Simple True or False Poll about Human Beings

Back to the same old worn out labelling based semantic claims. Call them the same thing and therefore they must be entitled to the same rights.

Never mind the fact that this:



[Born baby -- reduced from life size]

is obviously nothing like this:


[Single celled fertilized egg - magnified about a zillion times]

Illustrating the intellectual bankruptcy of the position.

 

When sperm meets egg, life is continued. Sperm and eggs are already human and alive. They will soon die if there is no meeting, but when the "meeting" occurs, life is merely continued, not created anew. The question being asked here is WHAT is that continued life called, and the implied question is does it have the same value that we accord to human beings.

 

Same child - different ages.

 

Runner - please correct me if I have this wrong...

Pretty sure that he meant the sperm's life as a sperm cell and the egg's life as an egg cell are ended and the new life they merged together to creae has began.

How then does an individual's aging begin at conception - if their life as an individual does not ?

Runners answer showed that it has nothing to do with the actual value of the human being.

It's a matter of biology.

 

And obviously nothing alike, which you refuse to admit.

Illustrating the intellectual bankruptcy of your positions.

 

You have to look at them with more than only your eyes.

I'll admit to you that (to an untrained eye) a child in the womb does not 'look like' a child at all.

Especially in the earliest stages of that child's life.

However, to a trained eye (embryologist, IVF doctor, etc.) It's not really that difficult to see at all.

 

Sure thing. Tell us with your "trained eye" how this


[Born baby -- reduced from life size]

is just like this:


[Single celled fertilized egg - magnified about a zillion times]

All you've been able to say is that they are both of the human species.

 

Only, I never claimed that any two people are 'just alike.'

I never claimed that a child at an early age is 'just like' the child (or adult) they will be later in life either.

My claim was (and is) that they are all human beings - regardless of the differences you see or think should exclude one or more of them.

 

OK, so you admit they are not "just alike". That's a concession.

I know your claim is that they should be called the same thing so that you can say they should have the same rights. Your sematical definitions are the only position you have which is why you call a zyglote a child as if this


[Born baby -- reduced from life size]

was the same thing this:


[Single celled fertilized egg - magnified about a zillion times]

So, we are still waiting for you to tell us with your "trained eye" how they are the same.

 

How do I just know that you will be taking that out of context?

My claim is that all human beings (persons) are entitled to the same (equal) protections of our laws - despite our apparent "differences.

Do you disagree with that?

Aren't they both living human beings? Organisms?

Aren't they both the young of the parents who created them?

See above.

 

Neither you nor I can be certain what he meant, since all we have to go on is his written word....and his written word said "new life" not "changed life" nor any other variation.

An individual's aging cannot begin before it is an "individual." can it? In this country, we count age as beginning with birth, an easily recognizable and verifiable point. Technically, I believe aging begins at the end of "developing" which would be about age 25, but probably greatly variable.

IAC, considering aging as beginning at conception is problematic for a couple of reasons, one it is an unidentifiable point, two, it is ONLY ONE point in the progress of development, and three, it is not the first point in development since eggs and sperm are both human and alive.

You are attempting to use biology (or more accurately, semantics) to establish value, and it ain't gonna work. Value is determined by individual pregnant women and no legislation can change that.

 

I'm sure you will think so.

Exactly. You pretend this


[Single celled fertilized egg - magnified about a zillion times]

is a "human being" just like this:


[Born baby -- reduced from life size]

so you can assert they are entitled to the same rights. Even though it is obvious they are not the same at all.

Of course. But I'll decline getting into another semantic debate with you. It is a waster of time. I demonstrated how you misread the statutes but you still do it.

Instead, I'll rest on the self evident and undeniable fact that a born baby is not the same as a single celled unfertilized egg and that they are obviously fundamentally different.

Back to the same old semantic labeling again, right? It's all you got.

That's it? That is the only thing you can identify between them that are not different?

 

Let me just jump in here for good measure:

I've thought about it a lot, and I've discovered what defines an individual is its DNA - after all the DNA dictates everything about you. That zygote is definitely NOT part of the mother, it is something different, it has a separate identity; from the moment you are conceived, you exist, you just don't remember it because you had no brain. Everyone is actually 9 months older than the world says they are, because they have existed from the time they were one cell large. The number of cells doesn't matter, it's still a separate person.

HOWEVER, it is not a self-sufficient organism when it is one cell large, because its DNA is designed to grow in a womb; outside of one it dies. It exists entirely at the whim of its parent; and basically, when you insist that abortions should be banned, you're saying that it doesn't matter if the child was never wanted, and will be born into a world that doesn't want it (bad news for that kid), he should be born anyway. Especially since it's almost always a mistake that the woman is pregnant in the first place - the kid wasn't supposed to exist, so there's no harm in fixing the mistake, so to speak.

There's also the problem that every abortion ban assumes women are all soulless, cruel baby-killers with no regard for human lives, which is flat out false. All you're doing is holding a woman's body hostage to your morality.

 

If human DNA were the criteria it would be murder to spit.

 

The fact that you can refer to "a human zygote" should be your first clue to the fact that it is "a" (an) individual.

So your response to a challenge of the conventional wisdom is to cite the conventional wisdom that is being challenged.

What's that called again?

You are confusing 'creation' (union of sperm and egg) with 'development' (growth aging and maturation)... no wonder you are finding this to be problematic.

This thread has nothing to do with the value of human beings or with the ways we might 'value' them.

Those debates come later.

 

Spit does not constitute your entire being nor is doing so going to kill you. But when you're one cell large....that's it. That's all you are, that is your entirety.

 

Sure. Which is why DNA is not a sufficient criteria.

When I was one celled I wasn't me.

 

I'm not being pretentious about it at all - like I said (and you haven't disputed it) those could logically be two pictures of the very same child (human being) - taken only a year or so apart.

I believe in equal rights and I don't discriminate based on age or level of development - if that's what you mean.

They ARE the same in that they are both human organisms / beings. You ability to deny either one (or both) of them not withstanding.

Your opinion.

 

Well the thing is the thing you call "You" is the electrical signals in your brain which do all the thinking, but since I don't believe in a soul, "you" are a product of your body, thus "you" is actually your entire body, the whole organism, not just your mind which exists simply to facilitate the survival of all the cells that comprise you. In that sense, when you were one celled you were still you, but you lacked the "you" that now exists in your head. But I've always maintained the "you" in your mind is an illusion - the thing "you" control, your body, is what you actually are, and "you", the one doing the talking, is just electricity generated by it.

 

I think therefore I am.

 

Or so you think.

Amoeba's can't think.

Do they exist?

 

I wonder why I click on "View Post"...then understand why I always slow down to see a car accident in the freeway.

 

If you scrape off a wee portion of your epidermis, you will also have a minute, mindless clump of living human cells.

You can, with equal validity, pretend that it is an itsy bitsy human being if you'd like.

And just as the minute, mindless clup of living hman cell stat is a zygote may eventually develop into an actual person through the gestative process, your wee portion of epidermal cells may someday become a person via cloning.

Cells have that potential.

 

I think it comes down to whether you consider a person to be that individual organism, or the mind that controls it. I can't answer that due to there not being a definition as to at what point you're not human. For example in theory you could use a human brain to control a robot. The brain was grown for controlling a human, the robot clearly isn't human, yet you can still think and control it regardless.

 

The question is moot where no brain exists.