Posted on 03/23/2014 8:19:43 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Sorry about that. I thought my other posts would make my position clear. In any case, no problem.
No, but spending several years studying the scientific literature, doing bench research, writing a dissertation, and basically learning the physical basis of life DOES make one a scientist. I have not made a single non-scientific statement, nor will I. *My* interest is to educate (while your interest is to remain ignorant), because I firmly believe that accurate information about embryonic development is the best weapon we have against abortion.
The fact that you have been all over the place trying to play "gotcha" does not make *me* inconsistent. Typically, I see people jump all over trying to trip me up like that because the scientific understanding of embryogenesis contradicts their pro-abortion belief system. And you, dear troll, have yet to say anything that would convince me that you are truly pro-life.
Give me a break! I’ve spent decades studying science and my first eighteen years living with a physician. Your phony baloney excuses shift from post to post. It’s brain, no it’s nervous system, no it’s awareness, no it’s perception, no it’s cellular function... Nothing more than lib/Progressive talking points with no scientific basis whatsoever.
A living organism is not a being.
Tell me, do you think? If so, where do you feel that thought process occur? Does it take place in your little toe? Do your thoughts happen in the neighbor's driveway? Are you really so unaware of the processes of your own body that you have no clue where all that thinking activity is going on?
Although we have a variety of instruments that can measure thought processes--and are even progressing to where they can roughly determine what people are thinking about--it really does not take a scientist to know that thinking occurs inside your head--where the brain is--and no place else. What I must wonder is why you find the scientific measurement of thought processes so threatening?
In reality, I do not think you are as dense as you make yourself out to be. I think you are a classic troll.
And yet you can't make one clear unambiguous statement as to what that physical basis is. LOL
So, what is a living being? See? You're definitions shift from post to post.
Nice deflection. Can any scientific test or instrument detect or define the presence of a thought? No. Much less the source of a thought. Do you think all thought processes and awareness ends with death?
BS. Name one instrument that can do that.
You purposely try to conflate organ cells with organism so that you may degenerate the concept of ORGANISM to nothing more than a 'mass of undifferentiated cells'. You are a liar at heart and the truth is not in you. Slither back to DU or wherever leftists frauds are now being hatched. Freerepublic is a pro-life website. Liars and frauds are not meant to be comfy here.
Typical. You cannot point at any thing I have said that is wrong or even inaccurate, so suddenly, you claim yourself a scientific expert on the basis that one of your parents was a physician? One, there is no way to verify that, and two, learning is not an osmotic process. You do not show any grasp of the scientific process.
Furthermore, I am completely consistent in the facts that I describe. I may have to explain them from different angles, because of your propensity to try to jump all over the place in your game of "gotcha", but that does not equate to inconsistency.
It is very simple, really. A cell is alive as long as chemical reactions continue to occur within it. A single cell can be an entire organism (as with amoeba, paramecium, E. coli, etc.), or a cell can be part of a multicellular organism. In the case of a multicellular organism, the cell may function just like a single-cell organism, with the main difference that it is associated with other cells. In more complex multicellular organisms, cells tend to specialize for various functions, a process called differentiation.
At this point, there is nothing that makes these living organisms aware. They are concentrations of chemical reactions, as unthinking and unaware as any chemical reaction mixture that one mixes in a flask. They are, by definition, alive, but they are utterly unaware. Up until about 3 weeks post-conception, the human zygote/blastocyst/early embryo is no different than any simple multicellular organism. Chemical reactions occur, but it is unaware.
Awareness is seated within the central nervous system. (I think that you know that perfectly well, but are being deliberately obtuse about it for the sake of trollery. You do know what a troll is, don't you?) Through the central nervous system, information is gathered and acted upon. With the presence of a nervous system, no longer is the organism reacting chemically to its environment--it is aware of its environment and willfully modifies its behavior according to information it processes within its brain. Human embryos begin this information processing somewhere between 3 and 5 weeks post-conception. At that point, having become aware and feeling, they should have the same legal protection as any born human being.
Now, troll, let me see how you try to spin this.
Ah, yes. Pretending to be completely incapable of knowing where thoughts originate, and what organ is responsible for making those thoughts. Definite troll. Goodbye.
I admit to being dumbfounded here. I have explained the scientific basis on which to oppose the murder of some two to three thousand babies every day in the US alone, and you react as if I'm advocating entering kindergartens and dismembering all of the children.
