Do you know what "straw man" means? You said, "So what you're saying is," then you declared something stupid that is obviously not what I was saying. You did this in an attempt to discredit my position without actually discussing my position. It's a rhetorical trick.
Since you didn't know this, I'm coming down on the side of "idiot" now.
I don't know what you think "RAD" means, but if you're talking about AppleScript Studio, that's the process of creating native user interfaces controlled by AppleScripts. So I don't see what that has to do with anything... unless you're using it to demonstrate my point.
virtually every engineer at apple knows and uses python
Um. "Virtually every engineer?" No. You're making things up, and you should be ashamed.
Another dumbass with an Orwell analogy. You do realize that Orwell was trying to demonstrate the dangers of insidious euphemism, don't you? Calling a baby an "embryo" merely to dehumanize it and make it more tolerable to slaughter it would fit in exactly with what Orwell was writing about in 1984.
I'm going to assume that you object on religious grounds
As I wrote elsewhere, I am an agnostic. You are attempting to construct a straw-man argument. This embarrasses us both.
It's assumed that an embryo will grow to be a human being
Assumed? Sure, I guess. In the same way we assume that gravity will hold us to the surface of the earth and that we assume that water is wet. "Assumed" is entirely the wrong word here. It's not an assumption. It's an indisputable fact
killing the embryo somehow counter acts the divine will of God
I'm not interested in arguing religion, as I have none of my own. But yes, as I understand it, that's the basic religious objection to killing people.
Abortion/stem cell protest aren't about concern over people's lives or the will of God.
"Protest?" I don't understand why you'd use the word "protest." Again, that's entirely the wrong word. Nobody is protesting anything.
However, you're right that the disagreement isn't over health or religious issues. It's over ethical issues, which have nothing to do with either of those arguments.
No, this is about controling people.
There goes that straw man again. If you ever reach the point where you're interested in having an actual conversation rather than slinging straw-man arguments at people, let me know.
I think the important point in the original post was "without the assistance of a host".
Ventilator = host. Hell, for that matter, nurse to clean out his trach tube = host. Without either, he'd have died.
it does seem a reasonable answer to the question "When is it okay to have an abortion?".
You're asking the wrong question. The right question is, "Given that babies are alive, why should it ever be okay to have an abortion?"
the issue is being dependant on a living host.
Why does it have to be a living host? I thought the question was whether a person was able to survive on its own. Is it possible that you're just moving the line until you find one that delineates between unborn babies and adults, even adults who require life support measures to stay alive?
In another XXX years I'll assemble an amoeba for you atom by atom
Amoebas have been assembling other amoebas atom by atom for billions of years. No one has ever successfully assembled an amoeba, or any other living thing, without the use of another living thing. While you might think such a thing would be theoretically possible, there is no reason to think it would be practically possible. For instance, how would you handle the metabolic problem? You can't just clip an entire amoeba together out of atoms like you're building it out of legos and then just expect metabolic processes to start all by themselves.
There is no reason to think that it will ever be possible to build cells atom by atom, just like there's no reason to think it will ever be possible to create atoms from nothing or to create an engine that operates at 100% efficiency.
Also you suggest that a first cell formed. Perhaps not? Perhaps there were a few environments especially conducive to producing cells and not all cells have a single parent.
That contradicts what we know about life on earth. We know that all life ever observed is composed of the same compounds in the same ratios. Given what we know about reproduction, the only explanation that fits the fact is that all life descended from a single cell.
But you're right when you say "Perhaps not." We have to be honest about what we know. We know that the planet is covered in a vast diversity of life that's all composed of the same compounds in the same ratios. We know that there's evidence that more complex life forms evolved from simpler life forms, though we've never observed it. So we conclude that all life is descended from a single cell. We don't know it for a fact, but we think so.
It's also entirely possible that all life was created by God, or that it was seeded on this planet from another planet... where it was created by God, or descended form a single cell, or whatever. Or that time is cyclic and that life never had a beginning or an end. We just don't know for sure. All we have are theories, some of which explain the facts better than others.
Are they alive when solid?
Obviously, because when unfrozen they resume metabolic processes.
Then I argue that soil is alive
Obviously not, because left alone soil does not come to life. That's the whole idea behind the theory of biogenesis.
