That's beautiful. It draws me into an awareness of the colors and smells that surround and lure us.
Thinking of purpose, after sleeping on it... maybe we are the cattle of the plants (the earth's true children) and our purpose is to serve them. Each of our breaths heaps praise upon them. For they have sacrificed their leaf so that we may be full filled. Our cars and factorys are churches of the mystery of the CO2, and we build them in honor of their gift to us, the breath of life.
Surely some things remain the same whatever your beliefs... too much religion, like freedom, can be detrimental. Ideas in time will go astray without continued shepherding. And every breath is in service of the divine forest.

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-Marty

1986 300E 220,000 miles+ transmission impossible
(Now waiting under a bridge in order to become one)

Reading your M103 duty cycle:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/showpost.php?p=831799&postcount=13
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/showpost.php?p=831807&postcount=14

It also reflects the fear of being killed. As such, you band together and outlaw something. People are not that noble.

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01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

Is it worse to kill a human fetus that is not even self-aware and feels no pain, than to kill a cow for meat that may go through a painful death just so it can end up in your burger? I know many people, especially religious ones would say definitely no. But for me, it's not about human vs. animal (we're animals too) but it's about how much pain is being inflicted on the victim and whether the victim is self-aware. That's why I have no problem with other people having abortion, particularly if the child would have led a miserable life. I'm all for reducing suffering.

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL

If degree of self-awareness is what determines life's value, and value is the determinante for whether a person should live or die, then wouldn't it save us all a lot of money to euthanize the profoundly retarded?

That's just wasteful. Keep them alive and harvest the organs.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

If it's done humanely and the family and/or legal guardian agrees to it, then I'm not gonna take to the streets and protest the idea. Life is all about choices, and a lot of times they are hard choices but a decision has to be made and it should be made by those who will be directly affected by that decision. I'm not pro-abortion, only pro-choice. If my wife is about to die because the fetus has been developing outside the womb (which can happen) I don't want some religous wacko to make it illegal for my doctor to save my wife. Same if we find out that the fetus is going to be severely handicapped for life. The religious wackos are not gonna take care of this person so why should they have any say?

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL

Maybe we should move the religious wackoes along to meet their maker? They spend so much time yearning for him why not give them a helping hand?

Ahhh, the slick coolness of the slippery slope.

B

Didn't work for me. Some religious nut knocked on my door and I let him in. This was when I was young and naieve. Well he didn't want me to leave or I'd go to hell if I didn't listen. So I got out Mr Ruger Redhawk #44 and asked if he would like to meet his maker. He declined.

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01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

Embryo ethics
By Michael J. Sandel | April 8, 2007

As the Senate prepares to take up stem cell legislation this week, Congress and the president are at odds over a tangled question at the boundary of science, ethics, and religion. President Bush has restricted federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and last year cast the first veto of his presidency when Congress tried to ease the restriction. With majorities in both houses of Congress ready to try again, the president has threatened another veto.

The main arguments are by now familiar. Proponents argue that embryonic stem cell research holds great promise for understanding and curing diabetes, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, and other debilitating conditions. Opponents argue that the research is unethical, because deriving the stem cells destroys the blastocyst, an unimplanted human embryo at the sixth to eighth day of development. As Bush declared when he vetoed last year's stem cell bill, the federal government should not support "the taking of innocent human life."

It is surprising that, despite the extensive public debate -- in Congress, during the 2004 and 2006 election campaigns, and on the Sunday morning talk shows -- relatively little attention has been paid to the moral issue at the heart of the controversy: Are the opponents of stem cell research correct in their claim that the unimplanted human embryo is already a human being, morally equivalent to a person?

Perhaps this claim has gone unaddressed because stem cell proponents and many in the media consider it obviously false, a faith-based belief that no rational argument could possibly dislodge. If so, they are making a mistake.

The fact that a moral belief may be rooted in religious conviction neither exempts it from challenge nor puts it beyond the realm of public debate. Ignoring the claim that the blastocyst is a person fails to respect those who oppose embryonic stem cell research on principled moral grounds. It has also led the media to miss glaring contradictions in Bush's stem cell policy, which does not actually live up to the principle it invokes -- that destroying an embryo is like killing a child.

