A government-commissioned report into stem cell research has found the arguments for therapeutic cloning have not advanced since the issue was last debated in Parliament four years ago.
So what is the real debate about stem cells? Where is the main point of disagreement between opponents and defenders of therapeutic cloning and research on embryos?
In my view it rests on definitions of âpersonhoodâ? and the âright to lifeâ?.
A few months back, I asked people to share their view on the ethics of performing fatal research on humans who are close to death and who have no awareness of pain or consciousness. There was a consensus that this would be a Bad Thing. Yet most opponents of therapeutic cloning appear comfortable with performing fatal research on embryos leftover from IVF. Why do they not picket IVF clinics? Why are they not angry about this utilitarianism-gone-mad?
They donât because at this point in the argument, they will admit that embryos are not quite the same as people.
So then, the argument will move on to one, or both, of the following: that the embryo has the potential to be a person; or that the embryo has human DNA and so while it has fewer rights than a human person, it is still a sacred object, not to be destroyed.
The second point raises the same dilemma as above: why then is it still OK to destroy spare embryos, but not OK to create perfect DNA copies and do exactly the same thing?
It also raises the question that Amanda Vanstone summed up so nicely in her speech on the RU-486 amendment: since when was the special status of human beings due to their DNA? Isnât it our capacity for reason, for insight, for emotional connections – the soul, in other words – that makes us more than other animals? Thatâs certainly what theyâll say in debates about the coldness of evolutionary scientistsâ¦
The first point is addressed by Peter Singer in this weekâs Bulletin. Go â read it! He points out that the new research that suggests the ability to create embryonic stem cell lines without destroying the embryo actually starts to highlight the absurdity of the opponentsâ objections. See, itâs theoretically possible, though not yet proven, that the cell taken from the eight-cell embryo could itself become an embryo, which could then become a person.
When a New York Times reporter asked Senator Sam Brownback, one of the most prominent American opponents of federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, whether Lanzaâs new technique would change the senatorâs attitude to embryonic stem cell research, Brownbackâs spokesman rejected the technique with a striking comment: âYou are creating a twin,â? he said, âand then killing that twin.â?
Does a single cell, extracted from an eight-cell embryo, have a right to life? If it falls over in the woods, and no-one is there to hear it, will it make a sound? This is crazy stuff, and opponents of therapeutic cloning have either not thought it through to the logical consequences, or it doesn’t bother them that their rationale isn’t coherent.
Itâs my view that all of these clever arguments are little more than attempts to give faith-based opinions a gloss of scientific thought (remind you of another debate?) When Tony Abbott argued the other day that religious folks should not be prevented from being involved in politics, he well and truly demolished that Strawman. I agree that that Atheist Strawman is arrogant, intolerant and out-of-touch.
But that really has nothing to do with the real issues, which are two-fold.
Firstly, if youâre arguing from a position of faith or ideology, religious or otherwise, then donât insult the rest of us by clutching at faux-rational straws.
Secondly, quit trying to prevent the rest of us from finding real cures to save real people from real deaths because you think that maybe your god would disapprove. If s/he felt that strongly about it, then being omniscient and all, surely she would have made it known that she thought that eight of my own cells were of greater moral significance than my right to be cured of fatal diseases.
This has got nothing to do with faith, God or religion. What is human life? This is a debate the pro-abortionists avoid as if their own lives depended on it. Let’s engage and resolve that debate first. Then it follows that all we have to do is determine what is the status of any mixture of “cells”. You, Anna, are a conglomeration of cells yourself!
The whole of Professor Singer’s moral philosphy towards human life is summed up in this quote from his Bulletin piece:
“because there is no sound ethical reason against destroying human embryos”
He may as well not go into the cellular arguments. A human embryo has no right to life. Period. Presumably (because he doesn’t distinguish in his article) the thirty-week foetus has no right to life.
However we approach this subject the subject of the ethics of abortion cannot be avoided.
Isn’t Professor Singer on record as a defender of infanticide?
Yes, Peter Singer has defended the concept of infantcide in the past.
But Peter Singer’s views are considerably more complex than the caricature conservatives often draw of him; I recommend his book Writings on an Ethical Life if you want to get a grip on where he is coming from.
And to answer your question, whyisitso, a clump of cells in the lab is not a human; I get about as upset with scientists doing research on it as I would about a blood sample.
Practical Ethics is another good one. And I agree that those often critical of Singer seem to cherry pick statements and ignore what doesn’t suit them. I don’t always agree with Singer’s conclusions but his reasoning is often well laid out and worthy of careful investigation outside of the shrill carcitures of his writings.
Infanticide is straight-out murder. I can’t be bothered examining the finer points of argument of such a man just as I can’t be bothered examining the finer points of Nazism. There’s too much of worthwhile note to read about in one lifetime.
“I get about as upset with scientists doing research on it as I would about a blood sample”
A very ego-centric statement, Robert. Still doesn’t resolve my central question about what is a human.
I expected a far more than 5 comments before Godwin would come into play. Oh for the good old days of teh internets when you could go many a comment before such a scurillious comparison would appear.
For those less blinkered, Pushing Time Away is Singer’s account of his grandparents suffering at the hands of the Nazi’s and an excellent read.
Shaun may well wish that infanticide should be discussed on its merits without reference to Hitler. I don’t apologise for my reference. The whole concept of legitimate infanticide is as ethically without merit as was “the final solution to the Jewish problem”. The common link is criminal homicide. His comment is nothing but a cheap shot.
And to refer to a point-of-view deploring infanticide as “blinkered” is scurrilous indeed.
Actually whyistiso I wasn’t referring to your point of view. Just the scope.
Anyway, I’ve had a hard day, so I’m going to bed. Have as many free kicks as you like in the meantime. My guess as to number of comments by 8am 1 September is 108.
Would discussing Singer’s attitude to Hitler’s dogs breach Godwin’s Law?
Yet most opponents of therapeutic cloning appear comfortable with performing fatal research on embryos leftover from IVF.
I’m not and neither is Tony Abbott. The only morally consistent view of this matter, in fact, is proposed by Catholics – with only a few exceptions.
A human being is an living organism who’s development was/is encoded by human DNA and is capable of thought. A blastocyst satisfies the first criteria but not the second. It has no brain, synapses or nerves. It is completely incapable of thought because it has nothing with which to think it. As such I see no reason whatsoever not to extract stem cells from it or to create it with the express purpose to do so and then be destroyed. It is a bunch of cells with the potential to develop into a human being. It is not a human being. IVF and the associated production of excess embryos is ethically acceptable for this reason and so should therapeutic cloning for disease prevention/curing.
Whoops, that should be a living organism whose etc.
As I said CL, I don’t always agree with Singer. And I think his reasoning on the issue of bestiality is very sloppy and very wrong. But as it is Anna’s post I’m not going any further on that issue.
I even object to IVF. But there you go.
And I also find it funny that one can point to Singer, whose ethical views are extreme and confined to the sum total of one (he himself doesn’t even live by them) while say, the views of billions around the world are to be ignored. But again, coherence has never been some people’s strong point.
I apologise for this longer post. My argument is quite complex, as befits the matter for debate.
Since the mother is primarily responsible for the life which is hypothesised to be in her uterus, what are her responsibilities? (I guess similar arguments may be made about the egg which is removed from the ovary with the intention of allowing its impregnation in a test tube. No other acts can take be performed unless and until the producer of that egg allows removal.)
There are moral and legal responsibilities.
Much of the discussion so far has been about the moral responsibility of the mother to the hypothesised embryonic life. Debate rages about what that woman should feel about any act she makes, or any act she refuses on moral grounds to make.
Now, it is clear that there is considerable disagreement about which acts ought ot be considered to be immoral.
This is the point at which the debate edges toward debate over legal issues.
Presumably, those opposing stem cell research want to establish a regime of penalties for persons who use embryonic cells in proscribed ways. In other words, the law ought to step between the providers of the embryo and researchers.
These opponents deem this behaviour as a crime against a person, that is, the embryo. Accordingly, the state should involve itself in investigating, and if appropriate, punishing proscribed behaviour.
But I wish to show that there are powerful practical problems with this position.
Proponents of this position would be on firmer ground if they were consistent in their application of this principle of state intervention.
Now it is well known that a huge number of pregnancies end in spontaneous miscarriage. These miscarriages may occur almost immediately after conception right up to a point where the infant may still live were it to receive immediate and expert medical care.
What are the appropriate medico-legal regimes for these eventualities? Surely they cannot be identical in all these cases.
For example, if a woman suspected she were pregnant but then had a discharge, should be be compelled to obtain a certificate of death? At what point in a pregnancy that ends with a miscarriage should a death certificate be mandatory?
Moreover, at what point and under what circumstances should a medical practitioner who issues a death certificate be compelled to notify a law-enforcement agency of a death by misadventure?
If proponents of a sweeping definition of what constitutes life can’t come up with some consistent and workable answers to these very practical medico-legal questions, then they will find it quite difficult to make sensible arguments about how their very sincerely-held moral positions can be translated into juridical practice.
I challenge these proponents to come up with the outlines of a legal regime that covers important aspects of the personhood of ante-natal life.
And if they can’t adduce some workable legal principles about how the law should deal with the end of ante-natal life, it is difficult to see how they can stand legitimately between the mother of an eight-celled embryo and a medical researcher.
Why draw the line at blastocysts? Every little spermatozoa also has the potential to create a human life. Yet how often are the little buggers spilled onto the ground or into condoms or otherwise expire in environments that weren’t marked on our original DNA dance card?
So I reckon it’s high time we hung all the wankers, poofters and manufacturers of contraception and spermicidal products out to dry, the dirty murdering bastards.
This SCNT stuff really is the thin edge of the wedge. If we don’t think coolly and clearly about how to ban folks tinkering with us at any kind of corporeal level, we could well end up with another Edward Jennerscenario.
I think a stray variola thingy infiltrated my last comment. The above link was supposed to work like this.
http://www.bl.uk/images/popup/cowpock1.jpg
Why? A bit of argument might help enlighten us, saint. Like Anna, I find the attempts to argue against stem cell research confused and incoherent.
That’s just silly.
Singer is a philosopher. He provides reasons for his views. You may call them extreme (and you could treat him as a philosopher rather than as some sort of straw-opponent) but majority opinion doesn’t necessarily disprove the coherence and strength of an argument just by virtue that it’s held by a majority.
Personally, I find it perplexing that many people are prepared to accept and support millions of intelligent, sentient fellow mammals enduring a lifetime of unimaginable suffering, followed by an often less than pleasant slaughtering, just so they can have a yummy meal – yet go beserk over a microscopic embryo being killed.
And the simple fact is that if people believe that destruction of microscopic embryos is wrong, they should be openly and loudly condemning IVF, (and all those who use it of course) and seeking to stop it, rather than attacking people who seek to further benefit their fellow humans by making use of microscopic embryos that will die anyway. I can’t see any difference between discarding surplus microscopic embryos and using the cells from those doomed embryos for research.
I fully agree that humans are special, but we’re not so bloody special that every microscopic group of cells that can be labelled ‘potential human’ has some sacred value, while every other form of life can just get stuffed. Time the human race got over itself just a little bit, I think.
PS None of the above means I am fully convinced that we need to or should move to legalising SCNT. But if people want to transplant the abortion argument to microscopic embryos as a way of opposing embryonic stem cell research, they should at least acknowledge that that argument was lost in 2002 (and if they’re serious, start showing some courage and attacking IVF). Opposing SCNT along the same ‘killing babies’ line is no more or less convincing than it was in 2002. I’d like to actually hear some arguments why SCNT itself is a bad idea, apart from the ‘killing babies’ lines (and Tony Abbott’s hysterical ‘hybrid/chimera’ ‘cloned humans’ stuff).
In response to Steve’s opinion, I would say, without going into personal Christian morality on the subject, in a social sense, if most of the population were to give this any decent thought and have a good look at the potential of the group of cells which, if allowed to develop, would become as much a human as anyone here, and were to allow ordinary, concious morality to have a say in their opinion, they would, in fact, collectively see that, despite the possible advantages of human embryonic stem cell research maybe finding some cures for various illnesses, they would rather live shorter, less comfortable lives than allow a living being of their own kind be helplessly sacrificed. We talk about choice, but potential humans are without a choice, and vulnerable to our choices, because of either our vanity, or at best our need, but, because humans, on the whole tend to prefer one another, such is their natural moral stance, that I believe they would, driven by their conscience, prefer the life of a human embryo to be complete, or you would think so wouldn’t you?
But that’sif the majority of the population would really give this some decent thought. Unfortunately the other side of human morality would allow itself to be talked into potential cures by leaving it to the ‘experts’ rather than think it through for themselves, and let the harvesting begin, whihc is dangerous, because there are people with vested interests who want to drive this issue and convince us that ‘therapeutic cloning’ isn’t really human embryo harvesting. The soothing language of the harvesters is more pleasant to the ears of the recipients of the cure, and lends a new morality to the issue.
Defining the point of existence of a group of cells with the potential to become human is a very risky and controversial area. Steve can’t possibly know for sure. I don’t know for sure. No one knows for sure. There’s a great deal of supposition here. That’s why this is such an emotive issue, regardless of religious ideals. This is a human dilemma as well as a moral dilemma.
Anna’s confidence in her analysis that those cells are harvestable because they’re true value is in meeting the needs of the living rather than in their own intrinsic potential to become a sentient being, maybe even someone of great importance to the human race in the future, is frankly bewildering, since no-one really knows when life, a soul, begins, or even how, so to make a comparison between a group of cells and what they could become, a child lost in a forest calling for help, is really a nonsense, and part of the soothing talk which will convince voters that this is indeed a right thing for all wo/mankind, and the cells are made expendable and available for experimentation, being slightly more viable to present research requirements that rats.
And that’s outside of the ethical, moral Christian perspective. I’ll leave that to God!
The scientific impulse driving stem-cell research is the same as the scientific impulse that drove the Manhattan Project. We can do it so, fuck it, we will.
Senator, your idea of a “debate” on this is to ask that those who believe life begins at conception not say so – or propose that policy be formulated according to that principle – and to caricature as ‘out-there’ Tony Abbott’s references to chimera research – even though you know his concerns are entirely justified. This is the same old trick that’s always used in these bio-ethical discussions. The progressive Mengelists always insist that one side not actually contribute to the “debate.”
How convenient and how utterly obscurantist.
Andrew,
I don’t think the size counts in a fair world, do you? And if it can be ‘killed’ it must have life, and the argument, I think, is that it isn’t ‘yet’ a life-form, and is therefore expendable and available for experimentation, so maybe you need to rephrase that statement.
If people go ‘berserk’ over an emotive issue it could be because they feel their opinion is being overrun, and they are uncomfortable with a decision by their peers which leaves their conscience wanting, because they are part of a society which has a contrary view. You’ll never be able to cure that pain, because the collective conscience of those who oppose the hideously named ‘therepeutic cloning’ argument will rage, and hurling insults at those with a different morality to yours will only serve to alientate them further. Your conscience which calls what we consider to be ‘potential’ humans ‘suplus microscopic embryos’ has clearly been invaded by the soothtalk Anna is divesting.
Little dots, in your view, mean nothing, except, Andrew, you were a group of little dots once, microscopic, and, according to your thinking, surplus.
“…while say, the views of billions around the world are to be ignored. But again, coherence has never been some people’s strong point.”
I’ll say. By that yardstick you’ve just established, we should also be adopting the archiac views of diehard Muslim and Hindu fundies, making cricket the global sport and kowtowing to the Middle Kingdom.
Anyway the guts of the matter about this issue is that it’s too late to stop it. You can’t unwind knowledge. SCNT is laready happening and even more than we can imagine right now in this field is gonna happen too whether you like it or not.
The best we can do now is start up setting guidelines and codes of practice to encourage, attract and manage the operations that know what they’re doing.
Your way of thinking (stop all it now and never try it again) will just lead to dodgy underground clincis in sleazy Korean FTZs.
Haven’t you puritanical, superstitious and anti-progress twits learnt anything from the past 15,000 years?
“I’ll leave that to God!”
So why isn’t that your default position instead of a closing punchline? How do you know that unravelling and reweaving the building blocks of life isn’t part of his, her or its plan anyway?
Because, Nabakov, as I’ve said, this isn’t just a ‘religious’ issue. There is also a human morality here, and I was trying to emphasise that because most regulars here know I’m a Christian, and would expect opposition to therapeutic cloning from that standpoint.
We don’t have to unravel the building blocks of life by wiping it out. Let’s find out what makes a Nabakov tick. I know we’ll
killterminatetherepeutically permanently immobilise him and dissect him. We’ll pull apart his brain and run itthorough the centrifuge. Who knows it might contain a cure for insanity. We’ll leave his liver, it’s too saturated with the red stuff, but his heart shows signs of passion, so let’s see if we can develop a cure for apathy.Sleazy foreign clinics are never a reason to legalise
deathhuman harvesting squads.“…this isn’t just a ‘religious’ issue. There is also a human morality here…and would expect opposition to therapeutic cloning from that standpoint.”
Well, that was a particularly disingenuous confabulation.
“We don’t have to unravel the building blocks of life by wiping it out.”
Which was not I said. And define human life. DNA, RNA, Spermatozoa, one cell, a hundred cells, a cytoblast, an egg, an embryo? At what point exactly do you draw a line? So far you’ve been arguing in immense bad faith, painting anyone that opposes your views as murderers without ever stating where you think human life begins.
“Sleazy foreign clinics are never a reason to legalise death human harvesting squads.”
No, but they’re a damn good argument against trying to drive science underground.
And “death human harvesting squads”!!??! Shame you don’t exert the same level of hyperbolic rhetoric in support of stopping real death squads who kill real people around the world.
Instead you’d rather work yourself up into lather over a point you can’t even define properly yourself. You may call yourself a Christian but you ‘re exhibiting all the traits your saviour warned you against – from bearing false witness to arrogance to judging others the way you wouldn’t judge yourself.
And as I said before, it’s too late anyway. The genie is out of the lamp. Sticking your fingers in your ears or others eyes won’t change anything.
Anna and Everyone:
Let’s cut right to the guts of the issue.
Just who is making money and gaining power out of opposing stem cell research? Which sneaky thieves have their sticky fingers into our wallets? Which utterly ruthless mongrels would rather see their fellow human beings suffer and die than give up their ambitions? They make false claims of being Christians but they are the sort of people who would have abused Jesus Christ on His way to Calvary and cheered at the crucifixion. In their heart of hearts they couldn’t give a damn about the foetuses they pretend to cherish but they are very concerned about money and power. The compassion of Jesus Christ is only an obstacle for them, no matter how much they screech in public about being “Christian”.
They are nothing but cynical and greedy Hypocrites …. and we all know the god they really worship – it’s Mammon.
The time has come for true Christians to stand firm against these heretics and so bring hope and relief to the suffering.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
- Psalm 139
Not found in most translations: “And verily, you were OK about me being sacrificed so people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again“!
Asks Graham: Just who is making money and gaining power out of opposing stem cell research?
We should really ask who is making money and gaining power proposing it. Mostly Big Pharma multinationals.
Oh, and Senator Stott Despoja’s husband. And Senator Mal Washer’s son:
The answer to my question: multinationals and “utterly ruthless mongrels” like the Stott Despoja and Walsher families.
It’s not risky or controversial at all. Sperm and eggs have the potential for human life, a zygote does, a blastocyst does, an embryo does, a fetus does. Another thing that is not controversial is that a blastocyst has no capacity for thought, that occurs later in development when synapses interconnect to form a developing brain. And thought is what makes us human. So I am not attempting to define an exact point when development has progressed far enough that full human rights should be granted. What I am defining is a point where those rights most certainly should not be applied, and that is the blastocyst stage.
Nabakov,
Well I can’t (as I’ve already said), and neither can you, or anyone else, which is my point, what makes people here so certain that they’re not, as Andrew puts it, ‘killing’ embryos? Scientists? The scientists who want to press this issue? The companies with vested interests? The politicians associated with those with vested interests? Why should any speculative line have to be draw? What line do we draw between when you should live or die?
One of the arguments here is that we need to save the clearly suffering by sacrificing embryos, but the only difference I can see between that argument and the argument that embryos are also people who are suffering, is that suffering adults are easily seen and can’t be handled in test tube, or hidden away in laboritory, are not ‘microscopic’, mand they have a voice which says ‘help me’ to whihc our human conscience replies, ‘we’ll try’, but at what cost?
And human life is something greater than ‘DNA, RNA, Spermatozoa, one cell, a hundred cells, a cytoblast, an egg, an embryo’, just as a human body is more than kidneys, blood, millions of cells, etc..
I do! But that’s completely irrelevant point you make to this argument, which means you’re running out of real ideas, or you’ve distracted yourself away from the point.
I define human life as beginning where CL pointed out it begins, at conception, in the womb, although science is here attempting to remove life from the womb into the lab, into glass containers, into God knows where. But the real point is, where do you define the beginning of human life, because you’re the one who is advocating laboratory experimentation on human embryos?
It only took 5 paragraphs to completely contradict yourself. Why conception? Why define life there? You must have a reason why it’s not earlier or later.
OK, Steve, badly put, and point taken. I’ll attempt to explain it better. I’m trying to look at this from a perspective other than Biblical.
My personal beliefs lead me to understand that life begins at conception.
However, attempting to look at it from a non-religious (secular?) perspective, I’m arguing that you can’t scientifically define the exact point of life, and therefore saying, as Andrew has, that embryos are merely little ‘microscopic’ nothings, whihc implies they should have no representative choice in the matter, is a poor argument.
And I take exception to his dismissal of the word ‘potential’ to describe a developing group of cells, which, if left to their natural course, will certainly become a human being. It is a relevant point to this discussion, and shouldn’t be shrugged off, because we’re setting ourselves up to make the decision not only about whether those cells should or should not be allowed to develop, but also whether they should be terminated for the sake of experimentation.
Quite, Steve.
The development from conception through embryo to birth is far more contingent and tricky and fallible that the development from egg&sperm to fertilised egg. All that takes is a little contact.
If human cloning is possible, my every cell is a potential human life. Does that mean the dude who scratched me in a tackle last weekend is a mass-murderer?
That’s hair-splitting, FDB! But you hint at the point that there are other ways of working with human stem cells which don’t involve embryonic harvesting. The ethical issue isn’t over stem cell research which leads to therepetic benefits, but over the material used.
Okay Facelift, so – aside from your definition of a collection of cells being human life – this begs the question: what do you define as suffering?
These cells are not capable of feeling pain, or anything remotely resembling it.
And anyway, the ethical escher contortions engaged here are driving me nuts! Since when have we defined something by its potentialilty? A potato isn’t vodka, even though it has the potential to become vodka.
That is _far_ from certain, facelift.
These debates elate and depress me. Elate, because it means we are making progress and the paraplegic person I care deeply about may one day be able to ease her suffering.
Depress because the opponents in such debates have relativistic, self-immolating arguments but that never seems to stop them.
I agree that IVF should never had been allowed. This is why we have ‘spare’ embryonic stem cells for one.
What the secularists are denying is human life because of ‘potential’ cures which can only eventuate by denying human life.
But you understand, EP, that we live in a secular society where moral justifications for policy must go beyond the fact it was written in the bible?
And that your definition of life fails on every scientific criteria to the point where even people using that arguing can’t call stem cells life but have to refer to them as human potential?
80% of embryos resulting from conception never implant in the womb and will never go on to become a human being. The woman will never even know that conception occurred.
As this happens in vivo anyway, what makes it so different in vitro?
pat,
I didn’t bring any biblical doctrine in my comment merely that most of the embryonic stem cells we are talking about in OZ are those which were brought on for IVF ie giving life.
What you and the rest are denying is that very thing. Denying life in the hope of a cure for present day people.
not really different from killing people to help other people really
I was going to give a considered response to you, FaceLift, but I really don’t believe you’ve paid any attention to my post – you certainly haven’t addressed any of the points I raised. So I just have a couple of questions for you (and Homer).
If we have brought it all down to potential being the reason for a right to life, then tell me why I can’t donate 8 cells and an egg to be used for research? There is no potential for life there – it’s in a test tube, it can’t develop unless man intervenes in nature again to implant it in a womb. It isn’t unique at all, it’s a bunch of my cells, and the person whose DNA it is is still alive. Why can’t scientists perform research on my own cells, given voluntarily?
Secondly, as patrickg asked: in what way will those eight cells suffer?
Just for the sake of rational debate, I hope that parliamentarians can come up with a more convincing position on this one than BBEP.
Well, patrickg, Andrew brought up the word ‘potential’ and I was responding, but it isn’t the only argument here, and we’re not brewing vodka, we’re discussing human potential, not the potential for inebbriation.
Part of suffering includes the inability to reach full potential, and doesn’t have to include pain. You’re saying that we should have the right to curb human potential ffor the sake of fixing those who have lost their full potential.
Denying life? So now it isnât enough not to kill people, now itâs a sin not to let them become people? Does that mean we are all sinning right now if we arenât off having unprotected sex to ensure that as many âpotential peopleâ? as possible come into being.
No, not different at allâ¦
FaceLift, please stop doing CL’s trick. The comment about potatoes was an analogy to show you that your reasoning was flawed. Don’t be rude and accuse him of saying that people are no more morally important than vodka.
Anna, I’m not as bright as CL, so I wouldn’t even attempt to think for him, but the comment about potatoes was weak analogy which demonstrated nothing, so I made a wisecrack!
Your analogy on unprotected sex in the previous comment is genuinely flawed reasoning. We’re talking about people not spuds. I’m sorry, all plantlovers out there, but I have to say that I beleve the humble potato is totally expendable and available for experimentation, or for those who drink, crushing in the still.
However when it comes to humans, I have to say that they are in no way expendable at any stage in their development, regardless of size, age (prebirth), or current structure, and should not be treated like lab-rats.
Facelift, you still haven’t answered the question. What is the difference between sperm and eggs, which have the potential to develop into human life, and a blastocyst, which has the potential to develop into human life?
so why exactly is it wrong in any circumstance to harm a microscopic group of cells that have the potential to develop into a human being, (even though if they resulted from an IVF process they won’t), but it is OK to torment and kill billions of sentient mammals that feel pain and anguish just because we feel like it?
I am genuinely interested in arguments why SCNT should not be allowed. I can even think of a couple myself. I am seeking to be persuaded and am listening to the debates.
But almost all I hear are variations on the abortion debate (and mostly ones that seem willing to avoid opposing IVF), which become more tortured the smaller the group of cells you are talking about is. I respect and understand why many people are against abortion, but I don’t see much point making the SCNT debate a proxy for that. It ignores the particular issues involved with SCNT and the issues that flow specifically from it, which is where the debate is actually at – at least in a legislative sense, which is where this whole thing is stemming from.
(and no CL, Tony Abbott’s references to chimera and human/animal hybrids are not justified and are grossly (and one has to assume deliberately) misleading. It is really not a good idea to insist on canards like that, as it makes thinking people who may be genuinely undecided pay no attention to anything else you say, which means they may miss it if you put forward a point with some merit)
Don’t be daft, Steve, sperm has no future without the egg and vice versa, so it’s not an argument. Once conception takes place, there is a viable life form, whether it implants in the womb at a later stage isn’t the issue. It’s viablity has to be respected.
Facelift, I’m sorry I used a trivial example, however my point still stands. A thing is a thing first and foremost, not a potential thing.
To use some analogy you may find more serious: a knife is not a murder weapon, it’s just a knife.
But it _is_ different, EP. You keep gliding over the fact that this is potential we are talking about, and frankly very small potential at that.
I don’t really know what to say to that. How can any of us, Facelift, “achieve full potential”? If I achieved full potential I would be president of the world. Because I’m not, am I doomed to a life of sufferance?!? That’s crazy. By your definition everything on earth is suffering.
“It is really not a good idea to insist on canards like that, as it makes thinking people who may be genuinely undecided pay no attention to anything else you say”
I would go further and say that exaggerated claims can in fact discredit the rest of your arguments even though they may be quite reasonable.
A personal example of this at work is the WMD justification of the war in Iraq. I was quite prepared to believe that they existed until I heard the claims about human threshing machines. That one ridiculous claim led me to thinking that the rest of their claims were probably a load of crock as well.
Facelift,
the reason so many embryos are created for IVF is that a large number of them are NOT viable. This is the case even for women who seek IVF other than for fertility problems.
Does somehing have ‘potential life’ if it is not viable?
You’re begging the pertinent question with your use of “viable” there.
A blastocyst outside the womb is not viable as if you just leave it in a petri-dish it will fail to develop further. It is only kept potentially viable by freeze-preservation techniques.
Nobody describes a Fallopian tube blastocyst implantation as viable, after all. The embryo simply is not viable until it implants in the uterine lining.
Yes, well I’ll resist the scriptural implications there. That’s not quite what I’m saying. There are things, such as wanting to become president, which are in our power provided we apply ourselves and certain circumstances were in place, and we have a level playing field in which we can paticipate in the contest, but when we are disempowered by the choices of others, without any ability to resist, we are indeed suffering.
That is completely wrong. Without many other inputs from the mother a zygote has no future. Both sperm and eggs, as well a zygotes, are all potentially viable with the right inputs though. Accordingly, using viability or its potential to define a human being is unsustainable. A human life is something far more than “potential”. By equating potential with what it is to be a human being you are reducing the status of human beings, not adding to it.
So the argument drifts into environment. tigtog, Steve and FaceLift are not viable if they are transferred into space without a life support system.
You’ve finally got it. Viability or its absence has nothing to do with defining a human being. Which is exactly what we’ve been saying. Well done!!
Just so we’re clear, FaceLift, this is the “person” we’re discussing*.
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/phta-00003679-001.jpg"
*NB Not actual size – that orange thing is a pin.
Incredible, isn’t it Anna, that one of those ‘persons’ turned intto you!
Of course, ‘not viable’ meaning ‘dead’ if tigtog, etc, are taken from environment.
Yes, because I was fortunate enough to be incubated by a very nice woman for nine months. Incredibly, I would currently be incapable of caring that I wasn’t here otherwise.
Exactly, Steve.
Of course viability is and always has been all about the organism’s capacity to metabolise, grow and mature in its surrounding environment, FaceLift: how else would you define it, seriously?
Well, like duh. The term viable is derived from the Latin word for life, FaceLift, so yes, “not viable” = “dead” or “dying”.
None viability, in this case, indicating a previous state of viability.
No, FaceLift, when it’s in a test tube it is not viable, unless doctors/scientists intervene to make it so.
Ethics, eh! Things to do, so I’ll see you, just steer clear of that old test tube!
I’m just a lurker, over here from Andrew’s site, but would like to add another (usual) argument into the mix.
Why can’t we, instead of having a de facto abortion debate, leave it to the public to decide for themselves?
If I have no problem with donating eggs for Stem Cell Research why can’t I? Just as people donate now for IVF. If those people who believe that every sperm and egg is sacred, they can choose not to donate, that is their choice. Just as in the abortion debate, if you believe it’s wrong, then don’t do it, but don’t legislate to restrict others who do not share your belief.
This way we will not have a restricion imposed on most of us (I think that the majority are pro SCNT) by a minority of religious activists.
I think that the greater good is being served by having access to this research.
Oh, I thought of something for Anna, who seems to be deeply involved in this debate, before I go, which maybe we can pick up on later. Can you tell me what kind of quantities of embryos are being envisioned for research?
It’s research, FaceLift, so I don’t know how long that will take or how many will be used, although I don’t see why it’s relevant.
However, one of the main hypotheses is that SCNT – where an embryo is created that has identical DNA – will allow patients in need of organ transplants etc to have one grown from that cloned embryo. That is, it will be a perfect match, so problems of rejection should be a thing of the past. So in that sense, many embryos could be cloned – as many as the patients who need them.
Senator Bartlett knows the concerns about chimera research are real and relevant. He’s using the old trick: lets have a “debate” but only one where Tony Abbott and everyone who disagrees with me can’t participate.
As for it being “not a good idea to insist on canards like that, as it makes thinking people who may be genuinely undecided pay no attention to anything else you say,” well that’s just what I thought when I read you ask why “it is OK to torment and kill billions of sentient mammals that feel pain and anguish just because we feel like it.”
Ergo: humans, animals, whatever. Abbott is right.
Facelift, why is that relevant? If, as you believe, destroying blastocysts is murder, then one is too many for it be allowed as legal. If, as people who are not under the sway of some especially poorly reasoned religious dogma believe, it is not murder then it can be many billions for all anyone should care.
BTW, did you know that the Billings method of contraception mostly works not by preventing fertilisation, but by ensuring that the mother’s uterus is at a stage where implantation is no longer possible? So this method actually increases the “murder” rate, compared with those banned methods that prevent fertilisation. In their concern for market share those old men in Rome can’t even get their story straight.
Neither is a newborn particularly viable unless someone intervenes to care for it for quite a while.
The supply of eggs could indeed be a limiting factor when it comes to a clinical application. For that reason the use of enucleated animal eggs is desirable though significant technical hurdles would need to be overcome. I’d actually like to see mitochondrial and nuclear DNA transfer occur simultaneously in that particular case so that there is no remaining animal genetic information whatsoever in the developing embryo. Also, gene regulation and protein expression in stem cells from such an embryo would need to be confirmed experimentally to be no different than in those extracted from an embryo formed using a human egg. Wouldn’t want something nasty like organ rejection or cancer popping up years down the line in a organ transplant recipient. Well-regulated science and experimentation will demonstrate whether these things are possible or not.
Chris, FaceLiftâs point is that we have a duty not to harm or kill the embryo because if we donât it will become a person. My point was to demonstrate that, in fact, it wonât. It will just remain in a test tube doing not much.
A newborn is a person, and hence neglecting it would be wrong. Eight cells in a test tube is not a person, which is why FaceLift et al are now clutching to the âyes, but it could be one dayâ? straw, without actually demonstrating why potential is in any way morally relevant.
Andrew Bartlett said:
Well one argument would be that as as society we’ve made a fairly arbitary choice that humans are more important than other life forms. Eg we can own and exploit animals but aren’t allowed to do the same to other humans. Some people have decided to draw the line of classifying something to be human at the point of conception and others at varying points further along development. So even though it may be just a bunch of cells its still more important than sentient mammals.
btw would you support SCNT if there was no potential for medical applications? Eg someone just wanted to do it for fun. Although I support SCNT I am a bit disturbed by people attempting to justify it by pushing potential medical breakthroughs. This implicitly suggests that there is something inherently wrong with what would be done, but that in effect the end justify the means.
Those “old men in Rome” don’t actually call abortion or stem-cell research “murder,” nor do they make any references to “murder” in even the abortion section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. References to “murder” or “mass-murder” are usually made by fantastically ignorant people like FDB. See above.
Not speaking for facelift, nor do I personally believe this, but some people do believe that eight human cells in a test tube is a person – or at least effectively so with the same rights as a person.
But it does lead to an interesting question – just how many cells does it have to be before it should be considered a person with full human rights? I think its really quite an arbitary decision and using either the number of cells or months of development we’ll never end up with a situation where everyone agrees.
Chris, I’m really unsure about what point you are trying to make, so if I’m misunderstanding you I apologise.
Firstly, no my view on the morality of SCNT would not change if it were found to not have the medical benefits we think it will have. I wouldn’t be spending as much of my time trying to promote the cause however if it was just so that scientist could have a bit of fun.
Secondly, I know that lots of people don’t agree with me that the eight cells are a person. Did you read my post? Because that was the whole point of it. I care very little about whether FaceLift, or Tony Abbott, or anyone believe it to be a person. I do care that they would try and affect public policy and scientific research without having the courtesy of demonstrating why it’s a person. Which – again – is the point of my post.
In this thread people have, as I predicted they would, alternated between claiming the eight cells are a person and claiming they have the potential to be a person. I provided arguments as to why I think that both of these claims are wrong and instead of debating them, they merely repeat the claims, and switch definitions as convenient.
When I pointed out that the cells in the test tube would not become a person without human intervention and a willing womb-provider, it was because FaceLift was trying to claim that by killing the embryo we are preventing it from reaching personhood when it otherwise would have. But what’s preventing it from becoming a person is actually its lack of a uterus to grow in. If it doesn’t have a womb, it is no different to the spare embryo that was created during the IVF procedure.
The only possible objection left now is that the act of intervening in nature and creating the embryo is wrong. So now the opponents have to explain why this interference in nature is wrong, when we interfere in so many other ways. Because unless they’re willing to do so consistently, they have no business trying to force their random whims on the rest of us.
C.L. – FFS it’s not up to me to learn the wording of your cult’s ghastly pronouncements, but please forgive any offence caused by my failure to try to incorporate
“the moral evil of every procured abortion”
or
“the innocent who is put to death”
in what was intended to be a pithy remark.
There is certainly no shortage of folks who do call abortion murder, in any case.
Sorry, probably my fault for skim-reading too much (I am sort of meant to be working
Hopefully I’m a bit more coherent now.
I don’t think that they believe they need to prove that its a person with rights like any other. They believe that its self-evident that it is so. Similarly, other people have made the fairly arbitary choice that you become a person at birth and are of lesser worth until that point. And just like if someone suggested that a newborn is not a person because it hasn’t yet had sufficient intellectual development to be considered sentient would cause a reaction of disbelief from many people that this person couldn’t see what they believe is obvious, you get a similar reaction.
These are core assumptions and beliefs, and no amount of debate is going to change people minds about what is fundamentally “right” or “wrong”.
However, I do believe what might change the general public’s view of what is acceptable is the potential medical benefits – eg a little bit of wrong is ok if it leads to a a great deal of benefits for everyone else.
FDB, that’s fine – many people say they’re not interested in what the Catholic Church teaches but they’re also obsessed with what it teaches at the same time. I would at least extend the hand of conciliation to you by agreeing that talk of “murder” with regard to these matters isn’t helpful and is intellectually sloppy.
But I’m arguing that they aren’t, really. Their words say that they think embryos are people, but their actions say otherwise. If they really were their beliefs, these people would be picketing IVF clinics and demanding an end to this holocaust.
But they aren’t, are they?
I don’t see why. Surely if you are going to have this sort of discussion, then two of the things you might want to discuss are 1) Whether stem cell research is ethically justifiable and 2) Whether some of the consequences of this research are ethically justifiable.
Abbott’s comments seem to fall into that 2nd category.
At any rate, are human/animal hybrids such a bad thing? It strikes me that these sort of thing could have many benefits for the long-term future of homo sapiens. Well worth a blog post of its own, I reckon.
You’re just stirring, Anna, and with a weak argument devoid of any point relevant to this debate. Your words suggest you should be picketing Catholic churches for being anti-abortion, etc, but I’m pretty sure you’re not. How people go about debating issues is entirely up to them, not your reasoning.
Those of us who consider human embryos to also be human beings don’t have to demonstrate that they are just bits of microscopic stuff whihc can be experimented with. It’s for you too convince us that they truly have no connection with human life, and are mere inanimate objects set apart for scientific analysis and laboratory experimentation at the whim of scientists and companies with vested interests.
You’ve mentioned potentiality or viability of life as a non-argument, but the PM’s tabled report suggests the weakness of your argument lies with the fact that cures are still in the realm of ‘potential’. Can you have the ‘potentiality’ argument both ways?
Ummm…that’s what research is for, FaceLift – to prove or disprove hypotheses. There are potential cures that we are searching for. We might not find them, but if we knew the answer then we wouldn’t need to research any longer, would we? I have no idea where to begin explaining to you that point has nothing to do with whether or not a potential person has the same rights as an actual person.
I’m not stirring though, FaceLift. I’m completely serious. If there were clinics that were dissecting and killing people to find cures for Alzheimer’s in all the major cities in Australia then I’m guessing that we’d all be doing a little bit more than writing comments on blogs. The actions of the opponents of stem cell research are demonstrating that they do not in fact see that tiny dot as being worth as much as you or I, despite their rhetoric.
FaceLift, that makes no sense whatsoever. It’s metaphysics in the bad sense of the word. The issue isn’t pain but the ability to feel anything. Suffering by definition is a product of sentience and feeling.
Look up ex post facto argument!
Can someone also please enlighten me on the “human/animal hybrid” thing? I don’t understand it.
Though as I believe I’ve previously pointed out (and here I agree with TimT), human/animal hybrids can be cool.
<img src="http://www.kunstkritikk.no/kk/images/uploads/cremaster3c_med.jpg"
patrickg raised the issue of pain being suffering and I responded, Kim. You’ll have to check through the thread. I was asked to define suffering. If a person is painlessly locked up, parilysed, disabled or removed from their natural environment against their will by another person with alterior motives against their person is that considered suffering?
Facelift, I guess my problem here is that you (or anyone I’ve read) cannot convincingly defend your perspective from a _secular_ position.
You are well entitled to your faith – and I don’t intend to denigrate it – however, religion should not be confused with an ethical framework; it comprises many moralities (cf. the debate on gay clergy for example).
In this respect, strength of faith – or even a secular strength of belief – is simply not enough to base legislation on; what’s required is a cohesive moral framework.
Opponents to stem cell research have no lack of morals, or frameworks, but unfortunately no cohesion.
In this respect, Anna’s valiant efforts to highlight the double standard at play in regards to IVF are not an exercise in sophistry; she is highlighting a fundamental relativism in your arguments (if I can presume to speak for you Anna!).
I reiterate; it’s not enough believe in an argument like this: you _must_ demonstrate. I believe this is a crucial aspect of legislating in a democracy, and one often ignored by people on both sides of the fence.
That’s circular argument, FaceLift, because you’re begging the question of who a person is.
And your previous comment referred to potential persons.
I deny that a cluster of eight cells falls within any definition of personhood.
And it’s clear that it cannot suffer, because it has no sentience.
Therefore any attribution of suffering to it on the grounds of “denial of development” or whatnot is logically incoherent and false.
Here, here!
Even Tony Abbott accepts this.
Before he goes and muddies the waters with inflammatory nonsense and claims people are discriminating against him.
The formation of the neural tube begins between 18 and 21 days of embryonic development. This is a long time before it can even begin to feel pain. Without even that proto-nervous system, it can’t feel anything. It can’t even emote. That is to say, it can’t be said to have a soul. How can a soulless clump of cells be called human?
These type of subjects require voting upon. They don’t require supposed but impossible definitions of what a human is or isn’t.
I don’t see how one can vote on anything unless the question has already been framed in terms of definitions of the matter under question.
The voter has to be offered several coherent contrasting definitions/answers in order to choose their response, surely?
OK science-type persons, excuse my possible lack of expert knowledge here, but are those 8 cells specifically human cells, or could they be cells which would form something else? Is it proposed that they would be used to produce human tissue, ie new kidneys, liver, etc which would be used to help cure human beings? What is the importance here of using human cells as opposed to pig cells or rat cells?
Evolution.
silkworm,
Well, you see, it would seem to me that they are human cells, and that, at the point of germination of sperm and egg (and even before) there are extreme levels of design, purpose and intent, which is the ultimate and consistent formation of a human being, and that the likelyhood of these cells forming any other creature is nil, unless manipulated by an outside source, or caused to mutate by some unknown, unplanned, unforseen accident of nature.
Facelift,
Yes, the 8 cells are human cells , and no, you can’t use pig or rat cells. Otherwise they obviously would I mean come on.
So the trump card, FaceLift, is intelligent design?
Let me rephrase it. What makes this clump of cells a human being, i.e., a person? No one has addressed the issue of how a clump of cells without a nervous system can possess a soul. What makes killing a clump of cells without feeling any worse than killing an animal that obviously does have feelings?
That wasn’t where I was going with this, Kim. I was asking the more knowledgeable if these cells could be anything else but human.
The ‘trump card’, if you must have one, is that they are human cells and therefore should be treated with a higher degree of respect than to consider them disposable or expendable. I understand that some human cells never make to their full potential as a living breathing person, but that is generally as a result of natural cause, not human intervention for an ulterior purpose.
When I talk about design, purpose and intent, I mean that there isn’t any other reason for them to exist but to become a human, and are in fact as human as a fully formed person.
Not, true, FaceLift, and that’s the point. Even if you believe in an Intelligent Designer, these embryos are created by scientists. So if their reason for being is now what matters, then it should be OK to perform research on them, since that’s the reason they’ve been created.
For bright person, Anna, that’s a stunningly unreasonable argument.
Your scientists create nothing. They manipulate what already exists. Put another way, if the human cells didn’t exist they’d have nothing to manipulate. The cells’ reason for being remains to form human life.
Your logic is flawed.
FaceLift, could you please do me a favour and actually go read a bit about SCNT before you form opinions about it?
The cells used in SCNT do not exist to form human life. It is a cell taken from a person, that when removed makes no more difference to the person whom it belonged to than losing a strand of hair.
You’re circling around the reasons you don’t like it, which is that you don’t think it’s compatible with God’s wishes. But you are unable to convince anyone of why the rest of us should be affected by that belief.
The only reason it has the “potential” to become a human is because a scientist make it so, and the only way it can fulfil that potential is by science intervening again (provided they can find a willing woman).
You are claiming that human DNA is deserving of the same respect as actual human people, despite the fact that you can’t explain to me why you don’t cry at night about the little uterus-challenged babies being slaughtered in IVF clinics around the world.
You are also completely ignoring the point that you are so eager to make in debates about evolution – that people are higher than the animals. Apparently now they’re just DNA. The mind, the soul? Completely irrelevant.
A known fact is that therapeutic cloning destroys the cloned embryo. Many people, religious or otherwise, believe that the embryo is a human being and therefore it is morally wrong to destroy that life. The only way to produce stem cells from a cloned embryo involves a destructive process. The scientist may have produced the clone, but not the basic material required to form a clone, and still has to form and destroy the embryo to begin research with the resultant stem cells. You are attempting to moralise a system which is, undeniably, destructive to human embryos.
There are other, less destructive, ways to carry out research on human stem cells, by using adult stem cells.
Try to sum up exactly why you are opposed to it, or accept that your position is based on nothing but your faith. Which is fine, but you have no right to prevent me from benefitting from such research if you can’t defend it with reality-based facts.
Is it because it’s a person, but you just can’t be bothered being upset about the babies in IVF clinics who are being murdered?
Is it because you see embryos created for that purpose as being more valuable or sacred than spare ones that were created for a different purpose? Why is it worse to research on embryos that exist for that specific reason, than it is to research on embryos that exist for a different reason?
How do you know what their “reason” for existing is? Who told you? How do you know their reason for existing isn’t to save potentially millions of people? What makes you so certain that anything in nature has a “reason” for existing?
Or is it because you believe they have the potential to become human? Tell me then why potential is morally significant. And what makes them different from eggs and sperm, which also have the potential to become human? Why is it not sinful to be trying to bring every potential human to life? Am I a sinner because I have wasted about 15 years’ worth of eggs?
What makes us humans so special in the first place, if it isn’t the mind and the soul?
As has been mentioned by tigtog and others, not all IVF embryos are viable. When the embryos are created for want-to-be parents they are screened and sorted. The best looking candidates are implanted or frozen for later use, and the unviable ones – which from experience the doctors know will never implant or become viable – are discarded. Given that these unviable embryos are never going to be humans, because their cellular division hasn’t worked properly is it reasonable to use them for research?
You’re the one who has brought up several of the things which you think are, or should be, key to my thinking, including faith, sacredness of embryos, IVF. I’ve argued from conscience and fact. i beleieved, for instance, that abortion was wrong long before I became a Christian.
I don’t like the destruction involved in IVF. And I oppose the use of embryos stored for IVF for another purpose. It’s a difficult area because there are people who otherwise could not have children, and IVF has helped many have families, which has some merit, but could never condone the destruction of embryos. But using stored embryos was bad value jusdgment. I think that was a compromise decision made by Parliament, but it gave the PM some time before he had to face this present issue. It’s a separtae subject, but you need it to validate your weak case, but raising the IVF issue demonstrates your willingness to take us another step along the slippery slope. Where next we wonder?
There is a value here, though. The IVF program has limited resources which have been made aavailablee for research (I don’t condone this). What you’re proposing though, judging by your inability or unwillingness to answer the question I asked earlier about how many embryos you were proposing, is an unlimited bank of cloned embryos. A veritable superharvest of available material. That I seriously oppose.
Most of what you brought up in that last comment has been dealt with elsewhere in the thread, including why eggs and sperm don’t count (which you should already know), whether you’re a sinner for chosing to have no children for 15 years (bearing in mind I haven’t argued this from a scriptural standpoint on purpose), etc. Howeverâ¦
The words of a committed atheist with no ability to consider the views of the rest of the world! And preceded in other comments with the suggestion that we’re no greater than any animal.
I know their reason for existing because when they’re allowed to go full term they ALWAYS become human beings!!!!! Not once in all of modern recorded history is there an incident of human cells in embryonic form being allowed to come to the birth and coming out of their mother as another creature. Have you seen it? Can you say it has happened? No! I thought so. That’s all the evidence you or I need really isn’t it! Whatever happens after that is up to them, becaue IF THEY COME TO FULL TERM THEY WILL LIKELY GROW UP AND HAVE A MIND OF THEIR OWN!!!!!!! Nobody told me that, Anna, not God, or my mum, or LP, or CL, or an encyclopaedia, or Wickipedia. I worked it out all on my own! Duuh!! How? Because the evidence is right there in front of me! This very day, thousands of human beings will be born the way they have been for centuries. They will be different shapes and sizes and colours, but they will all be human and all will have started out as those 8 little cells! Evidence!
Finally, I haven’t brought up the subject of sin. You are attempting to argue a point I have not raised, which shows little respect for the position you know I’ve attempted to discuss this from, and maybe demonstrates that your own arguement is wearing down. If you think that it’s sinful to do what you’ve done, than act on it, but don’t say that I said it here.
