Hacker News Reader

Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

The article completely fails to mention that religious people tend to believe that humans have a "soul" and animals don't, which seems to me to be a massive oversight. Of course Dawkins doesn't believe in the soul, but it's hard to see how his arguments are going to move anyone who does believe.

The other problem with the argument is that, on the other side, many vegans believe that killing animals for food is wrong.

View on HN

I think the main argument that Dawkins wanted to make is that many pro-choice arguments are completely missing the point and don't engage with the pro-life arguments at all, rather than try to engage with all pro-life arguments, and do a full exploration of them.

> I think the main argument that Dawkins wanted to make is that many pro-choice arguments are completely missing the point and don't engage with the pro-life arguments at all

I agree, but I think Dawkins fell prey to the exact same problem. He ignored the religion behind the pro-life movement and tried to break it down into biological terms. Is that really engaging?

The intended audience for this article is pro-choice people, not the pro-life people. It's trying to start a "strategy discussion" on how to better enact certain goals. In short, he's not trying to convince any pro-lifer of anything here, he's trying to convince pro-choice people to use better arguments.

And in general, I actually avoid the "soul argument" as well, even when engaging with pro-life people. First, I know several pro-life people who are not religious or even atheists, secondly I have no good arguments to counter a faith-based belief, and thirdly I think that for many religious pro-life people it's not even that important of an argument (for example many – though not all – pro-life advocates will allow room for nuance in cases of medical issues or rape).

He knows that as an evolutionary atheist, he has no attack against the "soul" or "man is made in the image of God" argument that would be persuasive to a believer so he avoids it.

What are the properties of a soul?

How does it work with twins from one egg? Does it split?

The primary property of a soul is its soulfulness.

An egg split into twins because it had too much soulfulness for one person.

By that logic, chimeras and gingers have too little soulfulness?

Yes to the chimera question, not sure about gingers.

Is the measurement unit for that metric or otherwise?

Pretty sure its an imperial unit.

And furthermore is the soul eternal? If the soul is present at conception and then the corporeal body is aborted, is the soul re-used in another child, or does it go to eternal judgement directly? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com