Evidence Contrary to Evolution - The Cambrian Explosion

Well, I thought that it would be a decent idea to overview some of the strongest evidences against evolution.

Why? Is it because I'm an irrational crusader for the ignorant Christian Right? Well, I do lean right and I am a Christian but I am not irrational and really did start with an open mind before I began to gain knowledge of this subject and found the evidence to be compelling enough to confidently proclaim Neo-Darwinian evolution to be falsified.

This would be a good time, in light of the previous post on logical fallacies, to point out that my Christian beliefs are irrelevant to the truthfulness or veracity of my anti-evolutionary claims. If you disagree, you are committing the genetic fallacy. :)

OK, first up is the Cambrian Explosion (note the disclaimer about errors in this article). The Cambrian explosion refers to a period of time about 540 million years ago. Before this explosion (pre-cambrian) there were only single-celled organisms and non-differentiated multi-celled organisms (say sponges). Then, over a period of less than 5 million years something like 69 of 71 phyla ever to exist on Earth 'suddenly' appeared. Some things to note about that statement:

1. You will often see that period of time listed as 10+ million years, but the latest scholarship seems to be saying it's down perhaps to as short a time as 1 million years. I say 5 to be safe. The best 'resolution' for the dating comes from recent study of a fossil bed in Hunan province in China. References to the Burgess Shale site in Canada is old data.
2. 'Suddenly' means in geological or evolutionary terms.
3. Sometimes you will see the number of discovered phyla being listed as around 20. I think the difference is whether you count sub-phyla in the number.

This raises two problems for evolutionary theory. The first one is the length of time for the introduction of all of these new life forms. First, evolution can only move at a certain pace. Many evolutionists will say that the speed of evolution will accelerate and decelerate depending on environmental factors. While this is plausible, it's not supportable by evidence. Firstly, they usually mean that periods of greater stress drive faster evolutionary speeds. While this might be intuitively sound, the fact is that environmental stressors that increase the rate of mutation always result in widespread extinctions (this is borne out by the fossil evidence, and laboratory testing). If they are referring to an increased rate of natural selection, then it still doesn't answer the issue of the speed of mutations which is the 'engine' that drives the car. Mutations just are not interjected in a rate fast enough to drive the evolutionary explosion we see in the Cambrian.

For this reason, many scientists have historically claimed that evolution had been happening for hundreds of millions of years prior to the Cambrian explosion and that the 'explosion' is only an explosion in fossilization rates due to the right circumstances for fossilization, combined with the fact that earlier life forms were smaller, softer organisms that just aren't prone to fossilization.

This line of reasoning has been ruled out by the fact that we have an unbroken chain of fossilization throughout history prior to the Cambrian and we are adept at identifying single-celled fossils. In addition, any possible hope of this is precluded by the global snowball event that immediately preceeded the Cambrian. This snowball event covered the Earth's oceans with a layer of ice about 1 kilometer thick all the way down to the equator for a period of about 10 million years. The event was so catastrophic that none of the multi-cellular creatures seen in the Cambrian could have any multi-celled ancestors. As it stands now, after years of resistance to the snowball theory by evolutionary biologists, it has finally been accepted and is even now being called the catalyst for the Cambrian explosion!

Darwinian theory would predict that life would progress much more slowly than we see in the fossil record. It would predict that life's progression would not only be slow, but fairly methodical (ie. consistently happening too slow to see all around, much like the way a tree grows). This 'prediction' of evolution has failed.

Another prediction of evolutionary theory is that life's complexity would proceed in stepwise fashion. We should see the introduction of one species which eventually gives rise to a second related species, then a third until you eventually get a species that barely crosses the line and becomes the first member of a second genus. This would continue until you have a second family, then a second order, then a second class, and then a second phylum.

When this is depicted in a top-down manner (phyla containing classes containing orders...on down to species) you get this:

The problem is with what's been termed the Inverted Cone of Disparity. This refers to the observation that the fossil record, beginning with the Cambrian explosion, shows the vast spread of distinct phyla that then diversified in to various species rather than the other way around.

