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P1234567890
Emperor of the Universe
Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 8230
Location: Victoria, Canada
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 Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 1:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Mattathias wrote: | | P1234567890 wrote: | | So you don't believe that we have something inside us which animates us, but is not made out of matter, cannot be studied by science, and cannot be destroyed? |
It took me a while to study the information in the link I provided. You must be a speed reader.
If you checked closely, the link had nothing positive to say about the natural immortality of the soul. Of course a soul (person) can be destroyed. |
Then it sounds like we agree!
So you don't believe that your soul will one day go to heaven?
_________________
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal
"...with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -that takes religion..."
-Steven Weinberg
"I would bless my children with your destruction instead."
-Someone who shall remain anonymous. |
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Mattathias
King of the Jungle
Joined: 06 Jul 2007
Posts: 1991
Location: Atlanta
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 2:19 pm Post subject: |
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| P1234567890 wrote: | | So you don't believe that your soul will one day go to heaven? |
No, I don't. The inheritance of believers, according to scripture, is the earth - not heaven.
_________________
"All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price." - Juvenal |
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P1234567890
Emperor of the Universe
Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 8230
Location: Victoria, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 2:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Mattathias wrote: | | P1234567890 wrote: | | So you don't believe that your soul will one day go to heaven? |
No, I don't. The inheritance of believers, according to scripture, is the earth - not heaven. |
Excellent. This makes a whole lot more sense than what most Christians and Muslims believe.
_________________
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal
"...with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -that takes religion..."
-Steven Weinberg
"I would bless my children with your destruction instead."
-Someone who shall remain anonymous. |
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Mattathias
King of the Jungle
Joined: 06 Jul 2007
Posts: 1991
Location: Atlanta
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| Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 6:33 pm Post subject: |
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| P1234567890 wrote: | | I'd have to search for references, so I'll leave it to you. |
Okay. Here's a first stab at it.
| Quote: | As Professor [Roy Bowen] Ward indicates in his pamphlet, many of the first Christians, including all but one (Luke) of those whose writings are preserved in the New Testament, were Jewish Christians—with a basically Jewish morality. We can therefore rightly expect, as Ward does, that if a Jewish consensus on fetal personhood and/or abortion existed at that time, the writers of the New Testament would almost certainly have held the common Jewish view.
Ward implies that the Jewish consensus in the early part of the Christian era was not antiabortion, but he has incorrectly interpreted texts that are only marginally relevant, and he has failed to discuss Jewish documents that explicitly mention induced abortion. Early Judaism was, in fact, quite firmly opposed to induced abortion.
The popular Jewish wisdom of the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides (written between 50 B.C. and A.D. 50) says that "a woman should not destroy the unborn babe in her belly, nor after its birth throw it before the dogs and vultures as a prey."
So, too, the apocalyptic Sibylline Oracles includes among the wicked two groups: women who "produce abortions and unlawfully cast their offspring away" and sorcerers who dispense abortifacients.
The apocryphal, first- or second-century B.C. book of 1 Enoch says that an evil angel taught humans how to "smash the embryo in the womb."
In his exposition of the commandment against murder, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (25 B.C.-A.D. 41) rejected the common notion that a fetus is merely a part of its mother. He taught that anyone who induces abortion must be fined if the fetus is unformed, and given the death penalty if it is formed.
Similarly, the first-century Jewish historian and apologist Josephus wrote, "The Law orders all the offspring to be brought up, and forbids women either to cause abortion or to make away with the fetus." A woman convicted of this was regarded as having committed infanticide, because she destroyed a soul and diminished the race.
No contradictory early Jewish texts about abortion have been discovered, thus suggesting that a Jewish anti-abortion consensus did exist in the first century. (Later, some rabbis pronounced an exception-abortion to save the mother's life.) This consensus is acknowledged even by scholars, such as William Countryman, who find the New Testament's silence on abortion puzzling and problematic.
Given the Jewish consensus on abortion, the most logical supposition is that the Jewish-Christian writers of the New Testament would have shared the antiabortion posture of their Jewish heritage and ethos, even if they did not mention abortion explicitly in the preserved writings of the New Testament. |
Link
_________________
"All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price." - Juvenal |
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nobody important
Young Wolf
Joined: 16 Nov 2006
Posts: 517
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 8:15 am Post subject: |
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"So by any objective criterion, every time you swat a fly, you are causing infinitely more suffering than when an embryo is destroyed.
Shouldn't swatting flies be outlawed?"
He, He dont be foolish we dont put any value on the amount of cells, we put the value on the species.
one single cell human being (a zygote) is worth many sparrows...horses, cats, dogs, panda's take the most endangered species and a single cell human being is worth a lot more than many of them. |
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P1234567890
Emperor of the Universe
Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 8230
Location: Victoria, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 8:20 am Post subject: |
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In that case, doesn't it bother you that you are committing a holocaust every time you scratch your scalp? Because you're killing many thousands of cells when you do that.
_________________
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal
"...with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -that takes religion..."
-Steven Weinberg
"I would bless my children with your destruction instead."
-Someone who shall remain anonymous. |
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nobody important
Young Wolf
Joined: 16 Nov 2006
Posts: 517
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 8:59 am Post subject: |
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i dont believe your that stupid.... and i am very offended that you think i am that stupid.
