neither surprising, nor
does it refuted he claim that thousands were killed for their disability.

Your claim is akin to saying the Holocaust did not happen because some
Jews survived

>
>
>> As for the new article, it is a summary of the condition that the
>> author found most interesting, but it is simply incomplete. The complete
>> list was, in the original version of the "Merkblatt" (instruction
>> leaflet) that came with it:
>>
>> Schizophrenie
>> Epilepsie
>> senile Erkrankungen
>> Schwachsinn in verschiedenen Stufen
>> Syphillis (Lues and what we would call today Lissauer Paralyse, to be
>> precise, are listed )
>> Encephalitis
>> Huntington und andere neurologische Endzustaende
>
> Burkhard omitted Malaria.

I "omitted" it because the Nazis did so too - it is not listed as a
category on the T4 instruction leaflet from which I cite, and I have no
idea why you think Malaria was on there

The Nazis did terrible things, but I don't
> think searching out malaria patients for extermination was one of them.
>
>
>> The entry relevant here is "Schwachsinn in verschiedenen Stufen" which
>> covers everything that we would today call "learning disabilities"
>> (literally, it means "weakness of the mind in various degrees") and
>> covered Downs, which as my previous link showed was classified as
>> "Mongoloid idiocy".
>>
>> an example of the questionnaire is here:
>> http://www.denktag-archiv.de/typo3temp/pics/d4a5d11af7.jpg
>>
>
> It seems not to say anything about the official policy towards
> people with those "disabilities". It looks like a medical record,
> nothing more.

It's a questionnaire that we know was designed and used with the sole
purpose to identify victims for T4

>
>
>> So yes, even minimal research would show you that Down's children were
>> specifically targeted
>
> I see no real evidence that they were specifically targeted for
> extermination.

Of course, not, you don't want to see it. Other people will follow the
historical record that shows (and my link has the actual images of the
actual document)

- that Down's syndrom was included on the list developed by T4and
designed for the sole purpose of identifying people for extermination
- that those who were as a result taken into one of the six hospitals
all died, and even though the relatives would get a letter blaming same
other illness, the preserved documents from the time show in painful
detail the murder

>
>
> Burkhard temporarily un-killfiled me in the thread on Pastafarians,
> but that might not apply to this thread. That is why I have not
> addressed my words to him, but to the general readership.

I did indeed unkillfile you, but are already regretting it massively. I
thought Glenn's attempt to claim that Mongoloid, a technical medial term
at the time, meant really "person of Asian appearance" was as pathetic
and disgusting as one could possibly get. Though I'm surprised that
you'd steep so low to engage in all sorts of transparent linguistic
games to defend the Nazi killing machine.

[Glenn]

"Burkhard" <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote in message news:pjo1ka$84d$1...@dont-email.me...

Horseshit.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 19:37:35 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by "Glenn" <g...@invalid.invalid>:

Burkhard is correct:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Criticism of behavior or philosophical position is not ad
hominem *unless* it is used to dismiss a valid argument
("He's a YEC, therefore his argument is incorrect").
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[Peter Nyikos]

Hemidactylus did "dismiss" Glenn's argument by totally ignoring its
actual content.

I think talk.origins is a sufficiently informal forum that this use of
the word "dismiss" should be acceptable, if only for purposes
of using the term "ad hominem".

> Nothing of this type here - just criticism of a poster's behaviour.
> >
> >> I don't get why people still give this little troll so much oxygen.
> >
> > Perhaps because Glenn is less of a troll than Hemidactylus,
> > in my experience.
> >
> >
> >> On that specific issue, I linked to a site that has an actual image of the
> >> actual medical record of a victim of T4, which clearly lists "mongoloid
> >> idiocy".
> >
> > Yes, but to what effect? The medical record did not cite any orders
> > which mandated that the victim be killed, did it?
>
> The medical form was developed specifically for the Action T4 project,
> which was indeed designed for extermination, a well known and
> meticulously documented historical fact.

Yes, but was that project part of an overall campaign to target
similar people for extermination?

> The first accout was as early
> as 1948 by Alice von Platen-Hallermund: Die Tötung Geisteskranker in
> Deutschland. Standard texts include Götz Aly (Hrsg.): Aktion T4:

> 1939–1945. Die "Euthanasie"-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstrasse Edition

> Hentrich, Berlin 1989 Thomas Beddies, Kristina Hübener (Hrsg.): Kinder
> in der NS-Psychiatrie. Schriftenreihe zur Medizin-Geschichte des Landes
> Brandenburg,Berlin-Brandenburg Wissenschaft Verlag, 2004, or in English
> Evans, Suzanne E. (2004). Forgotten Crimes: The Holocaust and People
> with Disabilities.


> Trying to deny this is getting precariously close
> to a version of holocaust denial, I'd say.

Who is trying to deny the T4 project?

More importantly, you are making at least as free and easy with
the term "holocaust denial" as I was with the term "ad hominem".
The ca. 6 million Jews, over a million gypsies, etc. that were
murdered are a far cry even from the upper T4 estimate you give,
300,000.

Let me remind you that "Holocaust denial" is a felony
in various European countries. One of the Le Pens (probably
Louis) was fined 40,000 Euros for it. So I would be judicious
in my use of the term, if I were you.

[In contrast, denying the genocide of Armenians in Turkey is NOT
considered a crime even though the estimate for the number
of victims is usually well over 300,000]

> >
> > I suppose Burkhard is referring to a memorial to Christa M.
> > which is undated but was obviously written many years after the
> > end of WWII:
>
> The photo of the document on the website that I linked to is indeed
> dated - 20.2.1940 to be precise. Are you claiming the image of the
> document on that website is a forgery?

Perish the thought. I am merely making inquiries as to its
actual content and implications.

> >
> >> https://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/jugendwebsite/r_pdf/christa.pdf
> >
> > The following excerpt is certainly not an official 1941-1945 description of
> > the program:
> >
> > 5 Aktion T4 – Euthanasiemorde
> > Staatlich organisiertes Programm zur Ermordung von körperlich und geistig behinderten Menschen, Psychiatriepatienten sowie nicht
> > mehr arbeitsfähigen, kranken Häftlingen in Konzentrationslagern.
>
> No, it is the historical evaluation that is shared by every single
> historian of that period, and only right wing extremists with a website
> and a bizarre conspiracy theory would deny it. Between over 200,000
> people were killed during T4 with some estimates going over 300000

See above.

> (the discrepancies are the result of less meticulously documented killings in
> Poland and the occupied territories, for Germany the Nazis collected
> all the evidence that's needed - notorious e.g. the so called
> "Hartheimer Statistik", which documented the killing of 18269 people
> between the May 1940 and 1. September 1941 in one of the six hopitals
> used by T4 on German territory. It also contained an explanatory note
> that calculated that with 70.273 killings and a life expectancy
> otherwise of 10 years, food at the value of 141.775.573,80 would be
> saved.
>
> >
> > The lack of an official contemporary document makes this secondary
> > (at best) source inconclusive for purposes of this dispute.
>
> That is getting yet another step closer to holocaust denial.

Come off it. You are getting further and further away from
the issue in the OP of whether the Nazis targeted ALL people
with Down Syndrome for extermination.

> > Moreover, I find it difficult to believe that all patients of psychiatrists
> > were targeted for extermination.
>
> good thing then that nobody said this.

Oh, no? Read the quote again:

Staatlich organisiertes Programm zur Ermordung von körperlich
und geistig behinderten Menschen, Psychiatriepatienten

It's a bad thing that it makes the document irrelevant to the
issue I talked about, in light of the way psychiatric
patients are lumped in with the people you name next:

> Discussed here are people with
> learning disabilities, especially Downs syndrome.
>
> And there is no reason to think that
> > anyway: the words "Ermordung von" are not followed by "alle".
>
> yes, and concentration camps were only there to help people concentrate.
>

This kind of sarcasm does nothing to shed light on the main issue.

More importantly, you are ignoring the plain implication that
people with learning disabilities were treated on a par
with psychiatric patients.

One way or the other. Which way was it?


Remainder deleted, to be replied to later if it seems
appropriate to do so.


Peter Nyikos

[Glenn]

"Bob Casanova" <nos...@buzz.off> wrote in message news:mmc1mdpsmnn4r2cp6...@4ax.com...

>>>>>>> -those suffering from schizophrenia, epilepsy, dementia, encephalitis,

>>>>>>> and other chronic psychiatric or neurological disorders

>>>>>>> -those not of German or "related" blood
>>>>>>> -the criminally insane or those committed on criminal grounds
>>>>>>> -those who had been confined to the institution in question for more than five years. "

>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005200
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> We have now jumped from an Evolution News article to an article by the US
>>>>>> Holocaust Memorial Museum, which I guess substitutes for you doing any real
>>>>>> thinking.
>>>>
>>>> Burkhard's response ignored the fact that Hemidactylus's words
>>>> constituted an irrelevant *ad hominem* attack, and seems to
>>>> be reinforcing it.
>>>
>>> Ad hominems are invalid inferences where an argument is dismissed
>>> because of an irrelevant attribute of the person making that conclusion.
>>> Nothing of this type here - just criticism of a poster's behaviour.
>
>>Horseshit.
>
> Burkhard is correct:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
>
> Criticism of behavior or philosophical position is not ad
> hominem *unless* it is used to dismiss a valid argument
> ("He's a YEC, therefore his argument is incorrect").
> --

You're an idiot.

[Burkhard]

No he didn't. Glenn's argument did not have any content, and
Hemidactylus pointed this out

>
> I think talk.origins is a sufficiently informal forum that this use of
> the word "dismiss" should be acceptable, if only for purposes
> of using the term "ad hominem".
>
>
>> Nothing of this type here - just criticism of a poster's behaviour.
>>>
>>>> I don't get why people still give this little troll so much oxygen.
>>>
>>> Perhaps because Glenn is less of a troll than Hemidactylus,
>>> in my experience.
>>>
>>>
>>>> On that specific issue, I linked to a site that has an actual image of the
>>>> actual medical record of a victim of T4, which clearly lists "mongoloid
>>>> idiocy".
>>>
>>> Yes, but to what effect? The medical record did not cite any orders
>>> which mandated that the victim be killed, did it?
>>
>> The medical form was developed specifically for the Action T4 project,
>> which was indeed designed for extermination, a well known and
>> meticulously documented historical fact.
>
> Yes, but was that project part of an overall campaign to target
> similar people for extermination?

Say what? T4 targeted among others people with Down Syndrome, as I
documented. The claim by Glenn and his source was the Nazis did not
target people with Down syndrome.

So I have no clue what your question means, or why you think it has
anything to do with the issue, the fact T4, a nazi campaign, did it is
all that's needed to answer that in the afirmative.

>
>
>> The first accout was as early
>> as 1948 by Alice von Platen-Hallermund: Die Tötung Geisteskranker in
>> Deutschland. Standard texts include Götz Aly (Hrsg.): Aktion T4:
>> 1939–1945. Die "Euthanasie"-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstrasse Edition
>> Hentrich, Berlin 1989 Thomas Beddies, Kristina Hübener (Hrsg.): Kinder
>> in der NS-Psychiatrie. Schriftenreihe zur Medizin-Geschichte des Landes
>> Brandenburg,Berlin-Brandenburg Wissenschaft Verlag, 2004, or in English
>> Evans, Suzanne E. (2004). Forgotten Crimes: The Holocaust and People
>> with Disabilities.
>
>
>> Trying to deny this is getting precariously close
>> to a version of holocaust denial, I'd say.
>
> Who is trying to deny the T4 project?

It's an implication of what you are, even though you seem not to realize
that yourself. And I quote: "Yes, but to what effect? The medical

record did not cite any orders which mandated that the victim be killed,

did it?" The medical record that listed Downs is on a form specifically
designed by T4 to identify targets. So to question whether this mandated
that the victim was to be killed is exactly the same as denying that T4
was set up for killing people.

> More importantly, you are making at least as free and easy with
> the term "holocaust denial" as I was with the term "ad hominem".
> The ca.

You are right, I should have been more precise and explicit. What I mean
is: you are making the exact same disgusting type of argument that the
most lunatic fringe among the Holocaust denier use to deny the Holocaust
and the extermination of Jews, in your denial of the targeted
extermination of people with Downs.

It is the despicable type of arguments I meant, not the content.

6 million Jews, over a million gypsies, etc. that were
> murdered are a far cry even from the upper T4 estimate you give,
> 300,000.
>
> Let me remind you that "Holocaust denial" is a felony
> in various European countries. One of the Le Pens (probably
> Louis) was fined 40,000 Euros for it. So I would be judicious
> in my use of the term, if I were you.
>
> [In contrast, denying the genocide of Armenians in Turkey is NOT
> considered a crime even though the estimate for the number
> of victims is usually well over 300,000]
>
>>>
>>> I suppose Burkhard is referring to a memorial to Christa M.
>>> which is undated but was obviously written many years after the
>>> end of WWII:
>>
>> The photo of the document on the website that I linked to is indeed
>> dated - 20.2.1940 to be precise. Are you claiming the image of the
>> document on that website is a forgery?
>
> Perish the thought. I am merely making inquiries as to its
> actual content and implications.

