Trot out a toddler strikes me as a bad faith argument that purposely ignores context. The argument significantly narrows the scope of the discussion in a way that is reductive to the pro choice argument and strategically advantageous for the pro life side. It's a clever rhetorical trap, but it doesn't really have a place in dialogue if the goal is to improve conversations between the two sides and is more likely to leave the opposition frustrated by your rhetorical prowess rather than convinced by your argument. The exercise should be reworked to allow the other person the opportunity to define their perspective rather than tricking him/her into allowing the pro life side to define it for them.
I would disagree that it's in bad faith or ignoring context. Trotting out the toddler for the question of fetal euthanasia helps the pro-life interlocutor figure out whether personhood matters to the person to whom we're talking, which helps us understand their views better (and, in turn, can help us help them to clarify the argument they're making).
That's a straw man. I never made the argument that trot out a toddler doesn't help the pro-life interlocutor identify the dominant values in his/her counterpart and I never stated that this exercise doesn't help the interlocutor clarify the argument on behalf of his/her counterpart. On both counts it certainly does, but that has nothing to do with whether the exercise is in bad faith or ignores context. The exercise carries a very damaging implicit bias and frames the discussion in a strategically advantageous way for the pro life interlocutor, especially when the interlocutor uses the exercise to define the argument on behalf of and for the often less experienced counterpart in the debate or discussion. Open your mind and listen to what I'm saying, not what you think I said. The paradigm with which you are viewing the interaction is skewed and it damages your outreach, your credibility, and your argument.
Elpollolocco, I just saw this comment. (I've moderated the blog less heavily in the last year due to my increased travel schedule.) This is a clear violation of rules two and four of our comments policy. I'll quote them here: #2: You may disagree with us. We welcome debate. However, we ask that if you disagree with us—or anyone else, for that matter—do so in a way that is respectful. In our opinion, there is way too much shouting in the public square to tolerate it here. #4: 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... (and it continues.) It is you who are strawmanning the way that we teach people to trot out a toddler. But you didn't ask any clarification questions about how we teach that. You simply assumed that we teach a tool in bad faith, even when one of our staff members said that wasn't true. You're not seeking to understand what we actually teach; you're seeking to win debate points, and given that you tend to be the first to comment on all of our posts, you've been around our material enough to know better than that. Looking at your comment history shows a clear pattern of being flagrantly uncharitable to our team, and that causes a more toxic atmosphere in the comments section. We've already been crystal clear about the kinds of comments we will keep up, and which kinds of commenters we will ruthlessly ban in order to preserve at least one spot on the internet where people have productive dialogues. Therefore, you are banned. I expect that you will probably go to Secular Pro-Life's blog or Patheos or one of the other places previously banned people have gone to whine about how unfair this is, and that's fine. Those places have different comments policies, driven by different goals. But this is our blog and our goal is simply and unambiguously to promote productive dialogue.
Secular Pro-Life just recently did a poll related to this topic: "What do you think of abortion for fatal fetal abnormalities compared to physician-assisted suicide?" A lot of followers discussed it further in the comments, if you're interested: https://bit.ly/2NszS1s
It's a clever rhetorical trap, but it doesn't really have a place in dialogue if the goal is to improve conversations between the two sides and is more likely to leave the opposition frustrated by your rhetorical prowess rather than convinced by your argument.
The exercise should be reworked to allow the other person the opportunity to define their perspective rather than tricking him/her into allowing the pro life side to define it for them.
On both counts it certainly does, but that has nothing to do with whether the exercise is in bad faith or ignores context. The exercise carries a very damaging implicit bias and frames the discussion in a strategically advantageous way for the pro life interlocutor, especially when the interlocutor uses the exercise to define the argument on behalf of and for the often less experienced counterpart in the debate or discussion.
Open your mind and listen to what I'm saying, not what you think I said. The paradigm with which you are viewing the interaction is skewed and it damages your outreach, your credibility, and your argument.
#2: You may disagree with us. We welcome debate. However, we ask that if you disagree with us—or anyone else, for that matter—do so in a way that is respectful. In our opinion, there is way too much shouting in the public square to tolerate it here.
#4: 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... (and it continues.)
It is you who are strawmanning the way that we teach people to trot out a toddler. But you didn't ask any clarification questions about how we teach that. You simply assumed that we teach a tool in bad faith, even when one of our staff members said that wasn't true. You're not seeking to understand what we actually teach; you're seeking to win debate points, and given that you tend to be the first to comment on all of our posts, you've been around our material enough to know better than that.
Looking at your comment history shows a clear pattern of being flagrantly uncharitable to our team, and that causes a more toxic atmosphere in the comments section. We've already been crystal clear about the kinds of comments we will keep up, and which kinds of commenters we will ruthlessly ban in order to preserve at least one spot on the internet where people have productive dialogues. Therefore, you are banned.
I expect that you will probably go to Secular Pro-Life's blog or Patheos or one of the other places previously banned people have gone to whine about how unfair this is, and that's fine. Those places have different comments policies, driven by different goals. But this is our blog and our goal is simply and unambiguously to promote productive dialogue.