Yabby, it's because you were allowed to live and grow into an adult that you can indulge yourself with **If I was not here, I would not know about it. So there is nothing to miss.**

But Yabby you cannot speak from a position of NOT being born because you WERE born.

The inescapable fact is you WERE born - you ARE here - and by virtue of BEING here you benefit from the opportunities life has afforded you - such as making your own choices and expressing your own opinion about whether or not YOU were worthy of continuing YOUR life.

It's only by virtue of BEING HERE that you're in a position to express that opinion about yourself.

The proposed process creates a new human being in the very earliest stages of life - unique in every sense of the word -rare and irreplaceable. You propose they should not have the same opportunity as you - you propose they're not worthy of our respect, not worthy of growing, not worthy of life. You propose we should USE that life - experiment on it in any way we deem fit for OUR purpose - a life completely innocent of any wrong doing is given no right of recourse.

And still you don't see anything wrong in playing judge and jury - deciding who is and who is not worthy of life. Any logical person is capable of perceiving how dangerously far that could lead.

Yabby, the stem cell bill proposes taking the next step in USURPING the RIGHTS of those unable to speak for themselves - today it's embryos, tomorrow it could very well be you.

Any person who sees their life as a gift, who is grateful for the opportunity life has afforded them, is capable of seeing how blatantly unfair that proposal is, and how frightening our future could become.

HH

“I don’t believe there is any warrant in common sense parlance or in scientific discourse to say that Rex existed as the separate sperm or ovum that came together at his conception prior to that moment.”

This is true, but neither did Rex the person exist at the point of conception: This is merely another stage in the process by which a human, which may or may not become capable of abstract rational thought, is formed. The first stage in the creation of Rex the person was the creation of the unique sperm and ovum from which he formed after their fusion.

“I’ve never read a science textbook which says, “Water exists in one state as any particular hydrogen and oxygen atoms that are destined to combine.””

True again, but you wont see any mystical significance attached to the combination of the two, neither would you claim that the hydrogen and oxygen atoms cease to exist when they form a water molecule (Try putting that in the next chemistry or philosophy exam, and see what marks you get.). And any chemist could tell you that the chemical symbol for water is H2O, not W. You might also note that water was once considered to be one of the four elements before Lavoisier discovered it to be an oxide of hydrogen.

Fester,
Having the capacity to do something by no means necessarily implies the ability to remove by oneself any impedance to that capacity. There are times one implies this, and there are many times when one does not.

The fact that the marooned violinist might 1. imagine playing the violin or 2. play the island coconuts does not gainsay the fact in any way that he can’t here and now play the violin. Yet we still – properly – call him a violinist. Now, you imply, on this univocal meaning of ‘capacity’ that if he can’t swim back to civilization, one cannot properly say ‘he has the capacity to play the violin’ or, in other words, that he is a violinist.

I do hope I’ve misunderstood you: this is nonsense. For one, it’s not by any means the only or even the predominant way the word ‘capacity’ is used. If I said of that man “he’s a great player” it would be simply disingenuous of you to say you didn’t know what I could possibly be referring to, given that there are no violins around and he can’t swim to get hold of one.

Secondly, supposing that the word ‘capacity’ WERE only ever used in this restricted sense, one could STILL use other concepts to refer to a real world distinction between the incapacity of a man who plays the violin beautifully when he has one, but for whom an instrument is here and now insuperably unavailable, and the incapacity of a man who can’t play the violin even if one is given to him.

It is the capacity of the former (to play) that I am referring to when I speak of humans having an innate capacity to reason. The mere fact that they can’t self-correct any bodily impedances to their ability to reason is therefore not a relevant factor any more than it is in the example of the violinist.

Now, you may dispute the existence of that innate capacity in, say, the zygote. Fine, let’s discuss that. But you can’t just define it away.

Fester, my point is not that Rex the person first existed at conception. It’s that Rex the human being – the member of the species homo sapiens, first existed then. The person may have existed then, but I think that’s too mysterious a situation to plumb at this point in science and philosophy.

