happyjack27 wrote:
we are not talking about fetuses.
Look, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here, and assume that you agree that it would be wrong to murder an unborn child in order to perform medical research on it.
finally! thank you.
That being said, my entire point was, in order to perform embryonic stem cell research, you must destroy a fertilized egg. Researchers have not found any way around that.
If that fertilized egg is outside the womb, then yes, that child is in suspended development,
no, it is not a child. you keep getting that confused.
and if they switched off the power, that baby would die.
again, it is not a baby. it is no more a baby than a single nerve cell in my neck is a baby. in fact, it is more primordial than the nerve cells in my neck.
That doesn't mean that we should leave that child in suspended development forever,
again, it is not a child
nor should we murder it in order to extract its stem cells.
there is nothing to murder. there is nothing to extract. there is only stem cells. stem cells and nothing else. what part of "undifferentiated" do you not understand?
I'll wait patiently, while I move on with my life because it'll take you a very very very long time to find your facts.
the question is not whether the facts posted on it are correct. the question is whether they are complete.
I'm just saying, show me your facts that show the score even slightly less lopsided. Like I said, as of 2007 (that's a long time ago considering the recent advances in medical research) the score was 72 to 0 in favor of adult stem cells. It's probably way more lopsided right now.
that's not including, for instance, that research was banned by the bush administration from the moment we had the technology to do it. so it's a bit like punching someone in the face and then laughing at them for having a black eye. and in any case given that that's from 2007, that one little fact is sufficient by itself. like i said, completeness.
mdeminico wrote:
Yeah because heaven forbid in this country we have a respect for another ****ing human being.
How about we take you, your spouse, your mother/father, and your kids, chop them all up against their will, and do medical research with them, just because someone somewhere claims something good will benefit from it. Only just like the other liberal experiments, nothing of value comes from it, ever. ***hat
I wonder why they didn't do all of these experiments on animal embryos stem cell lines that they are demanding we finance on human embryo research?
Surely if this research was so important we could have used animal studies to pioneer the way? Why MUST it be human till at least the point some beneficial thing had been discovered on animals?
good question. my guess is the answer is quite simple: we don't provide the kind of medical care for animals that we do for humans. so for instance when an animal has a miscarriage or something, well... we don't exactly collect a sample. and i don't think impregnating animals just to.... well i don't think that would be considered all that humane.
You mean as a practical matter it isn't feasible. That may be so, but I suspect that it had more to do with it being expedient for people of certain political persuasion to pursue it for reasons other than science.
God only knows why bankrupt California felt it was important to finance embryonic stem cell research just to repudiate George Bush.
I assure you that if someone suggested doing these experiments only on Black embryos, there would be a huge hue and cry from supporters of such research against it, and all their current arguments about it not being a human being would fall on deaf political ears.
Such is the nature of the childish people who rule us today.
Religion is the sum total of past knowledge about human behavior simplified into a mythology.
It is a compressed human being with it's own unique DNA. It is nothing else.
by that logic every cell in my body is a compressed human being with it's own unique DNA. every possible permutation of combinations between any two human genomes, and possible mutations of that is a compressed human being with its own unique human being. (and let me tell you thats a LOT of people!) the buried corpses of our great grandfathers contain millions of compressed human beings with their own unique DNA. does that make it a crime to donate their organs to _living_ human beings who would die without them?
Diogenes wrote:
I wonder why they didn't do all of these experiments on animal embryos stem cell lines that they are demanding we finance on human embryo research?
Surely if this research was so important we could have used animal studies to pioneer the way? Why MUST it be human till at least the point some beneficial thing had been discovered on animals?
good question. my guess is the answer is quite simple: we don't provide the kind of medical care for animals that we do for humans. so for instance when an animal has a miscarriage or something, well... we don't exactly collect a sample. and i don't think impregnating animals just to.... well i don't think that would be considered all that humane.