While I agree that the technology for Spotlight does seem very well done, do you think that it will change the way people use computers?
It has fundamentally changed the way I use mine.
For instance, if I'm looking for a photo that I took on vacation last summer, chances are Spotlight won't be able to find it
Of course it will. All photos are logged by date and time in the camera. Soon they'll be logged by latitude and longitude, too, if the plans of camera-makers pan out, enabling geographic searching. "Show me all the pictures I took last summer within 100 miles of Lake Tahoe."
But of course Spotlight has little to do with this. This is all iPhoto's job.
To me, it is much easier to just organize my photos in a directory structure.
That is, in fact, not easier, because you're limited by the assumptions of files and folders. You can't put a file in two folders unless you make a copy or use some sort of computer trick like an alias. That means if you want a Lake Tahoe file and a Summer 2004 file, you're shit out of luck. You can't reorder pictures, you can't easily retouch or crop pictures without taking them into some program or other, you can't easily share your pictures without taking them into several programs and so on and so on.
For instance, my mother would be able to store photos in a folder on the hard drive, but entering meta data would probably not be obvious to her.
Step one: Get her away from the antiquated "folder on the hard drive" thing. Bring the pictures from the camera right into iPhoto. Click a picture, type in the comments field. Easiest thing in the world.
That's a classic fallacy committed by armchair "scientists." You're assuming something that hasn't been observed. "Just because we haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't happen," you say. Well, yes, that's exactly what the scientific method does mean. If we haven't seen it, there's no evidence to support it. And we've been looking for a long, long time.
Is it possible that abiogenesis occurs on other planets or something? Sure, it's possible. But it's also possible that I will sprout wings and fly, that water will spontaneously turn to wine, or that the sun will fail to rise tomorrow. But we have no evidence to believe any of these things. They're all completely unsupported by the facts.
I'm just stating that if progress (define it as you will, ultimately it is defined by those doing the experimentation) can be made, it will be made.
Um. I know you were stating that. And I'm arguing with you. Didn't you notice?
Step one: Let's stop calling it "progress." Calling all experimentation "progress" attaches a positive connotation that's not warranted. Some experimentation results in progress, some doesn't. So let's call it what it is: Experimentation.
We have rules of ethics that govern experimentation on human beings. You can't use a human subject in an experiment without his informed consent, for instance. There might be volumes to be learned from experimenting on unsuspecting people, but we don't do it. Period. We just don't.
There's another fundamental rule of ethics: We don't kill people in order to experiment on them. That rule applies equally to babies and adults.
Some people have become confused about that rule because they don't see embryos or fetuses as people, but they are. So the rules of ethics clearly tell us that we shouldn't kill them in order to run experiments on them (or, in this case, their cells).
You're arguing that we shouldn't bother trying to maintain ethics because somebody going to do the experiment anyway. That's obviously circular reasoning. If we maintain ethics, nobody will do the experiment, because it's unethical. See?
One of the best ways of maintaining ethics is by enforcing it through funding restrictions. We don't offer public funds for experiments that involve killing babies and harvesting their cells.
Incidentally, I think you're a little confused about your history. We have extensive records of Mengele's experiments. We know all about his, and the Nazi's in general, high-altitude tests, sea-water drinking tests, mustard gas tests, deliberate infections of prisoners with malaria and yellow fever and other diseases, and other even more disturbing experiments. All this stuff came out at Nuremberg.
And frankly, your referring to the murder of unborn babies as "throwing out embryos" disgusts me. How can you be so glib?
It's ethically iffy because, in order to save time, some IVF practitioners have decided to mass-produce embryos in the lab, then implanting some and storing the rest.
There's no medical reason to do it this way. It's purely a cost expediency factor. And the idea of creating a dozen babies with the intent right up front of killing 11 of them is extremely iffy. In fact, I personally think it goes farther than iffy. I think it's criminal.
There are two solutions to the problem. Stop the practice, or invest money in developing the technology and protocols for embryonic adoption.
I must have missed that class seeing as every highschool in the world must teach the same syllabus.
Well... yeah. Basically, they all do. I mean, we all learn arithmetic, we all learn to read and write, and we all learn that life does not arise spontaneously from inorganic matter in nature.
How about you provide a link to some "proof" that abiogenesis has been 'disproved'.