Darwinian evolution holds that all new species are descended from a similar ancestor. It is then absolutely inexplicable why so many phyla appeared in the Cambrian (practically every one ever to have existed in the history of the Earth!) and then for species to have diversified within those phyla. Over the course of the history of the Earth, scientists tell us that only one or two new phyla have been introduced outside that period of time less than 5 million years during the 'explosion'.

I cannot find the quote, but I have heard that Stephen J. Gould has called this the greatest mystery known to evolutionary biology. If anyone is able to confirm that quote, please throw a comment in here.

In my opinion, the Cambrian explosion falsifies Neo-Darwinian gradualism. None of the alternative explanations I've ever heard offered for this have any merit.

Note: in searching the web for "Inverted Cone of Disparity" I can only find references that originate with me (well, one other). I did not coin the term and have no idea why it's not all over the web. If anyone knows where the term comes from, or knows an alternative term for the phenomenon, please comment that in here too.

More Logical Fallacies

A while back I posted about some common logical fallacies. You can find that entry here. I'd like to cover a few more now. I find this important because recognizing these is critical to sorting out truth from falsehood in our society. If a person's argument for or against something contains logical fallacies, it should be a warning to you that their position might be wrong (having a flawed argument doesn't necessarily indicate their position is actually false). These can be classified as follows:

Appeals to Motive. These would include such things as:

• Appeal to Force - You are threatened to agree
• Appeal to Pity - You are persuaded by sympathy (consider the abortion question and rhetoric of rape or incest or inability to provide financially)
• Consequences - You are warned of unacceptable consequences of holding the a contradictory position. Not to be confused with a valid argumentum ad absurdum.
• Prejudicial Language - The terms used in the debate create an unjustified bias.
• Popularity - The proposition being argued for is true because it's popular.

Changing the Subject. These would include:

• Attacking the person (Ad Hominem) - Attacking the person's character, claiming them a hypocrite, noting their circumstances.
• Appeal to Authority - When the 'authority' isn't one, when experts disagree, when the authority is misrepresented, or the authority is anonymous.

Inductive Fallacies would include:

• Hasty Generalization - Extrapolating from a sample size that is too small.
• Unrepresentative Sample - The referenced sample isn't representative of the group as a whole. This mistake is made very often when doing polls and 'scientific' studies.
• False Analogy - Drawing an analogy between 2 things that are different in a critical way.
• Slothful Induction - A valid inductive argument is denied despite the evidence.
• Fallacy of Exclusion - Evidence that would change the outcome of an inductive argument is not presented. I see this done often in regard to the evolution debate.

Causal Fallacies include:

• Post Hoc - Because one thing follows another it is held to be causal. This is often done in 'scientific' studies too. One recent example is that a researcher claimed that the more religious a nation, the more social problems it has. All he showed was that among industrialized nations, the level of religiousity coincides with social ills. The Cause/Effect link was never established.
• Joint Effect - One thing is held to cause another when the truth is they are both caused by the same underlying cause.
• Insignificant - One thing is said to cause another (which it does) but that effect is insignificant compared to others. ie. Having guns causes murder...There is a much stronger causal relationship between narcisism and murder (ie. guns don't kill people, people kill people).
• Wrong Direction - The cause/effect relationship is reversed.
• Complex Cause - The cause identified is only one part in the cause/effect.

Well, that's enough for now. What I'd like to do is ask that my readers chime in with real-world examples of any one of these fallacies, especially when the example comes from public life such that we might all have seen the fallacy in action.

The Ruling On Intelligent Design

Well, I've written a couple of times about the court case over Intelligent Design in the Dover, PA school district. The final ruling was handed down yesterday. Because the original school board was voted out since the case began, there won't be an appeal since there's no one willing to appeal now. That's really a shame, and I think the judge took that knowledge to heart when he ruled.

