Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Steven Jacobs’ 5-year fight and when mammalian life begins

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

According to The College Fix:

UChicago scholar proves biologists believe life begins at conception. It took five years and cost him a career.
Daniel Payne – Assistant Editor •July 10, 2019


‘I’m doing this for the sake of the research’
Steven Jacobs has described some of his time in the academy as “agony.”
The University of Chicago PhD spent the last half-decade in a grueling fight to gather and publish research related to the American abortion debate. During that time he was ridiculed, mocked and defamed; accused of committing academic dishonesty, politicizing science and conducting his work with personal bias; compared to the Ku Klux Klan; and in general painted as an unprofessional radical who was, in one academic’s words, “not deserving of a PhD degree.”
All of this came about simply because Jacobs asked thousands of scientists several questions about when they believe human life begins – questions one respondent referred to as a “trap” and another called “horribly manipulative.”
The results of Jacobs’ work would eventually reveal a stunning fact about American academia in the field of biology: professors overwhelmingly agree with the pro-life position that human lives begin at conception. Gathering that data, arguing it, and getting it published, however, was a crushing and drawn-out affair.

This suggests, there may be yet another guilty secret lurking behind the dominant, widely promoted views. A clip of the results of his survey may give a clue:

Breitbart adds to our understanding of what seems to be a troubling case:

A study found 80 percent of Americans say biologists should decide the question of when life begins, and, when more than 5,500 biologists were then asked that question, 96 percent affirmed life begins at fertilization.
Steven Jacobs, Ph.D. completed his doctoral dissertation research (final publication pending, but an earlier version can be read here) recently at the University of Chicago, but only after a decade of investigation that ultimately led to his final study titled “Balancing Abortion Rights and Fetal Rights.”
In his research, Jacobs focused on studying Americans’ beliefs and values, attitudes toward abortion, and beliefs about when life begins.
One of the quotes he included in his study comes from an anonymous academic biologist, who said, “[The abortion debate] comes down to the question of whether we think personal autonomy is more important than the life of a human being.”
For the first part of his research, Jacobs went to the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision itself for a list of experts who might be considered most qualified to determine when life begins. He then presented this list to participants in one of his surveys.
Jacobs surveyed a sample of 3,883 Americans who were given the choice of biologists, religious leaders, voters, philosophers, or Supreme Court justices as the group of experts most qualified to determine when life begins.
According to the study, the sample was predominantly pro-choice (62 percent), liberal (63 percent), socialist (54 percent), and Democrat (66 percent.) Of the participants, 63 percent were college graduates, 57 percent were female, 43 percent were male.
Results showed 80 percent of Americans selected biologists (95 percent confidence interval [79-81 percent]) as the group to answer the question of when life begins.
Pro-choice participants (86 percent) were more likely to select biologists than pro-life participants (69 percent).
“I followed that up with an open-ended question: ‘Why did you select that group?” and 92 percent said they selected biologists because they are experts in science and they are objective scientists,” Jacobs told Breitbart News in an interview.
The researcher then took survey questions to 5,577 biologists from over a thousand academic institutions in 86 countries. According to the study, the sample of biologists was predominantly non-religious (63 percent), with more liberals (89 percent) than conservatives (11 percent), Democrats (92 percent) than Republicans (8 percent), and pro-choice supporters (85 percent) than pro-life supporters (15 percent).
While the study focused on the biological view of when a human’s life begins, the surveys also included questions about other scientific concepts related to genetics, etc. Participants were asked to respond “Correct” or Incorrect” to statements describing the biological view that “a human’s life begins at fertilization.” An open-ended question on the participants’ biological view of “when a human’s life begins” was also presented.
Overall, the study found 96 percent of biologists affirmed the view that a human’s life begins at fertilization (95 percent confidence interval [95-97 percent]).

The College Fix gives some troubling points of concern:

One respondent to Jacobs’ survey “accused me of nefarious intentions and threatened to sabotage my work by telling other biologists to not participate in my study,” the scholar said. That professor “ultimately reported me to my school’s ethics committee.” Jacobs’ advisor told him to halt his data-gathering, though eventually that advisor would defend Jacobs before the school’s ethics committee, after which the research was allowed to continue.
Further troubles
However, after beginning the survey again, this time in September 2016, “my study was once again canceled within a week.” Jacobs’ advisor was beleaguered with accusations that he himself “had no integrity for even approving [the] research.”
“I was told that my survey seemed like it was developed by the Ku Klux Klan; I was told that my work could expedite the extinction of the human race; I was told that I should be ashamed of myself since I was damaging the reputation of the University of Chicago,” Jacobs said.
He provided The Fix with a staggering number of responses from the survey respondents. Those emails range from the affirmative to the immaterial to the aggressively vituperative.
“A VERY poorly designed questionnaire. I doubt that ANY serious conclusions can be drawn from it,” one response reads. “Abortion has been legal for over 40 years. It’s time for all the religious nuts to get over it,” said another. “Abortion is a woman’s right; the state has no role in the decision to abort whatever the reason (medical, cultural, economic),” a third reads.
“Abortion is not about biology. Please don’t use this survey to say ‘Look, even biologists are pro-life’ because that is absolutely not what my answers mean,” another respondent said.
Others equivocated on the relevance of the questions. “Biology deals with facts. When a life, with value, begins or ends is best decided by philosophers and ethicists,” said a respondent.
Another wrote: “As a scientist, I agree that life begins at fertilization. But, as a citizen of this democracy, I support a woman’s right to choose. From that perspective, I adopt the opinion that life begins at first heartbeat.”
Another criticized Jacobs for referring to the two sides of the abortion debate as “choice” and “pro-life.” That professor requested that the terms be classified as “choice” and “anti-choice.”

