Does life begin at conception? I think it does.

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: Technosoul I would also question what people think of as "life" per-say. Is a sperm a human being? It seems to be alive because it can swim and that is before conception. So the real question might be when does human life start? We have the sperm and then the sperm knew the egg - then a anonymous stem cell which matures during and evolutionary process in the womb, passing through stages where it looks like a fish with gills, then like a small animal with a tail, then little by little takes shape as a human baby. Does a human being have gills and/or a tail? And so you see that it does not evolve into a human being until after a few months of evolutionary changes within the womb. "It" being used generically as a term for life before human life. Now the anti-abortionist would debate that it is all part of a process that in fact will become a human being and once the process is started then we have the moral responsiblity not to abort the life developing - even if it has no human rights until after birth. For example if the stem cell is a human at the moment following conception then it should be issued a "conception certificate" so that it will belong to the country where the conception took place, not where it was (is) born. (with a birth certifitcate) - which certifiticate in turn gives life form it's rights relative the country where it orginated. Needless to say stem cells are not given certificates of conception and so have no real rights under any country because they cannot be an American or whatever until birth. And so also we should not count chickens until the hatch. Now that life process started long before the one child in question was born, life started thousands of years ago as far of this human strand goes. The most important part of that process for continued reproductive life is the sex drive which becomes dominate from the teens on up. So if you tell young people who are old enough to be reproductive not to have sex at all until married then you are aborting the natual processes of reproductive life and thus the baby human that might have been born to that highschool mom will never see the light of day.... so using will power not to have sex to avoid having children is an abortion of the life process that would result as a human being of the next generaiton. So life did not start with conception but with the first human couple at the beginning of the process and or via some evolutionary pre-human speices. So it must have the complete appearence of the physical human and in addition the self consciousness of being "I Am". And most experts would agree what it must be independant of the mother so that the individual can breathe and take food as a seperate identity. Technosoul

For all the talk, you seem to have little, if any grasp of basic developmental biology. Or perhaps you do, but prefer to cast smoke screens in order to hide the truth. In either case, you have made no case.

First, sperm and eggs. This one is so old and tired that the pro choice movement should send a memo out suggesting that it not be used as it is quite easily torn down, and exposes a profound lack of knowledge in the subject of human biology on the part of any who use it.

Sperm and eggs. Are you male or female? If you have sperm they are cells from your body. Alone, they are of no more consequence than your fingernail clippings. They are cells that are produced by your body. Any 2nd year bio student could positively identify them as belonging to you via a simple DNA test. Ditto if you have eggs. These cells are unique in that they only have one half of a set of chromosomes, and as such represent potential life, but alone they are just your cells. They grow and are either used, or, in the case of males, reabsorbed, or in the case of females, sluffed off.

BUT..Once they get together and each contribute their half set of chromosomes, then both sperm and egg cease to exist, their potential is realized a new DNA fingerprint is formed and a new human being is growing. A new individual's life has begun in that very moment. You can trace your own existence back exactly that far, one moment further and you would not exist and your life has continued, uninterrupted till this moment. You would be quite unable to demonstrate in any real way that your life did not begin at the moment of your conception.

Each of the stages of your development have been nothing more than the stages of your development. At any time and at any stage, your DNA would have identified you as a human being. You are very different today than you were the day you were born, but you are no more human. And you were very different on the day that you were born than you were at the moment of your conception, but you were no more human by virtue of your passing down 7 inches of birth canal. If you live to be 150, you will not become more human by virtue of your age than you were when you were concieved.

Pick a stage of development. You will find, with just a little research, that at any stage of development, that a human looks just as a human is supposed to look at that stage. Your suggestion that it does not "evolve" into a "human being" suggests that you are not able to wrap your mind around the idea that humans go through stages of development but are still humans even though they may not be wearing levis and a T shirt.

I don't quite get your reference to "stem" cells, as if conception produced a stem cell. You need to brush up a bit on your basic biology there.

And ID? You believe that you must hold a paper in your had that proclaims your citizenship in order to be a human being? What biology book did you get that from. In the US, ALL human beings have an inalienable right to life. The founders didn't suggest that all human beings that were at least 9 months of age had that right, they said ALL humans. Are you able to demonstrate in some real way that the offspring of two human beings is something other than human?

And the "life process"...What a hoot. It is clear that we are talking about an individual, and not a species. You as an individual can follow your life back to the moment of your conception and not a moment further. And because of that, science clearly states that a human being's life begins at the moment of conception.