I don't say that because I disagree with his ruling (which I do), but because he actually did things a judge shouldn't do. One of which is that he made a prejudicial statement (grounds for appeal itself). The judge said this:

To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

What is the judge's rationale for calling Intelligent Design 'grounded in religion'? Well, it was his observation that the school board members that enacted the policy were Christians. In fact, they were quoted by witnesses as saying that they considered Intelligent Design to be compatible with the Bible.

The problem with this, is that this commits the genetic fallacy. It's common knowledge in philosophy and logic (and should be in the legal system) that a person's personal beliefs have no bearing on the merit of their arguments. Either ID is a neutral scientific position, or it's not. And for this determination the testimony of the scientists about the theory itself are at the heart of the matter. Finding out that the people supporting ID believe in Santa Claus would not matter here.

You see, we could apply this same reasoning to evolution. It can be demonstrated, and has by many philosophers of science, that Darwinism as practiced by many scientists (and school board members) is a religious perspective. That means it's unconstitutional to teach Darwinism in schools...at least according to a consistent application of this judge's logic.

How about the idea that ID is unscientific and untestable? Well, I've written before (somewhere) that the same criticisms fall on Darwinism yet no one seems to care. You see, it can be readily established that Darwinism is untestable and provides the inability to make meaningful predictions in just the same ways as ID. There is definitely a double standard here.

The judge also said something I find interesting: This policy "singles out the theory of evolution for special treatment...". It seems the judge doesn't like the fact that the policy explicitly states that Darwinism fails to answer some things. He even admits this in his quote above, yet for the policy to admit the same thing amounts to some unfair singling out of the theory? I don't get his logic. How does suppressing the teaching of absolutely any alternative not itself constitute singling out the theory of evolution for special treatment?

This ruling amounts to censorship.

Note: Before you get all wadded up about this, realize that I do not advocate banishing evolution from the classroom. It should be taught, even if it's wrong, in the best possible light. It's a viable competing theory with incredible social importance. I just think the other alternative should be taught too. And even though I've not addressed it directly, the scientific evidence for ID is huge.

The Real History of the Crusades

Perhaps the most common attack made against Christianity goes something like this: "Christians suck because they want to kill everyone, look they tried in the middle ages! And you are a Christian and you suck too! You blood thirsty murdering scum!"

Ok, maybe the typical objection doesn't go quite like that. But with a bit of hyperbole I wanted to imply that attacking Christianity based on the crusades is really irrational. First, we should all remind ourselves that the truth of a proposition has nothing to do with the behavior of it's adherents. I could just as easily mention Hitler to an evolutionist or Stalin to an atheist.

I could even go on to point out that protestant Christianity shouldn't be blamed for the actions of Roman Catholicism.

I could stop there, but I won't. I won't because the truth of the matter is that we have all been indoctrinated with a politically correct historical revisionism. I'm going to quickly attempt to set the record straight by borrowing from Thomas F. Madden, author of The New Concise History of the Crusades .

The Crusades are generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are supposed to have been the epitome of self-righteousness and intolerance, a black stain on the history of the Catholic Church in particular and Western civilization in general. A breed of proto-imperialists, the Crusaders introduced Western aggression to the peaceful Middle East and then deformed the enlightened Muslim culture, leaving it in ruins. For variations on this theme, one need not look far. See, for example, Steven Runciman’s famous three-volume epic, History of the Crusades, or the BBC/A&E documentary, The Crusades, hosted by Terry Jones. Both are terrible history yet wonderfully entertaining.

So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.

How often have you heard an Arab decry the western aggression that was the Crusades? It's interesting that they forget that these were Christian lands before they were conquered by Muslim agression.

Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity—and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion—has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.

Shortly after Mohammed's death Islam began to conquer the region. For centuries they continued until the 11th century when the only remaining portion of the Byzantine Empire was Greece. In desperation the Emperor of Constantinople sent word to Christians in the west asking them to come to their aid.

That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.