This, in response to questions such as:

Asking biologists basic questions on human development
The survey questions were directed specifically at determining respondents’ beliefs about when individual lives begin. Respondents were asked to agree or disagree with two “implicit statements.”
The first read: “The end product of mammalian fertilization is a fertilized egg (‘zygote’), a new mammalian organism in the first stage of its species’ life cycle with its species’ genome.” The second declared: “The development of a mammal begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.”
A subsequent “explicit statement” asked recipients to respond to this premise: “In developmental biology, fertilization marks the beginning of a human’s life since that process produces an organism with a human genome that has begun to develop in the first stage of the human life cycle.”
An open-ended essay question asked respondents to answer “from a biological perspective” the question “When does a human’s life begin?’”
The questions are firmly couched in the premises and presumptions of biological science rather than any political ideology. And yet the backlash to the survey was relentless and viciously negative.

Jacobs has apparently been told that he is in effect blacklisted; something that sounds all to familiar to those who have argued, analysed and done research that warrants a design inference.

This sort of pattern suggests a guilty secret.

Food for thought. END

Comments
the summary given in this article is false. If you have read the paper it is deliberately false. Jacobs surveyed 62,469 biologists and got a response from 7383. Q1 was affirmed by 4542 or 7% of the surveyed and by 62% of those responding to the survey. Q2 by 6% and 54%, Q3 by 4% and 34%. Q4 is irrelevant for the quantitative result. So how does Jacobs reach the conclusion of 95% affirming his preconceived notion and his desired outcome? He ignores the low response rate and active “don’t want to answer” anwers first. Then he counts anybody answering at least one his three questions with yes as “biological classification of a fetus as a human at fertilization” A proper conclusion would be: -low response rate, results can’t be considered as consensus -from all the responses a maximum of 34% confirmed the view (me assuming, that all who affirmed q3 also affirmed q1 and q2) -most scientists responding didn’t answer all questions -a significant number of scientists gave a conflicting view (at least 544) even considering non answers as confirming the answers given. My understanding of his questions doesn’t allow the conclusion, a fetus (actually a zygote) being a human being. An analogy would be the “life cycle” of a house to start once the foundation is being laid. That would be a usable and good marker, despite quite some work being done way earlier. But a foundation or even a frame isn’t a house. A proper assessment would be a house starts to be a house, once people are living in it. But independetly from the qualtative assessment of his questions and his obvious not acounted for strong bias, the mere quantitative assessment is so different from “95% consensus”, that his conclusion has to be understood as deliberately misleading if not worse.Georg
July 26, 2022
July
07
Jul
26
26
2022
01:13 AM
1
01
13
AM
PDT
Brother Brain:
The issue has never been about the facts of the human life cycle, it is about fetal rights. Philosophical and ethical questions, not biological ones.
There are people that say a zygote is not life. So that is why what biologists say is so important. Once people agree that a zygote is alive then no one can deny it the same rights as someone who went through that cycle.ET
July 24, 2019
July
07
Jul
24
24
2019
06:12 AM
6
06
12
AM
PDT
F/N: While we have had to deal with the habitual objector tactic of distractions, caricatures and attacks to the man, we must not allow ourselves to lose sight of what has been clearly established. The force of evidence as to when mammalian life begins is so forceful that simple recognition that we are mammals is decisive regardless of political inclinations. Of course we are not merely mammals, we are rational, responsible, en-conscienced, inescapably morally governed, arguably en-souled. Where, it is clear that the right to life is the first human right as one robbed of life can exert no other rights. Where also, the right to life implies a neighbourly duty to respect, protect, defend life. Thus, we see laws of natural justice regarding life and that these, properly should extend to our living posterity in the womb. Accordingly, we must break the bewitchment of law in our time that has entrenched the fatal, nihilistic principle of legal positivism which in effect reduces to might and manipulation make 'law' and 'justice,' so also 'rights' and 'non-rights.' That is the first step to stable, sound, sustainable reform rooted in a solid critical mass of support across our civilisation. Reformation that needs, among other things, to end the enabling of a holocaust in process. KFkairosfocus
July 24, 2019
July
07
Jul
24
24
2019
02:44 AM
2
02
44
AM
PDT
BB, the record stands quite clear above and in onward threads. The ONLY way that you could pose vigilante attacks against abortionists or the like as though it were parallel to defending a citizen being attacked by some criminal, is because of the tainting effect. We have also seen abundant further evidence of manipulative, tainting and falsely accusatory behaviour on your part. Indeed, scrolling back above I find your false claim to the effect that I oppose the use of contraceptives or judicious -- note that operative word -- education in such; I do think that we need chastity education and virtue education and education in the natural law of moral government and more, but that does not preclude reasonable, objective information (which I had in biology class and long before that from my Mom who was a public health educator) -- as opposed to instructing the young in the techniques of vice and subtly undermining principles and moral fibre. Moral corruption, however subtle, is educational malpractice. I only mention the un-retracted further doublings down on false assertions and the unavoidable appeal to the moral government that you would undermine. I also note, again, that the actual evidence in hand is that the research conducted -- despite all sorts of attacks which you are further enabling -- was found sound; that undermines your snide suggestions decisively. Also, there is evidently no objective base for dismissing the established facts regarding the conclusions that have to be acknowledged . . . which immediately extend to the obvious premise that right to life is the first human right. We must not allow a shoal of red herring distractors to lead us away from a key issue connected to long needed reforms that will stop the enabling of the worst holocaust in human history. And that is what is at stake here, with your rhetoric clearly serving that enabling of the central evil of our time. Your credibility, for cause, is nil. KFkairosfocus
