I’ve decided to switch back to blogspot. Much easier to maintain:
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Abortion is a pretty big issue, and can be pretty emotional at times. I’ve been thinking about it a bit recently, and I’m writing about this, hoping that I can write it in a way that no-one can disagree with. If that’s possible. I want to outline the issues, provide a couple of arguments for and against, but at the end of the day I’m not going to conclude it all. Well, I’m going to try…
My first point I’d like to make is that the debate around abortion is not primarily about whether or not you believe it is ok to kill another human being. It is primarily about when you believe life begins. If you believe that human life begins at conception, then you will likely fit in the so called ‘pro-life’ camp, and be anti-abortion, believing abortion is killing a human being. If you believe that human life begins at birth, then you are likely to fit in the so called ‘pro-choice’ camp, believing that abortion is not killing a human being, and therefore the woman should be free to make their own choice. Of course, it’s possible to believe that human life begins at a time between these points, and people have varying degrees of certainty in their belief of when life begins.
The key point is that your belief about when life begins will determine what you think of abortion. And the problem is that it’s really hard to come up with a consistent argument for what constitutes human life. There just isn’t an easy answer. What I’d like to look some ways we can try to use to determine when life begins, and make a bit of a comment about them.
- The Potential to become Human. The argument is that once conception has occured, if the embryo is left uninterfered with, it will eventually become human.
However, a good number of viable embryos do not make it to full term, and therefore each embryo represents a chance at human life, not a definite human life. Are we allowed to try and alter such probabilities? Perhaps. On one hand, if I throw a grenade into a room that may or may not contain people, the fact that the room only contained a chance of having people wouldn’t be a justifiable reason for throwing the grenade. On the other, if we must in all cases preserve any and every potential human life, then we must ensure that every egg has it’s maximum chance of being fertilized. Most people consider abstaining from sex acceptable behaviour. - Unique Genetic Code. Once conception has occured, a cell with a distinct genetic code is formed. If we define human life on the basis of a unique genetic code, then life begins at conception.
A couple of things need to be taken into account here. First, a person is more than their genes. Identical twins have pretty much identical genes, but they are different people, and each entitled to their own unique human life.
Second, in every human being there are a number cells that have different genetic codes, as the consequence of mutations, and even as part of normal functioning (when B Lymphocytes are being produced, their genome is shuffled to produce different antibodies). If you define a human life simply on the basis of a distinct genetic code, you will need to consider each of these cell populations to be human lives. Cancer is has a unique genetic code, but we don’t consider cancer to be a human life. - Physical appearance, based on Embryology. Using this criteria, something is alive if it resembles a human being. You’ve probably seen photos of little fetuses, who are only so many weeks old, but they’ve already got fingers, and by the time they’re four weeks old they have their own heart, etc… So, abortion is wrong after the first few months of pregnancy.
This method can tend to be very subjective, when we need some objective criteria, otherwise it’s just based on a gut feeling, and what if my gut feeling disagrees with your gut feeling. The objetive criteria needs to exclude non-human embryos, which in early stages can resemble human embryos. The other thing we need to take into account is that someone doesn’t lose their humanity if they are disfigured. If someone were scarred beyond recognition, do they lose their humanity? If losing the appearance of humanity doesn’t mean losing humanity, then it follows that gaining the appearance of humanity doesn’t mean gaining humanity. - Sentience / Consciousness. If something can think, then it is alive. If we use this criteria, abortion is wrong after the fetus has become self aware.
There are a couple of issues with this. Firstly, if I lose consciousness, I remain human. People are not entitled to kill me in my sleep, just because I’m not awake. So perhaps a better definition would be the capacity for consciousness?
Secondly, how do we know if fetuses have consciousness? We can’t ask them when they’re in the womb, because they can’t speak, and we can’t ask them when they can speak, because by the time they’ve learnt the language required to answer such a question, they will have forgotten. - Independence from Mother. If something can exist on it’s own, then it is alive. So once a baby can survive on it’s own, it’s effectively human. Using this criteria, abortion is ok up until an age when it’s sufficently developed to survive on it’s own (so you’d need to look at how young a preterm birth can be, yet still be viable).
On the other hand, a new born is still dependant on the Mother until it’s old enough to look after itself. In fact, some babies don’t really become independant until their twenties…
Right. So there you have it. Five Criteria. Some say Life begins at conception, others are more at the other end. And in my opinion, none of them are 100% watertight.
So I’m running out of steam, it’s late at night, you can probably tell… There are probably more criteria, and I probably haven’t treated these with as much time and effort as I would have liked, but it’s starting to get late. I’ll rely on comments to cover anything I missed and to refine the arguments I’ve made so far.
I’ve recently become quite aware that over the years my attitude to romance has changed. I’m not sure I can really do it justice, but I’m just going to write a few things. Feel free to add your comments, and I can clarify.
