That's not my argument. My argument is purely on the basis of function. Can two incompatible parts be compatible and function?

So you are saying that since something can and does get "taken away" it therefore can't be inalienable, Is that correct?

A right implies that something is due to someone on the basis of something. If I'm correct an inalienable right doesn't mean that something can't be taken away. But that only the one giving or the basis for the right has the proper authority to take the right away. So I don't see how your argument from silence demonstrates that inalienable rights don't exist, maybe you could explain that for me.

When the Founding Fathers wrote those words about the inalienable right to life I doubt they meant the right couldn't be taken away; since the document that contains those words was a basically a deceleration of war and offered justification to take life away from other humans. When they wrote those words they grounded those rights in a creator. In essence what they were saying is that the creator gives the right to life to us and only the creator has the right to revoke that right; there must be proper justification to take human life, it has to be on the creator's terms not ours. And the Deceleration of Independence was an attempt to properly justify their action of going to war to regain a right that had been unjustly taken from them. So I don't see how you get from that the idea that inalienable rights can't be taken away.

So the question I'm raising is not an issue of "can" inalienable rights be taken away and if so are there such things as inalienable rights. I'm asking that if there is not a transcendent, immutable giver of our right to life do I have such a right. Because if I haven't been given it how can I say I have it? Because if atheism is true and we are just a cosmic accident without a purpose then there is no difference between gassing cockroaches and gassing six million Jews. And our Founding Fathers understood this and that's why they grounded those inalienable rights in a transcendent, immutable creator.

So what I'm looking for is a good argument for how you would ground inalienable rights without a transcendent, immutable source, if it can be done. Not whether or not inalienable rights can be taken away.

OK we need some clarification on the point I'm making. I'm not making a religious or teleological argument. I'm not using the term sex to refer to gender. Nor I'm I trying to make some redefinition of what constitutes a sexual act. I'm strictly making a functional observation.

I'm looking at the function and asking; In a complementary design were you have two different parts that complement each other to perform a certain function can two parts that are the same function in the same way two different parts can? I can't see how they could. So what do you do when you want to perform the function but that parts you have don't work together, they aren't complementary, you find a substitute that does.

So I'm asking if it can't function with the same parts can we honestly say that it is functioning with the same (homo) parts? To be honest we would have to say that it is functioning but with a substitute. What we can't say is that it is functioning with the same parts because it can't function with the same (homo) parts. So no you can't get the function, sex, with the same (homo) parts. The function, sex for humans, requires by design two different parts that form a complementary role to accomplished the given function.

Yes, of course. Anything that has intelligence would know that it was created and that it didn't make itself.

You err in assuming that I'm making a religious argument, I'm not. No where in this debate have I referenced my religion to support my observation. I'm just making an observation based on function. And I just don't see homosexuality able to function as claimed.

I'm assuming you don't live near an Indian reservation because if you did you would know first hand what socialism does to people. Those people have everything given to them and are they productive and industrious people, no they are a decimated people who live in squalor, struggle with alcoholism and all sorts of problems. All the free stuff didn't have the effect on them that you think it would. It had the opposite and a very opposite one at that.

Now I'm not trash talking Native Americans, I fell horrible about what is happening to them. What I'm trash talking is the system that put them there and keeps them there, the system that strips a man of his pride and dignity, destroys his motivation to work and kills his creativity. And that system is socialism, a system that says; you don't have to work for this to earn it, we will give it to. The promise of socialism is poison, a deadly poison. It promises you things that it has no power to give and leaves you in a worse state than before.

and the job would get you what, an opportunity to give your earnings away to pay for the other guy to have an opportunity? That's a vicious cycle that goes nowhere. Not everybody needs a degree, the world will always need janitors and that's okay.

Part of the error I see you making is that you think the benefits of a free market will remain in a market that is not free. That is just not the case. In a free market you're free to succeed and you're free to fail. It is the potential to succeed and succeed big time that motivates like nothing else because the sky is the limit. And yes some people will not shoot for the moon and that's okay. But in socialist economy everybody is just floating around in circles on their life rafts going nowhere until the pond dries up.

The point was that you don't have a "right" to an education like I don't have a right to the fifty dollars. The best things in life come to those who earn them and nothing worthwhile is easy. And if education is everything to you than go get it. But to some people it isn't and they will always do manual labor and that's okay.

What you are missing is that socialism removes motivation. If the playing field is leveled what is there to attain to? why teach, to what end? why "get it", to what end? Why work to "get ahead" if all I'm going to do when I get there is give it away to someone else so he can "get ahead" That kind of circular motion kills motivation and destroys creativity. A socialist society can't work on it's own accord because it has no driving force. And therefore it must be propped up by some other means, usually legal force. But that prop will eventually give as they always do.

And that's why sink or swim is a great motivator because sinking has a way of making you swim like hunger has a way of making you work. And minimum wage has a way of making you get an education. But if it's freely given there is no motivation, it's just there.

