It appears that you are making evidential claims from a position of ignorance. Mammalian development is regulative, not mosaic.
I’m afraid that you are pretending that your ignorance is merely a metaphysical framework. If you’re accusing others of murder, you damn well ought to know what you’re talking about.
Utterly, spectacularly false. The early embryo does NOT grow until after implantation.
Some translations of that passage have even changed over time! There’s simply no basis in that passage to consider abortion to be murder.
I think you’re being far too easy on the movement. If you’re literally accusing group A of murder, while group B does far more killing of embryos, it’s rank hypocrisy, not mere inconsistency. Jesus did speak strongly against hypocrisy while never mentioning abortion. Is there a reason for that?
You seem to be just fine with it and more angry with me for pointing it out than at those committing what you consider to be killing humans.
I didn’t say you said it, and my assessments about the intentions of others are accurate. You’re confirming them with your excuses.
It most certainly does. The whole “a human life begins at conception” thing is a post hoc contrivance, because it is the only way one can overcome a woman’s rights. It’s made immoral by all of the lying from ignorance about relevant facts.
Watch this video:
The idea that the embryo shown in the video has rights equal to yours is absurd.
You know that the human embryo in the video was never implanted and died after the video was taken. Is that fascinating, or is it morally revolting?
For those who think life begins at conception, an embryo of 8-20 cells is as much a human as anything else. As part of this process, embryos are either destroyed or frozen back in liquid nitrogen. However, the pro-life movement doesn’t seem that interested in going after IVF clinics, especially given the number of christian couples who seek out the services of fertility clinics.
So what happens to all of these frozen embryos? It’s an interesting moral question for the pro-life movement.
And freezing isn’t a way out, as freezing and thawing kills plenty of embryos. Then, we know that most of the embryos that appear to be alive in the dish after thawing won’t be viable in utero, so multiple embryos are transferred. When the thawing has higher viability than expected, that creates problems with multiple pregnancies, which result in more spontaneous and medical abortions.
One can credibly argue that all of these are more poorly morally justified than virtually all of the reasons for which women seek to terminate non-IVF pregnancies.
If I understand things correctly, the distinction between regulative and mosaic development (which I was in fact ignorant of, but am slightly less so now, thanks) is irrelevant to my claim that the formation of identical twins isn’t the normal developmental pathway. It isn’t a normal part of the developmental pathway to split the embryo up so that identical twins result - the split happens by accident or disruption, not an intrinsic function oriented towards causing the split. Regulative instead of mosaic development just means that when such an accident or disruption occurs, the result is identical twins instead of half-embryos.
We could argue the metaphysics, but that would turn into a much longer discussion. And on the flip side of what you say - one should also be very confident in their metaphysical conclusions before they carry out something that might be murder if they are wrong.
The video you posted only shortly after writing this contradicts you. Yes, I forgot that the embryo doesn’t start literally increasing in size until a little later on. But my point was that the kind of developmental activity that the zygote/embryo carries out even before implantation shows that it is an individual organism distinct from the mother.
And I’m not saying that there is a basis in that passage, only that the supposed basis for the opposite position is disputable.
Maybe you are right and I am going too easy on the pro-life movement, but I think it has a lot more to do with people’s lack of awareness of this issue than a conscious decision to turn a blind eye to one practice while condemning another. And again, this isn’t meant to be an excuse for that inconsistency. (Though you seem to think that’s what I’m doing.) We should be well aware of the issue with IVF and as opposed to it as we are to abortion. That we are not is a fault on our part.
He did not need to mention that it is wrong to kill an unborn child; he became an unborn child himself.
I am not angry with you for pointing it out. I simply disagree with you that it implies that pro-lifers are insincere about their principles or beliefs.
What is considered tragic or not tragic is a matter of people’s emotional response. The fact that we don’t have as strong emotional responses to the death of embryos (or fetuses, for that matter) as we do to other people doesn’t show that they are less than fully human.
It is actually an entirely natural belief about when human life begins - you know, because it is the beginning of a unique human organism - and once again, has nothing to do with a desire to take away anyone’s rights.
I think it’s highly relevant. You’re flailing when you try to claim that identical twins are some sort of abnormality. They are rare, not abnormal.
