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Aug. 8, 2006 Let's assume that a woman has become pregnant and the embryo is growing inside of her. If she unintentionally and spontaneously aborts the embryo, that isn't the same thing as her purposefully having the embryo removed. A man on the golf course can be struck by lightning or shot to death by a poor sport he has just beaten. Legally the first is an "act of God." The second is legally a crime. The spontaneous abortion is like the lightning bolt or "act of God." The surgical removal is a deliberate human act so it is like the poor loser with a pistol. Simplistic picture-thinking aside, I say that circumstances alter cases and in certain cases an abortion is justified. I'm not in favor of outlawing abortion. If we dismiss simplistic thinking, then when is a baby a human person? Is an eight month old fetus a human person? Exactly what makes a specimen of H. sapiens a human person? And who says? Is David Gleeson our authority on this topic? Is Fred Smith? Is a child born without legs a person? And so more questioning follows and so forth. At what point do we draw the line? Whom do we defer to on this issue? Is a H. sapiens who isn't always 100% logical a real human person? Do we have to be dogmatic about this as well? I think what really bothers me about David Gleeson, Fred Smith, t411sh, and other trumpeters of the humanist manifesto of "reason ueber alles" is that hardly anybody is 100% logical about what is most important to them. Furthermore, what one person calls "evidence" may be interpreted in another way by someone else. Strong feelings often get in the way of pure reason. Trying to make reason the law of the mind is positing a rule that no one can follow. Aristotle should have included this caveat in his compendium on logic. Maybe Aristotle did, but I doubt it. Even Bertrand Rusell and Kurt Goedel had their lapses in logical thinking. So why is the humanist ideal of "reason ueber alles" set up as the impossible objective? What's more, cold reason is often heartless. I'm not saying stem cell research is bad. I'm trying to explain why the ideal of secular humanism is bad. The secular humanists need to re-think their agenda, and not be so dogmatic. If some potential humans are sacrificed for stem cell research, wny not just up and admit it? Humans donate their organs and their blood to medical science, so why not donate their eggs, sperm, and embryos to medical science? If medical science is what you want to give your sacrifices to, then just admit that is the case. But not everyone needs to agree with you, and you don't have to make your opinion the law of the mind for everybody else. When it comes to religion and worshiping a god, well, one doesn't have to be 100% logical to reject the idea of god. One can just note that no one has ever used reasoning to prove that God exists. No one has ever used logic to prove that God doesn't exist, either. Many people say that God is beyond logic and reason. Humans are beyond reason and logic as well, when they have to make a quick decision in an emergency. When there's no time to analyzing our thinking and draw up a truth table, a person simply acts on impulse or intuition. David Gleeson writes lucidly. I appreciate that. But I'd like to see a reference so I can verify that in fact President Bush acknowledges "that a human embryo is not yet a human person." I'd like to read the entire speech or press conference report. I'd also like David Gleeson to tell us what constitutes "a real human person." He doesn't do this in his recent article. With respect to Fred Smith, I'm not sure I'm worried about "potential." I'm worried about arbitrariness- just defining something the way you want it to be or the way your intuition guesses it to be. Intuitions differ. What you consider "unhuman" might not be what others consider to be "unhuman." What makes YOUR intuition the correct one? Don't say "reason" because your reasoning always derives from some ideas that you can't prove. Even the most logical mathematicians agree that this is true. Before the proofs come the unproven definitions and the unproven axioms. This fact is really what undermines the humanist manifesto of "be reasonable above all." There is simply intelligence and knowledge that is more basic than logical argumentation. Yes, He's got the whole world in His hands. Sci-tech humankind is presently playing God in transforming the world and philosophy also. Because of this, the human school-social agenda needs to center upon genuine wisdom, not just facts and memorized rules. In past ages the wisest persons were considered close to God or even sent by God. We can pretend that God does not exist, but we can't prove that God doesn't exist. We can find logical or factual errors in books believed to be "holy," but finding errors in books doesn't prove that God doesn't exist. To make their message more relevant to the actual human condition, humanists need to get back to their collective drawing board. ------------ About the author: sixty-six years young, and vigorous in mind, body, emotions, and spirit, John L. Waters is an independent researcher on self-healing, integration, creativity, and unity. To help demonstrate the effectiveness of his research, John has created thousands of drawings, paintings, instrumental music pieces, songs, prose pieces, poems, and other inventions. John has used his research to help persons remove a mental block and solve a problem. John also gives personal presentations which illustrate his research results. Each one of these works demonstrates the effectiveness of John's research. For more information, read John's letters of recommendation: about John's self-healing and integration: about the mystical energy or yogic force and related topics: about John's independent research: about John's seeking an agent or a publisher: Email: blueguntwo@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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