thordaddy
Posts: 486 Joined: Jan. 2006
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ericmurphy opines,
Quote | Get over yourself, Thordaddy.
If you could read and comprehend what I'm writing, you'd realize that my point is that it doesn't matter when life begins. You're hallucinating if you think I, or anyone else in this discussion, is doing any "flip-flopping" on this point (gee, I wonder which way you voted in the last presidential election). On this utterly trivial and stupid point, my position has been unchanging: that life had a beginning (whether it happened more than once or not, and no one knows the answer to that question) billions of years in the past. Can you possibly understand that simple statement? |
It doesn't matter to you and yet you still argue in favor of pointlessness and meaninglessness. Huh? Would your parents say your conception was pointless and meaningless? Have you or will you claim your children's conception to be pointless and meaningless? Ok... do whatever, but don't try to convince the rest of us that these "beginnings" are pointless and meaningless just because they are to you. If this is what science has to offer, what's the point?
But then you say, "life had a beginning," which is tantamount to saying life began at conception. This is exactly what I believe. Life begins at conception. You are certainly coming around.
Quote | For the purposes of the abortion debate, the question of when life "begins" is utterly meaningless. The only question that is of even remote applicability to the abortion debate that is grounded in biology (as opposed to ethics, religion, etc.) is when does an embryo become conscious. That's very much an open question, but as I said before, we can all be pretty comfortable in saying a group of a hundred cells (to say nothing of a single cell) is not conscious, any more than a fern, or a jellyfish, or a diatom is conscious. |
Excuse me if I'm missing the science in your statement. The question of when life begins would be very important if it coincided with the emergence of consciousness. And that is the very debate, isn't it? Some claim human life begins at conception and some claim it begins at some unknown point after conception with the emergence of consciouness. The question is whether this latter belief is merely a rationalization for abortion. There is certainly no evidence as to when one becomes conscious and yet you are adamant that it DIDN'T begin at conception. You must concede that consciousness REQUIRES human life first and foremost, but you won't concede that human life is conscious from its conception. This is fine, but you run into a problem.
If a zygote is not human life then a zygote, much like a ovum, sperm, flower or bacteria cannot become conscious.
If you are conscious and hence represent human "life" and where at conception a zygote, then it stands to reason that a zygote can become conscious.
And because a zygote can become conscious, it stands to reason that it must be human life and not the equivalent of a ovum, sperm, flower or bacteria.
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