Shane responded to my article written in response to his position. Shane abandons his prior position because I brought up that it is obviously false. His position is analogous to a person that states the NBA hall of fame is filled with only black men. You respond by pointing out that it isn’t true(Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Steve Nash). He then tells you to ignore all the exceptions. This is the same tactic that Shane takes to avoid the fact that he is wrong. Remember his original position:

My position is that men are causally responsible for all pregnancies. That’s a biological fact. Women can have plenty of sex & orgasms with 0 chance of pregnancy. I am not sure if you can separate morality and causality, but pregnancy is 100% caused by men’s pleasure, so …

http://spirited-tech.com/COG/2019/06/24/fletchers-cause/

So, pointing out exceptions are legitimate when they undermine the position. Your statement was simply you reverting to your prior position. But if we are specifically speaking to male caused pregnancies then he’s simply has asserted to a tautology. All male caused pregnancies are caused by males. Moving along:

ii) I was clear that I am talking about causality of pregnancy. I started my sentence about the morality of the situation with “I am not sure”. To make a claim about what I believe about the morality of the situation is a mistake.

Well, you’re mistaken on both fronts. Shane’s being deceptive. He is using this to propose a moral view. According to Fletcher, we should chemically induce men to stop producing sperm. Take his statements:

He is sure enough that he wishes doctors would chemically emasculate males in their teens. Furthermore, I’ve shown how women can be the cause of their pregnancies. Shane is operating on a narrow view of causation. Shane abandons the feminist argument about bodily autonomy to present that we should violate males bodily autonomy by force:

Abortion was never truly about the belief in bodily autonomy. This is a clear example that the debate is simply about no serious principles on the leftist side other than deceitful arguments to get to their ends by any means necessary. I’ve already collected resources debunking the mythical bodily autonomy that Fletcher thinks is taken from women:

http://spirited-tech.com/COG/2019/05/25/the-pro-life-catalogue/

ii) cont. And again you bring up the idea of women sleeping with lots of men resulting in pregnancy. That is not a prerequisite for pregnancy, and belies a bias against women that you obviously harbour. More about this below. Women’s voluntary sexual actions CAN NOT result in pregnancy. Only a man ejaculating into a woman can result in pregnancy. So it is a Mans voluntary sexual actions that are the cause.

Fletcher simply ignores my point about counterfactual causation. He operates on such a simple view of causation that it is difficult to whether he fully grasps there are many types of causes that exist. The points are being muddled here. My first point was that it is intuitive to think that a person that voluntarily engages in sexual activity takes the risk of getting pregnant(without coercion, deception, etc). Fletcher seems to think that any risk in an activity magically evaporates because you get results that you don’t want(only for women though). I wonder what Fletcher would think about a man that contracts an STD from a woman. Is it his fault or hers? Secondly, Fletcher simply doesn’t understand counterfactual causation. The point is that the situation wouldn’t have obtained if it wasn’t for something. So, mentioning that other causes are necessary isn’t proof that a woman can’t be a different kind of cause for her pregnancy.

iii) An interesting question that could have been the source of a dialogue. We could have used this to try and understand each others POV. Instead, you want to put words in my mouth in order to strawman an argument. Do you want to have an adult discussion or not?

Here Fletcher states that I’m not dialoguing with him and simply mispresenting him but I’ve corrected that already(look above). I’ve written 3articles in response to him. So, it seems like we are communicating about something. I have also quoted him verbatim with links to the threads.

iv) You end with a factually untrue statement. My wife has had 4 children during the course of our marriage. By you estimation, how many men did she have to sleep with in order to have those children? Pregnancy has nothing to do with how many sexual partners you have.

Shane doesn’t show the statement is false. The article explained counterfactual causation. Shane continuously brings up his wife. so, I’ll use her in a new example:

If Fletcher’s wife chose not to have sex with Fletcher, then their children(their entire lives in fact) wouldn’t have been born.

So, in this regard, Fletcher’s wife is a cause of her pregnancies. Fletcher may deny this only by asserting that he was a cause as well. But where did I deny that men are also causally responsible? I simply pointed out that they both can be causes.

v) I am a determinist. But that doesn’t mean that men depositing sperm in a vagina is not the cause of pregnancy. It just means that cause also has causes. And for this discussion, I can put myself in your world view, and have an opinion on it. Which is what I have done.

Nowhere has Fletcher stepped into the Christian worldview. He has simply created artificial rules and imposed them onto the Christian worldview. My point is subtle. If women aren’t morally responsible for their children because they were caused to be pregnant with such an unwanted pregnancy, then men are also not culpable because they were caused to impregnate the woman. I understand that given normal usual circumstances men impregnate women(ignoring miracles, artificial means). I never denied that and have clarified that already(see above).