Sigh. No, I don't think I will, for the same reason that I wouldn't provide a "link" to the fact that two and two make four or that water rolls downhill.
Look, since you're so blindingly ignorant of your basic biology, do you at least remember your Shakespeare? Remember Hamlet? "If the sun doth breed maggots in a dead dog," Hamlet says, then he interrupts himself. "Have you a daughter?" he asks Polonius, who replies that he does. "Let her not walk in the sun," Hamlet says. "Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive."
See? It was once believed that maggots grew spontaneously from the corpses of dead animals. We now know this isn't true. We all know that this isn't true, because we all did the same experiment in high school biology class. We all took two pieces of meat, and put one in a dish by an open window and the other in a bell jar with an air-tight seal. We all observed maggots in the uncovered meat and none in the covered meat, proving that maggots do not generate spontaneously. Seriously, everybody knows this. How did you manage to be so ignorant of basic biology?
This is especially true considering that scientists have constructed simple lifeforms in the lab.
Um. You do know that that's never happened, right? You've been badly, badly misinformed.
there's no reason to believe that any "magic" was passed on by the molecules
Nobody said it was magic. All anybody has ever said on the subject is that life does not spontaneously arise from inorganic matter. It's never been observed, it does not happen in nature. You can keep that piece of meat in that bell jar forever, and maggots will never appear.
What does this mean? That life arises only from life. But surely there had to be a first cell, right? Well, that's one theory, yes, and in that case some process must have resulted in the creation of that cell. We have no idea what process that might have been. We can't even begin to guess.
The point is that the criteria you were quoting are UTTERLY RETARDED when applied to the general case of the worthiness of life.
Um. You do know that we were talking about the criteria for assessing death, right? No heart beat, no spontaneous respiration, no reflex. These are some of the criteria doctors use to determine when you're dead. They have nothing to do with "the worthiness of life."
Somebody asserted that the definition of death was somehow contingent on "brain activity," and I was explaining that that's not true. I explained that doctors use several overlapping criteria to define death, and then you jumped my shit about how cows are also alive. Any of this ringing a bell?
Yes, I have about as much concern for a few celled embryo as i do for dandruff.
Sigh. That's disappointing. Maybe someday you'll change your mind. I certainly hope so. I hate the idea that I live in the world where people aren't bothered by the idea of killing babies.
There are counter examples for every argument you'll make
What argument? I'm not the one arguing. I'm telling you that in my opinion, killing a baby is something that requires no argument. It's not acceptable, period. This is, to me, as obvious as the day is long. You disagree, which is fine, I guess, it being a free country and all. But it still makes me sad.
you believe it has a soul given to it by God
Actually I'm an agnostic, but thanks for expressing an interest.
keep it to yourself
This bothers me, too. I don't have an opinion about God one way or the other, admitting my own infinite ignorance on the question. But it doesn't bother me to hear somebody talk about God. Why does it bother you?
I mean, it's inarguable that an embryo is alive, it's just a question of whether we should be allowed to kill them or not.
Why is that a question? An embryo is obviously alive, as you say. An embryo is also obviously a human being. I mean, it's not going to grow up to be a salmon or a hummingbird or a hydrangea bush.
So why is the question of whether we should be allowed to kill people even a question? Isn't the answer obvious on its face?
Would you rather design your gui using XML or python?
Oh, sweet mother of Christ, no. It's a Mac. We don't do shit like that on the Mac. On the Mac we use native programming toolkits, not piss-poor imitations.
What? Did you never take high school biology? You know, the experiment with the piece of meat in the bell jar? The one that high-school textbooks use to disprove abiogenesis? Have you not gotten to that year yet?
Bush came up with the most restrictive rules for stem cell research funding, short of banning it.
Um. He also came up with the most permissive rules for stem cell research ever. Half-empty, half-full.
You say "These are human babies." These are embryos that would be destroyed anyway.
First, "embryo" is medical jargon. That's why I say "baby." It's a matter of simplicity of language. Second, they would not be "destroyed" anyway. (I think you mean "killed" here.) The ones that are created specifically for stem-cell collection would not have been created in the first place. The ones that were the result of an ethically iffy in vitro fertilization process can be kept on ice indefinitely, and can be implanted in any willing mother with compatible blood factors.