Yah, sure, see above, "type of argument."

The OP is whether Nazis targeted people with Downs The "all" is your
addition, and a totally pointless one at that.

>
>
>>> Moreover, I find it difficult to believe that all patients of psychiatrists
>>> were targeted for extermination.
>>
>> good thing then that nobody said this.
>
> Oh, no? Read the quote again:
>
> Staatlich organisiertes Programm zur Ermordung von körperlich
> und geistig behinderten Menschen, Psychiatriepatienten
>
> It's a bad thing that it makes the document irrelevant to the
> issue I talked about, in light of the way psychiatric
> patients are lumped in with the people you name next:

Bullshit. First, that also other categories are mentioned in addition
to Downs does not change its relevance for proving that people with
Downs were targeted one bit.

Second, the document specifies which psychiatric patients were included:
those who had been committed for 5 years or more in a psychiatric
without prognosis of improvement.

Your quip that you find it "difficult to believe that all patients of
psychiatrists were targeted for extermination" is grossly offensive to
the people they murdered.

>> Discussed here are people with
>> learning disabilities, especially Downs syndrome.
>>
>> And there is no reason to think that
>>> anyway: the words "Ermordung von" are not followed by "alle".
>>
>> yes, and concentration camps were only there to help people concentrate.
>>
>
> This kind of sarcasm does nothing to shed light on the main issue.

>
> More importantly, you are ignoring the plain implication that
> people with learning disabilities were treated on a par
> with psychiatric patients.
>
> One way or the other. Which way was it?

They were treated on a par with people who were committed to psychiatric
institutions for 5 years or more. They were both killed. We have the
records for that. Your attempts to wiggle out of this through verbal
acrobatics is simply disgusting.

[Peter Nyikos]

What did the ca. one dozen lines beginning with "The form's sinister purpose
was suggested" consist of in your mind? Chopped liver?

They clearly addressed your implication that Weikard's research
was shoddy. No additional commentary was necessary.


> and Hemidactylus pointed this out.

Would you like to explain how his words "pointed out" such a thing?

"We have now jumped from an Evolution News article to an article by the US
Holocaust Memorial Museum, which I guess substitutes for you doing any real
thinking."

It's clear that Hemidactylus has a low opinion of the people
behind Evolution News. Out of context like this, the statement
seems to express a similarly low opinion of the US Holocaust museum,
from which Glenn quoted.

I've seldom seen coherent thinking from Hemidactylus,
but perhaps you can read him the way some people figured they
could read the Delphic Oracle.

> > I think talk.origins is a sufficiently informal forum that this use of
> > the word "dismiss" should be acceptable, if only for purposes
> > of using the term "ad hominem".
> >
> >
> >> Nothing of this type here - just criticism of a poster's behaviour.
> >>>
> >>>> I don't get why people still give this little troll so much oxygen.
> >>>
> >>> Perhaps because Glenn is less of a troll than Hemidactylus,
> >>> in my experience.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> On that specific issue, I linked to a site that has an actual image of the
> >>>> actual medical record of a victim of T4, which clearly lists "mongoloid
> >>>> idiocy".
> >>>
> >>> Yes, but to what effect? The medical record did not cite any orders
> >>> which mandated that the victim be killed, did it?
> >>
> >> The medical form was developed specifically for the Action T4 project,
> >> which was indeed designed for extermination, a well known and
> >> meticulously documented historical fact.
> >
> > Yes, but was that project part of an overall campaign to target
> > similar people for extermination?
>
> Say what? T4 targeted among others people with Down Syndrome, as I
> documented. The claim by Glenn and his source was the Nazis did not
> target people with Down syndrome.

Once more: Dawkins targeted ALL fetuses with Down Syndrome by
labeling as "immoral" anyone who did not have an "early" [1]
abortion of them when she had a chance. Any documentation
that does not show that the Nazis targeted ALL people with
Down Syndrome for extermination fails to address the OP.

[1] I would call an abortion "early" if it was of an embryo
-- up to ca. 10 weeks LMP [2] -- rather than a fetus in the
strict sense of human embryology. The US Supreme Court goes
to what is probably the opposite extreme by implying that
all abortions before viability are "early." Virtually all
abortions of developing humans with Down Syndrome are between
these two extremes.

[2] Portugal and Turkey use 10 weeks LMP as the cutoff for
elective abortion. So it seems to be a workable standard --
except that it means allowing almost all Down syndrome fetuses
to come to term.

>
> So I have no clue what your question means, or why you think it has
> anything to do with the issue, the fact T4, a nazi campaign, did it is
> all that's needed to answer that in the afirmative.

You are using a standard of "targeted" that falls far short of
the main issue of this thread. But you obviously think otherwise
below.


<snip of lots of personal attacks by you, which I will deal with
if and only if you insist>


Here it comes:

> The OP is whether Nazis targeted people with Downs The "all" is your
> addition, and a totally pointless one at that.

Just what do you think "total erasure" means? Glenn said in the OP:

Argue with this:

'They are unsatisfied with anything less than total erasure
of these human beings who can in many cases do "productive work"
but who also give abundant joy and love."

These words have been sitting at the top of all this back-and-forth,
from the get-go.


I never could figure out why Glenn accused you of using a "strawman"
argument -- until now.


I've deleted the rest, where you once again made personal attacks
against me on the basis of what I hope is still an honest misunderstanding
about the OP.

However, I will address it point by point if you insist.


Peter Nyikos

[Martin Harran]

On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 22:57:29 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 1:40:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

[...]

> Though I'm surprised that
>you'd steep so low to engage in all sorts of transparent linguistic
>games to defend the Nazi killing machine.

I'm surprised that you are surprised at anything Nyikos would say.

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2018 14:47:38 -0700, the following appeared

>You're an idiot.

Possibly. What's your excuse?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 12:50:03 PM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 22:57:29 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 1:40:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> [...]
>
> > Though I'm surprised that
> >you'd steep so low to engage in all sorts of transparent linguistic
> >games to defend the Nazi killing machine.

I'm not surprised to see you take what I hope to be an honest
but huge misunderstanding by Burkhard at face value. You're
that kind of person.

And I'd be very surprised if you had anything intelligent to say
about WHY it is a huge misunderstanding. I explained that in reply
to the same post to which you are replying:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/vh_5qLZ_2y0/9GfqOrGwCgAJ
Subject: Re: More Dawkins
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2018 08:48:35 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <d7bc1dc2-abeb-467a...@googlegroups.com>

In fact, I don't think you want to even LOOK at the explanation,
lest it cramp your style. You are that kind of person.

> I'm surprised that you are surprised at anything Nyikos would say.

I'm not surprised at what a newcomer, Marcel Kincaid, had to say
about you, and how curtly you brushed off his comments about
"apologists for religion." This was in a thread YOU began and
in which you seem to have let Mark Isaak off the hook because you found
me a more inviting target: "The blessings of religion."

Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 2:05:03 PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
> On Tue, 31 Jul 2018 14:47:38 -0700, the following appeared
> in talk.origins, posted by "Glenn" <g...@invalid.invalid>:
>
> >
> >"Bob Casanova" <nos...@buzz.off> wrote in message news:mmc1mdpsmnn4r2cp6...@4ax.com...
> >> On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 19:37:35 -0700, the following appeared
> >> in talk.origins, posted by "Glenn" <g...@invalid.invalid>:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>"Burkhard" <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote in message news:pjo1ka$84d$1...@dont-email.me...

> >>>> Ad hominems are invalid inferences where an argument is dismissed
> >>>> because of an irrelevant attribute of the person making that conclusion.
> >>>> Nothing of this type here - just criticism of a poster's behaviour.
> >>
> >>>Horseshit.
> >>
> >> Burkhard is correct:

Not in the last of those three lines, unless you can refute
what I wrote in response to it. And not in the preceding two,
since they fly in the face of the webpage you are ostensibly
using to justify what Burkhard wrote:

> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"[1]),
short for argumentum ad hominem, is a fallacious
argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion
of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking
the character, motive, or other attribute of the
person making the argument, or persons associated
with the argument, rather than attacking the substance
of the argument itself.

Nothing about "invalid inferences" here.

What you wrote next is even more completely different. Did you even
bother to READ what you linked?

> >> Criticism of behavior or philosophical position is not ad
> >> hominem *unless* it is used to dismiss a valid argument

The word "valid" is your Hemidactylus-serving addition.
[Burkhard was pinch-hitting for Hemidactylus in the part
I've quoted.] If people had to abide by it, all normal
discourse about "ad hominem" would disappear from talk.origins,
because of the way people tenaciously insist that THEIR
arguments are valid.


On top of which: did you see the notation,

"Personal attack" redirects here. For the policy on Wikipedia, see
Wikipedia:No personal attacks.

It is quite customary on Usenet to label personal attacks as
"ad hominem" without having to go into motives. And the
editors of Wikipedia seem to go along with that.

> >> ("He's a YEC, therefore his argument is incorrect").

In all my years on the internet, I've NEVER seen an ad hominem
this simplistically spelled out.


> >You're an idiot.

That's an ad hominem, all right. But apparently a valid one.

> Possibly. What's your excuse?

Let's see what YOUR excuse is for posting that url and completely
ignoring what it says.


Peter Nyikos

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2018 11:43:01 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 12:50:03 PM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
>> On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 22:57:29 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> >> On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 1:40:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> [...]
>>
>> > Though I'm surprised that
>> >you'd steep so low to engage in all sorts of transparent linguistic
>> >games to defend the Nazi killing machine.
>
>I'm not surprised to see you take what I hope to be an honest
>but huge misunderstanding by Burkhard at face value. You're
>that kind of person.

Nah, it's just that you're an habitual liar.

>
>And I'd be very surprised if you had anything intelligent to say
>about WHY it is a huge misunderstanding. I explained that in reply
>to the same post to which you are replying:
>
>https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/vh_5qLZ_2y0/9GfqOrGwCgAJ
>Subject: Re: More Dawkins
>Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2018 08:48:35 -0700 (PDT)
>Message-ID: <d7bc1dc2-abeb-467a...@googlegroups.com>
>
>In fact, I don't think you want to even LOOK at the explanation,
>lest it cramp your style. You are that kind of person.
>
>
>> I'm surprised that you are surprised at anything Nyikos would say.
>
>I'm not surprised at what a newcomer, Marcel Kincaid, had to say
>about you, and how curtly you brushed off his comments about
>"apologists for religion." This was in a thread YOU began

For fuck's sake, can you not even get your basic facts right? I didn't
start the thread, Joe Cummings started it.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 5:50:03 PM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Aug 2018 11:43:01 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 12:50:03 PM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
> >> On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 22:57:29 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> >> On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 1:40:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> > Though I'm surprised that
> >> >you'd steep so low to engage in all sorts of transparent linguistic
> >> >games to defend the Nazi killing machine.
> >
> >I'm not surprised to see you take what I hope to be an honest
> >but huge misunderstanding by Burkhard at face value. You're
> >that kind of person.
>
> Nah, it's just that you're an habitual liar.

That is pure slander. I'd like to see you post REAL examples,
not the spin-doctored trio you posted back on July 10 and
are so keen on me replying to.

And your alleged examples of me indulging in "bullshit" were
also spin-doctored ridiculous. Why didn't you go the whole hog and
post your favorite non-example of me spewing "bullshit"?

I'm referring to your false claim that I attacked your Catholicism
when all I did was ask you whether you'd had a Catholic education.

Is Ireland so different from the USA, where only a minority of
Catholic parents ever sent their children to Catholic grade
schools, let alone high schools, in the last half century?
If so, I had no idea when I asked you that question.

> >And I'd be very surprised if you had anything intelligent to say
> >about WHY it is a huge misunderstanding. I explained that in reply
> >to the same post to which you are replying:
> >
> >https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/vh_5qLZ_2y0/9GfqOrGwCgAJ
> >Subject: Re: More Dawkins
> >Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2018 08:48:35 -0700 (PDT)
> >Message-ID: <d7bc1dc2-abeb-467a...@googlegroups.com>
> >
> >In fact, I don't think you want to even LOOK at the explanation,
> >lest it cramp your style. You are that kind of person.
> >
> >
> >> I'm surprised that you are surprised at anything Nyikos would say.
> >
> >I'm not surprised at what a newcomer, Marcel Kincaid, had to say
> >about you, and how curtly you brushed off his comments about
> >"apologists for religion."

If he doesn't come back at you for that, he has a lot less spunk
than I thought he has.

