When Does Human Life Begin? - Where is our humanity to be found?

When does human life begin?

There has a arisen among modern Christianity this newly found conviction that human life begins with conception. If we probe the history of Christianity we find a difference of opinions and Thomas Aquinas, for example, followed Aristotle's developmental view of the soul which concluded that the soul of the embryo could only be called human 40 days after conception. This only changed after the advent of modern genetics and the discovery that our unique genetic pattern begins at conception (sort of). What is new and peculiar is this sudden conviction that humanity is to be equated with a genetic code. What is terribly embarassing is the obvious logical connection to the extreme racists like the Nazis who held that there was a pure and perfect human genetic code that required a defense from corruption by inferior pseudo-human examples. Can this new conviction be seperated from that other? If we identify humanity with the possession of a particular genetic code can we avoid taking the next logical step and measuring the humanity of a person by the purity and completeness of that genetic code?

There are other unsettling connections here. There are interpretations of Genesis that see the corruption of man as a corruption of the human seed by demons. They interpret the phrase "sons of God" in Genesis 6 as angels and claim that these bred with human women to give birth to inhuman giants called "Nephilim". I think this is an effort to resist the obvious interpretation of Genesis 6 in agreement with the rest of the Old Testament where the phrase "sons of God" always refers to God's chosen people. The logical interpretation here is this gives the answer to that age old question of who did sons of Adam and Eve marry and the answer of Genesis 6 is that these "sons of God" took wives from the "daughters of men" and gave birth not to inhuman giants but to "men of renown" - leaders of human civilization. But that would mean that there was other members of the human species on the earth in complete agreement with science, so even though this fits with other things like Cain's fear in Genesis 4:14 of all these nonexistent people, these anti-science reactionarys would rather believe in fairy tale giants and sex between angels and human beings. But again the real tragedy is this belief that human evil is some kind of corruption of the human genetic code tying this reactionary thought inseperably to racism and the idea of fighting evil through ethnic cleansing.

But let us now examine this question frankly, when does human life begin? Well this cannot be answered unless we first answer the quesion of what is human life. The answer that human life begins at conception only makes sense if we answer this other question by saying that the human being is just another biological species trying to preserve the survival of its own genetic code. How does this fit with any kind of Christian world view? Well this particular type of "Christian" world view is one that sees God's creative involvement with the world as something that ended milenia ago with the creation of Adam and Eve. The rest of us are thus not a creation of God but a creation of biology. This is perhaps connected with a medieval view that the human race is in decline as our inheritance from our ancestors is corrupted over time and thus it is to the great thinkers of the past that we must look to for truth. In any case, in this worldview it becomes clear why our genetic code must be identified with our humanity, because apparently this is our only connection with God.

Well now that we have explored this rather deplorable understanding of humanity held by some Christians, perhaps it is time to consider an alternative. Instead of seeing the human being as just another biological organism, some believe in something called the human mind. Many will insist that this is nothing more than a function of the human brain, but there are significant reasons to suggest that this is nothing of the kind. It is certainly clear then when examining the nature of life, inheritance is an important key to understanding it, for it is only by means of an inheritance that complex life is possible. But then what of the human mind? Do we find any inheritance other than this same genetic code by which all biological organisms are defined? We do indeed. In fact, if we can seperate out those things we call mental abilities, which are really a matter of brain function, from those beliefs, concepts, and methods of thought which are taught to us and have nothing whatsoever to do with our genetic code then it becomes quite obvious that we do indeed have an inheritance of the mind that is quite seperate and different from our biological inheritance in the genetic code.

