I would argue that human life begins at the moment of conception. At least this is the argument put forwrad in this book which is titled The Scale of the Very Small 1. http://www.dabase.org/small.htm

Unfortunately this book is out of print.

The author argues that to truly serve your child both parents should enter into a period of comprehensive preparation and purification well before even beginning to engage in the sexing act of conceiving.
He also argues that the state of consciousness of both parents at the MOMENT of conception has a profound influence on the child's psyche altogether. And that the combined psycho-energetic pattern of both parents at the time of conception affects which entity, or discarnate "soul" will be born via these two parents. In other words the new incarnating entity actually chooses its parents.

He alsp points out that it is the Spiritual duty and obligation of both parents, but obviously especially the mother, to serve the incarnating entity from the moment of conception onwards. A very profound responsibility altogether.

Well then. This gells neatly with my own findings. Life simply 'is'. We're all 'part of the one'. Maybe there is some warm benevelent external deity out there that cares uniquely for each individual in each district, on each continent, on each planet, in each galaxy....hey, omnipotence, right? Hmm. Right. How about this....We're aware, clever monkeys, et al. Thats it. Period. All the 'spiritual/god' stuff is something that WE created in little tiny increments over the millenia as a 'management tool' to soothe the individual and to control the masses. Bread and circusses. Smoke and mirrors. Baffle 'em with bullsh**. The primary purpose would have been to control female sexual behaviour and reproduction to preserve the systems relating to ownership of land, inheritance, etc. When in doubt, study monkey behaviour. Pretty much all the questions of human relationships and behaviour can be answered right there. Very sobering. Very humbling. Want to live god like? Just be nice to everyone you meet, everywhere, every day. Whammo. You're in heaven. Dont, and you're pretty much experiencing hell on earth. Know which I prefer. Mind you, feel kind of sorry for all the religous fundies in all their various manifestations. They're all wrong. Again. Bummer. They'll froth at the mouth on this one, but hey, when dont they? Happy days.

A good article.

The conclusion we come to as to when human life begins depends on the belief we wish to support when we address the problem.

See http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6189

Sorry. Wrong reference given above. See

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5860

What has religious committment have to do with when human life begins?

It is a basic scientific fact that if left alone a sperm or ovum does not turn into a bouncing baby boy or girl.

A zygote however, if left alone to do its thing, will.

Human life starts at conception and life at all stages deserves our protection for we know not when we will be dependent on those around us.

Sickness, old age, etc.

Life is the prime value we must protect it.

By the way, I hope the author understands that arguments that clothe themselves in insults and politically correct stereotypes do not magically increase the argument's force.

A zygote will not, if left alone, turn into a bouncing baby boy or girl.

It needs the co-operation of a healthy mother for that.

Quite right xoddam that goes without saying.

Why then is it such a stretch to say that it is a scientific fact an egg, if left alone with a sperm and a healthy mother will become a bouncing baby?

We can begin the process where ever we choose...

It is a basic scientific fact that a healthy man left with a healthy man, will turn out a bouncing baby boy or girl. etc, etc, etc.

I reckon a case could be made that you don't have 'real' human life until that moment when the baby starts to look around and take it all in. Usually several weeks after birth. That's the beginning of consciousness and the first sign of a real little person emerging.

Oops, I mean't a healthy man left with a healthy WOMAN.

Yikes.

He's perfectly correct, of course. I suppose this gives rise to the possibility that the right-to-life squad will call for bans on masturbation by men and menstruation by women :O

Seriously though, Michael Lardelli asks the wrong question. Instead of "When does a human become human", it would be more pertinent to consider "When does a human foetus become a human person". This is because it's the social meanings of humanity that cause the ethical dilemmas and controversies around issues like abortion, contraception, stem-cell research etc, as opposed to biological/genetic considerations.

Mind you, the apparent immortality of human genes in sperm and ova is something I hadn't thought about in quite those terms before. Thanks for that!

We’re each the product of genetic evolution stretching back over millions of years and generations. The materials in our bodies have been around billions of years, and some were forged in the deaths of ancient star systems. Our physical components will be recycled, and possibly our genetic blueprints recombined and reproduced, for even more millennia to come.

These are marvels that science has helped to describe, but they do not begin to define in full the meanings of a human life, still less to demonstrate that human life has no beginning (or presumably, end).

