[realpatriot71]

While the sustained absence of brain waves indicates death, does this prove that the beginning of brain waves or even brain cells indicates the beginning of a person?

I believe so

What is it that shows that a person exists? If those things are not noticed, yet can you be certain that the person does not exist, where he is certainly growing?

The matter, the substance of a person shows that one exists, and can quite objectively seen - for example, I exist because I'm here. However, it is the understanding that one exists - the "knowing" that one exists - as the determination of personhood. If I do not know I exist, if I cannot feel, or love or hate or experience life, then I am no longer a person. Perhaps, I would be technically, biologically alive, but I would no longer be a person.

No mystery in what I'm saying. It's in the Bible. It's also outside the realm of known, natural sciences. It is not ours to draw lines, where we run out of drawing materials.

I'm still unclear as to what you mean here. Perhaps you could give me an expansion of this thought?

What if you were assigned a blastocyst, but "its" life was terminated?

I don't think people are "assigned"

Does that which a scientist does not know by the scientific method not exist?

A rationalist scientist would probably say no, but I would disagree

[unspun]

1. I didn't ask what you believe.
2. And about people in a deep coma, who recover -- do they cease to be persons, then become persons again?
3. People have self-directed and interrelational minds, emotions, wills, and as you say, knowledge of self, also of relation and responsibility to other beings. Science has no way of proving when these begin for a person any more than it has a way of proving what these phenemena are for a person, or when a person begins.
4. I didn't ask you what you think.
5. If what you say is true, it's funny how different things exist for different people... and how more and more suddenly exists, as science goes on.

Sounds like New Age "mind science" that you believe, by this post, not science and not a reverence for human life.