July 23, 2019
July
07
Jul
23
23
2019
10:31 PM
10
10
31
PM
PDT
KF
First, you full well know that you used a tainting, ad hominem laced suggestion in the teeth of a highly material fact: a serious uni awarded a PhD to the research in question.
I criticized one survey that was used as part of his defence. As did others. Presumably his thesis involved far more than this. If it didn’t, I question the credentials of the University.
In this context, the newly minted Dr Jacobs has done our civilisation a huge favour (at apparent cost of any hopes of an academic career, as he has been informally blacklisted) ...
Yes, this immense cost to an academic career that he himself admits that he has made no effort to pursue. Playing the victim card doesn’t cut it when you have no evidence of being a victim.
by doing research that documents a fact that is so strong regarding beginning of an individual life that against ideological inclinations in many cases, biologists have been collectively put on record on the matter. The result is about to be formally peer-review published also.
Yes, we have been over this. Biologically speaking, the human life cycle begins at conception. Nobody denies this. We are taught this in sex Ed in primary school. Except, of course, in jurisdictions where the religious puritans prevent this being taught at such a young age out of fear of it driving kids to want to have sex. The issue has never been about the facts of the human life cycle, it is about fetal rights. Philosophical and ethical questions, not biological ones.
Next, your persistent shift from moral government under a law of inescapable duties to “governance” is also significant.
What shift? You have yet to demonstrate that this objective moral governance exists. You repeatedly make this claim, accusing anyone who disagrees with you of agit-prop tactics, nefarious motives and being all around poopy heads. But completely ignoring all of the evidence opposing it. Including every one of the examples I have presented, under the false colour of dragging the thread into the sewer. Even to the point of posting a comments off OP (supposedly) refuting my arguments. If your worldview with regards to objective moral governance and your mythical IS-OUGHT gap (not to mention your “necessary being” nonsense) can’t stand up to some real world examples, then it is your worldview that needs some re-thinking, not mine.Brother Brian
July 23, 2019
July
07
Jul
23
23
2019
09:38 PM
9
09
38
PM
PDT
PPS: I am reminded of some remarks in a recent College text:
Excerpted chapter summary, on Subjectivism, Relativism, and Emotivism, in Doing Ethics 3rd Edn, by Lewis Vaughn, W W Norton, 2012. [Also see here and here.] Clipping: . . . Subjective relativism is the view that an action is morally right if one approves of it. A person’s approval makes the action right. This doctrine (as well as cultural relativism) is in stark contrast to moral objectivism, the view that some moral principles are valid for everyone.. Subjective relativism, though, has some troubling implications. It implies that each person is morally infallible and that individuals can never have a genuine moral disagreement Cultural relativism is the view that an action is morally right if one’s culture approves of it. The argument for this doctrine is based on the diversity of moral judgments among cultures: because people’s judgments about right and wrong differ from culture to culture, right and wrong must be relative to culture, and there are no objective moral principles. This argument is defective, however, because the diversity of moral views does not imply that morality is relative to cultures. In addition, the alleged diversity of basic moral standards among cultures may be only apparent, not real. Societies whose moral judgments conflict may be differing not over moral principles but over nonmoral facts. Some think that tolerance is entailed by cultural relativism. But there is no necessary connection between tolerance and the doctrine. Indeed, the cultural relativist cannot consistently advocate tolerance while maintaining his relativist standpoint. To advocate tolerance is to advocate an objective moral value. But if tolerance is an objective moral value, then cultural relativism must be false, because it says that there are no objective moral values. Like subjective relativism, cultural relativism has some disturbing consequences. It implies that cultures are morally infallible, that social reformers can never be morally right, that moral disagreements between individuals in the same culture amount to arguments over whether they disagree with their culture, that other cultures cannot be legitimately criticized, and that moral progress is impossible. Emotivism is the view that moral utterances are neither true nor false but are expressions of emotions or attitudes. It leads to the conclusion that people can disagree only in attitude, not in beliefs. People cannot disagree over the moral facts, because there are no moral facts. Emotivism also implies that presenting reasons in support of a moral utterance is a matter of offering nonmoral facts that can influence someone’s attitude. It seems that any nonmoral facts will do, as long as they affect attitudes. Perhaps the most far-reaching implication of emotivism is that nothing is actually good or bad. There simply are no properties of goodness and badness. There is only the expression of favorable or unfavorable emotions or attitudes toward something.
kairosfocus
July 23, 2019
July
07
Jul
23
23
2019
08:20 PM
8
08
20
PM
PDT
BB, First, you full well know that you used a tainting, ad hominem laced suggestion in the teeth of a highly material fact: a serious uni awarded a PhD to the research in question. Your reply further underscores why your credibility, properly, is nil. On the second matter, it is highly significant to underscore again how you expect your argument to have any leverage at all:
