[quote]pushharder wrote:
Provable beneficial mutations are so exceedingly rare that they are virtually non-existent[/quote]
They are actually a bit more than “virtually non-existent” in the field of microbiology.
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s
Sloth, it occurs to me that a certain gentleman in history, that I know you have great respect for, often spoke in parables. They were sometimes obscure, and not everyone who heard them got it right off the bat. “Mustard seed? What the fuck is he talking about? Nobody can move a mountain, that’s ridiculous! We want to know how we’re going to kick out the goddamn Romans!”)
The original point of this thread was to discuss the ethics of abortion, with the facetious proposition that if abortion is okay, than infanticide should be as well. The ethicists who authored the proposition obviously believe the converse, that infanticide is an abominable practice, abortion is the moral equivalent of infanticide, ergo abortion is abominable. In the interest of full disclosure, let me just say that I agree. You and I are actually on the same side of this issue.
We recoil at the idea of killing a baby, or a fetus, or even an embryo the size of a mustard seed, not necessarily because we think babies are cute, or because this world need more people, but rather because every human child culled represents the premature snuffing out of unimaginable potential. We can never know whether we are preventing another great philosopher, scientist, author or physician from being born.
My contention, however, is that by narrowing our focus, protecting the rights of unborn humans on the basis of their status as “persons”, while denying the same status to our closest living relatives on this planet, even when some of them demonstrate attributes that qualify them for “personhood” ahead of many members of our own species, then we actually weaken our own position. We come off looking as hypocritical as a man who would author a document proclaiming that “all men are created equal” while owning other humans whose personhood, and indeed their humanity, was widely denied by his peers.
We wouldn’t put Down’s Syndrome people into cages, vivisect them, subject them to torture, or kill them, justifying our actions because they “aren’t quite as human” as we are. Or at least, we shouldn’t. It follows that we should extend the same courtesy to those who “aren’t quite as human”, by approximately the same degree, as a Down’s Syndrome person.
Our species has a long, long history of exterminating people who didn’t quite measure up to whatever standard of humanity was in vogue at the time. People who believe absurdity will inevitably commit atrocity. I believe the converse is true: people who reject absurdity will eventually eschew atrocity. Killing a person for no good reason is an atrocity. The article in the original post makes the case that the atrocity is not lessened just because the person in question has not yet emerged from the birth canal.
Horton’s Maxim states that “a person’s a person no matter how small”, and our favorite parablist would agree: “whatever you do for the least of my brothers and sisters, you do for me”. Whatever we do for the least of our kin, even if they don’t share our culture, our language, our morphology and behavior, or two percent of our DNA, we do for all humanity.
All it takes is understanding the size of a mustard seed, and we can move mountains of public opinion.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Okay, Sloth, just for you.
I’m so glad you brought up the soul. According to your beliefs, all human beings have souls. Let us not muddy the waters with Walter Miller’s assertion to the contrary that we don’t have souls, rather that we are souls temporarily encumbered by bodies. Humans have souls. The precise moment these souls are assigned by the Soul Fairy is not pertinent to our discussion right now. If we are to accept that all humans are animals (as of course they must be, being neither vegetable nor mineral) that all humans have souls, and that all humans are “persons”, can we then postulate simply that a “person” is an animal with a soul?
What is the soul? The Hebrew Bible uses two words predominantly to refer to the invisible animating force. They are nephesh (breath) and ruach (spirit). In Greek the words pneuma and psuche are used to refer to the same concepts. We could spend all day debating the changes in the uses of the terms between the Septuagint and the Koine New Testament, let us simply use these two concepts to imagine the soul as simultaneously the animating force or “breath” of life (pneuma), and the “spirit” (psyche), comprising consciousness, self-awareness and intellect, which separates us as individuals, an also separates us as a species from animals who do not posess this consciousness and self-awareness.
A dog may have pneuma, but probably does not have much going on in the psyche department. So a dog probably has no soul, and therefore is probably not a person (particularly golden retrievers, which, being gingers, are twice as soulless).
But what of Kanzi? Kanzi, remember, is the bonobo who can converse with scientists, reporters and other bonobos using pictographs not dissimilar to the Chinese characters (kanji) he is named after. He possesses all of the attributes of psyche: consciousness, self-awareness and intellect. He is capable of expressing abstract concepts. He has a sense of humor. He can express highly nuanced emotions not only through facial expression and vocalization, but through his pictorial language.
