6 ms·

At the embryo stage, what's the difference?

411111111111111 4y ago
The difference actually doesn't change, wherever it's in embryo stage or not. The human is easier relatabe and enjoys a special status from organized religions.
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago
  Even putting aside the embryo vs adult issue… pretty much everybody, religious or not, considers a human qualitatively different from a mouse.
  - colanderman 4y ago
    Hence why I'm asking about embryos. What, scientifically, differentiates a human embryo from a mouse embryo, beside what it may eventually become? Why find the experimentation of one appalling, but not the other, when neither is allowed to grow? (I am not arguing one way or the other, merely that it is illogical and unscientific to differentiate.)
    - NotYourLawyer 4y ago
      Because life begins at conception.
      - colanderman 4y ago
        For mice surely too then, no?
Thorrez 4y ago
It's the abortion debate. I'm against abortion. The way I see it is a person has rights no matter the person's age. Earlier in development just means younger.
- alexvoda 4y ago
  In that case you should very much be in support of this research. According to you, those dead embryos that resulted from failed pregnancies have just as much a claim to healthcare as anyone else. This researchers that problem.
  - Thorrez 4y ago
    I agree we should be doing research to promote healthy life, but I don't agree that we should be creating people for the purposes of killing them and deriving scientific info from their deaths. The research in this article is fine, it's on mice. If it were to be done on humans it wouldn't be. It's not ok to kill an innocent person, regardless of how much scientific data that provides and how many lives that data might save.
- implements 4y ago
  Everyone agrees people have rights, it’s that they disagree on what constitutes a person. Some religious people currently believe a person exists at the point of fertilisation, but they used to believe ‘ensoulment’ happened some weeks after. One question to ponder - “Why would God give personhood to a fertilised egg that (via omniscience) he knew was fated not to be carried to term?”. If earthly life is essentially a test of moral virtue (“Here’s free-will, let’s see what you do with it”) then “eggs as persons” doesn’t really make sense - the test can’t start / a true person doesn’t exist until it has some form of effective agency.
  - NotYourLawyer 4y ago
    Plenty of non-religious people think life begins before birth.
  - Thorrez 4y ago
    Yeah I agree it's about personhood. That same argument applies to all the babies who die between being born and turning 1. It's more an argument against God than an argument against rights starting from the first moment of life. If we assume God doesn't exist, then the argument doesn't really work. If we assume God does exist, one possible rebuttal is that the purpose of life isn't to test moral virtue. For example the purpose of life could be to provide an opportunity to know, love, and glorify God. But it's just an opportunity, not the only opportunity. After death there continue to be opportunities for that, so people who die immediately after ensoulment still have an opportunity for that.
graderjs 4y ago
Ho ho courting controversy. The difference is you don't know if there's a difference: when does the soul come in? Maybe you don't believe in souls but can you disprove that they exist? is the personality only some sort of construct that's formed as a child is raised? Or is there something eternal spiritual inside? It doesn't have to trip your anti-religious ADS, maybe it's a fact about the universe we haven't found a way to measure yet. Giving you don't know and can't be sure don't you think it's better to err on the side of caution? But putting that aside like I think it should be possible to create embryos that don't have souls but these non-soul persons are they any less human or deserving of human Rights than soul persons, given they can experience pain and suffering just the same as soul embodied humans? The future is just a giant big can of worms I don't think anyone can strive so confidently into it sure of that they're coming down right on the ethical issues.
- samus 4y ago
  How would we be able to tell that a person has no soul? How can we even say that we have a soul? The problem with the existence of the soul is that there is no definition of what the soul is for science to prove or disprove its existence. Right now it's just a fuzzy term to be employed in religious rhetoric.
  - graderjs 4y ago
    Too logical. Don't be so materialistic. People talk about souls right there has to be something to that. No definition doesn't mean doesn't exist, maybe means we don't understand. We don't understand everything. We should err on the side of caution. It's not just religious. Too much of an onerous connotation. Unnecessary. It's part of our history, our cultural, our art. It's something we as humans know to be true. Like consciousness. Can we "tell" that we are conscious. Can we "say" that we are conscious, as you say. The problem with the existence of consciousness is there is not definition of what consciousness is for science to prove or disprove its existence. Right not it's just a fuzzy term employed in grant applications. C'mon. We have to recognize the limits of what we know and not be so fucking arrogant to think we can just pontificate, but more importantly, act, beyond that. If we don't know it has a soul, how we kill it? It's like saying: "You can press a button, and that will release a poison gas into a box, and there's some probability that there's something alive in that box." The thing is, you don't know. Is there a life in there, or is there not? You don't know. But you really think it's ethical to take that chance? Or...to fallback on some psuedo-scientific notion that "we (our instruments) can't definite it yet" so it can't exist. I'm sorry, that's not good enough. We might just be talking about the eternal part of ourselves, or at least at part that survives incarnation in this body. How are we so arrogant to say: Yeah, we totally know the truth, let's just kill everything (or experiment on everything) that we're sure there's no life in. Ugh...anyway, thank you for engaging. I'm not taking a pot shot at you. I'm not saying you think all these things. Just a chance to expound on this subject. Have a good night! :) ;p x ;p

The difference actually doesn't change, wherever it's in embryo stage or not. The human is easier relatabe and enjoys a special status from organized religions.

