Does life begin at conception? I think it does.

[gophomaxx]

Life in Buddhist belief does not begin until a period after birth has passed. This period is available for the disposal of unwanted females in the pond of compassion. The Kwan Yuan, goddess of mercy rules over the pond and sees who is removed from the world of suffering at an early time thus saved from the life of suffering.

[Starboy]

Quote by: fedfem Not sure what your argument is here. Seems we are just playing the semantics game. Just to clarify...an embryo is not a viable human being(without medical intervention) until well into the third trimester.

I agree that semantics are tricky since the word human has so many meanings and uses. Some people use the word human to mean human being as opposed to a kind of animal tissue or stage such as a human egg as opposed to a chicken egg.

Starboy

[fedfem]

Quote by: Chancellor So, if someone doesn't remember anything prior to age four, his life hasn't begun yet? If the embryo doesn't have life, what does it have? It takes in nourishment, it grows, it responds somewhat to environmental stimuli: I'd say it has life.

Interesting...you just described a parasite.

[Blanh]

I think it is important to state that, pre-birth, a human being has about the same level of conciousness as a bird or insect. As a mind, this is usually classified as gregorian. Second order representation is something that is inherently and distinctly human. Killing humans at the pre-birth stage effects the conciousness of that being much like killing a bird or spider. Yet, we dont make nearly as big a deal about these things for obvious reasons. Birds and spiders do not exhibit the capacity to understand their role in the world. Neither does a partially developed fetus. The only differing characteristic is that the fetus has the POTENTIAL to grow into something that does. This is where anti-abortionist arguments should begin. However, the obvious flaw that ensues is that consciousness is static at every moment, and so it is nothing short of nonesensical to base an argument on the potentiality of a consciousness. Because, if this were true, every time I masterbate there should be picketers outside my home protesting.

[Starboy]

Quote by: Blanh Because, if this were true, every time I masterbate there should be picketers outside my home protesting.

I'm looking up your address right now. They will be there shortly. Better get your shorts on.

Starboy

[voyager]

I feel that many people are suckered into concept that "Life Begins at Conception" idea. Those who suscribe to that theory you skip over the question "What is human life"? It presupposes the question, as it was the question has been answered.

Life does not begin at conception! The most you can say about THE dividing clump of cell that results from fertilization is that it has a "POTENTIAL FOR LIFE".

The question becomes to what extent are we obliged to to let the potential becone the actual.

[FIFI]

so do cancer cells. But they aren't considered living either, are they?

[fedfem]

Quote by: Blanh I think it is important to state that, pre-birth, a human being has about the same level of conciousness as a bird or insect. As a mind, this is usually classified as gregorian. Second order representation is something that is inherently and distinctly human. Killing humans at the pre-birth stage effects the conciousness of that being much like killing a bird or spider. Yet, we dont make nearly as big a deal about these things for obvious reasons. Birds and spiders do not exhibit the capacity to understand their role in the world. Neither does a partially developed fetus. The only differing characteristic is that the fetus has the POTENTIAL to grow into something that does. This is where anti-abortionist arguments should begin. However, the obvious flaw that ensues is that consciousness is static at every moment, and so it is nothing short of nonesensical to base an argument on the potentiality of a consciousness. Because, if this were true, every time I masterbate there should be picketers outside my home protesting.

Many in the pro-life movement believe man should not spill the seed(the bible says so)and to this day do not understand how reproduction works. Matter of fact, that is why they do not want their children to take sex ed.

Dear miraculously palpitating cardio vascular sustained sentiencies:

Pehaps the most surely agreed upon facet in this issue is that it is fraught with complexities, alternating, mitigating, and harsh.

As like as not, most contributors to this discussion are aware that, globally speaking, approximately 35,000 children perish, every 24 hours, of malnutrition.
This is a solemn fact for which, until further notice, there is no easy solution.

Anti-abortion postures - especially as applied to impoverished '3rd world' cultures, condemns 35,000 children daily, to malnutritive death, before age five, while the same policy alleges to disallow abortion out of 'respect for life'...

Ergo: Insist that a chilld be born, only to proceed to post natally starve to death within five years. Is it not a tortuous premise to condemn a child to a birth, commencing a five year lifetime of consuming nutrients which, in a more realistically balanced control of births, would allow a controlled number of non-aborted children to live, where and when, otherwise, death by starvation is imminent?

(Re: the law of diminishing returns.)

Is there not an element of ' passing the buck', here - forsaken responsibility regarding the relativly more humane alternative of early
abortion, to minimize the number of otherwise doomed children birthed with the foreordaninment of slow death and correspondng suffering to Mother,
family and friends?

