Let’s admit first that, whatever faults the man has, Bill “The Science Guy” Nye has taught us at least one valuable lesson in biology. Never cinch your bow tie so tight that it cuts off the oxygen to your brain.
Violate this simple rule and you’ll end up making videos like this one: “Can We Stop Telling Women What to Do With Their Bodies?”
Why, no, Bill, we can’t stop telling women what they can do with their bodies. Such a thing is beyond preposterous. “Pardon me, madam, I see that you are using your body to gut a passel of cats and are scattering their eviscera along the byway. But since you are using your body to do this, the objection to your act which first occurred to me must be wrong. Carry on.”
We also tell women not to use their bodies to kill their own bodies, though this admonition is weakening. Here’s another thing women can’t do with their own bodies: without a prescription ingest any quantity of substances like cocaine or heroin. Women, using their own bodies, are also discouraged from clonking their husbands on their heads with frying pans.
A woman who uses her body to kill a life inside her which is not her body is acting immorally. This life, this enwombed (that’s what I said: enwombed) baby, does depend on its mother for life, but this is also true of babies who escape from inside their mothers into the wild. An outwombed baby left unattended dies. A woman, using her own body, must not fail to keep the outwombed life-form alive, else, we say, she is wicked, and must pay the relevant penalty.
The secular often say they do not believe in miracles. They lie. They claim a miracle happens that turns the life inside a mother into a human being. One instant this life is just some ambiguously classified life-form, and the next—Abracadabra!—it is human! Sacré Unplanned Parenthood!
Now there are many arguments that advocate the routine killing of enwombed babies, but perhaps the most idiotic ever ventured was given by Nye in this video. I’m willing to be corrected on the “most idiotic” claim, but frankly I think Nye is peerless.
He states, what everybody already knows, that a fertilized egg must be implanted in the uterus for a pregnancy to take. He notes many fertilized eggs fail to implant and thus die. So far, so good. But then the constricting neck-wear has done its work and he says (around 40 seconds in):
Then who—whom–are you gonna sue? Whom are you gonna imprison? Every women who’s had a fertilized egg passed through her? Every guy whose sperm has fertilized an egg and then it didn’t become a human? Have all these people failed you? It’s, uh, just a reflection of a deep scientific lack of understanding. And, uh, you literally, or apparently literally, don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Which is, it, Bill? Literally? Or apparently literally?
No, no: I’m teasing you, Bill. Have a sense of humor! Everybody can see that while your last sentence is comprised of individual English words, the sentence itself is empty of all meaning. And then I notice, Billy Boy, you mentioned suing as a penalty before imprisonment. You smarting from some lawyer’s bite, Bill, old son? Okay, no more teasing, I swear.
Here’s Bill’s Blunder recast. Some mountain climbers fail to make it to the top because they slip and fall to their deaths. Nobody can be sued or imprisoned for this. Therefore the folks who continue climbing and have not yet reached the top are not human beings and may be killed. Heck, à la Planned Parenthood, we can even harvest their organs for a pretty penny!
And it doesn’t have to be just mountain climbers. To make it home from a driving commute, a driver must remain alert at all times. Some do not remain alert and crash and die. Those who continue on their way are therefore not human and may be used for medical experimentation. Hey. Aren’t you for scientific progress? Don’t you want the new medicines that will result from this killing?
The national embarrassment which is Bill Nye goes on to accuse white men of coming to their view of the immorality of abortion from “a book written 5,000 years ago”. Old Bill also claims we whites believe every act of intercourse results in a pregnancy.
Bill, you recall, casts himself in the role of scientist. And this is, unfortunately, true. Many scientists are this stupid.
I read a very good article about the abortion debate in the Federalist today as well.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/09/30/the-end-of-abortion-moderates/
Bill Nye has chosen his side pretty clearly.
Nate. Thanks.
I see that I forgot to mention that Nye is himself white. But then Nye himself forgot it, too.
Does the fact that the founder of PP was a eugenics believer mean anything? Doesn’t eugenics tell everyone what and with whom they can do with their bodies?
We refuse to allow prostitution. As long as prostitution is illegal, then yes, we are going to tell women what to do with their bodies. Legalize prostitution, Bill. Get started now.
Lobos made an interesting point about abortion–how is it less superstitious to believe a baby becomes a human being when it passes through the birth canal than to believe God made the baby. Lobos is an atheist who can see the superstition in the secular version of abortion rights. No magic turns a fetus into a human–it’s human all along. With or without religion being involved. The only way it is not always human is to invoke superstition of some kind.
In a different take from Briggs, Bill’s necktie keeps him from realizing there is a difference between eggs, sperm, zygotes, fetuses and deliberately ripping out the human life inside a woman. By his logic, I can run over anyone with my car because accidents happen and unless you jail all those people who have accidents, you can’t jail me.
I’m not sure where Bill gets the 5000 year old book. As far as I know, the Bible was written over a long period, none of which dates back further than 3400 years or so.
The biggest crime here is people are not taught that celebrities are merely fluff and should be ignored on all matters of importance. If the person is on TV, they should be ignored as they no longer have any expertise whatsoever and live for ratings. That’s we need to teach. (Congress only has celebrities testify because they–the Congress–are in love with fame and hope some will rub off. It also makes for a great change from not running the country like elected to do.)
Nate: Interesting articles. A point was made that with abortion in the case of the mother’s life being in grave danger, we are not killing the child per se, but we lack the technology to save both. Sadly, there are times where only one person can be saved. It happens in triage medicine all the time.
Dr. Briggs —
I was on my way to writing a fairly sophisticated Kalman filter when your email popped in and I was drawn by the headline to read. I suppose it was an easy decision: Kalman filter or Bill Nye bashing. The latter got the nod. I also read the Federalist piece, as well (thanks Nate).
Here’s the thing that simply stupefies me: people who are so ideologically driven to support abortion regardless of the cost are seemingly (based on observation) demonstrably closed to any rational argument to the contrary. Case in point 1: Nancy Pelosi stating that she is convinced the Planned Parenthood videos are faked. In another era these people would be treated akin to those who claimed the moon landing was faked… or the earth was flat.