So, at any stage of development, it has the "appearance" of a human being at that stage of development. And the self aware "I am" doesn't happen until 15 months or so post birth so lets toss that one out as meaningless as well. And no experts agree that dependence makes any of us less human so out with that little error as well. It would seem that for all your writing, you didn't get a single biological fact right. You just talked and didn't offer up a single thing that could be considered evidence to support your opinion.

Maybe you can provide a bibliographical reference to a medical textbook or two that suggests that a human being's life doesn't start at the moment of conception. Or maybe some reference to a scientific text that suggests that the offspring of two human beings is some species other than human until it "looks" like a human being to you. Maybe anything to support anything that you have said?

[Starboy]

Quote by: Pale RIder And the "life process"...What a hoot. It is clear that we are talking about an individual, and not a species. You as an individual can follow your life back to the moment of your conception and not a moment further. And because of that, science clearly states that a human being's life begins at the moment of conception.

You are at it again. You can not follow life back to conception because everything involved with conception was alive. It is not as if life just *popped* out of non-life. If you wanted to actually follow life back to its conception then that would take you back at least 4 billion years. And again you miss a very important point. You cannot follow the existence of a human being back to conception because what exists at conception cannot be human. It has no brian.

Starboy

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: Starboy You are at it again. You can not follow life back to conception because everything involved with conception was alive. It is not as if life just *popped* out of non-life. If you wanted to actually follow life back to its conception then that would take you back at least 4 billion years. And again you miss a very important point. You cannot follow the existence of a human being back to conception because what exists at conception cannot be human. It has no brian. Starboy

Flat earther - n. - One who stubbornly adheres to outmoded or discredited ideas.

That is the name that comes to mind when I talk to pro choicers. Science has discredited your arguments. Contemporary science says that individual human lives begin at conception. Of course one doesn't really need science in this case, it is simple common sense. There is no coherent argument against it.

Look at the content of yours for example. Suggesting that a new human life doesn't begin simply because the sperm and egg responsible for that new life were also alive, completely disregarding the fact that both sperm and egg belonged to different individuals and that upon conception, both sperm and egg ceased to exist. You grab onto the tiniest shred of truth and disregard the bigger truth in order to make your flat earth theory sound plausible.

And the suggestion that a new human life doesn't begin at conception because life began on the planet 4 billion years ago. Never mind the fact that you can trace your individual life back to the moment of your conception.

And the idea that a human being is not h. sapiens until it has a brain is pure sophistry. Laughable.

Sure, everything involved in conception is alive. Father's sperm, mother's egg. But the result is completely separate from either. Easily identified as neither. Unique. Separate. What exists at conception is a human being that has not yet developed to the point of having a brain. I am sorry that you can't wrap your mind around complicated (actually this isn't complicated, I am just being condecending) scientific concepts. I suppose that this would be much easier if you weren't holding an indefensible position. Arguing against the truth, trying to reshape reality into a form that doesn't mesh with what is is always more difficult than simply accepting what is.

So tell me flat earther, did you find any of those textbooks that you mentioned? The ones that say that individual human lives don't begin at conception? You supposedly based your argument on them, and they don't even exist. I was confident that you would not post reference to them.

Sophistry and equivocation define the nature of your argument. How about if you provide some actual hard science to balance it out? Oh, I'm sorry, there isn't any.

[Starboy]

Quote by: Pale RIder Flat earther - n. - One who stubbornly adheres to outmoded or discredited ideas.

Now now Rider, if you want to get into evaluative feedback you will get far more than you would care for. But I suggest that you stick to debate and do not bait.

Starboy

[Technosoul]

Pale Rider - I liked your response and it sounded a lot more updated then my old bio class back in 1957. My resource for the "life process hoot" came from this article in a publication produced by the Institute For Creation Research (Impact).

If we start off as a totally new human being at the moment of conception then how can some people get red hair like their great grandmother's? Why would doctors claim that being overweight can be a problem handed down from our family tree? As I recall the DNA process has pre-programed much of what we will be way before we become individuals at birth, but individuals that seem to clone a lot of our race and historical background relative to our family. That would logically appear to me to be a on-going process that did not start at the moment of conception but as far back as we can trace life on earth (or some other planet in case we were transported here).

Now let's assume that the Creator used evolution as as means to create human beings, then as the Native Amercans teach we are brothers of the fish and other creatures that resulted from the first life form, so all animals are human? Clearly we have created names to seperate each type of indenty and so is everything human but just with different names, like some humans are called John, some are called Peter, and some are called Mary Ann.

