> If a fertilized egg is where nature wants it to be, there's only a matter of time before it is inarguably a human.
Nonsense. A great many fertilized eggs get just naturally flushed down the tubes, as it were. Just because an egg gets fertilized doesn't mean it's gonna take.
> It will never become an eggplant, a pebble, or a dog's nose.
Ah, but here's the thing: it just might become someone else's new neurological system or some such.
> Your body was once a fertilized egg, as were the bodies of everyone reading this thread.
My body was once an *unfertilized* egg, too.
Well, your body was once an unfertilized egg, but that's before it was alive. It got alive when the sperm kicked in. So in that sense, your body was once all the food you ate, too.
Here's another angle: Is the body so important to keep alive at all costs that we can cannibalize other bodies to keep it going?
There are other things more important that clinging to the body when the whole thing is falling apart. I accept, believe and am 100% convinced (and I'll add, have also experienced) that the real self is the soul, or atma, which is separately existing from the body. The body is essentially a vehicle, which the soul is currently using. When the body is no longer viable - through accident, old age or disease, the soul goes somewhere else. Where it goes is a whole 'nother topic.
But it is commonly accepted by those who agree on the existence of the soul, that what we do in this life affects or determines where the soul goes after he leaves the body. So to cling on to the body as though nothing were more important than that often leads to wrong decisions, and misuse of the body's purpose.
"My body was once an *unfertilized* egg, too. "
I make no pretensions to being a trained biologist.
What I do remember from high school biology, however, is that my body was never an unfertilized egg.
Unfertilized eggs were a part of my mother's body -- they had her unique DNA. I was no more an unfertilized egg at one point that I was one of my mother's eyelashes.
When my dad's sperm (also with his unique DNA) united with my mothers ovum, a new creature came into existence -- ME.
One second before fertilization, I did not exist. At conception, a process began that could (and ultimately will be) terminated with my own death.
Please correct me if I am wrong about this.
By the way, the argument that "I was once an unfertilized egg is really just the flip-side of the pro-abortionist canard that if those of us who thin abortion is wrong were truly consistent, we would be out to save all sperm.