[KF --> BB, 36:] just to argue, you have yet again been forced to appeal to our knowledge and adherence to the moral government of rationality and our intellectual faculties; exposing the hollowness of your attempts to undermine that moral government because of what it points to, the need for bridging IS and OUGHT in the world root.
In this context, the newly minted Dr Jacobs has done our civilisation a huge favour (at apparent cost of any hopes of an academic career, as he has been informally blacklisted) by doing research that documents a fact that is so strong regarding beginning of an individual life that against ideological inclinations in many cases, biologists have been collectively put on record on the matter. The result is about to be formally peer-review published also. The fact is an indictment of the slaughter of the unborn that we have enabled. Next, your persistent shift from moral government under a law of inescapable duties to "governance" is also significant. Governance is a political, balance of power term; best defined succinctly as how big decisions are made and are made to stick in a relevant context. Government by principle or law is an objective referent. Even so, you fail as your phrasing denying even moral governance effectively rejects moral suasion. That only leaves raw nihilistic power on the table: might and/or manipulation make 'truth,' 'right,' 'rights,' 'justice,' 'knowledge,' etc. Thank you for inadvertently confirming the force of the point made so long ago by Plato:
Ath [in The Laws, Bk X 2,350+ ya]. . . .[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art . . . [such that] all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only [ --> that is, evolutionary materialism is ancient and would trace all things to blind chance and mechanical necessity] . . . . [Thus, they hold] that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.-
[ --> Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT, leading to an effectively arbitrary foundation only for morality, ethics and law: accident of personal preference, the ebbs and flows of power politics, accidents of history and and the shifting sands of manipulated community opinion driven by "winds and waves of doctrine and the cunning craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming . . . " cf a video on Plato's parable of the cave; from the perspective of pondering who set up the manipulative shadow-shows, why.]
These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might,
[ --> Evolutionary materialism -- having no IS that can properly ground OUGHT -- leads to the promotion of amorality on which the only basis for "OUGHT" is seen to be might (and manipulation: might in "spin") . . . ]
and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [ --> Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles influenced by that amorality at the hands of ruthless power hungry nihilistic agendas], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is,to live in real dominion over others [ --> such amoral and/or nihilistic factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless abuse and arbitrariness . . . they have not learned the habits nor accepted the principles of mutual respect, justice, fairness and keeping the civil peace of justice, so they will want to deceive, manipulate and crush -- as the consistent history of radical revolutions over the past 250 years so plainly shows again and again], and not in legal subjection to them [--> nihilistic will to power not the spirit of justice and lawfulness].
No wonder, the warning in The Republic, in the Ship of State parable on the likely fate of mutiny and substitution of what we may call de-mock-racy and folly-tricks, seems all too relevant. (In the case of the USA, that now clearly is in low end 4th gen, low kinetics, agit-prop and lawfare civil war, with heavy shooting war all too likely to follow. The bloody lessons of the 1850's have been forgotten.) KF PS: The only inconsistencies are those arising from the manipulative nihilism you have so directly admitted to. As the OP demonstrates, evil powers can and do trap people, requiring moral courage and clarity to identify evil and where it ends, ruinous chaos. Yes, St Kolbe, the White Rose Martyrs, those who stand up against oppression entrenched under false colour of law often face utterly unpalatable alternatives. All that does is to underscore that we are morally governed creatures, that the unjust may seize power, and that breaking such oppression is costly. And, recognition of the built in indelible law of our nature is precisely the pivot on which reformation must turn. Where, notoriously, one of the telling self-falsifying consequences of radical relativism is that automatically the would be reformer going up against an entrenched system [= that which by the imposed power is automatically deemed "right"] is in the wrong.kairosfocus
July 23, 2019
July
07
Jul
23
23
2019
08:06 PM
8
08
06
PM
PDT
Brother Brian:
I point out an inconsistency in your “objective” moral universe …
And it has been pointed out that your alleged inconsistency is just your ignorance riding on your agenda. .
...and you twist it to a claim that I am advocating vigilantism.
No twisting required.ET
July 23, 2019
July
07
Jul
23
23
2019
06:22 PM
6
06
22
PM
PDT
KF
FYI-FTR: The answer given to attempts to undermine moral government (and to those that — even worse — suggest that Christians must become/are vigilantes), here:
There is no moral governance to undermine. At least not as you proclaim it to be. And to claim that I am suggesting that Christians must become vigilantes is just laughable. I point out an inconsistency in your “objective” moral universe (ie, that you think it is morally acceptable to use force to protect a child, but not to protect a fetus), and you twist it to a claim that I am advocating vigilantism. I haven’t decided if it is just sadly pathetic or manipulatively deceitful. Based on my previous interactions with you, I am leaning towards the former.Brother Brian
July 23, 2019
July
07
Jul
23
23
2019
06:12 PM
6
06
12
PM
PDT
Brother Brian:
You expend a ridiculous amount of effort, and verbiage on someone with zero credibility.
Only because your trope requires a thorough debunking.
When I run across comments from people with zero credibility (eg ET), I ignore them.
