Actually, your sperm does not have the potential to become human. It has the ability to fertilize an egg and turn it into a zygote, but neither an egg nor a sperm will ever become human.
Heres a question: What makes it wrong to kill you? You have a heartbeat and brain activity, but at the end of the day we're all just blobs of cells. Science hasn't discovered any sort of 'soul,' so what scientific justification separates you from an embryo, cattle, or the roach? Besides humanity in the case of the last two and current form in the case of the embryo, not a whole lot. All that is required to make something wrong to kill is its humanity. Basically, as someone way up in the thread said, if its got human DNA, its human.
Then separate it from its unwilling host -- let it be truly an individual -- and let it live, or not, on its own.
Fair enough, just give it a few more months. Besides, temporary condition of life has no relation to status as human. And this might sound harsh, you're not an 'unwilling host if you knowingly take an action that practically invites the baby into you. If you invited someone into your house and killed them because they were trespassing and didn't leave fast enough, that would be murder. Pregnancy is no different. And please don't tout the minority of rape cases as the strawman defense.
An "individual" not only has a beating heart and brain activity, but is able to survive without feeding off the bloodstream of another.
Yes, lets keep changing the definition of human until your argument holds water.
Strawman, the roach isn't human by any strech. A developing embryo/fetus/baby is, and also has the features the GP mentioned, and although your cat's lunch also had those secondary features, it quite obviously is not human, nor will it ever be.
Actually, I was thinking of just that topic whenever I posted my comment, but didn't want to bog it down with 'except the loons fighting the war on drugs, ect.' Your tax dollars at work.
The general point I was getting at is that it is a strawman to say that people are telling other people what to do with their reproductive system among pro-lifers. No one cares what you do with it, just what you do with the baby who is taking up temporary residence.
Yes, but that is a tissue, not a separate entity with a unique genetic build. If your cancer develops a brain and a heart after a few weeks, then you'll have a good counterpoint.
How about all of the embryos that for one reason or another are destroyed by the body itself?
There's a big difference between natural and unnatural death. What you're saying is like comparing death by murder and death by old age because they both have the same end result.
Those embryos are just as much "potential individuals" as all of the children that don't exist because not every fertile human is continually having sex.
So not creating is the equivalent of destroying? Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.
I don't think men should have any business telling a women what to do with their bodies, certainly not based on faith either.
You'll be hard pressed to find anyone who advocates telling people what to do with their bodies. You can, however, find those who would like to legislate a measure of protection for other people's bodies (even if those bodies happen to temporarily be inside other people's bodies).
That being said, this really is a whatcouldpossiblygowrong situation. Disease is one thing, but what about aesthetics? Should people have the right to select babies based on more or less meaningless preferences? And of course, what of the people who were not preselected? Will they be forced to live out the life of one considered inferior?
Of course, that's the moral playing God standpoint, there's also the scientific playing evolution standpoint. Do you really think that we can play with genetics and foresee all the consequences? This could be a great way to dig ourselves into an evolutionary hole. Take the commercial Cavendish banana, for instance. Bred to be the best, and it stands to be wiped out by a single disease. Yeah, that's clonal propagation, but even if it were sexual reproduction, anything that limits the genetic pool tends to be a bad thing. For example, dog breeds were genetically concentrated into smaller populations, and they're medical train wrecks compared to mutts.
So, moral issues aside, genetic selection might work for a few generations, but then I'd bet it begins to come unglued, and the benefits dissipate when a bunch of weird-assed disease start poping up in the selected populations.
First off, yes, I realize that China is a take of two countries, and that there is a lot of poverty. But if population is the only factor, why does Japan, a neighboring country with a much higher population density still enjoy a higher standard of living? The answer is, as I said, because population is not as significant as the way the population is managed. Humans are much more complex than bacteria. Not to say it doesn't have some effect, but that single factor determines little.
Second, as for the question 'Is there enough land?' I would say yes. Hypothetically, say we took everyone in the world and put them into the state of Texas. Assuming a global population of 6,655,452,799 and the area of Texas is 696,241 km2, we would have a population density of 9559 people/km2. Compare that with the population denstiy of NYC, which is 10,482/km2 Think about that, if you put every man, woman, and child on earth into Texas, they'd still have more room than the average New York City dweller, and that leaves the rest of the planet to be used as farmland, nature preserve, whatever.
And please don't tell me that there wouldn't be enough viable land for crop production. I would be willing to bet that there is (right now, starvation is a distribution problem, not a production one), but even if there isn't, I believe that could easily be fixed by diversifying our diets. Exotic pomology & olericulture is a hobby of mine; pick an environment and I'll give you an edible suited for it. As for water, heck, 70% of the planet is covered in it. With significant desalination plants, we'd be in the clear there, too.
