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The Incoherence of "Life Begins at Conception" [1]

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Date: 2022-07-06

Contraception ___________________ Murder (pictures far, far from scale ... grain of sand on the left; fava bean in the middle)

In my previous diary, Part 2 of a cheat sheet on fighting theocracy, the last bogus meme I highlighted was the one in the title. Today, let’s do a deeper dive into the infamous LB@C.

To riff off Bill Clinton’s famous howler: it depends on what the meaning of ‘life’ is. (Hold on the Monty Python jokes for now.)

The radical theocrats do not mean biology/science, say, this:

Figure 1: the earliest phases of fertilization — just biochemistry … sperm aren’t tadpoles

They mean the speculative theological hypothesis of the kind of life that they believe is eternal, the soul/spirit, this:

Figure 2: sperm and soul combining with egg = conception … the zinc sparks are a nice touch

Blues, we need to be much more forceful on this. A secular, pluralistic democratic republic like ours, dedicated to both Liberty and Justice, cannot allow Law to be made on disputed points of theological minutiae. (I’ll get into some of the dispute below.)

Working back to front, LB@C is incoherent because:

Conception is not a scientifically precise term. Even the more rigorous ‘fertilization’ is a multi step process. I’d personally argue that the earliest phase that qualifies as a new 1 is pronuclei fusion, but what do I know, I’m not a biologist. Even then, though, only a supernaturalist could argue with a straight face that this single cell should have legal status and protection equivalent to the mother. So strike the C-word. Life is more scientifically precise, but still fuzzy (e.g. all the debates around whether viruses qualify or not). No need to rat-hole there as even the most dogmatic theocrat who’s not a loon will concede that eggs and sperm are living cells. So we’re out of the realm of science.

Hmmm, what is a poor theocrat to do faced with this conundrum?

The first and most legitimate thing they could do is rewrite the slogan:

“An individual homo sapiens organism begins at the moment of pronuclei fusion” … or maybe “acrosome reaction”?

Nope. Will neither fit on a bumper sticker nor trip off the tongue … nor (the key part) stir the blood. Bernays would not approve.

Alright then, with reason being of no help, to hang onto LB@C, the wily theocrats have two more gambits. For the obedient sheep in their flock, they just assert the rule:

2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.

No argument provided. No definition of the term ‘person’ (hold this thought). The first sentence and the first half of the second are redundant, for what that’s worth. … Straight up Bernays: repeat, repeat, repeat.

Which brings us to the hybrid gambit that worked here in the USA. Resting the slogan LB@C on one sect’s magisterium only covers about 2/3 of their 20% of Americans who obey and agree. But 17% of total isn’t enough. The key is to expand the base, relying on theophilosophical common ground.

And of course the Electoral College map.

Prods and Papists think each other heretics doomed to Hell, recall, but they do agree on a handful of deep points, including that there is a supernature and that humans have eternal souls that live on therein after our mortal bodies die. The kicker is that these souls are not eternal in both directions, as in the Hindu ātman (self/soul) hypothesis.

Figure 2 souls are created. They begin. That’s what Catechism #2270 above means. (We’ll get to the tricky matter of precisely when, ‘ensoulment’, in a sec.)

The theocratic legerdemain here (as laid out concisely in the Guardian piece linked four paragraphs up) was to co-opt enough Protestant leaders to flip another bloc of the Christianities — the Evangelicals — into the LB@C camp.

(At this point it’s worth injecting the Monty Python, as well as Donald Trump’s Pro-Choice position of his first campaign. If any of that is news, read Jill Lepore. Rome’s hijacking of Geneva, so to speak, is a fairly recent phenomenon.)

The anti-abortion position is no longer just a mockable Rome anachronism.

Add 80% of the roughly 25% Evangelicals of the populace, for a total of 35%+ single issue voters, doctrinaire, ready for radicalization into a seditious mob, abandoning our American heritage. Both the separation of church & state and the post-Protestant aspects.

Where there’s a base of voters, the pols will soon flock. Integrity be damned. Science, reason and stare decisis too. It’s about the Power, baby:

Let’s stipulate the pure politics of it and resume the question of the (in)coherence of LB@C. For the sake of this line of argument, fine, we can assume Rome’s metaphysics. Do the slogan and its implication (“abortion bad)” still hold?

The real clincher: if the life that is beginning at fertilization is the spiritual/supernatural subsequently immortal one, wouldn’t it be a good idea to zoom it straight to Paradise? (Call this Scenario One.)