No, but that's not to say it couldn't happen. But I have yet to see a compelling argument against my religious belief. All the arguments I've seen against it commit at least two common informal fallacies: The Ad hominem and the Straw Man fallacy. It just seems to me that most people have forgotten that you must first show that a man is wrong before you can say that he is wrong.

give everyone the opportunity to develop a career and learn, and watch as our I.Q.'s rise and our youth become the benefit of our benevolence.

I strongly disagree with this assumption, You can search the world over and you will never find this to be true, It doesn't happen. People don't esteem and value things that are easy to come by. Things that are easy to come by are not as valued as those things that are hard to come by. That is why gold is more valuable than sand. It is why a private education is more valuable than a public education.

If you give away education no one will want it and no one will work in the field because it has no value. Nobody benefits because their is nothing to gain.

Insult is not an argument, it's a failure to provide one. You addressed nothing regarding the principle point of the story,nothing to verify or falsify it.

Well I have a right that you pay me fifty dollars for every comment of mine that you read.

Just because we say we have a right doesn't mean we do. A right means someone has an obligation towards you in some fashion. Just like you can't see how you have to pay me for reading my comments, I can't see how anybody owes somebody else an education. But if you do maybe you could explain to me how someone has an obligation to give someone else an education.

If you were a teacher would you teach pro bono? I think not. But if you did you wouldn't do it for long or well.

Socialism will fail every time. Here is a good illustration of why.

" a college education is a privilege, not a right" Ronald Regan

In my opinion an incorrect belief about God causes the most problems. If there is no God than all things are permissible and if it is a god of our own making (false religion) then that god will justify what ever we want. No matter what side of the horse we fall off of we end up in the same place, all things are permissible, even a sense of superiority. One just has a second level of false authority, our god said it was okay or we are better than them because we follow the right god.

A correct theology always leads to a correct anthropology, distort the one and you distort the other. A correct theology naturally leads to the conclusion that " all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

It's hard to find a justification for personal superiority in those words because those rights were properly grounded in their true source. And those rights give no room to treat your neighbor unjustly. But what would happen to those rights if you removed the source or replaced it with another source? your rights would vanish and all things would become permissible. Well almost, we are moral absolutist when we are the victim and moral relativist when we are the perpetrator. But a God who holds us accountable is something we most certainly don't want because He always gets in the way of what we want. Because correct theology also leads to correct conduct.

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." James 1:27

One life you forgot to mention and the devastating impact abortion has on it is the life of the child. No reason you can give me can justify destroying the life of a child. And all those reasons about a mother "suffering" don't rise to the level to properly justify taking the life of another human being. Because someones existence is hard on you, requires you to be self sacrificing, to give yourself to them, to lay aside your dreams and aspirations for them and to support them doesn't justify you killing them, I hope you see that. And if there is no one else to support them it is all the more reason why you should, for the love of humanity.

It is one of the great tragedies of our day that we have forgotten the joy of self sacrifice and traded it for the empty promises of self autonomy. And that is where we differ, you see a child as a hindrance to your joy and I see it as a doorway to a greater and fuller joy. So yes, I child will cost you everything, your life included, it will destroy all your dreams and demand everything you have. But in return it will give you a treasure of joy and pleasure you could have never known otherwise. It will take your sandcastles and build you real ones. So to the point of the this debate; of course the father should have a choice, especially if you are going to rob him of such a vast wealth of treasure.

And because one out six couples is infertile (I'm one of them) there is no such thing as an unwanted pregnancy, I want it and so do thousands of other couples. Children are not a burden they are an infinite joy and both parents should have a say in it because they are the parents and that should be self evident.

And unmarried women account for 81.6% of abortions. A disproportionally higher number wouldn't you say? And what was the reason for those abortions in married couples? I'd bet dollars to donuts it's not the same reason as unmarried women. But point taken, I should have been more careful in the way I stated that. It would be more accurate to say that in the normal course of affairs married women don't normally go seeking an abortion, they ain't knocking on the door of Planned Parenthood. It's typically the result of a unfortunate turn of events for a woman who want's the child and regrettably the choice is made by the mother and father to terminate.

So in one case the mother wants the child but something is wrong and they have to make a choice they don't want to. And that choice is made by the mother and father. In the other case the mother doesn't want the child and nothing is wrong. So she makes the choice she wants to and decides by herself. And there is a world of difference between the two.

You are not differentiating between physical dependence and other kinds of dependence.

Your correct, I'm not differentiating or discriminating on the basis of level or kind of dependency because it's just wrong to do that and I hope you aren't either.

A woman with an unwanted pregnancy has no option but abortion if she wants to do the same thing. If there was a way the fetus could be removed from her body and survive, then I would be all about that, but during the window in which the vast majority of abortions are performed, it is not currently possible.

There is other options just like the scenarios I posed. One option is to deliver the baby. But that's not convenient for someone who's only concern is ending their responsibility to a burdensome person.

So, no, a mother and father do not both have a legitimate claim to the child

This assertion is not supported by anything you have said so therefore it is invalid.