NotYourLawyer 4y ago
Even putting aside the embryo vs adult issue… pretty much everybody, religious or not, considers a human qualitatively different from a mouse.
- colanderman 4y ago
  Hence why I'm asking about embryos. What, scientifically, differentiates a human embryo from a mouse embryo, beside what it may eventually become? Why find the experimentation of one appalling, but not the other, when neither is allowed to grow? (I am not arguing one way or the other, merely that it is illogical and unscientific to differentiate.)
  - NotYourLawyer 4y ago
    Because life begins at conception.
    - colanderman 4y ago
      For mice surely too then, no?

Thorrez 4y ago

It's the abortion debate. I'm against abortion. The way I see it is a person has rights no matter the person's age. Earlier in development just means younger.

alexvoda 4y ago
In that case you should very much be in support of this research. According to you, those dead embryos that resulted from failed pregnancies have just as much a claim to healthcare as anyone else. This researchers that problem.
- Thorrez 4y ago
  I agree we should be doing research to promote healthy life, but I don't agree that we should be creating people for the purposes of killing them and deriving scientific info from their deaths. The research in this article is fine, it's on mice. If it were to be done on humans it wouldn't be. It's not ok to kill an innocent person, regardless of how much scientific data that provides and how many lives that data might save.
implements 4y ago
Everyone agrees people have rights, it’s that they disagree on what constitutes a person. Some religious people currently believe a person exists at the point of fertilisation, but they used to believe ‘ensoulment’ happened some weeks after. One question to ponder - “Why would God give personhood to a fertilised egg that (via omniscience) he knew was fated not to be carried to term?”. If earthly life is essentially a test of moral virtue (“Here’s free-will, let’s see what you do with it”) then “eggs as persons” doesn’t really make sense - the test can’t start / a true person doesn’t exist until it has some form of effective agency.
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago
  Plenty of non-religious people think life begins before birth.
- Thorrez 4y ago
  Yeah I agree it's about personhood. That same argument applies to all the babies who die between being born and turning 1. It's more an argument against God than an argument against rights starting from the first moment of life. If we assume God doesn't exist, then the argument doesn't really work. If we assume God does exist, one possible rebuttal is that the purpose of life isn't to test moral virtue. For example the purpose of life could be to provide an opportunity to know, love, and glorify God. But it's just an opportunity, not the only opportunity. After death there continue to be opportunities for that, so people who die immediately after ensoulment still have an opportunity for that.

graderjs 4y ago

Ho ho courting controversy. The difference is you don't know if there's a difference: when does the soul come in? Maybe you don't believe in souls but can you disprove that they exist? is the personality only some sort of construct that's formed as a child is raised? Or is there something eternal spiritual inside? It doesn't have to trip your anti-religious ADS, maybe it's a fact about the universe we haven't found a way to measure yet. Giving you don't know and can't be sure don't you think it's better to err on the side of caution? But putting that aside like I think it should be possible to create embryos that don't have souls but these non-soul persons are they any less human or deserving of human Rights than soul persons, given they can experience pain and suffering just the same as soul embodied humans? The future is just a giant big can of worms I don't think anyone can strive so confidently into it sure of that they're coming down right on the ethical issues.

samus 4y ago
How would we be able to tell that a person has no soul? How can we even say that we have a soul? The problem with the existence of the soul is that there is no definition of what the soul is for science to prove or disprove its existence. Right now it's just a fuzzy term to be employed in religious rhetoric.
- graderjs 4y ago
  Too logical. Don't be so materialistic. People talk about souls right there has to be something to that. No definition doesn't mean doesn't exist, maybe means we don't understand. We don't understand everything. We should err on the side of caution. It's not just religious. Too much of an onerous connotation. Unnecessary. It's part of our history, our cultural, our art. It's something we as humans know to be true. Like consciousness. Can we "tell" that we are conscious. Can we "say" that we are conscious, as you say. The problem with the existence of consciousness is there is not definition of what consciousness is for science to prove or disprove its existence. Right not it's just a fuzzy term employed in grant applications. C'mon. We have to recognize the limits of what we know and not be so fucking arrogant to think we can just pontificate, but more importantly, act, beyond that. If we don't know it has a soul, how we kill it? It's like saying: "You can press a button, and that will release a poison gas into a box, and there's some probability that there's something alive in that box." The thing is, you don't know. Is there a life in there, or is there not? You don't know. But you really think it's ethical to take that chance? Or...to fallback on some psuedo-scientific notion that "we (our instruments) can't definite it yet" so it can't exist. I'm sorry, that's not good enough. We might just be talking about the eternal part of ourselves, or at least at part that survives incarnation in this body. How are we so arrogant to say: Yeah, we totally know the truth, let's just kill everything (or experiment on everything) that we're sure there's no life in. Ugh...anyway, thank you for engaging. I'm not taking a pot shot at you. I'm not saying you think all these things. Just a chance to expound on this subject. Have a good night! :) ;p x ;p