“I don’t get it.”

Your dogma has to be Scenario Two, that aborted beings don’t automatically go to heaven, even though the science suggests babies sleep until birth. Sure, they kick and move in those stages of sleep, as most of us do outside of the womb. If the babies in utero are not awake and conscious, how can they sin and be denied their eternal reward?

Better safe than sorry, no? Why risk the taint of Adam & Eve? Take the chance the precious little bundle will derail? If they’re sitting on a golden ticket pre-birth, how is it moral to force them to be born and risk it all?

Calculate the Expected Value on THAT flip of the Great Cosmic St. Petersburg Paradox.

At least the hardcore predestinationists think the babies’ fates are sealed even before they’ve been created, which is an answer of sorts, although a moral travesty. The Greco-Romans would have considered that blasphemy, to think God/The One would be that capricious and cruel.

But ok, Calvinists, if you really think that, then what’s the big whoop? Just fast forward the process. Or are you arguing that the poor destined-for-Inferno babes should at least be given some time here in reality before the eternity in the agonizing flames? As miserable as life is on earth at least there are some joys and maybe the little tykes can know the blissful grace of Jesus for a few instants … oh, no, wait … then they’d be saved.

See Scenario One … oh, and right: that’s a logical contradiction, since we assume predestination, not possible to change your fate. Oh well.

So it’s really just the predestined damned you want to tease? Like condemning a prisoner to multiple life sentences in San Quentin to be served sequentially, but let the serial killer have a weekend out on the town in San Francisco first?

Okay … a bit of a stretch analogy … give me some grace

??? That’s your entire basis for banning abortion from the point of acrosome reaction? That we tease the damned? Hurl some rotten fruits & veggies & filth, and spit on them, on the via dolorosa of their auto-de-fé?

What happened to Christian charity? Or the wages of sin is death. If you’re cursed from the jump, who are we poor wretched humans to interfere with the Almighty’s handiwork. Isn’t it better to ship the fallen straight to their eternal punishment?? His Will be done?

Where’s the logic?

Let’s give the final word on this absurdity back to the royal court in Rome. At least they know not to walk right into the yokel trap. The TL;DR of the doctrine concerning the fate of all who die before baptism:

umm … Mother Church has no answer (😳)

there has been this Limbo theory, but it’s just a speculation

Mother trusts in Father’s grace, so we like to think Scenario One: the little ones go to Heaven … but, there’s a chance not, so best err on the safe side

Har.

I’ll say this flatly on behalf my team: theocrats, if your G*d isn’t Scenario One, he is a contemptible demiurge. Not at all the One of the American tradition. Keep your superstitious inanities out of our flawed but beautiful Experiment.

Note in that classic passage of sophistry linked just above that this is in line with Rome punting on the Figure 2 question of exactly when the soul is added to the mix … the gin into the tonic as Richard Dawkins put it in his famous debate with the notorious Cardinal Pell.

Can’t tell you crisply when the magic happens, or the consequences before. But take our word for it. Trust us. Obey us.

So you want incoherence, watch this:

Personhood (aka “human life”) is defined as when the soul enters the flesh We take no position on exactly when that happens But abortion is always wrong Even though aborted babies very, very likely go to Heaven

The Mother Church states flatly there’s a period of time when the conceptus may be human-soul-less, so not a full human. (Space doesn’t allow for a full treatment of Rome’s derivative of the Aristotelian model.)

I can understand erring on the side of caution. But if the claim is that killing developing organisms that don’t yet have human/rational souls is always grievously wrong and should be outlawed, well, doesn’t that mandate for vegetarianism? Isn’t that h. sapiens not-yet-ensouled individual morally equivalent to a chimpanzee?

Aristotle and Mother Church say the two have the same type of soul, don’t they?

Points if you spotted the twist in the middle image at the top of this diary. That’s a chimp fetus. Any arguments someone wants to make based on pure scientific/gestational development grounds apply there as well … fetal heartbeats, fingers & toes, neuronal responses to stimuli, movement and such.

Next time you hear LB@C, laugh.

Rational people can debate the approximate zone, meaning closer to contraception on one side and closer to infanticide on the other. As a non-supernaturalist, I think the Roe line of viability had a Solomon quality to it.

This theocratic gobbledygook should be mocked out of the political arena and the broader public sphere. Right up there with Flat Earth and Young Earth Creationism. No serious person has to indulge this baloney.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/6/2108662/-The-Incoherence-of-Life-Begins-at-Conception

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