Raging Discussion About Life

Science can explain the nature of souls just fine: they're imaginary.

At no point does anything 'become alive' during fertilizations or in the womb - the reproductive process requires living cells be present at fertilization.

The only questions is whether, when, and how violently we should legally subjugate woman once they've become host to developing organisms.

By developing organisms you mean humans. You know, you're taking the humanity out of people, right? That's what Nazis did to Jews. You don't want to be a Nazi, do you?

Good luck with this one. So many people believe life starts at conception, but in reality conception can start under a microscope, and cells can live on forever with out further development until placed in a host, or placed in perfect conditions to develop, or remain frozen in time.... The reality of weather or not a fertilized egg is the property of its host , or life starts at conception is ridiculous. I for one don't believe life starts at conception. If it did millions of laboratory embryos would be placed in incubation because of Christian beliefs. If you can create a stem cell from bone marrow, then divide it into a living embryo is it alive? Or a clone?

Belief, specifically in things that are counter-factual, is what's at issue here.

The entire reason IVF is such a huge issue in this election is precisely because the process destroys so many embryos to successfully implant, and fundamentalists want to legally impose their beliefs about the sanctity of developing organisms on the rest of us.

Biologically speaking though, gene combination happens at conception, and the ingredients for that process already have to be living at the point of fertilization, and there's no evidence of anything resembling a soul.

I don't oppose IVF and neither does Trump. Trump has supported it consistently. And actually he's a lot more moderate on abortion than it would appear. He just wants it left up to the states. I think this is incorrect and it should be outlawed everywhere as murder is but that's just me. As for embryos in labs, I appreciate the scientific advances those produce but it's almost akin to animal torture. Can I really get behind animal torture? Of course not! I don't care if it makes a better shampoo.

You and he may say you support it - but an unintended consequence of getting his theocratic appointees on the high court is that access to it is now prohibited in many places and at risk in others because it kills several orders of magnitude more embryonic-stage organisms than abortion.

Leaving it up to the states didn't work for slavery, why would it work for reproductive healthcare in the modern era?

B/C the constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion nor does it guarantee the right to privacy nor does it have passages that add up to the right to privacy. All this is casuistry from the left to justify the Roe vs. Wade decision. And I said elsewhere on this thread abortion should be outlawed entirely. As for IVF it may be a "necessary evil" like animal torture. I can't fully get behind it but apparently animal torture leads to better shampoo so... *shrugs*

Why should abortion be outlawed entirely, but IVF allowed when IVF destroys far more living, developing human beings than abortion?

What makes one a necessary evil, while the other is not?

Why is the one you consider unnecessary also the one that requires the law strip women of bodily autonomy and the right to choose whether to give birth?

Oh know you beginning to sound like me from a previous rant with whoever Magnuson is .... Glad I'm not the only person alive that can agree and follow you. .... Upvotes... Props.

Because people should be doing their best to create more people.

So it's not about the murder, and has always been about legally forcing pregnant women to produce offspring.

At least you admit it.

I'm for raising the fertility rate. We need more humans, especially in the West. And we shouldn't be importing people from the third world to replace us.

I'm not promoting IVF. I just told you it could very well be wrong. To be honest, you're kind of convincing me it is. I didn't really know much about it before this more in-depth conversation with you. Thanks for helping me clarify.

Listen to you. You're arguing for a woman's right to murder her baby in utero. That's a scumbag position. I might as well respond to you by saying that because people die murder is okay. That's not true. People do die, yes. They die every single day. But that doesn't make murder right. It's not complicated.

It isn't murder - you don't believe it's murder because you're completely fine with destroying dozens of embryos for every one that implants..

Either that or you're actually ok with murder, only as long as it's dozens of IVF murders and not a single D&C murder.

Face it, buddy. You're just grappling whatever argument you think will win you on this. I'm actually standing for something. You'll fall for anything.

You seem to be struggling with a touch of cognitive dissonance here. If we use -your- definition of "murder", which includes anything post-conception, then each IVF procedure "murders" dozens of human beings while abortion "murders" one.

That means abortion resulted in around 1 million "murders" (again, so you aren't confused, using your definition) in 2023, while IVF "murdered" nearly 6 million in that same timeframe.

Is 6 bigger than 1? Significantly bigger? Why do you find 6 million "murders" acceptable?