You ignore me because I have proven, time and again, that you are just another zero credibility internet troll. Every time you ante up you get taken down. That must be frustrating to have someone like me prove that you are a loser. If life is too short then why waste your time here? Clearly you have nothing to add. So why bother? Perhaps the point of the survey was to get scientists to admit that life starts at conception. If life starts at conception, that life is clearly human.ET
July 23, 2019
July
07
Jul
23
23
2019
05:41 PM
5
05
41
PM
PDT
KF
BB, you have no evidence that the thesis was incompetent and the contrasted fact that U of Chicago, a noted school, awarded a PhD.
When did I say that the thesis was incompetent. I said that the survey was, as can clearly be seen by the fact that it didn’t ask any questions about the stated purpose of the survey, a mess. Presumably the thesis was not limited to interpreting this survey, as I mentioned above.
Your insistence on a belittling, tainting, ad hominem distractor in the teeth of direct evidence to the contrary, is duly noted.
What evidence? The questions asked did not pertain to the stated purpose of the survey. That can only be due to poor design or deceptive design.
Further, on a survey of 5000+ biologists (apparently spanning 80+ countries) 95% of them admit that mammalian life (thus, human life) properly begins at fusion of egg and sperm cells forming a zygote.
From a biological perspective, nobody would dispute this. But that is irrelevant to fetal rights, the stated objective of the survey.
Further to this there is clear evidence of being forced to admit an unwelcome fact, likely on the compelling force of biological evidence in the teeth of much agit prop and powerful agendas promoting the ongoing holocaust of the unborn.
The agit-prop comes from the student, not the survey respondents. If the objective of the survey was to get biologists opinions on fetal rights, as was stated, why were there no questions about that? Why did the survey centre on a question of when the human life cycle begins, a question that eight year olds know the answer to?
So, we have every epistemic right to rate your commentary at zero credibility.
You expend a ridiculous amount of effort, and verbiage on someone with zero credibility. When I run across comments from people with zero credibility (eg ET), I ignore them. Life is too short to waste my time with them.Brother Brian
July 23, 2019
July
07
Jul
23
23
2019
03:15 PM
3
03
15
PM
PDT
PS: As you have resorted to cross-thread misrepresentations in 28 above, I duly post notice of my FYI-FTR in response: FYI-FTR: The answer given to attempts to undermine moral government (and to those that — even worse — suggest that Christians must become/are vigilantes), here: https://uncommondescent.com/atheism/fyi-ftr-the-answer-given-to-attempts-to-undermine-moral-government-and-to-those-that-even-worse-suggest-that-christians-must-become-are-vigilantes/kairosfocus
July 23, 2019
July
07
Jul
23
23
2019
01:02 AM
1
01
02
AM
PDT
BB, you have no evidence that the thesis was incompetent and the contrasted fact that U of Chicago, a noted school, awarded a PhD. Your insistence on a belittling, tainting, ad hominem distractor in the teeth of direct evidence to the contrary, is duly noted. The material fact on the table remains: we have here documented on 3000+ general public survey that biologists are the public's perceived experts on the headlined subject. Further, on a survey of 5000+ biologists (apparently spanning 80+ countries) 95% of them admit that mammalian life (thus, human life) properly begins at fusion of egg and sperm cells forming a zygote. Further to this there is clear evidence of being forced to admit an unwelcome fact, likely on the compelling force of biological evidence in the teeth of much agit prop and powerful agendas promoting the ongoing holocaust of the unborn. All of this is telling -- as is the rhetorical gambit you resorted to in distractive response. I further note that just to argue, you have yet again been forced to appeal to our knowledge and adherence to the moral government of rationality and our intellectual faculties; exposing the hollowness of your attempts to undermine that moral government because of what it points to, the need for bridging IS and OUGHT in the world root. So, we have every epistemic right to rate your commentary at zero credibility. KFkairosfocus
July 23, 2019
July
07
Jul
23
23
2019
12:58 AM
12
12
58
AM
PDT
The legal definition of when life begins is not a biological one.
If so then the legal definition is total BS and should be ignored. And the people who wrote such a definition should be imprisoned for their ignorance.ET
July 22, 2019
July
07
Jul
22
22
2019
08:08 AM
8
08
08
AM
PDT
KF
The pivot here is that a human being, by inherent nature and dignity has a right to life,...
No, the pivot here was the treatment of this student and whether the criticism of his work was warranted. Given that the claimed purpose of his survey was to assess what biologists’ professional opinions were about fetal rights, I think that his survey was very poorly designed, probably dishonestly so. If this survey constituted his entire PhD thesis, which is unlikely, then it is my opinion that it should not have been granted.Brother Brian
July 22, 2019
July
07
Jul
22
22
2019
07:27 AM
7
07
27
AM
PDT
BB, I am speaking to the world of scholarship as it is rather than the idealised storefront. I am glad that in the end, U Chicago had the integrity to respect the work and acknowledge that it does add to the global knowledge base through a significant original conclusion, but the sausage factory details are also telling a story which is obviously unwelcome to you. Those details are there because the substance brought out clearly cuts across the enabling of an ongoing global holocaust of our living posterity in the womb. As to the legal positivism notion that whoever has power levers can make or unmake law as he pleases, that is its own refutation. The pivot here is that a human being, by inherent nature and dignity has a right to life, so we are inherently duty bound to respect the manifest truth of the presence of such life and then are under an obligation of justice to respect and protect said life. But then, to see that requires acknowledging as inescapable truth that our intellectual faculties are governed by duties to truth, right reason, prudence (so both warrant and due caution), sound conscience, justice etc. Which, across several