[part 1 of 2, in reply to Msg #48]
My argument is not based on the potentiality of the zygote. Rather, it is based on the present status of the zygote.
YOUR CLAIM IS INVALID. Simply because the present status of a zygote includes a 2/3 chance that it will naturally die before birth. PLUS, the present status of a zygote includes a 100% chance that it will die if it does not receive Active External Help. Therefore you are assuming at least two potentials will be fulfilled. The receiving of Active External Help is not guaranteed (see your nearest ectopic pregnancy), and the genetics of the zygote are not guaranteed to be free of all possible fatal defects.
All of those other cells that, yes, can be reprogrammed to totipotency, are only potential persons, in my view.
THAT'S ANOTHER ERROR ON YOUR PART. Simply because you know what a person truly is, and it has nothing to do with properties of cells. For proof that you indeed do know what a person truly is, just Answer this Question:
"If you were visiting a modern well-equipped medical laboratory, and some madman with a machete cut your head off in an attempt to murder you, but rescuers arrived in time, would you want them to save your headless human body, or your severed head, to save YOU-THE-PERSON?" (And we most certainly do have the medical technology to save your choice, else "head transplants" would not have been in the news recently. Therefore it is not a trick question, and it is not a loaded question.)
I think I have not gotten my point across clearly enough.
YOU DON'T HAVE A VALID POINT, SO IT DOESN'T MATTER. Just lika all other abortion opponents have no valid reason to oppose abortion. All they have is Stupidly Prejudiced Master Race Idiocy about the word "human".
What bestows personhood upon the zygote is not its potential to differentiate into all other cell types, as you seem to think my argument was,
THAT IS INDEED AN IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR ARGUMENT. And it totally misses the point, since in the not-distant future True Artificial Intelligences, made of electronics instead of cells, will begin to exist. Your error of thinking/claiming that personhood has something to do with biology is as fundamentally obvious as it is fundamentally stupid and fundamentally wrong. And for another example of a widely-discussed entity that is claimed to qualify as a person, without having anything to do with biology, see any religionist talking about God's existence prior to the Big Bang (before biology existed, that is).
but, rather, that, by dint of possessing this potential,
STILL NOT ADEQUATELY DISTINGUISHING THAT POTENTIAL FROM A CUTICLE CELL'S POTENTIAL. The DNA of cells is rather equivalent to computer software. If two computers have all the same total installed software, but one is running a particular small part of that total, like a word-processing program, while the other computer is running a different small part of it, like an image-editing program, you are in-essence saying one computer is somehow superior to the other computer (deserves to be called a person), just because it is running a particular piece of software. Even though neither piece of software actually has anything to do with personhood (per the Question in red text above)!