I once thought that “I couldn’t live without you” was a pretty romantic thing to say. Now I see it as part-exaggeration, and part-disempowerment. Part-exaggeration, because it simply isn’t true. Part disempowerment, because it implies that an individual is somehow incomplete on their own, and that they are dependant on the other individual. If it’s true, it implies that they have ceded soverignty to something else, have given up their independence, have grown accustomed to relying on someone, and consequently become weaker. In my view, relationships should make us stronger, not more dependent on the other party. This doesn’t mean keeping oneself seperate and never admitting to weakness, on the contrary, it’s about acknowledging weakness in order to overcome it together.
On a similar note, I don’t think anyone should ever hold their partner to be the most important thing in the world. There are more important values than unwavering devotion to one’s spouse; it’s far greater to be two individuals united by a common love for Justice and Mercy, Love and Dignity, than two individuals infatuated with each other.
So, haven’t posted in months. Thought I’d better update the old blog.
The big news is that I’ve moved away from the city of my birth, and have moved to sunny dunedin. Har har. I wish it was sunny. But, I am really enjoying myself, I’ve gone back to university to retrain as a (medical) Doctor. Bit of a big decision, but over the past years I’d been looking for a way to integrate my desire to pursue knowledge, and my desire to do stuff for people. Medicine is great like that. The entire class is a bunch of geeks (though not socially inept geeks), and the profession, while having it’s fair share of ethical issues, offers a relatively objective way of helping people.
So, that’s what I’m up to. Now you know why I don’t update this regularly! (and if I do, you’ll know why I suddenly start spouting medical stuff)…
Organic food is one of the latest trends out there. It’s part of a reaction against the commercialisation of food, and all the evils accompanying it. I mean, who wants food with nasty chemicals on it? So the basic idea is to avoid non-organic methods in the production of food. Advocates of Organic foods would argue that it’s both healthier for us, and healthier for the environment. I want to look at these claims
For a start, is it really healthier for us? It seems intuitive that natural is good right? Well, natural food is good, but if you’ve ever been stung by a bee, or stepped on a thorn, you’ll have (hopefully) quickly learnt that nature is not geared towards meeting our needs. Yes, there are a lot of non-organic substances that can mess us up, but there are also a lot of organic substances that can also mess us up good. So we should avoid the fallacy that natural = good.
Is it better for the environment? Perhaps. It might prevent the build up of chemicals that build up in the environment, but bear in mind that organic farming produces less food per acre than non-organic farming. Again, chemicals can be bad, but so can organic products.
My main issue I have with organic food is that it is often taken to be a primary indicator of healthiness, when it’s only a secondary measure of healthiness. Maybe organic foods are healthier than non-organic foods? If that’s the case, we should buy them not because they’re organic, but because they’re healthy. So why bother looking for what is and isn’t organic? Why not just look for healthy foods? If it’s organic, sweet. If not, no worries. No sense getting all dogmattic about it.
[There's also the issue of 'organic' starting to become a brand name, which starts to exclude small scale local farmers, which kinda defeats the whole philosophy behind it all.
So: buy healthy, buy local. Importantly, make sure you read up on where you food is coming from. Be aware of where you food is coming from.
Yeah, what are other's thoughts on the matter?]
In my previous post, I argued that christians should support gay rights, on the basis that there is insignificant biblical evidence against it, and that conversely, the biblical narrative encourages christians to be an advocate for minorities and those who have not recieved justice. I wish to add to this argument.
Premise 1: ‘It is not good for man to be alone’. It is an inalienable right that someone should be able to live with their mutually chosen partner. An individual’s right to form a close intimate bond with another individual should not be taken away, without very very good reasons.
Premise 2: There exists homosexual individuals who would not be satisfied by a heterosexual relationship. I’m not saying that homosexuality has a solely genetic aieteology, I’m just saying that some people are at a point where they just couldn’t do a heterosexual relationship.
If one deems homosexuality to be wrong, this means that there will be individuals who have had their right to form an intimate relationship taken away from them.
What would you do if someone told you that even though you loved someone, you were not allowed to be with them? If you have a partner, think about them. What would it be like to look upon your very relationship as something pathological, something wrong, something to be repressed, ignored? Think what it would be like to spend the rest of your life away from them, knowing that although you both love each other, you must live apart?
I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
I’ve been thinking about homosexuality, and have come to the conclusion that Christians in general have missed the boat. We should be the ones pushing for gay rights, not fighting against them. By demonizing homosexuality I think we’re missing a great opportunity to do a great good in our world, and instead are letting ourselves become tools for evil. I want to outline some of my thoughts on the matter.
So since moving south, I’ve been church shopping. This means going to a whole lot of different churches, and checking out what they do, how much free stuff they give to new people (one church gave me chocolate, a definite plus!), how welcoming the people are, what the service is like, etc… I have a bit of an informal points system going (which isn’t an objective measure, it’s a measure of how good the church is for me - I appreciate that a low scoring church for me might be a high scoring church for others)
Brehaut is doing something radical. He’s doing the blog thing without the comment thing. Comments do have a few problems associated with them, mostly the problem of worth; comments are generally not as worthwhile as blog posts (see brehaut’s post for more).
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