Download Audio MP3 | 01:42:12
Two months ago I spent about four hours in two sessions answering questions from Rock for Life activists before their outreach tour this summer. This is the audio from the second of those two sessions. Click here for the audio from the first session.
I’ll list the topics below in case you want to jump around:
Every other Wednesday we publish a new episode of the Equipped for Life Podcast, available to everyone who purchases our course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations about Abortion.” Generally, these podcast episodes won’t be available to the general public, but we plan on releasing short clips from the episodes every Thursday, to give you a sense of what these podcasts are like.
In this episode of the Equipped for Life Course Podcast, Tim gives a fuller explanation of the argument that I presented in the course about avoiding burden of proof shifts, and responds to counter-arguments.
Download Audio MP3 | 00:06:43
In this clip from the full episode, Tim explains a pragmatic reason to not be quick to shift the burden of proof and responds to a counter-argument.
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UPDATE: One of our original changes included turning off guest commenting to make it easier to enforce our comments policy. Unfortunately this had the unintended side effect of virtually banning several or our commenters who are uncomfortable with creating Disqus accounts. So we did some googling and came to believe that we can still attempt to enforce the policies while allowing guest commenting. Given that, we’ve reinstating guest commenting abilities on our blog.
We’ve updated our comments policy to be more clear about what is and is not okay in comments on our blog. Because of the update above, there is only one change, which is an extended section on what is and isn’t allowed:
The goal of the comments section on this blog is simply and unambiguously to promote productive dialogue. But there is a major obstacle to that goal: the internet is a terrible place for dialogue. People are much more inclined to be poor at dialogue and impossible to reason with on the internet. Our solution is to ruthlessly and without warning ban anyone that is engaging in poor dialogue activity (as outlined below) for the good of all. The result of this is that some people we ban will not appreciate or agree with it. That is unavoidable. Some of these calls will be a simple matter of our discretion. If you want to debate people in a free-for-all environment where you can say anything you want, go to almost any other part of the internet. If you want to dialogue respectfully, charitably, and reasonably, we hope you’ll find this to be a helpful place to seek truth with us. Examples of bannable bad dialogue activity include (but is not limited to): being snarky, disrespectful, off-topic, libelous, flagrantly uncharitable, defamatory, abusive, harassing, threatening, profane, pornographic, offensive, false, misleading, or which otherwise violates or encourages others to violate my sense of decorum and civility or any law, including intellectual property laws; or (d) “spam,” i.e., an attempt to advertise, solicit, or otherwise promote goods and services. You may, however, post a link to your site or your most recent blog post.
Download Audio MP3 | 00:04:38
Little conversational agreements create clarity about the kind of conversation you’re having. This is especially helpful with difficult people, because it clarifies for you and for them that they’re being difficult and calls them to a higher standard of dialogue.
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Pro-choice advocates constantly describe the intentions of pro-lifers with the word “force.” “Pro-lifers want to force women to stay pregnant, force them to have babies, force them to go through pregnancy, force them to be a parent.” All of these statements are common, and all of them are false.
The word force implies a threat. It implies violence. It implies aggression. It’s a tragic irony given that the aggression, violence, and threatening behavior doesn’t come from pro-lifers, it comes from doctors killing babies.
The pro-life position is simple: you don’t get to kill people, very young embryos are people, so you don’t get to kill embryos. It’s very straightforward.
It is true that by saying “don’t kill the embryo,” other things naturally follow from that, such as “go through pregnancy, give birth, and either raise the child or give him to someone else who will.” But that isn’t the same as forcing someone to do these things.
If it sounds to you like I’m just playing semantical games, consider the following case: