(a) Do you believe that a newborn baby is fully human? Yes/NoJames Randi declared, with PZ’s approval:
(b) Do you believe that a newborn baby is a person? Yes/No
(c) Do you believe that a newborn baby has a right to life? Yes/No
(d) Do you believe that every human person has a duty towards newborn babies, to refrain from killing them? Yes/No
(e) Do you believe that killing a newborn baby is just as wrong as killing an adult? Yes/No
”I will not respond to such a heavily biased set of questions, and I could not do so without providing extensive explanations for my answers. The "quiz" is short, but the answers would be far too involved and lengthy.”So the answer is apparently not “yes”. It is "no, because I have my reasons".
PZ responds thus:
”The dehumanizing aspect of the so-called pro-life position is the flattening of the complexity of humanity and personhood, and its reduction to nothing more than possession of a specific set of chromosomes. To regard a freshly fertilized zygote as the full legal, ethical, and social equivalent of a young woman diminishes the woman; it does not elevate the zygote, which is still just a single cell. It is that fundamentalist Christian view, shallow and ignorant as it is, that is ultimately the corrosive agent in our culture, since it demands unthinking obedience to a rigid dogma rather than an honest evaluation of reality, and it harms the conscious agents who actually create and maintain our culture.The question was not about seeds, it was about saplings. And even then the eugenists cannot acknowledge anything other than their right to assign value to humans at every point along the natural human journey (this particular point being a newborn baby).
My position is one that demands we respect an organism for what it is, not what it isn't. It recognizes that an epithelial cell shed from the lining of my colon is less valuable than a gamete is less valuable than a zygote is less valuable than a fetus is less valuable than a newborn. It does not imply that one must still adhere to the black & and white thinking of the IDiots and draw a line, and say that on one side of the line, everything is garbage that can be destroyed without concern, and on the other side, everything is sacred and must be preserved at all costs.
A seed is not a tree. That doesn't imply that I'm on a crusade to destroy seeds.”
"To regard a freshly fertilized zygote as the full legal, ethical, and social equivalent of a young woman diminishes the woman".This is only true in the judgmental world of PZ. And what about older women? Or just-born women (that's what the questions addressed). Or Judeo-Christian Women? I doubt that many people, even Atheo-Leftists, want PZ to assign them their value as human / not human / part human, and whether they are disposable under his judgment of their personhood. I suspect Judeo-Christians in particular would not fare well in the rankings. After all, PZ eschews tolerance of such inferior beings.
An interesting thing about Atheo-Leftists. They shriek about inequality and demand egalitarian reduction so that everyone (the masses anyway) are equal. Then they declare that they can determine the changing value of every human as that human proceeds through the human life cycle. There is no rationality whatsoever in the progressive struggle for power. Nor is there any morality that can't be changed in a flash, depending on the need, for example the concept of what constitutes "dehumanizing", and "flattening the complexity" of what is allowed to be called personhood.
I was recently given a single apple seed by an acquaintance. He said,
“it is easy to determine how many seeds are in an apple. It is impossible to determine how many apples are in a seed.”Or, one might add, how many future trees, or how much nourishment they might provide.
3 comments:
So when an Atheist sees the words "newborn baby", it gets filtered to mean "fetus"?
And then they accuse Christians of not seeing the gradation between a zygote and an adult?
A fetus is able to survive outside the womb only after a certain stage (around 5 months). So, how can it be a "person" - with rights and all - when it needs the womb to live, and has no consciousness whatsoever outside of it? That "breath of air" makes all the difference.
Pro-choice advocates are not saying that abortion is good per se, but that it is the lesser evil. When it's determined that more harm will come to the mother by having the child, that's when she has the abortion...although, I will agree this is abused and contraceptives should be encouraged more. Most of all, for people to be more choosy when it comes to their sexual partners.
Anonymous,
Please choose a moniker.
Your personal attribution of the value of human life displays your willingness to determine who lives and who dies. You have no moral authority to do so.
If dependency is your critierion for non-human, then a great many people qualify. The prenatal months are common to each and every human, and are a legitimate part of the human life cycle.
"Pro-choice advocates are not saying that abortion is good per se, but that it is the lesser evil."
Bull. The 50,000,000 abortions were not done to "save the mother", they were done because the baby was an inconvenience, and it is now culturally acceptable to kill the human which is an inconvenience. The lesser evil would be responsibility and not to condone or encourage irresponsibility.
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