Q&A: What Is the Problem with Abortion
What Is the Problem with Abortion
Question
I read somewhere that the fetus’s brain, and its ability to feel pain and have awareness, develops only in week 24 (only then does the frontal lobe develop). Assuming those are the facts, it’s crystal clear that before then it isn’t considered a human being at all, just a body without a soul.
If so, the question is: where does your fierce opposition to abortions come from, if we’re talking about eliminating a body without a soul?
Answer
Lucky you that things like this are crystal clear to you. Apparently you’ve been blessed with divine inspiration. Unfortunately, I have not. As for what you “read somewhere,” I doubt how far the question of awareness can really be scientifically tested. But regardless, being a human being does not depend on having awareness. A sleeping person, or a person who has lost cognitive abilities, is still a human being even if perhaps he has no awareness.
If we’re going to wonder and ask a question, I would actually ask a different one: where does your absolute confidence, and that of people like you, come from—to murder on the basis of a gut feeling together with something you read somewhere? But fine, that’s just a layman’s question. From someone who has no grasp of higher knowledge.
I’m just curious: when, in your opinion, does the soul enter a person? At age 5 does it sneak in without anyone noticing? Or perhaps one might wonder and suggest that the soul is there from the outset, but needs to develop just as the body develops over the years. But again, these are layman’s questions from someone like me.
Discussion on Answer
I understand that, as a great man of science, you tend to sneer at philosophers. I’ve made a note of that. Therefore I’ll only repeat and say:
A. They have no scientific way of knowing anything about awareness. And the fact that they think they do is only because they think crookedly (due to philosophical weakness that very much characterizes scientists, as I have shown more than once).
B. Awareness is not the relevant parameter. But perhaps reading comprehension, too, contains lofty scientific lessons that somehow escaped me.
C. It is not clear to me where your firm opposition to eliminating human beings with a frontal lobe comes from. What distinguishes man from beast is the frontal lobe. Truly a sublime scientific claim.
I’m done.
Indeed, what distinguishes man from beast is his cognitive abilities, his complex brain, and his ability to think about abstract things. Essentially there is no difference; there is only a technical difference.
And as for why not kill—I’m tired of this stupid feigned innocence. Our moral intuitions are only the product of emotion and evolution. The simple proof that this is not philosophy is that psychopaths, whose emotional mechanism is defective—even if their intelligence is high, they will not behave morally. Therefore I oppose philosophers like you. You think from the gut and not from scientific facts.
More than that: morality changes from one period to another, even though people are always convinced they are the smartest. Which proves that the entire philosophical thesis of morality is fundamentally wrong. We have nothing to rely on except science and the approach of evolutionary psychology, which explains our moral behaviors in the best way.
I’d be happy if, in general, you would write a column on this topic. Because it seems to me there are a lot of holes in your moral theory.
It is evident that you write very decisively about subjects you do not have the faintest clue about. This is scientism in its lowest form. You wrote so much nonsense in a few short passages here that it is hard even to address some of it. And in general, I also don’t see why you want me to write more on the subject when you have no trust in the nonsense written by philosophers like me. Go read the words of the priests of your church. Read about it “somewhere” and may your soul find fitting scientific relief. Good luck.
A person who has lost his cognitive abilities—for example, a low-functioning autistic person—still does have awareness; it’s just that the brain doesn’t function properly, so he is limited in his abilities. A sleeping person is already considered a human being because he has consciousness, he’s just currently in a state of sleep. Here we’re talking about a creature that was never a human being, because it still has no awareness. The question of awareness is a scientific matter that can be examined by scientific methods. Assuming the fetus never received awareness, it is not essentially different from sperm, and in that case I assume you would agree that ejaculating sperm is not murder.
As for your question of when the soul enters it—I explained, and for some reason you ignore it: when the frontal lobe develops, that’s where the awareness component is. For further questions on these topics, it would be better to ask brain researchers. Philosophers like you apparently won’t yield a good answer, because your approach to this whole issue (of soul and body) is crooked from the outset, since it is based mainly on gut feelings.