If we have some process A followed by process B that produces life. We have never observed life being produced in any other fashion than A then B. So that even if A is not by definition life, A then B is life. To end A is to end B is to end life.
So define embryos however you want, but the fact that they produce life makes terminating them the same as terminating life.
I’ve made the argument that this is the greatest possible free world. I may get into that later. But the greatest possible world would not be the same as the greatest possible free world.
If there is an afterlife, it must be better or worse than this world.
If there is no afterlife, this would be the best [and worst] possible world by default. But you see, an atheist is correct either way. If there is an afterlife, this life is better than hell. And if there is no afterlife, this life is, by necessity, better than nothing.
If God exists, he exists in the greatest possible world. If there is an alternative worst possible world, God does not exist there. Because if he did, it could be worse. If God didn’t exist there.
But if you don’t believe God exists, he can’t exist in your ideal greatest possible world. So that, your greatest possible world is one where God does not exist. This is independent of the fact that God may or may not exist.
If there is a maximally great being, and the end game of humanity is to have them enter a maximally great world, it would make no sense to admit those who don’t believe in any such being or world. Because admitting people into that world who don’t think it’s the best possible world would make it less than the greatest possible world.
This is something that you hear about all the time nowadays. Someone is transitioning from being a man to being a woman.
Let’s break this down for a minute. There are two possibilities if you’ve gotten to this point: what I see in the mirror is true. Or my thoughts are true.
To swap genders, you must believe that your thoughts are truer than your body. They are in obvious conflict, and something has to give. Either the mind or the body.
But our minds have a history of deceiving us. How often have you thought something and been wrong? What if everyone who had suicidal thoughts valued those over their own bodies?
I think we can agree that our thoughts are not necessarily true. I can worry about things that may or may not happen tomorrow, or in the next year. The fact that I think them does not make them true.
But my organs are something that I cannot deny. They are, as surely as I am.
So the question is only what should I believe, my mind or my eyes? One has a history of misleading me, the other is undeniable.
But if there is no good reason to believe that these thoughts could be false, and culture tells us that they are true or good or natural, we may start to believe them. They may become part of us. And we may value those thoughts over whatever we see in the mirror.
We live in Fantasyland. Everyone is always on their phones. And its taking us further and further away from reality. And truth.
Think about what Instagram is. Snapshots of reality. Pictures of your friends, family, or celebrities in the real world. You get the tiniest bit of it. A single frame or a fifteen-second video. They are only a part of your life because you chose them over the present moment. You chose someone else’s life over your own.
But it’s not only that. It’s not like you looked up in a restaurant at the couple next to you. From there, it’s your perspective of their reality. But on social media, you get their perspective of their reality. What they think their life is like or what they want you to think their life is like.
My wife and I watched the Joker the other night. I couldn’t stop thinking this is a movie based on a comic book. If it was a play, there would at least be real people in front of me. I am watching a screen. Pixels of actors pretending to be people who never actually existed.
I have friends that share Twitch feeds on Facebook. If you don’t know, this is a place where you can watch people play video games online. And it’s popular.
First off, the video game itself does not actually exist in the real world. It never did. It started as an idea in someone’s mind, and ended up on a disk in your console. And your interactions are on a server who knows where.
Just in case that is not removed enough from reality, you can watch people play instead of actually playing it. Think about a memory of you walking your dog. Now imagine me watching a video of you walking your dog, if you and your dog both never existed.
I guess you could say that what is real is your thoughts. So in engaging in these things, you could share experiences with real people. If your mind is on the same thing, you shared something, right?
Remember ‘I think, therefore I am.’ If thinking is adequate to know that we exist in reality, we have to assume that thoughts exist in the same reality.
The problem with this is the fact that if thoughts are the only things that anchor these things to reality, how do you distinguish between two different thoughts of killing someone-one in a game and one in real life? You have to remember that the game has no anchor in reality. No one actually dies.
If thinking of killing people is OK, but killing people is not, why should we practice thinking of killing people? Is it possible to kill someone without thinking of killing them first?
But wait, the people you kill online are actually anchored in reality. They are other people like you. So it’s more like killing real people in your dreams.
So if reality has any value, if truth has any worth, put down your phone for a minute and be present in your own life. Put down your controller and go do something with your friends, instead of killing them in dreamland. You’re the main character in your own movie, and you write the script.
Don't Read This Blog 