I don't know anyone who would claim an abortion does not kill anything. I've been getting pre-cancerous patches called actinic keratoses. Since they can become cancerous my doctor freezes them off with liquid nitrogen. My wife had a mole surgically removed that her doctor thought might become cancerous. I have a skin tag on the back of my leg that is bothering me that I'm going to get tied off. I don't worry that I'm killing cells when I have AKs frozen off or my skin tag tied off. These are living human cells but like a zygote they are not a person.

The embryos that we transferred had few cells. They were nothing like a person at this point and their death bothers me no more than the cells my doctor kills with LN2 or a suture. Any of those embryos that survived would joyously be welcomed into our family because they were wanted but I also wouldn't fault someone for aborting them at such an early stage. I love my daughter more than life itself but I don't mourn about the two other embryos our doctor transferred that didn't make it.

Oh for crying out loud. Are you kidding me?

It's an organism, and an early stage of the human organism, but not a human organism and not a human?

You are being more than ridiculous here.

At what point do you "believe" the organism turns into a human? Please explain why you believe that, and how it's backed by science.

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

from a biological perspective, there isnt one.

---

who's smarter than you're? i'm!

So to run with that logic, we either are't human now, or we are all human from the moment of fertilization. There is no separation of the two, correct?

Would it help you if instead of using the term "human," we said a "member of the species homo sapiens"?

From a biological perspective, a human organism is a human. You might still be trying to hide, inexplicably, behind the difference between a human and a person.

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

there isnt a definite point. there are no clear lines in biology.

if you lined up the entire line of skeletons from the first ape like ancestor to a modern human, at no point could you make a distinction ;this is a homo sapien, and this one isnt. but you could look at the first one and say "thats not a human" quite easily. any point in between is purely arbitrary.

---

who's smarter than you're? i'm!

no. the lines are fuzzy. at what point does a person become old? give me an exact definitve day we can all agree on. do you get that? now apply it to biological development.

---

who's smarter than you're? i'm!

 
there isnt a definite point. there are no clear lines in biology.

Yeah, there really is.


if you lined up the entire line of skeletons from the first ape like ancestor to a modern human, at no point could you make a distinction ;this is a homo sapien, and this one isnt. but you could look at the first one and say "thats not a human" quite easily. any point in between is purely arbitrary.

Has nothing whatsoever to do with what we're talking about. What we're talking about is an individual, living organism, biologically distinct from it's mother, with it's own, complete, human DNA, growing and developing under it's own internal direction. Just because some lines in biology are fuzzy does not mean that we cannot also make definitive statements, or that all lines are fuzzy. What you have with a fertilized egg is, undeniably, a human organism. A human being. There is no question of it being an ape or a the next stage in human evolution, and the point of conception is not arbitrary.

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Why are you entertaining this discussion with this guy. I made a decision last week. If people can't explain their positions in easy to understand English within a back and forth or two, I'm done with them. People trying to sound smarter than they are or engage in circular arguments aren't worth my time.

---

---

"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

An "old" person is still a person. You are trying to limit when a person becomes a person.

i suppose you will just limit yourself to topics without any difficult problems.

---

who's smarter than you're? i'm!

the lines in biology are messy. they are.

the point of conception is an arbitrary point to describe the beginning of human life. you can make that claim. absolutely. its a disctinction you can reasonably hold. but, you are absolutely incorrect to claim its a basic science fact or that biologists agree with you. they dont. there is no definitive line. its an arbitrary distinction.


you can convince me otherwise by finding some sort of consensus in biological texts. please do.

---

who's smarter than you're? i'm!

im not trying to limit it, im trying to get you and others to understand there is no clear distinction in biology. any point you choose is arbitrary, and there is plenty of disagreement. just as it would be in trying to pick a day when someone becomes old.

---

who's smarter than you're? i'm!

the lines in biology are messy. they are.

Some lines in biology are messy. Others are not. Conception is one of those that isn't, and it isn't an arbitrary point in the life cycle of a human being, either. Quite the contrary, it's the point at which a human being comes into existence. Before that moment, there is not a human organism present. After conception, there IS a human organism present. That's about as bright a line as there is.

