Fertilized Eggs

Originally posted by twhitehead
I disagree. First of all, what is a 'soul' and why is it worthy of being saved? What is a 'human' and why is it worthy of being saved?

Now suppose that you had a choice between 100 convicted murderers and a six year old girl. Would your choice of the six year old girl prove that the convicted murderers were not human?

I don't think he was talking about saving souls. (And BTW - I thought that was the job of the deity.)

As for the girl and the murderers - would your choice change if some of the convicted murderers were really innocent? What if the girl was your niece? (These questions are stupid - better to ask the question outright.)

Hypothetically we would all act in a courageous and reasonable fashion by carefully weighing our options. Realistically most of us would run away and leave them all to die. How are you treating your family? What do you do when your honor-student 15 year-old daughter gets pregnant? What do you say to your neighbor when it happens to his dropout drug-addict daughter? Do you support efforts to get prenatal health-care for those who have none? What about after the children are born? Are you willing to be taxed more to support those kids? Would you pay less for abortions or would pay more for living children? Are you just recommending how everyone else should act or are you willing accept the consequences of your recommendations yourself?

Suppose there was one fertilised egg on the tray and it was yours, and it was your last hope of having a child ever. Who then would you save?

Suppose, just before you ran out, you found out the egg would produce a seriously disabled but living child. Who then? Human morality is never going to be a benchmark for anything.

Originally posted by amannion
Equivalent is pretty easy to define isn't it?
It essentially means 'the same as' or something like that.
Your question is typical of the obfuscation that arises when a tricky question is posed. It's pretty simple really - is a fully formed and developed human the same as a fertilised egg cell? Clearly they are not physical the same, so the essence of the ...[text shortened]... on is in the moral treatment of these two distinct entities - should we treat them the same?

Obfuscation. I've been looking for that word. Thanks for finding it for me.

Originally posted by TerrierJack
I don't think he was talking about saving souls. (And BTW - I thought that was the job of the deity.)

Correct. But he did suggest that there might be more reason for saving an entity that had a soul vs an entity that didn't.

As for the girl and the murderers - would your choice change if some of the convicted murderers were really innocent? What if the girl was your niece? (These questions are stupid - better to ask the question outright.)
My point was to show that all the original scenario shows is relative worth, it does not show that the entities left to dies are not human beings.
I do however think that the original scenario is not totally useless. For those who believe that killing an embryo is murder and should carry a similar sentence, the original scenario basically shows that most of us do not value embryos that highly and maybe the sentences should not be the same.

Whether you choose to label embryo's human beings or not is really irrelevant - unless you give a specific definition for 'human being' which the original poster seems reluctant to do. The label is man made and flexible and should not affect rights.

Originally posted by karoly aczel
The 6 year old girl.
Now if the population was on the brink of extinction, you may have a bigger conundrum..

I would still save the six year old girl.

EDIT: By the way, for more detail on my view on the matter, see Thread 120882.

Originally posted by 667joe
Are fertilized human eggs equivalent to human beings? I say they are not.

I don't know what "human being" means. I know that the fertilized egg is not a person or an infant.

"But ATY, what about this definition?!

In biological terms, a human being, or human, is any member of the mammalian species Homo sapiens

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Human_being"

Well, what does it mean to be a "member of" Homo sapiens?

Is the cell at the tip of my left thumb a member of Homo sapiens? It's certainly human!