Pope Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous. Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war. Why did they do it? The answer to that question has been badly misunderstood. In the wake of the Enlightenment, it was usually asserted that Crusaders were merely lacklands and ne’er-do-wells who took advantage of an opportunity to rob and pillage in a faraway land. The Crusaders’ expressed sentiments of piety, self-sacrifice, and love for God were obviously not to be taken seriously. They were only a front for darker designs.

During the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have demolished that contrivance. Scholars have discovered that crusading knights were generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap. Even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade. They did so not because they expected material wealth (which many of them had already) but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Europe is littered with thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments, charters in which these men still speak to us today if we will listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing booty if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing.

Pope Innocent III wrote this:

How does a man love according to divine precept his neighbor as himself when, knowing that his Christian brothers in faith and in name are held by the perfidious Muslims in strict confinement and weighed down by the yoke of heaviest servitude, he does not devote himself to the task of freeing them?...Is it by chance that you do not know that many thousands of Christians are bound in slavery and imprisoned by the Muslims, tortured with innumerable torments?

This is just a taste of the true history as far as the best scholarship has been able to uncover. Remember this the next time you are made to feel guilty for what your religion has perpetrated against the peaceful Arab people...or the next time you are tempted to criticize a Christian, or Westerner for that matter, for the Crusades.

More Comments About Crossan

Well, I'm almost done listening to a debate between Crossan and William Lane Craig moderated by William F. Buckley.

This debate is very informative in regard to Crossan's theology. He couches himself in a postmodern use of language such that he spends a lot of his time affirming the same assertions we would make about Christianity, yet he means something completely opposed to historical Christianity.

For instance, he was pressed by Buckley to explain on what authority he has redefined the term 'Christian' such that it applies to him. His dancing around the issue confirmed that he has redefined the term in a way that it's never been defined before. He is not a Christian except by his own assertions.

He also tried his best to avoid being pinned down by Mr. Craig when asked if he believed God was a real being. Crossan will say that God is real, but means he's a real construct of our own minds. When asked if God was a real, operational being during the Jurassic period of Earth's history Crossan simply replied that the question was "nonsensical". This belies the truth that Crossan sees 'God' as a construct of the human mind.

It's very interesting to delve deeply in to Crossan's perspectives. It seems to me that he's got a new age religion that he's calling Christianity. He talks about 'faith' healing people, but doesn't mean that they are healed by the object of their faith (God). He really means that there is some psychological-physical link that allows a person's beliefs to actually heal them of certain illnesses (an idea that I don't discount).

One contradiction that I've noticed in his position is that he claims that the disciples never intended their claims of the miraculous (namely the resurrection) to be taken literally by the readers. He wants to avoid calling them liars, and gets around this by stating that they meant to be taken figuratively and that the original readers understood this.

The contradiction comes in when talking about the origin of the 'resurrection' idea. He claims that the idea that Christ 'resurrected' originated out of the Jewish belief in a bodily resurrection (read that 'literal'). He even goes as far as to confirm that in Jewish culture, the idea of resurrection ONLY consisted of the idea of a physical, bodily (literal) resurrection. (See Sam's blog for a series on the resurrection).

Crossan and Divine Consistency

Last week I listened to a debate between Dr. James White and Dr. Dominic Crossan pertaining to the reliability of the Scriptures. Specifically, the thesis was "Is the orthodox, Biblical account of Jesus of Nazareth authentic and historically accurate?" Dr. White took the affirmative while Dr. Crossan took the negative.

I've been told that in at least one other debate, Dr. Crossan (an ex Catholic priest) conceeded that he does not believe in a personal divine being. What's really interesting about his brand of liberalism, to me, is that in spite of this he claims to be a Christian and talks the talk while all the while undermining the truthfulness of the Scriptures.

There were two things about Crossan's position in this debate that really struck me that I'd like to comment on here. The first is that he made a distinction between 'facts' and 'truth' which is quite artificial and I've heard from another liberal Christian that I've been dialoging with lately. The second is his concept of 'Divine Consistency'.