Third, my regeneration was hypothetical. Yes, I know that someday me and everyone I know will be dead, and the odds are pretty good that science won't come in time to save me, and I'm cool with that. I was saying that, if the option were available, I would take in in an instant, and I don't think that immortality would necessarily be as bad as you said it would be. It might even have a positive effect. If everyone knew they could live indefinitely, there'd be no incentive to do nasty things like war today. Procrastination FTW.
Hey, I wish you peace with yourself too, but I plan on raging against the dying light with everything I've got when the time comes. By the way, ever notice that/. doesn't do superscript numbers? Please pretend those 2s are superscript.
Present day Asia has more population that the entire planet did a few hundred years ago. Why doesn't Asia have an 18th century world's concentration of war, plague, and starvation?
The answer, I would say, is that, while it is a factor, population is hardly the key determinant. Rather, it is not the quantity of the civilization, but the quality. Given limited resources, a well managed, civil population of 10,000 will do far better than an uncivilized, chaotic population of 1000.
As for Glug, if he wanted to deny a treatment that would regenerate him on his deathbed, more power to him. The rest of us would much rather accept the treatment and strive to continue to improve the world's condition for everyone through means other than cutting the population.
What I'd like to know is how you can be offended by a random three letters, even if they happen to have relatively recently gained a meaning. The key here word is random. They are not offensive unless one chooses to make them so. IMHO, folks should stop being so thin skinned.
So the right to have an abortion is bullshit whereas the right to own a gun is God-given. Yes.
What the hell is with the current collection of issues in the present political divide, anyway? Good question, but abortion and guns are apples and oranges, so don't assume that those who support the freedom to own guns would logically also support the freedom to kill inconvenient people.
You were lucky in the genetic lottery How long has intellect been determined by your genes? When I was in school, it was the people who, for whatever reason, decided to actually read the material and do the work that succeeded in school. The vast majority of those who didn't do well simply weren't putting in the same effort. Noting genetic about it, and no one used their genes as an excuse.
If you want to improve education in the USA, stop letting the dumbest folk breed like bunnies. Or you could just accept the fact that 'dumb' people don't have to be and ensure that a strong effort is made to educate their kids, hence eliminating 'dumb' people. But that solution just wouldn't satisfy pretentious elitists who have a pathological need to look down on others, would it?
Call me an apologist if you want, but Naruto really is pretty decent, at least once you filter out stupid stuff like that and bloody awful filler episodes. By this I mean, when in doubt about a series, read the manga. You'll thank yourself.
As a side note, I do think the tendency for westerners to buy bananas out of habit is a disease. People have written essays and even books on why fruits and vetegables should be bought local, and then, only when in season. Personally, I think that those of us in colder climates should try to replace our bananas with something like pawpaws whenever possible, but people are such culinary cowards that there's not much of a market for 'new' fruit.
No it hasn't.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Looks pretty clear to me.
Watson was forced into retirement for saying that wanting everyone to be "equal" doesn't make them so. Of course, the moment that the POSSIBILITY of any inherent inequality is brought up, any rational debate is impossible because no one wants to consider it. Yeah, and every time the POSSIBILITY that the Earth is flat comes up, people just blow it off. What's up with that? Folks just don't want to come face to face with the possibility that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Earth may be flat. Sure, some may say it's based on biased and outdated pseudoscience, but I'll be damned if it doesn't deserve consideration!
For console games, I know there's a market for the old/rare, not too sure about PC, but I'd assume there's at least some demand, at least for certain titles. I know old cardboard boxes get rarer as time passes because most people have thrown there's away, so there is a chance that they're worth something, but worth likely differs from title to title; I don't think any generalizations can be made for them as a whole. For stuff like the Star Trek and D&D games, you might find a market outside the general realm of games because of what they're based on, not that they're games.
Same as every other religion? I beg to differ. I've seen missionaries give up almost everything they own for their religion; at my local church there are people who work with teens/elderly folks who honestly care and devote a good bit of time and money to helping them. The head of this church (it's an independent) goes out and does what everyone else does. If any of them are after money, they sure are going about it the wrong way. I'm not saying every religious group is genuine, there are a lot that are just over glorified pyramid scams, but you can't say every religious group is in it for the money. I personally think that's the key difference between a religion and a cult (cult in the sense of a religion with a negative connotation). Religious groups want to help, cults want to help themselves.
Assume no God and ask who created man? The answer is no one. Assume God, and ask who created Him, and the answer is now someone? Why does God need a creator, but humans don't? The question of 'who created God' is pretty irreverent.
by removing their armed forced from the region and stop supporting Israel. This is what you sound like here. If you can't see the similarities, watch the movie.
Sheila: Times have changed
Our kids are getting worse
They won't obey their parents
They just want to fart and curse!
Sharon: Should we blame the government?
