# Bush may make use of his first veto on a critical stem cell bill **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 18, 2006, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-may-make-use-of-his-first-veto-on-a-critical-stem-cell-bill/364948 "2006-07-18T00:38:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2006, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-may-make-use-of-his-first-veto-on-a-critical-stem-cell-bill/364948/241 "2006-07-21T16:32:12Z")
[QUOTE=Dead Badger] Well, when you asked what secular purpose there was behind curtailing stem cell research, I rather thought that implied you didn’t think there was one. [/quote] No I was saying that in respect to GW Bush for whom there does not seem to be a secular reason. If he has one then that’s all well and good and I would hope he brings it fore at some point in time. > [@](#): > > To be clear: do you believe that the establishment clause should prohibit President Bush from signing this veto? No. As said I am not interpretting the first amendment to mean “that no person holding public office can use their religion to motivate any of their actions.” That you would rather believe I am talking about the First Amendment and not the tenth Federalist paper is not really something I can do anything about but again redirect you to what is the “job description” for anyone serving as a representative in our republic. Whether the person is creating or barring laws is irrelevant, the whole raison d’aitre of their job (as opposed to a simple democracy) is to try and enforce reason and logic when popular opinion flies in the face of such. > [@](#): > > More than 200 years of jurisprudence suggests that what is actually allowed is substantially different to what you think ought to be. Looking back over the last 200 years I see a steady upwards slope of things that are, via evidence, more just having been successively made to happen. At no one of hose points was religion a deciding issue when things went forward, be it slavery, suffrage, labor laws, or what-have-you. Personally I would rather see this trend continue, if not sped up. If you would rather believe that modern day society is as enlightened as the world can ever get then by all means. But personally I see no reason to think that modern religions’ morality is any more to be trusted than that of 1820. > [@](#): > > Forcing children (whether explicitly or constructively) to worship one particular religion’s God is a veritable light year away from withholding funding from something whose opposition is not even uniformly religious, let alone uniformly from one religion. I had no interest in what the case was about, nor did I discuss it any. My point was in introducing what actual law there is concerning the separation of church and state and the Supreme Courts own litmus test. What law there is is entirely in the First Amendment and as said serves no purpose beyond that “[…] the govenment not favor any one particular religion.” Which can be tested by “the law in question must have a valid secular purpose, and its primary effect must not be to promote or inhibit a particular religion.” Anything beyond that is not-law and is simply the personal dream of me and the founders as written in the Federalist in regards to what the “Job Description” is meant to be. Personal I would say that this makes it “required” just as much as I would say it is required for people to do things they personally don’t like but that are part and parcel of what they are getting paid to do. [quote] It’s eminently possible for most things to be both religiously motivated and logically justified, even if one disagrees with the premises used for this justification. [quote] I have no issue with what motivated the person, only with whether they can argue it outside of “because God said” and whether they can make choices based solely on those arguments. [quote] In the instance here, the premise is that the fetus is alive; [quote] The premise you proposed was that the fetus is a human and that humans are all of equal worth regardless of the level of development. This is a simple debate between whether “Development” should trump “Human DNA” or the other way around. If that is what the vote is on, then I have no issue with either outcome (beyond that I disagree with the logic of one.) If however the argument is about a Human Soul rather than Human DNA then, you’re going to be hard pressed to convince me that we aren’t talking about the issue in religious terms. > [@](#): > > If, however, you’re trying to argue that the First Amendment can somehow be used to excise any religious motivation from our legislative process, then I think you’re both wrong in stating that it enables such a thing, and indulging in massively wishful thinking in believing that separating religious motivation from the morass of subjective morality is even possible. No, the only person to ever suggest that was you. And I specifically said that I was not. I do assert that the founders intended for the nations representatives to do such, but as stated in the linked paper, realised it was unfeasible. The first amendment is simply the most they could put into law towards this end and have any hope of it succeeding. So not everything that one could ever hope–but there is no way to police ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2006, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-may-make-use-of-his-first-veto-on-a-critical-stem-cell-bill/364948/242 "2006-07-21T16:40:08Z")
