(May 17, 2018 at 11:56 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: A place it has no right to be?! What? Where else would or could a fetus be?

There is difference between were it is and were it has the right to be . On whether it is there or has any right to remain there. I say it has no right to be inside the woman it's their by her say and she has the right to kick it out .  

Quote:Nope... the dependency of the baby doesn’t make it any less human, With a right to life.

Nope it's depency very much does . It's inside her body a place it has no inherent right to be . And it has no right to her bodies resources or to live within her . It's parasitic. So yes it very much changes the whole issue . No matter how much you deny it .

(May 17, 2018 at 9:19 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote:

(May 17, 2018 at 8:47 pm)The Industrial Atheist Wrote: If a human has the mental capacity of a cat or chipmunk is it really a human in the ways that matter?

Are you saying that people with less mental acuteness are less human?

No, I'm saying that something that belongs to species human but that doesn't have human intelligence doesn't qualify. Basically if he/she can mentally do things that animals just cannot and has the human emotional experience. I don't see this as a slippery slope at all.
Also, if something is/isn't conscious/sentient.
You could I suppose, mention dolphins, but I would say there would be something more wrong about killing a dolphin(than most animals) unless it would cause more suffering for it (the dolphin) to keep living.
The death of animals is unfortunate, and I personally dislike killing anything. But we eat things that suffer more than aborted fetuses and that have equal or better mental functioning all the time. As others have said more eloquently, it causes more harm to disallow abortion.
Most aborted fetuses clearly have no ability to experience pain.
I don't think humans are that special apart from their mental/emotional faculties. If an animal could think and reason like humans, and had human emotion, I would pretty much consider that animal human in the ways that matter.
It's not about if something/someone is a more or less intelligent human. It's if they meet a threshold.

(May 18, 2018 at 8:00 am)The Industrial Atheist Wrote:

(May 17, 2018 at 9:19 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: Are you saying that people with less mental acuteness are less human?

No, I'm saying that something that belongs to species human but that doesn't have human intelligence doesn't qualify. Basically if he/she can mentally do things that animals just cannot and has the human emotional experience. I don't see this as a slippery slope at all.
Also, if something is/isn't conscious/sentient.
You could I suppose, mention dolphins, but I would say there would be something more wrong about killing a dolphin(than most animals) unless it would cause more suffering for it (the dolphin) to keep living.
The death of animals is unfortunate, and I personally dislike killing anything. But we eat things that suffer more than aborted fetuses and that have equal or better mental functioning all the time. As others have said more eloquently, it causes more harm to disallow abortion.
Most aborted fetuses clearly have no ability to experience pain.
I don't think humans are that special apart from their mental/emotional faculties. If an animal could think and reason like humans, and had human emotion, I would pretty much consider that animal human in the ways that matter.
It's not about if something/someone is a more or less intelligent human. It's if they meet a threshold.

So where do you put that threshold then?    It would seem that what you are talking about, that there is no significant change, when the baby is born.   So this would seem to put the limit either before (possibly between the 2nd and 3rd trimester)  or if you raise the bar (you had mentioned other animals) it could be as late as 4 years old or so.  It all depends on when you arbitrarily put that line on what you consider human.  

Personally I prefer a biological point of view, in which the fetus is most definitely human.  However for the intelligence thing, could we possibly give them the Kalam cosmological argument, and see how many false fallacies, and how many times they contradict themselves?  One could make the case from a natural selection and evolutionary standpoint to make stupid people less than human.

(May 18, 2018 at 9:10 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote:

(May 18, 2018 at 8:00 am)The Industrial Atheist Wrote: No, I'm saying that something that belongs to species human but that doesn't have human intelligence doesn't qualify. Basically if he/she can mentally do things that animals just cannot and has the human emotional experience. I don't see this as a slippery slope at all.
Also, if something is/isn't conscious/sentient.
You could I suppose, mention dolphins, but I would say there would be something more wrong about killing a dolphin(than most animals) unless it would cause more suffering for it (the dolphin) to keep living.
The death of animals is unfortunate, and I personally dislike killing anything. But we eat things that suffer more than aborted fetuses and that have equal or better mental functioning all the time. As others have said more eloquently, it causes more harm to disallow abortion.
Most aborted fetuses clearly have no ability to experience pain.
I don't think humans are that special apart from their mental/emotional faculties. If an animal could think and reason like humans, and had human emotion, I would pretty much consider that animal human in the ways that matter.
It's not about if something/someone is a more or less intelligent human. It's if they meet a threshold.

So where do you put that threshold then?    It would seem that what you are talking about, that there is no significant change, when the baby is born.   So this would seem to put the limit either before (possibly between the 2nd and 3rd trimester)  or if you raise the bar (you had mentioned other animals) it could be as late as 4 years old or so.  It all depends on when you arbitrarily put that line on what you consider human.  

Personally I prefer a biological point of view, in which the fetus is most definitely human.  However for the intelligence thing, could we possibly give them the Kalam cosmological argument, and see how many false fallacies, and how many times they contradict themselves?  One could make the case from a natural selection and evolutionary standpoint to make stupid people less than human.

I think I would put it at 24-28 weeks, which is also when the fetus can be viable. I took a cursory look at Kaalam's Cosmological argument and I don't see how it applies here. I find it inconsistent that it makes the exception for the concept that everything has a cause that came before it, for god. I don't see a reason why he gets an exception. You could say it's just possible that some things existed forever, that's what some physicists think about the Universe. At least that it existed in some form, which may have been energy. Also if some things existed forever, that blows out 2/3 to 3/4 of the argument.

