And Obama, as you well know, panders. He tells pro-lifers he’s going to reduce the number of abortions and he tells pro-abortionists that he’s not going to get rid of abortion. So I’m not as thrilled as the choice of Dr. Collins as others are.
This is moral relativism in all its splendor.
Probably so.
In Buddhist analysis a human being has five parts (skandhas): form, feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness. A blastocyst has some form, but it is not yet a human form, no feelings, no perceptions, some impulses from its previous life and some consciousness from its previous life though that consciousness is pretty much dormant. A blastocyst is not yet a full human being in Buddhist analysis. It is still a living being and should only be injured for sufficient reason. The person from the homeless shelter has all five parts and is a full human being and hence should be treated differently. The rule of thumb about size also applies in this case.
No. By the time the embryo is a few months old all five parts of a human being are present and it can be correctly said to be human.
Can one be only partly human? What is the other part?
Out of curiosity, do you support first trimester abortion?
You need to remember that Buddhists see much less difference between animals and humans than Christians do. You may have, or may in future, be an elephant. That elephant may have, or may in future, be a human.
SCNT creates a new living being. That living being does not yet have all the five parts that a human being has - see my post #22 for a short description.
Here’s a tip for the future: “moral relativism” doesn’t mean “things I disagree with.”
“Form, feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness” - all things that are easy to detect in with a degree of certainty in any creature, eh? When I, an adult human being, am asleep, the only of those 5 parts I evince is “form”, all others are dormant,… just as in the blastocyst? As a scientist, I just don’t see how that blastocyst is any “less human” than I, and the same with regard to sleeping homosapiens, mentally and physically handicapped homosapiens, young or old, etc, etc.
That’s a fascinating question as I think it underlines (and appeals to) a natural inclination that we all have, which is to consider developmental maturity as part of our view of “life”.
“a degree” covers a pretty wide range, so yes.
Do you dream? Do you have feelings as you dream? When you are asleep can you be woken by a loud noise? Can you be conscious of yourself as you are dreaming?
I was asked a moral, not a scientific question so I am answering from a moral/religious point of view.
Many Buddhists would probably kill neither. A few might kill themselves to feed the other humans as with the Bodhisattva and the Tigress. Trying to kill the elephant with your bare hands might well give the same result, just a bit more squished.
In a discussion on morality I will tend to use religion more than science.
Yeah really. One of the most impressive things about the Catholic Church is that we’re basically the only ones in the world that can claim Truth and not subscribe to moral relativism.
You are not the first person to notice my sig. The original source is Mark Siderits, “Thinking on Empty: Madhyamika Anti-Realism and Canons of Rationality” in S Biderman and B.A. Schaufstein, eds, Rationality In Question (1989). Dordrecht: Brill. I saw it quoted in Nagarjuna and the Limits of Thought. The Siderits quote is at the end of section four of the article:
There are a great many people that claim Truth and not all of them are Catholic.
I’m pretty sure Francis Collins is against abortion.
Actually there’s a topic about self-defense in this forum. But the moral justification for it is the so-called “double effect” of an action, not the changing circumstances.
Can circumstances change such that the “double effect” no longer exists? If so, then justification is indeed dependent on changing circumstances.
A reasonable question - the answer is No. The action can change (part of action being motivation of the actors, hence the difference between murder and man-slaughter in the American justice system), hence action-dependent and not circumstance-dependent. Understand?