[vulturesrow]

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That makes sense. When you said you could make the argument without reference to God, I was under the mistaken assumption that you didn't have a religious motive for making the argument. My apologies.

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Although I have been Catholic, I had pretty much dropped away from any religious belief for quite some time. I was always pro-life and it was actually something that helped bring me back to religion. My motive was to show that you didnt have to reference God or religion to make the argument against abortion.

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ca·pac·i·ty
n.
1. Ability to perform or produce; capability.

It doesn't have the ability or capability to speak, reason, or love. If you mean that in the future it might be able to (if it ends up being one of the lucky zygotes that end up implanting in the uterine wall and developing without being miscarried), then a sperm might be able to also. With the additional "luck" of finding a suitable egg to implant.


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Of course you ignored the capability part of your own definition. At conception, barring any accidental or intentional intervention in the developmental process, the capacity for all these things exist, it just isnt fully developed.

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How does your criteria help determine when someone is dead? How can medical science use your criteria to determine when it would be OK to bury someone?

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If a person still has this capacity, even if it is damaged, they arent dead.

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An infant has a functioning brain. It is a person.


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IF someone goes into a coma, are they no longer a person?

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How do we know the tumor isn't a person? Maybe it looks like a tumor at first... but after we observe it kinda looks like a person? (This isn't science fiction, by the way.)

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I already answered this. Why does what it look like matter?