> This was in a thread YOU began
>
> For fuck's sake, can you not even get your basic facts right? I didn't
> start the thread, Joe Cummings started it.

Oops, sorry. You've been playing such a prominent role on it that
I had a senior moment there.

>
>
> >and
> >in which you seem to have let Mark Isaak off the hook because you found
> >me a more inviting target: "The blessings of religion."

And it looks more than ever like you let him off the hook.

I may have let YOU off the hook by my latest reply to him,
but chances are you will lambast me for violating your
commandment to mind my own business and let you fight your
own battles.

Peter Nyikos

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2018 12:30:52 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net>:

Correct. As I stated.

>Nothing about "invalid inferences" here.

Inference - "This person is (X), therefore his argument is
crap".

Invalid - The usual meaning, in this case due to the ad
hominem fallacy involved.

The "invalid inference" is using the person's character,
history or posting style, rather than the content of his
post, to attempt to refute that content, as is described in
the cited article. You *really* aren't aware of that, even
after you posted the excerpt which specifically states
exactly that?

This isn't exactly rocket science...

>What you wrote next is even more completely different. Did you even
>bother to READ what you linked?

Of course. Did you?

>> >> Criticism of behavior or philosophical position is not ad
>> >> hominem *unless* it is used to dismiss a valid argument
>
>The word "valid" is your Hemidactylus-serving addition.

No, it's an acknowledgement that there exist both valid and
invalid arguments, and that anyone with two neurons can
usually tell the difference. Not always, of course.

>[Burkhard was pinch-hitting for Hemidactylus in the part
>I've quoted.] If people had to abide by it, all normal
>discourse about "ad hominem" would disappear from talk.origins,
>because of the way people tenaciously insist that THEIR
>arguments are valid.
>
>
>On top of which: did you see the notation,
>
> "Personal attack" redirects here. For the policy on Wikipedia, see
> Wikipedia:No personal attacks.
>
>It is quite customary on Usenet to label personal attacks as
>"ad hominem" without having to go into motives. And the
>editors of Wikipedia seem to go along with that.

Yes, I suspect we've all seen that from some posters here,
along with the tendency of some to label any disagreement as
a personal attack.

And a personal attack *may be* ad hominem, but only if it's
used as an attempt to refute an argument.

>> >> ("He's a YEC, therefore his argument is incorrect").
>
>In all my years on the internet, I've NEVER seen an ad hominem
>this simplistically spelled out.

Your lack of experience (or recollection) is of no
consequence to me. I *have* seen such, and far more than
once, usually (but not exclusively) by creationists who
reject evidence provided by those they're pleased to label
"atheists" *because* they're seen as atheists, whether they
are or not. Ray Martinez was fond of this, but he wasn't
alone; Tony Pagano also practiced it. To be fair, I've also
seen it occasionally in the other direction, although it's
far more likely to be of the "Oh, crap; you and your
idiocies again?!?" in response to someone like AB who posts
refuted assertions repeatedly.

>> >You're an idiot.
>
>That's an ad hominem, all right. But apparently a valid one.
>
>
>> Possibly. What's your excuse?
>
>Let's see what YOUR excuse is for posting that url and completely
>ignoring what it says.

I ignored nothing. Your lack of acumen is not my problem.

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2018 15:27:02 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos

<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 5:50:03 PM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
>> On Wed, 1 Aug 2018 11:43:01 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
>> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>> >On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 12:50:03 PM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
>> >> On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 22:57:29 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> >> >> On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 1:40:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> >> [...]
>> >>
>> >> > Though I'm surprised that
>> >> >you'd steep so low to engage in all sorts of transparent linguistic
>> >> >games to defend the Nazi killing machine.
>> >
>> >I'm not surprised to see you take what I hope to be an honest
>> >but huge misunderstanding by Burkhard at face value. You're
>> >that kind of person.
>>
>> Nah, it's just that you're an habitual liar.
>
>That is pure slander.

Sue me then (though you would probably be better to familiarise
yourself of the difference between slander and libel before you do
so).

> I'd like to see you post REAL examples,
>not the spin-doctored trio you posted back on July 10 and
>are so keen on me replying to.

I'd like to see you deal with those real examples instead of
handwaving.

>
>And your alleged examples of me indulging in "bullshit" were
>also spin-doctored ridiculous. Why didn't you go the whole hog and
>post your favorite non-example of me spewing "bullshit"?
>

[Snip usual Nyikos tactic of trying to turn the discussion to
something completely different and relevant rather than dealing with
the matter at hand that he finds uncomfortable.]

>
>> >And I'd be very surprised if you had anything intelligent to say
>> >about WHY it is a huge misunderstanding. I explained that in reply
>> >to the same post to which you are replying:
>> >
>> >https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/vh_5qLZ_2y0/9GfqOrGwCgAJ
>> >Subject: Re: More Dawkins
>> >Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2018 08:48:35 -0700 (PDT)
>> >Message-ID: <d7bc1dc2-abeb-467a...@googlegroups.com>
>> >
>> >In fact, I don't think you want to even LOOK at the explanation,
>> >lest it cramp your style. You are that kind of person.
>> >
>> >
>> >> I'm surprised that you are surprised at anything Nyikos would say.
>> >
>> >I'm not surprised at what a newcomer, Marcel Kincaid, had to say
>> >about you, and how curtly you brushed off his comments about
>> >"apologists for religion."
>
>If he doesn't come back at you for that, he has a lot less spunk
>than I thought he has.

For fuck's sake, how many times do I have to tell you that I have no
interest whatsoever in your opinions of other posters or my replies to
them.

>
>
>> This was in a thread YOU began
>>
>> For fuck's sake, can you not even get your basic facts right? I didn't
>> start the thread, Joe Cummings started it.
>
>Oops, sorry. You've been playing such a prominent role on it that
>I had a senior moment there.
>
>>
>>
>> >and
>> >in which you seem to have let Mark Isaak off the hook because you found
>> >me a more inviting target: "The blessings of religion."
>
>And it looks more than ever like you let him off the hook.

Mark posted outlandish claims about the Catholic Church and exorcism;
I challenged him to produce evidence to support those claims; he
couldn't and ended up by resorting to personal insult. How that
becomes "letting him off the hook" is beyond me but as already said, I
don't really give a shit about what you think of other posters or my
replies to them.

>
>I may have let YOU off the hook by my latest reply to him,
>but chances are you will lambast me for violating your
>commandment to mind my own business and let you fight your
>own battles.
>

And yet again Peter you try to avoid the matter at hand by trying to
create imaginary scenarios about things you think I might do.

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 03 Aug 2018 07:45:16 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> wrote:

...

"... Snip usual Nyikos tactic of trying to turn the discussion to
something completely different and relevant ..." should be "completely
different and IRrelevant"

[Burkhard]

Well, they start with something else directed at me: "He didn't say he
did not find any evidence, idiot." Just mentioning this because of our
recent if partisan crusade against "ad hominems", which you seem to
think included bare insults.

>
> They clearly addressed your implication that Weikard's research
> was shoddy. No additional commentary was necessary.

They do o such thing. As always, Glen simply posts without comments a
link or some material, then leaves t to the reader to find out what he
may have wanted to say with it - and when people then reply on the basis
of what they think the point may have been either get a "gotach" "where
did I say this"?) or a only line insult ("you are an idiot") Classical
trolling behaviour why I killfiled him ages ago. No interest in any
discussion, juts disruption ad causing annoyance.

It remains totally unclear what relation the text had to the point it
seems in reply to, that is Weickart's claim that he did find any
evidence that Down syndrom sufferers were targeted by the Nazis. The
text is no t by Weickart, and does not as far as I can see contradict
anything I said. Glen most certainly does not spell put why he thinks
it s relevant, and I have no interest playing silly bugger with him

>
>
>> and Hemidactylus pointed this out.
>
> Would you like to explain how his words "pointed out" such a thing?
>
> "We have now jumped from an Evolution News article to an article by the US
> Holocaust Memorial Museum, which I guess substitutes for you doing any real
> thinking."
>
> It's clear that Hemidactylus has a low opinion of the people
> behind Evolution News. Out of context like this, the statement
> seems to express a similarly low opinion of the US Holocaust museum,
> from which Glenn quoted.

No, he has a low opinion of Glen, or more specifically, his technique of
posting stuff by others without any indication or argument what it is
contributing to the discussion, if he agrees or disagrees with it (and
if so, why), hence the "substitutes for you doing thinking bit". Thought
that was quite clear.

>
> I've seldom seen coherent thinking from Hemidactylus,
> but perhaps you can read him the way some people figured they
> could read the Delphic Oracle.

Really? I find him consistently one of the most conscientious and on
point posters here, with way more patients in suffering fools than I
have, and invariably engaging them with evidence and arguments.

>
>
>>> I think talk.origins is a sufficiently informal forum that this use of
>>> the word "dismiss" should be acceptable, if only for purposes
>>> of using the term "ad hominem".
>>>
>>>
>>>> Nothing of this type here - just criticism of a poster's behaviour.
>>>>>
>>>>>> I don't get why people still give this little troll so much oxygen.
>>>>>
>>>>> Perhaps because Glenn is less of a troll than Hemidactylus,
>>>>> in my experience.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On that specific issue, I linked to a site that has an actual image of the
>>>>>> actual medical record of a victim of T4, which clearly lists "mongoloid
>>>>>> idiocy".
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, but to what effect? The medical record did not cite any orders
>>>>> which mandated that the victim be killed, did it?
>>>>
>>>> The medical form was developed specifically for the Action T4 project,
>>>> which was indeed designed for extermination, a well known and
>>>> meticulously documented historical fact.
>>>
>>> Yes, but was that project part of an overall campaign to target
>>> similar people for extermination?
>>
>> Say what? T4 targeted among others people with Down Syndrome, as I
>> documented. The claim by Glenn and his source was the Nazis did not
>> target people with Down syndrome.
>
> Once more: Dawkins targeted ALL fetuses with Down Syndrome by
> labeling as "immoral" anyone who did not have an "early" [1]
> abortion of them when she had a chance.

That is a rather crude characterization of what he meant Twitter
argubaly not the best place to have philosophical discussion. It also
and perpetuates the false equivalence that the OP was making:

“Obviously the choice would be yours. For what it’s worth, my own choice

would be to abort the Down fetus and, assuming you want a baby at all,
try again. Given a free choice of having an early abortion or
deliberately bringing a Down child into the world, I think the moral and

sensible choice would be to abort. And, indeed, that is what the great

majority of women, in America and especially in Europe, actually do. I
personally would go further and say that, if your morality is based, as
mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce
suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when
you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually
be immoral from the point of view of the child’s own welfare. I agree
that that personal opinion is contentious and needs to be argued

further, possibly to be withdrawn. [...] said that, the choice would be

entirely yours and I would never dream of trying to impose my views on

you or anyone else.”

So the first morally false equivalence is between a Nazi policy to
kidnap, mistreat and eventually murdered adults with Down's, against the
will of their parents (which at that point matter little anyway)against
a position that unequivocally leaves the choice to the mother whether to
have an abortion or not. Anyone who thinks these actions are morally
equivalent has no morals.

Now, he goes a little but further than that. He also says that we can
think of the choice of the mother as a moral choice, not one merely
driven by self interest. That is she might act out of the genuine
concern for the quality of life her child would have, and we should
accept that as a moral decision, even if we disagree with the outcome.
And second, that he probably would come to the same decision (but
accepts that he may have to revise this after further discussion). So he
says that IF one accepts a specific type of moral framework
(utilitarianism) then it is likely that one would, for moral reasons,
decide on an abortion. But that does not imply that the opposite
decision is immoral, as you claim, and Dawkins does not say that. He
only says that relative to a specific theory of morality, it is
legitimate to factor in the possible future harm of the embryo into he
moral calculation. Even for a utilitarian, this does not mean that
abortion is a forgone conclusion, as the utility of the parents would
also count.

Both Hemidactylus and I wrote rather lengthy criticisms of Dawkins
argument here, and for the purpose of the discussion of the Nazi
policies it is also totally irrelevant.

Any documentation
> that does not show that the Nazis targeted ALL people with
> Down Syndrome for extermination fails to address the OP.

Nonsense. Even if it could be shown that the Nazis had targeted only a
single person and killed him because of his Down, it would address the
factual statements the OP made.

My comments were in reply to a very specific claim:

Weikert:

-----------------------------------------------

I’m not sure to what extent the Nazis targeted people with Down
Syndrome. It was not one of the hereditary illnesses listed in the
compulsory sterilization law of July 1933. I suspect it may have
depended on their ability to do useful labor. The Nazis generally
targeted people with disabilities that were unable to do productive work.

One factor influencing this may have been that the Nazis only killed
disabled people who were institutionalized, and many people with Down
Syndrome do not require institutionalization.

