Ireland legalizes the killing of the unborn

[Starlight]

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 seem to be dodging away here from the observation that if "I" was the gamete, then "I" prior to that was the egg and sperm that would subsequently produce that gamete. The logical problem your focus on material causes faces is that it's in danger of pushing causes too far back to be convenient to your anti-abortion argument - it's in danger of concluding that "I" was the egg and sperm prior to the gamete, and I can see you'd like to avoid that claim because you want to pretend "I" started at conception.

You are a unique individual that did not exist until the gamete was fused. At that point "you" began to exist.

If you mean that in a basic biological sense, it's trivially true. If you mean it in any sort of philosophical sense, I don't agree at all. The entity that is "I" to me is my conscious mind in its present state. Since the gamete isn't conscious it certainly isn't me, or anyone else for that matter, and to the extent that the fetus eventually developed a consciousness, if and when that happened, it wasn't yet the "me" I am now.

Aborting a "fetus" removes all of those experiences, hopes, dreams, thoughts and fears. No ideas, no humor. No love.

But equally if my parents hadn't made love that night, or if a different sperm had combined with the egg, "I" wouldn't exist / "I" might be someone completely different.

You are cutting short an entire life that already exists and preventing a lifetime of experience.

If you are deeply concerned about lifetimes of experience being prevented, then I guess you think everyone should constantly try to have as many children as possible? After all, every since egg and sperm wasted is one less lifetime of experience had by a human being in the world. It's yet another potential life snuffed out and cut short. These consequences of the logic you are putting forth appear utterly untenable.

Even if you don't believe in a soul, you still are murdering a human being

Not by any common definition of murder today. Not even by the bible's definition of murder. In the bible the definition of a fetus is referred to as "if mischief follow" and is compensated by an appropriate financial payment for property damage, rather than the capital punishment murder gets. In our modern justice systems, abortion is always treated separately from murder.

but shortchanging every life they might have touched, and every life they might have created.

Imagine all those potential lives you're destroying by not getting every women you see pregnant! You're destroying an untold infinity of potential lives.

Murder and abortion robs us all.

If only the logical quality of your arguments was a tenth as good as your emotional and poetic appeals...

[Tassman]

If you mean that in a basic biological sense, it's trivially true. If you mean it in any sort of philosophical sense, I don't agree at all. The entity that is "I" to me is my conscious mind in its present state. Since the gamete isn't conscious it certainly isn't me, or anyone else for that matter, and to the extent that the fetus eventually developed a consciousness, if and when that happened, it wasn't yet the "me" I am now.

Yes. The brain pattern IS the human person. When it goes you go and before it comes on, you are not here. There IS no you.

[carpedm9587]

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 don't see that the same way. Taking it one by one:

We reproduce without concern for the larger organism, like cancer.

Most species reproduce in balance with their environment. They do not do so consciously, of course. But was a population outgrows its food supply, starvation and predation bring the population under control again. A species is literally incapable of growing beyond its food supply - like a healthy organ is incapable of outgrowing its allotted space in the body. But humanity is cognitively aware and can create/plan. So the human response is to growth the food supply, without any real attempt to control population, in the belief that we are somehow exempt from the laws of nature. The result, the human population has soared, and we continue to grow the food supply without restricting population growth. That is the behavior of a cancer...not a normal species.

We consume resources and starve out other "organs," like cancer.

Our increase of the food supply does not happen without cost. To do so we take over the habitats of other species, destroying an incredible number of them in the process. And we consume resources beyond just "space" to create that food and the infrastructure humanity depends on. Now we are even tailoring the genes of the food to better meet our needs. Many cancers will actually change the genetic structure of surrounding tissues to better meet their needs.

We pollute the environment in which we live, like cancer.

As you note, I don't see animals polluting. They urinate and defecate in the wild, but that is part of a complex bio-process, just like cells releasing their excrement into the bloodstream for disposal is part of the human biosystem. Humans, on the other hand, drag raws materials out of the earth, use them for their own purposes, and dump the leftovers into rivers, streams, the air, and dump sites all over the planet. We've certainly improved things since the 1960s, when some of those rivers were actually burning, but we still wantonly pollute and defend it in the name of "business" and the "economy." If anyone has ever dealt with a patient dying from lung cancer, you've experienced the kind of polluting a cancer can create.

We function as if the entire organism exists for our benefit...like cancer

This one is more of a parallel - I have to assume that most animals are self-centered and living to live. However, most animals don't actually have access to "the entire organism" and live out their lives in one small corner of it. Humanity has metastasized and now occupies almost every "corner" of the planet, bringing its consumption habits with it.

Don't get me wrong - we have a unique gift the cancer does not have: we can recognize what we are doing and stop "being a cancer." I have to wonder, however, if we ever actually will.

[carpedm9587]

A cancer is also "surviving." Ultimately - it kills its host organism. For the rest, see my previous post.

[carpedm9587]

I think you'll find that non-native species are usually introduced by human action. In nature, non-native incursion happens, but is fairly rare and reasonably localized. Then it simply follows the natural course of evolution: with an adjustment in species dominance until the environment reaches equilibrium. Unfortunately, human transference of non-native species is relentless, and worldwide, giving nature very little opportunity to "catch up." That's the distinction. Nature has little/no means of introducing a snake from Southeast Asia to a swamp in Florida (the Burmese Python), or a fish from Southeast Asia to the Great Lakes and Mississippi Basin (Asian Carp). Humans are apparently very good at it.

[lilpixieofterror]

A cancer is also "surviving." Ultimately - it kills its host organism. For the rest, see my previous post.

