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| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Let’s solve the problem of evil > When Human life begins: in reality and legally | Forum Quick Jump
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 7/2/2004 4:34 AM (GMT -6) |   | quote:
Originally posted by PotOnWheel
sparknheart: If this is true in death, is it plausible that a zygote/embryo/fetus/baby’s conscience (SOUL) could exist before any BRAIN activity is detected?
DLW: ...provide compelling evidence, my friend.
PoW: sparkinheart wants to come down on the side of caution, respecting the significance of what is involved. sparkinheart says "plausible" and not proof.
But DLW has an adgenda, and that is inconvient for him. He wants clear-cut land to build on, and demands "evidence" as proof, assuming no need for caution merely because of the nature of the issue.
There is no compelling evidence to mandate spark-n-heat's over-caution. The analogies with death are too vague and not well corroborated.
No one is saying that we view zygotes prior to a month's gestation as decent ingredients for chinese-take-out.
There loss of life is still tragic, but its not murder.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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Truth Aficionado
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 1544
| Posted 7/2/2004 4:39 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by DLW
Okay, Spark-n-heat, yes I may have some similarities with the so-called "spider-man", but really we're just friends. I don't do wall-crawling.
Just be sure to keep yourself from getting intertwined in Pow's many arms.
dlw
I think I'm out of harms way, but you might want to look over your shoulder, I think POW might have clutched onto one of your long legs, daddy.  | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 7/2/2004 4:42 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by sparknheart
quote:
Originally posted by DLW
Okay, Spark-n-heat, yes I may have some similarities with the so-called "spider-man", but really we're just friends. I don't do wall-crawling.
Just be sure to keep yourself from getting intertwined in Pow's many arms.
dlw
I think I'm out of harms way, but you might want to look over your shoulder, I think POW might have clutched onto one of your long legs, daddy.
Having tangled so often with Pow in the past, I don't feel the pain as much when he rhetorically sends me flying into the side of a building or what-not.
Its all about building up callouses.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/2/2004 5:02 AM (GMT -6) | | DLW: There is no compelling evidence to mandate spark-n-heat's over-caution. The analogies with death are too vague and not well corroborated.
PoW: This is more than an conclusion. It also contains within it a pre-decision, a methodology, and ethic, that says in effect "expendable unless proven otherwise." The same has been said of Ethnicity with Native Americans and Africans.
(But deal with the unborn, and don't shift to non-whites as a tactic.)
DlW: There loss of life is still tragic, but its not murder.
PoW: Signs of your inconsistency show, right there. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 7/2/2004 5:08 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by PotOnWheel
DLW: There is no compelling evidence to mandate spark-n-heat's over-caution. The analogies with death are too vague and not well corroborated.
PoW: This is more than an conclusion. It also contains within it a pre-decision, a methodology, and ethic, that says in effect "expendable unless proven otherwise." The same has been said of Ethnicity with Native Americans and Africans.
Gotta say no-go. I believe in being conservative in how we view the unborn, but we also have to be reasonable and that is why having signs of brain-activity matters. And as I stated, Sparky's arguments to the contrary haven't held any weight yet.
Attempts to prove N. Americans and Africans as sub-humans were far more specious. This is just a bold assertion on your behalf Pow, with nothing to back it up.
quote:
DlW: There loss of life is still tragic, but its not murder.
PoW: Signs of your inconsistency show, right there.
Whatever. I'd rather be inconsistent than consistently wrong.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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Truth Aficionado
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 1544
| Posted 7/2/2004 7:26 AM (GMT -6) | | Many scientists are concluding that the laws of chemistry and physics cannot explain our experience of consciousness. Professor J. P. Moreland defined consciousness as our introspection, sensations, thoughts, emotions, desires, beliefs, and free choices that make us alive and aware. The "soul" contains our consciousness and animates our body.
According to a researcher who showed that consciousness can continue after a person's brain has stopped functioning, current scientific findings "would support the view that 'mind,' 'consciousness,' or the 'soul' is a separate entity from the brain."
As Moreland said, "You can't get something from nothing." If the universe began with dead matter having no consciousness, "how, then, do you get something totally different -- consciousness, living, thinking, feeling, believing creatures -- from materials that don't have that?" But if everything started with the mind of God, he said, "we don't have a problem with explaining the origin of our mind."
Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse candidly conceded that "no one, certainly not the Darwinian as such, seems to have any answer" to the consciousness issue. Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist John C. Eccles concluded from the evidence "that there is what we might call a supernatural origin of my unique self-conscious mind or my unique selfhood or soul."
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 7/2/2004 7:36 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by sparknheart
Many scientists are concluding that the laws of chemistry and physics cannot explain our experience of consciousness. Professor J. P. Moreland defined consciousness as our introspection, sensations, thoughts, emotions, desires, beliefs, and free choices that make us alive and aware. The "soul" contains our consciousness and animates our body.
According to a researcher who showed that consciousness can continue after a person's brain has stopped functioning, current scientific findings "would support the view that 'mind,' 'consciousness,' or the 'soul' is a separate entity from the brain."
I don't believe they are separate entities, from my own readings a while back, they are intermeshed, but the soul is more than the chemical structures of the brain.
quote:
As Moreland said, "You can't get something from nothing." If the universe began with dead matter having no consciousness, "how, then, do you get something totally different -- consciousness, living, thinking, feeling, believing creatures -- from materials that don't have that?" But if everything started with the mind of God, he said, "we don't have a problem with explaining the origin of our mind."
Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse candidly conceded that "no one, certainly not the Darwinian as such, seems to have any answer" to the consciousness issue. Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist John C. Eccles concluded from the evidence "that there is what we might call a supernatural origin of my unique self-conscious mind or my unique selfhood or soul."
That consciousness is separate from the material functioning of the brain does not imply that it can be divorced from its material functioning. Even in heaven, our bodies are to be renewed. We are not going to be spirits without body. The material and the spiritual will be intertwined as they are now.
And that is why I have a hard time accepting that there is consciousness prior to when the zygote/embryo's brain starts to physically evidence signs of some activity.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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Truth Aficionado
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 1544
| Posted 7/2/2004 8:28 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by DLW
That consciousness is separate from the material functioning of the brain does not imply that it can be divorced from its material functioning.
Are you implying that if you’re not as physical endowed  then you’re also short on soul?
If you lost a toe (wall scaling accident) would you loose a little soul?
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/2/2004 9:24 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by DLW
quote:
Originally posted by sparknheart
Many scientists are concluding that the laws of chemistry and physics cannot explain our experience of consciousness. Professor J. P. Moreland defined consciousness as our introspection, sensations, thoughts, emotions, desires, beliefs, and free choices that make us alive and aware. The "soul" contains our consciousness and animates our body.
According to a researcher who showed that consciousness can continue after a person's brain has stopped functioning, current scientific findings "would support the view that 'mind,' 'consciousness,' or the 'soul' is a separate entity from the brain."
I don't believe they are separate entities, from my own readings a while back, they are intermeshed, but the soul is more than the chemical structures of the brain.
quote:
As Moreland said, "You can't get something from nothing." If the universe began with dead matter having no consciousness, "how, then, do you get something totally different -- consciousness, living, thinking, feeling, believing creatures -- from materials that don't have that?" But if everything started with the mind of God, he said, "we don't have a problem with explaining the origin of our mind."
Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse candidly conceded that "no one, certainly not the Darwinian as such, seems to have any answer" to the consciousness issue. Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist John C. Eccles concluded from the evidence "that there is what we might call a supernatural origin of my unique self-conscious mind or my unique selfhood or soul."
That consciousness is separate from the material functioning of the brain does not imply that it can be divorced from its material functioning. Even in heaven, our bodies are to be renewed. We are not going to be spirits without body. The material and the spiritual will be intertwined as they are now.
And that is why I have a hard time accepting that there is consciousness prior to when the zygote/embryo's brain starts to physically evidence signs of some activity.
dlw
That's all good. Right up to almost the end. But then that last paragraph goes off track. The zygote fulfills all of its divinely ordained task. Just by being it offers glory to God. | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/2/2004 9:28 AM (GMT -6) | | DLW: I believe in being conservative in how we view the unborn, but we also have to be reasonable and that is why having signs of brain-activity matters.
