[Vision2020] Credibility: Roger's and Mine (Correction!)

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:

I left out a crucial "not" in my response to Roger.  It should read 
"the brain cells are not even connected, Roger!"  You can see for 
yourself at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/fetalbrain.htm.

Nick Gier

At 10:09 AM 9/2/2008, you wrote:
>Nick
>You hinted at medical opinion at being a basis for when a a fetus 
>becomes a person. You are on somewhat more solid ground there than 
>you are with religion or legality. Killing the jews was legal under 
>the Nazis and religion is oll over the place. You site 24 weeks a 
>being the cutoff point. Is that set in stone.  Could it be 165 days 
>170 days 168 days or 167 days, 12 hours 10 minutes and 37 seconds.
>Roger
>-----Original message-----
>From: nickgier at adelphia.net
>Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:47:44 -0700
>To: lfalen lfalen at turbonet.com
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Credibility: Roger's and Mine
>
> > Hi Roger,
> >
> > You need to read my article to see the documentation on the 
> historical position of the Catholic and Protestant churches. My 
> claim was based on tradition, not what current thinkers 
> believe.  Many of them are flaming liberals in changing a 
> traditional position on abortion that has solid scientific foundation.
> >
> > Neither Calvin nor Luther said anything about abortion, and 
> Thomas Aquinas' position was that the fetus becomes a person "at 
> the completion of man's coming into being."
> > The great Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain agrees with 
> Aquinas: "To admit that the human fetus receives the intellectual 
> soul from the moment of its conception, when matter is in no way 
> ready for it, sounds to me like a philosophical absurdity. It is as 
> absurd as to call a fertilized ovum a baby."
> >
> > And if you had followed the Vision discussion between Ted and 
> myself, you would have remembered that I set 24 weeks as the 
> cut-off point for abortion, which is pretty much how state medical 
> boards are interpreting the 1973 Supreme Court decision.
> >
> > Conception is not your "clear demarcation" point, because 
> twinning can happen up to 16 days, and what was once a conceptus 
> with one genetic identity is now two individuals with the same 
> genetic identity.  That, and the possibility of cloning every 
> somatic cell, proves the absurdity of identifying genetic and 
> personal identity.
> >
> > My stand on favoring abortion before 24 weeks and rejecting the 
> death penalty at all times is morally and legally 
> consistent.  Executing Duncan, a moral and legal person, or anyone 
> else is state sanctioned murder, but taking the life of a 
> non-person is not.  You continue to speak of "innocence" but cows 
> and pigs are just as innocent as early fetuses, and yet you have no 
> compunction about having them killed.
> >
> > Thanks for the dialogue,
> >
> > Nick
> >
> > Nick
> > You state that legal and religious traditions have held that a 
> fetus is not a
> > person until late in pregnancy. I dont think that Catholics and 
> Evangelicals
> > would agree with that.  By saying late in pregnancy you still 
> have not set an
> > exact demarcation point. This  can be somewhat of a sliding 
> scale.  For myself I
> > do not know what the correct answer is. I may be somewhat in 
> agreement with
> > Obama on that narrow point. At least the Catholics and 
> Evangelicals have a clear
> > demarcation point.
> > You still run the risk of killing the innocent and sparing the guilty. If
> > anybody deserves the death penalty it is Duncan.
> > On a related issue why would California what him extradited to 
> try him there. He
> > has already been sentenced to death, they should save the 
> expense. The same
> > holds for the guy who killed a Moscow student, some one in Boise 
> and in Nevada.
> > Boise can keep him. Latah does not need the expense.
> > Roger
> >
> >
> > You also need to read my article to see that I
>
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"Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to 
human affairs."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who 
represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."
  --Mohandas Gandhi

"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be 
discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each 
part by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole 
and on the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our 
intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between 
science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the 
sum of its various parts." --Max Planck

Nicholas F. Gier
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
http://www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/home.htm
208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
http://www.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/ift.htm

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