However, I think they would agree with me if they got the full story rather than "propaganda".
A world of arrogance. The thought that people can be fully informed and disagree with you just never occurred, huh?
If that was truly the case, it would be illegal to disconnect ventillators.
In the vast majority of cases, it is. The exceptions are very, very strictly defined by law.
If the end of life is legally judged by the cessation of brain activity
It's not. There are numerous criteria, and the specific combination varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The absence of a heart beat is always involved, the lack of spontaneous respiration is usually a component, and the failure to respond to reflex stimuli is often included. (Pupils don't contract when exposed to bright light, that sort of thing.)
I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. Embryonic stem cells come from living embryos that are killed in the process of extracting them.
You're been mislead by the meme that's been going around for about 4 years now that embryonic stem cell research depends on aborted babies, but that's untrue. The babies used for embryonic stem cell research come from two sources: Either they're created in vitro purely for their stem cells, or they're created as part of an ethically unsound "mass-production" technique for in vitro fertilization and are subsequently killed for their stem cells later.
How about 'from parents to offspring', mothers can't do it alone and neither can fathers.
Last time I checked, the baby comes out of the mother, not the father. And incidentally, it's a baby, not an "offspring."
we should be asking "When can a life be protected under the law?". That question can be answered.
Actually, when you phrase it that way, the moral imperative is clear. Life must always be protected under the law. And it's not just moral, either. The 14th amendment to the Constitution demands it.
You know, if I pulled out the quote from the top of your comment and replaced it with something from Dr. Mengele, the result would be basically the same.
Are researchers who extract stem cells from undeveloped babies equivalent to Dr. Mengele? No, I personally don't think so. But I'm humble enough to concede that I might be wrong. It's possible --just possible -- that the next generation will look back on the slaughter of embryos as a crime against humanity on the same level as the Holocaust. The fact that we don't, the fact that our morality lets us excuse it, doesn't mean that it's not killing on a massive, massive scale.
Our kids might think it's no big deal, and they might think it's an atrocity. We just don't know.
We have a responsibility as human beings to try to make the best decisions we can in all situations. Crying "you can't stop progress!" when the subject under discussion is as morally ambiguous as this one is irresponsible in the extreme.
That position can't work because, by that logic, anybody on a ventilator is no longer a human being. Christopher Reeve -- whose poor name has already been dragged through the mud enough on this; it's the cross he had to bear being the world's most famous quadriplegic -- could not breathe on his own, therefore by your reasoning he was not alive.
Premature babies often require the use of a ventilator for some time after they're born. By your reasoning, any baby that required a ventilator would not be alive.
Let's cut to the chase scene here, okay? There is no definition of the moment when life begins that can stand up to scrutiny. There's just no way to unequivocally define it, because there is no moment when life begins.
Let me say that again: There is no moment when life begins.
We all learned in high school about the theory of biogenesis, right? It's the principle that life comes only from other living things. It doesn't arise spontaneously. Rocks don't turn into turtles. It's a basic principle of biology. (The opposite of this theory, the theory of abiogenesis, is given as an example of a scientific theory that was once believed but that we now know to be false.)
Am I alive? Yes. Is my liver alive? Well, it's not an independent organism, but it's alive, sure. If you cut off its blood flow, it dies, so yes, it's clearly alive.
Is an embryo alive? Yes, obviously. It's not independent, but it's alive. If you cut off its blood flow, it dies. The cells that compose it cease to function, and it dies. So yes, an embryo is alive.
Life doesn't begin. It's a continuum, passing unbroken from mother to baby and so on through generations.
So it's long past time we stopped looking to science to tell us when life begins. Science has answered that question unequivocally: Whenever the first cell formed, maybe billions of years ago, life began, and it's been going ever since. (How that happened, nobody has the foggiest idea. But clearly it did, so either God did it or space aliens made it happen or some natural process that we don't understand yet happened and life was the result. Take your pick; they all end up in the same place.)
The question of when life begins isn't one for science. It's one for our values.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you know what "straw man" means? You said, "So what you're saying is," then you declared something stupid that is obviously not what I was saying. You did this in an attempt to discredit my position without actually discussing my position. It's a rhetorical trick.
Since you didn't know this, I'm coming down on the side of "idiot" now.
