unwanted baby or guilt-tripping them, please advocate for free contraception and mandatory, comprehensive sex education.

Celivia,
Agree however, there's another factor many who have it too good never think about. Those who want to hasten the downfall of the West will never, repeat never make use of birth control.
After all, the biggest problem we face is overpopulation & only the correctly educated & those who can think know that in order to prevent more babies suffering the West has to stop sending aid to those who don't want to help solve the problem.
The West needs to be cruel to be kind to all. Bonuses should be paid to women who chose birth control after two babies. This could encourage women in poorer economies to give two children a good life instead of raising three or more in poverty & misery !
Modern medical advances probably can already effect temporary or reversible sterilisation in males & females. Economic & environmental problems are already making it crystal clear that this is the only way forward.

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Dear Yuyutsu,

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You affirm :

« Life has no beginning and no end »
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The fact that the current state of the art of science can neither confirm nor debunk that statement relegates it to the status of pure conjecture.

Perhaps the recently launched $US10 billion NASA-built telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, (JWST), the most powerful space telescope ever created, will shed some light on the subject.

The JWST is the closest thing we have developed so far as a time machine.

It will gather light from stars and galaxies located up to 13.6 billion light-years away — light that has taken 13.6 billion years to reach the telescope’s mirrors. Since the universe is thought to be roughly 13.8 billion years old, the galaxies that JWST will be observing probably formed about 100 to 250 million years after the Big Bang. The universe was in its infancy then, and JWST will be providing us with photos of it when it was a baby.

That may not be quite early enough, but it may, nevertheless, provide us with some interesting factual information that would be a vast improvement on our current state of ignorance of just how and when the universe and life began.

Religious doctrine, dogma, belief, teaching, and propaganda have never been reliable sources of information on such matters.

Science has often proved it wrong.

Wisdom dictates that we should not listen to the sirens that pretend to reveal the unknown. We must be patient and wait for science to accomplish its task.

Some progress will be made during our lifetime, and we must be grateful for it, but we must also accept that, unfortunately, much will not.

That's life.

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Dear Banjo,

Life has no beginning simply because one cannot conceive of a time when life was not. Time is just a relation between events, but if there is no life then there are no events, thus there is no point in time when life "was" not.

The intention of my post was to point to the author that life is not limited to human life. In fact, not even to biological life. If one artificially limits life to biological forms then of course, one does not even need a telescope to point at such a time when no biological life existed. However, that division which claims "this phenomenon is life, that phenomenon is not life", is arbitrary and based on human ego alone.

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Dear Yuyutsu,

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You explain :

« Life has no beginning simply because one cannot conceive of a time when life was not. Time is just a relation between events, but if there is no life then there are no events, thus there is no point in time when life "was" not »
.

Apparently, you consider that life exists in our minds only, Yuyutsu – that it is a purely subjective notion. That is not the case. Life is an objective reality. It exists independently of any ideas we may have concerning it.

The fact that we “cannot conceive of a time when life was not” has no effect whatsoever on the existence or non-existence of life. It does not depend on our thoughts (conception) in order to exist or not exist.

The day I die I shall “no longer conceive of a time when my life existed”. That does not alter the fact that my life did, in fact, exist. It will have been an objective reality – and my lack of conception of it will have no effect on that reality.

I also beg to differ with your declaration that “if there is no life then there are no events”. An event is “a thing that happens or takes place, especially one of importance” (OED). In physics, it is defined as “a single occurrence of a process, e.g. the ionization of one atom” (also OED).

Events occur constantly in the universe where there is no life. In fact, there are an enormous number of events and very little life. The only life we know of at present is life on earth and that is insignificant compared to all the events that are occurring throughout the universe, completely independent of any life that may also exist, including life on earth.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-YSB6v8k1U&ab_channel=GBHForumNetwork

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Dear Banjo,

"one cannot conceive of..." is just an expression.
For example, when we say that "one cannot conceive of Santa living in the North Pole", we only mean that that concept is illogical.
Of course Santa could be conceived of, and many little children indeed do, but an intelligent adult would not.

Thus please allow me to keep the discussion of objectivity vs. subjectivity for another time since it has little to do with this topic.

Regarding events, time depends on events regardless of their "importance" or otherwise. Who is to claim that a particular event is more important than another? - that's sheer prejudice, not physics!
An electron going round a nucleus of protons and neutrons is also an event. All clocks, including atomic clocks are based on such events. The Newtonian idea of the existence of time independent of matter, has long been superceded by Einstein's relativity.

Back to the topic:

«The only life we know of at present is life on earth and that is insignificant compared to all the events that are occurring throughout the universe»

Life is all around, at least wherever matter exists. Considering non-biological phenomena, such as the movement of stars, to not be worthy of the name "life", is prejudice based on human ego.

The author went a step further, to consider only human life as worthy of protecting. Not the totality of life, not even biological life, only human life.

Mayhap he considers only humans to be created in the image of God?
But never mind, that would be a theological discussion between myself and the author which would unlikely be of any interest to an atheist/agnostic like yourself.

According to the author, when 46 chromosomes are present, the very moment 23+23 human chromosomes combine, that organism must not be interfered with.
Why would it be different when 60 (30+30) chromosomes combine to form a cow?
Unless one is blinded by prejudice in favour of the human body they identify themselves as, one would consider 60 chromosomes just as sacred as 46!

60 chromosomes just as sacred as 46!
Yuyutsu,
Only a being with 46 can answer that & it looks like you might just be the person to ask that creature & get an answer.