It is important to be clear, first of all, about the embryo from which stem cells are extracted. It is not implanted and growing in a woman's uterus. It is not a fetus. It has no recognizable human features or form. It is, rather, a blastocyst, a cluster of 180 to 200 cells, growing in a petri dish, barely visible to the naked eye. Such blastocysts are either cloned in the lab or created in fertility clinics. The bill pending in Congress would fund stem cell research only on excess blastocysts left over from infertility treatments.
The blastocyst represents such an early stage of embryonic development that the cells it contains have not yet differentiated, or taken on the properties of particular organs or tissues -- kidneys, muscles, spinal cord, and so on. This is why the stem cells that are extracted from the blastocyst hold the promise of developing, with proper coaxing in the lab, into any kind of cell the researcher wants to study or repair.

The moral and political controversy arises from the fact that extracting the stem cells destroys the blastocyst. It is important to grasp the full force of the claim that the embryo is morally equivalent to a person, a fully developed human being. For those who hold this view, extracting stem cells from a blastocyst is as morally abhorrent as harvesting organs from a baby to save other people's lives. This is the position of Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, a leading advocate of the right-to-life position. In Brownback's view, "a human embryo . . . is a human being just like you and me; and it deserves the same respect that our laws give to us all."

If Brownback is right, then embryonic stem cell research is immoral because it amounts to killing a person to treat other people's diseases. But is he right? Is there good reason to believe that the blastocyst is a person?
Some base this belief on the religious conviction that the soul enters the body at the moment of conception. Others defend it without recourse to religion, by the following line of reasoning:
Human beings are not things. Their lives must not be sacrificed against their will, even for the sake of good ends, like saving other people's lives. The reason human beings must not be treated as things is that they are inviolable. At what point do we acquire this inviolability? The answer cannot depend on the age or developmental stage of a particular human life. Infants are inviolable, and few people would countenance harvesting organs for transplantation even from a fetus. Every human being -- each one of us -- began life as an embryo. Unless we can point to a definitive moment in the passage from conception to birth that marks the emergence of the human person, we must regard embryos as possessing the same inviolability as fully developed human beings.

This argument can be challenged on a number of grounds. First, it is undeniable that a human embryo is "human life" in the biological sense that it is living rather than dead, and human rather than, say, bovine. But this biological fact does not establish that the blastocyst is a human being, or a person. Any living human cell (a skin cell, for example) is "human life" in the sense of being human rather than bovine and living rather than dead. But no one would consider a skin cell a person, or deem it inviolable. Showing that a blastocyst is a human being, or a person, requires further argument.

Some try to base such an argument on the fact that human beings develop from embryo to fetus to child. Every person was once an embryo, the argument goes, and there is no clear, non-arbitrary line between conception and adulthood that can tell us when personhood begins. Given the lack of such a line, we should regard the blastocyst as a person, as morally equivalent to a fully developed human being.

But this argument is not persuasive. Consider an analogy: although every oak tree was once an acorn, it does not follow that acorns are oak trees, or that I should treat the loss of an acorn eaten by a squirrel in my front yard as the same kind of loss as the death of an oak tree felled by a storm. Despite their developmental continuity, acorns and oak trees differ. So do human embryos and human beings, and in the same way. Just as acorns are potential oaks, human embryos are potential human beings.

The distinction between a potential person and an actual one makes a moral difference. Sentient creatures make claims on us that nonsentient ones do not; beings capable of experience and consciousness make higher claims still. Human life develops by degrees.

A further reason to be skeptical of the notion that blastocysts are persons is to notice that many who invoke it do not embrace its full implications. President Bush is a case in point. In 2001, he announced a policy that restricted federal funding to already existing stem cell lines, so that no taxpayer funds would encourage or support the destruction of embryos. And in 2006, he vetoed a bill that would have funded new embryonic stem cell research, saying that he did not want to support "the taking of innocent human life."