Is that why tiger has an applescript RAD?
... unless you're using it to demonstrate my point.
I don't know what you think "RAD" means, but if you're talking about AppleScript Studio, that's the process of creating native user interfaces controlled by AppleScripts. So I don't see what that has to do with anything
virtually every engineer at apple knows and uses python
Um. "Virtually every engineer?" No. You're making things up, and you should be ashamed.
Another dumbass with an Orwell analogy. You do realize that Orwell was trying to demonstrate the dangers of insidious euphemism, don't you? Calling a baby an "embryo" merely to dehumanize it and make it more tolerable to slaughter it would fit in exactly with what Orwell was writing about in 1984.
I'm going to assume that you object on religious grounds
As I wrote elsewhere, I am an agnostic. You are attempting to construct a straw-man argument. This embarrasses us both.
It's assumed that an embryo will grow to be a human being
Assumed? Sure, I guess. In the same way we assume that gravity will hold us to the surface of the earth and that we assume that water is wet. "Assumed" is entirely the wrong word here. It's not an assumption. It's an indisputable fact
killing the embryo somehow counter acts the divine will of God
I'm not interested in arguing religion, as I have none of my own. But yes, as I understand it, that's the basic religious objection to killing people.
Abortion/stem cell protest aren't about concern over people's lives or the will of God.
"Protest?" I don't understand why you'd use the word "protest." Again, that's entirely the wrong word. Nobody is protesting anything.
However, you're right that the disagreement isn't over health or religious issues. It's over ethical issues, which have nothing to do with either of those arguments.
No, this is about controling people.
There goes that straw man again. If you ever reach the point where you're interested in having an actual conversation rather than slinging straw-man arguments at people, let me know.
If the criteria is intelligence and free will, then the mentally ill or brain-damaged are not alive.
Like I said elsewhere, there is no criteria you can offer that can stand up to rigorous scrutiny.
I think the important point in the original post was "without the assistance of a host".
Ventilator = host. Hell, for that matter, nurse to clean out his trach tube = host. Without either, he'd have died.
it does seem a reasonable answer to the question "When is it okay to have an abortion?".
You're asking the wrong question. The right question is, "Given that babies are alive, why should it ever be okay to have an abortion?"
the issue is being dependant on a living host.
Why does it have to be a living host? I thought the question was whether a person was able to survive on its own. Is it possible that you're just moving the line until you find one that delineates between unborn babies and adults, even adults who require life support measures to stay alive?
In another XXX years I'll assemble an amoeba for you atom by atom
... where it was created by God, or descended form a single cell, or whatever. Or that time is cyclic and that life never had a beginning or an end. We just don't know for sure. All we have are theories, some of which explain the facts better than others.
Amoebas have been assembling other amoebas atom by atom for billions of years. No one has ever successfully assembled an amoeba, or any other living thing, without the use of another living thing. While you might think such a thing would be theoretically possible, there is no reason to think it would be practically possible. For instance, how would you handle the metabolic problem? You can't just clip an entire amoeba together out of atoms like you're building it out of legos and then just expect metabolic processes to start all by themselves.
There is no reason to think that it will ever be possible to build cells atom by atom, just like there's no reason to think it will ever be possible to create atoms from nothing or to create an engine that operates at 100% efficiency.
Also you suggest that a first cell formed. Perhaps not? Perhaps there were a few environments especially conducive to producing cells and not all cells have a single parent.
That contradicts what we know about life on earth. We know that all life ever observed is composed of the same compounds in the same ratios. Given what we know about reproduction, the only explanation that fits the fact is that all life descended from a single cell.
But you're right when you say "Perhaps not." We have to be honest about what we know. We know that the planet is covered in a vast diversity of life that's all composed of the same compounds in the same ratios. We know that there's evidence that more complex life forms evolved from simpler life forms, though we've never observed it. So we conclude that all life is descended from a single cell. We don't know it for a fact, but we think so.
It's also entirely possible that all life was created by God, or that it was seeded on this planet from another planet
Are they alive when solid?
Obviously, because when unfrozen they resume metabolic processes.
Then I argue that soil is alive
Obviously not, because left alone soil does not come to life. That's the whole idea behind the theory of biogenesis.
While I agree that the technology for Spotlight does seem very well done, do you think that it will change the way people use computers?