In regard to the first, Dr. Crossan will assert that the Bible is 'true' in that all the stories are designed to teach spiritual truth. For instance, the story of Jesus feeding the 5000 (click this twice to make it work) is designed to teach the truth that God has the ability and desire to feed our hungry souls (yet, this 'God' that Crossan speaks of must be the god within us even though he's not forthcoming in admitting this). That's all fine and dandy, yet he denies Jesus actually ever fed 5000 people. He says that this, and all other accounts of the miraculous are simply parables. This is where he makes the distinction between 'fact' and 'truth'. The story contains truth on a deeper level, but is not factual in that these events never actually transpired.

To this, I'd simply ask him to list the literary clues used in that time period to distinguish between factual, historical accounts and parabolic literature. You can do this for yourself by contrasting that account with an explicit parable such as the parable of the Sower. A few notable differences are that the parable doesn't have names or places.

If you concede the possibility of a God, then you should concede the likelihood that this God can orchestrate an actual event (factual) that conveys spiritual truth so that it's both of these things at the same time. In fact, doesn't this make the account all the more powerful?

The second thing, his idea of 'Divine Consistency', is a presupposition that God always acts the same way. This might seem logical considering the doctrine of immutability. This doctrine is found in Scripture, but can be supported simply via philosophical argumentation too. So Crossan has decided that an unchanging God can never act differently during one period of history than He does at another. So, since we don't see God performing miracles today, He must not have done them earlier. He seems to miss the distinction between essence or nature (which is part of immutability) and behavior.

During the debate, White and Crossan agreed that this was a presupposition that Crossan operated under. Crossan even admitted that there is no evidence that he could ever accept that would convince him that God had performed miracles in ancient history. So is 'Divine Consistency' a valid presupposition? I say no. As a presupposition it's not defendable. As a conclusion, perhaps. Yet Crossan never attempted to support this conclusion via a rational argument so for him it really is a presupposition. A presupposition must be valid without evidence. A valid presupposition would be the belief in the reliability of what we perceive with our senses. Divine Consistency would only be a valid presuppostion if it were applied to a non-personal force such as gravity. When applied to a personal force it would be as nonsensical as assuming that you will always be reading this blog (because you are now).

In fact, using the cosmological argument which proves that God created the universe from nothing at some time in the relatively recent past (recent relative to eternity), then we actually have irrefutable logical proof that 'Divine Consistency' is a fallacy in regard to God.

So Crossan's radical anti-supernaturalism is pretty easily refuted.

Ethics - and Your Daddy Kills Animals

Check out this fine publication by PETA. Your Daddy Kills Animals

I found it hillarious, but what's perhaps more funny is that PETA didn't mean it as a joke. They claim they actually used focus groups made up of middle schoolers and found this a very effective means of communicating their ethical claims.

Want to read something else funny? Well, I found it funny anyway, and again, this isn't at all funny to members of PETA so my apologies if any of you who wander across this are members. It's a transcript of 'The Situtation' with Tucker Carlson taking on a PETA spokesman on this ad campaign. You should make sure to read this because Tucker Carlson takes on a lot of the fallacies in their logic that I don't bother with below.

What I find particularly ironic is that PETA is, at the bottom of it all, making an ethical claim. They are saying that animals are of equal value to humans. Basically, they see humans as distinct only in that we've been lucky enough in the evolutionary crap-shoot to have gotten smart (plus we have those opposable thumbs...Oh, and we walk erect too...Oh, and there's speech..wow, maybe that's a lot of coincidences...but I digress). So they would label someone who disagrees as a 'speciesist'.

I can understand why they claim that humans are of no more value than animals; it just follows from naturalistic evolutionary theory. What I find ironic, is that they are making an absolute type of moral claim. They aren't just saying "we think this is wrong, but you are free to decide for yourself" (a claim I'll bet most of them would make about abortion), which would be an ethical perspective called personal relativism. They aren't even making the claim of cultural relativism that our society should define what's right and wrong. I say this because, after all, this ethical perspective leaves you to define morality by concensus and all the polls will show that most people support killing animals. By the way, cultural relativism would make these PETA folks immoral by definition.

