Winning Friends and Influencing People the Richard Dawkins Way

[Martinus]

He faced a backlash for his comment, with one mother, who has a child with the genetic condition, saying: "I would fight till my last breath for the life of my son. No dilemma."

How does that statement in anyway justify that emoticon?

The bitch was being overly dramatic?

[Martinus]

Besides she is totally using anecdotal evidence ("my DS kid is great so noone should abort their") and appeal to emotion, which is always bad form.

[Josquius]

He faced a backlash for his comment, with one mother, who has a child with the genetic condition, saying: "I would fight till my last breath for the life of my son. No dilemma."

How does that statement in anyway justify that emoticon?

Downs fetuses should be aborted !=  your son should be killed.
Not by a long stretch

[Viking]

yet another reason why 140 characters is only enough for bumper sticker slogans and not actual complex (as in having many parts) ideas.

from his website about what he would have said with more than 140 characters

"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 I agree that that personal opinion is contentious and needs to be argued further, possibly to be withdrawn.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."

[Martinus]

Ok, now I perfectly 100% agree with what he said.

[Viking]

Ok, now I perfectly 100% agree with what he said.

This bit amused me

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.

[Tamas]

Well, first of all if I ever faced this choice and agreed to abortion it would probably haunt me for the rest of my days. But I do agree with him.

[CountDeMoney]

He faced a backlash for his comment, with one mother, who has a child with the genetic condition, saying: "I would fight till my last breath for the life of my son. No dilemma.”

How does that statement in anyway justify that emoticon?

Because Tyr's parents would never have said that.

[The Minsky Moment]

The problem with Dawkins is that he is perfectly logical and completely insensitive at the same time. Human morality has developed so that there is a lot of grey areas and answers are not always internally consistent and binary.

So when is the real Martinus coming back?

[The Minsky Moment]

yet another reason why 140 characters is only enough for bumper sticker slogans and not actual complex (as in having many parts) ideas.

from his website about what he would have said with more than 140 characters

No one forced him to tweet.  If 140 characters wasn't enough to explain his nuanced view then he either should have said something like "it's a complex moral problem but my view is no" or just not address the matter through twitter.

[KRonn]

Dawkins is pretty hilarious actually, crude and rude, but funny as heck. And he has a way with words with some of those ingenious insults he comes out with. Lol...

[Razgovory]

yet another reason why 140 characters is only enough for bumper sticker slogans and not actual complex (as in having many parts) ideas.

from his website about what he would have said with more than 140 characters

"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."

I wonder if they could discover prenatally that the child will grow up to be gay if they should be aborted as well.  Gays have higher rates of suicide, and from that we can probably conclude higher rates of unhappiness.  So would aborting the gay child be the right thing to do if you were interested in increasing human happiness?

[KRonn]

After I had some law school under my belt, a good friend asked me if I thought he could sue his mother for not aborting him.

Well, I was doubtful at first, but hell, I put my mind to it and hit the books and with a whole lot of elbow grease and a lot of fancy talking, we argued the case in front of the US Supreme Court, and goshdarnit they ruled in our favor. 

I told him it probably wasn't a recognized cause of action at this point.

Lol, with the US legal system and it's bizarre propensity for ease of lawsuits over anything, we shouldn't be surprised when a case like this comes up.   

[garbon]

I wonder if they could discover prenatally that the child will grow up to be gay if they should be aborted as well.  Gays have higher rates of suicide, and from that we can probably conclude higher rates of unhappiness.  So would aborting the gay child be the right thing to do if you were interested in increasing human happiness?

On some level isn't that attacking the problem from the wrong direction? After all if gays are generally more unhappy, I'd assume most of that stems from society being intolerant. I wonder if rates of unhappiness will stay the same as we become more tolerant (allowing for life goal things like marriage, children, etc.).

Because, otherwise, yeah then we're heading down a path of well perhaps we can use abortion to increase human happiness by weeding out differences. Can't be picked on for being different if we're all the same.

[Malthus]

After I had some law school under my belt, a good friend asked me if I thought he could sue his mother for not aborting him.

Well, I was doubtful at first, but hell, I put my mind to it and hit the books and with a whole lot of elbow grease and a lot of fancy talking, we argued the case in front of the US Supreme Court, and goshdarnit they ruled in our favor. 

I told him it probably wasn't a recognized cause of action at this point.

Lol, with the US legal system and it's bizarre propensity for ease of lawsuits over anything, we shouldn't be surprised when a case like this comes up.   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_life