[Starboy]

Quote by: Pale RIder See the corner that you have painted yourself into?...now you are saying that you were not human until you reached puberty...and had you been born sterile, you never would be human...This is the problem with trying to manipulate known facts into an improbable fantasy...you end up standing in a corner that you have painted for yourself looking quite stupid...imagine...according to you, none of us are human until we are old enough to reproduce...and if we never reproduce, we are never human...we don't even belong to a species...

It is not a corner that I paint myself into. We already do not recognize teenagers as full grown adults. We must somehow intuitively know that they are not. Gee I wonder why that is.

and you question my education..

If you don't like it then don't start it. I give as good as I get. When you first questioned my knowledge is when you opened your own knowledge up for questioning. If you don't like it then don't do it.

speices is simply a fundamental category of taxonomic classification, ranking below a genus or subgenus...it in no way requires reproduction, or red hair, or green eyes...or a dimple in your chin...Even sterile members of a species are vested members of that species..sterile members simply have a defect, they are not excluded because of a defect...one is not required to reproduce in order to be human, or any other species...

You asked the question, I answered it. Too bad you don't like the answer. It is a fact that being able to produce viable offspring is part of what constitutes a species. If you want to place man above nature then you have entered the realm of religious argument but if man is of nature then our understanding of nature is fair game in this discussion.

We are not talking about a specific member of a given species we are talking about all members. And the ability to reproduce is part of that classification.

And most of us die of natural causes...natural causes do not constitute murder...murder is when one human kills another human with intent...

Even those who are considered dead even though their bodies are alive? You have studiously ignored this point. This classification doesn't apply to some humans, it applies to all humans. That there is a classification of human life that is not completely described by the living state of the individual cells that make up that organism and yet the organism is still considered to be dead is a state of living organisms that you deliberately ignore. Yet this is how you want to simplistically frame the argument. Cells are alive therefore the human is alive. You know better yet you persist in your dishonest argument.

Now I ask again...before you were born, you were a living, growing, developing member of what species?

Same answer. Nothing has changed. Address the fact that people’s bodies can be alive but they are dead. Until you can do that you got bupkis.

by the way...I had seriously considered biochemistry as my career choice...I have taken various math and physics courses up to and including the 5000 level as well..

Good for you but biochemistry is still not biology. It is more like organic chemistry for cells. It is not as if they deal with multi-cellular organism as animals.

Starboy