a response to
"Does a Person Exist at the Moment of Conception?"Jerry McDonald, whose debating attempts to defend biblical inerrancy are indexed on a special title page on this website, has posted on his website an article that attempted to reply to "Does a Person Exist at the Moment of Conception?" an article in which I cited scientific information that casts serious doubts on the claim of biblical fundamentalists that abortion in the early stages of pregnancy constitutes murder. "Smoke Screens and Straw Men" is the title I have given to this reply, because, as readers will see, McDonald spent more time laying down smoke screens and fighting straw men than he did actually trying to address the scientific information cited in my article. He said that he would post on his website any reply that I may choose to write, so I will expect him to honor that promise.
In addition to using Till and McDonald as ID tags, I will color code McDonald's article as I quote it. His quotations from my original article, as well as my own quotations from some of my other articles, will be printed in red, and his introductory comments and later "replies" will be printed in blue. My debating experiences with McDonald have now spanned almost 20 years, and during those years I have found him to be a close-minded biblicist, who thinks that he has the right answers to all matters involving religious disagreements. Those experiences will explain to readers who may not know him why at times I speak quite frankly about his arrogant belief that he is right and couldn't possibly be wrong.
In his online version of The Skeptical Review Mr Till has come to us with an article entitled "Does A Person Exist at the Moment of Conception? Which [sic] he presents what he thinks is a scientific argument showing that life does not begin at conception. In this article you will find both his article and my response.
In my experiences with Jerry McDonald, mentioned above, I have found that he either has a reading handicap or is deliberately deceptive when he undertakes to "answer" an opponent. The title of my article that he has tried to answer is "Does a Person Exist at the Moment of Conception
The fact that the gametes are alive before conception, however, does not make them "persons" any more than the fact that the blood oozing from a scratch on my hand is a person. The blood is alive--and even McDonald's beloved, inerrant Bible says that "life is in the blood" (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 17:11,14)--but it is not a person. It is simply part of the many living cells that make up the body of a person. As I continue through McDonald's article, I will point out the number of times that he either ignorantly or intentionally misled his readers into thinking that I have claimed that "life" doesn't exist at the moment of conception.
Till:
For several decades, abortion has been a driving force on the American political scene, and it no doubt played a key role in voting patterns of the Christian fundamentalists who were largely responsible for returning to the White House a "president" who half of the citizenry believe has been reckless and at times downright incompetent in both domestic and foreign affairs. As a former fundamentalist preacher and foreign missionary, I can appreciate the concerns that many Bible believers have about this emotionally charged issue. Even after my personal studies of the Bible had convinced me that it was not the inspired, inerrant word of God, as I had been taught to believe in my childhood and Bible college classes, I still thought that abortion was a deliberate act of murder. Even though I had by that time spent some fifteen years in rather serious biblical studies, I had not yet disassociated myself from my fundamentalist background sufficiently to see the points that I developed in "Abortion and the God of the Bible," which points cast serious doubts on pro-life attempts to associate abortion with flagrant disregard of biblical principles.McDonald:
Abortion, alone, has not been the driving force in American politics. Yes, it definitely played a key role in voting patterns of Christians in the last two elections.
I am sure that careful readers noticed that I said that "abortion has been a driving force on the American political scene." Furthermore, the comment was intended only as part of my introductory remarks. I didn't intend it to be understood as a major point for an opponent to use as a smoke screen to hide from answering the central question addressed in my article: "Does a Person Exist at the Moment of Conception?" We will see McDonald consistently evade this question and devote his time to saying that "life" exists at the moment of conception, something that I never once denied.
McDonald:
Homosexuality was another driving force, along with embryonic stem cell research.
McDonald will get no argument from me here, because the ignorance of religious fundamentalists pertaining to homosexuality, which scientific research so far indicates is not something that individuals choose, and embryonic stem-cell research, which, as my article showed, would not involve the killing of "persons," were certainly driving forces for Christian fundamentalists who apparently thought that it would be better to have a "president" who, after having used family influence to evade combat duty when he was military age, didn't even blink at the idea of sending thousands of young men and women off to die or be permanently crippled or maimed in a war that was started under false pretenses. None of these young men and women, of course, would be this "president's" daughters or nieces or nephews. They would come primarily from the lower social classes for which he has always shown little regard and even at times outright disdain.
