There is a weak argument here, but it is not mine. I am not flitting from subject to subject trying to find something, anyting that will stick.
You appear to be exactly what you accuse Armchair General of:
There you have it. You want your postion and will disregard any amount of science that you can't argue against in order to have it. You have described yourself perfectly to me. A stone wall that will ignore truth in any form to maintain your postion of faith.
What you call "flitting" is what I call evaluating new data. Every debater on this thread brings in something different. Are you saying it should be disregarded? You appear to have a set position from which you do not deviate - in fact, you conducted this same argument on another forum.
I am sticking to the same general subject: what is and when is something a living human being and what makes it so special? Though I admit - I got sidetracked on tangents such as other animals.
Loss of a pattern of brain activity. The key word here is loss. Tell me, when do the unborns lose any pattern of brain activity. Again, you are trying to equate the effects of serious injury or disease to a perfectly healthy human being.
IS it the key word or is "brain activity" the key word with loss or presence defining human life? Your second sentance - again, comes down to the following argument: Is a blastocyst a "perfectly healthy
human being"? Scientists themselves have admitted they don't quite know when someting becomes a "human being" as opposed to simply a species that is little different then a thousand other species.
Ansence is not the same as loss. You are trying to equate the absence of brain activity which the new human being has not yet matured enough to have to the loss of a thing which a more mature human being has and loses if diseased or injured badly enough.
Absence does not have to be the same as loss, if
presence defines a living human being. You could extend the same logic to defining an egg or a sperm as a human being - so it lacks half of the necessary chromosomes - an absence, not a loss and eventually, it may have them.
Medical science is perfecly clear that when your brain is no longer active, you are dead but I don't find any such caveat when the human being in question has not yet matured enought to have brain activity. Once again, you are trying to equate perfectly healthy humans to diseased and dying humans.
Why does there have to be a caveat in defining a human life?
If you have a good argument, go ahead and present it. We are covering ground that you already lost earlier in the thread. It is clear that you will reject all credible science in favor of your articles of faith, and only care to hear the untestable ideas of your high priests, the necromancers and gypsys.
Credible science....here is the crux. You seem to ignore credible science that is in oppositon to your own views.
Medical science is not at all "perfectly clear" on when "personhood" begins - that is what seperates us from other species and makes human beings special. It is what differentiates homosapiens the species from homosapiens the human being.
Clifford Grobstein asserted that from a biologist's perspective, personhood was not achieved at conception and that it was beyond the realm of biology to determine the point at which it is established. A "person" is in part biological, and in part something else and it is that something else that makes it worth protecting - not the fact that is has the correct biology. Being a "person" entails subjective awareness, sense of self, personality, consciencenous - all of which are present in a newborn and even a later term fetus - but not in a blastocyst.
Do you have any credible science that determines that a blastocyst is a person?
