Charlie V said:
You are the one who seems to not be grasping.
It is only your opinion that "A fertilised egg is a new life. An unfertilised egg, or a single sperm, is NOT a new life.
An unfertilsed egg is not dead. It's
alive.
New? Well, that's an entirely relative term.
Semantics are totally involved -- if the word "new" meant "one second ago," or if it meant "within the last 1,000 years," that would cast new light on the meaning of "new life."
And "life," how do you define that? Are you saying that the unfertilised egg is
dead?
If we defined "New Life" as "The latest issue of Life magazine," no eggs would be involved.
We could define "life" or "new" or "human being" or all sorts of words all different ways. That is
semantics.
Please be assured, I have a basic grasp of embryology
Semantics are not involved, and you're confusing this very simple issue by trying to involve them.
Lets start with a few definitions:
1) GAMETE - A reproductive cell having the haploid number of chromosomes, especially a mature sperm or egg capable of fusing with a gamete of the opposite sex to produce the fertilized egg.
2) ZYGOTE - The cell formed by the union of two gametes, especially a fertilized ovum before cleavage
You've been using the latter word (zygote) to define two very different things. Regarding 'life' - human gametes are cells with half the amount of genetic material of any other human cell. They are designed to be discharged from the body if not used. A new life is created when two gametes fuse, becoming a zygote. New = fertilisation of the egg. New = cell with correct amount of genetic material, which was previously two cells with half the amount of genetic material. Making sense?
Perhaps I think that a wasted fertilized egg is not murder of life. They are wasted zygote cells.
No, they are wasted gametes. A 'wasted zygote cell' would be the wastage of a fertilised egg, following sexual intercourse.
"Murder" is another semantics issue. There are a lot of people who don't think abortion is murder, and a lot of people who think it is. There are a lot of people who don't think that killing an Iraqi during a war is murder, and a lot of people who think it is. It's all a matter of how you define the word "murder."
We could come back to Christianity here
In Ecclesiastes verse 3, we read 'There is a time for war, a time for peace'
The Ten Commandments, however, tell us 'Thou shalt not kill.'
Contradiction? The vast majority of Christians agree that there is no contradiction. 'Murder' is the killing of innocents. War is something entirely different (of course, this is another discussion entirely!)
Why?
A woman may choose to become pregnant, or she may choose otherwise and kill an unfertilized egg.
To me, killing an unfertilized egg is just as immoral as killing a fertilized egg.
Then you have a bizarre concept of morality. One is a necessity (no woman can have thouands of babies, and no man can inseminate millions of women every day - the loss of unused gametes is a natural process) whilst the other is a conscious decision to have sex, become pregnant, then kill your own child. Big difference.
To my way of defining "human being," a human being isn't one celled, therefore, neither is a human being. If you're going to tell me a human being may be one celled, then to me, there's no great stretch to calling the unfertilized egg a human being.
And we have already ascertained that your 'way of defining' has absolutely no basis in reality. Not in the dictionary, and certainly not in any biology text.
Heck, I'm going to drink a glass of water, which is going to be absorbed into me and become part of my blood. So may be a glass of water is a potential human being, therefore, it's a human being. So wasting a glass of water by pouring it down the sink is murder. This makes just as much sense to me as calling a zygote a human being.
That was before you understood the basic concepts behind conception though, no?
Let me tell you my semantics. I'll tell you about how I define a "baby."
Now, may be I'm sentimental, but I believe this: All babies are cute.
I don't do DNA tests to see if it's a baby. I see it cooing, and go, "Ohh. How cute!"
A zygote isn't cute. It's not even visable to the naked eye. It doesn't have skin, a spinal chord, blood, lungs, a heart.
To me, all of these things are among the requirements to call something a "baby" or a "human being." Not DNA. (I wouldn't require cuteness because not all people agree with me -- but I consider all babies cute.) I think we can know what a baby looks like when we see it, and a fertilised egg is completely dissimilar to a baby.
I don't look into a microscope and say, "Ohh. Look at that single cell, just cooing away! How cute it is!" I feel nothing for a frozen embryo, unless it's actually wanted by its mother to eventually become a baby, in which case I'm happy for the mother. Otherwise, in my eyes, it is not a human being. It's alive. It's got human genetic material. It's a cell. But it's not a person any more than an unfertilised egg is a person.
Okay. As we're at ChristianForums, lets look at it this way:
You refuse to accept a very young human as being a human because it does not look like one. But what makes us inherently human is our soul. We are made in God's image. The reason I accept that a fertilised egg is a life, is because two poeple have come together, fertilised an egg, created a new life. That baby has a soul.
Perhaps you are suggesting that the child's soul arrives some time later. Perhaps you are suggesting that a child needs to have an embryologically formed heart, lungs and spinal cord in order to get a soul. If so, I'd be interested to hear your explanation regarding exactly when, and how, this occurs.
Now, I look at a little five year old boy with Diabettes, or an elderly woman with Alzheimers, or Michal J. Fox with Parkinsons, and there's absolutely no doubt in my mind, these are human beings, and if some donated eggs combined with some genetic material form a zygote and are frozen and can save these human lives and spare these human beings -- I am not going to argue for the frozen zygote being a human being because I do not see it as one and I think it's horrific that people will allow the suffering of other people to protect someone else's frozen zygotes as though these single celled microbes are human beings. Which, by the way I see it, they are not.
Different discussion. I'd advise you to read up on the biology before you try to discuss it with anyone though.
But if they are, then so are unfertilized eggs. I see no difference. Neither has skin, neither has a spinal chord, neither can smile, both are human, both are alive, so if killing one is murder than so is killing the other. If a single cell's destruction is murder, then it is equally so whether or not the cell is fertilised.
When you've grasped the concept of egg fertilisation, you'll look back and see how ludicrous your attempts to convice me are. Until then, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt as being ignorant of basic biology, and wait until the penny has dropped.