And now what of a severely disabled Down’s Syndrome person? Undeniably human, and no way one would or could deny that he has a soul. But how does his self-awareness, consciousness and intellect compare to that of Kanzi? If we insist on the existence of a soul in our Down’s Syndrome friend, but deny its existence in Kanzi, we are being inconsistent.
I have been laboring the point of the different number of chromosomes in “normal” humans (46), Down’s Syndrome people (47) and bonobos and chimps (48) for a reason. Between the 15th and 21st week of pregnancy, the presence of Down’s syndrome can be tested using amniocentesis. If the fetus has an extra chromosome (in this case a duplicated 21st chromosome), then it is a Down’s Syndrome person. No question.
At this point, I expect another split of opinions, and not necessarily along the pro- and anti-abortion lines. Let’s see.
I have met a number of Down’s Syndrome people, and they are some of the gentlest, sweetest people in the world. Their parents are some of the most patient, long-suffering people you can imagine, and I am ashame to say that I do not envy them one bit. People who go out of their way to adopt a Down’s Syndrome child are likewise especially commendable: the decision to adopt a person who will remain emotionally and mentally a small child or an infant (depending on the severity of the disability) all of its life, and likely die young into the bargain, must be even more difficult than the decision to carry it to term and raise it yourself.
When the results come back positive for Down’s, the obstetrician will, as a matter of procedure, give the family the option to terminate the pregnancy. Most families exercise this option. It may be easy to criticize a woman who would end the life of her baby for no other reason than that extra chromosome (that came from her bad egg in the first place), but I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell her she had no choice but to keep it.
Okay. Now we get into science fiction territory again. As I mentioned, I am convinced that chimpanzees and bonobos are similar enough to our species that a hybrid of chimp or bonobo and human is theoretically possible. Let us say that it is.
Let us now think once again about Kanzi, an adult male bonobo. As you may be aware, bonobos love sex. Chimps are all about power and control and rape and murder (just like us), but bonobos are lovers, not fighters. Let us imagine that Kanzi takes a fancy to one of his trainers, a 38-year old primatologist named Jane. After training one night, Jane and Kanzi decide to have a late dinner in the lab. They watch a movie (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, of course, Kanzi’s favorite), and afterwards they start talking (using the pictograms, of course). They talk of life and love and sunshine and flowers, of happiness and warmth. And marshmallows. Kanzi likes marshmallows.
They have a few drinks. They laugh. They tickle each other. They cuddle. One thing leads to another.
In the morning Jane is overcome by guilt and shame at what they’ve done. She begs Kanzi not to tell anyone about their night of passion. Kanzi gives his solemn word. Jane keeps her secret from her colleagues, and has almost forgotten her indiscretion when she realizes her period is late. A week goes by. Then another. Still doesn’t come. Panicking, she buys a pregnancy test and to her horror the test is positive.
Now for the questions.
Should she keep the baby? Consider that it was entirely consensual on both sides (Kanzi is a gentleman: he wouldn’t have forced her if she said no), and assume that she would be in no danger if she carried the baby to term. Besides, Jane is Catholic, and believes it would be anathema to kill her child.
Will the baby be human? Well, it will have 47 chromosomes: 23 from Jane and 24 from Kanzi. An amnio taken of Jane’s baby at 15 weeks indeed shows the baby it to have the extra 21st chromosome, and considering Jane’s age (right on the cusp of risky), the doctor naturally assumes Down’s Syndrome. The possibility that the father of the baby is a bonobo never enters his mind.
Now. Let us assume that the baby girl is born without complication. She exhibits some morphological and behavioral abnormalities (including abnormally dense lanugo) but these are consistent with the presumed genetic condition of the baby. Although the little girl (whom Jane and Kanzi have named “Tora”, after the Japanese word for “tiger”) seems to have a severe speech impediment due to an abnormally formed larynx, her development of manual dexterity and muscular coordination proceeds at a surprisingly rapid rate. She also seems to have inherited both Kanzi’s and Jane’s intelligence. Before long she has learned all of the pictograms that Kanzi knows, and Jane can scarcely keep up with her curiosity. Every day Jane must invent new pictograms to depict new concepts.
One day Tora notices the gold crucifix around Jane’s neck. She asks, using the pictograms, “who little man on tree?” Over the next week, Jane tells her daughter about God, Jesus, sin, heaven, hell, forgiveness and the soul.
So here is the big question. Tora understands about sin. She understand about heaven and hell. She understands about the soul and salvation.