If as I have suggested, complex life revolves around and is defined by an inheritance, then this suggests that the human mind is a living organism. Clearly this living organism depends upon the human brain for its existence and can in fact be said to live in the brain. But does this mean that other animals which have a brain also have a mind? Again we have to look at the question of inheritance and we do see some examples of where information is passed from parents to offspring apart from their genetic code. Geese teaching their offspring where to fly south is just one such example. But the important thing to notice is that nowhere in the animal kingdom does this kind of inheritance play a role of importance comparable to that found in human beings. The informational inheritiance found in animals all serves the purpose of survival of their biological existence. Only in human beings do we find the contents of the mind defining our identity to such a degree that we give our lives for the sake these ideas. To be sure it is debatable but where in the animals it is clear that all serves their biological existence, in the human being there are clear examples and much sense to the idea that this is reversed and it is our biological existence which serves the interests of the mind.

In a continuation of this discussion I will get back to this question of how this identification of humanity with the human mind changes the answer to this question of when life begins.

 

 

 

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Hi mitchellmckain,


You touched upon a number of interesting subjects here. Although they are indeed interconnected in many ways, I'll have to gloss over some of them in order to keep this post as brief as possible...



While I know of many speculations and beliefs that try to answer this question (with varying levels of failure, I might add), one theory in particular has stuck with me.

In his book, DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Rick Strassman made a compelling case about how we might say that life enters the body on the 49th day after conception. The 49th day marks at least two interesting events:

• The pineal gland forms in the fetus, and...
• The distinction between the male and female genders becomes visible

The pineal gland has always inspired major philosophical and spiritual speculations. Descartes proposed that it was the link, so to speak, between the body and the mind, per his body-mind duality. Some yogis claim it's our "third eye." Its peculiar situation in relation to the human brain is fairly counter-intuitive from an evolutionary perspective.

Strassman proposed that the pineal gland is responsible for releasing a chemical compound, Di-Methyl Tryptamine (DMT), which is essentially the most potent psychedelic compound ever known to humankind. It's interesting and highly suggestive that this very same compound be produced endogenously. Even more suggestive is that it's a member of a very select class of chemical substances that the blood-brain barrier allows entry.

I don't want to go into too much detail (at least, for now), but Strassman proposed that the 49th day is the day when the pineal gland produces its first large dose of DMT into our bodies. Those who experimented with DMT to induce psychedelic states know how completely "out of this world" this experience is. There are many connections drawn between DMT, human consciousness, and the nature of our relationship to the divine, as it were.

It might be worth mentioning that the Tibetan Book of the Dead states that it takes 49 days for the process of reincarnation to fully play out. Just something to tinker with



Excellent point!



Well, I personally have nothing against accepting that the human brain is distinctly different from the mind. Perhaps we could equate mind with consciousness in some respects. The truth is, we don't really understand either of them.

But sometimes I think about another possibility: that the human mind is an emergent property of the fully-developed human brain. For example, here's an interesting question: "can we say that one molecule H2O is wet, or does it take a certain level of arrangement of H2O molecules for the wetness property to emerge?" Of course, this is an oversimplified example (a faulty one, too) of emergence. More detail can be found on Wikipedia.

In that same sense, perhaps the human mind is not so much a "function" of the brain as it is a "property" that is only possible to exist when a brain reaches a certain level of organizational complexity. Perhaps that's what separates the human brain from the brains of other animals.



I'm not sure I can agree with you on this one. In fact, I'm not even sure I understand it correctly



I like to think of the human brain as some sort of TV set! Once it has electric power surging through it (perhaps that is the mind, or consciousness, in this analogy), it can "tune in" to different waves.

I also very much like to think of the human brain as a "valve." Its main function is not to produce; it's actually to reduce. When this valve opens up more than it usually does, that's when we see visions, become clairvoyant, and have contact with the Other -- be that a deity, an alien, a sublime idea, or something else.




I'd like to comment on this part, but it seems to be too closely related to that other section I didn't quite understand, so I'll hold on to my comment for now

 

 

 

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when does it begin?
When Does Human Life Begin?

Replying to mitchellmckain
These are great and thoughtful questions. I am a practicing embryologist and stem cell biologist. In contrast to some of the speculation in the discussion, the science is fairly clear on when a human begins. You might find the following recent article useful for this debate, which I won�t recapitulate here (see link below). Instead of ducking and dodging these facts, the national debate would be best to begin from there, with well-informed citizens who are struggling with this question. What value do we place on these entities? What are the trade-offs between a small human's rights and a larger human's rights, as well as the rights of others, and how does this impact the kind of society we want to pass on to subsequent generations?

