When Is There A Functioning Integrated Whole Human Being?

FreeRepublic ^ | 6/13/2003 | Marvin Galloway

[MHGinTN]

This essay is the second in a series addressing the biological reasons to be pro-life. The first essay is still up under one heading or another on the right hand margin of the browse page.

[MHGinTN]

The first essay is HERE, titled 'Using the Word LIFE'.

[MHGinTN]

ping

[Blood of Tyrants]

Excellently reasoned argument. However, the pro-muder crowd only cares that an unborn baby doesn't meet the arbitrary definition of "personhood".

[RightWhale]

In the movie "The Man Who Faced Southeast" there is a scene where the scientist/doctor has the brain itself over the dissecting sink and is washing pieces of it down the drain. He asks various questions as each piece goes down. 'Is this the appreciation of art'? 'Is this love of family'? 'Is this the business entrepreneur'? There is some doubt that the brain is in fact the seat of the soul, although it is certainly part of the control system of the body, and not just through the nervous system but also through chemical systems. There is a lot of reference in poetry to 'heart and soul' and it might be that there is a closer correlation there than followers of the 'material man' believe. So we should think twice about cloning to produce organs for transplant if we have some uncertainty about these other questions. Do we know enough about what we want to do?

[Havisham]

The question of when life begins is a false one and is not really what is under debate. We can be certain of few things as that the human embryo is life. It is life that in somewhere over 90% of conceptions will progress toward birth unless other "functioning, integrated, whole human beings" undertake to destroy it.

Life? A life? The practice of placing the indefinite article before the noun is linguistic sleight of hand. Now the question becomes not when does life begin but when does a life we value begin. Honesty in the debate about life founders here and is unrecoverable unless we agree that life and a life are not equivalents for the purpose of debating abortion or other destruction of embryonic human life.

[MHGinTN]

Thank you for reading the essays, RW.

There are several points in the Bible (OT and NT) where reference is made to body, soul, and spirit. In a recent Catholic homily, the Priest refers to the soul wrapping the body, not the body wrapping the soul. This leads me to understand that it is the soul (and spirit) that is not locked in time and space, but the body clearly is.

I've attempted, with the entire series of essays, to approach the realities of the organism from a biological perspective, avoiding the religious aspects as best I can. The series is offered for folks already pro-life to one extent or another, in an effort to give substantial reason why current biological understandings underpin the pro-life position. In subsequent essays, the notions of legal positions (abortion laws, the Roe, Doe and Casey decision, embryonic stem cell proscriptions, cloning regulations) will also be addressed but the addresses of same underpinned with the biological realities.

[MHGinTN]

Yes, it is the central connundrum to agree upon when an individual human being is worthy of protection, hence the effort to expose the biological realities of prenatal life. The issue bears also upon how our society will deal with embryonic exploitation and cloning.

[MHGinTN]

Too many "n's" in conundrum. Sorry.

[MHGinTN]

^

[dark_lord]

Which is why the idea that someone can sell their Soul to the Devil is silly. One can no more sell their Soul than a dog on a leash can sell their owner.

[RightWhale]

I have an engineering approach to body/soul concept. It is not religious at all. It's more along the lines of Freud and the super-ego or Teilhard de Chardin and the noosphere. That is, there are three levels, two of which are invisible yet just as real as the material body. The mid level would be the soul or spirit and it is that part that is the function of the mind, the 'I' inside the body. The higher level is the functioning within nature and society, operant behavior or the ability to modify the enviroment. We might draw an analogy, imperfect as analogies always are, to (1) the computer hardware, (2) the software [which includes any necessary data] loaded in the CPU , and (3) the functioning of the program.

[MHGinTN]

You might find it interesting to read a book by James Kennedy, title (I think) Teaching Through The Tabernacle. In this book, Rev. Kennedy parallels the construction of the Tabernacle to the way God constructed humankind, with the outer court representing the body, the inner sanctum the soul, and the Holy of Holies the spirit. The furniture in the Tabernacle has interesting parallels ... the showbread table, the golden lampstand, and the altar of incense, etc., found in the inner sanctum.

[MHGinTN]

^

[cpforlife.org]

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[Jim Noble]

When Is There A Functioning Integrated Whole Human Being?

Women: Age 24

Men: Age 30

[MHGinTN]

Quite utilitarian! I've a 19 year old stepchild still at home. Ahh, the comfy nest.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[palmer]

The functions of integrated whole organism (the definition of alive)

The author reaches for such a broad definition of life that he ends up including unfertilized eggs. An unfertilized egg is as "integrated" of a "whole organism" as an fertilized egg. Thus a "human life" means a live egg than has been turned into a live human being by the process of fertilization.

embryonic individuals who have built the first form of the placenta they will occupy during pregnancy

The author seems intent on personifying cell specialization and other genetic processes. These exist throughout nature and in no way imply consciousness or survival instinct. They are simply predictable, predetermined actions.

When human form and human functions develop (I believe 8 weeks or so), then there is certainly an argument to be made for intentional actions by the individual. Otherwise I don't see how it is any different from what an unfertilized egg does, or for that matter an organ.