Do you really intend to assert, with a straight face, that an unborn human baby is not human? What is it then? An oak? A dandelion?

A kidney is human tissue – it isn’t an oak or a dandelion, either – but isn’t a human being. The argument is about whether a blastocyst or fetus are human beings or not.

You may well think the position that a conceptus isn’t a human being is wrong, or even reprehensible. But if you want to convince someone of that, it will be most useful to address their actual postition.

Begging the question. You can’t simply assume your whole argument. I can just as well assert that dolphins are human beings (I hear that corporations are people), and criticize you for not treating dolphins as human beings.”

Do you really intend to assert, with a straight face, that an unborn human baby is not human? What is it then? An oak? A dandelion?

Does that sound reasonable? No, because it’s not true. Some religious people do in fact do that – but not all. In many places, not even most. But “it happens”.

The thing is, making broad generalizations is easy but rarely (if ever) accurate. If you’d just said some “WEIRD people bring up reductio ad hitlerum whenever an appeal to group loyalty is made”, I wouldn’t have made a point of it. I honestly haven’t run into that, but I’m willing to believe you have.

But without qualifications, your original statement isn’t just insulting, it’s unjust – as insulting, unjust and inaccurate as the first sentence of this comment.

What is just as common, and more legitimate for WEIRD people is that a lot of them worry that group loyalty can lead to intellectual dishonor via the temptation to choose what the group says over what one thinks is true. That is a valid claim; the fact that there are so many balances is just one of the reasons why it is so hard to be a good person if you are inclined to try. Also WEIRD people when the concept of group loyalty is brought up have an image of screaming mobs.

I have met all this enough times to bear witness that it does happen. That does not mean that your WEIRD friends are like that. It means that it happens.

Finally Ray, and anyone really, as a side note, don’t misunderstand the acronym. WEIRD does not mean Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic. It means a certain value system that tends to be held mainly by a faction of the above. A substantial portion of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic people are non-WEIRD and have no intention of being WEIRD.

It is almost considered a vice in fact: WEIRD people bring up reductio ad hitlerum whenever an appeal to group loyalty is made.

Guess I’ve never run into someone WEIRD in my life, then.

Spartans definitely were not WEIRD. But when they killed a diplomat in a rage, not only did they regret it, they came to a conclusion that they were cursed by the gods and asked for volunteers to go to the Persian King’s court and offer their lives.

The rioters haven’t done that yet.