Now, it may well be that the Nazis sterilized and/or killed some people
with Down Syndrome (I would actually be surprised if they didn’t target
those with more severe cases), but I don’t know.
----------------------------------------------------

That is the claim under discussion, nothing else. And as I said, one has
to be a particularly incompetent historian to say such a thing.

Already the second statement is plain false, Down's was listed in the
law, in fact at No 1, as I pointed out else thread.

In the other paragraphs he "speculates" because he "could not find"
anything specific to Downs. One wonders what his research method was -
googling for "Down's syndrome" in a database of German texts from that
time, 40 years before that term became used?

The Nazis die not just kill people who had been institutionalized, and
anyone familiar with e.g. t4 would know that. The Runderlass des
Reichsministers des Innern vom 18. August 1939 Az.: IVb 3088/39 – 1079
Mi, tasked all maternity wards, children hospitals, pediatricians,
family doctors and midwifes in filling in the form that among other
categories included Down's (or rather "Mongoloism, which Glenn claims
mean they were Asiatic looking, which shows his ignorance of medicine,
and German and his utter lack of ny human decency whatsoever). The
decision to the kill the child listed was done entirely on the basis of
this form, without reference to their medical records or seeing the
person in question. 95% of the would be poisoned. In fact, the entire
starting point for the campaign was the notorious case of "Child K"
whose parents had petitioned Hitler for Euthanasia as they could not
cope with looking after him/her (the identity was never established) -
so clearly not a case of "only institutionalized" people, and you would
not need a historian for that any German school pupil could have told
him as Child K is standard teaching material for History at stage 11.

T4 "also" killed people who had been institutionalized (for more than 5
years) but not only those but of your local doctor diagnosed your child
with Down's as part of the T4 survey, it would be taken away from you
and gassed

And no, the form made no provision for "severe cases" either - being
identified with Down's as part of the T4 survey was a death sentence,
pure and simple.

That T4 was comparatively short lived, and so some survived, and that
sometimes benevolent doctors fiddled with the entries and downplayed the
diagnosis etc etc is neither here nor there.

The Nazis killed children and adults because they had Down's, and
nothing else. A "historian" who dies not know this is either gross
incompetent, or lying, or both.

No degree of verbal acrobatics by Glenn or you is going to change this.
And nobody with an ounce of decency is going to equate a position that
says "the choice for abortion must be the mothers, and for some of them
the possible future suffering of the child is a relevant moral
criterion" with one that says "taking children with Down's away from
their parents with force and then murdering them, while having forced
sterilization on adults with Down's"

>
> [1] I would call an abortion "early" if it was of an embryo
> -- up to ca. 10 weeks LMP [2] -- rather than a fetus in the
> strict sense of human embryology. The US Supreme Court goes
> to what is probably the opposite extreme by implying that
> all abortions before viability are "early." Virtually all
> abortions of developing humans with Down Syndrome are between
> these two extremes.
>
> [2] Portugal and Turkey use 10 weeks LMP as the cutoff for
> elective abortion. So it seems to be a workable standard --
> except that it means allowing almost all Down syndrome fetuses
> to come to term.
>
>
>>
>> So I have no clue what your question means, or why you think it has
>> anything to do with the issue, the fact T4, a nazi campaign, did it is
>> all that's needed to answer that in the afirmative.
>
> You are using a standard of "targeted" that falls far short of
> the main issue of this thread. But you obviously think otherwise
> below.

If I kill someone because he is tall, I targeted hi because he is tall.
If I do it routinely, I target tall people.

The Nazis murdered people because they had Down's, that means they
targeted Down's suffers for murder

It really is that simple. Your verbal acrobatics and attempts to impose
a ridiculous reading of what the "main issue" of this thread is
notwithstandig

The main issue of this thread is the attempt by morally bankrupt people
to establish an equivalence between the targeted killing of children and
adults with Down's to a position that says it can, maybe and sometimes,
be a moral choice to abort a foetus with Downs.

The sub- issue that my historical analysis was about was the
lie/incompetent claim offered by a "historian" that the Nazis did not
kill people because they had Down's.

If you have something on topic to say why Weikert's statement was not in
parts false on the face of it, and in those parts where he dais he "had
not heard about.. incompetent to an unbelievable degree, feel free to
post it, so far your contribution had been verbal acrobatics and hot air.

>
>
> <snip of lots of personal attacks by you, which I will deal with
> if and only if you insist>
>
>
> Here it comes:
>
>> The OP is whether Nazis targeted people with Downs The "all" is your
>> addition, and a totally pointless one at that.
>
> Just what do you think "total erasure" means? Glenn said in the OP:
>
> Argue with this:
>
> 'They are unsatisfied with anything less than total erasure
> of these human beings who can in many cases do "productive work"
> but who also give abundant joy and love."
>
> These words have been sitting at the top of all this back-and-forth,
> from the get-go.

Not something Weikert said, and I've been discussing his specific
claim, long before you butted in.

As for the Nazis, of course they wanted a society without Downs syndrom
which is why, contrary to Weikert, adults were force sterilized and the
children with it were killed.

[Burkhard]

fallacious = invalid
argument = inference.

So yes, Wikipedia agrees with me, but uses synonymous expressions.

>
> What you wrote next is even more completely different. Did you even
> bother to READ what you linked?
>
>>>> Criticism of behavior or philosophical position is not ad
>>>> hominem *unless* it is used to dismiss a valid argument
>
> The word "valid" is your Hemidactylus-serving addition.
> [Burkhard was pinch-hitting for Hemidactylus in the part
> I've quoted.] If people had to abide by it, all normal
> discourse about "ad hominem" would disappear from talk.origins,
> because of the way people tenaciously insist that THEIR
> arguments are valid.

Eh, no? Bob states correctly that ad hominem is a move in a dialogue
where one side first makes an argument, and the other side then
dismisses this argument by claims about the person making it.

>
>
> On top of which: did you see the notation,
>
> "Personal attack" redirects here. For the policy on Wikipedia, see
> Wikipedia:No personal attacks.
>
> It is quite customary on Usenet to label personal attacks as
> "ad hominem" without having to go into motives. And the
> editors of Wikipedia seem to go along with that.

Eh, no? All ad hominems are personal attacks (hence the redirection) but
not all personal attacks are ad hominems. You should know the difference
between necessary and sufficient conditions, surely?

[Ernest Major]

It may not be quite so simple. Wikipedia classifies poisoning the well
as an ad-hominem argument, which would require a somewhat broader concep
of ad-hominem. (Or perhaps the Wikipedia article reflects some editor's
idiosyncratic conception.)

Wikipedia also indicates that poisoning the well is preemptive, which
leaves us without a label for persistent compaigns of character
assasination which don't explicitly draw a link between the target and
their arguments.

>
>>
>>
>> On top of which: did you see the notation,
>>
>>   "Personal attack" redirects here. For the policy on Wikipedia, see
>>    Wikipedia:No personal attacks.
>>
>> It is quite customary on Usenet to label personal attacks as
>> "ad hominem" without having to go into motives. And the
>> editors of Wikipedia seem to go along with that.
>
> Eh, no? All ad hominems are personal attacks (hence the redirection) but
> not all personal attacks are ad hominems. You should know the difference
> between necessary and sufficient conditions, surely?
>
>>
>>>>> ("He's a YEC, therefore his argument is incorrect").
>>
>> In all my years on the internet, I've NEVER seen an ad hominem
>> this simplistically spelled out.
>>
>>
>>>> You're an idiot.
>>
>> That's an ad hominem, all right. But apparently a valid one.
>>
>>
>>> Possibly. What's your excuse?
>>
>> Let's see what YOUR excuse is for posting that url and completely
>> ignoring what it says.
>>
>>
>> Peter Nyikos
>>

--
alias Ernest Major

[Martin Harran]

Can I nominate "Nyikoism"?

[Burkhard]

I'd have no problem including poisoning the well as a form of ad
hominem, even if it is preemptive. It is still a dialogical situation,
and my move is to attack the opponents argument by pointing at
irrelevant characteristics of his (He will try to convince you that
giving planning permission to the new housing development will lower
water levels, but you should know he's a Freemason, and would you trust
someone like that?" That I anticipate the argument rather than wait for
it is a rhetorical move that you can make with any argument, fallacious
or not - my opponent is going to argue X, but I will show you that from
X follows Y, which is obviously wrong" is still a modus tollens, even if
I anticipate the claim X rather than wait for it.

For the other situation, we have a label and you in fact use it,
"character assassination:".

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2018 13:29:34 +0100, the following appeared in
talk.origins, posted by Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>:

Thanks; I made exactly this observation (and the one above).
So far no response.

>> On top of which: did you see the notation,
>>
>> "Personal attack" redirects here. For the policy on Wikipedia, see
>> Wikipedia:No personal attacks.
>>
>> It is quite customary on Usenet to label personal attacks as
>> "ad hominem" without having to go into motives. And the
>> editors of Wikipedia seem to go along with that.
>
>Eh, no? All ad hominems are personal attacks (hence the redirection) but
>not all personal attacks are ad hominems. You should know the difference
>between necessary and sufficient conditions, surely?

Any bets on that?

>>>>> ("He's a YEC, therefore his argument is incorrect").
>>
>> In all my years on the internet, I've NEVER seen an ad hominem
>> this simplistically spelled out.
>>
>>
>>>> You're an idiot.
>>
>> That's an ad hominem, all right. But apparently a valid one.
>>
>>
>>> Possibly. What's your excuse?
>>
>> Let's see what YOUR excuse is for posting that url and completely
>> ignoring what it says.
>>
>>
>> Peter Nyikos
>>

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2018 15:29:12 +0100, the following appeared in
talk.origins, posted by Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk>:

Perhaps. But let me remind you of the initial comment (still
above), and of Glenn's response. Is Burkhard's post
"horseshit" as Glenn claimed, or do you think Glenn is "just
being Glenn"? I replied to Glenn's accusation by explaining
the defined meaning of "ad hominem", and showing that it
agreed with Burkhard (and for that matter, with me). Peter
then demonstrated that he couldn't comprehend that
definition, in Peter's usual manner. Was any of that ad
hominem, or "poisoning the well"? I don't think so, but I'm
open to argument.

>Wikipedia also indicates that poisoning the well is preemptive, which
>leaves us without a label for persistent compaigns of character
>assasination which don't explicitly draw a link between the target and
>their arguments.

So is *any* observation regarding the posting habits of an
individual verboten, since it might be seen as preemptively
poisoning the well? What does that mean to those who
habitually use personal attacks and epithets? Can we dismiss
any *valid* arguments they might make on that basis?

I think coupling observations of personal characteristics
with ad hominem, and assuming that the former by definition
implies the latter, is a bad idea, since it negates the
requirement for thought in any specific case. Treat
arguments as arguments, and ad hominem as ad hominem; it
seems to work quite well.

>>> On top of which: did you see the notation,
>>>
>>>   "Personal attack" redirects here. For the policy on Wikipedia, see
>>>    Wikipedia:No personal attacks.
>>>
>>> It is quite customary on Usenet to label personal attacks as
>>> "ad hominem" without having to go into motives. And the
>>> editors of Wikipedia seem to go along with that.
>>
>> Eh, no? All ad hominems are personal attacks (hence the redirection) but
>> not all personal attacks are ad hominems. You should know the difference
>> between necessary and sufficient conditions, surely?
>>
>>>
>>>>>> ("He's a YEC, therefore his argument is incorrect").
>>>
>>> In all my years on the internet, I've NEVER seen an ad hominem
>>> this simplistically spelled out.
>>>
>>>
>>>>> You're an idiot.
>>>
>>> That's an ad hominem, all right. But apparently a valid one.
>>>
>>>
>>>> Possibly. What's your excuse?
>>>
>>> Let's see what YOUR excuse is for posting that url and completely
>>> ignoring what it says.
>>>
>>>
>>> Peter Nyikos
>>>
--

[Peter Nyikos]

The Wikipedia entry which Casanova linked certainly seems to go
along with that, as I pointed out to him. Your "rebuttal"
misquoted a crucial part, "argumentative strategy"
as though it were "argument" -- taken out of context, to boot.
So I await a more intelligent rebuttal.

> > They clearly addressed your implication that Weikard's research
> > was shoddy. No additional commentary was necessary.
>
> They do o such thing. As always, Glen simply posts without comments a
> link or some material, then leaves t to the reader to find out what he
> may have wanted to say with it

My impression is that Glenn is the sort of person who "writes off"
others for one reason or another -- which may include dishonesty,
hypocrisy, insincerity, obnoxiousness, and cowardice, or some subset
of the above -- and then only does curt replies.

I got an inkling of what the reason might be when I caught someone
fitting most of those qualities dishonestly attacking Glenn, and
I showed that, and criticized Glenn for not having done the same.
The response was "That's what they want."