So what’s your schema? First conception, then, at some other stage, human being, and then at another stage person ? I’m interested: when is Rex human? And what species is he a member of before then?

Do you agree that the destined sperm and ova are not Rex prior to conception? That was the point of my water analogy. Well you’re in a position to see why Cris & I don’t treat sperm and ova, even those predestined to fuse, as human beings. They’re not, any more than predestined hydrogen and oxygen atoms are already water. So you may disagree that Rex is a human being at conception (do you?). But you can’t argue that because we think he is one, that we must logically think the predestined sperm and ova are, too. We could be arguing that a new entity is created on conception which is not to be identified simply with the elements from which it was created.

Actually, I do wax mystical about the incredible differences between hydrogen and oxygen, and the water which results from their bonding. That’s why I love science. But sometimes Rational Beings are created by the fusing of non-rational entities, and that’s bloody marvelous. Of course, you dispute this. But if you did see it this way, do admit, you’d be enthralled - no?

Just because hydrogen and oxygen are not destroyed in the formation of water, it does not follow that in every creation of an entity from separate elements, there is no destruction of those elements. Hydrogen and oxygen can be separated again by electrolysis. The sperm and ova cannot be reconstituted after conception. This is a good warrant for saying they have, qua sperm and ovum, been destroyed. Much like the cereal I ate this morning

Cris, the fact that I was born is mere chance. As a child,
my mother commented many times that she made a mistake,
she should have flushed me down the toilet, but there
you have it :)

Of course I can comment on birth, just as I can comment
on death, they are simply lifes realities, get used to them.

If I was not here to express my opinion, then I would be
missing nothing and not know about it, so what is your problem?

The earliest stages of life are certainly not unique or rare,
but common as chips and dirt cheap. What is rare is mothers
who actually want to have another child, as is their right.
If you want a few spare embryos, line up at the abortion clinics,
there are plenty of unwanted ones, so what is rare about them?
Do you want them? Do the churches want them? Clearly not,
alot of the noise is simply rhetoric, as I could show.

Wether an embryo will be kept is the mothers choice, she takes
on the responsibility after all. Which of her 400 odd potential
babies that she wants to keep, should be her choice alone, fact
is that she can only keep a few of them at most.

Human embryos are as innocent as bonobo or chimp embryos, they
all have the potential to reason one day, given the right environment.
But they still are only strings of dna with potential,
nothing more.

I dont see my life as a gift, I see it as pure chance against
the overwhelming odds, as is how things happen in nature.
Life is not fair, get used to it. The real frightening future is
if we humans wreck the planet, in the name of false philosophy.
Then there won't be a humanity to fuss about. Think about it.

Only perhaps 1 in 3 embryos survives to the live baby stage, even if there is no deliberate interference. That is why the IVF clinics to produce surplus embryos, to give their clients a better probability of a baby. If you pro-life people were really concerned about embryos and not the guilt of people having or performing abortions you would be calling for a massive diversion of medical research funds from cancer and heart disease to failure to implant and to subverting the natural mechanisms that cause abnormal embryos to be expelled. (The failure of these have recently been linked to the problems of women who habitually miscarry.) After all, the embryo is just as dead whether it is deliberately killed or not. Could it be that the real concerns relate to such things as demographic competition, maintaining the supply of cheap labour for the elite, or keeping women in their place?

There is also no one-to-one correspondence between surviving embryos and people. This is not only due to embryos splitting to form identical twins or triplets, but because two entirely separate embryos that would normally form identical twins can be squeezed together in the uterus and then cooperate to form a single individual (Google 'tetragametic chimera'). A case was discovered in England a few years ago when DNA testing revealed that a 50 year old woman could not possibly be the mother of her two sons. Although not true in this case, the embryos making up the chimera can be of different sexes and could theoretically have different fathers. In the lab, chimeras can even be formed using embryos of sheep and goats, which are not closely related enough to hybridise in nature (humans and chimpanzees?). What does this say about the soul entering at the moment of conception?

If you can accept the concept of brain death, why can't you accept the concept of brain birth?