No you could not use evolution as justification to say mentally disabled people as less human . And already made the distinction between someone who is disabled and a fetus . So this is disingenuous.

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(May 18, 2018 at 12:42 pm)The Industrial Atheist Wrote:

(May 18, 2018 at 9:10 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote: So where do you put that threshold then?    It would seem that what you are talking about, that there is no significant change, when the baby is born.   So this would seem to put the limit either before (possibly between the 2nd and 3rd trimester)  or if you raise the bar (you had mentioned other animals) it could be as late as 4 years old or so.  It all depends on when you arbitrarily put that line on what you consider human.  

Personally I prefer a biological point of view, in which the fetus is most definitely human.  However for the intelligence thing, could we possibly give them the Kalam cosmological argument, and see how many false fallacies, and how many times they contradict themselves?  One could make the case from a natural selection and evolutionary standpoint to make stupid people less than human.

I think I would put it at 24-28 weeks, which is also when the fetus can be viable. I took a cursory look at Kaalam's Cosmological argument and I don't see how it applies here. I find it inconsistent that it makes the exception for the concept that everything has a cause that came before it, for god. I don't see a reason why he gets an exception. You could say it's just possible that some things existed forever, that's what some physicists think about the Universe. At least that it existed in some form, which may have been energy. Also if some things existed forever, that blows out 2/3 to 3/4 of the argument.

Indeed Kalam is a classic case of special pleading. and no amount of saying "but only things that begin to exist count " helps the theist on that one .

With the Kalam, the conclusion follows from the premises, but the premises are just unsupported assertions.

(The conclusion is just “a cause” though, not “an uncaused cause” or “god”.)

If I were to choose, I'd pick when the fetus first develops brain activity. Death (the generally accepted end of personhood) is generally determined when brain function stops, so it should make sense to start when it's first developed. And that usually happens sometime around the end of the second trimester, and while it is a bit before viability, it happens around week 20 at the earliest. Before that, it's no more sensate than a stone; this is why there's no comparison between someone who's been born, but has substandard cognition, and a fetus that hasn't developed any.

(May 18, 2018 at 6:36 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: If I were to choose, I'd pick when the fetus first develops brain activity. Death (the generally accepted end of personhood) is generally determined when brain function stops, so it should make sense to start when it's first developed. And that usually happens sometime around the end of the second trimester, and while it is a bit before viability, it happens around week 20 at the earliest. Before that, it's no more sensate than a stone; this is why there's no comparison between someone who's been born, but has substandard cognition, and a fetus that hasn't developed any.

So are you arguing that they are not even alive (the fetus)? I think that science would disagree. The ability to reproduce is also a qualifier for life as well, but we don’t say that the young or the old who can’t reproduce at the time, are not alive.

So is a person in a medically Induced coma, or in a coma from an accident (but thought to recover) still a human?

(May 18, 2018 at 6:53 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote:

(May 18, 2018 at 6:36 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: If I were to choose, I'd pick when the fetus first develops brain activity. Death (the generally accepted end of personhood) is generally determined when brain function stops, so it should make sense to start when it's first developed. And that usually happens sometime around the end of the second trimester, and while it is a bit before viability, it happens around week 20 at the earliest. Before that, it's no more sensate than a stone; this is why there's no comparison between someone who's been born, but has substandard cognition, and a fetus that hasn't developed any.

So are you arguing that they are not even alive (the fetus)?  I think that science would disagree. The ability to reproduce is also a qualifier for life as well, but we don’t say that the young or the old who can’t reproduce at the time, are not alive.

So is a person in a medically Induced coma, or in a coma from an accident (but thought to recover) still a human?

I'm saying that brain activity is THE crucial qualifier to count as human life. Individuals can and do go their entire lives without reproducing, but with no brain activity, nothing else can happen. Someone in a medically induced coma or someone in an accidental coma, but still expected to recover, still has brain activity. It's less than usual, but it's still there, and, in the case of someone in a coma from an accident who's still expected to recover, that's WHY they're even expected to recover in the first place. If activity in the cortex is gone, all chances of a recovery go down the toilet, because it's irreversible.

(May 18, 2018 at 7:06 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote:

(May 18, 2018 at 6:53 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: So are you arguing that they are not even alive (the fetus)?  I think that science would disagree. The ability to reproduce is also a qualifier for life as well, but we don’t say that the young or the old who can’t reproduce at the time, are not alive.

So is a person in a medically Induced coma, or in a coma from an accident (but thought to recover) still a human?

I'm saying that brain activity is THE crucial qualifier to count as human life. Individuals can and do go their entire lives without reproducing, but with no brain activity, nothing else can happen. Someone in a medically induced coma or someone in an accidental coma, but still expected to recover, still has brain activity. It's less than usual, but it's still there, and, in the case of someone in a coma from an accident who's still expected to recover, that's WHY they're even expected to recover in the first place. If activity in the cortex is gone, all chances of a recovery go down the toilet, because it's irreversible.

Ok, if your limit is some brain activity, then the first synapses are forming at 5-6 weeks, and starting to fire a little while after. Should we move the time for abortion back until then? Or have similar reasoning in this case as well, as to expected brain activity increase?