And you are one reason why Glenn might be right: there are a number
-- generally three or more on a given thread, out of a "pool" of
around ten -- of people who latch onto me in thread after thread,
relentlessly bringing up easily refutable trumped-up charges.
And as a result of my relentlessly exposing them, you killfiled
me on the grounds that I spend too much time on "personal attacks"
-- as though honest personal attacks were just as reprehensible
as dishonest ones.

> - and when people then reply on the basis
> of what they think the point may have been either get a "gotach" "where
> did I say this"?) or a only line insult ("you are an idiot") Classical
> trolling behaviour why I killfiled him ages ago. No interest in any
> discussion, juts disruption ad causing annoyance.

Honest discussion is the furthest thing from the minds of that "pool",
all of whom play "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" about
the attacks of the others against the likes of me -- and possibly of Glenn.

Finally, I finally decided to post a list late last year of
20 people who are very far from fitting that description, and it
has grown to 27. I would characterize most of them as "tough but fair."
But most of them rarely reply to me.

I have never seen Hemidactylus behaving even remotely like this towards
me. At one point he even criticized John Harshman for discussing
science with me, on the grounds that he is encouraging me to go
on posting to talk.origins.

The only reason I even learned about this thread is that Hemidactylus
barged into a different thread and lambasted me on the false grounds
that Glenn is my "pal" and trying to hold me personally responsible
for Glenn having referred to a "brain cancer" of his on this
"Dawkins Again" thread. When that failed,
he point blank falsely charged me with having adopted Glenn's insult
as my own.

A link to that is documented in my first two posts to this thread, which
were in reply to Hemidactylus. Here is the link again.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/jI6KRtcqX30/n8dqXs2PCAAJ
Subject: Re: Potential answers to the Fermi Paradox
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2018 18:46:51 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <7aea0093-aa42-4485...@googlegroups.com>

I warn you: it reveals a side of Hemidactylus that is utterly
different from any you've seen before, if your description
is accurate of what you've seen from him.


And yet he never posted any complaints about it to this thread,
and he never replied to the post of Glenn's where he made
the insult.


And it's late, and I almost never post on weekends, but I'll
get around to the rest of your post on Monday.

Have a nice weekend.


Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

My impression is Glenn is the sort of person who considers himself
above posting clear and coherent arguments and backing them up. My
impression is you are that sort of person also. So it's no surprise
to me that you support him here. That's what strange bedfellows do.

>I got an inkling of what the reason might be when I caught someone
>fitting most of those qualities dishonestly attacking Glenn, and
>I showed that, and criticized Glenn for not having done the same.
>The response was "That's what they want."

Cite? Of course not, backing up your bald assertions is beneath you.

>And you are one reason why Glenn might be right: there are a number
>-- generally three or more on a given thread, out of a "pool" of
>around ten -- of people who latch onto me in thread after thread,
>relentlessly bringing up easily refutable trumped-up charges.

Of course, if those charges are so easily refutable, not sure how you
have so much trouble refuting them.

>And as a result of my relentlessly exposing them, you killfiled
>me on the grounds that I spend too much time on "personal attacks"
>-- as though honest personal attacks were just as reprehensible
>as dishonest ones.

It's no surprise that you think there is such a thing as an "honest
personal attack".

>> - and when people then reply on the basis
>> of what they think the point may have been either get a "gotach" "where
>> did I say this"?) or a only line insult ("you are an idiot") Classical
>> trolling behaviour why I killfiled him ages ago. No interest in any
>> discussion, juts disruption ad causing annoyance.
>
>Honest discussion is the furthest thing from the minds of that "pool",
>all of whom play "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" about
>the attacks of the others against the likes of me -- and possibly of Glenn.

Of course, your refusal to stop posting your irrelevant spew puts the
lie to your pretensions of seeking honest discussion.

>Finally, I finally decided to post a list late last year of
>20 people who are very far from fitting that description, and it
>has grown to 27. I would characterize most of them as "tough but fair."
>But most of them rarely reply to me.

Do you really think that's just a coincidence?

Considering your refusal to stop posting irrelevant spew, that's a
reasonable criticism. Not sure how you *still* don't understand that.

>The only reason I even learned about this thread is that Hemidactylus
>barged into a different thread and lambasted me on the false grounds
>that Glenn is my "pal" and trying to hold me personally responsible
>for Glenn having referred to a "brain cancer" of his on this
>"Dawkins Again" thread. When that failed,
>he point blank falsely charged me with having adopted Glenn's insult
>as my own.
>
>A link to that is documented in my first two posts to this thread, which
>were in reply to Hemidactylus. Here is the link again.
>
>
>https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/jI6KRtcqX30/n8dqXs2PCAAJ
>Subject: Re: Potential answers to the Fermi Paradox
>Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2018 18:46:51 -0700 (PDT)
>Message-ID: <7aea0093-aa42-4485...@googlegroups.com>
>
>I warn you: it reveals a side of Hemidactylus that is utterly
>different from any you've seen before, if your description
>is accurate of what you've seen from him.
>
>And yet he never posted any complaints about it to this thread,
>and he never replied to the post of Glenn's where he made
>the insult.
>
>
>And it's late, and I almost never post on weekends, but I'll
>get around to the rest of your post on Monday.
>
>Have a nice weekend.
>
>
>Peter Nyikos

--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

[Oxyaena]

Glenn is the sort of person who accused me of having brain damage, which
you showed no signs of disagreeing with him, instead "merely" stating
you don't know what my gender is, which is true, you don't. You're
defending a morally bankrupt ableist troll who honestly isn't much too
different from you.

>
> I got an inkling of what the reason might be when I caught someone
> fitting most of those qualities dishonestly attacking Glenn, and
> I showed that, and criticized Glenn for not having done the same.
> The response was "That's what they want."
>
> And you are one reason why Glenn might be right: there are a number
> -- generally three or more on a given thread, out of a "pool" of
> around ten -- of people who latch onto me in thread after thread,
> relentlessly bringing up easily refutable trumped-up charges.
> And as a result of my relentlessly exposing them, you killfiled
> me on the grounds that I spend too much time on "personal attacks"
> -- as though honest personal attacks were just as reprehensible
> as dishonest ones.

Translation: You killfiled me because I had repeatedly spammed t.o. with
hordes of nonsensical paranoid ramblings filled to the fucking brim with
personal attacks on these "three or more people", and I have a problem
with being killfiled due to being a self-righteous prick.

Coming from you I doubt that means much.


>
>
> Peter Nyikos
>

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 02 Aug 2018 11:35:23 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:

[Crickets...]

>This isn't exactly rocket science...
>
>>What you wrote next is even more completely different. Did you even
>>bother to READ what you linked?
>
>Of course. Did you?
>
>>> >> Criticism of behavior or philosophical position is not ad
>>> >> hominem *unless* it is used to dismiss a valid argument
>>
>>The word "valid" is your Hemidactylus-serving addition.
>
>No, it's an acknowledgement that there exist both valid and
>invalid arguments, and that anyone with two neurons can
>usually tell the difference. Not always, of course.

[Crickets...]

>>[Burkhard was pinch-hitting for Hemidactylus in the part
>>I've quoted.] If people had to abide by it, all normal
>>discourse about "ad hominem" would disappear from talk.origins,
>>because of the way people tenaciously insist that THEIR
>>arguments are valid.
>>
>>
>>On top of which: did you see the notation,
>>
>> "Personal attack" redirects here. For the policy on Wikipedia, see
>> Wikipedia:No personal attacks.
>>
>>It is quite customary on Usenet to label personal attacks as
>>"ad hominem" without having to go into motives. And the
>>editors of Wikipedia seem to go along with that.
>
>Yes, I suspect we've all seen that from some posters here,
>along with the tendency of some to label any disagreement as
>a personal attack.
>
>And a personal attack *may be* ad hominem, but only if it's
>used as an attempt to refute an argument.

[Crickets...]

>>> >> ("He's a YEC, therefore his argument is incorrect").
>>
>>In all my years on the internet, I've NEVER seen an ad hominem
>>this simplistically spelled out.
>
>Your lack of experience (or recollection) is of no
>consequence to me. I *have* seen such, and far more than
>once, usually (but not exclusively) by creationists who
>reject evidence provided by those they're pleased to label
>"atheists" *because* they're seen as atheists, whether they
>are or not. Ray Martinez was fond of this, but he wasn't
>alone; Tony Pagano also practiced it. To be fair, I've also
>seen it occasionally in the other direction, although it's
>far more likely to be of the "Oh, crap; you and your
>idiocies again?!?" in response to someone like AB who posts
>refuted assertions repeatedly.

[Crickets...]

[Peter Nyikos]

On Sunday, August 5, 2018 at 1:15:02 PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:

...in reply to:

> On Thu, 02 Aug 2018 11:35:23 -0700, the following appeared
> in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:

Get over yourself, Bob. You are nowhere near as respected
in talk.origins as Burkhard, by all available evidence.
He's had his own take on "ad hominem," and I started to
rebut it in my Aug 3 reply to him, but you show NO sign
of having seen that reply in your Aug 5 homage below to the crickets
only you can hear chirping -- until now.

You sure know how to convince yourself that what you
write below is free of invalid inferences. Now you
need to convince a normal intelligent adult other
than yourself.

> >>Nothing about "invalid inferences" here.
> >
> >Inference - "This person is (X), therefore his argument is
> >crap".

There is no "therefore" implied in the Wikipedia text.

"argumentative strategy" = polemical strategy. No inferences needed.

As the old Machiavellian saying goes, "There is no need to refute
anyone if you can convince people not to listen to him."

Here in talk.origins, all one has to do is to
get an accusation of "hater of gays" to remain unrefuted,
and nobody (except possibly the accused, and myself)
is going to pay any attention to what the accused person is saying.

> >Invalid - The usual meaning, in this case due to the ad
> >hominem fallacy involved.

> >The "invalid inference" is using the person's character,
> >history or posting style, rather than the content of his
> >post, to attempt to refute that content, as is described in
> >the cited article.

There is no refutation implied, except in the mind
of a master of spin-doctoring like yourself.

> > You *really* aren't aware of that, even
> >after you posted the excerpt which specifically states
> >exactly that?

Fallacy of begging the question.

The "specifically states" makes the fallacy downright obnoxious.

To me, that is: you may just be living up to the
nickname I gave you long ago: Hit Man ("nothing personal,
just business") or banking on your self-serving and
allies-serving use of the word "informal" (as in "talk.origins
is an informal venue").

>
> [Crickets...]
>
> >This isn't exactly rocket science...

That's a good description of my rebuttal to your sophomoric
"reasoning."

> >>What you wrote next is even more completely different. Did you even
> >>bother to READ what you linked?
> >
> >Of course. Did you?

You may want to sign up at your local community college
for a refresher course in English Comprehension.

> >>> >> Criticism of behavior or philosophical position is not ad
> >>> >> hominem *unless* it is used to dismiss a valid argument
> >>
> >>The word "valid" is your Hemidactylus-serving addition.
> >
> >No,

Yes, you added it to the description which alleges it to
be a NECESSARY condition for an *ad hominem*.

You may have been fooled into thinking that I botched
the distinction between necessary and sufficient
conditions by reading something into Burkhard's own
leaky-as-a-sieve "rebuttal." He forgot that, as a highly
productive research mathematician, I have a masterly
instinct for the difference.

> > it's an acknowledgement that there exist both valid and
> >invalid arguments,

...smuggled into a definition where it is employed
in a highly fallacious manner.

> and that anyone with two neurons can
> >usually tell the difference. Not always, of course.

You are obviously an exception, hoist with your own "two neurons"
petard, which may come under the rubric of "poisoning the wells."

>
> [Crickets...]
>
> >>[Burkhard was pinch-hitting for Hemidactylus in the part
> >>I've quoted.] If people had to abide by it, all normal
> >>discourse about "ad hominem" would disappear from talk.origins,
> >>because of the way people tenaciously insist that THEIR
> >>arguments are valid.

Finally, readers actually get to hear the crickets chirping
in the absence of any attempt to rebut the above.

> >>
> >>On top of which: did you see the notation,
> >>
> >> "Personal attack" redirects here. For the policy on Wikipedia, see
> >> Wikipedia:No personal attacks.
> >>
> >>It is quite customary on Usenet to label personal attacks as
> >>"ad hominem" without having to go into motives. And the
> >>editors of Wikipedia seem to go along with that.
> >
> >Yes, I suspect we've all seen that from some posters here,
> >along with the tendency of some to label any disagreement as
> >a personal attack.
> >
> >And a personal attack *may be* ad hominem, but only if it's
> >used as an attempt to refute an argument.
>
> [Crickets...]

They are chirping loudly NOW.

> >>> >> ("He's a YEC, therefore his argument is incorrect").
> >>
> >>In all my years on the internet, I've NEVER seen an ad hominem
> >>this simplistically spelled out.

You allege otherwise below, probably because you are
feigning amnesia about the words "spelled out".

