Alan interacts with your comments and responds to this week’s challenge:
Challenge Response: They’re Going to Die Anyway
Posted: October 7, 2010 by Alan Shlemon in Do the Right Thing, Weekly ChallengeComments
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I am Kathryn and Claire’s Nana. I was so happy to see this video and to hear the way that frozen embryos can NOT be used for research. But to become lovely little boys and girls in a family, like my granddaughters. It is a real God thing, that they look like our family! God bless you for informing others.
Human sentience is completely defined by our brains. Without the brain you can’t have consciousness, you can’t have memories, you can’t have any of the things that characterize a human personality… these early embryos don’t have a brain, therefore they are not people. End of story. No philosophical argument you can ledger will ever change this fact. A living form without a functioning brain is nothing more than an empty vessel. This research is not hurting anyone and could potentially help everyone… why do you insist on standing in the way of progress?
Samuel let me see if I understood. No brain = no people. So lets take those people in hospitals in a coma state and just rip em appart. Well based on your explanation they are not people either since they can’t think or are concious.
There are better ways in these modern times to do research other than breeding humans in labs.
“Breeding humans in labs”
Nobody is doing that you fool… where the hell do you people get this stuff from? A person in a coma or in a vegetative state has a brain, and depending on the situation it may only be partially dysfunctional such that they are still partially aware. That situation is ENTIRELY different from an embryo, which in its’ early stages has no brain at all, nor has it ever been conscious, nor will it become truly conscious of itself or anything else until a good amount of time after it is born.
An embryo in the zygotic stage is a human being, Samuel. Therefore, Onix’s statement (“breeding humans in labs”) is accurate & your assertion is not. Human consciousness is not what makes a human being valuable & deserving of protection and care.
Killing human beings w/ anencephaly is wrong because killing innocent human beings is wrong. In the same way, destroying embryos (with or without brain or consciousness) is wrong because killing innocent human beings is wrong.
Study fetal origins.
“An embryo in the zygotic stage is a human being”
Morphologically a human embryo looks nothing like a human being at all. Not only that, but a human embryo is entirely indistinguishable from the embryos of other mammals. Potential humans are not protected under the law… otherwise everybody who murdered somebody would be charged with infinity counts of murder.
“Human consciousness is not what makes a human being valuable & deserving of protection and care.”
What makes humans valuable then? I’m dying to hear your answer.
“Morphologically a human embryo looks nothing like a human being at all.”
Of course it does. It looks exactly like a human being looks at that stage of development. An embryo isn’t a different species. It’s a stage of development. Surely you don’t think things derive their value from what they look like.
>>Potential humans are not protected under the law
If by “potential human” you mean a human who has not yet been born, then you are incorrect. A person who kills a mother and her unborn child is charged with two counts of murder in California and in many other states. Many of those states do so from the moment of conception, even if the killer isn’t aware the woman is pregnant.
>>otherwise everybody who murdered somebody would be charged with infinity counts of murder.
Nobody has infinity humans in the embryonic stage growing in them at any time, so I don’t understand your statement there.
>>otherwise everybody who murdered somebody would be charged with infinity counts of murder.
Nobody has infinity humans in the embryonic stage growing in them at any time, so I don’t understand your statement there.
I think what he means is that if “potential humans” were protected by law, then since there is no limit to the number of humans each of us could produce, then each of us represents an unlimited number of “potential humans,” so if you murder one person, you’re guilty of all the “potential humans” you prevented from becoming actual humans. At least that’s what I THINK he’s getting at.