A colleague, Dr. Maureen Condic, a professor who is the Director of Medical Embryology in the School of Medicine at the University of Utah and does research on stem cells and neural development, has just published a clear and politically neutral summary of the scientific facts behind these issues. It also has diagrams and definitions of some of the scientific terminology for those who are not familiar with the biology. Come to the political debate with a mind informed by the scientific arguments.

Http://www.Westchesterinstitute.Net/index.Php?option=com_content&view=article&id=351:white-paper&catid=64:white-papers&Itemid=113


-reply by an embryologist\'s view

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There is nothing politically neutral being offered here and that the suggestion that this is a scientific question is nothing but propaganda is confirmed by the nonsensical bluster about ducking and dodging facts. My conclusion is that this is an advertisement of a special interest group and not any kind of meaningful contribution to the question I am discussing.

This paper is produced by a group called the Westchester Institute and here is their mission statement:




In short this is an organization devoted to pushing the Catholic sentiment against abortion and the belief that human life begins at conception, and so the last thing you can expect from such a group is any kind of objectivity. This is not science but paying people with scientific credential to construct pseudo-scientific justification for their theocratic political agenda to turn back the clock and force their peculiar moral ideology on other people. I should think we have all learned from history what letting the Catholic church dictate right and wrong, and life and death to the world can lead to.

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So lets continue my examination of this question.

Life is a continuous process, in which organisms grow from lesser to greater and thus making a dividing line between life and non-life difficult to do in an absolute sense. Perhaps 3 billion years ago life came from non-life but generally what we are talking about is life that comes from life. So the line that we are really drawing here is not between non-life and life but between old life and new life. So what are the significant events when we can say that there is a beginning of new life? The most obvious answer is fertilization. But why? What happens in this an event that brings about a birth of new life? The sperm is joined to the egg but both of these are alive, so what is the significance? The egg infact has 20 times the diameter of the sperm and thus 8000 times the mass, so in such term the sperm contributes very little. But what the sperm contributes is information - an inheritance of information from the other parent. So the significance is found in information.

In terms of information the sperm contributes nearly half what is needed for the growth of a human being. Without the addition of this information the egg is disposed of by the body as worthless, because its potential for becoming a human being will not be realized. With the addition of this information the egg becomes a zygote and begins to divide and grow into a multicellular organism called an embryo. Up to day 14 there is a possibility that this mass of cells will seperate into two or more independent organisms giving rise to identical siblings. After 20 weeks the brain has developed sufficiently that we can start to detect brain activity. This activity becomes sustained by the 22nd week.

I have suggested that we should only consider fertilization the beginning of human life if our humanity is to be found in our genetic code as a biological organism. As I explained in the previous post, we also have an inheritance of the mind, information that is passed from one generation to the next quite seperate and apart from the information in the genetic code. Furthermore unlike the genetic code there is an inheritance of acquired characteristics for anything that one generation learns can be passed to the next generation, and as modern science and technology is demonstrating we can learn new things at a far faster rate than information is accumulated by any process of evolution. So where significant changes in the genome requires millions of years, we can see significant changes in human understanding in a single generation.

But then, what event shall we look to as the beginning of human life, that would reflect a belief that our humanity is to be found in the human mind. Well this beginning is not quite so simple, for the inheritance of the mind that we have talked about, is not passed to the next generation is anything so compact as the genetic code, it is passed by means of human to human communication and a great deal of it is in language and through language. These are things that are absorbed especially in childhood but often continuing through a persons whole life. As a result we cannot look to any completion of this inheritance as a beginning of human life and that suggest that we look instead at the beginning of this.