These are not easy issues. No consummate polemics or egress implied or intended here.
Truly yours does not pretext any specific solutions, but I do think it's a mighty sobering reminder of parallel, ironically irrresolute, often highly emotional alternatives - neither one of which in the presented context - beats the prematurely imposed reaper at the locus of this notoriously intense theme. Whereas, in such qualified cases, the so called 'respect for life'
decision is an empty - questionably honest gesture of what amounts to
further extending an unavoidably pejorative demise.

The dilemma includes the necessary choice of alluding to 'repectfulness of life' and being 'pro-life' - dissenting against most forms of what is often, otherwise, legal abortion (pro-choice; an acknowledged euphemism).

In some cases abortion is not left as a legal option, even to forcibly raped, consequently impregnated women. Even that issue brachiates from the demonic source of the seed to the innocent results of the ensuing fertilized egg and resulting foetus and what it connotes as an individual 'unrelated' to the circumstances of it's conception...

By some definitions forced upon the involuntary 'mother'. Her violation becomes a burden imposed on her through the ordeal of child-birth and 18 years of imposed - enormously life changing - responsibility; often resulting in the schizoid results of being obliged to love and care for a human life you are
forced to incubate, birth, care for, often accompanied by a real or imagined 'guilt' for having - perhaps inevitable - 'mixed feelings' about
such a child.

Regarding (1st trimester) abortion, such a victimized woman may feel, or be perceived as guilt ridden, damned if she does, and damned if she doesn't.
. .......................

Then there is the pensive argument that an amputated digit or limb is indeed human, but it is not 'a person'. Neither is it experientially
programmed with any particular experience (have a favorite color, song, artform, hobby, preoccupation, goal in life, sense of past, present or future, etceteras...)
............................

With regard to whether life begins at conception or at birth: generally speaking, Western (European) Civilization recognizes the beginning of life as commencing at the moment of birth - when you breathe your first air, independent of oxygenation provided by pre natal, umbilical physiology.

On the other hand, Eastern - Asian - perspective generally recognizes a life as commencing from the moment of conception.

My Mother was 2nd generation American Mongolian; she 'resolved' (in fluent Mongolian and Englsh) that most anyone could reasonably argue either side of this quasi-perplexing issue.

Notably, when the generally Western perspective of when the life of an individual begins, is corroborated with the Eastern perspective, then, each individual has in fact, two 'birthdays'.
The Eastern perspective of conception, nine months prior to the Western perception of life's beginning at actual birthing, of the nine month gestated, fully trimester developed result of the original moment of conception.

Meaning that, in this sense, any European - Western Civilization - originated person, may compute their Asian birthday to be nine months prior - in cases of full trimester gestation - to moment of their first breath of air, exposure to variations of light, and heat, etc. While Asians are left with the option of a converse computation, also bequeathing two birthdays per individual.

Thank you for reading this missive.

Kudos to Volconvo for their cordially extended invitation to join this interesting and educational forum.

Sincerely, Kent Benjamin Robertson
World's Number One Einstein Groupie.
Kraziequus@yahoo.com


Vini. Vici. Entiendo.

[eggosphere]

It facinates me the popular fight for life against all odds. It is far beyond debating with in what terms life is. Ok, a cell is life sure, a vegitised cancer patient is still alive. Fight for that if you so wish. But fighing for a right to life is a strange one when death is left out of the eqation as it is an equal and entire important part of life. All life dies, its nature. If i was in an era before our technoligy capable of reproducing basic bodily functions, a fatal injurie or disease would be just that, fatal. But now we enter the poor delema of people acting as a flesh bags run by machines when struck by terrible mentally and physically erroding diseases. If the have such a vivid right to life, where is the option of death? Its no longer in there hands if they cant communicate, and so they act as a platform of moral debate that letting her die is vial murder and is the same as killing a perfectly fit and conciously active person. The termaninal body lies motionless with a suffering in the mind nobody cared to mention. Nobody on the life crusade anyway. From what i seen in these debates gone by, the majority of humans say a lot before theve really though about quality of life rather than plain old life. Life is a versatile thing, the human psyhc is defiantly not in comparison. I know your all talking about killing babies but this is all completely relavent. I couldnt think of a worse demise than limbo between life and death. I myself will make sure i have legal documents to cover myself if i ever came down with a terminal illness that if im no longer responive to destroy, as i am no longer living by my own concept.

[eggosphere]

oh wow theres more pages than i noticed on here, ive probally just repeated something already said .__. all well, got my opinion out at least.

Great Thread, EggoSphere:
(The avalanche response compliments your ability to strike a fine chord. What you get for resembling a fertile oblate spheroid?) By the leave of all who haven't otherwise departed, consider the title and content of the now, perhaps 35 year old book, THE POPULATION BOMB, by Irene and Paul Erlich (authors of THE END OF AFFLUENCE).

