Pro-Life Academy every Tuesday and Thursday.
Two weeks from today we are going to turn our focus on the embryo toward the book EMBRYO: A Defense of Human Life, by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen. Check it out at Amazon. Order soon!
In the interim, I direct your attention to the Endowment for Human Development. Their stills and videos are the best ever compiled. Check out the movie theater there and marvel at the wonders of human development.
Thursday, more on the abortion/breast cancer link.
Coming Home 
Mary Catherine was kind enough to point out that a good deal of this books is available on Google Books as a Preview. Having read all that is available there, I have developed some notes on this long-recommended book. I appreciate the authors’ refreshing honesty in teaching that “science itself does not provide us with guidance in making moral decisions about the treatment of those embryos or of human beings at any developmental stage.” One might think they are contradicting themselves when they say a little later “We know from science that those embryos are nascent human beings…” However, it all depends on the definition of nascent. There is no question that the human zygote is a human zygote, as distinguished from a bovine zygote or a llama zygote. One dictionary definition of nascent is “just beginning to be.”
So, the authors suggest, they argue, they do not impose by fiat, “that the early human embryo is a complete, albeit developmentally immature, human being.” There, of course, I disagree with their argument. Working from the same data the authors present, the same data presented in “101 Reasons,” the same citations from multiple biology text books posted by Dr. Nadal, I suggest, and argue, that the early human embryo is not a complete human being at all.
Thus, to go back to their opening story, “Noah” was not transported in the cryogenic bottles during the floods that followed Hurricane Katrina. A number of embryos were transported, and one of those embryos BECAME Noah after being implanted and successfully growing into a baby. Random chance could easily have led to an entirely different embryo being implanted, in which case, if male, the resulting baby would have been given the name “Noah.” His birth gave meaning to the rescue of the cryogenic bottles that the rescue would never have had if he had not been implanted, and born. His birth did not bestow names on the other embryos in those bottles – unless they are implanted, they will never have names, personalities, identities, they will never become human beings.
The authors have quite properly stated that “we can know from philosophically informed reasoning what is is morally permissible to do to human embryos.” I agree. It is of course possible for reasonable women and men come to differing conclusions by philosophically informed reasoning.
The authors then offer a syllogism for philosophically informed reasoning. They assert that in order to deny their argument, once must deny one of four claims. There are probably other syllogisms that one could establish for such reasoning, and I could only find three of the four. However, I am perfectly willing to work with their syllogism.
I deny their first claim: The early human embryo is not a human being.
I fully accept their second and third claims, without denial. Persons are indeed to be identified with the biological entities that are human beings. Also, all human beings deserve full moral respect.
The authors give some attention to the biological matrix in which an individual life exists. Initially, and for a time, the zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, can only exist within the biological matrix of the pregnant woman. Later this is not true. Later, the fully developed human being can live in the much larger biological matrix of planet earth.
The embryo is “fully programmed” but it is ONLY programmed. It autonomically follows the steps of its chemical programming, as a robot dispatched to the far side of the moon follows the steps of its electronic programming. A human being does have autonomic functions, but a human being is much more than those autonomic functions. I also note that while oak trees drop hundreds of acorns, each of them genetically unique and complete, each fully programmed to grow into an oak tree, very few of these acorns actually take root and grow, and of those, very few reach maturity without being grazed by squirrels or deer or other herbivores. Mammals do not scatter so many fully programmed seeds per live birth, but the fully programmed human zygote is not a human being.
The embryo does not “contain within itself the internal resources and active disposition… to develop itself to its full maturity.” It cannot eat, it cannot drink, it must absorb a vast quantity of external resources. In order to grow beyond blastocyst, it must implant in the uterine lining. There is no other environment where it can develop or survive.
Locke, as quoted on page 65, is correct. But, this does not require dualism. The capacity for rational thought is not an exterior entity to the body, it is a capacity that the body develops when it is complete. (There may indeed be a dualism of body and nefesh chayyim, I believe that there is, but that is not a necessary consideration to discuss when a fetus becomes a human being).
Ultimately, if you agree with all four of the authors’ premises – and they place the only one I would question first in the list – then you will of course agree with the author’s stated conclusions. If you disagree with any of the authors’ premises, then you may well look at the exact same set of data, and come to different conclusions. Ultimately, the authors are making a value judgment about the data, and arguing that it is a correct value judgment for a human society to adopt. They are entitled to their opinion, but their conclusion is not a scientific fact, and they quite properly do not claim that it is.
“I deny their first claim: The early human embryo is not a human being.”
That is the one claim that *is* supported by science, and precisely for that reason no clear-thinking modern-day “prochoicer” denies this claim.
