From: bskendig@netcom.com (Brian Kendig)
Subject: Re: The answer (are the unborn alive?)!!!
Organization: Starfleet Headquarters: San Francisco
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 14:26:14 GMT

frank@D012S658.uucp (Frank O'Dwyer) writes:
>bskendig@netcom.com (Brian Kendig) writes:
>#
>#Easy.  Find something which is commonly considered as having a soul
>#(you, for example), and find something which is commonly considered as
>#not having a soul (a cat, for example).  Note the differences between
>
>...
>What I am saying is "commonly considered" doesn't really work for me, sorry.
>
>Does a cat have a soul?  Haven't a clue.  I don't go out of my way to harm
>cats.  

If "commonly considered" doesn't fly for you, then how can we say
anything at all about souls?  There's no way to empirically verify
that a fetus does or does not have a soul -- in fact, I don't believe
there is any such thing as a 'soul'.  I was merely referring to what I
think the most common idea of a "soul" is, in the Christian sense.
I'd have to say that this Catholic who told you that animals have
messiahs definitely holds a minority opinion (he sounds loony, but hey).

Sure, you don't go out of your way to harm cats, but what relevance
does that have?  Do you go out of your way to hurt rocks?

>#you and the cat that lead people to believe that you have a soul while
>#the cat doesn't: the ability to conceive of indirect solutions to
>#problems, the ability to use language, and so forth.
>
>These are measures of intelligence, not humanity.  There are lots of people
>who can't do either of the things you mention to any useful degree, and some
>of them are my colleagues :-)

I disagree.  I've never heard of anyone whom I would call a 'person'
who wasn't capable of either of these two things.

>#Now compare anything against the two of you.  A minority person would
>#possess many, if not all, of the distinctions that distinguish you
>#from the cat.  
>
>Only because YOU say so.  Only because you want it to turn out that way, 
>perhaps.

*blink*

Can you provide some believable objective criteria that would indicate
that a black man is more similar to a cat than to a white man?

>#A fetus, on the other hand, would not, nor would it
>#even biologically be similar to either you nor the cat until late in
>#its development (that's biologically, note, not genetically).
>
>Sure.  We can invent criteria which allow us to treat a foetus as less than
>fully human.  Some of these criteria are even extremely reasonable ones.
>Nevertheless, some the actions which they are used to justify stink to
>high heaven.  That's the data of immediate experience, and I'm willing to
>fly with that.

I'm not treating it as 'less than fully human'.  I'm just recognizing
that humanity's not the important thing.  What are these actions that
you feel I'm using my opinions to justify, and why are they bad?

>I believe there's a certain amount of reverse engineering going on here.  We
>can do this for just about any helpless minority, and have done, in living
>memory.

I'm honestly not at all sure where you're coming from.  Why aren't you
also defending animals from being butchered for food?  They're
certainly helpless, and you've admitted they might have souls, and we
can certainly live with fewer steaks in our lives.

-- 
_/_/_/  Brian Kendig                             Je ne suis fait comme aucun
/_/_/  bskendig@netcom.com                de ceux que j'ai vus; j'ose croire
_/_/                            n'etre fait comme aucun de ceux qui existent.
  /  Nolite te bastardes     Si je ne vaux pas mieux, au moins je suis autre.
 /  carborundorum.                                               -- Rousseau
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