I could comment forever about the dishonesty of McDonald's presidential hero, but the deplorable personal character of George Bush really has nothing to do with whether a "person" exists at the moment of conception, so I will leave it to readers to pass judgment on McDonald's admiration of someone who most citizens--even many of whom once defended him--have come to regard as the worst president in our nation's history. I can take solace in knowing that I opposed him from the beginning.
McDonald:
However, the war on Terrorism played a key role in the last general election.
It did in the sense that people who couldn't see through Bush's dishonesty and phoniness allowed themselves to be scared into voting for him. I take great pride in saying that I wasn't one of them.
McDonald:
People knew that John Kerry didn't have the intestinal fortitude to see things through (and I shiver every time I think where we would be right now if Al Gore had been in the White House on 9/11), and the nation knew that President Bush did have what it took.
McDonald cannot know how Gore or Kerry would have performed as president, since neither of them made it to the White House, very likely because of dishonest voting tactics in both cases. On the other hand, we do know how Bush has performed, and if McDonald thinks that his performance has been noteworthy, that speaks volumes about McDonald's lack of judgment.
McDonald:
This is why he was re-elected.
In order to be reelected, one must first be elected, and Bush was not elected in 2000. There are serious doubts about whether he was honestly elected in 2004. Regardless of whether he was elected or not, that would in no way prove that he was the best choice for the country. Does McDonald think that every person who has been elected president was the best choice that could have been made at the time?
McDonald:
I don't know where Mr. Till gets his information (maybe from the polls--which are not really a reality of the peoples [sic] desire in this country), but most of the people I know, even the Democrats, are satisfied with the way the [sic] President Bush has conducted himself in office.
McDonald is a preacher in one of the most conservative branches of the Church of Christ, so I suspect that "most of the people [he] know[s]" are also members of this church. As McDonald has repeatedly shown in my debates with him and in his participation in the Errancy forum, he will stubbornly refuse to admit that he is wrong, even when he has confronted overwhelming evidence that he is. That is a personality trait that is generally true of Church-of-Christ members, so "most of the people he knows" would certainly not be representative of the country in general. I can honestly say that most of the people I know, including even Republicans, are very dissatisfied with where Bush has taken the country, so my experience has been the opposite of his.
What either of us may personally think in this matter is certainly no proof of what the country in general thinks about Bush's performance. McDonald disdainfully referred to "the polls" above, and his reason for doing so is obvious, because if he doesn't know that all major polls clearly indicate widespread dissatisfaction with the Bush administration, he must never read newspapers or watch TV newscasts.
McDonald:
I don't know when he made these studies but I do know that as far back as the early 90's Mr. Till, although he thought abortion was deplorable, thought that every woman had the right to choose whether to have an abortion or not. He made this plain in our written and oral debates in 1991.
Here is an excellent example of why I said above that McDonald either has a reading handicap or is deliberately deceptive, because our written debate that he just referred to will clearly show that I was opposed to abortion when that debate was in progress. While we were debating whether the massacre of the Amalekites, presumably ordered by the Hebrew god Yahweh (1 Sam. 15:1-4), was a moral atrocity, McDonald took a familiar fundamentalist route and said that I was inconsistent to favor the murder of millions of babies each year by abortion while condemning the massacre of Amalekite children and babies. When he found out that I was opposed to abortion, he issued the following apology.
McDonald:
Now, I want to make an apology. Anytime I am wrong, I want to correct the wrong. It is not my intention to charge anyone with a position that they [sic] do not hold to. I charged Mr. Till with being a pro-abortionist. However, after talking with him on the phone, I see that I was in the wrong. I am sorry. Please forgive me.
One would think that this would have ended this line of argumentation, but, astonishingly enough, McDonald, apparently left with no logical way to defend biblical atrocities, later returned with the same attempt to defend Yahwistic massacres in the Old Testament. In his second rebuttal, he said this.
