Tuesday, April 11, 2006

The Mystical World of Pro-Choice Atheism

In a response to a post by the Raving Atheist, biology professor PZ Myers says, "Picking an instant and calling that the moment when one is human is not scientific. This is an emotional, social, economic, and personal decision."

Here we have a biology professor claiming that whether an entity is human or not isn't based on science but on the pregnant woman's emotions, social situation and economics. I guess we don't need biology when we can look into a woman's saving account or lack thereof.

If a woman decides to have an abortion based on financial or social reasons, then I guess the unborn wasn't a human in PZ's mystical world. Somehow in this world of atheistic fantasy, what kind of organism the unborn are is based their mother's feelings. One wonders if this is the case for other organisms. Are unwanted dog fetuses not really dogs if their mothers decide they aren't? Are two poor chimpanzees capable of mating and creating an entity that isn't a chimpanzee if the female chimp feels the entity growing in her womb isn't a chimpanzee?

What about the fortunate early embryo whose mother decides to keep the child upon finding out that she's pregnant? If the woman judges her finances, social situation and emotions and makes the personal decision that her early embryo is a human, then is the early embryo a human at the instant of that decision?

What was the embryo before that decision? A giraffe embryo? A cat embryo? A cow embryo, perhaps? Or maybe some newly discovered type of organism without a genus and species to call home?

And what about women who think the unborn is a human, yet have abortions anyway? Or women who go back and forth in their decision? Does the humanness of the organism in her womb go back and forth with changing opinion? Or a woman who wins the lottery a day before her abortion is scheduled?

To assert that whether the unborn are human or not based on a woman's socially and economically based decision is mystical poppycock. It's unfortunate that an individual's preference for legal abortion can lead them so far from scientific truth that they are forced to rely on such obviously poor criteria in an attempt to magically dehumanize the unborn.

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