It has fundamentally changed the way I use mine.
For instance, if I'm looking for a photo that I took on vacation last summer, chances are Spotlight won't be able to find it
Of course it will. All photos are logged by date and time in the camera. Soon they'll be logged by latitude and longitude, too, if the plans of camera-makers pan out, enabling geographic searching. "Show me all the pictures I took last summer within 100 miles of Lake Tahoe."
But of course Spotlight has little to do with this. This is all iPhoto's job.
To me, it is much easier to just organize my photos in a directory structure.
That is, in fact, not easier, because you're limited by the assumptions of files and folders. You can't put a file in two folders unless you make a copy or use some sort of computer trick like an alias. That means if you want a Lake Tahoe file and a Summer 2004 file, you're shit out of luck. You can't reorder pictures, you can't easily retouch or crop pictures without taking them into some program or other, you can't easily share your pictures without taking them into several programs and so on and so on.
For instance, my mother would be able to store photos in a folder on the hard drive, but entering meta data would probably not be obvious to her.
Step one: Get her away from the antiquated "folder on the hard drive" thing. Bring the pictures from the camera right into iPhoto. Click a picture, type in the comments field. Easiest thing in the world.
Nice straw man. You're either an idiot, or you're desperately not funny. At this point, I haven't the foggiest interest in guessing which.
That's a classic fallacy committed by armchair "scientists." You're assuming something that hasn't been observed. "Just because we haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't happen," you say. Well, yes, that's exactly what the scientific method does mean. If we haven't seen it, there's no evidence to support it. And we've been looking for a long, long time.
Is it possible that abiogenesis occurs on other planets or something? Sure, it's possible. But it's also possible that I will sprout wings and fly, that water will spontaneously turn to wine, or that the sun will fail to rise tomorrow. But we have no evidence to believe any of these things. They're all completely unsupported by the facts.
I'm just stating that if progress (define it as you will, ultimately it is defined by those doing the experimentation) can be made, it will be made.
Um. I know you were stating that. And I'm arguing with you. Didn't you notice?
Step one: Let's stop calling it "progress." Calling all experimentation "progress" attaches a positive connotation that's not warranted. Some experimentation results in progress, some doesn't. So let's call it what it is: Experimentation.
We have rules of ethics that govern experimentation on human beings. You can't use a human subject in an experiment without his informed consent, for instance. There might be volumes to be learned from experimenting on unsuspecting people, but we don't do it. Period. We just don't.
There's another fundamental rule of ethics: We don't kill people in order to experiment on them. That rule applies equally to babies and adults.
Some people have become confused about that rule because they don't see embryos or fetuses as people, but they are. So the rules of ethics clearly tell us that we shouldn't kill them in order to run experiments on them (or, in this case, their cells).
You're arguing that we shouldn't bother trying to maintain ethics because somebody going to do the experiment anyway. That's obviously circular reasoning. If we maintain ethics, nobody will do the experiment, because it's unethical. See?
One of the best ways of maintaining ethics is by enforcing it through funding restrictions. We don't offer public funds for experiments that involve killing babies and harvesting their cells.
Incidentally, I think you're a little confused about your history. We have extensive records of Mengele's experiments. We know all about his, and the Nazi's in general, high-altitude tests, sea-water drinking tests, mustard gas tests, deliberate infections of prisoners with malaria and yellow fever and other diseases, and other even more disturbing experiments. All this stuff came out at Nuremberg.
And frankly, your referring to the murder of unborn babies as "throwing out embryos" disgusts me. How can you be so glib?
It's ethically iffy because, in order to save time, some IVF practitioners have decided to mass-produce embryos in the lab, then implanting some and storing the rest.
There's no medical reason to do it this way. It's purely a cost expediency factor. And the idea of creating a dozen babies with the intent right up front of killing 11 of them is extremely iffy. In fact, I personally think it goes farther than iffy. I think it's criminal.
There are two solutions to the problem. Stop the practice, or invest money in developing the technology and protocols for embryonic adoption.
I must have missed that class seeing as every highschool in the world must teach the same syllabus.
... yeah. Basically, they all do. I mean, we all learn arithmetic, we all learn to read and write, and we all learn that life does not arise spontaneously from inorganic matter in nature.
