No, what’s really funny is watching a doofus with an inferiority complex try to decide “when” his steak is done. “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe another couple of nanosec -- no, maybe more time -- I just can’t be sure it’s truly ready. (Then, after 20 minutes of hand-wringing: ) Oops, now it’s ruined.”
I am very impressed that you are so devoted to theory that you will not even attempt to answer fundamental questions. Very impressed indeed. I’m less impressed by your unwillingness to acknowledge that there are points along a continuum at which certain conditions can definitively be said to be true. I accept and agree with (and frankly, expected) your explanation of water turning to ice. But surely you would agree that, at some point, the water can be tested to determine whether it possesses the qualities of a solid. At some point, there is no question that a jet aircraft is traveling faster than the sound waves around it. Likewise, at some point, there is no question that the “organism” in a woman’s womb is a living entity with its own human genetic code.
So, seeing as you and I are not communicating well, how about if I put it this way: “If the organism has its own human genetic code and exhibits the characteristics of a living organism, ‘it’ is a living human and thus should have human rights.” Will that placate you? (And if not, will you agree your own rights are in jeopardy, given the apparent theoretical uncertainty of your own status as a human?) If you can accept that simple and non-arbitrary test, then your concerns about continua should evaporate. Other questions may arise, such as how you test for the stated condition, but those questions are more practical than theoretical, and not, as you may claim, “arbitrary”; and as science marches on, they become less daunting. Which is the original thrust of this thread.
PS: I thoroughly enjoyed the comment about “extraterrestrials.” The nerd-o-meter overheated when I read that one.
You've reached new limits of cranial density. You complain that I repeat myself and yet never seem to read any of the repeats. I have made it abundantly clear that "there are points along a continuum at which certain conditions can definitively be said to be true". However, there is no meaningful POINT along a continuum that divides significant differences. You STILL don't know what a contuum is, do you? Your mental block is very impressive.
But surely you would agree that, at some point, the water can be tested to determine whether it possesses the qualities of a solid. At some point, there is no question that a jet aircraft is traveling faster than the sound waves around it. Likewise, at some point, there is no question that the “organism” in a woman’s womb is a living entity with its own human genetic code.
Of course. Who would think otherwise? But, being a contiuum, there is no particular meaningful time point that separates water from ice, subsonic from supersonic, or gametes from baby.
Beat that straw man, dude. You almost look like your having fun with it.
“If the organism has its own human genetic code and exhibits the characteristics of a living organism, ‘it’ is a living human and thus should have human rights.”
So, to have rights then, a thing must
(1) be an organism
(2) be living
(3) have homo sapiens genetic code
So did rights not exist before Watson & Crick? Is there not even a single characteristic of a living human organism, observable to our less technologically savvy forebears, that can give meaning to "rights"? What in the world was John Locke talking about, since surely he did not know very much genetics (did one of your nerdy aliens whisper in his ear)? And why stipulate human DNA? If I gave you some human DNA, could you analyze it for rights? Is there a rights gene?
If you can accept that simple and non-arbitrary test, then your concerns about continua should evaporate.
But it is an arbitrary test. Where is the linkage between the meaning of rights and who you say it applies to? For that matter, just what do you think a right is? How do you know?
I will grant you that there may be an explanation of rights that does not depend upon your devoted falsehood of temporal discontinuities (at least there better be, or rights don't exist). But you are not explaining human rights, or how we know humans have rights. You're just stipulating "take rights (whatever the hell they are), and give them to, oh let's see, how about 'living homo sapiens'". So you've said nothing.
PS: I thoroughly enjoyed the comment about “extraterrestrials.” The nerd-o-meter overheated when I read that one.
It is interesting that you chose not to respond to the hypothetical. I suppose the answer, then, is "no", they would not have rights, no matter how human they behave. So, slaughter and eat them, what the hell.