Your spectacularly weak arguments have been refuted many times over, in George and Tollefsen’s book, and in many other places.
Dan, did you notice that everything I wrote here is a direct response to George and Tollefson’s book, on their terms, speaking directly to the question they posed and the logical structure they rely upon?
Siarlys, you obviously didn’t read the whole book. Either that, or you didn’t understand what you read.
How convenient it must be, to define anyone who disagrees with you as having not understood what they read. I know I didn’t read the whole book — I said, Mary Catherine gave me a tip it was partially available on Google books. It was enough to spend a couple of hours on, and to see the philosophical framework laid out by the authors. You obviously came to a different conclusion. That’s life. Human beings don’t all think alike.
Siarlys …I suggest, and argue, that the early human embryo is not a complete human being at all.…
The word “complete” provides a basis for question-begging. Who holds the handbook of criteria for what constitutes a “complete” human being? Are you yourself complete? How would you know?
Siarlys: His birth did not bestow names on the other embryos in those bottles – unless they are implanted, they will never have names, personalities, identities, they will never become human beings.
How do names, labels, identification and personality attributes make a human being? If these things were removed from you – say you become an unidentifiable survivor of a catastrophe, in a coma, would that make you less human?
If you really wanted to make your point, that flesh and blood requires other essentials added to it to make persons “human”, then we can conduct a simple experiment. With your consent, you can be violently shredded to pieces, and once that’s complete, you can resoundingly demonstrate that person is an addable, essential attribute, but not inherent in the flesh.
Siarlys: It cannot eat, it cannot drink, it must absorb a vast quantity of external resources. In order to grow beyond blastocyst, it must implant in the uterine lining. There is no other environment where it can develop or survive.
Not having a plethora of secure environments does not make or change what makes us human beings. If anything, the dependency of the human embryo upon the mother is a perfectly natural one. To win your argument, you essentially have to make the case that motherhood is non-essential to humans. There is no other process.
Your discussion revolves around a specification of what constitutes a “human being”, while sidestepping the issue of the human life, which is the flesh and blood. This is what is destroyed. This is the target of the discrimination.
The flesh and blood, our very bodies, depend upon everyone else to uphold what is right, to not discriminate, and to not yield to the idea that “might makes right”.
There are many people who disagree with me that I would never claim have failed to understand the issue at hand.
“It was enough to spend a couple of hours on…”
Obviously not.
Siarlys: It cannot eat, it cannot drink, it must absorb a vast quantity of external resources. In order to grow beyond blastocyst, it must implant in the uterine lining. There is no other environment where it can develop or survive.
Siarlys can’t eat or drink without absorbing vast quanities of “external resources” found at Burger King and Sonic. In order for Jenkins to continue to grow beyound today, he must implant himself at a “external resource daily”. There is no other enviroment where Jenkins can develop and survive.
Your still a blastocyst, Jenkins.
Chris nails it down.
SJ,
The conversation is moving forward. Not only am I deleting the ongoing denials of what the field of Embryology has to say, I’m deleting comments that argue over why that is not to your liking, which is a back door way of continuing to make your point.
The bioethical question before us is simple: What are the rights of what science tells us unequivocally is a human organism beginning at the zygotic stage?
The science is a settled issue.
Move forward.
SJ,
If I’m supposed to be impressed that you quoted me in your article, I’m not.
I’ve taken down your last comment because it advertises a fundamentally dishonest treatise of me. You are a liar.
You lie by omission. You lie by misrepresentation. So, no, I will not address you on your blog. I will call you a liar here, where all of the readers of this blog can witness it.
True, I have stated that it is settled science that Embryology has stated definitively that a new human organism exists at fertilization. A new human life, a new human being exists. I gave an extensive list of textbook quotes.
I have also stated that the issue of personhood status is a legal and moral status enjoyed by an organism contingent upon the KIND of thing that it is. In the case of the embryo, it is a human organism. Therefore, personhood ought to be considered an intrinsic status based on the humanity of the embryo.
You fail to show the progression of that argument, presenting my arguments in a disjointed manner in order to cast aspersions.
You are no longer welcome here until you learn civil discourse, which includes telling the truth of my words in a manner that conveys the thrust of my argument, and not pulling words out of context to suit your pique because I have declared an end to truth denial running rampant on this blog.
Please provide one complete sentence of mine which you deem to be a lie, then tell me what you would consider to be a truthful restatement of that sentence. If possible, add how I should have known, from your previous posts, that the first was a lie and the second was the truth. I can then evaluate whether I owe you an apology, or whether you reacting defensively to fair comment.