Liane: Or blame society?
Dads: Or should we blame the images on TV?
Sheila: No, blame Israel!
Everyone: Blame Israel!
Sheila: With all their beady little eyes
And flapping heads so full of lies
Everyone: Blame Israel!
Blame Israel!
Sheila: We need to form a full assault
Everyone: It's Israel's fault!
Sheila: Well, blame Israel!
Everyone: Blame Israel!
Sheila: It seems that everything's gone wrong
Since Israel came along!
Everyone: Blame Israel!
Blame Israel!
Mapkinase: They're not even a real country anyway!
Everyone: We must blame them and cause a fuss Before somebody thinks of blaming us!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, your sperm does not have the potential to become human. It has the ability to fertilize an egg and turn it into a zygote, but neither an egg nor a sperm will ever become human.
Heres a question: What makes it wrong to kill you? You have a heartbeat and brain activity, but at the end of the day we're all just blobs of cells. Science hasn't discovered any sort of 'soul,' so what scientific justification separates you from an embryo, cattle, or the roach? Besides humanity in the case of the last two and current form in the case of the embryo, not a whole lot. All that is required to make something wrong to kill is its humanity. Basically, as someone way up in the thread said, if its got human DNA, its human.
Socialization teaches you how to be human, but it does not make you human. If you could learn to become human, odds are you already were.
Then separate it from its unwilling host -- let it be truly an individual -- and let it live, or not, on its own.
Fair enough, just give it a few more months. Besides, temporary condition of life has no relation to status as human. And this might sound harsh, you're not an 'unwilling host if you knowingly take an action that practically invites the baby into you. If you invited someone into your house and killed them because they were trespassing and didn't leave fast enough, that would be murder. Pregnancy is no different. And please don't tout the minority of rape cases as the strawman defense.
An "individual" not only has a beating heart and brain activity, but is able to survive without feeding off the bloodstream of another.
Yes, lets keep changing the definition of human until your argument holds water.
Strawman, the roach isn't human by any strech. A developing embryo/fetus/baby is, and also has the features the GP mentioned, and although your cat's lunch also had those secondary features, it quite obviously is not human, nor will it ever be.
Actually, I was thinking of just that topic whenever I posted my comment, but didn't want to bog it down with 'except the loons fighting the war on drugs, ect.' Your tax dollars at work.
The general point I was getting at is that it is a strawman to say that people are telling other people what to do with their reproductive system among pro-lifers. No one cares what you do with it, just what you do with the baby who is taking up temporary residence.
Yes, but that is a tissue, not a separate entity with a unique genetic build. If your cancer develops a brain and a heart after a few weeks, then you'll have a good counterpoint.
How about all of the embryos that for one reason or another are destroyed by the body itself?
There's a big difference between natural and unnatural death. What you're saying is like comparing death by murder and death by old age because they both have the same end result.
Those embryos are just as much "potential individuals" as all of the children that don't exist because not every fertile human is continually having sex.
So not creating is the equivalent of destroying? Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.
I don't think men should have any business telling a women what to do with their bodies, certainly not based on faith either.
You'll be hard pressed to find anyone who advocates telling people what to do with their bodies. You can, however, find those who would like to legislate a measure of protection for other people's bodies (even if those bodies happen to temporarily be inside other people's bodies).
That being said, this really is a whatcouldpossiblygowrong situation. Disease is one thing, but what about aesthetics? Should people have the right to select babies based on more or less meaningless preferences? And of course, what of the people who were not preselected? Will they be forced to live out the life of one considered inferior?
Of course, that's the moral playing God standpoint, there's also the scientific playing evolution standpoint. Do you really think that we can play with genetics and foresee all the consequences? This could be a great way to dig ourselves into an evolutionary hole. Take the commercial Cavendish banana, for instance. Bred to be the best, and it stands to be wiped out by a single disease. Yeah, that's clonal propagation, but even if it were sexual reproduction, anything that limits the genetic pool tends to be a bad thing. For example, dog breeds were genetically concentrated into smaller populations, and they're medical train wrecks compared to mutts.
So, moral issues aside, genetic selection might work for a few generations, but then I'd bet it begins to come unglued, and the benefits dissipate when a bunch of weird-assed disease start poping up in the selected populations.
First off, yes, I realize that China is a take of two countries, and that there is a lot of poverty. But if population is the only factor, why does Japan, a neighboring country with a much higher population density still enjoy a higher standard of living? The answer is, as I said, because population is not as significant as the way the population is managed. Humans are much more complex than bacteria. Not to say it doesn't have some effect, but that single factor determines little.
/. doesn't do superscript numbers? Please pretend those 2s are superscript.
