So far as I am aware, there is no generally accepted definition for human among biologists.
True. My definition is accurate but not complete.
True. But I might be talked in to the belief that taking that single skin cell, performing a somatic cell nuclear transfer into a human ovum, and then ensuring that division was beginning before destroying the cell is murder.
I don’t agree that personhood has such a high bar.
Based on what, though? Not on science, not on scriptural traditions about when life begins… so what exactly is it that is making you so confident about your arbitrary assignment of instantaneous full personhood to the moment of conception that you think it deserves to be the law of the land even for the majority of people who disagree with it?
I don’t mean to pester you with repetitions of a question that you don’t intend to answer, but I don’t see why you’d be avoiding it.
True. I agree that it’s an arbitrary assertion, although I contend that there is value in it.
I am perfectly happy to answer. I believe that there is a quality of personhood, of humanity, that is unlike animal life for mystical, supernatural reasons. Specifically, I contend there is a soul, and it’s at the moment of fertilization that the soul enters the cell, a process that does not exist for other mammalian life.
Because I am convinced of the truth of this proposition, I think it’s critical to avoid the wanton, deliberate destruction of such cells, even by people who don’t share that belief.
What becomes of the “souls” of all the zygotes and embryos that fail without intervention? What of all the cases where multiple conceptions that result in single births (I have heard that the number is rather larger than we are aware of). There must be an enormous repository of frustrated souls.
Thanks. As a personal religious belief of your own, I have no objection to that hypothesis at all. As a basis for secular legislation, I think it’s indefensible.
I don’t know the answer to that question.
But I am convinced that we tarnish our own souls by deliberately destroying the body of another life with a soul. I am equally certain that we are blameless when a genuine accident occurs.
That’s a very reasonable view.
I think there’s two steps missing in this explanation. You’d also need to place a value on the soul, and then in what way this value is diminished or negated (critically) by the deliberate destruction of such cells.
Heck, the soul attaches upon completion of biological process (fertilization) and leaves upon completion of another (death), aand is otherwise eternal. How does abortion affect the soul, if at all?
Naturally the catechism covers only birth control between married couples, but techniques other than natural family planning are “intrinsically evil”. Not exactly a “minor sin”.
<< In contrast, “every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil:159
Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.160 >>
Why would you believe that the soul enters the body at the moment of fertilization? Is there any evidence, scientific, scriptural, or philosophical, that would corroborate this belief, upon which you seem to found your opposition to medical procedures?
I see three issues that need to be addressed.
First, you must deal with your assertion that souls are uniquely human. This is a massive hurdle. You may not rely on arbitrary doctrine, you absolutely must convince us, positing the immortal soul, that only humans have them. The rest of us have observed plenty of evidence that the “spiritual” aspect of humans is shared by our animal kin and very little to suggest that our “souls” are unique to humanity. Can you make it over that hurdle?
Then, I see a problem with this being blameless for “genuine accidents”. Many failed zygotes, embryos and fetuses are not accidents per se but are the result of natural biological processes. In fact, the number your fertilized “souls” discarded naturally is ridiculously large – easily in the millions every month. So, all those discarded souls have to be shunted off to the soulfill, or perhaps somehow recycled.
But even then, you are left with what a genuine accident is. If we use a strong solvent on our machinery that, it turns out, results in spontaneous abortion in the women that handle it, does our carelessness make us blameless? What if the industrial waste that we probably knew we should not be dumping into the river correlates to a local decline in birth rates? Not on a legal, but on a moral basis, when are we blameless? If our skimping on wages leads our employees to seek the morning after pill because we do not pay them enough to support an addition to their families, do we escape any responsibility?
But finally, you demand accommodation of your mystical beliefs, merely on the basis of the fact that you believe it. I believe differently. You find my position detestable, and I find your overall doctrine loathsome, so who should concede to whom? There does not appear to be any middle ground here.
I don’t think Bricker’s under any particular obligation to convince anyone of that.
Recklessness seems like a moral standard as well as legal. With regard to recklessness, the important points would (I would personally say) be threefold; to what extent is the problem predictable, to what extent does the reckless behaviour directly lead to the problem, and what steps have we taken to eliminate the risk and make known what risk still exists? It doesn’t seem particularly onerous from a pro-life position to examine situations like the ones you’ve come up with here and end up with consistent answers as to blame.
Well, the best you can do is try to vote in a way that blunts his vote, since you’ve little chance of changing his mind. Express your views as freely as he expresses his. Try to cancel out his influence, as it were.
Hell, some significant chunk of the population is always going to be immovably wrong on any given issue.
It is a crucial component of his position. If he chooses not to at least make an effort to convince us, his position topples.
So again I ask, do Chimera’s have multiple souls? I guess I should also ask whether identical twins have the same soul, or half a soul each.
It isn’t and it doesn’t. Fun with assertions!
What? :eek:
It is and it does. Fun with gainsaying.