And here is why your arbitrarily chosen stop point is just another iteration of the dead soul apologetics of the progressives. YOU CANNOT SAY WHEN THE NEW LIFE IS CONSCIOUS IN SOME FASHION because you cannot scientifically define the onset of consciousness during the gestational process.
Consciousness is not based on your arbitrary definition. You don't know how consciousness arises, from whence consciousness is sourced, nor when the new life is or is not conscious. You arbitrarily set a threshold that you cannot prove is the dividing line of actual consciousness and none entity. You are trying to justify the earliest killing of the new life conceived in the womb or petri dish on the basis of your unproven criteria for what you want to be the definition of consciousness, in order to make room for your dead soul agenda. THAT is so progressive, you liar.
And you have this littleman Mormonism apologist stroking your ego to keep you spouting your deadness. His criteria, btw, fits with whatever his shifting churchology dictates, as Orin Hatchlings has shown his beliefs to shift to allow the wholesale use of new life so long as it starts in a petri dish. Disgusting liars.
Hear hear! There is no test or instrument that can identify or detect consciousness. That is in the realm of philosophy and faith. The Glowbull Warming hacks do a better job of pretending to be scientific than this troll.
I have never done any such thing. While my attempts to make my language understandable to non-scientists may sometimes be interpreted as lack of knowledge (usually by those who reject the art of objective observation as a means by which to understand the world), it in no way is indicative of any lack of familiarity with the subject.
You have a less rigorous position than a typical leftist democrat drone, but you are not pro-life, evidenced by your setting a criteria so arbitrarily as 'consciousness' for the stop point of killing the new life struggling to survive.
In your world view, apparently the fact that something is alive and that its genetic material is human rather than some other species is enough reason to confer legally protected status. By your world view, I am a murderer many times over, because of the countless millions (probably billions) of human cells that I have grown, experimented on, and killed. Gee, in your world I should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
Clearly, you do not have the experience of observing cells in a plate. While you attribute all kinds of personhood to the chemical behavior of the cells that compose a blastocyst, those behaviors are no different than the behaviors of cells grown for research. If I were to start talking about the behavior of those cells, you would think I was talking about little people, because their chemically-driven behaviors give them what are almost personalities. For example, epithelial cells do not like to be alone. When they are first placed into the dish, they are scattered randomly. But within hours, they start feeling for each other (they reach out little hand-like extensions) and crawl towards each other to form little clumps where they are happy. They are happiest when completely surrounded. These behaviors look very much like aware behaviors, but they are not; they are automated biochemical responses.
And here is why your arbitrarily chosen stop point is just another iteration of the dead soul apologetics of the progressives. YOU CANNOT SAY WHEN THE NEW LIFE IS CONSCIOUS IN SOME FASHION because you cannot scientifically define the onset of consciousness during the gestational process.
No, I cannot say when the brain is actually capable of true thought. But I do know that when cells differentiate, they immediately function as the differentiated cell type. There is no reason to think that this is not true of central nervous system cells. So, sometime between the point at which cells begin the differentiation process--the folding of the neural tube during the 3rd week--and when there is an actual (but tiny) brain--definitely observable at about 5 weeks--I assume that the brain has begun to process information about its environment, and that the embryo is therefore aware. Based on those considerations, I would set the time at which an embryo should have full legal protection as being 3 weeks post-conception.
The fact that the person exists as a consequence of the presence and function of the brain is not debatable from the scientific standpoint. There is such a robust body of evidence to support the fact that the brain is where consciousness (and personhood) resides that, frankly, I find it bizarre that there are people who would question that.
You are trying to justify the earliest killing of the new life conceived in the womb or petri dish on the basis of your unproven criteria for what you want to be the definition of consciousness, in order to make room for your dead soul agenda.
You are trying to justify withholding contraception from women based on very problematic criteria. From both a legal and philosophic point of view, considering a fertilized ovum as having the same status as a person is quite problematic.
--Most fertilized ova do not implant.
--Of those that do implant, almost half will not continue to grow.
--Union of sperm and egg is not necessary for embryogenesis. Embryogenesis can be induced in stem cells without a sperm/egg union event taking place.
--Prior to the point where tissues start to differentiate (week 3), the blastocyst can break apart, leading to the formation of 2 or 3 embryos, or two blastocysts can fuse, leading to the formation of a single embryo.
These facts create huge and obvious problems for the philosophical belief that a soul appears at the union of sperm and egg. In that belief, it would be okay to kill people who were cloned from stem cells, because they would have no souls (even though they look, talk, and behave just like people resulting from conception). A chimera would have two souls, and identical twins or triplets would be sharing a soul (making it okay to kill one, as long as the other is left alive, I guess). There is a set of twins, featured in a series of documentaries, who share one body but have two heads. Because of the presence of two heads, they are considered two people--even though there is only one body. Guided by the philosophy that the brain has nothing to do with personhood, and that consciousness is not a result of brain activity, shouldn't one of those heads be removed so that the girl can look more normal--because, clearly, only one person lives in that two-headed body?
Once upon a time, it was believed that the man's seed contained a fully formed baby. A lot of the Catholic Church's teachings still seem to be based in that belief. Since then, the microscope has been invented, as well as a host of other scientific methodologies. We are well aware of early development now. And we are very aware that it is the brain where personhood resides--making it logical to assume that the soul requires not just human tissue, but a brain in which to live.