threads you have sought to undermine, all the while depending on our knowledge of and obligation under such a law of our nature. You have tried to have your cake and eat it, fail. KF PS: You fail to see the inherent connexion between life, life of the order rational, ensouled, and that inherent dignity which demands due respect to the first of all lives. I am reminded of feral chickens here, and the quietness of our family vehicle. Driving up the road, I have come upon chickens in the road that, on spotting danger, flee squawking an alarm call. Now, I am not averse to killing the odd chicken for dinner, but I respect and admire the little beasties (especially cute little baby chicks and hard working mother hens). Even they know life is valuable. I think of the Agouti under the guava tree, picking one up, sitting on its haunches and eating it for all the world like a little man. Red-pink ears all a-wiggle, it is alert and at the slightest sound of danger, guava dropped, it is racing away for cover. Even, a fish that bites on a plug bait will fight for its life. The old Amerindians who so respected the animals they hunted had a point. We have ever so much to re-learn, things we have needlessly, heedlessly un-learned.kairosfocus
July 22, 2019
July
07
Jul
22
22
2019
02:22 AM
2
02
22
AM
PDT
KF
BB, you can keep the rosy tinted glasses on the wonderful world of the guild of scholarship.
I assume you are referring to the guild of scholarship that granted him his degree in spite of philosophical disagreements and pressure from some academics. Again, if you can explain how the process failed the student I would like to hear it.
PS: The research in question has successfully established that credibly 95% of biologists — who the general public perceive as relevant experts on the objective question, when does mammalian so human life begin — cannot but agree (often, much against their wishes) that life begins with the union of sperm and egg which forms a zygote with unique DNA. Sour grapes and belittling are besides the point.
No serious biologist is going to say that the human life cycle doesn’t begin at conception. The legal definition of when life begins is not a biological one. The legal definition is intended to draw a line past which the being is afforded human rights and protections. In the students own words, the purpose of the survey was to gauge biologists views on fetal rights, yet he never asked a single question about fetal rights. The most generous conclusion is that the survey was very poorly designed. The more likely conclusion is that it was manipulative and dishonest. It is the equivalent of asking you if you still beat your wife and only accepting a yes or no answer.Brother Brian
July 21, 2019
July
07
Jul
21
21
2019
06:38 PM
6
06
38
PM
PDT
BB, you can keep the rosy tinted glasses on the wonderful world of the guild of scholarship. As to doubling down on falsehood, that is now clearly a pattern with you. You chose to ignore responses, and now misrepresent that as my refusing to answer any challenges to my worldview. What I refused to do was to go back into mudwrestling in the sewer; you already had one thread for such and the linked agenda looks no better after than before. Finally, it is decisively clear that you cannot undermine moral government of our intellectual faculties without implicitly appealing to the known binding nature of such. That utterly devastates any case you were trying to make to undermine such. Not that I expect you to acknowledge that. KF PS: The research in question has successfully established that credibly 95% of biologists -- who the general public perceive as relevant experts on the objective question, when does mammalian so human life begin -- cannot but agree (often, much against their wishes) that life begins with the union of sperm and egg which forms a zygote with unique DNA. Sour grapes and belittling are besides the point.kairosfocus
July 21, 2019
July
07
Jul
21
21
2019
01:31 PM
1
01
31
PM
PDT
Brother Brian- Your comment about some woman is nothing more than hearsay. And the doctors should have taken action to prevent her from becoming pregnant.ET
July 21, 2019
July
07
Jul
21
21
2019
12:52 PM
12
12
52
PM
PDT
KF
Notice, lack of acknowledgement that something has clearly gone very wrong in the state of academia?
At every critical step of the process he was ultimately supported by the college. Seems like it functioned fine. Was the survey manipulative and disingenuous? Absolutely. He claimed that the survey was about fetal rights but didn’t have a single question about fetal rights. He concentrated on when the human life cycle begins, which is obviously at fertilization. As one commenter said:
A VERY poorly designed questionnaire. I doubt that ANY serious conclusions can be drawn from it,
I agree with this statement. Here is another:
Abortion is not about biology. Please don’t use this survey to say ‘Look, even biologists are pro-life’ because that is absolutely not what my answers mean
But that is what the student was using it for. Sounds dishonest to me. This response captures the issue:
Biology deals with facts. When a life, with value, begins or ends is best decided by philosophers and ethicists
We obviously don’t have all of the facts, but given what was provided in the article, I am surprised he was granted the degree. Not because of the subject, but because of the dishonest motives of the survey.Brother Brian
July 21, 2019
July
07
Jul
21
21
2019
08:22 AM
8
08
22
AM
PDT
KF
BB, your poor commentary continues. A miscarriage of a pregnancy (even one by a woman hoping against hope) is patently not an abortion. That you seek to conflate the two simply tells us you have no case and are willing to resort to the most blatantly specious arguments. This confirms your want of credibility. KF
You really do not like dealing with real world examples. That speaks volumes. Real life is not black and white. Most of it lives in the grey zones. My example is real. The doctors (more than one) have told her that she is physically incapable of carrying a pregnancy to term. Yet she repeatedly tries. When people repeatedly try to do harm to themselves or others we feel compelled to intervene. This woman is repeatedly performing acts that she has been told will result in a miscarriage. And, since the right to life begins at conception, she is knowingly doing something that will kill life. It could be argued that she, due to her desire to have a child, is deluding herself into thinking that she can. That would most certainly be used in mitigating any punishment, but isn’t society morally obligated to intervene to ensure that she does not do anything that would result in future deaths?Brother Brian
