Marc2b
Posts: 6660
Joined: 8/7/2006
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quote:
OK, I seriously don't want to mix into the ridiculous semantic argument going on here. So treat this as a real question please.
At what point does "a piece of a human" become "human". For instance, what about amputees? What about someone in a permanent coma? I know where you're going but I suspect you haven't nailed the specific parts of the definition you're looking for. Defining that which is and is not human is a non-trivial problem.
HA!
I knew it wouldn't be long before someone brought up amputees.
The answer is, I don't have an answer.
I see the situation as analogous to a fallacy often presented by creationists in their (feeble) attempts to "refute" evolution. Creationists will often ask the question "how can one species give birth to another species?" How, they want to know, can an ape give birth to a human being and what are the odds that another ape would give birth to another human capable of mating with it? The problem with this line of "thinking" of course is that species don't give birth to other species. They give birth to the same species which may have an infinitesimal difference that basically amounts to no difference in practical terms. It is over time that the differences become profound enough that we humans come along and ARBITRARILY draw a line and say, "this is a different species from its' ancestor of a hundred thousand years ago."
I think we are doing the same thing in the abortion debate. It doesn't matter where you draw the line, it's arbitrary. Whatever definition people come up with as to what constitutes a human will have exceptions! But we humans generally don't like it when things aren't demarcated... so where do we draw the line?
To me, the only logical place is the moment when sperm cell hits egg cell and the blue print that we call human is complete. This, of course leads to the problem of justifying abortion if we consider the fertilized eggs to be human life... which is where the euphemisms and excuse making come in. Me? I just prefer to admit that this particular class of humans (the unborn who have not yet achieved cuteness) are to be denied their human rights for the greater good of society,
This, of course, leads to a new problem... having accepted this justification, who is to say that we cannot justify denying other people their rights for the good of society (complicated by the fact that people have very different notions of what constitutes "the good of society.")? To that, all I can say is that, when it comes to philosophies, one size does not fit all. Sometimes we just have to draw the line somewhere and say "good enough."
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Do you know what the most awesome thing about being an Atheist is? You're not required to hate anybody!
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RE: End of discussion. "Fetal Pain Is A Lie..." - 
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