I'm disturbed and confused by the suggestion that one surrenders bodily autonomy during sex.

That's the trouble with sex outside of marriage you never know the full joy and pleasure of giving yourself body and soul to someone else. And yes I'm saying that nine months of pregnancy is a small thing compared to giving yourself, body and soul, to someone else. Because at the end of nine months the pregnancy is over and it all becomes worth it. But I have seen people who have given their body and soul to someone else only to have the other person rip out their heart, spit on it and smash it in the dirt. And it devastates the person for a long time, usually for the rest of their lives and they never recover from it. Sometimes it even leads to suicide. So yes, it is a far greater thing to give yourself to someone else, body and soul. Because when you are rejected the other person in essence says they have seen you and they don't like what they see and that cuts very deep, to the heart.

But it is a sad reality that there are many who will never taste the richest joys and pleasures of life like marriage, real deep, meaningful sex, and parenthood because they are so self centered that they are only concerned about ending their responsibility to burdensome people. And because they are to afraid to take the risk of giving themselves body and soul to someone else, life passes them by. Zombee, I pray that it might not be said of you.

If the quarterback calls the play and throws the ball to the wide receiver, does the quarterback still have a choice as to the play. Or does the choice of play now belong to the wide receiver who now carries the ball?

Just because the woman now carries "the ball" doesn't mean she can do what she wants and the man no longer has a choice. The choice was already made by the two partners when they decided to get into "the game" together. When we commit ourselves to something we have an obligation to follow through with it. We can't change the rules in the middle of the game and tell the other players to go home and we will carry the ball, or drop it from here on out. When we bind ourselves to others we have an obligation to them and we shouldn't dismiss them when it is no longer convenient to have them around. In the normal course of events a man has a right to choose because the woman gave it to him when she made him a partner.

No,never

So you are saying that a woman has a right to choose and a man doesn't because the woman is supporting the child with her body, is that correct?

If that is what you are saying then that would mean anybody that is supporting you would have more rights over your life than you do. And that would put us in a very dangerous position because every one of us is supported by someone else in some fashion.

If what you are saying is true than your employer, customer if you are self employed, has a right to kill you when you become a burden or risk to them. Because all the reasons you give for abortion could be made by your employer against you, in principle they support you and they have the choice, not you. But lucky for you the law says no. If you think I'm wrong just consider slavery for a moment. It was OK for a slave owner to kill a slave because it was his property, he paid for it and supported it. But the law was changed to make slaves legally humans, it gave them rights.

See the problem is that we can not discriminate against other humans because of their level of dependency. To do so would mean that parents could kill their children at any age so long as the parent is responsible for supporting the child. It would mean that we would start down the road Nazi Germany did by killing of it's weakest and most dependent citizens; the elderly, sick, mentally disabled and young. I don't think that's a road we want to go down, do you?

So yes, a mother and a father both have a legitimate claim to the child. And that claim is to the well being and health of the child they created, not to it's detriment. And the claim of the father is to the child, not the mothers body. And I agree with atypician that in the act of consensual sex the women actually and symbolically gives her body to the man, the man his body to her and the two become one. So if the woman was willing to give her body to that degree it seems a very small step to give it to this degree.

But in all this talk about choice and rights one voice has been painfully ignored and that is the child's. Who will be the child's advocate? So I say let both parents speak and may the best argument win. So yes the father should have a say, anything less is pure discrimination.

You two are making a strong case for abstinence. Do you both realize that all of these problems and possible scenarios would vanish if men and women waited to have sex until they were married because as a matter of course married couples don't have abortions. And if there are medical problems like comas etc. Being married already gives legal authority to the spouse to make medical decisions. The crux of the problem that is being debated is sex outside the confines of marriage; solve that problem and the rest disappears.

Unless I'm not understanding you, you are saying that the original purpose of genitalia was to engage in heterosexual intercourse. Anything else they are used for does not really exist, and should not be referred to by the word that was invented to describe it.

Yes, you are misunderstanding me. I'm not saying the aberrations don't exist, I acknowledge they do. I'm looking at this from a function and design perspective (not a religious perspective) So when I look at it from that point of view I see that it has two functions; waste elimination and sexual intercourse. Sexually speaking it is clear how it is meant to function and when I see it used in a way that is contrary to it's proper function I call that an aberration of it's original intent. So your argument fails because you are making a category mistake. So I agree that one thing can have multiple functions. But when it comes to a specific function, like intercourse, there is a right way and a wrong way; functionally speaking. One way it works as it should the other way it doesn't. Like a nut and a bolt, two bolts can't hold anything together but a nut and a bolt can. So the end result tells you if you got it right; Homosexuality ends in disease and early death, heterosexuality doesn't. And that ought to tell you something; unless you have other reasons for rejecting my argument other than logic.

You are trying to make a rule from the exception to the norm. So you are mistaken, there are two sexes in humans, male and female. And then there are aberrations of those sexes, distortions of it. We can't look to the exception and then somehow try to make a rule that applies to the norm, that's just bad logic.