If not, I would like to see at least three documented instances
of someone using the simplistic use of the formula (except
for illustrative purposes, the way you use it) "________ is ______,
therefore his argument is incorrect."


Hop to it, Bobby. Like they said when I was in the Army,
"You are on your own time."


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 5:20:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > Glenn <g...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> >> "Abortion to avoid birth defects is not about eugenics"
> >> https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/were-nazis-more-tolerant-of-down-syndrome-than-some-european-countries-today/
> >>
> >> Argue with this:
> >>
> >> 'They are unsatisfied with anything less than total erasure of these
> >> human beings who can in many cases do "productive work" but who also give
> >> abundant joy and love."

Burkhard, in your post to which I started to reply on Friday,
you made it pretty clear that we have been consistently discussing
things at cross purposes. I have been taking the above statement
literally, while you somehow shifted the argument to a Weikart-centered
issue and have been under the mistaken impression that I was
addressing THAT equivocal meaning of "targeted" rather than the
unequivocal, absolute meaning of "total erasure."

[Trivia: "mistaken impression" is a wording I've become quite
fond of after seeing the biting sarcasm Chief Justice Burger
used in his dissent to *Thornburgh v. Planned Parenthood*.
He wrote that the legislators who added the requirement of
a second opinion in third (3rd) trimester abortions were obviously
"under the mistaken impression that this Court meant what it
said about the State's compelling interest."]


Below, I try to move to some sort of common ground over
these two disparate issues.

> >>
> > This is a messed up article. Two cites speculate based on lack of mention
> > of Down syndrome in the Nazi eugenic era. Richard Weikart said:
> >
> > I'm not sure to what extent the Nazis targeted people with Down Syndrome.
> > It was not one of the hereditary illnesses listed in the compulsory
> > sterilization law of July 1933. I suspect it may have depended on their
> > ability to do useful labor. The Nazis generally targeted people with
> > disabilities that were unable to do productive work."
>
>

> If Weikart did not find any evidence, then it's for lack of looking - as
> shoddy as much of his work.

I don't recall you showing that any of the following children
were capable of "doing productive work", as defined by the
Nazi documents. ["productive" is relative -- you could put a child
to work moving dirt a foot away from where it was originally piled,
but that might not have been considered "productive."]

> Here a photo taken by the SS of children with Down Syndrom, they
> perished in the "Aktion T4".

Only one clearly looks like someone with Down Syndrome, by the way.


> http://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/aktion-t4-program-children.jpg
>
> But that was of course after 1933, so if Weikart only looked for that
> year, he'd overlooked it
>
> And here an article about Christa M, murdered in 1943, age 8
>
> https://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/jugendwebsite/r_pdf/christa.pdf
>
> You can see there also a scan of the medical document the Nazis made
> when she was put into the facility where she would die - it does not use
> the term "Down syndrom" but "Mongoloid", and the relevant category for
> the decision made about her is (the scientifically wrong) "inheritable
> defect" - if Weikart did nothing bit to google for "Down Syndrom" in the
> digital repositories of patient files, he'd have missed it (a rather
> charitable interpretation).
>
> The relevant law that mentions explicitly people with Down (again using
> "Mongoloid" was the Runderlass des Reichsministers des Innern vom 18.
> August 1939 Az.: IVb 3088/39 - 1079 Mi

Did you ever quote from this, Burkhard? I don't recall you doing so.

You got your hackles up when I mentioned a feeble-minded person
portrayed in "Judgment at Nuremberg" as having been sterilized
and not exterminated, but was it a policy after some date
to exterminate mental defectives rather than just sterilize them?

If so, a direct quote from that 1939 document might shed some
light on this. Or maybe you'd need to dig up a later document.


> >
> > After checking another book Richard Weikart "found no mention of Down
> > syndrome" and "One factor influencing this may have been that the Nazis

> > only killed disabled people who were institutionalized, and many people
> > with Down Syndrome do not require institutionalization.
> >
> > Now, it may well be that the Nazis sterilized and/or killed some people
> > with Down Syndrome (I would actually be surprised if they didn't target
> > those with more severe cases), but I don't know."

Did you ever give evidence that the above statement suffered
from "shoddy research"? I saw nothing quoted from any official
Nazi documents to indicate that they went beyond the description
in the last paragraph quoted from Weikart.


> > After making speculative ungrounded comparisons with Dawkins and European
> > countries with an allusion to the Nazis the article backpedals:
> > "Comparisons with Nazi Germany are obviously perilous, and I think I would
> > have advised Pope Francis against this one if he had asked me, as I would
> > have advised former CIA director Michael Hayden against his foolish Nazi
> > comparison from a few days ago."
> >
> > Dawkins is still an asshole:
> >
> > https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/502106262088466432
> >
> > Who realizes the limits of babbling on Twitter yet does it anyway:
> >
> > https://www.richarddawkins.net/2014/08/abortion-down-syndrome-an-apology-for-letting-slip-the-dogs-of-twitterwar/
> >
> > And abortion is not the same as killing the born as Nazis did. False
> > equivalency there.

By a similar logic, it would also be false equivalency to claim that
infanticide, or even the killing of children under 2 years old
at the request of their parents [1], is the same as killing
a normal adolescent or adult. Just ask Peter Singer, the holder of
a distinguished chair in philosophy at Princeton University.

[1] The Romans had a system of "paterfamilias" under which the
father of a child had that privilege.


I've snipped additional values-leftist arguments by Hemidactylus.
He has not replied to my first two posts (on July 30) to this thread [2],
both of which were in reply to him. Nor do I expect him or
*anyone* *else* to reply to those twpo posts.

[2] The only reason I even learned of this "More Dawkins" thread
is due to a series of trumped-up charges Hemidactylus made
against me, one of which was flat-out slander. Others were
false and highly emotional allegations that I had no interest in
the issues on this "More Dawkins" thread.


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 10:25:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> *Hemidactylus* wrote:

> > Martin Harran <martin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 06:44:05 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
> >> <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:
> >>
> >> [...]
> >>
> >>> What about the moral ramblings of Dawkins? Steel-manning it Dawkins
> >>> fine-tuned his rather offputting tweet:

> >>>
> >>> "Obviously the choice would be yours. For what it's worth, my own choice
> >>> would be to abort the Down fetus and, assuming you want a baby at all, try
> >>> again. Given a free choice of having an early abortion or deliberately
> >>> bringing a Down child into the world, I think the moral and sensible choice
> >>> would be to abort. And, indeed, that is what the great majority of women,
> >>> in America and especially in Europe, actually do. I personally would go
> >>> further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to
> >>> increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to
> >>> deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort
> >>> it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view
> >>> of the child's own welfare. I agree that that personal opinion is
> >>> contentious and needs to be argued further, possibly to be withdrawn.
> >>

> >> This, along with his comments a while back that teachers fiddling with
> >> young boys isn't really all that harmful, shows that Dawkins really
> >> has lost it.

In reply to this comment by Martin Harran, jillery made some
provocative remarks about "many Roman Catholic priests" and then,
as the back-and-forth progressed, jillery expanded on them in a bigoted way,
including guilt by association targeted at Martin. Martin donned kid
gloves in reply, characterizing jillery's remarks as merely
"irrelevant Jillshit".

Were you aware of this sub-thread, Burkhard?

> > He helped birth New Atheism then shot it in the head (or at least himself
> > in the foot on multiple occasions). I could unleash hell from my Dawkins
> > file, but that would detract from analysis of his moral argument for
> > aborting Trisomy 21 fetuses.
> >
>
> I think there are two issues at stake here. One is a general problem
> with utilitarianism. Its underlying intuition is sound, but if you put
> it into a strict rule that determines ethical decisions, you inevitably
> get problematic results. The problem is that it assumes a metric for
> "happiness" and "suffering" that makes arbitrary life events comparable.
> And if you then try to calculate the "happiness/suffering ratio" for an
> entire lifespan, it gets totally ridiculous.
>
> As we have here. What does it even mean to say that by not living a
> life, the overall sum of happiness increases/decreases?
>
> It also reminds me of discussions we had in ethics 101 - if you combine
> utilitarianism with a traditional Christian belief in heaven and hell,
> you do indeed end up with a moral duty to kill all babies directly after
> birth (well, after baptism, to be precise)

Sorry, there is no such moral duty, neither from a humanistic POV that
has no truck with traditional Christian belief, nor from a Christian POV.

The argument for the latter lack of moral duty begins with the
commandment Jesus is recorded as quoting to Satan, "Thou
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." It's a subtle issue and
one needs e.g. to know the original OT context of the commandment.

> So that's a general problem. But what makes Dawkin's position here more
> problematic, and indeed rather abhorred, are the specifics of Down
> syndrom, which after all is not something that leads to physical pain.
> So he can only come to his "balancing" if he dismisses or downplays the
> subjective experience of happiness, and it is at that point, where he
> replaces subjective happiness by an external evaluation ("they ought not
> to feel happy/their objective quality of life is less etc") when things
> get indeed morally bad.
>
> What might be ironic about the position, if I'm right, is that it is
> based on the same type of fallacy that some abortion opponents make -
> that is the driving intuition is probably something like this: if
> something happened to me, as I'm now, that would turn my life into that
> of a Downs person, that would be insufferable for me (as I am now).
> Therefore having Downs equates to suffering, even in the absence of
> physical pain, as a "life not lived to the potential my life has now".
> But that of course is not "suffering". Simple thought experiment that
> should work for an evolutionist: assume that in comparison to a species
> that evolves from ours in a few billennia, we are lacking the ability to
> fly (breath under water, have great orgasms just by thinking about it,
> all the time; whatever). Now, for a member of that species, losing their
> wings etc would indeed be terrible suffering.

Now comes the fallacy of pro-lifers of which you wrote above:

> But that of course does
> not mean that we, now, are "suffering from the inability to fly". Some
> of the anti-abortion arguments work just like that when they take an
> actual human being and say "imagine you'd never be born, would that not
> be terrible for you".

Of course the "terrible" has nothing to do with physical pain,
but it does have to do with a privation, a big "zero" on the
positive side of the ledger of utilitarianism.

Similarly, if an asteroid were to smash into earth on top of,
you would feel no pain, but it would be a tragedy from your
*present* POV because so many plans of yours for the future
would have been wiped out along with you.

>
> > OK maybe something light hearted to improve the mood:
>
>
> >
> > "Bin Laden has won, in airports of the world every day. I had a little jar
> > of honey, now thrown away by rule-bound dundridges. STUPID waste."
> >
> > https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/396956105869250561

Yeah, and I lost a bottle of sweet Moscato from Sicily, by far the best
dessert muscat I've ever found anywhere after having tasted a similar one
in Canberra on my honeymoon thirty years earlier. Neither Setubal,
nor Muscat de Beaumes de Venice, nor an award-winning muscat I found
in Auckland came even close to it.

In Washington, DC they made us re-check our luggage and only let us
go through security afterwards. My bottle was wrapped at the
duty free shop airport in Catania with ample identification of
the contents, but it was taken away anyway.

Now the rules are relaxed and they let such unopened bottles of
beverages through in hand luggage - eight years too late.

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Mon, 6 Aug 2018 11:44:11 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>Here in talk.origins, all one has to do is to
>get an accusation of "hater of gays" to remain unrefuted,
>and nobody (except possibly the accused, and myself)
>is going to pay any attention to what the accused person is saying.

It's even easier than that. Just post something you will lie about,
like someone calling Harran a child molester, and you are certain to
repeat it multiple times in multiple posts no matter what the actual
topic is about.

[jillery]

Let's assume just for argument's sake that your spamming of this
particular topic is actually relevant to whatever point you think
you're making. Given that, wouldn't it make more sense for you cite
the specific post or thread, rather than you poisoning the well with
your unique interpretation of events?

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 6 Aug 2018 11:44:11 -0700 (PDT), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net>:

>On Sunday, August 5, 2018 at 1:15:02 PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
>
>...in reply to:

It wasn't a "reply" to myself, Peter, it was a note that you
failed to respond.
..

>> On Thu, 02 Aug 2018 11:35:23 -0700, the following appeared
>> in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:
>
>Get over yourself, Bob.

You first.

> You are nowhere near as respected
>in talk.origins as Burkhard, by all available evidence.
>He's had his own take on "ad hominem," and I started to
>rebut it in my Aug 3 reply to him, but you show NO sign
>of having seen that reply in your Aug 5 homage below to the crickets
>only you can hear chirping -- until now.

What you may have "started to do" elsethread is rather
irrelevant, wouldn't you say? And whether I did or did not
read Burkhard's response is irrelevant to anything you
wrote.

*You* get over *your*self.

It's the entire point of the ad hominem definition, fer
Chrissakes! You simply *can't* be that clueless!