It is the characteristic arrogance of some scientists to assume that all that can be usefully said of a subject can be reduced to the tenets of their own discipline – in this case, genetic determinism, with the “life” of the sperm and the “life” of the egg giving rise to the life of a person.

But the energetic sperm wriggling under a microscope is “alive” only in the limited and qualified manner of a lizard’s tail detached and wriggling furiously as a decoy in the garden. The “life” of these objects cannot be equated with the life of an intelligent, able-bodied and self-aware human person.

If we discount the prejudicial intent in the religious overtones of the statement “I have no way of detecting or measuring the soul or any other aspect of spirituality”, it tends to refute rather than prove the author’s point. As a researcher in developmental genetics, the author does indeed lack the equipment or techniques to measure such things. But that does not mean that the “soul” – or, in secular language, the unique, self-aware, individual personality that is a human being – does not exist.

For all the problems we have in identifying the point at which a human life can be said to begin, the dignity of human beings should be in the forefront of our consideration ethics of human reproductive technology, not the biology of embryo development, and still less the bizarre and ethically incoherent objective of seeing ourselves in the eyes of “our non-human relatives”

First of all I do wish to compliment Michael for his enjoyable writing. As a person who does not normally follow biological issues, etc in that manner I found the article pleasant to read.
As author of books in the INSPECTOR-RIKATI® series about constitutional and other legal issues I deem it essential to bring across to a reader what one seeks to convey, and I view Michael did so.
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Michael did seek to elicit what the views were of others, and my view is that the creation of life should be deemed from time of conception.
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Why should it be all right for a woman to abort at anytime, but if the pregnancy was aborted by a person using violence then the person could be charged for a crime not just against the mother but also against the unborn baby?
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We, as a society should recognise that an expected “mother” is an expected “mother” because of the child, regardless of being unborn and regardless of how long after conception took place. She is not expecting, so to say, some “peanut” to grow in her but some living creature under whatever title you may bestow onto it, that eventually will for all intents to be become a living human being in its own right.
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From the moment of conception the female has control over two bodies, and feeding both, that of herself and that of the child growing inside of her. For all purposes we should take the time of conception as being the creation of another human being and with it all social and other human attributes entitlements to it.
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I do not practice any religion and as such have no such pre-conceived idea’s. I do know however that had my parents opted for abortion then none of you would have been able to read my writings, and likewise so if any of the readers parents had opted for abortion. Hence, we, as did our parents in our circumstance, should respect life to be created from conception.

When human life begins, I believe, is a matter for personal conscience. Not the type of conscience that is profounded from the pulpit or screeched from the streets by various influence groups, but the kind of conscience that the individual themselves can discover via education.
Research the issue - the facts are everywhere and easily available - read them and make up your own mind. If you believe that life begins when the glint appears in the fathers eye, or any time in between then until the newborn draws their first breath, then that, for you, is when life begins and you cannot be wrong.
Take the science route to awareness or the personality route, it doesn't matter. It's like religion, the belief is in the personal observance not the method.

as a practising Catholic, i find the comments on religion disturbing, in so far as the accepted view is that somehow i now invalidate my ability to think for myself, to have a valid contribution to make and that my religion will so colour my outlook as to render my opinion useless or nonsense.
i believe as many state, that the beginning of life occurs when the two 'living' cells join to create/begin that new creation. i also believe that the soul now comes in to play. can i qualify or quantify this? No
does that make my opinion worth less? you judge.
i also believe that as this new being has all the potential to grow, that as those who have participated in this act of creation, we have a responsibility to protect and care for this new being.
my faith in a creator, in one who is love, just convicts me of this belief, impresses on me the sacredness of every life and as another stated we as beings, live out our time in the best way possible. whether by using our intellect for future research, study, etc, or our talents in whatever other way we can contribute. however i do not believe that unless we have a contribution to make as human beings that we are worthless, on the contrary those who have to rely on others enable those others to express and share those talents and gifts that they have been endowed.

Thank you Michael for you scientific, factual and refreshing article.

The egg and sperm are indeed very much alive before fertilization.

The distinction between egg, sperm and the fertilized egg, is the religious belief that the zygote is a new individual or person, by virtue of acquiring a soul upon fertilization.

For some time after fertilization, the fertilized egg can split into two to form identical twins (this is not my opinion or belief but a scientific fact). If there was an individual soul/person whom we will call John, what did happen to him when the fertilized egg divided into two? Is he one of the twins? If he no longer exists and has been replaced by Tom and Steve, where did he go? Did he die? If so, where are his remains?