Quite a few of those embryos that are carried to full term and given birth to actually don’t end up as viable human beings, FaceLift. Born without a brain, or without lung surfactant, or without a functioning digestive system that will work for them independently once they are separated from the womb and placenta.
And many more of those embryos will miscarry before they get anywhere near fullterm. Nature and/or God does not intervene to ensure that every embryo, if left undisturbed in the vicinity of the womb, will become a human being. 80% of them never even implant in the uterine lining, as I mentioned before. Between 20 to 40% of those that do implant are later miscarried within the first sex weeks of gestation. That means, if you got scientists to insert those IVF embryos into willing women, 80% of them would be dead within 3 days anyway. So why not use them for science?
I’m much more in sympathy with the old Augustinian position on quickening than I am with yours, FaceLift (although his gender dichotomy is obviously absurd) – once a foetus is moving in the womb so that the mother can feel it, then absent severe illness on her part or gross abnormality of the foetus in later development, that foetus will be a born baby in a few months. My personal squick factor (in a choice for me) would kick in there, but I wouldn’t dream of telling any other woman that she had to subject her body to a process she didn’t want simply because I found it vicariously disturbing.
Yes, tigtog, and I think I acknowledged your comments from earlier, and I appreciate them, but how do you tell which embryo will be viable and which will not, and how, then do you separate them off should they be found to not be viable?
FaceLift, firstly you are confusing what with why. The fact that embryos become people rather than elephants has nothing to do with “why”. That is, just because embryos often become people, doesn’t mean that there is a reason for their existence. Perhaps they just are.
The reason I asked this is because it starts to get to the heart of the issue. You don’t like the idea of SCNT because you think it is contrary to God’s purposes for us all. But aside from the fact that you don’t in fact know that for sure, on account of God not having mentioned it in the Bible, you can’t reasonably defend that view being forced on the rest of us who would quite like to find cures for diseases like Parkinsons and Alzheimers.
Secondly, never, ever, have I described myself as a committed Atheist. You know this, because I once argued on your side against our regular militant Atheist. My religious views or otherwise are as described above: I don’t know, but nor do you.
Thirdly, and I am beginning to feel like a broken record: I have never heard of an embryo in a test tube developing into a baby without a huge amount of intervention. It is not “viable” in the sense that left alone it will become a person. It is eight cells in a test tube.
My argument is not breaking down. I think perhaps it is just that you are so convinced of your rightness that you can’t actually read what your opponents are writing. I am asking you these questions not to trick you, not to confuse you, nor to score cheap points. I wouldn’t even mind if you didn’t post your answers here. I am simply trying to get you to consider how arbitrary your positions are. I am suggesting that given how inconsistent they are, given that they are formed on the basis of your belief system and little else, perhaps you may be so humble as to admit that they shouldn’t be used to prevent real people from getting real cures to life threatening illnesses.
Oh, well now who’s shifting goal posts?
I’m sorry I thought you were a committed atheist. It just comes over that way and I can’t help that, but perhaps you are using your knowledge that I’m a committed Christian to enforce your argument that Christians shouldn’t have a verdict on the sanctity of life, yes as far back as 8 cells, because it confronts those who don’t believe the same things. However, I’ve really attempted to discuss this from another angle you clearly don’t see, and again I, and you, can’t help that,a nd we botht thjoink we’re right, so don’t have a go ffor thinking I’m wrong for sticking to my guns, as I’m sure you will, and I don’t think badly of you for that. I just think you’re missing something important, which maybe I don’t articulate well enough for you, or maybe my Christianity gets in the way of my explanation, but I can’t apologise for that.
Actually tigtog has come closer to convincing me that there may, just may, be a way, in the future, of using naturally produced non-viable embryos for research, but how you harvest them is quite an issue.
Anna,
If Facelift’s arguments are “inconsistent” and “arbitrary,” but nonetheless based on his “God’s purpose” then how exactly would you describe your arguments for SCNT?
The best you can say is that SCNT represents the “potential” to save millions of lives. Such could be the stance of any and every pro-lifer including those that oppose SCNT. In fact, your arguments for SCNT must necessarily be arbitrary because you can neither define what is being manipulated and destroyed nor does your “potential” to “find cures for diseases like Parkinsons and Alzheimers” have any basis in reality. The “potential” to save lives simply isn’t and your appeal is to an unreality.
A clump of cells without the ability to feel has no rights. To give a blastula rights is just plain stupid.
silkworm,
Your stance is even more arbitrary than one who asserts that a blastula is a human being at a very early stage in its development because it’s based on nothing more than your feelings of “its” feeling or lack thereof. By your definition a comatose person has “no rights” because it is both a clump of cells and lacks the ability to feel.
Secondly, no one is demanding “rights,” but instead asserting the RIGHT to life.
FaceLift, I am not shifting goal posts at all. My argument has not changed since the post that I wrote up there which started the whole thread.
I don’t believe that Christians have no right to voice their opinions. I do believe that when using those opinions to create, change or influence public policy they should be held up to the same standards as the rest of us. I have blind faith in lots of things, but that faith should be backed up by more than that before it is allowed to affect the rest of the community.
I’m a committed secularist, and this is a secular nation. I am trying to get you to support your stance on those grounds. So far you have not.
Anna,
A “commited secularist” only means that you ommit religious considerations when taking stances on societal issues. What it doesn’t tell us is exactly what considerations you do make when opining on societal issues.
Religious considerations aside, what exactly are your “secular” principles in support of SCNT?
For fuck’s sake thordaddy, read my post. I know it’s long, but there are enough small words in there that you should get the gist.
Anna,
I’ve read the whole thread and you seem to accuse those that oppose SCNT as inconsistent or arbitrary in their opposition. What I can’t figure out is how a “commited secularist” could have a principled stand in favor of SCNT when such a designation only identifies one as that who disregards religious considerations, but says absolutely nothing about the considerations taken. And seeing that you are, in the least, ambigious about what exactly is being manipulated and destroyed in the SCNT process, one can’t help but think that your stand is even more inconsistent and arbitrary than those that oppose it.
So what is the secular principle(s) behind your support of SCNT…? “Potential” to save lives…? Appears as if you should be a pro-lifer?
Dude, I’m not one your anti-life straw-women. I also don’t engage with dumb people who demand I restate my case using only monosyllabic answers.
Go away.
Secular humanist principles: for the common good. If it helps the sick get better, then help them.
Anna,
I’ll take your childish response as an admission that being a “committed secularist” provides nothing substanitive to this debate and really only means you utilize no basis in which to determine a definition of a human being.
Your support for SCNT is based squarely on your inabilty or unwillingness to define a human person and its “potential” to save lives. The latter point is one commonly shared by those that also oppose SCNT. How the former relates to being a secularist is still a mystery?
Hence, your support of SCNT rests solely on remaining ignorant in defining the human being.
If by childish you mean refusing to further paraphrase or simplify the points I have made countless times already, then colour me childish.
You can read, can’t you?
I’ve argued my point, stated my case. If you don’t understand it that’s your problem. Not mine.
I have to say, Anna, that consistently on this thread I have tried to argue from a
‘secular’ perspective, but so far neither you or a couple of others have allowed me that, and have come back with what you percieve as my religious understanding of this subject, including accusing you of being in sin for not choosing to have children, which I find totally ridiculous.
Now you come back and say, ‘…this is a secular nation. I am trying to get you to support your stance on those grounds…’ when all along I’ve been trying to get you to argue without attempting to second guess my motives and answer without raising my beliefs as a stumbling block. Strange.
How do you want me to argue? Perhaps Nabakov’s right and I should fall back on the default position of what God says, but here we have a dilemma because, actually, I don’t think God mentions stem cell research or how we should go about finding cures using stem cells, or which kind of stem cells in the Bible, so maybe we’re attempting to step out unto the water here and find a logical solution to difficult problem without becoming hysterical about the ethical issues involved, or compromising the sanctity of life.
Maybe I’m trying to hear a cogent argument which can define accurately and truly humanely (to use secular language) the state of those 8 cells, or the embryo, or the child, and how, if it is possible, human cells can be used for stem cell research in an acceptable ethical way acceptable to all Christians as well as secularists, so tat we can humanely help those who are suffering, if indeed this is a way to find a cure, which is by no means certain.
I think that humans get their special status from their unique ability to be rational, to think, feel, share and create. Without wanting to get too carried away, I believe that this is what we understand to be the “soul”.
I don’t believe that eight human cells possess these qualities, and so I don’t have objections to research on embryos based on this fact.
I also think that cloned embryos, while behaviourally similar to embryos that are created through the union of sperm and egg, are not the same. They are cells from one person, placed into an empty egg, and I think they should more properly be seen as the property of the person whose DNA it is. That person should be allowed to have those cells become the cure they need.
I think that the arguments about potential are stupid, not just because i don’t think that potential has any meaningful link with morality, but also because they don’t have “potential”. They aren’t in a uterus, there is no intention to place them in one, and left alone they will never become people. Especially if the scary “human-animal hybrid” is created. It won’t ever become a person.
I also think that “potential” is a messy area, and its proponents haven’t come up with much in the way of good reasons for why the potential of an embryo in a test tube is qualitatively different from the potential of a sperm or an egg. Except for “because it is…”
I think that, despite the Intelligent Design view, there is no “reason” or “purpose” for anything in nature. Our marvellous brains are capable of creating meaning in the world, and for finding purposes for our own lives, but that isn’t the same thing. I don’t see how anyone’s concept of life’s meaning can be impacted by how we treat eight cells.
But lastly, I don’t think the burden of proof is on supporters of SCNT to prove anything, because – and I understand I’m repeating myself here – its opponents don’t genuinely believe that we’re researching on people either. They think it’s wierd, they think it sounds dangerous, they think it’s the beginning of a slippery slope… They think it’s a lot of things, but until they can come up with a compelling defence, they should leave the scientists to their work.
Well said Anna.
Anna opines,
I see 2 problems with this “secular” definition. One could assume that the “special status” you speak of in regards to humans is one that protects them from intentional killing? I think it rather obvious that a newborn baby neither rationalizes, thinks (that is detected by others), shares or creates. So your criteria for imparting “special status” is rather blurry in the case of newborns who can only really be said to “feel.”
