A profound insight into the obvious.
But so what?
Are you suggesting that the ability to perceive pain is what makes a human being a human being?
Why not the ability to speak so as to be understood? Why is that ability any more or any less an indicator or being a human being that the ability to perceive pain?
The biological fact is that both human embryos and newborns and teenagers and old people are human life. Not feline life. Not death. Human Life. And human life -- in all its forms -- embryo, fetus, newborn, adult, elderly -- has more in common with itself than it does with dogs or cats or whales.
You seem to want to suggest that human embryos are somehow a "separate" form of human life from human life that has a developed nervous system.
If you want to do that, fine. But please don't try to legislate or force your own particular view of human life on the rest of us. Your effort to "separate" or compartmentalize some forms of human life (whether because they do not have fully developed nervous systems or for any other reason) has no real basis in biological fact.
You simply assert -- and expect me to nod in assent -- that having a developed nervous system is an essential condition for being a human being worthy of dignity, respect, and also worthy of having its life protected.
Why you choose that condition, and not, as others might, the ability to compose sentences that communicate thoughts and ideas, as a necessary condition for being a human being, escpaes me.
I am unwilling to make your leap of faith -- because that is what it really is. You can no more prove that having a developed nervous system makes a human "thing" into a human "being". You simply accept it on faith, and expect the rest of us to follow along.
"It's quite a clear distinction,"
See what I mean.
It's a clear distinction -- between human life thaqt has a nervous system and human life that doesn't. But it is not clear at all what difference that makes in terms of being a human being. You accept that difference solel;y on faith.
"and no number of silly strawman arguements will change that."
How odd.
A rather standard "argument" for lots of folks (and I notice this REALLY alot over on DU) who, when they cannot marshall the intellect to make a convinicing argument is to say that the other person has made a "silly strawman" argument.
It's that "silly strawman" thing that gives you away. YOu really are not fooling me. Which is why I respond to your taunt of "IF you can't do better than that when debating a fellow conservative, how well do you think you'll do agaisnt someone who disagrees with you?" by saying that I think I am doing rather well against someone who disagrees with me and who has shown me nothing to convince me that he is a conservative.
> Are you suggesting that the ability to perceive pain is what makes a human being a human being?
It's a start. YOUR definition seems to be nothing more than having the gene code of a human.
> YOu really are not fooling me.
Whatever.
> I think I am doing rather well against someone who disagrees with me and who has shown me nothing to convince me that he is a conservative.
And again.