PoW: That's not conservative. The issue is not "how we view" but how we honor. Your "conservation" is just withheld honor. It is not gracious.
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/2/2004 9:40 AM (GMT -6) | | Dave, sometimes you fail to keep the two issues separate: belief and legislation. You want to conflate them for yourself, and see the first through the lense of the second. You only want to believe what is politically possible.
Worse, you want to force everytone else to ONLY believe what is politically possible to legislate. When someone believes differently, you take after them. I've seen you do to.
Is this just complusive? (like wanting the webmaster to reorganize which forum different posts by other people are in. Surely such compulsivity is an acset in some way in economics.) Or is it a matter that you are deeply conflicted and don't know how to handle it.
Again, you choice is to ONLY believe what you can prove. If it is politically or legislatively risky you will alter (On the ourside--though conflicts creep in anyways.) your beliefs. And you call them "fallible judgements."
"Fallible judegments" is something that belongs in the DOMAIN of politics and legislation. We can believe and practice what will never be possible (But then God only knows...) in the political or legislative or power domains.
Martyrdom is always an option for the Christian. If we live in a Moslem, or Hindu country, or are dominated by the Kahn, we can still believe and do what we may not convince others to believe or do.
Augustine spoke of TWO CITIES. Not one. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 7/2/2004 10:14 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by PotOnWheel
Dave, sometimes you fail to keep the two issues separate: belief and legislation. You want to conflate them for yourself, and see the first through the lense of the second. You only want to believe what is politically possible.
I know that what I believe is right conduct is not politically possible to make law.
The point is I don't share your personal belief that the newly-formed zygote is a human being.
quote:
Worse, you want to force everytone else to ONLY believe what is politically possible to legislate. When someone believes differently, you take after them. I've seen you do to.
No, um, I already said what I myself believe I believe to be politically impossible to legislate. I stated earlier that I thought 48-51 days of pregnancy was a good cut-off. But I don't believe it is possible to make elective abortions illegal any earlier than 12 weeks of pregnancy.
I take after people who claim that we have a sure theological/scientific base for believing that the newly-formed zygote is a human being.
quote:
Is this just complusive? (like wanting the webmaster to reorganize which forum different posts by other people are in. Surely such compulsivity is an acset in some way in economics.) Or is it a matter that you are deeply conflicted and don't know how to handle it.
 I....am....conflicted.***sniff*** I just can't help myself. People maintain status-quo beliefs without critically-examining them. Thanks, Pow, now I know I gotta go back into therapy.
Oh and this board still needs to cut back on a forum or two. It also could do with more innovations so that it looks more aesthetically appealing, like TheologyWeb.
quote:
Again, you choice is to ONLY believe what you can prove. If it is politically or legislatively risky you will alter (On the ourside--though conflicts creep in anyways.) your beliefs. And you call them "fallible judgements."
Can you prove that I am choosing to only believe what I can prove? Or am I saying that a belief as to when we become human beings a matter of fallible tradition that should be based on both observed truths and ongoing deliberations, rather than past traditions and theo-sophistry.
Its not a matter of being politically or legislatively-risky, its a matter of it being possible at all to permanently remake laws to conform with our personal beliefs about when human personhood should begin.
My personal beliefs are not affected by the political dynamics, but my beliefs about what is right political strategy are affected by the dynamics.
quote:
"Fallible judegments" is something that belongs in the DOMAIN of politics and legislation. We can believe and practice what will never be possible (But then God only knows...) in the political or legislative or power domains.
true.
Which is why you and I tend to debate our personal beliefs more stringently than what is right political strategy.
quote:
Martyrdom is always an option for the Christian. If we live in a Moslem, or Hindu country, or are dominated by the Kahn, we can still believe and do what we may not convince others to believe or do.
Yeah, but its not the sort of thing one would want to do more than once. And we shouldn't go rushing into martyrdom for no good reason. There are things worth dying for and, even today as shown by the movie "Who would kill Veronica Guerin", there is room for martyrs to make a difference in our world.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/2/2004 10:17 AM (GMT -6) | |
DLW: Does it also fulfill a divinely-ordained task when it gets absorbed by the woman's womb as well?