The Erlich's, among many others, long ago forewarned of the finite ability of the planet to support a given number of persons, and, that if 'people' don't figure a way to control the exponentially increasing population in a gracious manner, sheer logistics will impose more harsh realities - famine, pestilence, war, and the 4th of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse', subsequent to the limitations of the garden that produces the agrononomy that sustains the population...' (Paraphrased).
The proffered caveat has been generally poo-poo'd, procrastinated, denied, derided and ignored. Increasingly displaced by an impetuously accented craven refusal to take responsibility for population control, wrapped in a contorted - Ingsoc-doublethink facade of 'respect for life.'

(And the exemplary flippant comparison of the use of a condom to the employment of a raincoat in the shower?)


It is an unfortunately fairly obscure - often denied - fact that there are more people alive on earth, today, then the sum historical total of the collective number of people who have ever lived here. That is a fact. Si.

So much for the old, ragged and ripped saw that 'there is nothing new under the sun'. Whereas since the approximate present population is 7 billion, and will extrapolatively double in the next eight years. And, since, globally speaking, massive portions of the existing population are already seriously under-nourished, the projected, forthcoming imminent disaster of accompanying pestilence, rioting, war and general anarchistic chaos is but a few comparative (yawning?) moments distance from the (ho hum?) present. Symptoms of this increasing world phenomena are in ever increasing evidence.

The procrastination of any largely coordinated affirmative action addressed to this oncoming jugganaut speaks volumes of a culture, and a world, unable to extinguish its own ('What?') flaming caboose, when it's on ('What?') fire.
Denial being much more - and less - than a large river in North Africa.

The afectatiously 'caring' cry of 'SAVE THE CHiLDREN!' is clad in an altogether different supply of diapers in this scenario.

"Here. Let me help you.", said the monkey, putting the fish in a tree.'
- Allan Watts.

Very much as the unstorable, most toxic substance in the world - the back end of the nuclear power cycle - is being 'heired' to the children of the future (superceded by presiding concern for immediate reward in the immediate moment, without any real concern for consequence, while making an artform of dodging responsibility), concern for whom is so frequently and plaintively expressed by - especially baby kissing politicians - today.

(There are over three hundred operational nuclear power plants in the United States, today. With over three hundred more on the drawing boards. No nuclear power plant placement or installation has ever been put on any ballot in the United States. Such - It Can't Happpen Here -installations are simply determined by a closed group of executives, completely uncontrolled by the democratic system, circumventing the power, will and autonomy of 'we the people'. Re: WE ALMOST LOST DETROIT: The Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant, by John G. Fuller <Three Mile Island. Love Canal. Chernobyl>..)

Each nuclear power plant brings a 30 billion dollar profit - from its outset, and becomes a ticking bomb, even when it's operating 'normally'... The nuclear power industry is not a step away from petroleum dependence, but, rather, owned and controlled by the petroleum corporate state- the most powerful, wealthiest industry in the world. Owner of the best U.S. Congress & Senate money can buy.

We the people are perpetually peppered with endless cliches and incantations of how, without nuclear power, we would revert back to the Stone Age.

A) That is untrue. and,

B) Better that we return to the Stone Age than go extinct as an irradiated, grotesquely mutated 'species'.

C) Progress in the energy alternatives of wind, solar and tidal power are deliberately oppressed, as well as the principles of such simple solutions to alleged challenging problems, as presented, for example, in the Stanley Steamer - speeds of 80mph, with comparable horsepower, with a daily fuel consumption of about a gallon of kerosene - innovated over a century ago.

Then there are the alternative sources of energy revealed by Nicolai Tesla (Who?), much of which (including the commutator and the full potential of alternating current) is still covered up, or, stolen by Thomas Alfa Edison, among others.

THE WHERE WE WERE

The 'updated solution' to the ('What?') population crisis has evolved from taking responsibility for avoiding the catastrophe of billions of starving people and the chaos and turmoil that accompanies such debacles has become a blase 'let nature take its course'; wherein, such 'philosophy' passes the power of people to constructively control their destinies, on to the phenomena of 'nature, taking its course'...

Reminiscent of a National Geographic article published about 15 years ago, wherein a prolifically photographed episode of an American Bison which had fallen through the ice on a frozen lake in Yellowstone National Park, was in the process - after having been roped around his horns by some incumbent tourists who were successfully rescuing the exhausted, drowning, freezing animal from its would be ice water grave; whereupon a Yellowstone Ranger happened upon the scene and ordered the rescue party to cease and desist ('Get a life'), in order to 'let nature take its course'...

The Ranger was adament. Heroically daring to aspire to a Perfect World. The nearly completed rescue was 'ceased and desisted', while the bewildered, betrayed animal perished of exposure and summarily drowned before the infuriatated volunteer rescue party's - smugly wizened, cold staring Ranger supervised - eyes...