When the fertilized egg split into two, did John's soul also divide into two or did God take back John's soul and supplied Tom and Steve with their own souls?

These are the questions that the religious need to think about, if they are going to persist with the belief that the zygote is a person like you and I.

Maryan your kind of argument does not a bit destroy my own views of what a soul is about. Let me try to explain it in a simple manner. As I did set out in my published books, I take the view that a soul is like a bunch of straws say each filled with certain characteristics. You get them from your parents and also, so to say, others are added as you go along. It would explain also why twins often have simular characteristics. Your John therefore will be in both Tom and Steve and if there is an Ann, and other siblings at the same time they all will have them. Now, the personality of a person basically comes from the straws that are the strongest and the weaker straws as such are the hidden personality characteristics. Hence, with a split personality you have that pending which straws are at a given moment the strongest that combination of straws is the personality coming out.

When people die their content of their straws, so to say, are floating about and so will spread themselves out to find other bodies as their home. This is why many people over decades may end up all having the belief they were for example Napoleon Bonaparte (or others who lived long ago), as they may all have ended up with a bit of his soul. Likewise, with others. It also explains how a child in England was able to make known where in the USA something was buried without the child ever having been there and no one else knew it had been buried there. Simply, the child had the content of a straw in itself, hence the knowledge.

It also explains why husband and wife over decades become so alike where they may duplicate each others characteristics.

Take for example my wife’s late husband. I was his Attorney. After he died my wife and I became married. I was much opposite then her late husband. I did however hyphenate his surname to me and my wife hyphenated my surname to hers,

Continue..

Part-2
this so my wife would not loose her identity she had lived with for so long. He was a civil engineer, architect, etc, and I was of a total different background.

Yet, my wife at times calls me by her late husbands name because in some ways I appear to her more and more as like her husband. Not because I lost what I was but because she views I have also taken on characteristics of her husband. OK she makes clear the good characteristics!

Over the years more and more people are wrongly referring to me as I am my wife’s late husband, but that doesn’t worry me. Not because I look anything like her late husband but because I have in certain ways pursued matters with my wife’s late husband also was pursuing.
Still there are differences because I am anti-racism where as my wife’s late husband was much of a racist. He was a drinker and I am not. Etc, etc.
I am very much a handyman but my wife’s late husband was not particularly. Yet, when I now do renovating to the house somehow I have a more specific interest in how to do matters and when I talk to my wife about structural pressures, etc, she comments that I talk now like her late husband.

This post only sets out matters in limited format but I for one has no qualms about the benefit I view I gained over the years.

Perhaps, because of the likelihood that I may have gained, so to say, some characteristics of her late husband it may have enabled us to settle in so well over the years in that regard. And if my straw theory (filled with characteristics) were to be consider feasible then you do not need to worry of John is still in Tom or Steve as you can be assured both have John in them.

Who says a "soul" is just a single thing and does not exist out of thousands of characteristics such as in the straws theory?

Silly red herring is the time of 'ensoulment'.

Fact is who knows? Does a particle physicist know exactly where an electron is at any one time?

If the zygote is left alone and is about to turn into two lives what difference does that make to how we treat this new life?

"If the zygote is left alone and is about to turn into two lives what difference does that make to how we treat this new life?" RE: Martin Ibn Warriq

If a healthy, fertile woman has sex without any form of contraception during the most fertile part of her cycle, the egg released from her ovaries has a high chance of becoming a baby/s if left alone. Shouldn't we accord the egg the same value that we accord to the zygote?

What a great name you have Mary - queen of heaven. But are you serious about that??

Maryan: "Shouldn't we accord the egg the same value that we accord to the zygote?"

And what about the poor old spermatozoon, who - having borne the weight of countless generations of evolution in the form of a uniquely configured genome - has swum the swim of his short and unicellular life, and won gamete Gold?

Actually, I think they should all be accorded the same social value - zilch. Zygotes, ova and spermatozoa are certainly human, but they are in no way people.

I extend this minimal level of humanity to embryos and foetuses, except that in their case, medical or spontaneous abortion or miscarriage may have very significant meaning and sense of loss to putative parents.

Human biology is fascinating and indeed quite wondrous, but there is no way that the biological precursors to birth are the equivalent of infant people, who have consciousness, cognition and identity. There is no chance of achieving this status if you haven't been born.

Well your ancestors and relatives might be non-human... that might explain a few missing links in your article.