And seeing that we must now reduce your criteria for “special status” down to mere feeling lest you dehumanize the newborn baby, it is equally scientific (i.e., non-religious) to assert that a fetus also feels. Now the question becomes whether 8 human cells can “feel” so as to accord them “special status.” One thing that can’t be argued is that the capacity to rationalize, think, feel, share and create are within those 8 human cells. It can be no other place if we are to stay consistent with arguing from a secualr position. Yet, I believe you assert the right of abortion which calls into question your criteria for “special status” since a fetus certainly feels. It really is confusing.
So again, outside your argument for the “potential” to save lives by using SCNT “technologies” (arguments that can aslo be used by those opposed to SCNT), what is your secular criteria for withholding “special status” to those 8 human cells? And what exactly is your motivation for supporting SCNT that isn’t any different than those that support the pro-life position?
Do you? What is your evidence support this thought? Are you seriously arguing that a newborn baby has less capacity for these activities than a stem cell or a first trimester foetus? If so, what exactly is it that we develop in those remaining 6 months of gestation?
At the end of the day, you and Anna are simply disagreeing on the line at which you believe a group of cells becomes a human. You seem to be arguing that this line is crossed immediately at conception and she is arguing that it is crossed later. There is nothing “confusing” about this difference of opinion and you are not providing any scientific evidence to support your argument as being any more objectively correct that hers, so why don’t you just agree to disagree rather than continuing to harrass her?
How can an organism without a nervous system “feel anything”? The foetus can’t possibly “feel” anything until it develops a cerebral cortex, even though peripheral spinal reflexes may produce touch responses earlier in gestation.
An 8-cell embryo doesn’t even have a peripheral nervous system, let alone a central cortex, so your attempt at “scientific” equation fails.
Thordaddy said “I think it rather obvious that a newborn baby neither rationalizes, thinks (that is detected by others), shares or creates. ”
What absolute rubbish to suggest a new-born baby doesn’t think. New-born babies can do all sorts of interesting things that show there are complex cognitive processes going on in there – including learning to stick out their tongue in response to an adult sticking out their tongue, recognising their mother’s face and preferring it to other faces (as long as they are not separated from their mother after birth), recognising and preferring stories (or music) they have heard pre-natally to those they haven’t, and they have dreams and nightmares.
They may not rationalise (but neither do most adults – http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20361761-29677,00.html), but they think, and it can be detected by others, I suppose it depends how you define share, but they share a breastfeeding relationship with their mothers, and I would say dreaming involves creating.
Equating a thinking, feeling, creating baby with eight foetal cells? A dubious analogy if you ask me.
I fail to see why there is even an argument being put forward about viable foetuses (irrelevant as embryonic stem cells are not foetuses) or potential for life, when talking about left over, unwanted, embryo (again, not a foetus or a baby).
You are correct tigtog, as the latest study quoted in the JAMA show:
…“foetuses are incapable of feeling pain without the development of consciousness, which is in turn predicated on the creation of connections between the thalamus and the cerebral cortex inside the baby’s brain.
These connections are not usually apparent until the 23rd week of pregnancy and may not begin to be made until the 30th week”
Once the pro lifers have no scientific fact (only emotional rhetoric) in which to base their argument upon, all that is left to them is the, morality issue.
The moral argument is another one that is studiously being avoided here (probably because it is also illogical).
Anna,
‘there is no âreasonâ? or âpurposeâ? for anything in nature
So your hand, what’s it for, if it has no purpose, or your feet, or your mouth, teeth, ears, etc.? Do you make your ears do what your teeth are ‘designed’, ‘purposed’, ‘constructed’, ‘formed’, ‘accidentally randomly evolved’ (for ‘design’ skeptics) to do? No purpose in nature? I don’t think you look at nature closely enough. Almost everything exhibits purpose, and that purpose is common in every kind. I use my teeth for the same basic purposes anyone does. My teeth were in the pattern in the 8 cells long before they were formed. Ho wdo I know? because everyone comes from the 8 cells, and everyone has teeth (although not at birth, a few weeks later – out they pop, one by one, but they were there, the basic ingredients for teeth, forming, oh yes!)
I’m not talking about ‘purposing’, as in considering, or planning. I’m talking about the reason for being. The reason for my teeth being is to chomp food. The reason for those 8 cells is to become a human. No other reason. No other purpose. Unless manipulated by science.
Facelift, using that logic, the purpose of human existence is to reproduce and perpetuate the species.
So a life without children is manipulating our purpose (to use your words). So Catholic priests who remain celebate are manipulating our reason for being.
The purpose of the existence of plants and animals to is reproduce and perpetuate their species. So when we eat them, rather than letting them reproduce, we’re manipulating their reason for being.
For ten thousand years, we’ve been selectively breeding plants and animals, for the deliberate purpose of creating more food/better food. So we’ve been subverting their purpose.
So what if eight foetal cells would usually grow into a human being? (Actually, given that up to 60% of conceptions end in spontaneous abortion, usually before the woman realises she’s pregnant, the word usually in this context is debatable). We manipulate other “natural” stuff in our environment all the time. I know religious types like to think we’re special, but it’s not a logical argument.
FaceLift, I tried, but I really can’t be bothered anymore.
What something does is not the same as what something is for, and just because a thing does something well, doesn’t mean that it must be used for that purpose.
Rebbekka,
Yes! Otherwise, guess what… extinction!
No. It’s called choice. Abstinance doesn’t have to equal manipulation. Others will perpetuate the species for you!
And in nature, by eating the fruit, apple, grape, tomato, etc, and casting the seed, I actually assist the process.
Anyway, you admit to the fact that all things in nature have purpose, that was all I was attempting to establish.
Anna,
But, in a natural sense, what it does will almost always be connected to what it is for, since its action will define its purpose, and be confirmed by offspring, consistently demonstrated through generations, and even different species. Eyes for seeing, nose for smelling, ears for hearing, etc. And no need to sound so condescending. I tried too! Have a nice day!
I didn’t say it must be used for its recognised purpose, but it would have to be manipulated to be used for another.
No, I don’t “admit to the fact that all things in nature have purpose”, did you entirely miss my last sentence “but it’s not a logical argument”???
And my point regarding not having children (which is of course not confined solely to chosing to be abstinent) was that in terms of YOUR argument, “The reason for those 8 cells is to become a human. No other reason. No other purpose. Unless manipulated by science.”, the reason for us to exist is to reproduce – no other purpose unless manipulated by us
Which is exactly what you just claimed is wrong with manipulating embryonic cells to do something other than turn them into a human – thus my conclusion that YOUR ARGUMENT IS ILLOGICAL.
So what would be the purpose of sperm then? or your womb? or ovum, or your breasts? Oh, no purpose, just to look good for the boys, oh, OK, but why? No purpose to the beautiful ultraviolet colours of a flower which needs to be polinated by a bee, or a honeysuckle, or the brilliant architecture of a dandelion seed, or the mating dance of a peacock, or a lyre bird, or the scent of a bitch on heat. No. No purpose to anything reproductive which recreates the species. Nope! Just there, that’s all. Accident. Random. Nothing.
Facelift
I think you’ve fallen a bit too hard for teleology which is oh hey Steve Martin
Facelift, you have provided me with the best entertainment I have had all day.
Your mental contortions in an attempt to justify your beliefs is hilarious. Don’t get me wrong, you are entitled to believe that those 8 cells are the equivalent of a human being, it is the mental contortions that amuse me.
Facelift, what is the purpose of an appendix?
Thanks for the comparison to Ari! And I’m glad you’re at least amused. Better than being cynical.
The appendix comes at the end of a book and helps people locate specific parts of the book. What is the purpose of the pineal gland?
Loren G. Martin thinks that:
8! The Biblical number for new life! Don’t you love it!
Viva the 8 celled human.
“A known fact is that therapeutic cloning destroys the cloned embryo.”
Nope FaceOff. SCNT is a technique that does allow you to reproduce an embyro if yer so inclined. It does not itself automatically lead to producing embyros. Y’know it wouldn’t hurt to actually study up on what you’re talking about.
“I don’t like the destruction involved in IVF.”
So I guess you’re even more opposed to the destruction involved involving actual born and breathing humans? Yet not once ever here have you denounced organised religions who have taken so many many many lives for far more nebulous aims than what you think IVF programs do.
I can just see you 210 years ago crapping on about how Jenner was going aginst God’s will by introducing infected animal tissue into humans. Your sort thought he was crazy and possibly evil back then, and that it made no moral sense, but have you died of smallpox lately? No? I thought not.
Also, why do you need to insist that everything has a purpose? Can you not accept the wonderful and intricately organised miracle of life as it is without insisting there’s some big CEO in the sky who has planned it this way? Or do you just have such a small and frightened soul that you want to believe a big Daddy clockmaker’s in charge who’ll make all the big decisions and judge all your small decisions so that we ultimately don’t have to think for ourselves outside the square?
If everyone thought like you, we’d still be back cowering in damp caves as the gods threw thunderbolts around instead of sitting warm and comfortable in secure pads with clean and running water and harnessing electricity to make this exchange possible.
Besides how do you know that what we’re doing now with our building blocks of life ain’t part of God’s plan anyway? Y’know, making things in his image and all that?
The best Christians I know would never presume to be so arrogant, or to let their heartful beliefs in the potential of human nature be hijacked by earthly hierachies obsessed by controlling reproductive systems.
Always the personal attack!
I didn’t mention the big CEO in the sky yet, Nabakov, which probably means you haven’t read much of what has been said here, because off you go presuming my position without any thought, bright as you are, but cynical to boot. When I talked about purpose you assumed I meant predetermined, as in planned by someone, or prepurposed, designed, and fell into your self-made snare headlong, but I meant ‘purpose’ as in its function, ability to perform as expected when applied, an anticipated outcome that is intended! I said this earlier to Anna!
So there is purpose to all things natural. Even if it was evolution whihc put it all together, life is pretty remarkable and incredibly predictable, don’t you think. That old apple tree just keeps on making apples! Nary one pear from that thar apple tree, y’all!
