Ireland legalizes the killing of the unborn

[carpedm9587]

DRAT, I'll find it when I get back from court.

So they finally found and arrested you, huh...?

[Mountain Man]

Exactly right. The biological difference between a self-contained and self-directing organism and a simple specialized part of that organism is basic Bio 101.

Let's see if they actually pick up on this.

[Mountain Man]

I just assume that you did get a detail wrong, but it doesn’t matter because it’s just Roy picking nits without addressing the actual argument made.

It's especially hilarious when he thinks he's somehow shaming us by putting a non-controversial quote in his signature.

[Sparko]

I also went through the stages of having skin cells and fingernails too, but those are getting a lot of hating-on in this thread.

cutting your fingernails doesn't end your life, and fingernails aren't even alive.

And before that 'I' was a sperm and and egg. But you guys are hating on sperm as well.

No that wasn't you. That egg and another sperm, or that sperm and another egg would have produced an entirely different person than you. You are a unique individual that did not exist until the gamete was fused. At that point "you" began to exist.

No, it certainly wasn't. What makes me ME is not the atoms that happen to currently comprise my body (they change out regularly), or the DNA I happen to have (it changes a bit over one's life, and though it contributes a lot it's not definitive), it's the person I have become through the sum total of my life experiences and choices therein, it's all my hopes and dreams, all my thoughts and fears, all my ideas and tendencies and humor and personality and memories and quirks and beliefs and hobbies and habits. That is what makes me ME, and that certainly didn't exist at all in any way at the moment of conception, and had barely begun to exist by the time I was 5 years old.

and every bit of that has led up to the present version of you. Without a body you would not have had any experiences. Aborting a "fetus" removes all of those experiences, hopes, dreams, thoughts and fears. No ideas, no humor. No love. You are cutting short an entire life that already exists and preventing a lifetime of experience. To me that is worse than killing an adult who at least had a chance to experience some of life.

And that's the important bit: Your idea of the 'soul' which you believe in and which you think God adds at the moment of conception.

Even if you don't believe in a soul, you still are murdering a human being and not only cutting short their life, but shortchanging every life they might have touched, and every life they might have created.

Murder and abortion robs us all.

[Roy]

Exactly right. The biological difference between a self-contained and self-directing organism and a simple specialized part of that organism is basic Bio 101.

Have you fallen for MM and LPOT's falsehood that I don't know the difference?

You've already agreed that "life" includes bacteria and sperm cells and suchlike, so MM's argument applies to sperm cells. The characteristics of "life" (including sperm and bacteria and maybe components of complex organisms) don't necessarily overlap with the characteristics of "living things", which is where MM's argument fails.

Biology is messy, and the lines between living things and specialised parts is frequently blurred - cf symbionts, organelles, gut bacteria, parasitic males, colonial organisms, composite organisms, and of course eggs/sperm, especially with external fertilisation.

Of course the whole issue could have been avoided had MM actually listed the characteristics of "life" that he thought applied to fertilised ova, but since he doesn't know what they are or what they mean or where they apply (he thinks cells don't grow or metabolise or respond to stimuli ) - it's hardly surprising that he didn't.

[Roy]

It's especially hilarious when he thinks he's somehow shaming us by putting a non-controversial quote in his signature.

Wow, you're stupid.

[Sparko]

Well Sparko has acknowledged this. But the anti-abortion movement does seem to mostly exist at the intersection of religious beliefs about ensoulment (a la Sparko) and utter ignorance about biology (a la MM), usually both at once.

Personally, when I was a Christian, my thought process was "God knows the future, he wouldn't stick a soul into a fetus he knew wasn't even going to survive until to birth, or at the very least he's smart enough to wait to see if it survives a decent amount of time before sticking the soul in, either way abortion isn't an issue". And a lot of Jewish views of ensoulment have it happening a lot later than conception.

Gotta protect all teh cellz!

~lightbulb~ That must have been why Samson lost his strength when his hair was cut - God was angry at the loss of hair cells!

Hair cells?

I thought you were a scientist?

[lilpixieofterror]

Have you fallen for MM and LPOT's falsehood that I don't know the difference?

And you screw up again. I maintain that you didn’t read what he said carefully and now you’re
attempting to nitpick your way out vs admitting you didn’t read very carefully. I’m just amused by your inability to eat a little humble pie and choose instead to dig your hole deeper.

You've already agreed that "life" includes bacteria and sperm cells and suchlike, so MM's argument applies to sperm cells. The characteristics of "life" (including sperm and bacteria and maybe components of complex organisms) don't necessarily overlap with the characteristics of "living things", which is where MM's argument fails.