As technology brings us closer and closer to the baby in utero, and as we begin to understand just how “human” the baby is closer and closer to conception, the rhetoric and shrieking becomes more shrill from those arguing for abortion. Thus, the essential point is this: the argument is less and less about being rational and more and more about ideology.
I am convinced (again, based on observation) that it matters NOT what the facts are: those who are closed-minded will remain closed-minded. We can pray for them that the Holy Spirit will enter and open their eyes (as happened to Saul). But, in the words of my late father, “don’t wrestle with pigs — you get dirty and they enjoy it.”
As an over-50 man I have seen our society devolve since my childhood: it has become coarser, cruder, less respectful. I see so many analogies between this and the end of the Roman Empire.
Have we learned nothing? Will we learn nothing?
I haven’t watched the video, but it seems likely that Nye is pointing out the commonplace inconsistency of the non-secular who claim that they believe that a fully ensouled life begins at conception, but do not behave as if they do.
“The secular often say they do not believe in miracles. They lie. They claim a miracle happens that turns the life inside a mother into a human being. ”
Who are “the secular?” This sounds like yet another straw man. The traditional Catholic teaching, following Aquinas and others, who followed Aristotle, was that ensoulment happens after from 40 to 90 days of fetal development. This is similar to the Roe V. Wade compromise, and is in practical harmony with the tradition of secular opposition to abortion. There are certainly many secular people who seem to believe in the miracle to which you refer. But many others do not – any plenty of Christians and other non-secular folks talk and behave as if they do. Sorry to muddy up your lines in the sand.
Bill Nye, although he has said things that I wish he had not (as have I – who hasn’t?) is a national treasure who does an admirable job educating young people about science and opposing superstition.
Lets be honest, the only way Bill Nye (and beta males like him) are ever going to get to see a naked human woman in person (let alone touch one) is to kowtow to the harpies.
Few things are more pathetic than a geek trying to be cool.
I find it interesting that Mr. Nye–whose training was in electrical engineering–is now an expert on reproduction, morals, religion, and women’s bodies. Perhaps we could get a landscape architect to give a definitive declaration on ensoulment next.
Lee: Bill Nye is a national treasure? Are you sure you’re not part of national decline you mentioned? The simple fact now that Bill Nye is pushing purely political agendas should be a clue.
Andrew: Bill is not an expert. He’s quoting them. It’s a CYA method used by most mainstream skeptics (those who hate religion and worship science) and virtually everyone in the climate science activist field and the media. If you quote experts and they are wrong, it’s not your fault. It’s all about being popular and CYA.
“I haven’t watched the video, but …”
“The traditional Catholic teaching, following Aquinas and others, who followed Aristotle, was that ensoulment happens after from 40 to 90 days of fetal development…”
If you want to cite teachings, you might as well pick infallible ones:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html
http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html
Also, for the ‘traditional’ teaching:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm
Lee – Aquinas was following the science of his day. They didn’t have ultrasound or genetics in the 16th century, so the only knowledge on the topic had to come from the naked eye. This meant observing when children started noticibly kicking in utero, or else seeing stillborn and miscarried children and trying to draw conclusions from there.
Even at that, Aquinas taught that abortion was still intrinsically evil, whether or not the child had been ensouled, and that is a teaching that goes back to the first century and the Didache. This is the traditional Catholic position on the topic.
I’ve noticed. It’s always the pro-aborts that bring “ensoulment” into the argument. That seems to be the one miracle they believe in.
Andrew: Bill is, of course, a climate expert as well.
Whereas “natural” processes are the primary drivers in reproduction, “natural” processes do not play any role in climate. To quote a previous video of his: “Humans (too many humans) cause Global Warming or Global Climate Change.” It is only logical that he believes in abortion (and in ever higher numbers).
Briggs,
People like you are the embarrassment and the reason that shows why abortion is quite a good idea. Imagine how better the world would be without people like you in it. Too bad your mom dropped the ball on that one.
Sylvain,
Spoken like a true bloodlusting zealot.
Which is because, of course, you are in agreement with my logical demonstration above. But don’t want to admit it.
Sylvain:
While your views are normally against the norm (for this blog); your animosity has really ramped up several notches these past days.
Can I pray for you?
Follow your gods:
Do what you will is the whole of the law
Do only that which satisfies the will … L Ron Hubbard
Everybody who lives dies of natural causes at some point. So you can kill everybody before that natural death.
Which happens all the time.
Americans are actually quite good at it, using advanced technology like nuclear weapons and drones, or old-fashioned guns that they happen to have because their government is prone to kill them off otherwise. Or so they tell us all the time.
Why should it be different for unborn children?
John b (),
Yes my animosity has ramped up lately, because the views presented on this blog are very dangerous and leads to killing of doctors and practitioner that don’t share their point of views. Surely not by the author of the blog but by one of the idiot that reads it like gospel.
Sarah Palin put a target signs over the district of Gabby Gifford and an illuminated moron opened fire.
Foxnews attacked doctor Tiller on air for weeks until another illuminated decided him to kill him at the doorsteps of a church.
Foxnews and this blog keep repeating how theirs a war a white and Christian in the USA. Results: an illuminated killed black people in a Church.
Words have consequences and the words of conservative leads to murder.
The law of the land in the USA is that abortion is legal. If you don’t want one don’t get one, but don’t force your will upon other people that don’t share your point of view.
Plan parenthood didn’t do anything illegal has as been shown by the numerous state attorney investigation that have announced that they found no wrongdoing on their part.
Carly Fiorina lied in the debate claiming that the video showed an aborted foetus by plan parenthood, while the reality was that it was not images of an abortion and that it didn’t happened in a plan parenthood clinic.
The author of the video even refused to testify before congress saying he would plead the fifth. This is how unedited these videos are when the person who realized them refuse to incriminate themselves. The truth has no place with the pro-life.
Let’s make lists to see who kills more–left wing wackos or right-wing wackos. Then we’ll know who’s right.
Could Sylvain be a computer… RESET…,as in Giles Goat Boy?
Sylvain:
Thank you – that was more reasoned.