ABCs of SCNT
I’m glad everyone doesn’t think like me. It demonstrates our diversity and individuality, and our ability to think and discuss and learn new things.
In defence of Christian thought, since you want to argue this way anyway: Christian thinkers brought us along way scientifically, and discovered many things we depend upon, and they did it to prove God, not to deny God. Christian men and women helped us create a more ‘humane’ society, and still do. Many of the aspects of welfare which are in place came from the compassion of Christians.
My sort? Who would that be? You know me that well, eh? My sort does stuff like helping cowering people in caves get over the thunder while your sitting in your nice warm pad, but I can’t mention what my sort does here because you’d even jump on us for saying it, but anyway, I’ll just say this, my sort stands up for 8 cells while you say they’re nothing.
“but I meant ‘purpose’ as in its function, ability to perform as expected when applied, an anticipated outcome that is intended! ”
Intended by whom or what?
“Therapeutic cloning means using cloning to develop stem cells for research. If a cloned egg cell is used, the egg cell grows and develops into an embryo.”
What part of “if” don’t you understand?
“In defence of Christian thought…etc, etc…”
I am nowhere denying that Christian thought does good when properly applied. I am saying that science should not be beholden to theology as it far too often has been in the past.
“My sort does stuff like helping cowering people in caves get over the thunder…”
Why not instead help ‘em get over the thunder and out of the caves by using logic and reason to harness the thunder and do up the caves for the betterment of all?
Y’know, catch a fish and feed someone. Show them how to catch a fish and they can feed ‘emselves. Help ‘em with their business plan and they can start a chain of seafood restaurants that’ll feed hundreds of thousands and provide direct and indirect jobs for thousands more.
Far too many religious sorts seem more concerned with getting people to just accept their lot in life rather than encouraging them to go for more (and this applies not just to those slavishly following Christianity. Islam, Hinduism and Buddahism are also pretty bloody bad in this respect.).
Keep your head down, follow our rules and you’ll get your reward in the afterlife. Thank um…God, the history of the human race is littered with people who did just the opposite. And lot more of them were free thinkers, scientists and entreprenuers than they were kneeling god-bothers first.
“my sort stands up for 8 cells while you say they’re nothing.”
A) I didn’t say they’re nothing (although yes I don’t regard them as a major player in this debate. And aren’t you bearing false witness here?); and
B) why not stand up instead for the future of actual humans instead of worrying over how many meiotic globs can boogie on a pin head.
And you still can’t prove your maker is against us following his example. And don’t starting quoting Jeremiah 1:5 back ‘cos it’ll just confirm you’ve only read the Bible as you would the manual for your new car.
Nabaokov wrote: Far too many religious sorts seem more concerned with getting people to just accept their lot in life rather than encouraging them to go for more (and this applies not just to those slavishly following Christianity. Islam, Hinduism and Buddahism are also pretty bloody bad in this respect.).
Keep your head down, follow our rules and you’ll get your reward in the afterlife.
Actually I’d fundamentally disagree with this. Much as I disagree with the supposedly religious viewpoint being expressed on this thread that eight embryonic cells are the moral equivalent of a human life, I do not think that’s what religion or religious sorts do. I think beliefs of that sort encourage people to look for more meaning in life, rather than slavishly consume more and try to “get ahead” (ahead of what?) – or as you put it “encouraging them to go for more” – more WHAT?
Do you think having more material wealth increases happiness? Should religious leaders of whatever persuasion be trying to influence their followers to be good little consumers?
And I don’t think you understand Buddhism too well if you think that’s what they’re doing, either. Buddhism is about leading an ethical life without being attached to the results of your ethical actions – i.e. if you’re being good to try to get a reward in the afterlife, that doesn’t really count as good.
Nabakov, you have your head stuck in the clouds of your own delusional version of what Christians do! Pity, we could use a bright mind like yours, with those marvellous ideas for helping people up.
You really don’t know what we do, do you? Meanwhile churches like Hillsong which attempt to create aspirational believers are hammered for their ‘prosperity’ teaching!!!!
Look, if you want an outlet for your ideas, please send an email, and I’ll let you know of several good churches and Christian organisations near you which could really use your entrepreneurial skills and brilliant ideas for lifting people up. Really! God made you for this purpose, that’s why it’s on your mind.
Perhaps you should research the missions projects undertaken by churches worldwide to build infrastructure and create care-based centres for the struggling and displaced. I think you’d make tremendous project manager for some of the things we’d like to put in place.
Anyway, what’s this got to do with the thread? I guess you just had to bring me onto the subject of God’s greatness!
I got the impression that Nabs was talking about aiming for more in terms of knowledge and discovery, not material wealth.
It’s not about personal material wealth creation, Anna, but more equitable wealth distribution and stronger welfare presence which encourages people out of poverty into prosperity, and creates an energetic, vibrant, wealth-sharing economy, which, as a socialist, you should be more than happy with.
And, ‘knowledge and discovery’ according to Nabakov then:
I entirely agree. And it is happening. We left the caves centuries ago.
Nabakov:
I do! All the time. Just about 24/7. As do others of ‘my sort’. I just think the microscopic up-and-comings need a hand up too!
He’s not against us following his example. He just doesn’t have to destroy life in order to create life. There are other ways of working with stem cells – adult stem cells for instance, which I have already discussed. You can’t prove your point that God considers embryos to be non-human and subject to destruction at our whim for the sake of experimentation. You tell me where God says that’s OK, now that you’ve swung this thread around to a Christian perspective.
FaceLift, I was talking to Rebekkah.
I like you, and I want you to keep commenting here, but I really don’t think you’re understanding what I’m arguing here (not because I think you’re stupid, but because you don’t really want to), so I really am not interested in going round in circles.
You’ve decided what you believe, which is great for you, but you aren’t actually addressing any of the objections people have raised to your arguments.
OK! Might help if you put the name of the person you’re addressing, so misunderstandings don’t occur. I think Nabs deliberately ignores what I’m saying so he can have a go at a ‘godbotherer’. It’s a shame, he’s got so much to offer, if he could only drop the antireligious tone, and I for one would like to hear his ideas, but it’s hard to scrape through the bias and jeering. I like you too.
Anna, I’m far from convinced he was talking about knowledge and discovery with those particular words -“Far too many religious sorts seem more concerned with getting people to just accept their lot in life rather than encouraging them to go for more”
Accepting their lot in life rather than going for more seems to me specifically tied to prosperity, i.e. not accepting that you’re poor because God ordained it that way, but rather trying to “better” yourself. A sort of God-helps-those-who-help-themselves philosophy.
Of course I may have misinterpreted, and Nabakov can correct me if I have. And whichever way you read it I would still say Nabs has fundamentally misunderstood Buddhism.
I was talking to you, Anna, but I forgot to add your name wwhen I said you should add the name of the person youir addressing!
Actually Rebekka, I’m kind of hoping that you have correctly interpreted Nabakov’s comments. Material security seems very sensible idea to me.
Any philosophy that holds out to its adherents the prospect of a better life either later or next time, just ain’t worth the candle.
If you kids are drinking dirty water and you can’t get afford their measles vaccination, the last thing you need to hear is from some puffed up cleric that to the meek comes the earth etc.
And Buddhism does not escape from this charge either. Selling delusions about illusions is not the best we should offer some of the poorest people in the world.
I think wbb is right. Although we should wait and hear what Nabs has to say, I got the impression that he was talking about knowledge and discovery that helps us improve our lot in life in all ways, including material.
The argument about stem cells is about material benefits too, in a way – it’s about finding cures that we don’t have now so that we can improve people’s lives. This sort of advancement would never happen if everyone accepted the general religious view of God knows best, he’ll look after us, be humble, be grateful…
Human advancement doesn’t come from people being happy and satisfied with their lot in life.
I wasn’t suggesting that people should put up with their kids dying of measles and drinking dirty water. But the idea that Buddhism tells people that things will be better in an afterlife/next life if they behave themselves in this life is a gross misinterpretation of Buddhism, which is about leading an ethical life without attachment to the consequences. Doing good in this life because you wish to be in a better position in the next is acting because you are attached to the consequences.
The eightfold noble path is sets out how a Buddhist ought to strive to live, karuna – compassion or charity – is a vital part of the ethical conduct part of the eightfold noble path. I don’t think you’d find too many Buddhists who would be suggesting that children ought to be left to die of measles or drink dirty water. The focus in Buddhism is living an ethical life in this life.
It is not about selling “delusions about illusions”. If you’re going to comment on religions you should have at least a basic understanding of what they teach.
Rebecca, I agree there are many different Buddhisms. But the ones with millions of adherents in Asia place the cyle of reincarnation squarely in the middle of their beliefs.
Reincarnation is an often cruel doctrine that can view someone’s straitened circumstances as the fault of the miscreant’s previous poor form. Tibet had a particularly feudal social system and all buttressed by the tenets of Buddhism.
Of course there’s stuff to like in Buddhism as there obviously is, too, in Christianity or other Pre-enlightenment philosophies. But the lived experience, rather than contents of the official user’s manual, and the uses these instutionalised belief systems are put to, in controlling the distribution of material benefits is to me the best judge of their ultimate worth.
You mean like subdue the earth and replenish it?
Reincarnation is central to all forms of Buddhism, but you misunderstand it. There is no enduring self in Buddhism; there is nothing to be reborn. There is no “miscreant”, as you put it.
It is just not as simple as “he did X in a past life, therefore he is suffering in this life”; no matter which school of Buddhism one belongs to, the lack of belief in an enduring self is a central tenet of Buddhism.
Feudalism in Tibet began in the 13th century CE – Buddhism was introduced some 600 years earlier and was well established long before that, so I don’t think you can blame Buddhism for Tibetan feudalism – oppressive regimes everywhere use existing belief systems to buttress their rule, but we were talking about what “religious sorts” tell their followers, not what oppressive regimes do to prop themselves up.
OK Rebecca, you’re Buddhism gets a leave pass – trouble is you are talking about an idealised Buddhism that exists mainly inside of Alan Watts books.