A connected question that I think can help just a little bit is a look at the opposite transition from life to non-life. That is, when is it, that we say that a human being is dead? Well there are a lot of issues and controversies over the question of when death really occurs. Most states and the medical community recognize that this occurs with brain death but the definition of this is difficult requiring a 24 hour observation period and assurances that the body is drug free. This is because drugs can suppress brain function. But regardless of all this, I think that there is one thing that is abundantly clear, and that is that, where there is no brain function, there is certainly no possibility that any learning process or assimilation of information can occur in that brain.

So the suggestion I am making here is that the information passed from parent to child through human communication represents the same kind of process as fertilization. The information of our mental inheritance entering the functioning brain is a process by which the new life of the human mind is given birth, but since this is an ongoing process the only line we can draw in regards to it is where this process begins and the earliest we can suppose that such a process begins is when the brain has sufficiently developed for brain function to begin.

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Before we take a look at other implications of this suggestion I am making that the beginning of human life be associated with the human mind and the start of brain function, I will first consider the religious ideas of spirit and soul, because since objections are usually religiously motivated we would do well to take a look at these concept in order to address these considerations. After this I will look at the implications of the mind definition of human life and then address the issues and concerns of the abortion controversy.

Religious people and even non-religious philosophies often believe that human beings have a non-physical imperishable aspect to their being. Curiously enough, Christianity is not united by a consensus on this, but there is quite a diversity of opinions. The majority do seem to believe in some sort of doctrine of the immortality of the soul. But not only does opposition to this represent a rather large minority, but of those that do believe in this doctrine, their idea of what this actually means is quite diverse.

Now I certainly do not agree with those who oppose the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and I certainly dispute that the Bible supports their claims. However the word "soul" is not only a rather abiguous term but is only found in a few translations of the Bible. The word that is commonly used in the bible is "spirit", capitalized "Spirit" refers to the Holy Spirit or Spirit of God and with small letters it refers to a person's true self which is essential to being alive, but can exist apart from the body.

Proverbs 20:27 "The lamp of the LORD searches the spirit of a man ; it searches out his inmost being."

Luke 8:55 "And they laughed at Him knowing that she was dead. But taking her by the hand he called saying, 'Child arise.' And her spirit returned, and at once she stood up."

John 6:63 "The spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing."

Romans 8:10 "But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness."

Romans 8:16 "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."

James 2:26 "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead."

1 Cor 2:11 "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God."


But where does this spirit come from? And when is it part of the life of a growing human being? Well this is largely answered in 1 Cor 15.

1 Cor 15:35-50 "But someone will ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?' You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, 'The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable."

This makes it quite clear that what survives death (is imperishable)is a spirit or spiritual body that grows from the physical just as a tree grows from a seed. It also makes it very clear that the physical comes first and then the spiritual. The view that this agrees with best is not that of a fertilized zygote suddenly having a soul that makes it a person, but that first the zygote grows into a physical body of a human being and then with a functioning brain the infant begins to absorb this inheritance of the mind that was first given to our ancestors by God and in this way the spirit or spiritual body of the person grows from the physical.

In agreement with this I believe that the spirit is something that grows from the process of physical life itself and by every choice that a living organism makes. This means that everything living has a spirit - every plant, every animal, every cell. But just as living things form communal organisms so does the spirit of these organisms, and so the cells of our body do not have a spirit which is separate and independent of our own. So for me the question is thus not when does the embryo acquire a spirit for it always has one (just as did the egg and the sperm before fertilization), but rather when does this spirit become seperate and independent of the spirit of the mother and when does it become the spirit of a human being. The most logical answer to the first question would be when the embryo's life becomes independent of the mother and that is the question of viability which Roe vs. Wade is based upon. The answer to the second question then goes back to the nature of the physical, and it is only when the physical becomes a human being, that the spirit becomes the spirit of a human being.

Since all living things have spirit, with birth of new life comes the birth of new spirit as well. So although the embryo has a spirit, without a mind it neither independent of the spirit of the mother nor is it a spirit of a human individual. Only with the birth of a human mind starting sometime after the 20-22 week of life when brain function begins, can the spirit of the fetus be said to be a human spirit.

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