That was more reasonable. There was much to the other PP videos than the one “faked” part (the woman’s testimony should have been enough without the “faked” bit). I’ve seen all the PP PR spots at movie theatres during the prescreen talking about all the services they provide for the “poor”. ObamaCare, also the law of the land should make Planned Parenthood unnecessary.
Yes, it is “the law” of the land (there was a time when legalized abortion was NOT the law of the land), but a “judicial law” rather than legislated. Also there are legislated restrictions that Planned Parenthood is not abiding by, apparently. These laws are at the federal level so naturally a state office is not going to jump in.
Bill Nye was being stupid –
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain –
That makes Briggs stupid, you stupid, me stupid
We contend, be more civil, be more clear
Briggs’ speech is the law of the land
Tell Briggs and caution his followers about your own fears
but I read none of that in the past several days
I read “I’m right and you’re wrong
When an “illuminated” person kills someone, even the Right considers this person evil, wicked or otherwise troubled. When abortionists and their supporters kill millions, the Left considers this progress, enlightened thinking, good for women, etc. It seems that the Left shares the same troubling “illumination.”
redmond barry,
All kidding aside …
“People like you are the embarrassment and the reason that shows why abortion is quite a good idea. Imagine how better the world would be without people like you in it. Too bad your mom dropped the ball on that one.”
Isn’t that hate speech or does that only count when it’s coming from a right winger? What is it that makes lefties think a person who opposes abortion can’t do so without killing doctors? They worry about pro lifers(whose morality values human life) killing doctors while they(who either don’t value it or value it in dollars) kill millions of “enwombed” children. How backwards is that reasoning? There’s little hope for humanity in those beliefs.
Bill Nye is a mechanical engineer. I am an electrical engineer and Bill Nye is not one of us.
1. The miracle that Dr. Briggs ascribes to the secular mind is this notion of “ensoulment.” They fervently believe it takes place at birth, unless the birth is an accidental byproduct of a failed attempt to abort it. Then it’s okay to kill born babies. However, it is difficult to identify any material factor that comes into play at birth that merits such a distinction. Does the doctor impart a soul in the act of smacking the kid’s bottom?
2. Tommy Aquinas wrote in Latin. Once that is understood, all difficulties vanish. The word for “soul” is anima, which means “alive, in motion.” Thus, a being is “ensouled” when it is “alive.” The stirring in the womb was the first bit of empirical evidence that folks in that day had that there was something alive in there. But science has improved since then (as we are told) and we no longer regard overt local motion as the sign of life.
3. Sarah Palin put a target signs over the district of Gabby Gifford and an illuminated moron opened fire. Except, they were not “target” signs, but engineering benchmark signs used to indicate a location point. The Democrats used maps that employed actual “bulls-eye” archery targets. No one seemed to suppose these a call for assassination of the targeted Republican incumbents. Not to mention the fact that the nutcase was not in the least motivated by partisan politics.
I find it interesting that Mr. Nye–whose training was in electrical engineering–is now an expert on reproduction, morals, religion, and women’s bodies. Perhaps we could get a landscape architect to give a definitive declaration on ensoulment next.
And perhaps we can get a statistician to give a definitive declaration on
– theology
– morals
– …
Isn’t it interesting that when someone presents a conclusion, however lamely or even falsely arrived at, that comports with one’s pre-existing viewpoints, the conclusion is accepted.
Mindlessly.
Briggs, here has presented some illogical whoppers — providing a number of analogies purporting to be a woman’s free-will choice of using her body when in fact she is abusing another.
The principle, missed entirely by Briggs, etc., is what economists call “externalities” — when one’s behavior impacts another’s.
The issue of a woman’s choice over her body is limited to her body — beating her spouse goes way beyond the principle of a woman’s choice over her body.
To present such an analogy as relevant to a “woman’s choice over her body” in the relevant context is either stupid or a lie.
People here keep forgetting that the U.S. government, with good reason, cannot legally impose religious values on the citizenry. The country is founded in a trade-off that many freedoms trump religiously-imposed values.
Like the right to have an abortion.
It’s law.
Like it or not, that’s one of the prices of freedom in the U.S. — the right to kill an unborn per certain conditions.
The price of freedom includes what freedom brings, and some of that includes the right to sin.
Effectively taking that away by imposing particular religious values creates precedent from which ALL freedom is put at risk.
And, by the way, consider St. Augustine’s views, which are derived from Aristotle’s (ref: “On Exodus”):
“Delayed Ensoulment.” A human soul cannot live in an unformed body. Thus, early in pregnancy, an abortion is not murder because no soul is destroyed (or, more accurately, only a vegetable or animal soul is terminated). He wrote extensively on sexual matters, teaching that the original sin of Adam and Eve are passed to each successive generation through the pleasure generated during sexual intercourse. This passed into the church’s canon law. Only abortion of a more fully developed “fetus animatus” (animated fetus) was punished as murder.
ALSO: Pope Innocent wrote a letter which ruled on a case of a Carthusian monk who had arranged for his female lover to obtain an abortion. The Pope decided that the monk was not guilty of homicide if the fetus was not “animated.”
ALSO: St. Thomas Aquinas considered ONLY the abortion of an “animated” fetus as murder.
The concept of “simultaneous animation” gained acceptance within the medical and church communities in Western Europe in the 17th century. This is the belief that an embryo acquires a soul at conception, not at 40, 80. or 116 days into gestation as the church had been teaching. This remains the church’s position.
– Modern Science has more recently shown that most fertilized eggs–most conceptions–do not survive (maybe 80 percent). That’s a lot of souls nature is killing off….
– Why is god killing off so many souls? There’s a question begging for an explanation consistent with St. Thomas Aquinas’ “proof” of god’s wisdom, compassion, & soon&soforth…
Did anybody catch that — SCIENTISM!
Read closely:
The concept of “simultaneous animation” gained acceptance within the medical and church communities in Western Europe in the 17th century. This is the belief that an embryo acquires a soul at conception, not at 40, 80. or 116 days into gestation as the church had been teaching. This remains the church’s position.