>"argumentative strategy" = polemical strategy. No inferences needed.
>
>As the old Machiavellian saying goes, "There is no need to refute
>anyone if you can convince people not to listen to him."
>
>Here in talk.origins, all one has to do is to
>get an accusation of "hater of gays" to remain unrefuted,
>and nobody (except possibly the accused, and myself)
>is going to pay any attention to what the accused person is saying.

And none of that has any relevance to the actual meaning of
ad hominem, which is applicable to *specific instances*.

>> >Invalid - The usual meaning, in this case due to the ad
>> >hominem fallacy involved.
>
>> >The "invalid inference" is using the person's character,
>> >history or posting style, rather than the content of his
>> >post, to attempt to refute that content, as is described in
>> >the cited article.
>
>There is no refutation implied, except in the mind
>of a master of spin-doctoring like yourself.

Ad hominem is the attempt to refute an argument by
commenting, not on the content of the argument, but on the
characteristics of the proponent. *Please* tell me you
understand that. It even says exactly that in the excerpt
you posted:

"...genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by

instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute
of the person making the argument, or persons associated
with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of
the argument itself."

>> > You *really* aren't aware of that, even
>> >after you posted the excerpt which specifically states
>> >exactly that?
>
>Fallacy of begging the question.
>
>The "specifically states" makes the fallacy downright obnoxious.

Read the above, Peter. Try to understand what it says.

>To me, that is: you may just be living up to the
>nickname I gave you long ago: Hit Man ("nothing personal,
>just business") or banking on your self-serving and
>allies-serving use of the word "informal" (as in "talk.origins
>is an informal venue").

Yeah, yeah; we all know how long you carry grudges,
especially for imagined "slights". Get over yourself.

>> [Crickets...]
>>
>> >This isn't exactly rocket science...
>
>That's a good description of my rebuttal to your sophomoric
>"reasoning."
>
>
>> >>What you wrote next is even more completely different. Did you even
>> >>bother to READ what you linked?
>> >
>> >Of course. Did you?
>
>You may want to sign up at your local community college
>for a refresher course in English Comprehension.

....says the person who can't even read his own cited
material for comprehension.

>> >>> >> Criticism of behavior or philosophical position is not ad
>> >>> >> hominem *unless* it is used to dismiss a valid argument
>> >>
>> >>The word "valid" is your Hemidactylus-serving addition.
>> >
>> >No,
>
>Yes, you added it to the description which alleges it to
>be a NECESSARY condition for an *ad hominem*.
>
>You may have been fooled into thinking that I botched
>the distinction between necessary and sufficient
>conditions by reading something into Burkhard's own
>leaky-as-a-sieve "rebuttal." He forgot that, as a highly
>productive research mathematician, I have a masterly
>instinct for the difference.

Or perhaps I was "fooled into" thinking that you were
actually interested in communicating, rather than in your
usual "gotcha" style of discourse. Coloe me wrong.

>> > it's an acknowledgement that there exist both valid and
>> >invalid arguments,
>
>...smuggled into a definition where it is employed
>in a highly fallacious manner.
>
>
>> and that anyone with two neurons can
>> >usually tell the difference. Not always, of course.
>
>You are obviously an exception, hoist with your own "two neurons"
>petard, which may come under the rubric of "poisoning the wells."
>
>
>>
>> [Crickets...]
>>
>> >>[Burkhard was pinch-hitting for Hemidactylus in the part
>> >>I've quoted.] If people had to abide by it, all normal
>> >>discourse about "ad hominem" would disappear from talk.origins,
>> >>because of the way people tenaciously insist that THEIR
>> >>arguments are valid.
>
>Finally, readers actually get to hear the crickets chirping
>in the absence of any attempt to rebut the above.

Nothing there to rebut; just your usual garbage.

>> >>On top of which: did you see the notation,
>> >>
>> >> "Personal attack" redirects here. For the policy on Wikipedia, see
>> >> Wikipedia:No personal attacks.
>> >>
>> >>It is quite customary on Usenet to label personal attacks as
>> >>"ad hominem" without having to go into motives. And the
>> >>editors of Wikipedia seem to go along with that.
>> >
>> >Yes, I suspect we've all seen that from some posters here,
>> >along with the tendency of some to label any disagreement as
>> >a personal attack.
>> >
>> >And a personal attack *may be* ad hominem, but only if it's
>> >used as an attempt to refute an argument.
>>
>> [Crickets...]
>
>They are chirping loudly NOW.

Really? How is that, since you finally deigned to respond,
poor as the response was.

>> >>> >> ("He's a YEC, therefore his argument is incorrect").
>> >>
>> >>In all my years on the internet, I've NEVER seen an ad hominem
>> >>this simplistically spelled out.
>
>You allege otherwise below, probably because you are
>feigning amnesia about the words "spelled out".

Uh, Peter? That was *your* comment above you're attempting
to refute, not mine. Or are you just "replying to" what you
posted earlier, as you allege my "Crickets" comment was to
my post?

>If not, I would like to see at least three documented instances
>of someone using the simplistic use of the formula (except
>for illustrative purposes, the way you use it) "________ is ______,
>therefore his argument is incorrect."
>
>
>Hop to it, Bobby. Like they said when I was in the Army,
>"You are on your own time."

I provided the names of a couple of the most egregious
examples; Ray's "X is an atheist, therefore anything X says
is false" (paraphrased, but accurately) was almost a daily
offering. If you want cites, GurgleGropes almost certainly
can help; I feel no need to accede to your demands.

DD? Or BCD? Or was it a "General"?

[Peter Nyikos]

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/vh_5qLZ_2y0/85Dgbn4XBwAJ
Message-ID: <dmqridd5058v2remn...@4ax.com>

> > and then,
> >as the back-and-forth progressed,

Martin posted two urls to back up something he had written, but
made no argument:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/vh_5qLZ_2y0/GueGGK0ZBwAJ
Message-ID: <9psridhef7uu4b6te...@4ax.com>

In a direct reply:

> > jillery expanded on them in a bigoted way,
> >including guilt by association targeted at Martin.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/vh_5qLZ_2y0/cObpGZckBwAJ
Message-ID: <1l8sidhi5kluhaiso...@4ax.com>

> > Martin donned kid
> >gloves in reply, characterizing jillery's remarks as merely
> >"irrelevant Jillshit".

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/vh_5qLZ_2y0/NHds738mBwAJ
Message-ID: <n9asidhdii2e084p1...@4ax.com>


In reply to that, jillery got in the last word in this tiff:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/vh_5qLZ_2y0/ev5iGms6BwAJ
Message-ID: <fsvsid1km6qobbr8t...@4ax.com>


The whole tiff took place on July 23, Subject: Re: More Dawkins

> >
> >Were you aware of this sub-thread, Burkhard?
>
>
> Let's assume just for argument's sake that your spamming of this
> particular topic is actually relevant to whatever point you think
> you're making. Given that, wouldn't it make more sense for you cite
> the specific post or thread, rather than you poisoning the well with
> your unique interpretation of events?

I'm sure you and Martin have your own unique interpretation
of these events, but I suspect that the citations I give
above will have both of you playing "both sides against the middle."


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, August 6, 2018 at 10:15:02 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Aug 2018 11:44:11 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >Here in talk.origins, all one has to do is to
> >get an accusation of "hater of gays" to remain unrefuted,
> >and nobody (except possibly the accused, and myself)
> >is going to pay any attention to what the accused person is saying.
>
>
> It's even easier than that. Just post something you will lie about,
> like someone calling Harran a child molester,

It must really irk you to know that nothing like that took
place, and so you are forced to spin-doctor the bejesus
out of what someone actually did say.

Correction: perhaps it makes you ecstatic to know that
your transparent spin-doctoring will have the subliminal message
for everyone who knows what is going on:
"This will happen to YOU if you try to mess with me;
and with Casanova, Oxyaena, and probably Hemidactylus
in my corner, there isn't a damn thing you can do about it."

> and you are certain to
> repeat it multiple times in multiple posts no matter what the actual
> topic is about.

Only if you or Martin or one of the people mentioned above
spin-doctors the bejesus out of it. THAT is what is most
OFTEN likely to have multiple posts about it, since I am
outnumbered and since you and Martin love to play

"both sides against the middle."

It's happened already in that long-running dispute about what you did
and did not do in a notorious reply to Martin.

Apropos of "...damn thing you can do about it": Martin saw how
Oxyaena, Wolffan, and even Martin's fellow "fighting Irishman"
Sean Dillon relentlessly attacked me as I kept improving
my documentation and you kept retreating into posts resembling
"garbage time" in basketball, while no one else -- least of
all Martin himself -- was attacking you.

Martin probably concluded that I was fair game for any
shit anyone tries to hurl at me, and so he suddenly
turned on me, first by being obnoxious, then by repeatedly
bringing trumped-up charges against me. Since then, his
replies to you have been with kid gloves on [1] while his
replies to me have gotten more and more reckless.

[1] I've added links to my earlier characterization of what
went on in this thread between the two of you, just a few
minutes ago.

Peter Nyikos

[Burkhard]

Anything on topic in them? If not I'm not the least interested.

>
>>> He helped birth New Atheism then shot it in the head (or at least himself
>>> in the foot on multiple occasions). I could unleash hell from my Dawkins
>>> file, but that would detract from analysis of his moral argument for
>>> aborting Trisomy 21 fetuses.
>>>
>>
>> I think there are two issues at stake here. One is a general problem
>> with utilitarianism. Its underlying intuition is sound, but if you put
>> it into a strict rule that determines ethical decisions, you inevitably
>> get problematic results. The problem is that it assumes a metric for
>> "happiness" and "suffering" that makes arbitrary life events comparable.
>> And if you then try to calculate the "happiness/suffering ratio" for an
>> entire lifespan, it gets totally ridiculous.
>>
>> As we have here. What does it even mean to say that by not living a
>> life, the overall sum of happiness increases/decreases?
>>
>> It also reminds me of discussions we had in ethics 101 - if you combine
>> utilitarianism with a traditional Christian belief in heaven and hell,
>> you do indeed end up with a moral duty to kill all babies directly after
>> birth (well, after baptism, to be precise)
>
> Sorry, there is no such moral duty, neither from a humanistic POV that
> has no truck with traditional Christian belief, nor from a Christian POV.

well, that's the claim. The issue was if this is true. Since a
(baptized) child is always automatically saved (infinite bliss), the
decision matrix has a certain outcome of infinite benefits for the child
if i kill it, and a non-negative probability for infinite (eternal
punishment) harm. A reverse Pascal's wager if you like. And the morally
right choice for a utilitarian, provided they believe in eternal
punishment would therefore have to be to kill all babies.

>
> The argument for the latter lack of moral duty begins with the
> commandment Jesus is recorded as quoting to Satan, "Thou
> shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." It's a subtle issue and
> one needs e.g. to know the original OT context of the commandment.

Don't think that works for 2 reasons. First, one could read this as
simply a stop-gap solution. Of course, one would argue, a religion will
find some ad hoc way to block undesirable inferences. But that still
accepts that the undesirable inference is valid. I.e. it simply concedes
the point that utilitarianism plus the doctrine of hell leads to a
command to kill babies - and then simply says the equivalent of: and you
are not supposed to think things through like this, just obey arbitrary
orders and don't do it.

Second, and worse for this line of argument, it does not change the
payout matrix as far as the infant is concerned - and no god that is not
an absolute monster, let alone a benevolent one, could harm the child
because of my action. Sure, god could disapprove of my actions and
punish me. But that makes the moral imperative to kill the child if
anything stronger: I'm acting now entirely out of a sense of duty, not
motivated my promised rewards or fear of punishment. and that is the
only appropriate motivation for an action to be called ethical.

OK, fair enough, that last bit might be a bit too Kantian for some
utilitarians, but rule-utilitarianism and Kant are compatible, so that's
not much of a problem.

Lesson: you can't have a coherent, rule based and benign ethical systems
that also has infinite punishment/rewards/. One of these must give. The
underlying reason is similar to Pascal's wager - once you allow infinite
outcomes in, good or bad, that screws up your decision matrix

But nobody against whom that zero is recorded. Your argument is simply
begging the question here. There is not a somebody who has been
deprived. And in any case, you could not know if the life in question

>
> Similarly, if an asteroid were to smash into earth on top of,
> you would feel no pain, but it would be a tragedy from your
> *present* POV because so many plans of yours for the future
> would have been wiped out along with you.
>

And that interferes with the vision I have for myself, the plans for a
life I've made etc. Which requires an I to have such plans.

[Oxyaena]

Do you honestly think he cares? Burkhard doesn't thin Burkhard cares, if
his latest reply to you is anything to go by.

>

[jillery]

On Tue, 7 Aug 2018 11:46:10 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos

Now that you have finally identified the basis for your spam, you
still haven't said why you think Burkhard should be aware of it, and
why you think it's relevant to anything you and he wrote to each other
here.

