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Originally Posted by Strangelet
It helps me not punch some of my family members in the face when they tell me gays shouldn't be allowed to marry. And I suppose it keeps me from getting punched in the face when I resist calling them brainless fools.
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That's always a good start!
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Originally Posted by Strangelet
But if you believe that humanity is simply genetic code, brought through several stages of life where the embryonic stage is really no different than puberty as they are all transformations on the same set of DNA, you must say that something "human", therefore sacred, begins when the unique genetic code, unique and never to naturally reoccur, is created - the zygotic stage.
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This is a good point, and I think you may have highlighted the different perspective I have by raising it. My position would be that whether and where we call something human and/or sacred is unimportant, irrelevant - it's just a label we ascribe at some point that feels right to us. Ultimately, to me, it doesn't matter whether it's deemed human or not yet human. So at the risk of sounding like a complete heathen, sanctity (even in a non-religious sense) is playing no role in how I think about this. The issue of
suffering - whether it's of a baby/foetus/embryo/egg, or of a mother - is all that sways my thinking when we're talking about the ethics underpinning it. Whether we decide something is human at conception is, for me, irrelevant. Suffering is the only factor I feel confident in using as a barometer for this.
I'm sorry I'm going to have to reply to your other points later, work is piling up, but the perspective you brought on those who believe in a soul and those who don't is a genuinely interesting one.