But it is a striking feature of the president's position that, while restricting the funding of embryonic stem cell research, he has made no effort to ban it. To adapt a slogan from the Clinton administration, the Bush policy might be summarized as "don't fund, don't ban." But this policy is at odds with the notion that embryos are human beings.

more at: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/04/08/embryo_ethics/?page=full

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_pain

"Most scientists believe that a fetus is able to feel pain sometime during the pregnancy, often beginning less than 24 weeks after conception, although the question of exactly when pain might be possible is disputed.[6] Some academics argue that it appears as early as seven weeks after conception. Others claim that pain cannot be felt until the third trimester of pregnancy or until after birth.[7]"


From Congress July 4, 1776
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are CREATED equal, that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

They could have said BORN they didn't, they said CREATED. So the fetus doesn't become a human being just because his location changed from inside the womb to outside.
They could have said GOD, they didn't, they said CREATOR which doesn't necessarily mean God, could be nature.

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1985 300D Turbo
"Evolution is God's way of giving upgrades" Francis Collins

So clearly the pain argument doesn't apply in the case of stem cell research since nobody thinks a few hundred cells can feel pain.

When does the Creator endow someone with inalienable rights? When they get a soul? When do they get a soul? The Great Doctor said at 60 days. How could anyone know when a body gets a soul? Do the inalienable rights include the right to control reproduction or create medical cures? The founders apparently thought that women and blacks were not endowed with these same rights. How did they make that distinction?

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/winter01/stem_cell.html

Does a good job of explaining why adult stem cells should be used as opposed to embryonic stem cells. The author makes a valid point in referring to the fact that adult stem cells have already been used for therapeutic means as opposed to embryonic stem cells. The author also points out that though it was commonly believed that adult stem cells are limited in their abilities, recent research shows adult stem cells are capable, if not better, than embryonic stem cells.

I think the stem cell debate comes down to the discussion about abortion. Pro-choice activists see this as an opportunity to train us all to believe that a blastocyst is not in fact a human being. Pro-life activists see this as one more place to assert the humanity of a blastocyst. I find it interesting though that no one really knows much about the topic in general, let alone the proven ability of adult stem cells which have already been used therapeutically. Once again, it has nothing to do with research, just two sides entering another facet of the abortion debate.

Thanks
David

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2000 Honda Accord V6 137k miles

1972 300SEL 4.5 98k miles

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Here is something interesting with from a Libertarian perspective, from Murray M. Rothbard's book, "For a New Liberty." This deals more with what he thinks the law should permit, rather than what should necessarily be considered moral, since no Libertarian would presume to tell someone else what they should think is right or wrong. Certainly not everyone will agree with it.

""Most discussion of the (abortion) issue bogs down in the minutiae about when human life begins, or when the fetus can be considered alive, etc. All this is really irrelevant to the issue of the illegality (again, not necessarily the morality) of abortion. The (religious) antiabortionist, for example, declares that he wants for the fetus is the rights of any human being - ie., the right not to be murdered. But there is more involved here, and this is the crucial consideration. If we are to treat the fetus as having the same rights as humans, then let us ask: What human being has the right to remain, unbidden, as an unwanted parasite within another human being's body? This is the nub of the issue: the absolute right of every person and hence every woman, to the ownership of her body. What the mother is doing in an abortion is causing an unwanted entity within her body to be ejected from it: If the feus dies, this does not rebut the point that no being has a right to live, unbidden, as a parasite within or upon some person's body.

The common retort that the mother either originally wanted or at least was responsible for placing the fetus within her body is , again, besides the point. Even in the stronger case where the mother originally wanted the child, the mother, as the property owner in her own body, has the right to change her mind and to eject it."

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Jason Priest
1999 E430
1995 E420 - retired
1986 420SEL - retired

Childish prep-school sophistry,age-old questions posed by any hopped up intellectual nitwit posing as a profound thinker.

Makes no nevermind you're the son of a whore or a captain of industry,you are here and if you have the native drive and ability you make the damned most of the f*cking 3 minutes allotted to you here and try to injure as few people as possible in the process,and by all means don't neglect all the pleasures that life can afford to make it bearable.........that's my take.

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Keep your stinking laws off my body.....thank you very much and have a nice day.

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"It's normal for these things to empty your wallet and break your heart in the process."
2012 SLK 350
1987 420 SEL