We both know that a skin cell is not a human being but part of a human being, ok yes given certain scientific techniques that cell can be manipulated into a kind of empty (no DNA) unfertalised egg cell, then implanted with my full DNA to produce a clone of myself.... but that is hardly the point. A skin cell is not a zygote ordinarily a skin cell isnt going to grow and develop. |
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P1234567890
Emperor of the Universe
Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 8230
Location: Victoria, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:45 pm Post subject: |
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| nobody important wrote: |
We both know that a skin cell is not a human being but part of a human being,
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We also both know that a zygote is not a human being but part of a human being. You kill more human cells every time you scratch your ear than are killed when a blastosphere is destroyed.
| nobody important wrote: |
ok yes given certain scientific techniques that cell can be manipulated into a kind of empty (no DNA) unfertalised egg cell, then implanted with my full DNA to produce a clone of myself.... but that is hardly the point. |
Why not? Every cell with DNA in it is a potential human being. Cells aren't that important, and neither is a fertilized egg.
_________________
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal
"...with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -that takes religion..."
-Steven Weinberg
"I would bless my children with your destruction instead."
-Someone who shall remain anonymous. |
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nobody important
Young Wolf
Joined: 16 Nov 2006
Posts: 517
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 2:48 pm Post subject: |
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"We also both know that a zygote is not a human being but part of a human being."
what human being are they a part of?
Surely your not suggesting the woman?
You do realise that the zygote has different DNA from both male and female parents, it is unique in every way...it is its own self, it is alive, growing and human in species...it is a human in *existance*...i,e a human *being* |
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P1234567890
Emperor of the Universe
Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 8230
Location: Victoria, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:34 pm Post subject: |
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A zygote is a single cell. To refer to a single cell as a human being is absurd to the extreme.
_________________
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal
"...with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -that takes religion..."
-Steven Weinberg
"I would bless my children with your destruction instead."
-Someone who shall remain anonymous. |
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nobody important
Young Wolf
Joined: 16 Nov 2006
Posts: 517
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| Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 1:05 am Post subject: |
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dont talk about how absurd something is to make it true or false.
not in a world of elephants, hippoptumus', kangaroos, duck billed platapus' Giraffes and crocodiles....if absurdity proves anything it is that the probability is more likely the more absurd it seems.
A zygote, has a unique DNA unlike any other human being, it is human in species it is alive, growing and developing...it is a distinct and an individual human in existance... it is a human 'being' what else could it be?
A human "being" in the biological sense is created when upon the resumption of meiosis, the haploid chromosome from sperm and egg are joined to form the complete human chromosomal complement. however the term human being can also be a philosophical and a legal experseion thus, when a human being begins is often classed as a social question that I believe should be answered by scientists...rather than by the current opinion. |
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P1234567890
Emperor of the Universe
Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 8230
Location: Victoria, Canada
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| Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 6:32 am Post subject: |
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| nobody important wrote: | | dont talk about how absurd something is to make it true or false. |
It's a description. It's subjective. There is no objective true or false in this case. There's only how reasonable it is to refer to a single cell as a human being.
This throws away an incredible amount of information. To say that a single cell is a human being completely demeans and cheapens human life and the human experience. What are the important characteristics of humans? Why are we so much 'better' than simple animals?
The ways in which we think, feel, reason, create, love, explore, etc. are what make human beings special. None of these characteristics apply to a fetus, let alone an embryo, and expecially not a zygote.
They can't feel. They can't love. They can't think. They can't reason.
They're no more special than an animal zygote in any objective way. The only thing you can say about them is that *if* brought to term, then they will one day develop into human beings.
_________________
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal
"...with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -that takes religion..."
-Steven Weinberg
"I would bless my children with your destruction instead."
-Someone who shall remain anonymous. |
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nobody important
Young Wolf
Joined: 16 Nov 2006
Posts: 517
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| Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 12:11 am Post subject: |
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"It's a description. It's subjective. There is no objective true or false in this case. There's only how reasonable it is to refer to a single cell as a human being"
The reason why my discription of new york can be true or false is because new york exists. A zygote exists, therefore any discription can be true or false.
"To say that a single cell is a human being completely demeans and cheapens human life "
Not at all, it heaps value on human life even more, to say that even a single cell human zygote is worth infinatly more than the animals because of its humanity does not demean and cheapen human life, far, far, far from it.
"What are the important characteristics of humans? "
"think, feel, reason, create, love, explore"
these things dont define a human being but all those abilities are present in a zygote we may not be able to see these qulaities yet but they are there.
An acorn is an oak tree. |
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P1234567890
Emperor of the Universe
Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 8230
Location: Victoria, Canada
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| Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 9:06 am Post subject: |
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| nobody important wrote: |
"What are the important characteristics of humans? "
"think, feel, reason, create, love, explore"
these things dont define a human being but all those abilities are present in a zygote we may not be able to see these qulaities yet but they are there.
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No, they are not. Thinking, loving, feeling, and reasoning require a nervous system. A zygote has no nervous system. Your statement is objectively and scientifically false.
| nobody important wrote: |
An acorn is an oak tree. |
Exactly how reasonable is this statement? In my opinion this is a reductio argument against your claim that a zygote is a human being.
_________________
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal
"...with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -that takes religion..."
-Steven Weinberg
"I would bless my children with your destruction instead."
-Someone who shall remain anonymous. |
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nobody important
Young Wolf
Joined: 16 Nov 2006
Posts: 517
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| Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 1:14 pm Post subject: |
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| A zygote has got a nervous system, it has not developed as yet, but it never the less has a nervous system. even though the photograph is in the film and has not been developed the photograph still exists. |
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