I've read your posts to me. You'll excuse me if I don't seek out your vast expositions (as you've undoubtedly done with mine) despite being so thoroughly impressed by the few I've read.
I don't think I've ever denied that continua exist in physics, in biology, or anywhere else. But hey, get this. All along these continua are things called "thresholds."
Threshholds are points that *people* place along continua. There is no significant difference between points immediately on either side of a threshold other than the fact that they are on opposite sides of a threshold. That is why thresholds, like drinking age or abortion age or human rights age, or any pinpointed age are necessarily arbitrary.
That is what it means to be a continuum. There are no significant immediate differences, only significant widely spaced differences.
I'm sorry if continua are too sloppy for your liking, but wishful thinking won't change the universe. Maybe you should consider instead realizing that that is how the world works, and any real understanding must be compatible with it.
So, forgive me if I don't see why you insist on getting wrapped around the axle on how "mature" or "developed" a human life is.
I forgive you, its just that dolt who wrote that rights begin at the point of conception. Since "begin" and "point" imply specific points in a continuum, they are arbitrary, and thus provide us with little more than a stipulated heuristic--certainly not any understanding--of the actual meaning of "rights", which was the initial question.
seeing how I had to spend so much time saving smug, smart-mouthed physics geeks from getting their butts kicked by my less tolerant fellow athletes.
Some of the smartest "geeks" in my school were some of the best atheletes (and the very few "butts" kickers were as pathetic then as now), so I don't know what you are talking about. Most took high school calculus, and so were necessarily familiar with the ubiquitous modeling of the physical world along a time continuum.
But what do I know. Maybe your school taught "Poof! There it is!" instead of calculus.
And if you get so offended at being wrong, then you might try posting with a bit more thoughtfulness.
So let me get this straight. You believe that water freezes at a certain point on the “temperature continuum” because *people* set the threshold for freezing. You also think a jet aircraft accelerates along the “speed continuum” and crosses the sound barrier because *people* have determined the speed of sound. I know a lot of USAF pilots who would be interested in manipulating that threshold; may I give them your e-mail address?
I think you give our species (or perhaps yourself) too much credit. If you think nature and physics don’t impose thresholds of their own, then you will never understand my position on when rights should attach. I just knew I was wasting my breath by restating my position for you.
I asked you last time for your counter-proposal, and in response you gave me just what I predicted: another sermon on continua. You have assumed the intellectual fetal position and denied -- incredibly -- there is any such thing as a natural threshold. And you continue to avoid the issue at hand. Like a Trekkie run amok, you seem more interested in pontificating about the space-time continuum than with acknowledging that a natural point exists at which an unborn entity may successfully be identified as a human life. You criticize the notion of conception as the invention of a dolt, but you have repeatedly failed to offer a more logical or more ethically defensible alternative. Not terribly courageous; rather weenie-like.
In conclusion, here’s your original question: When do rights attach? Here’s my answer again: When the life form can be identified as a human life (not, as you imply, at a particular “age”). Your answer is yet to be announced. I have to say I’ve been amused by your reluctance to offer one.