– Modern Science has more recently shown that most fertilized eggs–most conceptions–do not survive (maybe 80 percent). That’s a lot of souls nature is killing off…
SCIENTISM: Science in the medical community of the 1600s determined that an embryo gained a soul at conception — under the wrong belief that almost all embryos were born, only the visible, obvious, miscarriages were the exception. It is this false belief–scientism still retained–that still girds the foundation of the Catholic Church’s post-Thomas Aquinas position on abortion.
Wow.
Bill Nye is not a scientist. He’s a guy with a bachelor’s in a science related field who subsequently did everything he could to avoid doing any actual science. He’s a has-been entertainer trying desperately to jumpstart his dead career.
the U.S. government, with good reason, cannot legally impose religious values on the citizenry.
Except for the Catholic values of Social Justice. That’s okay.
Bill Nye is a staggering ignoramus, a smear of garbage water on the sidewalk the night after you take the garbage out. What a malignant oaf. If Nye’s wife were committing suicide, I’m sure his directive to let women do what they want with their own bodies would quickly fall by the wayside.
Sander: And there it is again–if we fight wars we can murder unborn children. If we fight wars, we should also be able to kill anyone we want by your logic. Permission for mass murder. Quaint.
acricketchirps: Watch it. College students apparently consider Bush the second more evil than Stalin or Hitler. Being a right wing wacko is worse than slaughtering millions. I have, of course, offered to drop these persons in North Koreas where they would be much happier with the benevolent dictator.
Paul W: Yes, it is hate speech but we are not allowed to say so because leftists are always right even when they are wrong. If you had said it, it would be hate speech. Black is white, white is black.
I just returned from a trip in my tardis to a time 100 years in the future. In the year 2115, Pope Mohammed III issued a proclamation clarifying the position of the Church in regard to abortion. As has been (had been? has had been? time travel complicates verb conjugation) preached for some time to the 12 remaining Catholic congregations (all in South America and Africa), life begins at the beginning of the third trimester, and termination before that time, while discouraged, is not considered a sin nor the taking of human life. The arguments proving that this was in fact always the Church’s teaching, and nothing has changed, was particularly clever.
Disputation is always so much easier when you are allowed to make up your opponents’ positions and arguments.
Ken: It was the LAW that blacks are not equal to white. It was the LAW that abortion was illegal. Like it or not, those were the laws and they never should have been changed by your logic. Once a law is passed, we’re forever stuck. But wait–abortion was illegal before it was legal. That was law, like it or not. Why was that law changed and not just “like it or not”?
So you’re good with legalizing prostitution since that IS about a woman’s body and her right to rent out parts if she chooses, right?
The government is ecstatic over the climate change Pope and are using that to push their agenda. So why can the government make a Pope their mouthpiece and not a pro-life Christian?
Lee Phillips: My trip on the Tardis showed that in 2200 there was a retroactive pronouncement concerning all those who murdered innocent humans through abortion for their own convenience and to run around banging whatever moved. They were declared the cause of multiple centuries of mass murder and anarchy due to their selfish behaviour. (YOS is right–this is so much easier!)
acricketchirps
Please do provide a list of mass killing made by leftist ideas. I know that mine was far from exhaustive.
McVeigh, Jones in Florida, Koresh in Wako, Anders Behring Breivik in Norway etc, all are conservatives.
Paul W
“Isn’t that hate speech or does that only count when it’s coming from a right winger?”
Did I ask that violence be done.
“What is it that makes lefties think a person who opposes abortion can’t do so without killing doctors?”
This is how it became almost impossible for a women to get an abortion in the US.
Your kind of activism leads to this:
http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/assets/files/abortion-access-to-abortion-violence.pdf
“They worry about pro lifers(whose morality values human life) killing doctors while they(who either don’t value it or value it in dollars) kill millions of “enwombed” children.”
The difference is that pro-lifers kill actual person, while pro-choicer doesn’t kill anything. You cannot kill something that is not alive and to be alive a baby needs to be able to breath and be viable.
What makes a person, a person: a body, a mind or spirit and a soul.
What makes a computer, acomputer the hardware (body), the software (mind) or electricity (soul).
A foetus is only hardware. Only your belief in a materialistic world can lead you to believe that the body is everything. This is because you believe in false prophet that modified the message of Christ to conform to conform to Constantine who was the first head of the Church as the Emperor.
About 10-20% of known pregnancies ends up in miscarriage with no fault to the women. Why would God ensouled a foetus and lose a soul on a thing that has 20% and higher (higher because the 20% doesn’t include the unkown pregnancies) chance of not getting to term.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pregnancy-loss-miscarriage/basics/definition/con-20033827
In this paper you see that 48 of 200 (24%) pregnancies terminated early in woman that wanted to conceive. This doesn’t include fertilized egg that never attached themslves.
http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/jun99/wilcox2.htm
The claim that life begins at fertilization is entirely bogus scientifically speaking.
YOS,
“However, it is difficult to identify any material factor that comes into play at birth that merits such a distinction”.
And of course there is no such thing as the first breath. A child that never take its first breath was never alive to begin with even if it was kicking in the womb.
You cannot kill something that is not alive and to be alive a baby needs to be able to breath and be viable.
Then you claim that the ability to suck air is what makes a being magically “ensouled”? What about life forms that don’t breath or human babies that must be put on respirators? But it’s good to know that smashing a fertilized bald eagle egg does not entail killing a bald eagle.
Your definition of “alive” is idiosyncratic and obviously crafted specifically to exclude those you wish to kill. For my part, I will rely on the judgment of science, since this is within her bailiwick.
YOS,
My definition of alive apply to humans and conscious life which all breath. That some children born at the 21 week can breath via a respirator doesn’t mean they are not breathing since they are oxygenating their own blood.
Is it your claim that trees and bacteria are ensouled?
Your definition of alive is idiotic since according to your definition a cancer should no be treated because it’s alive and ensouled. We eliminate cancer which is a lump of cells that is growing undesirably just like a foetus is a cancer for the women that don’t desire it.
As for the definition of life, it seems that you do exactly the same since there are no consensus in science on how to define it.
There are 2 main proof that the plan parenthood video were heavily edited. Enough that they could not be used as proof in court.