I am putting this in the form of questions and not as an attack outright.

However you are also correct in saying that our personal mold is set once conception is completed and set into motion. I cannot logical disagree with that concept. The question I ask then is why don't they issue "certificates of conception" instead of "birth certificates"? Example: if some woman came from Mexico and had a child here that child would be an American (USA) and could claim ALL THE RIGHTS our consitution affords (and other laws) instead of just a few rights as it would have if the birth happened in Mexico. Here we see that the "country of conception" does not matter only the "country of birth" relative to many of our rights in the global sense.

As you pointed out this would not mean that Mexicans are not human just because they are not U.S. Americans, as our forefathers once throught about people from Africa and the Indians. However when you cross the boarder into another country you might not have the same legal rights in another country. A unborn basically has no country because that cannot be claimed until it is born. Just paper work, you say.
But all laws are paperwork and that is what we go by when we debate the abortion topic, it is the paperwork you would like to have changed is it not? According to the paperwork you cannot abort human life but you can do so before the birth takes place which means that our authorties do not view the pre-borns as human beings. Anything in the womb is still part of the woman's body just like the hair we grow or the organs we sometimes remove from our body for medical reasons. Now George Bush thinks that a stem cell is a human being, but I can tell you flat out that it cannot cast a vote in the next election. Presently the woman IS the creator of human life and while in that middleman role she has the highest authority over that matter in my opinon. What right do we have to tell our creators what they can or cannot do?

You noted that my biology information was too old, but not as old as the Bible I can assure you.

Next I will speak about how you can become more human as you grow older after being born. (in future posting)

Technosoul

[Wickedcharley]

Life begins at...
Ok.. I am pro life, and agree that life begins at conception. I would like to allow the pro choice people their day. But what would be really helpful, would be for them to all get together in one place. Then they could find out what choice God made. Just ask anyone from Sodom and Gommorra!

[Technosoul]

Howday Wicked Charley - well now if God did make a choice then then it would become mandatory if He has the power to do what ever is possible. He could just wave a wand and make everyone conform and then no one would get an abortion.

Apparently His will is for Pro-choice.

Technosoul.

[Starboy]

Quote by: Wickedcharley Life begins at... Ok.. I am pro life, and agree that life begins at conception. I would like to allow the pro choice people their day. But what would be really helpful, would be for them to all get together in one place. Then they could find out what choice God made. Just ask anyone from Sodom and Gommorra!

Why does god need to gather us all in one place? And besides this second go round isn't god just supposed to float you all up to heaven. This I would like to see. It could be pleasant till you got to about 30,000 feet. In any case I can't wait. Hell if you like I'll send you off to heaven right now. Wanna go?

Starboy

[Technosoul]

Starboy - according to some biblical interpretations God likes to abort the non-believers before the can become born-agian.

[Starboy]

Quote by: Technosoul Starboy - according to some biblical interpretations God likes to abort the non-believers before the can become born-agian.

And those are the loving and kind ones.

Starboy

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: Technosoul Pale Rider - I liked your response and it sounded a lot more updated then my old bio class back in 1957. My resource for the "life process hoot" came from this article in a publication produced by the Institute For Creation Research (Impact). If we start off as a totally new human being at the moment of conception then how can some people get red hair like their great grandmother's? Why would doctors claim that being overweight can be a problem handed down from our family tree? As I recall the DNA process has pre-programed much of what we will be way before we become individuals at birth, but individuals that seem to clone a lot of our race and historical background relative to our family. That would logically appear to me to be a on-going process that did not start at the moment of conception but as far back as we can trace life on earth (or some other planet in case we were transported here).

Consider a quote by Dr. Jerome L. LeJeune, of the University Rene Descartes:

“Even more impressive, during the maturation of the reproductive cells, the genetic information is reshuffled in so many ways that each conceptus receives an entirely original combination which has never occurred before and will never again. Each conceptus is unique and thus irreplaceable.”

The chromosomes that your parents contributed in order for your unique DNA fingerprint to come into being came from chromosomes that were contributed by your grandparents and those were contributed by their parents and those were contributed by their parents.

No one that I have ever met would suggest that we don't inherit traits from our past generations, but each of us represents different shuffling of the genetic deck. You may be able to trace your family tree back 1000 years, but you can only trace your individual life back to a precice moment in time. One second more, and you, as an individual, would not exist.

Quote by: Technosoul Now let's assume that the Creator used evolution as as means to create human beings, then as the Native Amercans teach we are brothers of the fish and other creatures that resulted from the first life form, so all animals are human? Clearly we have created names to seperate each type of indenty and so is everything human but just with different names, like some humans are called John, some are called Peter, and some are called Mary Ann.