McDonald:
What is abortion, if not the killing of babies? Mr. Till believes that every woman has the right to murder her baby by the process of abortion if she deems it necessary. Yet he does not believe that God, the divine creator of the universe from whom all life stems, had the right to take the lives of the Amalekite babies. What an inconsistency, [sic] man can take innocent human life, but God cannot. In fact in the questions I asked him during the oral debate he set forth that very position: "It is morally wrong for a human to deliberately kill an innocent human for any reason." His answer: "False." Another question was posed: "It is morally wrong for God to deliberately kill an innocent human for any reason." His answer: "True." Man can, but God cannot. Man can kill over twenty four million innocent human babies between the years of 1973 and 1992 and that is perfectly alright [sic]. However [sic] God cannot give the order to take a few hundred thousand Amalekite babies without being guilty of immorality.
Later, in his third rebuttal manuscript, he brought up the issue again and accused me of being inconsistent for condemning biblical atrocities while defending abortion.
McDonald:
My response in my second rebuttal is found on pages 21 & 22 by showing that he has no real problem with babies dying because he allows for millions of babies to die by abortion and never raises his pen to criticize. He only wants to complain about this to find something wrong with the Bible.
I learned long ago that no matter how clear my position is made to McDonald, he will misrepresent it if he thinks that doing so will help his position. I now approve of abortion for reasons stated in my article linked to in the title of this one, but at the time of my written debate with McDonald in the early 1990s, I firmly opposed it. He was told that and later apologized for wrongly accusing me, but when he found himself with no sensible way to defend Yahwistic massacres in the Old Testament, he trotted out his condemnation of my "pro-abortion" position when he clearly knew that I did not at that time favor it. He has a long history of distorting his opponents' positions when he is unable to answer their arguments.
Whenever McDonald makes claims about what I allegedly said in previously debates with him, readers should take them with not a grain but a handful of salt, because he is not above deliberate distortion and misrepresentation whenever he thinks it will suit his purpose.
McDonald:
He never once said anything about believing that it was a deliberate act of murder.
I may not have used that expression in any correspondence, conversations, or exchanges with him--I really can't remember whether I did or not--but those who know me certainly know that I thought that abortion was immoral.
McDonald:
He has always said that it was a deplorable act (which only makes one wonder why, if there is no actual murder involved),
Those who are familiar with the debates and internet exchanges between McDonald and me know that he spends a lot of his time trying to find some kind of inconsistency in my life, as if proving me inconsistent will in some way establish whatever position he is trying to defend. What would inconsistency in my previous position on the issue of abortion do to prove that abortion in the earliest stages of pregnancy is an immoral act of murder?
That aside, McDonald's comment above makes me wonder about his sense of logic. Is he actually saying that if an act is deplorable, it must be an immoral act? A parent may deplore having to punish his children, but that would not make the act of punishment immoral. A landlord needing to make mortgage payments on rental property may have no alternative but to evict a tenant who is delinquent in his rent. If he finds this need to evict deplorable, would that make the eviction immoral? Those who read McDonald's articles will soon see that he lives in a black-or-white world. Everything is either right or wrong, so that myopic way of looking at life probably accounts for his apparent belief that if something is deplorable, it must also be immoral.
McDonald:
in the years since I have known him (since 1988) I have never heard him call abortion "a deliberate act of murder."
Neither do I remember ever calling abortion a deliberate act of murder, but so what? I do know, however, that I once thought that abortion was immoral and vehemently argued that it was. At any rate, what would what I may have once called abortion have to do with whether it is moral or immoral?
McDonald:
He uses this to further his attack on the President of the United States by saying that we "Christian fundamentalists... were largely responsible for returning to the White House a 'president' who half of the citizenry believe has been reckless and at times downright incompetent in both domestic and foreign affairs" solely because of our belief on abortion.
Here is an example of how McDonald will misquote or distort what his opponents say. Here is my statement within its broader context.
Till:
For several decades, abortion has been a driving force on the American political scene, and it no doubt played a key role in voting patterns of the Christian fundamentalists who were largely responsible for returning to the White House a "president" who half of the citizenry believe has been reckless and at times downright incompetent in both domestic and foreign affairs (emphasis added).
I didn't say that an anti-abortion belief of Christian fundamentalists was solely responsible for returning an incompetent president to the White House. I said that it had played a "key role" in voting patterns that were "largely responsible" for his return. As I have twice noted now, McDonald either has a reading handicap or he is deliberately deceptive. If the former, then he should take down his apologetic shingle until he learns some basic principles of reading comprehension. If the latter, well, what can I say except that he is a typical Christian fundamentalist, who puts more value on the protection of emotionally important beliefs than on honesty and truth?