PoW: I'd say so. I'm happy with that.
DLW: Worse case scenario: nada-happens. Best-case scenario:a soul goes to heaven.
PoW: I wouldn't say that. Niether is less than God glorifying. IMHO.
DLW: Where is all this divine-task stuff coming from?
PoW: At Dordt College the core curriculum covered "CALLING AND TASK." Didn't Bethel have something like that by the time you were there?
Task and Calling are essential to the Christian life. I had a Dean in Illinois who was at Seattle Pacfic for most of his career (Fre Methodist), and "Calling and Task" were really big with him!!!!
I think the CCCU's new faculty (YOU need to get yourself into their development program.) seminars cover it too. www.cccu.org/ | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/2/2004 10:22 AM (GMT -6) | | In the Army the saying goes "If it moves, salute it. If it doesn't, paint it white."
It is not "conservative" to fail to honor the image of God in man. You are only being "stingy" -- not conservative.
Yannaras: But why should we exclude that what each man is as a unique, distinct and unrepeatable personal existence is owed exclusively and only to the differentiation of the biochemical composition of its chromosomes and by extension to the function of the various “centres” of its brain? Why do we restrict the role of biochemical composition and biological functions solely to the activity and manifiestiation of the hypostatic otherness of each man, and do not extend it also to its foundation and composition?
. . .
“What is the body and what is the soul of man?” with the criteria of the ecclesial tradition: Both the body and the soul are energies of human nature, that is the modes by which the event of the hypostasis (or personality, the ego, the identity of the subject) is given effect. What each specific man is, his real existence or his hypostasis, this inmost I which constitutes him as an existential event, is identified neither with the body nor with the soul. The soul and the body only reveal and disclose what man is; they form energies, manifestation, expressions, functions to reveal the hypostasis of man. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 7/2/2004 10:28 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by PotOnWheel
In the Army the saying goes "If it moves, salute it. If it doesn't, paint it white."
Well we wouldn't want to contradict what military intelligence thought up, wouldn't we now...
quote:
It is not "conservative" to fail to honor the image of God in man. You are only being "stingy" -- not conservative.
The image of God or being a human being is not having human dna, being biologically-alive, and with the potential to develop fully as a human being.
quote:
Yannaras: But why should we exclude that what each man is as a unique, distinct and unrepeatable personal existence is owed exclusively and only to the differentiation of the biochemical composition of its chromosomes and by extension to the function of the various “centres” of its brain?
Maybe two or three sentences would make this point more clearly.
The criterion mentioned above does not make us distinct, as identical twins have proven.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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Mayflower
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 445
| Posted 7/2/2004 10:40 AM (GMT -6) | | .
DLW wrote:
quote:
Oh and this board still needs to cut back on a forum or two...
LOL.
It's fun to have you back, Bro.
Peace & blessings,
<><
.
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/2/2004 12:08 PM (GMT -6) | |
What each specific man is, his real existence or his hypostasis, this inmost I which constitutes him as an existential event, is identified neither with the body nor with the soul. The soul and the body only reveal and disclose what man is; they form energies, manifestation, expressions, functions to reveal the hypostasis of man.
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/3/2004 4:06 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by Sahid
I know what a soul is. ... The problem is I can't show that these qualities are in a one celled zygote. ... I am interested in what qualities demostrate the possesion of a soul.
Dear Zach,
THAT question is on the OTHER thread: "What is a soul?" www.christusvictorministries.org/gbfront/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3416
THIS thread is "When Human life begins: in reality and legally."
To that end, I'm relaying Christos Yannaras' possition that:
What each specific man is, his real existence or his hypostasis, this inmost I which constitutes him as an existential event, is identified neither with the body nor with the soul. The soul and the body only reveal and disclose what man is; they form energies, manifestation, expressions, functions to reveal the hypostasis of man.
The hypostasis" (Quality of being an individual person) of mankind, "is identified neither with the body nor with the soul." Rather, "The soul and the body only reveal and disclose what man is."
Zygotes contain the mystery of what only God knows.
Anyone who wants to interupt God while he is revealing that mystery should repent of their attituce, and sit on their hands.
(Again, what a soul is can be found on the other thread.) | | Back to Top | | |
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