I believe the natives suggested that we were brothers to the animals in a spiritual nature, not biological. Natives observed animal behavior as a way to understand human nature. In most of their stories, animals were the characters and behaved and talked as humans.

Your DNA positively identifies you as a member of h. sapiens. You can not be confused with any other animal.

Quote by: Technosoul However you are also correct in saying that our personal mold is set once conception is completed and set into motion. I cannot logical disagree with that concept. The question I ask then is why don't they issue "certificates of conception" instead of "birth certificates"? Example: if some woman came from Mexico and had a child here that child would be an American (USA) and could claim ALL THE RIGHTS our consitution affords (and other laws) instead of just a few rights as it would have if the birth happened in Mexico. Here we see that the "country of conception" does not matter only the "country of birth" relative to many of our rights in the global sense. As you pointed out this would not mean that Mexicans are not human just because they are not U.S. Americans, as our forefathers once throught about people from Africa and the Indians. However when you cross the boarder into another country you might not have the same legal rights in another country. A unborn basically has no country because that cannot be claimed until it is born. Just paper work, you say.

Knowing the exact moment and geograpical location of conception is much more difficult than knowing the place and time of birth. But certificates issued at birth are nothing more than formalities as you would still be human if you were concieved and delivered in some place that issued no papers.

Quote by: Technosoul But all laws are paperwork and that is what we go by when we debate the abortion topic, it is the paperwork you would like to have changed is it not? According to the paperwork you cannot abort human life but you can do so before the birth takes place which means that our authorties do not view the pre-borns as human beings. Anything in the womb is still part of the woman's body just like the hair we grow or the organs we sometimes remove from our body for medical reasons. Now George Bush thinks that a stem cell is a human being, but I can tell you flat out that it cannot cast a vote in the next election. Presently the woman IS the creator of human life and while in that middleman role she has the highest authority over that matter in my opinon. What right do we have to tell our creators what they can or cannot do? You noted that my biology information was too old, but not as old as the Bible I can assure you. Next I will speak about how you can become more human as you grow older after being born. (in future posting) Technosoul

I don't think that the paperwork needs to be changed. I think that we are dealing with (in the US anyway) a flawed application of the law. In the US, all human beings have an inalienable right to life. It is encoded into our legal system. The application of the law can be flawed. Consider blacks. They were once considered less than human and as such deprived of their inalienable right to liberty. Eventually we came to realize that if all humans have a right to liberty, then we could not enslave blacks so the flaw in the application of the law was corrected.

Our knowledge of what is human has changed much. When Roe was heard, it was possible to argue that an unborn was not "really" a human being. Science has changed all that and the argument is no longer valid.

The fact that an unborn is dependent upon its mother does not make it part of her body. Any part of her body can be identified via DNA testing as a part of her body..even a tumor. BUT, if you did a DNA test on the unborn, the test would clearly show that the unborn, while related to the woman, is most certainly not part of her body.

Lets try to be honest here. George Bush does not think that a stem cell is a human being. He correctly objects to creating human embryos (living human beings) and killing them to collect their stem cells. Unless you can demonstrate in some real way that a human being in the embryonic stage of development is not a human being, then you are suggesting that it is ok to kill one human for the benefit of another. If you are making that argument, why not round up the homeless, or the poor and harvest their organs?

The woman is not the creator. She is simply an incubator. Consider her right to privacy, to not be pregnant. Then consider every human being's inalienable right to live. Our rights stop were another person's rights begin. We may not kill in the process of exercising our rights except in the case of self defense.

[Starboy]

Rider, all very fine and good but a human being needs a functioning brain to be a living human being. A single human cell does not have any kind of a brain functioning or otherwise.

Starboy

[Starboy]

Rider, what about identical twins? How does your point of a unique genetic combination apply to that? Fact of the matter is as long as a functioning human brain is present it matters not how unique the genetic combination. Since when did personhood rely on a unique genetic combination? Your insistence that a unique genetic combination is somehow important to person hood is specious. If everyone was identical but had functioning human brains they would still all be considered individual human beings. Your mantra of unique genetic combination has nothing to do with what we consider to be the primary characteristic of a human being.