It seems that you're the one trying to square a circle here where my two eyes see both. I'm not going to go into, "Well, the fertilized embryo can't live outside the womb" stuff with you because your foolish need for consistency will say any baby that's unviable can be aborted. Then I would tell you that viability only goes backward, never forward, and that one day it will be proved to be conception. You'll say something like "yeah, one day" and I'll say "yeah, which ethically means now." Then you'll say all fertilized embryos are viable and I'll say only the ones that are put in a womb. You see where this is going?

I'm not looking for the safe stance. I'm not looking for the consistent stance. I'm looking for the morally right stance as far as we can see it and as far as we can tell right now the human population is declining so birth rates should probably go up. From both a scientific and religious perspective this is true. The religious values the life inside the mother and the scientific values human growth and flourishing. Unless you see the life inside the mother as meaningless and value human shrinkage and suffering. Again, those are some repugnant conclusions.

You're arguing against a straw man - I'm already giving you the concession of assuming for the sake of argument that embryos are living beings at the point of conception, and you can't find a reason why a procedure that destroys them by the dozens is wrong.

Well, I'm looking at the ends and seeing what it hashes out to.

If you kill an embryo in order to produce a living breathing baby that's ultimately going to live outside the womb and be independent (hopefully) then that's a good thing.

If you kill an embryo to kill what will soon become a living breathing baby that's ultimately going to live outside the womb and be independent (hopefully) then that's a bad thing.

That's why your reasoning is slanted. I know your argument is that I'm employing cognitive dissonance but I'm actually not. You'll see others on my side arguing that IVF shouldn't be allowed for your reasoning but I don't find their arguments compelling.

Chances are if you're pregnant you engaged in the act that made you pregnant so you want to be pregnant and therefore you must want to either be a parent or put it up for adoption. Killing the child in the womb is a repugnant conclusion. It's murder and it's all the more egregious because it's murder of the innocent. Inseminating an embryo outside the womb is a science project. That's the sort of question a scientific ethicist should probably answer and not a religious scholar. I mean is there anything the Bible could possibly say about such a subject?

Every embryo has the potential to be implanted, to be destroyed through natural means (failure to implant, miscarriage, genetic defect), and to be destroyed through artificial (discarding, mishandling, trauma, chemical or mechanical abortion through any means).

My reasoning is sound - you're extremely focused on an extremely small number of embryos destroyed because they're done at the mother's discretion, and you feel you should be able to control those because you're powerless against all the others.

And you refuse to acknowledge that there are, among the artificial causes of embryonic and fetal death, much greater offenders that you support because your position is emotional and irrational.

You're logically right in a slanted way but philosophically and morally completely wrong. IVF does not justify the practice of abortion no matter how much twisted logic you use to get there. You're using a de-ontological perspective on morality and it shows. IVF may be unjustified by my definition of life but it doesn't justify abortion if it is not life. That's what you need to figure out. A is B but that doesn't mean B is A.

I'm logically right - everything else is you trying to square the circle of your own cognitive dissonance because you're trying to justify a practice that, just in the united states, destroys more than five million living living embryos each year in order to produce 500,000 babies.

I don't personally see the problem with either IVF or abortion, we should be absolutely secure in our persons to decide when it comes to reproduction - but you should have a problem with it since you seem to believe killing an embryo is murder.

IVF could be wrong but I'm not really finding the argument for that to be compelling. I know you do but I don't. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is you right now. You're having trouble seeing it because when you observe a particle it's a wave and then when you observe a wave it's a particle. You can't escape it. I can and I have. I don't care if it's unreasonable. Obviously science is not subject to our reason.

No, I don't find it compelling because I don't believe embryos are particularly sacred or important.

My whole point here is that if you legitimately believe destroying an embryo is murder, you should be absolutely horrified by the prospect of IVF treatments, not promoting them.

You're lost in the weeds on this one. You can't see the forest for the trees. The chicken has flown the coop. Forcing a woman to have a baby once she is pregnant IS preventing a murder. I'm being fully consistent here. And keep in mind my position is likely the only consistent position. Yours is the one trying to split hairs and have your cake and eat it, too. You can't even decide whether an embryo is more important than a born baby.