1)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/planned-parenthood-sting-videos-forensic_55df2334e4b029b3f1b1be9f
2)
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/255156-gop-chairman-ignores-calls-for-planned-parenthood-videomaker-to-testify
Why the hell do Republican refuse to question the author of the video. Only one reason because they know they are bs. If they were real there would be no reason to try and plead the 5th, which they tried and failed to do in court.
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/09/24/ninth-circuit-deals-blow-group-behind-planned-parenthood-smear-videos/
No amount of fact and truth can shatter a true believer.
As for the definition of life, it seems that you do exactly the same since there are no consensus in science on how to define it.
The problem arises when the definition is used to justify drastic actions such as ending lives and the impetus for the desire of these drastic actions is mere convenience. For some reason, you don’t see this as purely evil.
As for cancer, it is ultimately fatal to the host where pregnancy is not.
Dr. Briggs:
The whole idea that the baby is part of the woman’s body and thus hers to dispose of is nonsense. Check the DNA: the baby’s body is not part of hers at all – it’s a guest, not a cyst.
@Sheri: Interesting point about prostitution. There may be something to it. As you may know, prostitution is legal in much of Europe where abortion is not nearly the political wedge issue that it is in the US.
Regarding “life begins at conception”: That seems to imply mitosis kills a cell and fertilisation revives it. I’ve never heard anyone make that claim and I’d consider it silly. Further study seems warranted.
Excellent point YOS. Perhaps we should take to smashing bald eagle eggs and declaring “it’s not an eagle until it hatches”. I like it. Let’s see how the baby killers react to smashed eagle eggs.
Greg: It’s not clear why “life begins at conception” implies mitosis kills a cell and fertilization revives it. I’m just trying for clarification, not disagreeing. I don’t really understand what your meaning is.
Paul Murphy: DNA is irrelevent in this argument. It only involves the magical point at which a living mass possessing said human DNA becomes human. All else is totally irrelevent. Except it isn’t. (Again, abortion is about a woman’s right to have sex without consequences the same as men because nature is so MEAN. No matter who has to die, the unfairness of nature will be avenged. This is quite clear in the eagle egg example and the fact that no one ever tries to figure out when a puppy fetus becomes a puppy and not a lump of tissue. Take out human women having free sex and the issue is mute.)
@Sheri: If life begins at conception, it seems to me the participants in conception are not considered alive.
Of course egg and sperm are, at least, clearly not dead. Briggs own mountain climber analogy is eerily reminiscent of the race of sperm towards the egg. Which means Monty Python had it right all along: Every sperm is sacred / Every sperm is great / If a sperm is wasted / God gets quite irate.
Concerning the Monte Python quote (my quote is from LiveScience):
“”Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate,” goes the song from Monty Python’s movie The Meaning of Life. If the lyrics strike you as funny, it’s most likely because calling a sperm cell “sacred” sounds ridiculous when men can produce so many of them.
In fact, the average male will produce roughly 525 billion sperm cells over a lifetime and shed at least one billion of them per month. A healthy adult male can release between 40 million and 1.2 billion sperm cells in a single ejaculation.”
Most creatures produce far more eggs and sperm than ever become actual offspring. The odds of tiny sperm finding a tiny egg is quite small. A large number of sperm are required for just one to complete the task of fertilization. There also millions or billions more sperm than eggs available, so God must be irate much of the time. No, wait, he created that imbalance…..
I think that “life begins at conception” is referring to human life versus a living cell. As has been pointed out in previous comment on other posts, an egg or a sperm on its own cannot grow into anything. Only together do eggs and sperm create and grow a new life. Conception doesn’t kill the egg and sperm, it unites them into a new being.
Sane people, re Sylvain’s “Please do provide a list of mass killing made by leftist ideas. I know that mine was far from exhaustive.”:
Is it just me or does the left really not “do” irony?
Sylvain [slowly in a clear loud voice]: No, I never intended to make a list of what wackos do. You see, it doesn’t prove anything, let alone who is right.
Please do provide a list of mass killing made by leftist ideas. I know that mine was far from exhaustive
According to the CDC, in 2011, there were 730,322 abortions in the U.S. That’s certainly a massive amount of killing based on a leftist idea. Most of these were for the convenience of mothers who didn’t want to deal with the inconvenience of being mothers to the extent they were willing to kill their offspring.
Is it your claim that trees and bacteria are ensouled?
Certainly. They are alive, aren’t they? Their souls may possess fewer powers than those of dogs or humans, but since “soul” is anima or “alive, it follows necessarily.
A living thing is one for which the principle and term of its acts lie in itself. This is captured partially by the modern expression “self-organizing system.” The most basic living things possess the powers of digestion, growth and development, homeostasis, and in its mature form, reproduction. Even plant life possesses these powers. That’s why eating and sexing are the two most fundamental appetites — Darwin called them the ‘struggle for existence’, the way to a man’s ‘heart’ is through his stomach, and an obesity ‘epidemic’ has gone hand in hand with an explosion of illegitimacy and single motherhood.
So the key question is whether an embryo-fetus is a self-organizing system, possessing its own ‘programming,’ say in the form of genetics. Its acts, such as growth and development originate within itself (and are not imposed by some outside force) and they terminate within itself (i.e., for its own ‘sake’).
Your definition of alive is idiotic since according to your definition a cancer should no be treated because it’s alive and ensouled.
According to the traditional definition, a cancer may indeed be alive, although it would seem more likely that it is a clump of malfunctioning cells of an organism and the organism as such is alive. But being alive does not mean we can’t treat malfunctions, eat vegetables, or enjoy a good steak au poivre now and then.
That’s like those people who say if we recognize the unborn human as a human, we would have to grant it voting rights. We don’t do that for infants, and the progressives have not yet nerved themselves to declare infants to be un-persons.
there are no consensus in science on how to define [life].
That’s because science cannot deal with its own axioms. Biology is the study of living things. They must have some notion of what a living thing is; although there was a column in Scientific American a while back that claimed “life” was simply a human concept imposed on nature. But that was just the latest in the string of things people are driven to deny once they take leave of their senses.