McDonald:
Well, this did have something to do with our decision when we voted, but it certainly was not the only thing.
As I just noted, I never said that it was, but I still contend that it played a "key role." The way that Christian fundamentalists are struggling in the present presidential primaries to find a palatable candidate that opposes abortion is indicative of the importance that they ignorantly place on this issue. They played a key role in getting George Bush into the White House, but after almost eight years in office, abortion still remains legal in the United States.
McDonald:
We believed, and as far as I know still believe, that he did the right thing in going to war against the terrorists who were responsible for the destruction of thousands on September 11, 2001, as well as those who aided these terrorists (yep, that's right, [sic] I am talking about Saddam Hussein).
I don't know what McDonald means by "we believed," but if the we was intended to include all Christian fundamentalists who believe that abortion is immoral, he is certainly wrong, because I personally know many anti-abortion Christians who have been very vocal opponents of Bush's foreign policy and especially his war in Iraq. McDonald was vague about Bush's doing "the right thing in going to war against the terrorists for the destruction of thousands on September 11, 2002," but if he meant the invasion of Afghanistan, where al-Quaeda was headquartered at the time, I would agree with him. The invasion of Iraq was the huge error in his policy, because Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack, and even the Bush administration finally admitted that it hadn't. McDonald, like many Bush supporters who seem deaf to any news reports that are unfavorable to their hero, may not be aware of that, but if he will access Wake Up America, he will find links to official White House sites that clearly quote Bush and other adminstration officials, who have finally admitted publicly--after lying about it for years--that there was no link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attack. At a joint press conference between Bush and then British Prime Minister Tony Blair, reported on official White House stationery, a reporter asked this question, which has been cut and pasted directly from the official press release.
Q One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim.
Blair then said, "That answers your question," but proceeded to ramble on about unspecific terrorist threats that needed to be dealt with. Blair has since been replaced, and his successor has begun to withdraw British forces from Iraq. We, unfortunately, are stuck for another year with Bush, who will continue to send young men and women off to die in Iraq. More American lives have already been lost in Iraq than were killed in the 9/11 attack, but this apparently doesn't faze Bush. As long as he knows that his daughters will never be numbered among the casualties and that he will leave the White House with all of his body limbs intact, he obviously doesn't care how severe the penalties of his folly may be on anyone else. That is how far he is willing to go to keep from admitting that he made a mistake.
McDonald:
And actually the attack on our country on 9/11 was not the reason we went to war, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back.
It wasn't? I guess we are supposed to think that McDonald has some kind of direct line to the White House that keeps him informed about the reasons why the Bush administration does whatever it does. Even if McDonald did have personal ties with Bush, as many times as he and his administration have been caught in flagrant lies, how could McDonald possibly know with any degree of certitude why Bush took us into war against a nation that had had nothing to do with 9/11? Even though he is a fundamentalist preacher, McDonald has repeatedly demonstrated a woeful biblical ignorance, so I certainly can't believe that he has any special insights into contemporary political affairs.
McDonald:
The Middle Eastern terrorists had been terrorizing Americans since the late 1970's. However, all of our Presidents held off sending in troops to take care of these people until President Bush was in the White House and had no other choice but to send in troops after 9/11.
McDonald gave no specifics here, so I don't know exactly what he meant by "terrorizing Americans since the late 1970's." Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter were our presidents in the 1970s, but except for the Americans taken hostage in Iran, whom Carter later tried to rescue, I could neither remember nor find any terrorist acts against Americans that Middle Eastern terrorists committed in the 1970s. The Wikipedia list of terrorist acts from the 1800s till the present time contains only one other act of Middle Eastern terrorism against Americans during this decade, and that was the September 8, 1974, bombing of TWA flight 841, which was attributed to the Palestian terrorist Abu Nidal. Most terrorist acts of that decade were attributed to the Irish Republican Army and were committed against British interests, and terrorist acts of that decade in the United States were attributed to radicals in the Black Liberation Army and the Puerto Rican nationalist group FALN, so I suppose that that decade found McDonald upset with Nixon, Ford, and Carter for not bombing Puerto Rica into the stone age.
