avocationist
Posts: 173
Joined: Feb. 2006
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| Quote | | That's not my point. My point is that to claim, as Thordaddy has about a million times, that "life begins at conception" is as arbitrary as saying it begins at birth, or age 18, or age 40. |
Conception is a unique and funamental milestone without which you could not have your specific set of genetics, and it is the event which starts a body to forming out of the potential contained in the sperm and the egg. Your 18th birthday is a day that follows other days and it could pass unnoticed. I'm not sure why you would think there's no difference between conception and turning 40.
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Yet, you clearly use the world "potential" because the "unique individual" may be readily disposed of. |
that's only one reason. It could be miscarried. Also, I do see the fundamental nature of the conception event, but I d o not think of things as separately existing without reference to other things, and all things unfold as processses within larger processes. If there is a soul we do not know when that soul inhabits the body, and the zygote does not have a mind or awareness, unless it be a spiritual awareness. If there is a soul then that soul could inhabit a different body, and I just don't think it is a good idea for people to have unwanted children that they are not prepared to care for. I do not think that an unformed albeit potential human has all rights when it has no responsibilities. I do not think it has the right to demand of the mother that it's life, which is not yet formed, should take precedence over hers. A life form which cannot even breathe on its own or metabolize its own nutrients cannot demand the use of someone else's body. This should be given graciously not under duress. I'm against late abortions but I don't think early abortions cause any suffering. It is silly to insist that a woman have a child at the wrong time because that almost certainly means that she will not have another child later that she could care for better and with less stress. I think that unwanted children brought forth under stress is a main cause of unhappiness and spiritual problems in this world.
None of this means that it is to be taken lightly, and I have never met a woman who did. For those few 'low-life' women who have taken it lightly and had multiple abortions, we should be very thankful that they are doing so.
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If you want to believe that you are a mere individuated outgrowth of one very large and very old entity and your death represents nothing more than this entity clipping his toenails, believe it. But you readily admit the even the most micrscopic change in those last billions of years and you would NOT EXIST. One change in sperm or one changed egg going back million and billions of years. |
Well I think exactly that - there is one all-encompassing being and it is alive, and within that being are many individuals, just as there are cells in your body that have individual existence and a life-span. Except in our case we have awareness, so we aren't toenails. But you seem to confuse the material with the spiritual. If you are a materialist, then I suppose it is sad to contemplate a death, but why not also be sad about all those potential humans who will never be born? Every change in a sperm or egg throughout all our past has meant that untold people, wonderful people some of them, have never seen the light of day. Your existence has negated the existence of others. .
I don't assume a newborn is conscious, I see its consciousness. consciousness can perceive consdiousness.
Eric Murphy is right that there is no one moment when human life becomes human life, because it is an unending flame that passes from body to body, but conception is certainly the moment when the materials to create an individuated human get started.
I don't understand where the consciousness thing fits in with your arguments. but I think it is because most people agree infanticide is wrong, and you hope to persuade people that a newborn isn't conscious, yet it's wrong to kill it.
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