No, regulative development means that the embryo handles multiple, arbitrary splits as normal. Another example is the split between the cells that become the embryo itself (inner cell mass) and those that become the trophectoderm.
I think you’re fabricating again. You’ve gone from not knowing what regulative development is to lecturing me on its mechanism!
What is the nature of this alleged “accident or disruption”?
No, it does not, because there was no growing. Are you really going to insist that I’ve somehow been contradicted because you have a special meaning for growth? BTW, were you offended by it?
You forgot the meaning of the verb “to grow.” Gotcha.
I don’t see why. Your point could just as easily be applied to oogenesis, and you’re ignoring the fact that without proper implantation, the whole process grinds to a halt. With implantation in the wrong place, you get a tubular pregnancy, endangering the life of the mother.
Twinning shows that it’s not an individual organism for two weeks. See, Matthew, you have to keep reiterating that deception that it’s an individual. That’s why it’s a contrivance.
How often is it the subject of sermons in churches filled with members who oppose abortion?
I don’t see how lack of awareness is a good reason either.
You’re missing the point. It’s not binary. It’s a gradation. For EVERYONE.
When our responses are completely different based on the excitement of accusing others of murder, I’ll go with actions over condemnations.
But it isn’t. It can end up as twins or triplets, all of whom everyone and every religion treats as different, unique human organisms.
And those are separate, unique human beings even if you brand them as abnormalities.
You clearly did not reason from a moral principle when you decided that abortion was morally wrong. You’re backfilling and pretending you aren’t.
I’m drawing out the implications that I see. Not fabricating, and also not intending to lecture you on anything other than my perspective.
Whatever it is that causes the split. It is an accident or disruption because splitting isn’t built in to the function of the embryo; it doesn’t serve the purpose of the organism, though being able to recover from a split does. (By the way, there we get into metaphysics again.)
At this point though, I have to admit I’m mostly just being stubborn, because I think that the belief that life starts at conception would still be reasonable even if twinning was the normal and usual course of things.
I don’t think it can be. It isn’t until conception that the capacity to develop into a full human being is united into a single entity. The oocyte isn’t a complete organism by itself; the oocyte + sperm in its environment isn’t a single entity. The fact that the embryo depends on the environment of the womb doesn’t make it less human than an adult who depends on air, water, and food: it just means the dependence on the mother is higher and more intimate, you might say.
In what way? It is an individual organism before twinning occurs. Upon twinning, it splits into two individual organisms.
I’m really not. I’m reasoning from the principle that it’s wrong to kill innocent human beings, and it simply appears to me to be the case that the unborn are human beings (and if they are human beings, they are certainly innocent ones) all the way back to conception.
You’ve been saying that the existence of twins is somehow a knockdown argument that this is not the case, but it doesn’t actually follow.
I see. So without knowing anything about the mechanism, you somehow magically know its nature anyway.
More vapid judgments. How did you decide on this alleged “purpose of the organism,” leaving aside the point that yet again you misrepresented identical twins as a single organism?
No, just fabrication.
Thanks for the honesty. However, I suspect that you are being stubborn because you believe that abortion is wrong.
I don’t think you have sufficient facts to have an informed opinion.
Which then splits into multiple entities, always into a part that is not part of the human being and sometimes into multiple human beings, falsifying your claim.
You might say that such “intimacy” means that morally, the mother gets to make the decisions without interference from busybodies like you.
That means that the zygote is not a single entity. It only has potential.
You keep confirming it when you slip up by specifying “single entity” and “unique” as essential properties.
It’s a continuum. A zygote has worth, just not the worth of a human being. That’s consistent with the way in which virtually everyone behaves when confronted with these issues.
Only one side on this issue falsely claims it to be binary. The other side does not.
I’m just asking how you know the other end of the binary should have worth, dignity, and worth. You can’t take it as forgone conclusion. Many moderns and ancients have held that a baby has no human value. On what basis are they wrong? Or do you agree?
It’s not a binary. I don’t think that they held that babies had NO value.
They would be wrong in our society because our babies are much more viable. It’s understandable and common for people treat babies as potential human beings in conditions of high neonatal mortality. It’s still a continuum.