Sincerely, next time you feel the impulse to accuse someone of denying science because of their personal or political beliefs, you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

No, just with people like you in the manner you have displayed. My position on abortion is clear. I don't give two shits whether the fetus is a person or not when it happens. No need to complicated it. You either feel it is murder or you don't. We are long past rational discussion on this. You obviously don't think a fetus is a person, so you don't think it is murder. Others disagree with you. Me, I think the bitch in question is selfish, and that is her prerogative. But it doesn't make here any less selfish. Selfish behavior is a funny thing and shouldn't be an insult to anybody on this forum based on the time and financial commitments most triathletes take at the expense of their families. Own it.

As for you, you sounds like a little piss ant with your childish debates lately. To be honest, they sound like little more than a chance for to you prove to others that you are smarter than you are, or maybe you are trying to convince yourself. But like I said Friday, there are a whole lot of things I would rather engage in than the recent back and forths with you. And you can call it what you want. At this point, I don't know what your goal is. Maybe you are simply trolling, being annoying on purpose, think you are smarter than you are, I don't know. I call it ignoring foolish behavior.

Going forward, I'm not going to engage with your silly back and forths. If you assert something, I'm going to insist you cite it with evidence, otherwise you are just another person trying to sound smart to me. Sorry, I have to do this to you man, but at a certain point, enough is enough and I've had enough of your nonsense.

If you want to talk about police brutality, the police state and gov't corruption? Fine.

---

---

"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

please provide a biological consensus for this.
ive tried to find one and cant.

---

who's smarter than you're? i'm!

 
please provide a biological consensus for this.

No, you haven't.

You've already agreed with me. Now you're just standing there stamping your feet and holding your breath and refusing to admit it.

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

you cannot provide biological proof of your claim. you havent. you won't becasue there isnt one. its an arbitrary line youre drawing that is not agreed upon in biology.

this is why i dont accept your assertion.

---

who's smarter than you're? i'm!

you realize that vitus is the one making an assertion without evidence? "human life begins at conception"

it flies in the face of accepted biology.

the fact of the matter is vitus is seemingly ignorant on the facts of biology. there is no clear line. he says its conception. but what he doesn't seem to know, and i haven't even touched on, is there is no clear line when conception has taken place either. its a long, complicated process that can take days. there is no agreement among biologists and the more we learn, the fuzzier the lines get. so to make any distinction, you must draw an arbitrary line.

---

who's smarter than you're? i'm!

That's a philosophical debate. I don't agree with it, but don't particularly care. It isn't worth the sweat off my sack to engage with him anymore than engage with you. With that said, I empathize more with the pro-life crowd's stance than the pro-choice stance because I don't think they are honest about why they make their decisions.

That is why I don't engage in debates about religion, abortion (except to say I think it is for the greater good in many cases), and global warming. Because they bring out the lowest common denominator in people. And frankly, I don't think much is gained from the back and forth.

---

---

"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

its fine if you dont want to engage in the discussion of course. its just not a simple discussion and im not going to put a super pithy statement as definining my position. its exceedingly complicated. i think the discussions are fun and fruitful.

---

who's smarter than you're? i'm!

Pigs generally think rolling in the mud is fun and fruitful to. I'm sure you have some philosophical argument on that simple concept to.

---

---

"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

"human life begins at conception"
it flies in the face of accepted biology.

Odd, because not that long ago you were agreeing with me that "of course" the fertilized egg is an organism. How can that be if it flies in the face of accepted biology?

there is no clear line. he says its conception. but what he doesn't seem to know, and i haven't even touched on, is there is no clear line when conception has taken place either.

Oh give me a break. That's neither in dispute nor relevant.

You can drill down and say that when a zygote is formed during conception, a human exists, if you like. Whatever. Still not fuzzy, and not arbitrary.

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

still waiting for you to prove that biologists agree that life begins when you say it does.

---

who's smarter than you're? i'm!

 
still waiting for you to prove that biologists agree that life begins when you say it does.

Since when is that the metric? Next time I'm in a room full of biologists, I'll give em your number and have them call you. But that's not the point. The point is that biology says that's when a new human life exists. As you said already, it's the organism in its earliest stage of development. That's entirely uncontroversial, and really is "settled science."

Again, instead of desperately trying to hang on to some nonsense about how there's no scientific consensus about when life begins, why don't you just try explaining how that could possibly make sense, given what we agree on about the nature of fertilization?

We agree that after conception, there exists a distinct organism. We agree that it is alive. We agree that it's human. Somehow you want us to accept that this distinct, living, human organism isn't a human. How does that make sense?

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."