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena] I say that this is a perfect example of where requiring a valid secular purpose and scientific evidence would outweigh any religious opinion one might have. [/QUOTE] So if the evidence is that the embryo is going to have one of two futures: 1. Be killed and then flushed down the toilet 2. Be killed, used to save lives, and then flushed down the toilet. If both involve killing the embryo, what logical reason is there to not go for #2 that isn’t a just knee jerk reaction to the whole topic? If the only secular argument is that it is a human, well the same bad stuff is going to happen to the human either way. If the only religious argument is exactly the same, then all that changes is that whoever killed the embryo is going to Hell. But the person is going to Hell either way. ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2006, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-may-make-use-of-his-first-veto-on-a-critical-stem-cell-bill/364948/243 "2006-07-21T17:40:24Z")
I see this as a modern dyt equivalent to book burning. Some knowledge should not belong to man. At least some people want it that way. Ignorance never seems to further world progress. The possibility of enormous profits from the stem cell reserarch tells me it will be done. If not here the rest of the world will embrace it and pass us up. We are risking a lot to satisfy a religious minority. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2006, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-may-make-use-of-his-first-veto-on-a-critical-stem-cell-bill/364948/244 "2006-07-21T18:00:48Z")
[QUOTE=Sage Rat] So if the evidence is that the embryo is going to have one of two futures: 1. Be killed and then flushed down the toilet 2. Be killed, used to save lives, and then flushed down the toilet. If both involve killing the embryo, what logical reason is there to not go for #2 that isn’t a just knee jerk reaction to the whole topic? If the only secular argument is that it is a human, well the same bad stuff is going to happen to the human either way. If the only religious argument is exactly the same, then all that changes is that whoever killed the embryo is going to Hell. But the person is going to Hell either way. [/QUOTE] I’m not going to debate this because I don’t necessarily agree with what GW did. Your point was that I was wrong about those in government being justified in trying to be true to their religious convictions when making law. Whether or not there is justification in this particular case is another matter altogether. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2006, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-may-make-use-of-his-first-veto-on-a-critical-stem-cell-bill/364948/245 "2006-07-22T16:14:05Z")
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena] I never said she could be happy or sad. But, she could be healthy or unhealthy. [/quote] Even using those terms along with a “she” implies some imagination of what they mean when applied to a baby or a child, not a zygote. Again, none of even the most basic components for a “she” are present. > [@](#): > > I don’t think you can deny this is true…there is an entire medical specialty dedicated to the health of developing babies. An embryo/zygote isn’t a baby. While those cells can be functioning in certain ways or other, their “health” is as vastly a different equation from the health of a baby as anything could be and still be alive. Shrimp are more like your daughter than an embryo. > [@](#): > > Unique in the sense that it is not the same DNA as the mothers…it is a distinct entity from her. So if they were cloned cells or a parthogenetic birth (which is now possible, btw, and happens in other animal species already) that would make some difference? I don’t think you’d say it would, so this characteristic is irrelevant. The fact that its DNA might be the same or different from the mother’s is totally irrelevant. Was it okay to abort the MOTHER in the womb? She had the same DNA, after all, as the cells you now think its okay to kill. > [@](#): > > The instructions are there in most cells, but they do not have the ability to develop into a person, as the embryo is more than likely to do. Neither does a zygote, if you put it in a petri dish and culture it. “Ability” is relevant. And in this case, that “ability” is the matter of a few chemical triggers that we could turn on and off at will. It ISN’T any capacity that is itself directly relevant to morality. > [@](#): > > Trust me, I am not confused in the least. My moral stance is rooted in the ethic that ALL human life is important, by virtue of its existence. But those are just words, at least in the way you are treating them: there’s no meta-ethic behind that. WHY is human life, and just, apparently, human life important? What are the basic values and reasons why we consider this human life important and this, say, pig life unimportant? And how and why would those reasons apply to an embryo? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-may-make-use-of-his-first-veto-on-a-critical-stem-cell-bill/364948.md?page=12)