Starboy

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: Starboy Rider, all very fine and good but a human being needs a functioning brain to be a living human being. A single human cell does not have any kind of a brain functioning or otherwise. Starboy

You seem to grasp onto small developmental matters and try to build a case from them. An unborn at its earliest stages is a living human being. It will have a functioning brain as it progresses to that point. You may as well argue that a human is not a human until he or she is X feet tall and then children would not be humans because they haven't progressed far enough in their development to have achieved X feet tall.

You seem to be so worried about a brain. Well, at 3 weeks, the unborn's brain has already divided into the 3 major components. By 6 weeks the brain waves are strong enough to be detected by EEG, and by 8 weeks, the unborn's brain accounts for nearly half of its body weight.

Since you place so much stock in brain matter, it would seem that you would figure an 8 week unborn to be more human than any of us since its brain to body ratio makes us seem positively brainless.

So tell me, are you opposed to abortion after a brain is present? Or is that just an argument that you make with no real conviction because it sounds reasonable to you?

And why do you continue on with that silly "single human cell" argument. That period of a human's development only lasts for a few hours. Are you under the impression that we remain one cell and then magically turn into an infant during that magical trip down 7 inches of birth canal?

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: Starboy Rider, what about identical twins? How does your point of a unique genetic combination apply to that? Fact of the matter is as long as a functioning human brain is present it matters not how unique the genetic combination. Since when did personhood rely on a unique genetic combination? Your insistence that a unique genetic combination is somehow important to person hood is specious. If everyone was identical but had functioning human brains they would still all be considered individual human beings. Your mantra of unique genetic combination has nothing to do with what we consider to be the primary characteristic of a human being. Starboy

You seem to miss the point entirely. The only reason that I bring up the uniqueness of the DNA is to point out the falacy of the unborn being part of its mother. In the case of identical twins, or triplets, their DNA would prove that they are also not part of their mother like some tumor as many pro choicers like to claim.

Again I will ask you, what is the difference between a human being and a person.

[Imudman]

Quote by: Pale RIder ...what is the difference between a human being and a person.

Personhood is a legal fiction designed to explain human beings relationships with each other. IOW, the term "human being" is used to explain and differentiate people from all other species of life, whereas "person" differentiates a person from all other human beings. Interestingly, in our society people have opted to give personhood to corporations, governmental entities, and other non-living things, but not to recognize it in unborn humans.

Since legal persons aren't human, it serves to illustrate that our society bases the dignity of man not on personhood, but rather the biological reality that our species of life is different from all others. Furthermore, and for a variety of reasons, we hold our species of life worthy of preserving above all others.

So the "life begins at conception" debate is really the clashing of two forces at work in our society. The first holds that since the unborn child is human, it deserves at least the same legal protections as those afforded even to non-human persons. The second force holds the opposite view, namely that personhood does not rely on the inherent dignity of humanity, but rather exists only at the pleasure of other humans.

Now we see there really are two camps of people - one recognizes and upholds the inherent dignity of humanity, and one that doesn't...

[fedfem]

Quote by: Pale RIder You seem to miss the point entirely. The only reason that I bring up the uniqueness of the DNA is to point out the falacy of the unborn being part of its mother. In the case of identical twins, or triplets, their DNA would prove that they are also not part of their mother like some tumor as many pro choicers like to claim. Again I will ask you, what is the difference between a human being and a person.

Well parasites--think tapeworms--have distinct dna but depend on the host for life.

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: fedfem Well parasites--think tapeworms--have distinct dna but depend on the host for life.

But tapeworms are identified by their DNA as tapeworms. Unborn human beings are identified by their DNA as human beings. Tapeworms do not have an inalienable right to life. Human beings do.

Can you provide some legal precedence that suggests that one person's dependence upon another is a valid reason to kill?

[Starboy]

Quote by: Pale RIder You seem to miss the point entirely. The only reason that I bring up the uniqueness of the DNA is to point out the falacy of the unborn being part of its mother. In the case of identical twins, or triplets, their DNA would prove that they are also not part of their mother like some tumor as many pro choicers like to claim.

You miss my point yet again. It would not matter if the conceptus was genetically identical to the mother. If it were born it would still be considered a human being and a person and it would still be considered to be distinct from the mother and be given a name even though it were genetically identical to the mother. Genetic uniqueness has nothing to do with what we consider to be a human being. What makes it different from the mother is that it will have its own brain that thinks its own thoughts and lives its own life.

Rider it is very simple. If unique DNA makes no difference to the declaration of a human being than it is not germane to making a determination if a conceptus is a human being.

Again I will ask you, what is the difference between a human being and a person.

Why do you think this is germane to my point?

Starboy

[FIFI]

A human being is WHAT you are. A person is WHO they are.