Does she have a soul to save? How about her father? Why or why not?[/quote]
A long set up for the ethical question, but not supportable in itself. Refer to:
bill_nye_2_creationism_is_not_appropriate_for_children_?id=5364844&pageNo=13
The strongest hypothesis is that ape chromosomes 12 and 13 conjoined to form human chromosome 2. (48 reduces to 46)
So a fusion between bonobo and human–whether in vitro or as a result of "heavy petting–would result in a variety of trisomic zygotes–trisomies of human 2 or of ape 12 and 13. Since there are no forms of human trisomy 2 known to survive, I would presume that the result of the mating between bonobo gamete and human gamete would be non-viable.
So, absent the sci-fi stuff, the rhetorical questions remain, and are still of value: what is human, and should the stupid survive, and who decides?
For that magisterium, science doesn’t have answers, only questions.
(For what its worth, I met Penny Patterson and Koko 37 years ago. Koko preferred the company of women and cats. No comment regarding Dr. Patterson. I understand that Kanzi learned some sign language after watching a video of Koko.)
That’s why I enjoy your contributions, Doc. Even when you contradict me, you bring something to the table more substantial than non credo ergo falsus est.
But I can dream, can’t I?
That’s the most important question, which in my estimation the abortion debate only addresses one small part of. It’s a good battle, but it’s only one battle in a larger war. One in which our species has been on the wrong side of, ethically speaking, for far too long.
And I just ask the questions.
[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:
(For what its worth, I met Penny Patterson and Koko 37 years ago. Koko preferred the company of women and cats. No comment regarding Dr. Patterson. I understand that Kanzi learned some sign language after watching a video of Koko.)[/quote]
Now that I am looking forward to hearing about.
No question in my mind that Drs Patterson, Goodall, Fossey, Galdikas et al would be in favor of expanding the definition of “person” to include our nearest cousins.
The Indonesians in Sulawesi consider the macaques in their midst to be merely another tribe, affording them all the courtesies due that of a human tribe. And of course the Malay word orang-utan means “person of the forest”. Meanwhile, the Enlightened Europeans fiercely debated whether the people brought back from Tierra del Fuego were human or not.
It is always a small step from non sunt nobis to neca eos omnes.
A baby step, one might say.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
And I just ask the questions. [/quote]
Is that so? As I scroll upwards I see more than questions.
At the very least I see questions based on fundamental assumptions. No problem with that as we all do it. But true objectivity is a slippery lil creature.
We all place faith in something, somehow, somewhere. As long as we recognize that a discussion about almost anything can be quite enjoyable and stimulating.[/quote]
What does it matter if our fundamental assumptions differ, if they lead us to similar conclusions? You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road, and as long as we both get to Scotland, who gives a fuck?
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
We recoil at the idea of killing a baby, or a fetus, or even an embryo the size of a mustard seed, not necessarily because we think babies are cute, or because this world need more people, but rather because every human child culled represents the premature snuffing out of unimaginable potential. We can never know whether we are preventing another great philosopher, scientist, author or physician from being born.
My contention, however, is that by narrowing our focus, protecting the rights of unborn humans on the basis of their status as “persons”, while denying the same status to our closest living relatives on this planet, even when some of them demonstrate attributes that qualify them for “personhood” ahead of many members of our own species, then we actually weaken our own position. We come off looking as hypocritical. [/quote]
Varq, your argument doesn’t read so much as pro-choice as is it does pro-life. Except you want certain other primates included…
My only other option is to consider that you really aren’t angling for such widely inclusive rights. Instead you’re attempting to paint pro-lifers into a corner where they must adopt the cause of certain primates (and others), or abandon a ‘hypocritical’ position. Heck, even abandon infants and those slow-witted folks you bring up.
Let’s just take your male bonobo. Now consider an individual human embryo/fetus in the womb. Both are individual organisms. Which one will develop faculties, form, and function during one of its stages to be recognizable as an adult human? Which one will actually court one of our females in sexual maturity? And actually impregnate her?
We start with the natural order of things. The human embryo is a human life. It is conceived by our own, slow-witted or not. It is already “packaged” with its instructions as to how to order itself throughout its stages of human life. Human embryo. Human infant. Human child. Human adult. Elderly human. Not so with the bonobo. At every stage he is a bonobo.
I’ll accept that you’re pro-life. But if you weren’t, how do YOU protect the infant and the DS adult? By welcoming the bonobos? Are do you even propose to protect them at all?
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s
Sloth, it occurs to me that a certain gentleman in history, that I know you have great respect for, often spoke in parables. They were sometimes obscure, and not everyone who heard them got it right off the bat. “Mustard seed? What the fuck is he talking about? Nobody can move a mountain, that’s ridiculous! We want to know how we’re going to kick out the goddamn Romans!”)