Dav,
” For some reason, you don’t see this as purely evil.”
Murder is evil. An abortion is not murder because that thing is not alive to begin with.
“As for cancer, it is ultimately fatal to the host where pregnancy is not.”
Maybe you should tell that the about 300k women around the world dying of their pregnancy.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/
@Sheri: Don’t tell the little sperms, lest they get depressed and stop swimming!
Both sperm and fertilized egg are single cells, no meaningful distinction here.
Little “mountain climber” sperm won’t grow into anything… unless it reaches the summit, finds the egg and successfully burrows into it. Then it grows.
Little “mountain climber” fertilized egg also won’t grow into anything… unless it finds home in mother’s uterus, manages to attach itself and grow a placenta burrowing into dear mother, then surmounts unfriendly odds of spontaneous abortion.
If the mountain climber analogy convinces on abortion, it should likewise convince to never willfully “waste a sperm”.
If life begins at conception, it seems to me the participants in conception are not considered alive.
In the relevant sense, no. Neither the sperm nor the egg are in themselves self-organizing systems with the information needed to self-assemble a mature organism. In short, they are not “organisms.”
In the USA the mortality rate is almost 18 woman dying of their pregnancy per 100000 birth. This is higher than murder rate.
There are about 4000000 birth which means 40 x 17.8 about 700 each year in the US
http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/pmss.html
Somehow Canada as a mortality rate more than half of what it is in the US and stands at 8.6 per 100000 birth. Luckily for you you, you health care system is so much better than ours.
Greg: I took Briggs to be referring to miscarriages and not sperm and eggs failing to meet or implant. The mountain climber never finished his “task” just as the fetus has not finished his “task”. If the fetus can be killed because it never finished its task or is still in the middle of the task, why can’t the mountain climber be killed before he completes his task? I agree the example is a bit awkward and I would not have used it. YOS’s example of eagle eggs is probably more appropriate–the egg hasn’t hatched so it’s not an eagle.
I promise not to tell the sperm! (Wait, note that I do not talk to sperm so all is safe with the knowledge. 🙂 )
The langauge in this video is what kills me.
Bill calls zygotes “fertilized eggs” as if to say it’s just an egg with some stuff added to it, when in reality a zygote is entirely different in nature than the egg before fertilization.
Bill also states that these eggs “never become human” as if to say that humans become human sometime after being conceived.
Ugh the language and euphemisms surrounding abortion are one of the main reasons why abortion is still so widely supported by the oblivious masses
All,
Somebody said, “An abortion is not murder because that thing is not alive to begin with.” A shockingly unscientific statement. It implies the thing in the mother is dead. Like a rock or iron plate, which are both examples of confined concentrated chemical reactions. Yet a miracle occurs that turns this non-life dead thing into a life. It must be a miracle, of course, because it is not alive. To become alive at some point after conception requires just that.
Notice too that the scientifically illiterate are the ones who boast of their devotion to Science.
Briggs beat me to it.
Briggs,
I didn’t realize your heart was a rock or iron plate since by itself your heart is nothing or that a human was still alive because its hair and nail continue to grow even though the person stopped breathing and its heart stopped beating.
There are difference between living cells and living organism. Billions of cells from your body die each day and are replace by new ones. Though your cell are dying your are not dead, just like the fact that some cell continue to live after a person is declared dead.
YOS,
1) Cells are not part of what Aristotle called anima or motion, because he had no idea that such things existed. Even if he could have seen the outlying of a cell it would not have moved, ence it would not have been alive.
You say you are in favor of the liberty of religious belief, that is as long as they are the same as yours. Your belief is that life begin at fertilization which means God kills over 80% of his children himself. This is a religious belief, and it actually was developed in the early middle ages in a manner to make the woman subsidient to man.
The vast majority of people do not share your belief,and believe that life starts with the first breath and ends with the last breath. Both event happen suddenly with a certain amount of violence. But they accept that you don’t want to get an abortion. Yet you don’t accept the religious belief of the vast majority of people.
All you want is the supremacy over women and order them what they can and cannot do. And deny them their religious liberty.
2)
“A living thing’s soul is its capacity to engage in the activities that are characteristic of living things of its natural kind. What are those activities? Some are listed in DA II.1; others in DA II.2:
Self-nourishment
Growth
Decay
Movement and rest (in respect of place)
Perception
Intellect”
Taken from: http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/psyche.htm
A foetus is unable of self-nourrishment. It doesn’t transform the food it only take the nutrient that the mother provide in her blood. Even when the cardiovascular system is developed the food is process in the ombilical cord.
It has no perception. It has no intellect. So it the doesn’t fit the definition of life that Aristotle came up with. It has the potential to be alive as an entity but in the womb it is not.
Sylvain,
You argue poorly. The baby in the womb is alive, and dependent on its mother for continued life. Just as it is alive after birth and dependent on its mother for continued life. YOS’s definition is exactly right, and your interpretation exactly wrong. A enwombed baby is just as incapable of self-nourishment as a newborn. The nutrients it receives, in either state, are certainly transformed—to flesh. The baby has perception, as is widely observed, and it has an intellect, although reduced in power. It meets every criteria for life .
And if it doesn’t, as you falsely suggest, then the miracle that makes it alive is what, exactly? Satan?
Briggs,
I could argue in french but we would not go very far. Although my argument might be presented poorly in a second language they are still valid.
YOS definition is what you believe. They are not fact. The vast majority of pthe population have different belief. For example that life begins at first breath and ends at the last.
A person’s body might be kept alive for a while after a person is declared dead.
Terry Shiavo’s case who had so severe irreversible brain damage that life had quit it long before the actual body died is a good example. The autopsy has shown that the damage to the brain was extreme. And of course body that are havested for organ after official death.
“then the miracle that makes it alive is what, exactly?”
The miracle that makes it alive is the first breath which ensouled the person. Many birth do not provide first breath which means the new born never was alive to begin with. I have a cousin whom is wife gave birth to a child with no brain. Before birth all test were normal ecography and cardiogram yet that baby born at terms never was alive. In this is the case for the vast majority( greater than 80%) of fertilized egg.
