Views

Tantalus Prime and I have been discussing abortion. Tantalus takes exception to my observation that human life begins at conception. He believes that the humanity of a human zygote/embryo/fetus isn’t a scientific fact, but merely a matter of linguistics:

The exact moment at which a fertilizing egg becomes human… is a horrible scientific question! Is asking the exact size beyond which a stream becomes a river a good scientific question? Of course not, because this is not an empirical problem but one of definition. Define the term human however you want, but don’t pretend it is an empirical question to be solved. Scientists can’t even agree on what constitutes a living organism, so what makes you think pinpointing the demarcation between human being and not human being is easily solved in a testable and falsifiable manner….

Tantalus doesn’t like to mix definitions with his science. Especially definitions that aren’t congenial to his ideology.
Yet a human embryo is surely something. But I’m not going to ask Tantalus that nasty beginning of life question. I’ll ask Tantalus a different question, hopefully one that he finds less irritating:

What is a human embryo?

There would seem to be 5 different things that a human embryo in the womb could be:

1. The human embryo is part of the mother.
2. The human embryo is not part of the mother, and is of a non-human species (i.e. not Homo sapiens).
3. The human embryo is some hitherto unclassified thing, neither of any species nor a part of the mother.
4. The human embryo is a proto-human being.
5. The human embryo is a human being.

Let’s explore Tantalus’ dilemma:

Living in two minds has gotta be tough. Perhaps that’s why the notable and irascible Craig Venter has made such a career out of bucking the system.

“I have almost no visual memory; I think almost entirely in concepts,” says Venter, explaining his mental peculiarities.

The pioneering biochemist won national headlines earlier this year by announcing that he and a team of privately-funded fellow researchers had produced “artificial life.” The truth, however, is more modest — what they succeeded in doing was determining the DNA coding sequence of one of the simplest bacteria they could find, minutely altering it, then artificially reconstructing this sequence of DNA from subunits supplied in chemical solution, removing the DNA from a bacterial cell, then re-inserting this new DNA “software” into the dormant cellular machinery. From there, the bacterial cell successfully read the inserted instructions, and transformed into the desired organism.

Anyone who’s ever used a flash drive in a computer will see the analogy — without the working interface software and hardware of the computer itself, the information stored in the drive is inert and useless. While certainly deserving of note, Venter’s achievement hardly negates the need for the pre-existing complexity of a functioning cell.

National Center for Selling Evolution Science Education’ s Program and Policy Director Josh Rosenau has made disturbing arguments in favor of abortion. On his personal blog Thoughts from Kansas, Rosenau, who has been a doctoral candidate in evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas, asserted that children in the womb were nearly indistinguishable from… cancer.
Later in his post, Rosenau defends abortion by asserting:

Is an embryo a discrete human being? I think not. An embryo is dependent on its living host…

An old-fashioned term for the “living host” of an embryo is… mother. Rosneau frames the mother-child relationship charmingly: he compares the relationship between a mother and her unborn child to the relationship between a host and a parasite.

Rosneau:

An embryo is dependent on… a woman whose nutrients it relies upon, whose immune system protects it, whose lungs provide it with oxygen, and whose body carries out every other essential function. If the woman dies, an embryo cannot survive (medical intervention alters this case somewhat, but a reliance on medical life support hardly vitiates questions about the embryo’s discreteness).

Actually, we have entire institutions devoted to children who rely on others to provide support for their vital functions. They’re called hospitals. I work in several of them. Many of the children for whom I provide care (I’m a pediatric neurosurgeon) need artificial feeding, antibiotics to augment their immune systems and protect them from infection, and need respirators to help them breathe. I assure Mr. Rosenau: hospitalized children are quite discrete human beings, tubes and machines notwithstanding. I do not consider their condition of dependence on vital support a basis for denying them the right to life. In fact, their condition of dependence is in my view justification for protecting their lives with increased vigor.

Jerry Coyne has an amusing post on the National Center for Science Education’s outreach effort to Christians. Coyne, in a post titled “NSCE Becomes BioLogos,” laments the rigorous efforts of the NCSE’s Faith Project, which is a major outreach program to Christians and other people of faith.

Coyne quotes the NCSE:

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a not-for-profit, membership organization providing information and resources for schools, parents and concerned citizens working to keep evolution in public school science education. We educate the press and public about the scientific, educational, and legal aspects of the creation and evolution controversy, and supply needed information and advice to defend good science education at local, state, and national levels….The National Center for Science Education is not affiliated with any religious organization or belief. We and our members enthusiastically support the right of every individual to hold, practice, and advocate their beliefs, religious or non-religious. Our members range from devout practitioners of several religions to atheists, with many shades of belief in between. What unites them is a conviction that science and the scientific method, and not any particular religious belief, should determine science curriculum.

Coyne asks, perceptively:

P.Z. Myers has responded to my post about his views on abortion and personhood. In reply, Myers posted pictures of a zygote, an embryo, and a group of young women. He asserted that differences in appearance between these human beings was an ethical basis for denial of the right to life to humans in utero.

I take it for granted that Myers, being a competent biologist, agrees with me on this point: a living human embryo/fetus is a member of the species Homo sapiens (it is no other species). That is, a distinct human life begins at conception and ends at natural death. That is not to to say that Myers and I agree on rights, personhood, etc., but merely to say that a human life is a continuum that begins at conception. That is a fact of biology.

Myers makes the bizarre assertion that devaluing some human beings adds value to the life of others:

Huh. I don’t know about you, but to me, that [recognizing that humans in utero have a right to life] doesn’t exalt human life at all — it seems to do the opposite, and devalue the life of women.[my ellipsis]

Every stage of human life is…human life. Each young woman in Myer’s picture looked like a “blob of cells” when she was an embryo. An embryo is what a human being looks like 20 days after conception. A young adult is what a human being looks like 20 years after conception. An elderly adult is what a human being looks like 80 years after conception. All are human beings of different ages. Of course, abilities, appearance, etc. differ radically, but a human being is a human being. And all human beings have a right to life. To respect and value one human being despite his/her immaturity is not to denigrate a mature human being. Respect for life protects and respects all human beings.

P.Z. Myers on a faux online abortion poll:

“I’m about as pro-choice as you can get…”

Unsurprisingly, Myers is “pro-choice”. But Myers’ advocacy of “choice” goes further:

“…I’m even willing to say that I’m pro-abortion…”

“Pro-abortion”? Even committed pro-abortion zealots don’t generally endorse abortion explicitly, except to assert the right to ‘choice,’ as if one were choosing a salad dressing rather than deciding to take a human life.
Myers:

“[I] would like to encourage more people to abort…”

My eight questions and answers for New Atheists have generated some amusing replies. Most just criticize me for asking, calling me ‘dishonest’ (that’s for my questions, not just for my answers). ‘No matter what, God didn’t do it’ is the typical reply.

One dyspeptic New Atheist was uncommonly amusing. Chuck O’Connor at Battling Confusion writes:

Michael Egnor (a fellow of the Discovery Institute – the PR organization that tries to deny biological evolution for the sake of Judeo/Christian creationism and theocracy – see their aims articulated in “The Wedge Strategy”) offers excellent evidence of this obsessive psychological quirk towards certainty when he creates a “strawman” argument against “New Atheism” at the Discovery Institute Web-site.

My “obsessive psychological quirk” was to ask important questions and to answer them coherently. After posting my questions, he asserts:

First off, Eignor’s [sic] unwillingness to enable comments at his blog post indicates he does not want to know what “New Atheists” believe.

We don’t take comments on ENV because much of what New Atheists believe is expressed in 4-letter parcels. They have their own blogs for that.