Well
How about you provide a link to some "proof" that abiogenesis has been 'disproved'.
Sigh. No, I don't think I will, for the same reason that I wouldn't provide a "link" to the fact that two and two make four or that water rolls downhill.
Look, since you're so blindingly ignorant of your basic biology, do you at least remember your Shakespeare? Remember Hamlet? "If the sun doth breed maggots in a dead dog," Hamlet says, then he interrupts himself. "Have you a daughter?" he asks Polonius, who replies that he does. "Let her not walk in the sun," Hamlet says. "Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive."
See? It was once believed that maggots grew spontaneously from the corpses of dead animals. We now know this isn't true. We all know that this isn't true, because we all did the same experiment in high school biology class. We all took two pieces of meat, and put one in a dish by an open window and the other in a bell jar with an air-tight seal. We all observed maggots in the uncovered meat and none in the covered meat, proving that maggots do not generate spontaneously. Seriously, everybody knows this. How did you manage to be so ignorant of basic biology?
This is especially true considering that scientists have constructed simple lifeforms in the lab.
Um. You do know that that's never happened, right? You've been badly, badly misinformed.
there's no reason to believe that any "magic" was passed on by the molecules
Nobody said it was magic. All anybody has ever said on the subject is that life does not spontaneously arise from inorganic matter. It's never been observed, it does not happen in nature. You can keep that piece of meat in that bell jar forever, and maggots will never appear.
What does this mean? That life arises only from life. But surely there had to be a first cell, right? Well, that's one theory, yes, and in that case some process must have resulted in the creation of that cell. We have no idea what process that might have been. We can't even begin to guess.
The point is that the criteria you were quoting are UTTERLY RETARDED when applied to the general case of the worthiness of life.
Um. You do know that we were talking about the criteria for assessing death, right? No heart beat, no spontaneous respiration, no reflex. These are some of the criteria doctors use to determine when you're dead. They have nothing to do with "the worthiness of life."
Somebody asserted that the definition of death was somehow contingent on "brain activity," and I was explaining that that's not true. I explained that doctors use several overlapping criteria to define death, and then you jumped my shit about how cows are also alive. Any of this ringing a bell?
Yes, I have about as much concern for a few celled embryo as i do for dandruff.
Sigh. That's disappointing. Maybe someday you'll change your mind. I certainly hope so. I hate the idea that I live in the world where people aren't bothered by the idea of killing babies.
There are counter examples for every argument you'll make
What argument? I'm not the one arguing. I'm telling you that in my opinion, killing a baby is something that requires no argument. It's not acceptable, period. This is, to me, as obvious as the day is long. You disagree, which is fine, I guess, it being a free country and all. But it still makes me sad.
you believe it has a soul given to it by God
Actually I'm an agnostic, but thanks for expressing an interest.
keep it to yourself
This bothers me, too. I don't have an opinion about God one way or the other, admitting my own infinite ignorance on the question. But it doesn't bother me to hear somebody talk about God. Why does it bother you?
I mean, it's inarguable that an embryo is alive, it's just a question of whether we should be allowed to kill them or not.
Why is that a question? An embryo is obviously alive, as you say. An embryo is also obviously a human being. I mean, it's not going to grow up to be a salmon or a hummingbird or a hydrangea bush.
So why is the question of whether we should be allowed to kill people even a question? Isn't the answer obvious on its face?
Right. I'll take that as a "no."
Would you rather design your gui using XML or python?
Oh, sweet mother of Christ, no. It's a Mac. We don't do shit like that on the Mac. On the Mac we use native programming toolkits, not piss-poor imitations.
Cows meet all of those criteria.
... congratulations. You've just proven to everyone's satisfaction that cows are alive. Let's throw you a fucking parade.
Right
is this some sneaky way to prove creationism?
What? Did you never take high school biology? You know, the experiment with the piece of meat in the bell jar? The one that high-school textbooks use to disprove abiogenesis? Have you not gotten to that year yet?
Bush came up with the most restrictive rules for stem cell research funding, short of banning it.
Um. He also came up with the most permissive rules for stem cell research ever. Half-empty, half-full.
You say "These are human babies." These are embryos that would be destroyed anyway.