Are you even thinking through your reactions? Why do you want to attack me for scientifically opposing abortion?
If it is because I will not extend my opposition to abortion to the use of contraceptives, then so be it. This is one of the cases where I will have to say "Let's just agree to disagree", despite the fact that I absolutely hate that term. I am not Catholic, and I genuinely do not understand the Catholic opposition to contraceptives. I've tried--I've asked Catholics to explain it--but I just don't get it. I will certainly never condemn anyone for using contraceptives to limit their number of children so that they can afford to raise the ones they have.
BTW, implantation when it occurs is a chemically driven automatic process. No thought, nor awareness, is required.
And here is why your arbitrarily chosen stop point is just another iteration of the dead soul apologetics of the progressives. YOU CANNOT SAY WHEN THE NEW LIFE IS CONSCIOUS IN SOME FASHION because you cannot scientifically define the onset of consciousness during the gestational process.
Consciousness is not based on your arbitrary definition. You don't know how consciousness arises, from whence consciousness is sourced, nor when the new life is or is not conscious. You arbitrarily set a threshold that you cannot prove is the dividing line of actual consciousness and none entity. You are trying to justify the earliest killing of the new life conceived in the womb or petri dish on the basis of your unproven criteria for what you want to be the definition of consciousness, in order to make room for your dead soul agenda. THAT is so progressive, you liar.
And you have this littleman Mormonism apologist stroking your ego to keep you spouting your deadness. His criteria, btw, fits with whatever his shifting churchology dictates, as Orin Hatchlings has shown his beliefs to shift to allow the wholesale use of new life so long as it starts in a petri dish. Disgusting liars.
What utter unscientific garbage.
BS. Name one instrument that can do that.
Talk about trolling.
Other than post after post after post where I have done that and gone unanswered. Troll.
Disingenuous trollop! You claimed to know when thoughts began not where.
...and what organ is responsible for making those thoughts.
So what organ do thoughts originate from and where is the scientific proof? Do thoughts end at death? You, because you're trolling, have not answered that or many other questions you trapped yourself with.
Hear hear! There is no test or instrument that can identify or detect consciousness. That is in the realm of philosophy and faith. The Glowbull Warming hacks do a better job of pretending to be scientific than this troll.
I have never done any such thing. While my attempts to make my language understandable to non-scientists may sometimes be interpreted as lack of knowledge (usually by those who reject the art of objective observation as a means by which to understand the world), it in no way is indicative of any lack of familiarity with the subject.
You have a less rigorous position than a typical leftist democrat drone, but you are not pro-life, evidenced by your setting a criteria so arbitrarily as 'consciousness' for the stop point of killing the new life struggling to survive.
In your world view, apparently the fact that something is alive and that its genetic material is human rather than some other species is enough reason to confer legally protected status. By your world view, I am a murderer many times over, because of the countless millions (probably billions) of human cells that I have grown, experimented on, and killed. Gee, in your world I should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
Clearly, you do not have the experience of observing cells in a plate. While you attribute all kinds of personhood to the chemical behavior of the cells that compose a blastocyst, those behaviors are no different than the behaviors of cells grown for research. If I were to start talking about the behavior of those cells, you would think I was talking about little people, because their chemically-driven behaviors give them what are almost personalities. For example, epithelial cells do not like to be alone. When they are first placed into the dish, they are scattered randomly. But within hours, they start feeling for each other (they reach out little hand-like extensions) and crawl towards each other to form little clumps where they are happy. They are happiest when completely surrounded. These behaviors look very much like aware behaviors, but they are not; they are automated biochemical responses.
And here is why your arbitrarily chosen stop point is just another iteration of the dead soul apologetics of the progressives. YOU CANNOT SAY WHEN THE NEW LIFE IS CONSCIOUS IN SOME FASHION because you cannot scientifically define the onset of consciousness during the gestational process.
No, I cannot say when the brain is actually capable of true thought. But I do know that when cells differentiate, they immediately function as the differentiated cell type. There is no reason to think that this is not true of central nervous system cells. So, sometime between the point at which cells begin the differentiation process--the folding of the neural tube during the 3rd week--and when there is an actual (but tiny) brain--definitely observable at about 5 weeks--I assume that the brain has begun to process information about its environment, and that the embryo is therefore aware. Based on those considerations, I would set the time at which an embryo should have full legal protection as being 3 weeks post-conception.