You mean as a practical matter it isn't feasible...
actually i was operating off of a faulty premise. we DO use animal embryonic stem cells (e.g. rats) for research and many beneficial things HAVE been discovered on them. in fact, i believe the way you suggest is the way it's always done.
happyjack27 wrote:
on the matter of antidisestablishmentarism, the purpose and role of a government is wholly secular. there is not and never will be any practical utility for it to excercise any role or make any decisions whatsoever concerning religion or the beliefs or ideas thereof. all of its considerations, all of its roles, all of its functions, are wholly practical.
the moment its decisions, actions, or what have you become religious in any way, it becomes an accretion of social power directed by a minority with the purpose of exercising authority arbitrarily over a people without their consent or regard for it. in a word, it becomes tyrannical. one of the primary purposes of a government by the people is to protect against _precisely_ this. and for very, VERY good reasons, which should be obvious. if the reasons are not obvious to anyone, well they need only take a candid look at history. history leaves no doubt on this matter.
so to say it plays no role in government decisions is a monumental understandment. it is imperative to the security and well being of the populace that it never does.
Strange... I thought i'd seen some stuff you wrote that wasn't idiocy.
great argument. you've made a lot of valid points there. i'll get back after researching that and maybe i'll come back with some deeper sublteties. but i might just come back convinced.
I recanted. See original message.
The argument you put forth may be new and insightful to you, but to me it is old and trite. The refutation of it would take more words than you used, and it is not worth undertaking lightly. Anyway, you seemed to have grasped my perception of the role of religion (Specifically a Beneficial religion) in society. For more perspective on what I would have written about had I offered a series of valid points, check out these arguments.
TDPerk wrote:. . .the moment its decisions, actions, or what have you become religious in any way, it becomes an accretion of social power directed by a minority with the purpose of exercising authority arbitrarily over a people without their consent or regard for it. in a word, it becomes tyrannical. one of the primary purposes of a government by the people is to protect against _precisely_ this. and for very, VERY good reasons, which should be obvious. if the reasons are not obvious to anyone, well they need only take a candid look at history. history leaves no doubt on this matter.
so to say it plays no role in government decisions is a monumental understandment. it is imperative to the security and well being of the populace that it never does.
Sorry but this betrays a fundamental lack of understanding in both history, and in political philosophy. It's enlightening for instance, to note Rousseau's Social Contract did not mandate a separation between church and state and he certainly believed we need the positive influences of religion in order to govern ourselves well, nor did France have such separation until 1905. Are you seriously going to maintain that all of France lived in tyranny until 1905? Likewise here in the States, the concept of separation has grown very slowly. Hence the public prayers for centuries in congress. Fact is, without the positive historic influences of religion in western civilization, we would arguably still have slavery and the inequality of the sexes you find in the unsecularized nations of the Middle East.
I certainly agree with the notion of secularization, but lack thereof most certainly does NOT necessarily degenerate into the kinds of monstrosity you're maintaining, and for someone who waved the magic want of "history doth say", you really ought to know your history better.
Last edited by GIThruster on Mon Dec 20, 2010 8:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis
happyjack27 wrote:wow. diogenes, i am done. until you start making rational arguments (for instance, comparing cell development with file compression?!?! that analogy is wrong in so many ways.) -- which frankly i'm not sure you're capable of (equating abortion to slavery?!?!) -- i see no point in any of this.
Really? Seems pretty obvious to me. I'm seeing Scientists constantly writing how this series of genes code for that series of proteins, and how the DNA contains entire sets of on/off switches governing gene expression.
A Human being is a computer program written in quadrinary molecular interactions with a complex/composite Fractal algorithm overview.
The Value of a human being is not based on the few dollars worth of chemicals of which our bodies are made. In other words, it's not worth an equal weight and volume of animal flesh. The Value of a human being is based entirely on the pattern (or code) that it employees to manipulate the matter into the form and function of a sapient entity.
The essence of a human is that pattern which forms, not that which it is formed from.
