I won’t mention the rest of the text because I’m not interested enough on the discussion to do so. I’ll focus on a single thing.
On the science side it’s a human from the moment of conception.
What should be considered a human being or not is prescriptive in nature, because it involves ethics. Science - i.e. the scientific method - does not give a shit to prescriptive matters; science is descriptive, it’s worried about what happens/doesn’t happen. For science it doesn’t really matter if you call it a human, a tissue, a wug or a colourless green thing sleeping furiously, as long as you’re unambiguously and accurately describing the phenomenon being studied.
As such, no, science itself doesn’t really tell you “when it becomes a human being”.
The only thing that it “proves” is that the author (not “science”) is referring to foetuses (from nine weeks after conception [not zero] to 16 weeks) as “children”. And it certainly does not back up your claim that [ipsis litteris] “On the science side it’s a human from the moment of conception.”
And no, “The growth and development are positively influenced by factors, like parental health and genetic composition, even before conception.” does not prove it either, given that the author is solely mentioning conception as a time of reference.
Sorry to be blunt but the way that you referred to science sounds a lot like “I’m ignorant on science but I want to leech off its prestige for the sake of my argument”. If you don’t want to do this, here’s a better approach:
Show how certain actions generate certain outcomes. Science will help you with this.
Explicit the moral and ethical premises that you are using, to judge said outcomes as good/bad. Science will not help you with this.
It’s also a nice way to avoid a fallacy/stupidity called appeal to nature (TL;DR: “[event/thing] is natural, so it’s good lol lmao”), that often plagues discussions about moral matters like abortion.
I think the responses from the conservatives in this thread have demonstrated what I’d expected, and hopefully what OP was looking for: abandonment of Christian dogma does not always result in abandonment of dogmatic values.
People who are happy to declare that the definition of something like science is anything other than what the vast majority of those accredited in scientific fields consider it to be are just as dishonest as hard-line Christians, and will vote against their own interests just as readily.
I won’t mention the rest of the text because I’m not interested enough on the discussion to do so. I’ll focus on a single thing.
What should be considered a human being or not is prescriptive in nature, because it involves ethics. Science - i.e. the scientific method - does not give a shit to prescriptive matters; science is descriptive, it’s worried about what happens/doesn’t happen. For science it doesn’t really matter if you call it a human, a tissue, a wug or a colourless green thing sleeping furiously, as long as you’re unambiguously and accurately describing the phenomenon being studied.
As such, no, science itself doesn’t really tell you “when it becomes a human being”.
The only thing that it “proves” is that the author (not “science”) is referring to foetuses (from nine weeks after conception [not zero] to 16 weeks) as “children”. And it certainly does not back up your claim that [ipsis litteris] “On the science side it’s a human from the moment of conception.”
And no, “The growth and development are positively influenced by factors, like parental health and genetic composition, even before conception.” does not prove it either, given that the author is solely mentioning conception as a time of reference.
Sorry to be blunt but the way that you referred to science sounds a lot like “I’m ignorant on science but I want to leech off its prestige for the sake of my argument”. If you don’t want to do this, here’s a better approach:
It’s also a nice way to avoid a fallacy/stupidity called appeal to nature (TL;DR: “[event/thing] is natural, so it’s good lol lmao”), that often plagues discussions about moral matters like abortion.
All very well put and saved me leaving a comment.
I think the responses from the conservatives in this thread have demonstrated what I’d expected, and hopefully what OP was looking for: abandonment of Christian dogma does not always result in abandonment of dogmatic values.
People who are happy to declare that the definition of something like science is anything other than what the vast majority of those accredited in scientific fields consider it to be are just as dishonest as hard-line Christians, and will vote against their own interests just as readily.