Posted on 12/02/2006 1:33:42 PM PST by Coleus
Is this true?
I posted a thread on that several years ago about this lucunae of Catholic doctrine (before it was dumped in the 19th century), in a larger essay by Easterbrook on fetuses and sentience, which was not well received. I reposted it years later, and someone observed that most of the participants from back then had been banned. And I am still here! Maybe miracles are not impossible. Anything is possible.
Sounds like BS to me, particularly vis a vis the male. My dad was 45 when he sired me,and 48 when he sired my younger brother. Of course, some here might consider me unhealthy.
I think it has to do with whether or not it's your first child. If you had a child previously, the outcome may be different. There are physicians on the FR, maybe one of them will read this and be more precise.
The male part doesn't seem to go as fast. They can produce healthy babies with young women into their 70s+. It's the female biochem/mech that has a problem. I know Down's syndrome is very likely after 40, and that's due to something about the female. 9% seemed kind of low...
Which would of course indicate that no new bio-science was necessary for the determination. Nor do I believe Augustine and Thomas among many others during that time and for the next 1200 years were evil. They were some of the best minds within the Church. Suffice it to say that for more than a millennium, it was an arguable position, just as it is today.
Yes, many did not support that position, just as some Catholics and other Christians don't support the Church's position today.
The beat goes on...
"Age-related chromosomal problems typically originate at the time of meiosis, when the egg cell eliminates half of its 46 chromosomes to accommodate the male's genetic material. Tiny filaments called spindles, which appear to become detached from the chromosomes as women age, separate the chromosomes. This detachment can result in an abnormal number of chromosomes in the egg, a condition called aneuploidy. This occurs in about 33 percent of eggs at age 35 and 50 percent of eggs at age 40."
So ~50% of the eggs have a problem at ~40.
True, but Augustine was as much a scientist as a theologian. And his determination that the human body was simply unformed in the early weeks is true today. His belief that the soul could only enter a formed body was purely theological, not based on any science. Many did not agree with him.
I suppose it depends what you mean by soul.
The issue was timing. Pius IX simply put the whole issue to rest by stating that the soul entered at conception. Of course, it was still not based on any science, but merely a philosophical point. The ensoulment determination ended the question (for those who believe) of when the fetus becomes a human being. For those who don't subscribe to that, it is still an arguable point.
But etymology, both Hebrew and Greek, suggest that life, breath, wind, and spirit are related concepts (ruach and pneuma). God breathes into Adam to give him life, and when the breath leaves the body we die.
Yes, I believe those concepts to be survivors from very ancient beliefs, many of which fell by the wayside, for Christians at least. I believe the concept of the soul to be a catchall for those earlier beliefs.
Further, the soul is not only spiritual. The Catechism of the Catholic Church still includes a formulation that goes back to Aristotle, that the soul is the form of the body. The body lives only when it has a soul. So, I would think this was a development of doctrine, not a change of doctrine.
Yet that defies the earlier concept of the timing of ensoulment. The Pope's encyclical in 1869 defining the timing of the act of ensoulment as instantaneous with conception was the second such decree by a Pope. There was one such call a few hundred years earlier, I believe, but it was short lived.
Yes, there were actually two concepts that came into play. One which Augustine subscribed to was the time when the body was sufficiently formed to resemble a human. The other was called animation, when the movement in the womb began.
I'm glad you mentioned sentience, because for those who think non-theologically, that must be a consideration. For me, it is one consideration as to when the Bill of Rights comes into play. It's unfortunate that on a conservative web site many fear being banned for simply doing nothing more than adding an intellectual point of view. There are certainly a few areas of no trespass to non believers, but I didn't know this was one of them.
Actually it was the critics of Easterbrook's essay who were banned, for other perceived transgression, apparently. Just an odd lucunae of FR history. For some reason I get a lot of slack, and I don't self censor myself. Never have, never will. I enjoy just being me.
No, informed conversation such as you have contributed certainly shouldn't be objected to, because it furthers the discussion.
I'm convinced that the decisions they made were made with the knowledge they had at the time, and to protect the women who miscarried or had a late period.
All too often, these arguments are made by the same people who ridicule religion for insisting that the sun revolved around the earth. As though none of the geocentrists were the equivalent of scientists. And, they're hoping we don't remember the way Medicine resisted the germ theory and the way that Semelweis was treated by the hierarchy at that time. Or, more recently, the difficulty in convincing Medicine that folic acid was vital to neural tube development, that breast feeding really is best, that heart disease is really due to a bacterial infection and that cervical cancer is an STD.
We should all remember that science develops better tools, with finer measurements all the time. Knowledge simply increases, often before we know what we're doing. It's hard to let go of the old pardigms -- especially if someone's reputation (or Lord forbid!) research grant is at risk.
We now know what happens when a sperm and an oocyte fuse. We especially know which embryos in the Petri dish are alive and which are not embryos or which are not dividing.
Extrapolating from "water" in the womb that can't be measured or verified to "water" in the lab - petri dish or, soon, the artificial uterus - after a deliberate act of creation is simply wishful thinking. And it goes against scientific knowledge.
"Bioethics" is the formal study of who we can kill and enslave by designating them as not-human-enough to possess the basic human right not to be killed or enslaved. That's not what "they" say. But it's what they do if we let 'em. Let's don't let 'em.
I can only guess then that they launched into the personal attack mode. Even if one is on the "right" side of an issue here, he can still cross the line. I suspect you bring valid points into the debate without resorting to the personal attack.
Thank you.
Why? Do you think they did not understand the basic concept of "conception"? The issue was not the scientific knowledge today that did not exist then. Their rationale was not based on any lack of knowledge since the reasons given by them (unformed body and lack of animation)were in fact actually how the fetus is formed. Nor am I aware that Pope Pius IX was aware of any new scientific knowledge. Since the very existence of the soul itself is based on theological or philosophical conclusions, no amount of scientific knowledge can support its existence at any stage of development. Faith must substitute for proof.
For those who do not have such faith, abortion can still be opposed on constitutional grounds.
This is a misrepresentation of the truth. The reality is that an older woman is equally likely to concieve a healthy child as a younger woman is. The difference is that the fetus in a younger woman is more likely to self-abort if something is wrong whereas an older woman is more likely to carry it to term. Hence, older women give birth to more downs babies, but not because they are less likely to concieve healthy ones.
What do they mean "when does life begin"? Life is present before and after conception. After conception it is a different life, a new individual.
At this point the lefties say "well it's not human!"
Well then, what is it? A dog? an ape? an amoeba? a paramecium? a virus?
If it's not human, at what point does it become human? And what is it that causes it to change from whatever to human? How does a formless mass of protoplasm (what they call it) become human? Either there is something inside it that makes it become human or something outside it that makes it become human.
At this point I've lost all the leftists, since their minds don't function like those of normal people.
And that's why I say "Leftism is Mentally Deranged"
At conception, the soul of life force is proven 'there' by the action of organized growth, as in will exercised to live. What we do not have proof of is the presence of the human spirit with the soul of life, but as in your 'cautionary' word, we ought assume the spirit is present as soon as the soul is present. Until someone can prove the spriit doesn't take up residence with the soul at conception but at some later date, it is an arbitrary selfish (I would say self-appointed godhood) assumption to kill the newly conceived claiming 'no human is there yet.'
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