Moral: The rescue of an animal, by humans or other animals, is 'unnatural'...
The 'enlightened' Ranger did the right thing, politically and morally corrected the wrongly behaving group of unedified rescue party participants.

This being the - exemplary - professionally guarded, legally sanctioned, stark madly insane case: let the publicly funded National SPCA - for example - go under, or be 'downsized', for (outlawed) lack of public contributions or assistance...

Why then, after all, should any efforts to avoid unnnecessary massive suffering by milllions of children and adults be planned or taken, since everything that lives, dies, anyway - without regard for the otherwise completely avoidable circumstances of premature death and unnecessary suffering? (The best is yet to come?) :eek:


"Im falling through a hole in the American Flag and Constitution of the United States'. - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

***********************

Corroborating +Post Script salute, to:

GORGO
Of The Lefties.
"The old joke goes: Why won't there ever be a coup d'état in the United States?

Because there's no American embassy in Washington."

William Blum, author of Killing Hope
....................................................

+ QUESTION:
"In any foreign country, how do you locate the American Embassy?"

+ ANSWER:
"Follow the lynch mob." - Anon
.........................

Oxymoronic Epigram:
'In a perfect world there would be no arguments.'
- Truly yours

Decryptification: 'In a perfect world, there would be be no people.'
(That problem is being seriously tested & enthusiastically worked on?) - Ibid

QUESTION:
"What did the non-sequitur, the oxymoron and the prevarication (re: the 3 body problem) agree upon?
ANSWER: Two wrongs don't make a right. But, three or more do."
- K.B. Robertson (Truly yours)

Thank you for reading this missive.

Sincerely, Kent Benjamin Robertson
World's #1 - Albert, The Axe - Einstein Groupie
http://einstein.periphery.cc/

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: Starboy Rider there are all sorts of conceptus that Americans do not eat. In other cultures it is a very different story. They eat stuff that would make you vomit and many in the world think that what Americans eat is just plain gross. We choose not to eat humans in any form (unless conditions are very dire) for social reasons. But unless something has changed I am not aware that women that have abortions are required to eat it. But even if your average American would not eat a partially formed chicken they would still be able to tell the difference between it and a chicken. All except you of course. Starboy

Again, you entirely miss the point. Comprehension thing??? The point was not whether it was too gross to eat or not, the point was that it isn't "just an egg" as you so mindlessly like to describe it. You don't even see that you contradict yourself in your own statement. You say that we don't eat partially formed chickens which are indeed chickens (just in early development) and then you say that they are not chickens (which they clearly are).

Quote by: starboy We choose not to eat humans in any form (unless conditions are very dire) for social reasons.

Glad to see that at least you have grasped that at any stage of development, that a human being is a human being.

Take some biology classes, the big picture isn't that hard to grasp if you get a handle on a few basic concepts.

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: samsara15 How much do you remember about the first year of your life? Life begins when we have will and memory of it. An embryo has neither.

According to you then, life doesn't begin until some 8 to 12 months post utero.

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: Blanh I think it is important to state that, pre-birth, a human being has about the same level of conciousness as a bird or insect. As a mind, this is usually classified as gregorian. Second order representation is something that is inherently and distinctly human. Killing humans at the pre-birth stage effects the conciousness of that being much like killing a bird or spider. Yet, we dont make nearly as big a deal about these things for obvious reasons. Birds and spiders do not exhibit the capacity to understand their role in the world. Neither does a partially developed fetus. The only differing characteristic is that the fetus has the POTENTIAL to grow into something that does. This is where anti-abortionist arguments should begin. However, the obvious flaw that ensues is that consciousness is static at every moment, and so it is nothing short of nonesensical to base an argument on the potentiality of a consciousness. Because, if this were true, every time I masterbate there should be picketers outside my home protesting.

I don't know which third world country you are posting from, but in the US, and most civilized nations, human beings have an inalienable right to life. Now in order to blithly write off the unborn, you must first demonstrate that they are neither human, nor living. You have not done either.

[Gorgo]

Quote by: Pale RIder human beings have an inalienable right to life.

Human beings who have been born.

[dev]

life began once, and once only. And that was probably a few hundred million years ago.

[Cephus]

Quote by: Pale RIder I don't know which third world country you are posting from, but in the US, and most civilized nations, human beings have an inalienable right to life. Now in order to blithly write off the unborn, you must first demonstrate that they are neither human, nor living. You have not done either.

Says who? You? The law specifically grants rights to humans who have been born. The laws grant a very limited number of rights to humans who have not been born. That's not likely to change any time soon.

You're just wrong, as usual.

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: Gorgo Human beings who have been born.

Where is that condition encoded into law?

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: dev life began once, and once only. And that was probably a few hundred million years ago.

But the lives of individuals begin all the time.