Dialogue between the Skeptic (“S”) and Faithist (“F”).
S- What is it exactly?
-it’s mere tissue, a few cells. Protoplasmic blob. My body, my business.
F-No, It’s a person.
S-So what makes it a person?
F-It isn’t a dog, monkey, lamb or turtle is it?
S-No but neither can it ride a bike, drive a car, yell at its mother or eat its vegetables.
F-So functionality and functional ability defines “human?-What about a disabled person, they are still a person-right? Which functions define personhood?”
S- Well, if they look like a person they are a person, not a monkey, dog, turtle or lamb.
F-So looking like a person is what makes a person? Phenotype defines personhood ?
S- Perhaps. You know it when you see it, hear it or run into it on the metro.
F-So a robot that looks like a person is a person?
S-No, silly- a robot isn’t human, it’s man made.
F-OK, so a person is what- man made with woman? Anything man made with women is a person? What about man made with a testtube? Let’s say phenotype plus functionality that looks like a person is a person.
Is that it?
S- OK, so if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, quacks like a duck- functionality plus physicality or phenotype-that makes a person? What about a really good robot- doesn’t it have to have person cells, differentiated human cells?.
- a tissue looks like a tissue, a few cells look like just a few cells- I don’t see a face. If I don’t see a face, it can’t be a person.
F-But what if it has at the microcellular level human memory capability and coding such that it will be a fully formed human eventually. It has a full complement of human DNA shouldn’t we call it then a person?.
S-nice theory, but it has to be born; an acorn is not a tree, a caterpillar is not a butterfly and a
a chicken is not an egg and an egg is not a chicken.
Were that the case we could make egg frickasee, egg kiev and scrambled chicken.
Their physical properties are different. One takes up more space than the other – one clucks and struts. The other fries in under five minutes.
If an acorn were a tree we would be strapping hammocks between acorns, and lounging underneath them for shade. The "born" part is the metamorphasis that vests legal rights of personhood. If "born" isn't the defining line then I will settle for "viable."
F- Yes, but isn't "born" a bit of an arbitrary line in the sand when the thing looks exactly the same five minutes after birth as it did before birth? Why that line? Why any line? Isn't "viable" just a circular definition that begs itself? Even a newborn needs others to exist. If no one feeds it or shelters it a newborn isn't viable-it will die. It needs another person more capable in basic life functions to exist. Aren't we making definitions that serve the argument rather than make it?
If people are coded people by virtue of their full complement of DNA, and their cell capacity for human memory, from the minute of "conception" and in the fullness of time they will become fully people, then all that is missing to make them people is time.
And God’s time is not our time; a thousand years is as a day to him and a day as a thousand years.
Kind of gives new meaning to the term "when two or more are gathered in my name I am there" doesn't it? Because two or more cells gathered in his name, a union of two souls who merge two cells of sperm and egg in his name, into a created likeness of him- make him there in a sense, he is in a sense there-right?
S- So what are you saying? These little people are really already a thousand years old?
F- Perhaps in some other dimension.
In this dimension they are tiny persons. Microscopic persons if you will. Coming to earth for a millisecond of eternity, growing like a time lapsed image of an opening lily- only made in the very image and likeness of God- a chip off the old block or a slice off the big pie. A lily opened and a lily closed is still a lily and a rose by any other name....
We just had Christmas- God came as a baby, and if God was a baby, before that God was an embryo, and before that God was a Zygote. God existed in his full complementarity in a few cells at one point.
You gave your child a name after he saw earth's daylight and was born. But the same being existed before he was born, and a month before he was born, the same child of the same name existed only a month smaller, and a month earlier, a month smaller, until the same child by the same name was but a few cells.
And God said that he gave them all purpose already; he gave them in his mind’s eye more than function, purpose. Purpose is more like Mission than Function.
Each one is unique, each one has a purpose to fulfill. Each one is like a tiny circuit in the puzzle of micro-chips that make up the motherboard of humanity. Each one is designed to produce, create or contribute something unique.
So it’s easy to see that if there are 3 million abortions a year, in a country of 300 million, we are missing one one-hundredth of our citizen circuitry.
S- No wonder the country is a mess.
F- Exactly.
F- Did you know that there was a time when legally a black person was considered only 3/4th a person in America?
S- Yes, absurdly cruel and hard to imagine now, but that was just because society was so bigoted against a group of people that they believed something that looked different in one phenotypical property did not have the full complement of all essential elements of personhood.
F- Exactly.
S- And because the definition of "person" served the ruling powerful class’s interests in depriving the less powerful and easily exploitable vulnerable voiceless of their legal rights to serve the pecuniary interests of the more powerful.
F- Exactly. That’s a good segue to the stem cell debate- for another day.
S- You are starting to sound like one of those religious nutcases.
F- Badge of Honor- Just as long as you don't start sounding like one of those plantation owners who could justify shooting runaway slaves who had no legal right of personhood being only 3/4th human.
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