Stem cell decision exposes religious divides

[schizophonic]

Mar 10, 2009 17:03:18 GMT -5 @antichrist said:

Well there is the Snowflake children, but as the name seems to suggest, they only want the whitest purest embryo's. I have no idea how much this would cost.

LOL. I remember Bush talking about them. The article says 134 "snowflake babies" have been born, which leaves how many thousand to not make it?

[szaleniec]

Mar 10, 2009 15:07:34 GMT -5 deliciousdemon said:

Mar 10, 2009 14:51:59 GMT -5 szaleniec said:

So the religious right are on a grand crusade for equality, are they? I don't know whether to be amused or disgusted at this implication, so I'll settle for a bit of both.

The best bit for me is the bland statement 'research shows that an embryo is a human being in its earliest form of development'. If that's not some sort of plea to the disembodied universe of 'research' I don't know what is.

Oh, absolutely. I can tell the guy isn't a scientist, because flicking through GCSE Biology for You is the extent of the research needed to figure that one out; the issue is that the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise however much he tries to turn it into an appeal to nonexistent authority. The unspoken assumption is that the concepts "is of the species Homo sapiens" and "is a legally recognised person" are or indeed should be identical. Even without following that line of reasoning down the slippery slope it as good as builds for itself, it reduces the nature of humanity to nothing more than biochemical processes. As these are the same people who like to accuse the scientific community of reductionism, it grates more than a bit.

[Art Vandelay]

"I don't think the question has anything to do with religion or pulling out our microscope and trying to find souls," George said. "We live in a pluralistic society where some people believe there are no such things as souls. Does that mean we should not have moral objections to killing 17-year-old adolescents?"

How the fuck does someone who thinks that the very fabric of society and survival of the 17 year old demographic hinges on the belief in souls manage to become a university professor! Aren't universities supposed to employ people who are at the very least somewhat rational. I realise he's in humanities and all but honestly...[/superior science student]

[ostravan]

It always makes me laugh when the fundies cry out about abortion, when it's not even mentioned in ANY of the Abrahamic Holy books, nor in the sources from which they are derived.
Same goes for the issue over stem cell research, which over the last 8 years has put America back in the Middle Ages.
Most of the noise about these issues come from a microscopic minority with a disproportionately large voice, whose agenda is that the USA be run as a theocracy (with them running the show - reluctantly, of course)
In my octogenarian lifetime, I've lived under Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and worked in countries run as theocracies of various faiths.
Hitler was no picnic, nor was Stalin, but thier outrages pale into insignificance when it comes to the excesses commited in the name of some imaginary sky-daddy!

[Damen]

Don't forget also, that the professor who's coughing up logical fallacies and claiming that "the research proves" he's correct...is a professor of politics.

[Vene]

Now colleges teach people how to bullshit and lie with a smile?

[ironbite]

I thought it always did that.

[Vene]

I keep forgetting that there are programs with less strict interpretations of reality than the science degrees.