(November 30, 2015 at 8:40 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: I don't understand your argument about toe nails/skin/hair?
If all it takes to be considered a human being is to have human DNA then my toenails are human beings.
If you don't like that example, and you don't think the tumor good either, what about a parasitic worm?
Let's say I ate an apple and became host to a parasitic worm that entered my body through that apple. The whole reason it was in the apple was so that a host would come along and eat it and thus provide a body it could grow in, and it only requires my body for three months while it grows into an adult worm. Of course, for those three months there's the possibility that I could get unbearably nauseated, my blood pressure could be affected by the presence of this worm, I could become anemic by its presence in my body, it could give me lasting medical conditions like an eating disorder, it could affect how my organs function, or maybe I spend the three months in near perfect health and the worm exits my body one night by giving me some wicked food-poisoning symptoms that only last, like 12 hours.
Do I have the right to expunge that parasitic worm from my body or am I morally obligated to allow it to grow inside me without a choice? It's an entirely separate being from myself with separate DNA and its own life to live once it exits my body. Do I get a choice?
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
        
	


 
 

 