[jillery]

On Tue, 7 Aug 2018 12:03:52 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos

<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Monday, August 6, 2018 at 10:15:02 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Mon, 6 Aug 2018 11:44:11 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
>> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>> >Here in talk.origins, all one has to do is to
>> >get an accusation of "hater of gays" to remain unrefuted,
>> >and nobody (except possibly the accused, and myself)
>> >is going to pay any attention to what the accused person is saying.
>>
>>
>> It's even easier than that. Just post something you will lie about,
>> like someone calling Harran a child molester,
>
>It must really irk you to know that nothing like that took
>place, and so you are forced to spin-doctor the bejesus
>out of what someone actually did say.

Your spin-doctoring disqualifies you from complaining about my alleged
spin-doctoring. Tu quoque back atcha, asshole.

This episode of repetitive irrelevant spew brought to you by Nyikos
the peter.

[Oxyaena]

On 8/7/2018 3:03 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, August 6, 2018 at 10:15:02 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Mon, 6 Aug 2018 11:44:11 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
>> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Here in talk.origins, all one has to do is to
>>> get an accusation of "hater of gays" to remain unrefuted,
>>> and nobody (except possibly the accused, and myself)
>>> is going to pay any attention to what the accused person is saying.
>>
>>
>> It's even easier than that. Just post something you will lie about,
>> like someone calling Harran a child molester,
>
> It must really irk you to know that nothing like that took
> place, and so you are forced to spin-doctor the bejesus
> out of what someone actually did say.

Like what you do all the time? Your affinity for psychological
projection is intact, Nyikos.

>
> Correction: perhaps it makes you ecstatic to know that
> your transparent spin-doctoring will have the subliminal message
> for everyone who knows what is going on:
> "This will happen to YOU if you try to mess with me;
> and with Casanova, Oxyaena, and probably Hemidactylus
> in my corner, there isn't a damn thing you can do about it."
>

There's no "conspiracy" against you, dipshit, only a loosely affiliated
group of people fed up with your horseshit and would like to see you
stop posting here.

>
>> and you are certain to
>> repeat it multiple times in multiple posts no matter what the actual
>> topic is about.
>
> Only if you or Martin or one of the people mentioned above
> spin-doctors the bejesus out of it. THAT is what is most
> OFTEN likely to have multiple posts about it, since I am
> outnumbered and since you and Martin love to play
> "both sides against the middle."
>
> It's happened already in that long-running dispute about what you did
> and did not do in a notorious reply to Martin.
>
> Apropos of "...damn thing you can do about it": Martin saw how
> Oxyaena, Wolffan, and even Martin's fellow "fighting Irishman"
> Sean Dillon relentlessly attacked me as I kept improving
> my "documentation"

Hold up, hold up, you have *no* documentation, if you did this entire
matter would've been settled eons ago! Dunning-Kruger, thy name is Nyikos!

>
> Martin probably concluded that I was fair game for any
> shit anyone tries to hurl at me, and so he suddenly
> turned on me, first by being obnoxious, then by repeatedly
> bringing trumped-up charges against me. Since then, his
> replies to you have been with kid gloves on [1] while his
> replies to me have gotten more and more reckless.

Does repeatedly daring you to provide evidence for your bullshit count
as "more and more reckless"? Maybe you should check a dictionary for
what the term "reckless" actually means, until then we can add it to a
list of words you don't actually know the meaning to (like "libel") but
use it anyways.

>
> [1] I've added links to my earlier characterization of what
> went on in this thread between the two of you, just a few
> minutes ago.

No one gives a shit, I sure don't. They're only of interest to you.



>
> Peter Nyikos
>

[Oxyaena]

On 8/6/2018 2:44 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
[snip mindless bullshit]

You must really like proving us right.

[Burkhard]

Firstly, the fact that they are children renders this moot. The killed
toddlers, "ability to work" does not enter the equation. and why would I
have in any case to show some bullcrap Weikart made up? The children in
he image are also bipedal, is it now my job to find evidence the Nazis
did not target them for bipedalism?

Again, you play word games to make excuses for the inexcusable. These
children were murdered because they were diagnosed with Down. that make
the targeted for having Down, nothing else was asked about them, nothing
else informed the decision. The category on the form which I both cited
and linked to, makes this abundantly clear.

Who cares what "ultimate" goal or reason the Nazis may have had?
Undoubtedly, they also had lots of "reasons" why they killed Jews - from
suspicion of being communists to criminals to engaged in a conspiracy to
undermine the purity of the blood. None of tat changes the historical
record that they targeted Jews.

>> Here a photo taken by the SS of children with Down Syndrom, they
>> perished in the "Aktion T4".
>
> Only one clearly looks like someone with Down Syndrome, by the way.

And that would matter if someone had claimed the Nazis only targeted
people with Down. Nobody has, so it doesn't.

>
>
>> http://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/aktion-t4-program-children.jpg
>>
>> But that was of course after 1933, so if Weikart only looked for that
>> year, he'd overlooked it
>>
>> And here an article about Christa M, murdered in 1943, age 8
>>
>> https://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/jugendwebsite/r_pdf/christa.pdf
>>
>> You can see there also a scan of the medical document the Nazis made
>> when she was put into the facility where she would die - it does not use
>> the term "Down syndrom" but "Mongoloid", and the relevant category for
>> the decision made about her is (the scientifically wrong) "inheritable
>> defect" - if Weikart did nothing bit to google for "Down Syndrom" in the
>> digital repositories of patient files, he'd have missed it (a rather
>> charitable interpretation).
>>
>> The relevant law that mentions explicitly people with Down (again using
>> "Mongoloid" was the Runderlass des Reichsministers des Innern vom 18.
>> August 1939 Az.: IVb 3088/39 - 1079 Mi
>
> Did you ever quote from this, Burkhard?

yes

>I don't recall you doing so.

.

>
> You got your hackles up when I mentioned a feeble-minded person
> portrayed in "Judgment at Nuremberg" as having been sterilized
> and not exterminated, but was it a policy after some date
> to exterminate mental defectives rather than just sterilize them?

I did get my "hackels" up about the sheer stupidity of the argument.
Some Jews survived the Holocaust, that does not mean the Nazis did not
target Jews either. Not even totalitarian states like the Nazis ever
have total control, or are 100% efficient in achieving their aims,
especially not if they have a limited lifespan.

And in any case, Weikert also denies that Down's patients were targeted
for sterilisation, (and I did cite the relevant law that flatly
contradicts this too) so yo are not helping him at all in the chareg of
being grossly incompetent.

>
> If so, a direct quote from that 1939 document might shed some
> light on this. Or maybe you'd need to dig up a later document.

I did in fact document and describe the timeline. Sterilization of
Down's patients was the effect of the compulsory sterilization law of
1933. („Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses“ -Wekert clais Down
was not included- it was, in section 1, under the larger category of
"inherited weakness of the mind") Oh, and if you think this was "only"
sterilization, the unsafe methods that were used resulted in the death
of thousands too.

One law Weikert also "overlooks" and which I did not mention before
followed in 1935, The Gesetz zur Änderung des Gesetzes zur Verhütung
erbkranken Nachwuchses“ which made abortion of fetuses with Down
permissble as an exception to the general prohibition of abortion in
Nazi Germany.

The "children euthanasia" programme to which I linked started in 1939,
it lead directly to Aktion T4 which extended it to adults - and I did
cite from that aw and how it explicitly includes "Mongoloid" patients.
So that was indeed 6 years after the sterilisation programme had started

The Nazis officially abandoned T4 in 1941 after public opposition, as I
said before. So it is not at all surprising to find people who were
caught in the sterilization programme but not in T4 - and both targeted,
contra Weikart, Dwon syndrom.

T4 was continued in the occupied territories, and n a smaller scale in
Germany under the designation 14f13. This applied only to prisons and
KZs. Again mental illness was an independent reason for getting
murdered, "inability to work" a second, independent assessment. So
bullshit again to Weikart's claim that the Nazis "only" murdered those
incapable to work, and only "accidentally" caught up in that net some
people with Down.

>
>
>>>
>>> After checking another book Richard Weikart "found no mention of Down
>>> syndrome" and "One factor influencing this may have been that the Nazis
>>> only killed disabled people who were institutionalized, and many people
>>> with Down Syndrome do not require institutionalization.
>>>
>>> Now, it may well be that the Nazis sterilized and/or killed some people
>>> with Down Syndrome (I would actually be surprised if they didn't target
>>> those with more severe cases), but I don't know."
>
> Did you ever give evidence that the above statement suffered
> from "shoddy research"? I saw nothing quoted from any official
> Nazi documents to indicate that they went beyond the description
> in the last paragraph quoted from Weikart.

Yes, all the quotes I gave show this. If you can't see that you can;t be
helped.

>
>
>>> After making speculative ungrounded comparisons with Dawkins and European
>>> countries with an allusion to the Nazis the article backpedals:
>>> "Comparisons with Nazi Germany are obviously perilous, and I think I would
>>> have advised Pope Francis against this one if he had asked me, as I would
>>> have advised former CIA director Michael Hayden against his foolish Nazi
>>> comparison from a few days ago."
>>>
>>> Dawkins is still an asshole:
>>>
>>> https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/502106262088466432
>>>
>>> Who realizes the limits of babbling on Twitter yet does it anyway:
>>>
>>> https://www.richarddawkins.net/2014/08/abortion-down-syndrome-an-apology-for-letting-slip-the-dogs-of-twitterwar/
>>>
>>> And abortion is not the same as killing the born as Nazis did. False
>>> equivalency there.
>
> By a similar logic, it would also be false equivalency to claim that
> infanticide, or even the killing of children under 2 years old
> at the request of their parents [1], is the same as killing
> a normal adolescent or adult. Just ask Peter Singer, the holder of
> a distinguished chair in philosophy at Princeton University.

So you are saying that consensual abortion is the same as killing
infants? In that case that's just another data point that your moral
compass is indeed somewhere between screwed up and non-existing.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, August 8, 2018 at 8:10:02 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Aug 2018 12:03:52 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >On Monday, August 6, 2018 at 10:15:02 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> >> On Mon, 6 Aug 2018 11:44:11 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> >Here in talk.origins, all one has to do is to
> >> >get an accusation of "hater of gays" to remain unrefuted,
> >> >and nobody (except possibly the accused, and myself)
> >> >is going to pay any attention to what the accused person is saying.
> >>
> >>
> >> It's even easier than that. Just post something you will lie about,
> >> like someone calling Harran a child molester,

It turned out, from what you posted yesterday on
one of the half dozen or more GG threads "Re: I'm back" [1]
[the only one on which I've participated, btw.]
that the "you" above refers to Martin Harran, and not myself.

And so, you've wasted another kindergarten-level reply
on me instead of pointing this out.

Even more remarkably, the only thing you've left in by me below
is something that is perfectly compatible with with what I wrote up
there, this time around. Here is what you left in:

> >It must really irk you to know that nothing like that took
> >place, and so you are forced to spin-doctor the bejesus
> >out of what someone actually did say.
>
>
> Your spin-doctoring disqualifies you from complaining about my alleged
> spin-doctoring. Tu quoque back atcha, asshole.

As always, you make no effort to document the existence of anything
that would fit the description of what precedes "disqualifies" -- in this case,
"Your spin-doctoring". Might
"Your" also refer to Martin Harran, rather than to me?

And, of course, you made no effort to show that you were
NOT guilty of spin-doctoring. See parting comments below by me.

> This episode of repetitive irrelevant spew brought to you by Nyikos
> the peter.

It is neither irrelevant nor repetitive, you juvenile twit.


[1] Despite your endless flaming about how I should get a
"real newsreader," the evidence seems to point to YOU
using NGG too. Right on this "More Dawkins" super-thread [2]
you did a post where there is nothing like the "A silent patient spider"
trademark of Eternal September, nor any clue as to what you
are using to post, EXCEPT the beginning of the Path:

n13-v6ni10408wmc.0!nntp.google.com

For comparison, here is the beginning of the path
for a post of mine to this same super-thread:

i6-v6ni5626wmf.0!nntp.google.com

[2] I am using "super-thread" to humor you on your schoolmarmish
insistence that "thread" only refers to an unbroken string
of back-and-forth within [3] what I -- and most others who have
spoken up on this issue -- call a thread.

[3] and in a long "super-thread" like "More Dawkins"
that is only a small percentage of the total posts.

> --
> I disapprove of what you say,

Of course you do, but you made the mistake of snipping
everything with which you disagreed.


Your disapproval is like Reggie's in an old "Archie" comic.

Archie makes some cutting remark about Reggie, and Reggie
says, "I resent that!"

Archie says, "Do you deny it?"

Reggie, with a sheepish look on his face, replies,
"Er, no. I just resent it."


Aren't you glad people can't see your facial expressions here
in talk.origins?


Peter Nyikos