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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cosmicforce who wrote (6406)	2/23/2001 10:11:21 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 82486

Comic Farce newadvent.org is not a favorite of mine but it is the official site of the Catholic Encyclopedia which would make it a favorite of the Catholic Church. To be fair to Aquinas there is no way he could imagine the modern ways devised to dispose terminate and hack up new life. There is really no point even talking about Aquinas or Aristotle with respect to a modern procedure that they had never seen or could imagine. Obviously human life starts when sperm meets egg. Killing it at two minutes with RU486, two months with an abortion procedure or at two years with a gun is still killing it. The right or wrong of killing it at any stage is a completely different matter. You can argue that there are too many people in the world therefore terminating a cell cluster, even though immoral since it deprives that cell cluster of a future which contains value is OK. Ok because it provides you with more elbow room, more clean air and more bean sprouts to eat which give your life value. However in doing so you have selfishly imposed your morality on the cell cluster which can't defend itself. It certainly does not need to be "sentient" or "truly alive" by E's classification to be human. I guess "truly alive" to you would be E burning her bra at a street party. But is that really sentient?

To: cosmicforce who wrote (6406)	2/23/2001 10:39:04 PM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Carl Sagan was a big time pothead. Not that theres anything wrong with that. (in moderation) Excessive pot smoking played a role in his death, I believe. If I remember right he died of pneumonia. His lungs must have been shot. Have to say he was a colorful character, but why on earth would he be contemplating Gaussian curves instead of his wife's curves? "I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of Gaussian distribution curves," he wrote in his essay. "I wrote the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down." gridlockmag.com