TDPerk wrote:. . .the moment its decisions, actions, or what have you become religious in any way, it becomes an accretion of social power directed by a minority with the purpose of exercising authority arbitrarily over a people without their consent or regard for it. in a word, it becomes tyrannical. one of the primary purposes of a government by the people is to protect against _precisely_ this. and for very, VERY good reasons, which should be obvious. if the reasons are not obvious to anyone, well they need only take a candid look at history. history leaves no doubt on this matter.
so to say it plays no role in government decisions is a monumental understandment. it is imperative to the security and well being of the populace that it never does.
Sorry but this betrays a fundamental lack of understanding in both history, and in political philosophy. It's enlightening for instance, to note Rousseau's Social Contract did not mandate a separation between church and state, nor did France have one until 1905. Are you seriously going to maintain that all of France lived in tyranny until 1905?
I certainly agree with the notion of secularization, but lack thereof most certainly does NOT necessarily degenerate into the kinds of monstrosity you're maintaining, and for someone who waved the magic want of "history doth say", you really ought to know your history better.
i did not say that the lack of an explicit contract separating church and state neccessarily leads to despotism. i just said that in the role that a governement is supposed to play, religion simply has no practical value. and whats more, once it finds a place where it _seems_ to have practical value, well then it behooves one to seriously think about whether it has overstepped its authority; whether the actions its taking are absolutely neccessary. (and bear in mind the old saying that the road to tyranny is _paved_ with "neccessity".) and esp. given the social mentality of an organized religion, well it's a very slippery slope, and one best avoided. i admit i may have used some hyperbole for rhetorical purposes. but the point is pretty solid.
This was EXACTLY my point in starting this thread!
A lot of people believed that the same intellectual types that have been pushing abortion since Margaret Sanger were also pushing embryonic stem cell research because it justified the use of embryonic tissue, and therefore allowed them to rationalize their own opinions about the grisly business of removing such embryos from their mothers. They would point to the benefits of such research to justify their support for it.
Now that they have precious little benefits to point at, their arguments are showing signs of fraying around the edges. The fact that their arguments don't hold water is no barrier to them believing what they wish, they only hope that the "apathetic mushy middle" won't notice the complete failure of another great liberal theory.
Now it might happen that Embryonic stem cell research may eventually show some benefit, but so far, it hasn't given very much bang for the buck.
No, you obviously don't understand. A fertilized egg (or "fetus" as you call it) is a complete human being at the earliest stage of development, wholly unique from any other human being that has ever existed
.
Yes, but at the non differentiated stage, you can split that pile of cells into multiple piles of cells that will then all develop into not so unique human beings. So what does that say about our pile of cells there?
Also, per definition a human being requires certain aspects that a pile of cells does not fullfill. The pile of cells offers the genetic makeup to turn into a human being, but theoretically you could probably do this with a couple of unfirtilized eggs as well (in the lab). Since unfertilized eggs are according to you not human, what would the outcome be then?
Also, this pile of cells by itself will not turn into a human being unless provided with the right environment (a womb, or maybe in the future an artificial womb even).
So the pile of cells by itself wont turn into a human being.
happyjack27 wrote:wow. diogenes, i am done. until you start making rational arguments (for instance, comparing cell development with file compression?!?! that analogy is wrong in so many ways.) -- which frankly i'm not sure you're capable of (equating abortion to slavery?!?!) -- i see no point in any of this.
Really? Seems pretty obvious to me. I'm seeing Scientists constantly writing how this series of genes code for that series of proteins, and how the DNA contains entire sets of on/off switches governing gene expression.