July 21, 2019
July
07
Jul
21
21
2019
07:47 AM
7
07
47
AM
PDT
Notice, lack of acknowledgement that something has clearly gone very wrong in the state of academia?kairosfocus
July 21, 2019
July
07
Jul
21
21
2019
04:10 AM
4
04
10
AM
PDT
BB, your poor commentary continues. A miscarriage of a pregnancy (even one by a woman hoping against hope) is patently not an abortion. That you seek to conflate the two simply tells us you have no case and are willing to resort to the most blatantly specious arguments. This confirms your want of credibility. KFkairosfocus
July 21, 2019
July
07
Jul
21
21
2019
03:57 AM
3
03
57
AM
PDT
BB, you know full well that you have shown an obsessive pattern with certain fashionable but patently degenerate behaviours, that you were given an opportunity to air the mess and that for cause I have gavelled further dragging of threads down to the sewer. You also should know that your recent distractions were answered more than sufficiently in good time, only to then be studiously ignored, indicating that concern for adequate warrant was never your true motive. Further to this, derailment was countered by continuing to deal with the focal question, substantially and in fact by going out to find in the wild actual objections. Your strawman caricature and slander covering up disruptive behaviour and want of cogent substantial addressing of the merits are hereby highlighted, further removing you from the pale of credible commentary. It is clear that your fact claims, arguments and claims regarding balance on the merits or motivations of those you disagree with are to be viewed as of utterly low credibility. KF PS: It still remains the case that in order to try to undermine the undeniable fact that our intellectual faculties are morally governed through duties to truth, to right reason, to prudence (so, warrant etc), to sound conscience, to justice etc you are forced to appeal to said duties just to try to lend persuasive power to your arguments. This is manifest just above. The inescapability of that moral government is definitively shown by how the attempt to undermine such has to rest on what it would deny. Your case collapses in self-falsifying self referential incoherence; as has been repeatedly pointed out to you but studiously ignored or brushed aside. The fact is, just to reason, we cannot escape moral government. We operate on both sides of the IS-OUGHT gap you don't want to hear about. That gap has to be bridged, and post Hume we know that can only happen in the world root. Where, on comparative difficulties over centuries, there is just one serious candidate: the inherently good, utterly wise creator God, a necessary and maximally great being. One, worthy of our loyalty and of the responsible, reasonable service of doing the good that accords with our evident nature. Where, if you object simply provide another serious candidate ____ and warrant on comparative difficulties ______ . Further to this, a serious candidate NB (flying spaghetti monsters et al need not apply) will either be impossible of being or else actual. And suggesting God as contingent simply will not get off the ground. So, as one who actively disbelieves in God and presumes to atheism as a default and suggests (ill-advisedly) that there is no evidence pointing to God, you have an obviously unmet burden of warrant to show God impossible of being.kairosfocus
July 21, 2019
July
07
Jul
21
21
2019
03:52 AM
3
03
52
AM
PDT
Sev, the clear record -- quite well documented (of which a sample is above) -- is that all means all and that the reference to men functions as inclusive. There was a specific explicit case on the table, put there by the lead drafter acting in knowing challenge to his own interests. It is known that it was removed as part of a compromise on the final document that obviously deliberately left in the global language. Recall, in the wider context of more than a year of fighting, previous petitions and pleas had been structured on the rights of British subjects but such were of no avail, The declaration was consciously directed to all the watching world and was constructed in terms of the self-evident core of the natural law built into our nature as rational, morally governed creatures. That there are gaps, wrongs on both sides and more were therefore recognised and a marker stone for future reforms was laid down. I find it telling that there is such a strong adherence to the cultural marxist oppression thesis that genuine pivots or milestones of progress for our civilisation seemingly "have" to be belittled. Indeed, this very weekend a similar exchange is happening surrounding the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landings. That pattern speaks volumes. In this case, it then feeds into the clear suppression of the patent humanity and manifest rights of our living posterity in the womb, enabling the worst holocaust in history -- advancing at the rate of a million further victims per week. KF PS: I should add that the US DoI is prior to but not part of the text of the Constitution; though its effect is acknowledged as establishing the USA 12 years prior, and the Constitution set out to be the second attempt at establishing a new framework of government (as para 2 of DoI discusses); note the Articles of Confederation of 1778 were in draft at the same time as the Declaration -- affecting who sat on the drafting committee. There having been a fatal compromise, there having been ill-advised rulings by those who should have known better [sounds familiar? Try 1857 vs 1973], there having been a war and a presidential statement, there was need to make for explicit language in the framework legal document. Hence, the cluster of post civil war amendments. Hence too, as matters advanced, further amendments. One proved a step too far and was pulled back, prohibition.kairosfocus
July 21, 2019
July
07
Jul
21
21
2019
03:42 AM
3
03
42
AM
PDT
Since BB asserts that we are no better than the other animals, perhaps he should be referred to as Sibling B, We don't, after all, need to treat him as we treat our pets, and give him a 'cuddly' title and 'human' name.Axel
July 21, 2019
July
07
Jul
21
21
2019
03:11 AM
3
03
11
AM
PDT
Seversky:
Now, if an aircraft manufacturer, for example, is found to have sold a flawed design which results in a number of accidents that cost a substantial number of passengers their lives then they may be held responsible and incur massive financial penalties at the least.
When an aircraft manufacturer can manufacture a self-replicating jet, then you will have a fair analogy. The woman of today were NOT the originally designed women. Genetic entropy has been at play for thousands of generations. This is not a perfect world. We could never learn anything in a perfect world. Seversky erects a strawman and in typical troll fashion, Brian doubles down on itET
July 20, 2019
July
07
Jul
20
20
2019
05:15 PM
5
05
15
PM
PDT
Sev@20, interesting take on the abortion issue. Although KF avoids all real world examples that call into question his worldview, I am going to risk another one. A friend of my son has had three miscarriages and one still birth. After the first miscarriage she was told by the doctors that she should never get pregnant again because the chance of it miscarrying was extremely high (almost a certainty). With this knowledge, she tried three more times, each resulting in the death of the fetus/embryo. According to KF’s worldview, is her decision to keep getting pregnant not the moral equivalent of deciding to have an abortion?Brother Brian
July 20, 2019
July
07
Jul
20
20
2019
03:05 PM
3
03
05
PM
PDT
Kairosfocus @ 19
As for women etc, you full well know that despite what radicals may say, “all men are created equal” clearly embraces any member of the human species whatsoever. So, the intent to smuggle in a taint of a state paper marking a breakthrough in liberty carried out in service to robbing our living posterity in the womb of their right to life collapses.
I have to agree with Brother Brian here. We may all agree that “all men are created equal” regardless of sex, race or creed but that was not always the case. If it had been then there would have been no need to add a Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1870, granting the right to vote to non-white men and freed male slaves, nor a Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 granting the same right to women. Note that black men had the right to vote fifty years before any women. Whatever the intentions of the Founding Fathers may have been, if there had been general agreement on a universal right of suffrage, it would not have taken so long after the Bill of Rights, which became law in 1791, to provide explicit statutory guarantees for these two disadvantaged groups nor would it even have been necessary. As for abortion, since you have argued for the importance of context, it is estimated that there have been 105 billion live births of human beings since the Dawn of Man. The natural rate of miscarriages is put at 10-50% of pregnancies depending on how it is defined so, if we assume a conservative rate of 20%, there have been around 21 billion lives lost over that period. Now, if an aircraft manufacturer, for example, is found to have sold a flawed design which results in a number of accidents that cost a substantial number of passengers their lives then they may be held responsible and incur massive financial penalties at the least. The human reproductive system is clearly flawed, wasteful and unreliable. As a Christian you have to believe that it was designed by your God who, by your own definition, is the greatest of all possible beings, all-knowing and all-powerful. So responsibility for this Holocaust-scale loss of human life, which continues to this day, should be laid at His door. Yet I don't hear any howls of moral protest from Christians over this outrage. I see no movement to shame and condemn Him in the way that women who seek abortion or the healthcare workers who provide the service are shamed and condemned. If you want to condemn abortion then, to be consistent, you should be addressing this massive death toll that should never have happened.Seversky
July 20, 2019
July
07
Jul
20
20
2019
02:49 PM
2
02
49
PM
PDT
All the instances you cite in post #4, BB, concern victims who either need protection, cause others to need physical protection, or both, while you actually seem coy about explicitly identifying - as if to save US embarrassment ! - the death penalty for 'murderers' (i.e. post-natal human beings). I wonder how many innocent victims of murderes would have been able to die in their beds or in some other propitious circumstance at a reasonably advanced age, had atheisrt liberals not decided to release murderers. I've just now read of a 77-year old who murdered a woman soon after his release from prison. But it would happen every day in the post-Christian West. And in more and more grisly circumstances. On the same page I read of yet another delightful duo who, after tricking a pregnant young woman, strangled her - to cut her baby out of her womb. Unfortunately, particularly in the US, such seems to be the level of anarchic, social pathologies among their leaders, it is well known that many innocent people (particuarly, if AA and/or, to a lesser extent, poor whites), have already been victims of deliberate miscarriages of justice, many, as a pedestrian or a driver, simply gunned down in the street by a 'friendly rozzer' (seldom sanctioned for their major crime),. It is evidently an ever-present danger for AAs. So, those blandishments were a very poor attempt on your part to minimise the enormity of a mother killing her own child, particularly when merely for the sake of convenience - as if the 'mite' were a disposable hnadkerchief. I must say, it absolutely me incensed me to read the author's account of the objurgations hurled at him by the low-lifes of science in academia, that should have been directed at themselves. All this madness, which people over 70 to 75 can see clearly as a remorseless degeneration from the quasi Christian zeitgeist of the three post WWII decades. The Pope says otherwise, but 'he has a lot on his plate', to put it mildly, and even popes cannot be always right, as Francis has said - much to the chagrin of the far-right loonies. And it is not my purpose here to gainsay him, even if it transpires. But I do think the dying words of the Good Thief on the cross about their deserving their fate, unlike Jesus, would be considered first-rate testimony in our courts, imperfect though they too would be.Axel
July 20, 2019
July
07
Jul
20
20
2019
11:54 AM
11
11
54
AM
PDT
1 2

Leave a Reply