No, these people are making an absolute moral claim: namely that it's wrong for anyone to murder animals. The problem is that their naturalistic/evolutionary perspective doesn't allow for any objective moral values!

PETA's philosophy self-destructs.

On another note; it's interesting how this issue has many common themes with the abortion issue that we've just covered. PETA defines fish, in this case, as being valuable beings because they feel pain and exhibit intelligence. These two qualities mean, in PETA's reasoning, that fish experience horror and suffering. This happens to be the criteria that Peter Singer uses to define the value of life (sort of).

They even use science (poorly) to support their claims. I haven't dug in to any of the studies they purport to show that fish learn, but I would pay careful attention to the methodology used. For instance, they say that some fish 'learn' to avoid fishing nets by watching their 'friends' get caught. If they aren't careful, they could simply be measuring natural selection selecting out the fish that instinctively zig when they should have zagged. This leaves only the fish that zag and it looks like the remaining fish have learned to avoid nets.

And as for feeling pain; that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about how the fish perceives that pain. We have no way to know if they are suffering anxiety as a result. Of course we know that some higher order animals do. Consider a dog. You can tell that pain causes it existential suffering because of the way it cowers when expecting or fearing more pain. I don't advocate cruelty to animals, but even if they can suffer, it doesn't follow that their lives hold moral value.

PETA needs to go back to college and study philosophy.

Abortion Part IV

Location:

There are those that would say that life or personhood doesn't begin until birth. These people defend abortion up until birth and defend the practice of partial-birth abortion. It's almost not worth arguing because it's almost universally agreed that nothing about that person changes in the last few moments as it moves 7" down the birth canal.

Despite what the extremists say (those who support partial-birth abortions) there are very few people in American society who support this procedure. But here again we have a property that has absolutely no ontological value. A person's location alone can not in any conceivable sense determine their status as a human being.

My guess is that most people who defend abortion up until birth do so because they have some other criteria for determining valid human life than the fact that it's in a uterus.

Dependency:

I think that most would try to use the fact that the baby is still dependent on its mother for life as some sort of justification that the baby isn't yet alive. The baby is receiving oxygen, even up until birth, through the mother's lungs and blood via the placenta.

Can this possibly work as a valid determiner of someone's status as a human being? Well, there are differing degrees of dependence. I have trouble seeing how one can be chosen without them all. When a child needs a parent to survive in terms of food, clothing, shelter we don't say that the parent is justified in killing them, or worse yet, claim they aren't really living humans.

And, of course, this would result in the problem that laws would have to change such that if someone were dangling helplessly from a rope that I own, I have the right to kill them since they are dependent on me.

This idea will allow for the killing of disabled people, or people on life support.

Consider for a moment Christopher Reeve in the years after his accident. He was immensely dependent on people and machines for survival. I'd say at least as much as an infant in a mother's womb.

Would you be prepared to hold consistently to this ethic and say that his caregivers would have been justified in killing him? Or more precisely, in stating, for the record, that he was no longer a human worthy of legal standing?

A wrapup:

My guess is that most who support abortion won't read everything I've written and really argue that a fetus isn't human (check the DNA), or that it isn't living (it's got metabolic processes going on). In the end, what they will try to assert is that the life has less value than the convenience of the mother.

If you read the comments on the previous posts, one of the common sentiments is that it would be more cruel for a child to live unwanted than to be killed. Is this true? Certainly it's cruel to grow up unwanted. But if this is your position, please do me a favor and put a comment here explaining how you justify one person deciding for another whether their life is worth living. I've known some kids who were unwanted by their parents. I don't know any of them who wish to die, or wish they'd never lived, or who say their parents should have had any say in their status.

What about the idea that having an unwanted child leads to child abuse? Well, how can you say it's more abusive to neglect and beat a child than it is to kill them? This is just plain screwed up. If this is your position, then please be consistent and admit that you support killing 5 year-olds for the same reasons.