{"id":60789,"date":"2016-03-08T07:00:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T14:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=60789"},"modified":"2016-03-08T12:21:53","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T19:21:53","slug":"identifying-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2016\/03\/08\/identifying-humanity\/","title":{"rendered":"Identifying Humanity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last January I had a discussion on Facebook in which\u00a0the person with whom I was speaking made the bold claim that the unborn “aren’t human yet”<\/span><\/em>. An interesting assertion!\u00a0I responded with two\u00a0questions:<\/p>\n

Question #1:<\/strong>\u00a0“What kind of offspring do\u00a0human parents have?”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Question #2:<\/strong>\u00a0“What do you call an organism with human DNA?”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, the answer to both of these questions is “human”. Unfortunately, my friend chose to ignore both of these questions, so I asked another:<\/p>\n

“If a fetus in his mother’s womb isn’t human…what is he? To what species does he\u00a0then belong?”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Once again, this question went\u00a0answered. To assert that the unborn aren’t human<\/strong> requires that they be something else<\/strong>. I asked repeatedly what that “something else” was, but I never got an answer…<\/p>\n

The Line Up<\/h3>\n

Eventually, my friend posted the following image:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

From left-to-right, this picture shows embryos\u00a0from different species: zebrafish, chicken, dog, human and skink<\/a>.\u00a0Although he didn’t articulate it, it appeared that\u00a0he thought that being unable to visually identify the human fetus somehow proved that the it wasn’t human.
\nThis is, of course, terrible logic. If I don’t know the answer to a question on a quiz show, does that mean that no answer exists? Of course not, it just means that I don’t have\u00a0the right information at my fingertips.<\/p>\n

\"OcularThere are lots of things which aren’t easy to identify with the naked eye. \u00a0An unmarked bottle of sulfuric acid (H2SO4) can look very similar to a\u00a0bottle of water (H20). If I placed an unmarked bottle of each liquid\u00a0in front of you, would a visual inspection be enough to convince you to take a drink from one of them? Of course not! What would need to happen in order to make you drink with confidence? You’d want to run more conclusive tests than a simple visual inspection.<\/p>\n

In the same way, just because I can’t easily see from an image whether or not a fetus\u00a0is a human<\/em> fetus, doesn’t change the fetus’ species.\u00a0It’s true that the naked eye can’t easily give you the answer to that question, but appropriate scientific examination can! In this case,\u00a0a simple DNA test could give you a conclusive answer as to the species of each of the above embryos.<\/p>\n

Biologically speaking, it is impossible to declare that the unborn are anything less than human. If they are indeed human, it would follow that,\u00a0as such, even the unborn should be treated with respect and dignity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last January I had a discussion on Facebook in which\u00a0the person with whom I was speaking made the bold claim that the unborn “aren’t human yet”. An interesting assertion!\u00a0I responded with two\u00a0questions: Question #1:\u00a0“What kind of offspring do\u00a0human parents have?” Question #2:\u00a0“What do you call an organism with human DNA?” Of course, the answer to both of these questions is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[232,3648,1560,1500,242,1523],"class_list":["post-60789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","tag-abortion","tag-dna","tag-embryo","tag-human","tag-science","tag-test"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60789"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61236,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60789\/revisions\/61236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}