If you believe in Satan it means that you believe that God is weak. If God is everywhere what place does it leave to Satan other then the heart and mind of people that reject God. Your belief are materialistic which is why you don’t understand the true meaning of life. That life is more than the body. More than matter. You give your devotion not to God but to the Church .
hair and nail continue to grow even though the person stopped breathing and its heart stopped
This is actually not true. The skin contracts.
Cells are not part of what Aristotle called anima or motion, because he had no idea that such things existed.
The mark of a good metaphysic is that it can handle things that were unknown to its creator. Einstein had no idea that other galaxies existed (they were still being called “extragalactic nebulae) when he formulated his theories; yet his theories account for them quite nicely.
Even if he could have seen the outlying of a cell it would not have moved, ence it would not have been alive.
The Greek word kin?sis means more than local motion.
You say you are in favor of the liberty of religious belief, that is as long as they are the same as yours.
It is so much easier to debate when you can make up things the Other said. Please cite where I have said any such thing. I think your Freudian slip is showing.
Your belief is that life begin at fertilization which means God kills over 80% of his children himself.
This … religious belief … actually was developed in the early middle ages in a manner to make the woman subsidient to man.
What is “subsidient”?
The middle ages were actually the first era to elevate women to an equal status! For details, see Regine Pernoud, Women in the Days of the Cathedrals.
http://www.amazon.com/Women-Days-Cathedrals-R%C3%A9gine-Pernoud/dp/0898706424
>Modern Science has more recently shown that most fertilized eggs–most conceptions–do not survive (maybe 80 percent). That’s a lot of souls nature is killing off…
This is obviously wrong. The mortality for fertilized eggs is at 100%. They all die, sooner or later. I think that you don’t need modern science to know that. That being said, from the fact that all people *will* die, sooner or later, does not follow that murder is morally good (or even morally neutral).
A foetus is unable of self-nourrishment.
By your account, a woman on life support being fed through a tube is not alive, either. How many other untermenschen do you count?
It has no perception. It has no intellect. So it the doesn’t fit the definition of life that Aristotle came up with.
By big toe has no intellect or perception, but that it because it is part of the whole organism. In like manner, the 3-D slice of the organism at time t is a part of the whole thing, which in 4-D Minkowski space extends in time as well as space.
The vast majority of pthe population have different belief.
Let’s ask the majority of the population what they believe about evolution. Or whether Pluto is a planet. Perhaps we can learn the majority belief of Germans in the 1930s regarding whether Jews are persons.
Truth, my friend, is not a matter for popular vote.
If a human becomes human, with a soul, at conception, then what of identical twins whose existence begins, when a multi-cell zygote, or even a “multier”-cell blastocyst, divides days & days & days & days later — do those twins share a single soul?
The Catholic Church sidesteps the issue of ensoulment, it does not identify the moment when a soul is installed in a fetus. Though, clearly, this does not necessarily occur “at conception.”
Consider vanishing twin, estimated to occur in over 10 percent of mulit-fetal pregnancies : http://americanpregnancy.org/multiples/vanishing-twin-syndrome/
Most (60-80 percent of) embryo’s do not implant and are lost before a would-be mother even considers she was ever pregnant: reason.com/archives/2004/12/22/is-heaven-populated-chiefly-by
A fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you have seconds to make & act on a choice: You can save either a three-year-old child, or, a Petri dish containing 10 seven-day old embryos that will remain viable for some time. Which do you choose to rescue?
Ken: The question of whether or not identical twins, triplets or quadruplets share a soul is a philosophical question, not a science one. It depends on what philosophy or religion one subscribes to. They do share DNA but only truly irrational person would argue that the identicals are one person.
Consider what about vanishing twins? That one did not survive? It’s a problem with IVF when you kill embryos in an effort to reduce numbers–human beings are killing human beings. In the case of the vanishing twin, it dies on its own. Are you arguing that because people die it’s okay to kill them whenever you want? Because that’s exactly what you seem to be saying. If nature kills, so can I.
You choose to rescue the three-year-old child. He is living and breathing standing in front of you. The petri dish contains seven day old embryos that may or may not implant. You go with the highest probability of survival, not numbers. I sincerely hope you are not an ER triage physician. If so, please let me know where you live and I’ll stay away from there.
Much of the confusion over twinning is due to people, deceived by Rene Descartes, believing that the soul is a thing (substantia, ?????). But the anima is the substantial form of a living body; it is what makes it a living body rather than an inanimate mass of casually-connected stuff. There cannot be an animate body without an anima. So it is foolish to ask about when a body is “ensouled.” It does not “have” a soul the way it has a spleen or a lung. It “has” a soul the way a basketball has a sphere. Forms are not things, even though they are generally instantiated in matter. (Neither is matter form, even though every thing is necessarily some thing.)
So there are several possibilities in twinning:
1. A and B are alive from the start, even when there are only two cells or three. (This was the opinion of Dr. Jérôme Lejeune, who contended that the twinning was “programmed” into the cell from the beginning.)
2. A is alive, then B becomes alive when it “buds off.”
3. A is alive, but passes out of existence when B and C split apart and become alive.
Genetically, #1 seems the most likely.
“hair and nail continue to grow even though the person stopped breathing and its heart stopped
This is actually not true. The skin contracts.”
This one on me I went with a popular saying without chcking it out. But my point of cell surviving after death is stil valid.
See the muscle and also skin growth.
http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/17227/1/Scary-Bodily-Functions-That-Continue-After-You-Die.html
For your theory to work all the cells should die at the exact same moment. There is a difference between cells being alive and a person being alive.
Einstein explanation was physical and did not required the knowledge of galaxy. While aristotle definition was from observation and gave different level of soul. The highest level was having an intellect which a foetus doesn’t have until after its born.
“What is “subsidient”?”
Sorry subservient.
“The middle ages were actually the first era to elevate women to an equal status! For details, see Regine Pernoud, Women in the Days of the Cathedrals.”
I’m actually reading another book that shows the exact opposite:
http://www.amazon.com/Peur-En-Occident-Jean-Delumeau/dp/B003SRXEWS/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
This books has hundreds of exerpts from prominent Church official like Aquinas, Augustine, etc. Showing how the women was demonized (that she was Satan) all throughout the entire middle ages culminating at the witch trials.
