Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: TimF who wrote (82008)	12/31/2009 8:01:28 PM
From: Solon	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"At an early stage of development one human organism can become two (or more)" LOL! A person cannot turn into a hundred people! The entire basis of human rights is that a person is independent and has indivisible rights. Now you are telling us (by proclamation) that a person can become PEOPLE! GET A LIFE, FELLA!

To: TimF who wrote (82008)	1/2/2010 1:31:11 PM
From: one_less	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"At an early stage of development one human organism can become two (or more). If that happens you no longer have only one human organism, you have two (or more). Before that happened you had one organism." Excellent point Tim. It begs a couple of questions, which are actually complexities more than single questions and which I don't think can be satisfactorily answered pro or con using our powers of reason and scientific observation. Ensoulment is the basis for most believers to argue for human rights of the fetus. In this case you are saying it is at one point one human being endowed with rights, and that changes to be two human beings endowed with rights. The complex issue here is that, believers generally associate natural endowment of rights with the idea of having a sacred soul which has natural rights. We change the idea of soul if it is something that can be split, transfered, or shared. I'm not willing to go along with that. At what point does an organism become a unique human being naturally endowed with human rights ... conception, specialization of body parts, complete nervous system, exiting the womb, cutting the cord, first breath, evidence of self awareness, independent self reliance? I'm afraid that any forced choice separates us into little enders and big enders at the end of the day championing flawed reason. The easiest, least complex, most defensible answer is conception, at least as far as observable stages goes. It is the one I am most comfortable with for that reason. However, as has been demonstrated here, even that answer is not entirely satisfactory. I have settled the question in my own mind only to have it become somewhat unsettled in these discussions. In our modern circumstances, I can't honestly think of the morning after pill as a murder weapon used to wipe out some unknown innocent victim in the same context as the automatic assault gun of a mall shooter, yet the argument tends to take on the same terms in a variable fashion. I don't think of young girls doing such things as murderers at any level. Murder involves intent, where a murderer does not consider their actions a matter of personal higiene, except maybe in the case of an extremely rare psychotic killer, and I'm not sure there are any genuine cases of that.