Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
An unstructured accumulation of cells is not an already organised organism with senses, stimuli perception and stimuli processing, no to mention awareness and self-awareness.
Obviously from a certain level of organisation and complexity on, this changes. And where to set the critical treshhold is the only thing I am willing to discuss. But to treat a tablespoon of slime with cells as a human, or animal, imo is grotesque. Mind and awareness need certain self-emerging, self-organizing cellular preconditions. Where this networking komplexity of specialsed cells lacks, there can be no mind. No awareness. There is only cosmos, but no logos. Such comlexity in a network must not necessarily be neural cells and their axions, maybe. Possible that it can also be the roots of trees in a forest, scientific research opens a perspective that such things maybe indeed are possible.
A drop of cellular slime however is not a realised human being. And potentials do not count, else we end up with arguing with the rights of children whose parents have not even been born yet.
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Any assumption regarding the presence or absence of awareness in any human animal remains just that: an unsupported assumption. I assume conception brings about awareness, you don’t. So then, at what point in the process do you draw the line where human life achieves awareness? When is it OK to kill it? Save the planet! But kill the unborn when convenient. How sick, twisted and demented we have become. Does Wendy, when she has just beaten Onkle Neal at a game of Texas Hold’em feel elated? I believe not. But there is nothing I can do to shore up those assumptions either.
Its been shown not a tablespoon but a fookin’ SINGLE CELL protozoa took hold of the end of a fibril, and backed off at an angle, as though to tear it loose. When the fibril would not give, the SINGLE CELL protozoon came in again, then backed away at a new angle, working the fibril loose, much as a dog might have done, working loose a chunk of meat. Watching that SINGLE CELL at work, not to anthropomorphize. Did it know what it was doing?
I could care less about religion and politics. Is a fetus as you say just a tablespoon of cells? Or are those cells aware and feel the pain and agony of it being ripped out from its mother’s womb? Do tell! As for me until proven otherwise I believe they should be protected.