Chris

I only mention trampling chickens and eggs to emphasise the distinction people make between life of a few cells and the developed organism. I think this most fair and reasonable as your own extrapolation morality leads you to see someone experimenting with a human embryo of a few cells as a baby killer, but someone else destroying gametes in the process of fusing as acting acceptably. There are many who believe that humanity is far more than the fusion of two gametes.

And yes, the Bible has not been mentioned, but why not? What is wrong with advancing religious arguments? Why must they be hidden behind a wall of pseudo scientific justification? I would suggest that religion is very ambiguous on this issue, leaving open a wide range of interpretation. What I find distasteful is your dogmatic insistence of your correctness, and your attribution of immorality to characters like Yabby for holding a differing opinion. The heroes of Christianity have risen above this behaviour.

Cris, I’m not saying anything is preferable, simply that its acceptable and most
of the Western World agrees with me. Talk of adoption is all very well, but
if 85000 babies a year would be put up for adoption, you would very soon have
what you used to have, orphanages full of unwanted children. Those children
already exist in overseas orphanages, so why not make things easier to adopt them?

I’m told that in America there is huge demand for “white normal” babies.
“Black abnormal” babies are largely unwanted. Is this the Christian love
that is preached by the most religious Western nation on earth ?

So I simply accept Darwin’s observation of nature, that far more potential
individuals of any species will be created then can ever survive. The biggest
killer of embryos is in fact mother nature herself, as was pointed out by
Divergence.

Cris get used to it, people in general don’t get emotional over a few cells,
no matter how much you preach to them. Abortion law has been overwhelmingly
accepted in virtually every country where its been voted on.

IMHO, this whole debate at its core, is still one about religion. Some of the religious
are trying to do what the ID mob did. A bunch of fundamentalists, failing with their
6000 year old earth theory, changed course, obtained a heap of money from
some rich US benefactor and came up with the ID story. So dvds went out,
lots of talk and promotion, trying to avoid the god story, but still driven by the
same fundamental factors as they always were.

Are you religious Cris? Do you believe in God?

Fester,

You defend an outspoken adult but cannot defend the innocent?

Yabby,

You demonstrated disdain for altruists because it's somehow bad they may feel good helping others, and you’ve expressed outright contempt for religion. What’s the motivation for raising religion again?

Is it because religion represents a moral hurdle - a hindrance to doing whatever you want, whenever you want, to whomever you want?

Like-minded people have drawn together throughout history in times of urgent humanitarian need. This is one of those times and religion is therefore a part of that. Religious denomination becomes irrelevant when humanity’s at risk.

You ask about my personal beliefs. Hmm, before I respond I wonder ... is that a FAIR and REASONABLE question while you, Fester, and Divergence conceal your real motivations behind fake identities?

Some people find it difficult to recognize what’s 'FAIR':

Is it ‘fair’ you get an opportunity to live but deny the same opportunity to another?

Is it 'fair' you push embryonic stem cell research whilst ignoring the AVALANCHE of EVIDENCE in favour of ETHICAL stem cell research?

Is it 'fair' you OMIT IMPORTANT INFORMATION whilst promoting the obscure?

Is it 'fair' to DIVERT funding from promising ETHICAL RESEARCH - DELAYING or halting sufferers' BEST CHANCES of treatments or cures?

Is it 'fair' to CREATE new HUMAN LIFE with the single intent of sacrifice to EXPERIMENTATION and DESTRUCTION?

Is it 'fair' to USURP an innocent human's BIRTHRIGHT to CHOOSE TO LIVE whilst handing life and death decisions to scientists and government departments who operate without moral charter or humanitarian obligations?

Is it 'fair' to put this wonderful nation on an ever-spiralling downward path that DEVALUES HUMAN LIFE in INCREMENTS of APPEARANCE, AGE, and MENTAL CAPACITY – endangering all STAGES of HUMAN VULNERABILITY and all stages of a human’s lifecycle?

Is it 'fair' to consign your NEW-AGE HUMAN VALUE SYSTEM to every generation to follow - every young Australian to follow? Is that a desirable legacy for the Australian people, for the human race?

BAD THINGS HAPPEN WHEN GOOD PEOPLE LOSE SIGHT OF WHAT IS FAIR

Cris, no disdain for altruists at all. Simply an understanding about why so called
“selfless” people are like they are. Clearly they have their rewards!

My question about religion is simple, I respect honesty! If you believe what
you believe for religious reasons, why not just say so?