No he didn’t what happened is you screwed up. He said the definition of life and a little common sense would tell you that he would be referring to organisms. You nitpicked though and didn’t apply much sense to what was said and decided to take it 100% wooden literal. Keep digging though. I’m enjoying watching you two make fools of yourselves.

Biology is messy, and the lines between living things and specialised parts is frequently blurred - cf symbionts, organelles, gut bacteria, parasitic males, colonial organisms, composite organisms, and of course eggs/sperm, especially with external fertilization.

True, but most people don’t argue technical details unless you’re a specialist in a given area and have a need to. Funny thing is though, few would try to act as though skin cells and sperm cells are ‘alive’ in the sense of a zygote. If you say otherwise, you’re more than welcome to produce a few examples where biologist say otherwise.

Of course the whole issue could have been avoided had MM actually listed the characteristics of "life" that he thought applied to fertilised ova, but since he doesn't know what they are or what they mean or where they apply (he thinks cells don't grow or metabolise or respond to stimuli ) - it's hardly surprising that he didn't.

In other words, you want to nitpick while leaving the actual argument untouched. Typical Roy, doesn’t want to debate the actual argument, so attempts to nitpick his way to victory.

[lilpixieofterror]

Wow, you're stupid.

That’s ironic.

[Starlight]

Thing is, I didn't actually get any details wrong.

Except for pretty much all of them.

I used the term "life", which scientifically speaking has a fairly well-defined meaning and is used interchangeably with the terms "life-form" and "organism".

This is sort of mostly true and is your most accurate statement here. There are various scientific definitions of 'life' all of which have issues and there's not a great deal of enthusiasm for them among scientists with regard to the accuracy of them. The question of whether to classify viruses as 'alive', for example, divides scientists. The most commonly used one, generally reproduced in basic biology textbooks, is just a list of characteristics, which you reproduce below. It's also not particularly important in the day to day research being done by biologists as to whether something gets labelled "alive" or not, that's purely a linguistic matter.

It's also a fact that there is a clear distinction between something being "alive" and meeting the scientific definition of "life".

No. The opposite. The scientific definition of life is mostly an attempt to come up with a list that matches the things that are colloquially said to be "alive". So you can't pretend your false statements in previous posts were actually correct because you've now decided you meant the 'scientific definition' of life which you didn't know about previously.

Your skin cells are alive, at least in their early stage,

They are alive. They can die like anything else that is alive.

but they are not life

Wrong again. They are life.

since they do not have the attributes that science uses to describe life (they don't organize, adapt, self-sustain, metabolize, respond to stimuli, etc.).

They do all those things, they have all those attributes. Do you not understand that is why Roy is mocking you with his signature quoting you blurting out these absurdly false statements?

A skin cell is part of an organism, but it is not an organism in and of itself.

It's also an organism in and of itself. As you rightly pointed out above, anything that is 'alive' is also a 'life form' / 'organism'. Skin cells are all of the above. Furthermore just to blow your mind, let me point of that cells themselves in turn contain other organisms known as mitochondria. So they are organisms living in other living organisms (the cells) which together comprise other living organisms (the humans), who in turn have trillions of other living organisms (bacteria) within them.

[carpedm9587]

Except for pretty much all of them.

This is sort of mostly true and is your most accurate statement here. There are various scientific definitions of 'life' all of which have issues and there's not a great deal of enthusiasm for them among scientists with regard to the accuracy of them. The question of whether to classify viruses as 'alive', for example, divides scientists. The most commonly used one, generally reproduced in basic biology textbooks, is just a list of characteristics, which you reproduce below. It's also not particularly important in the day to day research being done by biologists as to whether something gets labelled "alive" or not, that's purely a linguistic matter.

No. The opposite. The scientific definition of life is mostly an attempt to come up with a list that matches the things that are colloquially said to be "alive". So you can't pretend your false statements in previous posts were actually correct because you've now decided you meant the 'scientific definition' of life which you didn't know about previously.

They are alive. They can die like anything else that is alive.

Wrong again. They are life.

They do all those things, they have all those attributes. Do you not understand that is why Roy is mocking you with his signature quoting you blurting out these absurdly false statements?

It's also an organism in and of itself. As you rightly pointed out above, anything that is 'alive' is also a 'life form' / 'organism'. Skin cells are all of the above. Furthermore just to blow your mind, let me point of that cells themselves in turn contain other organisms known as mitochondria. So they are organisms living in other living organisms (the cells) which together comprise other living organisms (the humans), who in turn have trillions of other living organisms (bacteria) within them.