[lilpixieofterror]

I think you'll find that non-native species are usually introduced by human action. In nature, non-native incursion happens, but is fairly rare and reasonably localized. Then it simply follows the natural course of evolution: with an adjustment in species dominance until the environment reaches equilibrium. Unfortunately, human transference of non-native species is relentless, and worldwide, giving nature very little opportunity to "catch up." That's the distinction. Nature has little/no means of introducing a snake from Southeast Asia to a swamp in Florida (the Burmese Python), or a fish from Southeast Asia to the Great Lakes and Mississippi Basin (Asian Carp). Humans are apparently very good at it.

[carpedm9587]

Again...a cancer is also "adapting" and is perfectly "natural." It also kills its host organism and then dies in the process. That was the parallel being made. The rest you can call what you wish. If you can show where anything I said was not accurate, I'll be happy to examine it.

This raises a good point. We do tend to use the word "natural" for everything other than what is done by humans. In fact, since we are part of nature, what we are doing is also perfectly natural and I was sloppy with my language. A cancer, as I noted above, is also perfectly natural. The question I was raising was, "From the Gaia perspective, are we more like a cancer?" At first blush, it seems we might be. We can change it, but it is unclear if we will do so.

As I have noted in other posts, sentience is a relatively new phenomenon to this planet. On an evolutionary scale, it is brand new. The jury is still out as to whether it will have long-term evolutionary advantage. It may be that sentience simply gives a species the ability to burn hot and dominate, but ultimately leads to its own self-destruction. That certainly won't be decided in my lifetime.

[carpedm9587]

I believe I said most of that, noting that the phenomenon in nature tends to be localized (for somewhat obvious reasons). Humans have broadened it to planet wide (I provided two notorious examples, there are others here). I have not done formal research into the details, so I do not have numbers to quote.

[lilpixieofterror]

Again...a cancer is also "adapting" and is perfectly "natural." It also kills its host organism and then dies in the process. That was the parallel being made. The rest you can call what you wish. If you can show where anything I said was not accurate, I'll be happy to examine it.

Yet again, you present conjecture and opinion and little else. People have been producing dooms day claims since humans had time to think about those things. In the old days it was humans against an angry God. Today it’s against an angry nature and according to these dooms day prophets, we should all be dead by now. Like I said, conjecture and opinion is about all you have.

This raises a good point. We do tend to use the word "natural" for everything other than what is done by humans. In fact, since we are part of nature, what we are doing is also perfectly natural and I was sloppy with my language. A cancer, as I noted above, is also perfectly natural. The question I was raising was, "From the Gaia perspective, are we more like a cancer?" At first blush, it seems we might be. We can change it, but it is unclear if we will do so.

And you have produced little beyond dooms day claims. Plenty have produced dooms day claims that don’t come forth. We were supposed to experience mass famine and mass starvation in the 80’s and 90’s. Yet it didn’t happen because the past dooms sayers had conjecture and opinion with little fact. As things change, we develop new methods and technology to overcome challenges facing us. Sounds like adapting to me. I don’t buy your cancer claim because nature isn’t a caring entity. If we doom ourselves, it will be because we failed to adapt. Not due to an angry nature deciding to destroy us.

As I have noted in other posts, sentience is a relatively new phenomenon to this planet. On an evolutionary scale, it is brand new. The jury is still out as to whether it will have long-term evolutionary advantage. It may be that sentience simply gives a species the ability to burn hot and dominate, but ultimately leads to its own self-destruction. That certainly won't be decided in my lifetime.

Or we gain the ability to not be at the mercy of an uncaring nature. Again, I see a lot of conjecture and opinion, but little else.

[lilpixieofterror]

I believe I said most of that, noting that the phenomenon in nature tends to be localized (for somewhat obvious reasons). Humans have broadened it to planet wide (I provided two notorious examples, there are others here). I have not done formal research into the details, so I do not have numbers to quote.

[carpedm9587]

Yet again, you present conjecture and opinion and little else. People have been producing dooms day claims since humans had time to think about those things. In the old days it was humans against an angry God. Today it’s against an angry nature and according to these dooms day prophets, we should all be dead by now. Like I said, conjecture and opinion is about all you have.

And you have produced little beyond dooms day claims. Plenty have produced dooms day claims that don’t come forth. We were supposed to experience mass famine and mass starvation in the 80’s and 90’s. Yet it didn’t happen because the past dooms sayers had conjecture and opinion with little fact. As things change, we develop new methods and technology to overcome challenges facing us. Sounds like adapting to me. I don’t buy your cancer claim because nature isn’t a caring entity. If we doom ourselves, it will be because we failed to adapt. Not due to an angry nature deciding to destroy us.

Or we gain the ability to not be at the mercy of an uncaring nature. Again, I see a lot of conjecture and opinion, but little else.

I don't believe I "predicted" anything. I openly wondered if humanity was more like a cancer than a healthy organ and provided several parallels. At the end of the day, I guess I do believe that, unless humanity changes its actions, we will prove to be more like a cancer. I continue to hope we will change.

[carpedm9587]

So is your position that, because invasive species can be shown to have occurred in the past (e.g., the camel), and even on a geographically wide scale, human activity is not increasing this phenomenon appreciably (frequency and geographic scale) with significant environmental consequences?

P.S. The camel tidbit was cool. I didn't know about that one. However, it is not clear to me that it qualifies as an "invasive" species so much as a migratory one. Populations do migrate, but that does not always make them invasive.

[Mountain Man]

Wow, you're stupid.

Look who's talking!

[One Bad Pig]

A cancer is also "surviving." Ultimately - it kills its host organism. For the rest, see my previous post.

Cancer is not an organism. It's the body's own cells run amok.