The fact that the person exists as a consequence of the presence and function of the brain is not debatable from the scientific standpoint. There is such a robust body of evidence to support the fact that the brain is where consciousness (and personhood) resides that, frankly, I find it bizarre that there are people who would question that.
You are trying to justify the earliest killing of the new life conceived in the womb or petri dish on the basis of your unproven criteria for what you want to be the definition of consciousness, in order to make room for your dead soul agenda.
You are trying to justify withholding contraception from women based on very problematic criteria. From both a legal and philosophic point of view, considering a fertilized ovum as having the same status as a person is quite problematic.
--Most fertilized ova do not implant.
--Of those that do implant, almost half will not continue to grow.
--Union of sperm and egg is not necessary for embryogenesis. Embryogenesis can be induced in stem cells without a sperm/egg union event taking place.
--Prior to the point where tissues start to differentiate (week 3), the blastocyst can break apart, leading to the formation of 2 or 3 embryos, or two blastocysts can fuse, leading to the formation of a single embryo.
These facts create huge and obvious problems for the philosophical belief that a soul appears at the union of sperm and egg. In that belief, it would be okay to kill people who were cloned from stem cells, because they would have no souls (even though they look, talk, and behave just like people resulting from conception). A chimera would have two souls, and identical twins or triplets would be sharing a soul (making it okay to kill one, as long as the other is left alive, I guess). There is a set of twins, featured in a series of documentaries, who share one body but have two heads. Because of the presence of two heads, they are considered two people--even though there is only one body. Guided by the philosophy that the brain has nothing to do with personhood, and that consciousness is not a result of brain activity, shouldn't one of those heads be removed so that the girl can look more normal--because, clearly, only one person lives in that two-headed body?
Once upon a time, it was believed that the man's seed contained a fully formed baby. A lot of the Catholic Church's teachings still seem to be based in that belief. Since then, the microscope has been invented, as well as a host of other scientific methodologies. We are well aware of early development now. And we are very aware that it is the brain where personhood resides--making it logical to assume that the soul requires not just human tissue, but a brain in which to live.
By your world view, I am a murderer many times over, because of the countless millions (probably billions) of human cells that I have grown, experimented on, and killed. Gee, in your world I should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
In the world of Freerepublic, populated as it is by an overwhelming number of real conservatives, not liars like yourself, you are a dead soul leftist pretending at conservative.
As a lying progressive dead soul, you again (for the third time in this thread, in just your responses to me!) purposely conflate cells/organs with ORGANISM. That type of lying filth is not even undetected here at FR.
You also play the undistributed middle fallacy like a whining pro dead soul leftist. I'm actually surprised such a lying dead soul leftist peddling such dead soul filth as you have posted in the response to which I am now responding has lasted so long at Freerepublic! But then Jim Robinson is a patient man, and leftists do try and take advantage of such magnanimity.
And besides that, you still have no clue and cannot appoint when consciousness begins, nor how to define consciousness or what it actually is, or if it is a gradual process built up during gestation. You are a disgusting dead soul who wants desperately to maintain your charade at FR. Why? ... for the same reason sexual degenerate homosexuals demand to be given normalcy status, probably. Disgusting.
And here is another example of your charade: "No, I cannot say when the brain is actually capable of true thought." Like a typical lying leftist you try to slide the jello to the side as a dart is aimed at the heart of your deception. You can define consciousness as solely the function of an organ of an organism, stupidly, if you choose, but when you do you contradict the other assertions you've made regarding the tendencies of organs (the living epithelial cells which tend to seek other of their kind; glial cells in the brain do the same thing, and you might benefit from studying the process by which a gestating human builds the brain pattern for use in the body being built for life in the air world) within the context of the greater organism.
As a dead soul lying leftist masquerading as a conservative at FR, perhaps you seek to remove the divine from the Creation, appointing the physical world with all the requirements for life and intelligence? Your posting is exposing your dead soul the more you try to make us believe you know what you're talking about.
And BTW, I wrote a little guide for the layperson and posted it free for downloading, more than a decade ago, which explains stem cells, cloning and the agenda of the left in pushing embryonic stem cell harvesting and experiementation. You could actually read it if you follow the links on my profile page. But I doubt you will do so because you are a dead soul convinced that your godless perspective is the only correct way to view the world.
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