Quote:
Originally Posted by SCUDSBROTHER
How would they find that? It'd probably still be in the mother's Fallopian Tube. Whatever it is, it can't develop a brain without a woman. To call something a person it should be able to feel and/or respond to stimuli. A zygote can't survive in this world the way a person can. People have brains. When their brains don't work, they usually call it being a vegetable. You can implant many organs from another person, but not the brain. Each day, in this country, people have machines turned off, and people die. They die because their brain no longer works. Most of us do not consider that to be the person we knew. People burn it. People bury it in dirt. It once had life, but it no longer does. Same as something (without a developed brain) growing in a woman. She is the artificial machine keeping something growing until it's actually alive (with a functioning brain.) You're alive when you can feel n' respond to stimuli. Need a brain for that. If a fetus can feel stimuli, then I would agree that aborting it is murder.
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I obviously wasn't referring to an actual crime scene procedure...I was using it as an example to say that when we have a unique DNA sequence, we have one (or more in the case of twins, triplets, etc) new life present. It should be "hands off" at that point -- which leads to a philosophical position against abortion.
You're obviously correct that the brain is crucial to life experience and certainly that the end of the brain translates to the end of earthly life. After that point, the argument will depend on one's faith, or lack of it, and I'll forego that and keep this to a scientific discussion. But as to how life begins, we also know that life does not switch on, then off, then on again. So I would argue that since the DNA is unique at conception, and since growth begins immediately (zygote to blastocyst to embryo to fetus...) that life - not yet consciousness or sentience - begins at conception. It is more humane to kill before consciousness or sentience, but it is no more ethical. It is still murder.
I also agree with you about the disposition of the body of the deceased. Jumping outside of science for a second, I tend to think of the body as "a spacesuit for the soul." We need it to experience everything here on earth, from the laws of physics to our interaction with others, but, assuming there is an afterlife which I can never hope to comprehend in my finite existence, it is not needed for the next life.
09-02-2010, 09:07 AM
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