I’ve tried to understand how the Catholics came up with their line in the sand
in biblical terms and the best reference I could find was in the Catholic
Encyclopaedia, where a reference is made to some old testament
“holy sperms”. God seems to have punished some guy for wasting them.
The rest is seems to me, is pure theological speculation.

Why should I accept their interpretation of a line in the sand, as the
Divine truth from the Almighty himself?

No fake identities on OLO Cris, simply online nicknames. Given that
we have had religious fanatics bomb abortion clinics or threaten to
kill people who say a wrong word about Allah, that makes perfect sense
to me. Good debate is about reasoning about issues, not about the people
who wrote them. Why do you have a problem with that?

As to your questions about fairness, is it fair that as a sperm you
swam like mad, you got home first, meanwhile the other millions
of sperms all died , flushed down the toilet, without a second thought
by anyone?

Is it fair that perhaps last month, you and your wife decided that you
did not want another child, so that potentially cute baby or the sperms
and ova that can make it so, were flushed down lifes toilet? Why did
you decide that, yet expect other women to be forced to have children
that they don’t want or can’t afford to raise?

No new-age beliefs in my human value system Cris, simply an understanding
and acceptance of nature.

Fester,

There are innate capacities: capacities that are with us when we are born – or, better - conceived.

The exercise of those capacities can be impeded – either by internal defects or by external obstructions. For a bird in whose nature there is the capacity to fly, an internal defect might be a congenitally deformed wing. An external obstruction would be a vacuum. Neither type of obstruction removes the capacity. Fix the wing or fill the vacuum with air, and the extant capacity can be exercised.

HOW one cures an internal defect – via innate healing processes or totally external means (or a combination), or removes the external obstruction, is irrelevant to the predication of capacity. What is vital to ascribing innate capacities is whether any inability re a certain quality (here: flight) is a DEFECT or something which is not in the nature of that thing. Inability to fly (because of a broken wing) IS a defect in a crow. It is NOT a defect in non-flying species, such as emus, kiwis, humans and tortoises.

So a bird with defective DNA which means it can’t fly is still rightly spoken of as having the capacity to fly. For example if DNA corruption meant a crow was born with a deformed wing, we would say this crow is in exactly the same category (for these purposes) as a crow born with the same manifest defect resulting from a post-conception abnormality. Both have the capacity to fly, which, barring possible available corrective surgery, they can’t exercise.

But there is nothing DEFECTIVE in the DNA of an emu determines its inability to fly. Neither is there in humans or tortoises (except some flying varieties, of course). Emus, humans and and most tortoises I know of don’t have an innate capacity to fly. Crows with whatever deformity do.

Fiddling with emu (or human) DNA to endow them with functional wings is not curing a defect. Such operations render them abnormal, not more exemplary, humans or emus.

Anencephalic humans have an innate capacity to think. They are impeded by internal defects

[Note that, as the crow/congenital deformed wing example shows, innate defects which impair the exercise of capacity can co-exist with that very innate capacity.]

2) Sperm and ova have no innate capacity to think or reason in the human way. Human zygotes do: their barrier to thought is that they are immature specimens of humanity, though of course they may be perfectly normal specimens of a human being at that stage of development. A newly-hatched chick vis a vis the ability to fly is in an analogous situation. [No one says that newly-hatched crows “don’t have an innate capacity to fly.”] Sperm and ova (for the thousandth time!) are NOT human INDIVIDUALS. Their occasional union RESULTS in humans, but each sperm though “human” in origin in the sense of being a part of a whole: (the human individual of which they, like liver cells, are a PART) are not themselves HUMAN INDIVIDUALS. [Ova in the girl embryo are not themselves embryos.]

Killing a sperm or ovum is NOT homicide because there is no human being in existence. As I’ve said just recently, this act may well, however, be a grave wrong - BUT NOT HOMICIDE - if it is done with the malicious intention of preventing a human being coming into existence. In like manner, fiddling with the DNA of a sperm (or smoking) in order that a conception results in a human who is eg deaf is also a grave wrong. But it is not, precisely, assault, even though it is as grave a wrong as deafening an extant human being. It is complete rubbish to suggest that I don’t give (as I have explicitly given before) consideration to gametes pre-conception.

So the “prescience” argument fails. Killing a zygote is murder. Deliberately preventing a sperm/ovum in order that a human life not come into being is, in my opinion, gravely wrong. But it is not murder, and the argument for its wrongfulness are, though related to that act, not the same.

3) The fact that X WILL die doesn’t ground any right to kill X. Dispute this.