A Human being is a computer program written in quadrinary molecular interactions with a complex/composite Fractal algorithm overview.
no no no. there is much in the analogy that is false. not the elast of which is overemphasis on dna and likewise underemphasis on the environment and entropic processes. life, far from being digital is strongly nonlinear. and contrary to popular belief, not as self-contained as we would like to believe. certainly not auto-pietic. it's essentially a dissipative structure. also the information theoretic arguments of dna as compression are wholly misguided. most of the information, on a bit-per-bit bases, does not come from the quarternary coding of dna. but ratehr the chmicals present, the structure of intermolecular forces, the stored energy in the glucose, etc. (ultimately from the sun). very little of it is actually from the dna. (try putting the dna in a cup of water and see what happens) the dna only encodes a few macroscopic growth and form parameters for the surrounding molecules. and of that it is quite far from compressed. 99% of it is junk. and the remaining 1% is highly redundant.
etc. etc.
Last edited by happyjack27 on Mon Dec 20, 2010 8:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Diogenes wrote:Religion is a brilliantly conceived tool for getting people to behave in such a way as to benefit the survival chances of a community without going through the unfeasible task of explaining to each and every one of them why they should behave counter to their whims and instincts.
Not to turn this into a debate with you, because we pretty much agree on most things, just food for thought:
Perhaps, just perhaps, Religion was created by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God who created us and knows the inner workings of our minds and bodies better than we ever could dream to understand them, and who sets those rules for us so that we could have the best possible life.
Take for instance the rule to marry but one woman, not have sex before marriage, and only have sex with that one person, your wife. Modern science has done studies and finally realized that this is a good idea, that there's legitimate hormones that are released that generate a bonding between two people when they're, well, in the act. If that bonding is applied to another person, and they separate, it is like taking off a band-aid and sticking it somewhere else, it hurts and it's not as sticky as it used to be, reducing the effectiveness of the bond between those two people, and often times (not always) resulting in rocky relationships and/or divorce.
The amount of collaboration and communication tools we have in existence today, we can look at trends and data and see that sleeping around isn't good. The level of collaboration needed to make such a hard-and-fast rule in a society 5000 years ago didn't exist.
Much of what occurs often appears to be the work of a "Hidden Hand."
Adam Smith wrote of a hidden hand in economics, I have long insisted that there is a similar hidden hand in socialomics. Bad things happen to people who behave foolishly.
This perception is what puts the teeth in religion. People see bad things happen to bad people and believe that super natural forces are at work. Things do not always work out this way, but people encourage the narrative to reinforce the naturally occurring instances into a belief system.
Last edited by Diogenes on Mon Dec 20, 2010 8:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
happyjack27 wrote:i did not say that the lack of an explicit contract separating church and state neccessarily leads to despotism. i just said that in the role that a governement is supposed to play, religion simply has no practical value. and whats more, once it finds a place where it _seems_ to have practical value, well then it behooves one to seriously think about whether it has overstepped its authority; whether the actions its taking are absolutely neccessary. (and bear in mind the old saying that the road to tyranny is _paved_ with "neccessity".) and esp. given the social mentality of an organized religion, well it's a very slippery slope, and one best avoided. i admit i may have used some hyperbole for rhetorical purposes. but the point is pretty solid.
I think then we're in essential agreement. I would point out however, that it really is impossible to remove all influence of religion from how we govern ourselves. It may in fact be that religious understanding guides choices about human stem cell research, but this is not a bad thing. It is from religion, that our cultures participants in general form their beliefs about the sanctity of human life, and decisions about cutting up embryos are based upon this understanding. Government does not inform us as to values. Religion does. Whatever a person's religion, if they hold the value of the sanctity of human life, they have a right to express this value with their vote. It's thus just as wrong to say "religion has no part" as it is to say "religion will decide". What decides is hopefully, the corporate will of the people.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis
Diogenes wrote:
The Value of a human being is not based on the few dollars worth of chemicals of which our bodies are made. In other words, it's not worth an equal weight and volume of animal flesh. The Value of a human being is based entirely on the pattern (or code) that it employees to manipulate the matter into the form and function of a sapient entity.
The essence of a human is that pattern which forms, not that which it is formed from.
you're arguing genotype is ontologically prior to phenotype. then like i said donating organs should be a crime, and we should dig up our ancestors to preserve their born marrow. all sorts of ridiculous conclusions follow directly from that assertion.