Medical ethicists: newborns are not actual people, can be killed ethically

[CNYCacher]

Cny, think about this for a second - why is there no debate possible!  That would be because you defined "new organism" the way you did.  You're mistaking a tautology for a proof.

"New" or "organism", which word doesn't fit?

[Perd Hapley]

Conception is the point at which half of the dna from the father bonds with half the dna from the mother.  There is no debate possible about whether or not this is the point at which a new organism is created.  If you want to debate about the morality of killing this organism based on where it is in its journey to eventually becoming an adult person of value, then go right ahead, but to attempt to prop up your debate by disagreeing that a new organism is created at conception just exposes your ignorance.

No, it's not ignorance at all. It's refusal to admit facts which are inconvenient. The next step in the pattern is to claim that the facts presented by the scary social conservative are actually religious dicta, or a moral judgment. Plain, prosaic words like "life," "human," "individual," or "child" will then be accused of having some religious intent, or of being packed with philosophical assumptions.

And the game goes on. So does the holocaust, of course. 

[zxcvbob]

How did I not find this thread until now?  Anyway, http://youtu.be/t4gXVXVXzqg   

[Ron]

What is man?

Ultimately the question is really, what is a human being?

The question of what we are has not been answered by science. Our culture is just drifting in the direction of holding the presupposition that the materialist assumption is the truth. Faith in science and scientists to lead the way have taken the place of religion.

The hubris of exterminating millions of unborn under the guise of "human" rights is Orwellian in the extreme.

Redefining words and terms to mean the opposite of their historical meaning seems to be the tactic that is undermining our society culture.

The two sides of the culture divide are hardly speaking the same language.  

[longeyes]

Save your time: the human being is a consumer, a profit center, a government beneficiary. 

It's not the human beings who matter, it's the gods, and we have an entire class, on a global scale, of those now.