I'm saying both are and that best case you should be saving both but if you have to save one or the other, obviously the human gets saved. There's no problem with that just like there's no saying if you switch a train onto a track that kills 1 person instead of 5 you hate the one person. We can both agree that it would be a terrible choice and given that it's a terrible choice AS IS ABORTION it should probably not be made. I'm saying abortion is so egregious that it is murder and should be outlawed.

By the way, the right to commit infanticide in the womb is a right you'd never give to a man. Unless you want to correct me right here and right now on that. Just so we're clear.

If you condone IVF, you're condoning mass murder because the destruction of fertilized embryos is commonplace.

A pregnant woman getting an abortion terminates a single developing embryo or fetus, a woman undergoing fertility treatments will discard around 8-15 on average.

That's not consistency, it's outright denial.

The problem is more than a century of jurisprudence, which is how the constitution keeps the law in check, established otherwise.

Trump's appointees have discarded that to make up new law from the bench.

You mean half a century?

No, they've ignored and nullified precedent far older than Roe - their lawless presidential immunity ruling effectively wiped out more than two centuries worth of SCOTUS rulings.

Would you relax? That's to protect Biden. Otherwise we'd have him hanged for treason once he left office.

There's no way you seriously believe something that f**king stupid.

Staging an invasion of the United States by illegal aliens IS treason. Can't handle it? Leave. I hope they hang Mark Milley for treason, too.

So your against illegals invasion but your ok with women being forced to grow a ball point pin sized cell invasion they don't want? What about anchor baby invasions with illegals? Deport every pregnant illegal? Force them on birth control when it goes against their religion? Force abortion on illegals if they are in a 12 week timeframe because they are illegal? I'm all for immigration reform, and laws that manage and mitigate illegal immigrants. But I also believe a woman regardless of religious beliefs held against abortion should have access unrestricted in accordance to her doctors judgment and her current health weather it be mental or physical.

I get it - at this point you're too proud to admit you've been conned and have to keep doubling down and repeating the lies no matter how stupid they get.

There is no illegal invasion, but Trump has committed treason - apparently because he thinks it's smart to violate the Logan Act and subvert American interests by directly interacting with hostile foreign powers.

Are you talking about the Bob Woodward book? That's been debunked by Maggie Haberman, a known TDS haver. Try again.

No, I'm talking about his interview at the Chicago Economic Club this week where, when asked if he'd been in contact with Putin, replied:

"Well, I don't comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it's a smart thing,"

Wow, that's not an admission of guilt if I've ever seen one!

And clones are absolutely alive - the ability to implant stem cells into denucleated eggs and kick start the development process into another genetically-identical being is just higher-order organisms' version of regeneration we see when we cut a starfish in half.

So everything must be forced to live no matter what because it can live and turn into something that becomes individually and lives is the arguments... But when a doesn't want a cellular organism in her body through the activity she did that put it there weather birth control was used, or not, or failure of birth control is the issue. When the reality of something dieing is put into the equation, a woman is looked at as a murderer if she kills cells in her body according to these pro life believers, but everything can die, it's the moral belief that a woman ending her pregnancy is the issue to some people, but if the belief that a soul can go to heaven is a so called belief, then wouldn't a woman who want a abortion essentially committing a act that saves a soul?

Isn't all murder saving souls according to this casuistry and therefore murder to be encouraged at all times?

No, murder extinguishes the soul because it has the uncanny ability to end the life that it is murdering.

Soul means life, or more specifically, the act of living. Should something die, that would end its existence as a soul.

Science has nothing to do with the definition of the word as it is a biblical term.

DumbAF is being casuist as hell at this point.

Nobody but a so called God will save a so called soul if you believe you have one. And as far as I know this so called God is un proven but is comforting to a individuals soul. . .. I say let the woman do her own business and I'll say out of it.

Look at Mr. Ideas over here. Establishing a Utopia on Earth with your groundbreaking ideas on abortions for illegal aliens. Woowee! All I'm saying is illegal immigration is ILLEGAL. You don't need to pull all sorts of tangents out of that.

If you don't like illegal immigration, some women don't like accessing illegal abortion. I know it's not the same but if your a illegal immigrant because you can't access a legal route to America, it's kinda like the woman trying to access abortion illegally. A potentially deadly journey to get what they want.

That's a great argument for making both of those things legal. NOT!