Second, as for the question 'Is there enough land?' I would say yes. Hypothetically, say we took everyone in the world and put them into the state of Texas. Assuming a global population of 6,655,452,799 and the area of Texas is 696,241 km2, we would have a population density of 9559 people/km2. Compare that with the population denstiy of NYC, which is 10,482/km2 Think about that, if you put every man, woman, and child on earth into Texas, they'd still have more room than the average New York City dweller, and that leaves the rest of the planet to be used as farmland, nature preserve, whatever.
And please don't tell me that there wouldn't be enough viable land for crop production. I would be willing to bet that there is (right now, starvation is a distribution problem, not a production one), but even if there isn't, I believe that could easily be fixed by diversifying our diets. Exotic pomology & olericulture is a hobby of mine; pick an environment and I'll give you an edible suited for it. As for water, heck, 70% of the planet is covered in it. With significant desalination plants, we'd be in the clear there, too.
Third, my regeneration was hypothetical. Yes, I know that someday me and everyone I know will be dead, and the odds are pretty good that science won't come in time to save me, and I'm cool with that. I was saying that, if the option were available, I would take in in an instant, and I don't think that immortality would necessarily be as bad as you said it would be. It might even have a positive effect. If everyone knew they could live indefinitely, there'd be no incentive to do nasty things like war today. Procrastination FTW.
Hey, I wish you peace with yourself too, but I plan on raging against the dying light with everything I've got when the time comes. By the way, ever notice that
Present day Asia has more population that the entire planet did a few hundred years ago. Why doesn't Asia have an 18th century world's concentration of war, plague, and starvation?
The answer, I would say, is that, while it is a factor, population is hardly the key determinant. Rather, it is not the quantity of the civilization, but the quality. Given limited resources, a well managed, civil population of 10,000 will do far better than an uncivilized, chaotic population of 1000.
As for Glug, if he wanted to deny a treatment that would regenerate him on his deathbed, more power to him. The rest of us would much rather accept the treatment and strive to continue to improve the world's condition for everyone through means other than cutting the population.
What I'd like to know is how you can be offended by a random three letters, even if they happen to have relatively recently gained a meaning. The key here word is random. They are not offensive unless one chooses to make them so. IMHO, folks should stop being so thin skinned.
Yes, the average fat person (complete with slower metabolism) must eat way more, cause that's how they're portrayed on TV, and TV never lies.
And transportation? I'm sure that that extra 50 lbs. matters way more than the hundreds of pounds that seperate makes and models of cars.
Lets also not forget the fact that fat folks die sooner than everyone else, so they end up costing less in the long run.
But don't let petty things like facts get in your way.
Call me an apologist if you want, but Naruto really is pretty decent, at least once you filter out stupid stuff like that and bloody awful filler episodes. By this I mean, when in doubt about a series, read the manga. You'll thank yourself.
Yes. We should remind people that it doesn't matter if you're black or white. The only color that matters is green.
Balrog Obama? Now that sounds like a candidates I can trust!
For console games, I know there's a market for the old/rare, not too sure about PC, but I'd assume there's at least some demand, at least for certain titles. I know old cardboard boxes get rarer as time passes because most people have thrown there's away, so there is a chance that they're worth something, but worth likely differs from title to title; I don't think any generalizations can be made for them as a whole. For stuff like the Star Trek and D&D games, you might find a market outside the general realm of games because of what they're based on, not that they're games.
Same as every other religion? I beg to differ. I've seen missionaries give up almost everything they own for their religion; at my local church there are people who work with teens/elderly folks who honestly care and devote a good bit of time and money to helping them. The head of this church (it's an independent) goes out and does what everyone else does. If any of them are after money, they sure are going about it the wrong way.
I'm not saying every religious group is genuine, there are a lot that are just over glorified pyramid scams, but you can't say every religious group is in it for the money. I personally think that's the key difference between a religion and a cult (cult in the sense of a religion with a negative connotation). Religious groups want to help, cults want to help themselves.
Assume no God and ask who created man? The answer is no one. Assume God, and ask who created Him, and the answer is now someone? Why does God need a creator, but humans don't? The question of 'who created God' is pretty irreverent.
Sheila: Times have changed
Our kids are getting worse
They won't obey their parents
They just want to fart and curse!
Sharon: Should we blame the government?
Liane: Or blame society?
Dads: Or should we blame the images on TV?
Sheila: No, blame Israel!
Everyone: Blame Israel!
Sheila: With all their beady little eyes
And flapping heads so full of lies
Everyone: Blame Israel! Blame Israel!
Sheila: We need to form a full assault
Everyone: It's Israel's fault!
Sheila: Well, blame Israel!
Everyone: Blame Israel!
Sheila: It seems that everything's gone wrong
Since Israel came along!
Everyone: Blame Israel! Blame Israel!
Mapkinase: They're not even a real country anyway!
Everyone: We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before somebody thinks of blaming us!!!!