So this is something I have always found interesting about "life." The cell is comprised of individual living organizisms, some of which can live (for some time) independently, some of which can migrate to other cells, and some of them (e.g., mitochondria, and chloropolasts) have their own distinct DNA. Cells, in turn, comprise larger structures (e.g., organs), which humans have shown can survive outside the organism for some period of time, and some organs can be moved successfully from one being to another. This sometimes produces some very odd results, like the chimera that results from a bone marrow transplant. If you think about it, the higher-order beings that are a collection of organs (e.g., species of various sorts) then make up the biosphere we call earth - and some would say "Gaia." It's constituent elements can survive "outside" Gaia for some period (e.g., space travel). Ill-health in Gaia can produce ill-health in its constituent species, etc.

I wonder if the human species is a natural "organ" of Gaia, or are we the equivalent of a cancer? We reproduce without concern for the larger organism, like cancer. We consume resources and starve out other "organs," like cancer. We pollute the environment in which we live, like cancer. We function as if the entire organism exists for our benefit...like cancer.

Makes one wonder...

[Starlight]

This sometimes produces some very odd results, like the chimera that results from a bone marrow transplant.

Recent research has actually found that everyone is naturally a chimera because stem cells cross between the mother and fetus, so some of the early cells in your body (that will have since reproduced in the surrounding areas) will have your mother's DNA not yours, and your mother will have cells in her body with your DNA.

Also, in female mammals, a random one of the two copies of the X chromosome is deactivated in each cell at an early stage of development, so women's bodies will be roughly 50-50 divided between two different sets of DNA, one with the X chromosome from the mother and the other with the X chromosome from the father. This effect is most apparent in the orange-black Tortoiseshell cats, because the coloring is stored on the X chromosome, so you can visibly see which areas of the animal are using which X chromosome:

[Terraceth]

I wonder if the human species is a natural "organ" of Gaia, or are we the equivalent of a cancer? We reproduce without concern for the larger organism, like cancer. We consume resources and starve out other "organs," like cancer. We pollute the environment in which we live, like cancer. We function as if the entire organism exists for our benefit...like cancer.

Makes one wonder...

Except for perhaps the pollution, you have just described the behavior of every animal species on the planet. The only way humans are worse is that they're more effective at it thanks to technology. Of course, conversely, unlike every other animal species, humans seem to be the only ones who show any level of concern for the things you mentioned.

[lilpixieofterror]

So this is something I have always found interesting about "life." The cell is comprised of individual living organizisms, some of which can live (for some time) independently, some of which can migrate to other cells, and some of them (e.g., mitochondria, and chloropolasts) have their own distinct DNA. Cells, in turn, comprise larger structures (e.g., organs), which humans have shown can survive outside the organism for some period of time, and some organs can be moved successfully from one being to another. This sometimes produces some very odd results, like the chimera that results from a bone marrow transplant. If you think about it, the higher-order beings that are a collection of organs (e.g., species of various sorts) then make up the biosphere we call earth - and some would say "Gaia." It's constituent elements can survive "outside" Gaia for some period (e.g., space travel). Ill-health in Gaia can produce ill-health in its constituent species, etc.

I wonder if the human species is a natural "organ" of Gaia, or are we the equivalent of a cancer? We reproduce without concern for the larger organism, like cancer. We consume resources and starve out other "organs," like cancer. We pollute the environment in which we live, like cancer. We function as if the entire organism exists for our benefit...like cancer.

Makes one wonder...

Just as has already been pointed out, you’re describing about every animal species that had ever existed. You know that whole ‘survival of the fittest’ thing?

[lilpixieofterror]

Except for perhaps the pollution, you have just described the behavior of every animal species on the planet. The only way humans are worse is that they're more effective at it thanks to technology. Of course, conversely, unlike every other animal species, humans seem to be the only ones who show any level of concern for the things you mentioned.

I’d say depends on how you define ‘pollution’. Those large herds of animals do make quite a mess where they happen to be. Trampling over whatever happens to be in there way and leaving their droppings all over the place. Non native fish species can pollute the water and kill off native fish species through their pollution. Gold fish are actually pretty messy fish that do require better filtration vs tetras and other fish, for example. Likewise we’ve done loads to help plenty of animals spread far faster than would be naturally possible. Dogs, cats, mice, and snakes have done rather well in areas humans live.