Audie
Veteran Member
I dont think anyone says first life
was or could have been cellular.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
When does life begin?
- Thread starter Kfox
- Start date
was or could have been cellular.
When people get off the internet?
We Never Know
No Slack
My point is a single-celled organism is considered life.
But a mutlicellar fetus isn't considered life.
We Never Know
No Slack
Meaningless or not.... We are parasites.
Kathryn
It was on fire when I laid down on it.
OK, not true but you think so.
another post with no argument. what is not true ? ... you don't even have a legitimate premise in this one. I went back through your posts .. post after post .. no argument to be found. Which post of yours contains an argument ? Show that your claim is true ! ..
Thanks. I will block you, so that my 'off-topic' posts won't bother you anymore. Best wishes.
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
It contains all of the genetic information (a complete - diploid human genome) of a new individual (genetically unique) organism. But there is more. From a purely scientific standpoint:
"Both by its genetic information, produced proteins, overall molecular composition, and by its behavior, even at its earliest stages of development, the zygote that is produced after fertilization is both alive and with human genetic material."
See:
If you believe earth is a superorganism, perhaps. That would make all species of this planet parasites - organisms that live inside another organism, leeching off its life force and metabolism.
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
I agree, but is that all it takes to be considered human. I have lost a bunch of cells over my lifetime. All with a diploid human genome. Other than being the cells of a human are they human in the same sense that you or I are?
I'm just curious what people think and claim.
McBell
Unbound
Seems to me it depends upon just how asinine one is willing to be in order to push their agenda(s) over having honest discourse.
That's an interesting little paper. It tackles the points I'm interested in and is somewhat truncated version of the basis of my interest in this subject.
Audie
Veteran Member
Yep, there's no right to medical
care, no rights at all if you will die without it.
Simple.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
It’s the start of a new life which may, if all goes well, someday be independent of the two lives which came together to create it.
How do you figure that? It seems to me that folks with various perspectives on this issue are being quite honest in their tellings of them. That is, both the extreme positions of "abortion at any stage or pregnancy" and "abortion at no stage of pregnancy" are present in society. I don't understand what you mean here.
Audie
Veteran Member
Obviously
McBell
Unbound
Fair enough.
It just looks to me that people are going to extreme to conflate a specific individual life and that that specific individual life and everything about it is human.
So this "discussion" always ends up being nothing more than a big semantics mess.
anotherneil
Well-Known Member
I think the word that's missing or that you're probably looking for is "generation." What happens at conception when sperm and egg finish the process of completely joining together is that a new generation (relative to its parents) of that organism has formed. This is not limited to humans; it also applies to any other organism that reproduces sexually.
In a similar sense, people demonstrate having a misunderstanding about what a fetus is in terms of being a living human being. There are two problems that people seem to have with the word fetus. The first is that there seems to be a belief about what a fetus is as though it's a different species of an organism, distinct from its parents & that's not correct; it's a reference to a stage of development, for the same species as itself and its parents. The second is that some people seem to believe that only gestating human mothers can have a fetus (i.e. all other mammals can also have a fetus as a stage of development). When a human has a fetus, that fetus is a human fetus; when a rabbit has a fetus, that fetus is a rabbit fetus; when a coyote has a fetus, that fetus is a coyote fetus; when a giraffe has a fetus, that fetus is a giraffe fetus; etc. etc.
What might make it easier to understand is to take into consideration when a new generation of life begins with organisms that reproduce asexually (binary fission); in this case, the offspring (the new generation) are alive, and the parent apparently vanishes. With sexual reproduction, the parents of offspring do not vanish.
Hmm, I wonder if that's where the word "apparently" came from; just kidding, I just wanted to say that.
Regarding abortion, there's a distinction to be made with it, as well - there are two different terminations involved with an abortion, not just one. The first is that the pregnancy itself is being brought to an end, and the second is that the life of the unborn offspring is being targeted for slaughter to also bring it to an end.
BTW, I'm curious - why did you post this thread in the "Religious Topics > Religious Debates > General Religious Debates" section of the forum? This is a biological question; what does the issue, of when new generations of life begin, have to do with religion?
If it's about the issue of outlawing abortion, then that would be a political issue & still not a religious issue.
In terms of abortion as a political issue, I don't have a problem with the first type of termination; if a woman wants to stop being pregnant, what business is it of mine to tell her what to do with her body? None - that's what. However, the unborn child is a different story & what I'm saying is let women remove their unborn offspring if they want to stop being pregnant, and omit the extra step of killing it.
It's not the mother herself who's taking (direct) active action to slaughter the unborn offspring, herself; it's the abortionist who makes & takes this additional, extraneous, step of doing that. Simply transfer the unborn offspring to an incubator & if that's not feasible or viable way of preserving its life, then let's do what's needed in order to invent & develop the necessary technology.
The mother doesn't have to keep the child if she doesn't wish to raise it, doesn't think she's ready or fit to be a mother, or doesn't wish to raise a child because of financial hardship or limitations, etc. There's always the possibility that the biological father or another relative would want to raise the child & I don't think I need to patronize anyone by introducing a concept known as adoption as an alternative to the availability of biological parents or relatives.
The reason I bring up this distinction is because in a post Roe v. Wade era here in the US, we now have states imposing bans on abortion. I personally think this makes sense for the sake of protecting the life of the unborn child, but would such a ban include pregnancy termination procedures that preserve the life of the unborn child by transferring it to an incubator (hypothetically speaking), rather than deliberate dismembering to slaughter it?
I don't support that sort of a broad abortion ban, and if there are those who insist on such broad abortion ban for religious reasons that includes terminating the pregnancy even if the unborn child's life is protected and preserved, then that's a trivial matter of being an infringement on the 1st clause of the 1st Amendment, which prohibits the merger of religion ("church") and state.
Regarding so-called "abortion pills", which does generally entail the life of the unborn offspring promptly coming to an end as a result, I have a libertarian position that also makes me oppose an abortion ban that also covers this. My libertarian position - specifically - is that I think people ought to have a right to consume whatever they want, even if it just happens to be something that knowingly or unknowingly induces a miscarriage.
To me, the distinction between a situation like a miscarriage and an (elective) abortion is that with a miscarriage, in effect, the woman's body itself is initiating the termination through its own biological processes, and an (elective) abortion involves a mechanical & manual process of utilizing tools to remove the unborn offspring from the womb, whether in one piece or many pieces.
A ban on a pregnant woman intentionally consuming something that happens to induce a miscarriage, even so-called "abortion pills", to me, seem to only be based on religious grounds.
Well, at this point I guess I have my answer to the question of what the relevance is to religion. LOL