The original point of this thread was to discuss the ethics of abortion, with the facetious proposition that if abortion is okay, than infanticide should be as well. The ethicists who authored the proposition obviously believe the converse, that infanticide is an abominable practice, abortion is the moral equivalent of infanticide, ergo abortion is abominable. In the interest of full disclosure, let me just say that I agree. You and I are actually on the same side of this issue.
We recoil at the idea of killing a baby, or a fetus, or even an embryo the size of a mustard seed, not necessarily because we think babies are cute, or because this world need more people, but rather because every human child culled represents the premature snuffing out of unimaginable potential. We can never know whether we are preventing another great philosopher, scientist, author or physician from being born.
My contention, however, is that by narrowing our focus, protecting the rights of unborn humans on the basis of their status as “persons”, while denying the same status to our closest living relatives on this planet, even when some of them demonstrate attributes that qualify them for “personhood” ahead of many members of our own species, then we actually weaken our own position. We come off looking as hypocritical as a man who would author a document proclaiming that “all men are created equal” while owning other humans whose personhood, and indeed their humanity, was widely denied by his peers.
We wouldn’t put Down’s Syndrome people into cages, vivisect them, subject them to torture, or kill them, justifying our actions because they “aren’t quite as human” as we are. Or at least, we shouldn’t. It follows that we should extend the same courtesy to those who “aren’t quite as human”, by approximately the same degree, as a Down’s Syndrome person.
Our species has a long, long history of exterminating people who didn’t quite measure up to whatever standard of humanity was in vogue at the time. People who believe absurdity will inevitably commit atrocity. I believe the converse is true: people who reject absurdity will eventually eschew atrocity. Killing a person for no good reason is an atrocity. The article in the original post makes the case that the atrocity is not lessened just because the person in question has not yet emerged from the birth canal.
Horton’s Maxim states that “a person’s a person no matter how small”, and our favorite parablist would agree: “whatever you do for the least of my brothers and sisters, you do for me”. Whatever we do for the least of our kin, even if they don’t share our culture, our language, our morphology and behavior, or two percent of our DNA, we do for all humanity.
All it takes is understanding the size of a mustard seed, and we can move mountains of public opinion. [/quote]
I’m against abortion ONLY because I look at it as a freedom issue. People have rights to life, liberty, and property unless they forfeit them by violating another’s rights. The unborn child has not violated anyone’s rights because he/she did not create himself, so he/she deserves the chance to live.
A bonobo is not a human and I would say the chances of a bonobo/human baby being created are zero. If a bonobo and human are able to reproduce, then a bonobo is a human and I am wrong. Different species can’t reproduce. Different breeds and varieties can. The evolutionists have convinced people otherwise, but I don’t pay attention to their crap. A liger can be created because a lion and tiger are the same species.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Okay, Sloth, just for you. . . . Does she have a soul to save? How about her father? Why or why not?[/quote]
All time best internet-forum post, anywhere, ever. Thanks.
Now, if we accept that a human male and human female propagate humanity, and not bonoboity…
So, a person only exists when he displays the faculties of, I don’t know, a mentally healthy speaking child of some arbitrary age?
But isn’t that the crime of abortion? The killing of human lives already gifted with everything required to develop those capabilities? Already incorporated into their own individual life cycle? Robbing them of those faculties?
Here’s a hypothetical, what if the serial killer anesthetized his victims first, before killing them? That is, killing them while they’re still under. Is he only morally guilty of the assault/battery related to administering the anesthesia? But not of the murder that followed? I vaguely a waking period from a medically induced coma. A rather hazy and confusing episode. A bonobo may very well have appeared like an honor roll student compared to me. Might still…But annnyyyyyways…If he takes their lives while they’re under, impaired, is he taking something less than a human life?
And what of self-awareness? We assume a right to life for an adult because he’s aware of his own life and mortality? The understanding and subsequent fear of losing his life? What if a man crept up behind me and killed me in with one gun shot to the back of the head. Like, turning a switch off. No fear, no pain. If it’s only wrong to take a life that is aware enough to contemplate it’s ending, and any pain associated, what if it’s done in a way where there is no pain and time to reflect on the tragedy of one’s life slipping away? An injustice? We circumvented the concerns of pain and self-awareness of one’ life slipping away.
Do we have a right to be free from having awareness of our impending murder and pain?
Or, do we have a right to life?