“By your account, a woman on life support being fed through a tube is not alive, either.”
False. The woman is still alive because she absorb the food herself through the gastro-intestinal tract. While the foetus only take the nutrient from the blood and does not process it.
“By big toe has no intellect or perception…”
An embryo or foetus is not a part of a bigger entity. It is the complete entity and it has no intellect or perception. The first time they show any signs of perception is around 30th weeks.
Only 1% of abortion happens after the 20Th week and very few after 30th week.
“Truth, my friend, is not a matter for popular vote.”
You could add slavery.
Unless it corresponds to your belief.
Found a bit about Huckabee saying that the Dredd Scot decision was still law of the land. Forgetting that an amendment can reverse a SCOTUS decision.
” So it is foolish to ask about when a body is “ensouled.”
ThIs is because you use an outdated definition of the word soul.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soul
Your definition is very limited and materialistic view of the world and does not correspond to what people consider the soul to be, i.e. immortal and immaterial.
For you the body makes the entire person. For me and many others the person requires the body, mind and soul. Something that happens at birth and not in the womb.
Actually, the developing fetus processes through its temporary organ, the placenta, which filters some particles from the bloodstream of the mother while blocking others. It also produces hormones, including human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, estrogen and progesterone, to signal the baby’s needs to the mother. It also protects the fetus from harmful particles, such as the mother’s red and white blood cells, which can treat the baby as a foreign invader.
The fetus is no more a separate being from the infant or teenager that Sylvain today is separate from Sylvain tomorroe. In both cases, it is only a 3-D cross-section of a 4-D entity. Or do you deny Minkowski 4-space, too?
Wait. You cite a dictionary of colloquial usages of the English language for the meaning of a term of art in theology originally expressed in Greek? I think definitional honors should go to the people who invented the idea.
What color is the sky on your planet? What matters is not what “people consider” the soul to be. Their minds are clouded by Cartesian woo-woo. Following the old rule that if you cannot solve a problem, change the problem to one you can solve and then pretend you’ve tackled the original, Descartes jiggered the definition. Alas, his jiggering resulted in logical incoherence and gave us all the “problems” of modern philosophy, like the ‘problem’ of the qualia, the mind-body ‘problem,’ and so on. See Brennan, Thomistic Psychology, Macmillan (1941) for details.
Wait. So you require three things to be a human being? Do you think the soul (life) is a “thing” (substantia, ouisia)? How bizarre; but I don’t doubt that many Late Moderns are equally confused. But if the body is the matter and the soul is the substantial form, what the heck is the mind?
For me, the human being, like any physical being, is a synolon, a compound of matter and form. (Cartesians think the soul is not a form but a thing in itself, the res intelligens, and this is the kludge that informs most laymen’s understanding of the term. For them, the soul is a little person who sits inside the head and watches like play on the eyeballs like a bad movie.) But if triangles were alive, “three-sidedness” would be their souls; and three-sidedness is inseparable from what it is to be a triangle.
All souls are immaterial, like Dawkins’ “gene.”
Some are in part immortal. But there is a reason why Christians hold to the resurrection of the body as a central tenet of their faith.
YOS,
You didn’t mention that the tube feeding was intravenous. Still in most case the people fed this way will either be on life support which is temporary or can be manage by the person herself.
“What matters is not what “people consider” the soul to be”.
Meaning of words always evolved over time. The understanding of soul today does not correspond to what the word means today. It does explain why we have a different understanding of ensoulment.
Explaining my view of what a person is, one of the best example, is a medal or a coin. There is always to side a medal, just like there the material side of a human being which is the body, an immaterial side which is the mind/spirit but these to side cannot be separated they are link by a soul which is also a substance. Jesus demonstrated through its resurrection that the body can be rebuilt. Your thought are also a a creative substance and they manifest in the material worl once they are precise enough. It can be instantaneous when you are at the level of consciousness that Jesus is like with the wine, bread and fish, or can take a while to manifest when they are not created in the ideal of God.
A human is 3 thing in one unlike the idiotic Catholic/Christian definition of the Holly Trinity of 1 in 3.
This is why for me a foetus is not complete or alive until its born. You cannot something that is not a person.
Meaning of words always evolved over time.
But the concepts they were coined to express do not. You cannot use a modern, degraded usage to discuss ideas developed by people who employed the term in its basic meaning. Especially when they did so in another language. Otherwise we might try to debate “evolution” based on the maneuvers performed by a marching band, and never grasp why C. Darwin rejected the term.
All,
Apropos: Who’s Really Lying About The Planned Parenthood Videos? Carly Fiorina Or The Factcheckers? Gee, who could it be. Those who want to kill or those who want to save lives?
Briggs,
It doesn’t seem you provided the right link
I waited to see the link before answering but after searching I didn’t find anything new than the Breitbart article that you linked to earlier this week.
“Is it the same Breitbart that was caught in a libel lawsuit about an edited video”
1) on the link posted the other day Breitbart admitted that the video was taken with permission from another anti-abortion group.
2) the video shows a 19 weeks stilborn while the video talks about a 17 weeks.
3) forensic analysis by three independent video expert demonstrated time laps and the video missing content.
4) the author of the video tried to plead the 5th in a lawsuit. The request was denied because an organization cannot claim the 5th. Why would the author who claimed the video were not edited be afraid to release such “unedited” video, unless he knows that the video could be incriminating for him.
5) Isn’t strange that the special committee launch because of these video did not subpoena the author of the video that launch the witch hunt.
6) any states that launch inquiries into plan parenthood, close their investigation having no wrongdoing from plan parenthood.
The answer to your question is the zealot terrorist that are ready to kill Doctors, bomb clinics, and produce fake video to support their agendas.
A quick OT test: (S & SE) → (C) ← (X)
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It’s not surprising that Nye, a kiddy show presenter, got elevated to “scientist” status in the minds of the NPR-listening public. These are the same slack-jawed sheep who hang on every smug pronouncement from that arrogant twat, Neil deGrasse Tyson.