Life: Defining the Beginning by the End

First Things ^ | May 2003 | Maureen L. Condic

[Coleus]

Baby's Hand Reaches out of the Womb

http://members.aol.com/dfjoseph/babyhand.html

http://www.michaelclancy.com/

[MHGinTN]

I remain 'unconvinced' that hypnosis is so encompassing as to be dealing with 'cellular memory'. Sorry ...

[Victoria Delsoul]

Thanks so much for pinging me to this excellent essay.

[jwalsh07]

Interesting but you know I don't need convincing. I know when life begins, it begins at conception.

[Salvation]

Pro-life bump!

[RightWhale]

All this will soon be moot. The time is coming when maybe 30% of births will be natural, the rest will be in vitro or whatever. Beyond this, The Matrix Reloaded doesn't begin to show what is coming, and some of it is here already and some more is beginning. Schools won't teach subjects but will produce gov't-approved dispositions. The gov't will drug those pupils who are having trouble adapting to the social environment. Oh, nevermind, it's happening already.

[MHGinTN]

The important point so well characterized with this essay is that the way science/medicine already defines the end of life--end of coherency for the ORGANISM-- is not being applied tot he beginning, when it would clearly hold the first evidence of cell division (mitosis) to prove that an individual human ORGANISM is present and expressing itself in coherency.

From the essay: "The ability to act as an integrated whole is the only function that departs from our bodies in the moment of death, and is therefore the defining characteristic of 'human life'." Scientifically, the embryo behaves as an integrated whole!

[Frank_2001]

Excellent article!

[WilliamWallace1999]

Great read.

[WilliamWallace1999]

Don't use hypnosis as proof of anything. If you keep "going back", people start to go back to previous lives. This phenomenon is used by those that believe in reincarnation as "proof" of their prior lives. I personally think it is just delving into a collective memory and fantasy worlds.

[Consort]

That past life thing sounds interesting.

[ladyinred]

Here goes: My opinion: Life begins at conception.

Euthanasia is something I am totally against. One concern I have is how do we know at what point a person is really brain dead for ever, and when the medical professional wants the old useless person gone to harvest the organs?

[cpforlife.org]

See #17

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[WilliamWallace1999]

Just do a Google search on "hypnosis and past lives" and you will find a plethora of granola nuts.

[MHGinTN]

Having studied Jungian Psychology, I still don't quite fathom the mechanism of 'collective memory' (collective unconscious/realm of archetypes). I would cede the point of fantasy in hypnotic regression ... I don't see any 'recorder' evidence to carry the 'meme' back beyond coherent brain function. IOW, how does the DNA molecule act as recorder for something other than anatomical/physiological imperatives? Thought, and thus memory, is more than the sum of the 'physiological parts', perhaps in a way similar to quantum 'non-locality'; it's still well beyond my 'theorization-grade'.

[happygrl]

BRAVO ! BRAVO ! BRAVO !

The materialists will be hoisted on their own petard, the material truth and evidence of life !

[WilliamWallace1999]

"Having studied Jungian Psychology, I still don't quite fathom the mechanism of 'collective memory'"

I was also forced to study it and thought most of it was a bit out in left field. I would point out that some lower animals seem to have an instictual memory that is independent of learning. I would suppose this is indirect evidence of some type of DNA memory, but this is WAY beyond my area of learning. Just seem strange that one can regress and find al least the impression of a prior life.

[Diamond]

My opinion: Life begins at conception.

It's not just an opinion. It's an ontological and scientific fact. All individuals' lives begin at their conception.

Cordially,