First, "embryo" is medical jargon. That's why I say "baby." It's a matter of simplicity of language. Second, they would not be "destroyed" anyway. (I think you mean "killed" here.) The ones that are created specifically for stem-cell collection would not have been created in the first place. The ones that were the result of an ethically iffy in vitro fertilization process can be kept on ice indefinitely, and can be implanted in any willing mother with compatible blood factors.
However, I think they would agree with me if they got the full story rather than "propaganda".
A world of arrogance. The thought that people can be fully informed and disagree with you just never occurred, huh?
If that was truly the case, it would be illegal to disconnect ventillators.
In the vast majority of cases, it is. The exceptions are very, very strictly defined by law.
If the end of life is legally judged by the cessation of brain activity
It's not. There are numerous criteria, and the specific combination varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The absence of a heart beat is always involved, the lack of spontaneous respiration is usually a component, and the failure to respond to reflex stimuli is often included. (Pupils don't contract when exposed to bright light, that sort of thing.)
I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. Embryonic stem cells come from living embryos that are killed in the process of extracting them.
You're been mislead by the meme that's been going around for about 4 years now that embryonic stem cell research depends on aborted babies, but that's untrue. The babies used for embryonic stem cell research come from two sources: Either they're created in vitro purely for their stem cells, or they're created as part of an ethically unsound "mass-production" technique for in vitro fertilization and are subsequently killed for their stem cells later.
How about 'from parents to offspring', mothers can't do it alone and neither can fathers.
Last time I checked, the baby comes out of the mother, not the father. And incidentally, it's a baby, not an "offspring."
we should be asking "When can a life be protected under the law?". That question can be answered.
Actually, when you phrase it that way, the moral imperative is clear. Life must always be protected under the law. And it's not just moral, either. The 14th amendment to the Constitution demands it.
You know, if I pulled out the quote from the top of your comment and replaced it with something from Dr. Mengele, the result would be basically the same.
Are researchers who extract stem cells from undeveloped babies equivalent to Dr. Mengele? No, I personally don't think so. But I'm humble enough to concede that I might be wrong. It's possible --just possible -- that the next generation will look back on the slaughter of embryos as a crime against humanity on the same level as the Holocaust. The fact that we don't, the fact that our morality lets us excuse it, doesn't mean that it's not killing on a massive, massive scale.
Our kids might think it's no big deal, and they might think it's an atrocity. We just don't know.
We have a responsibility as human beings to try to make the best decisions we can in all situations. Crying "you can't stop progress!" when the subject under discussion is as morally ambiguous as this one is irresponsible in the extreme.
That position can't work because, by that logic, anybody on a ventilator is no longer a human being. Christopher Reeve -- whose poor name has already been dragged through the mud enough on this; it's the cross he had to bear being the world's most famous quadriplegic -- could not breathe on his own, therefore by your reasoning he was not alive.
Premature babies often require the use of a ventilator for some time after they're born. By your reasoning, any baby that required a ventilator would not be alive.
Let's cut to the chase scene here, okay? There is no definition of the moment when life begins that can stand up to scrutiny. There's just no way to unequivocally define it, because there is no moment when life begins.
Let me say that again: There is no moment when life begins.
We all learned in high school about the theory of biogenesis, right? It's the principle that life comes only from other living things. It doesn't arise spontaneously. Rocks don't turn into turtles. It's a basic principle of biology. (The opposite of this theory, the theory of abiogenesis, is given as an example of a scientific theory that was once believed but that we now know to be false.)
Am I alive? Yes. Is my liver alive? Well, it's not an independent organism, but it's alive, sure. If you cut off its blood flow, it dies, so yes, it's clearly alive.
Is an embryo alive? Yes, obviously. It's not independent, but it's alive. If you cut off its blood flow, it dies. The cells that compose it cease to function, and it dies. So yes, an embryo is alive.
Life doesn't begin. It's a continuum, passing unbroken from mother to baby and so on through generations.
So it's long past time we stopped looking to science to tell us when life begins. Science has answered that question unequivocally: Whenever the first cell formed, maybe billions of years ago, life began, and it's been going ever since. (How that happened, nobody has the foggiest idea. But clearly it did, so either God did it or space aliens made it happen or some natural process that we don't understand yet happened and life was the result. Take your pick; they all end up in the same place.)
The question of when life begins isn't one for science. It's one for our values.