This list has no entries for Middle Eastern terrorist acts against Americans in the 1980s, although Puerto Rican terrorists remained active during this decade. Even the list for the 1990s contained only four Middle Eastern terrorist acts against Americans, so it seems that McDonald has greatly exaggerated Middle Eastern terrorism against Americans "since the late 1970s." If Mcdonald will check these listings, he will find that more terrorist acts in the United States were committed by anti-abortionists than by Middle Eastern terrorists, but I suspect that these did not evoke in him the "disgust" with American presidents (which he referred to below) for not "doing something sooner" about these.
McDonald:
The terorists [sic] had made it clear that they were going to keep it up until we came out and fought them, so after 20 something years of terror, we finally did something.
If McDonald would bother to do such a drastic thing as actually research a subject before he pontificates on it, he will find that terrorism has been practiced down through modern history. Those who resort to it are difficult enemies to combat, but all major countries have had to deal with it. If McDonald thinks that Bush's invasion of Iraq is going to remove the problem from the American political scene, he is more naive than I previously thought.
McDonald:
Personally I am disgusted with every other President (Republican and Democrat) for not doing something sooner.
But as I said above, McDonald's disgust with "every other president (Republican and Democrat) for not doing something sooner" probably didn't extend to terrorism that Christian fundamentalists committed against abortion clinics and their personnel, even though those acts outnumbered those perpetrated by Middle Eastern terrorists.
McDonald:
Even President Bill Clinton (the liberal's choice)
I trust that readers didn't miss McDonald's use of the word liberal. It is his way of implying that Clinton had to be wrong in whatever he did, because he was a "liberal."
McDonald:
[Even President Bill Clinton (the liberal's choice)] understood that Saddam Hussein was a threat to national security,
McDonald, of course, didn't explain exactly how he knows that Clinton "understood that Saddam Hussein was a threat to national security." What did Clinton ever say that would so indicate? What documents can McDonald cite that would support this claim? Well, of course, McDonald never bothers with minor details like actual proof of what he is asserting. He finds it much easier just to assert it.
McDonald:
but he didn't have the intestinal fortitude to do anything about it.
On February 10, 1995, a counterterrorism bill drafted by the Clinton administration was presented to the senate and the house of representatives. It was immediately opposed by Republicans as an attack on constitutional rights and due-process protections. That opposition set the tone for the rest of Clinton's tenure in office. When Clinton ordered a cruise-missile attack on a factory in Sudan that was suspected of producing nerve gas for Osama bin Laden, Republicans screamed to high heaven. Their reaction had been the same just two weeks earlier when Clinton approved lauching cruise missiles against a terrorist training camp maintained by bin Laden in Afghanistan.
I wonder if McDonald was numbered in the ranks who opposed these actions that Clinton took against the interests of al-Qaeda? In my personal opinion, opposition to Bill Clinton during his presidency has been unprecedented in my 75 years. If he had invaded Iraq, even McDonald, as disgusted as he had been at all American presidents for doing nothing about Middle Eastern terrorism, would have howled his opposition, and he knows that he would have.
McDonald:
So we continued to suffer attack after attack upon this country, and it's [sic] interests,
McDonald, of course, didn't bother to list those attacks after attacks. There were some attacks, but as I showed above, they could hardly be accurately described as "attack after attack." Anyway, I seriously doubt that someone who doesn't even know the difference in the English terms it's and its would have any background in contemporary history and politics that would qualify him to speak with any competence on Middle Eastern terrorism against U. S. "interests."
McDonald:
[So we continued to suffer attack after attack upon this country, and it's [sic] interests] from Bin Laden (who was supported by Hussein) as well as other Middle Eastern terrorists until finally someone stood up and said "enough is enough."
I don't doubt at all that Hussein was sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but, as noted above, even the Bush administration has finally admitted that Hussein had not assisted bin Laden and had not permitted al-Qaeda training camps like those that the Taliban was condoning in Afghanistan. If McDonald has any evidence to the contrary, why doesn't he make it public? I would be especially interested in seeing his evidence that bin Laden was "supported by Hussein."
McDonald:
That someone was our present President.
Who had promised during the 2000 election that he would not pursue a policy of "nation building." In a speech in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on November 7, 2000, Bush made a commitment that he has obviously flung down and danced upon.
Let me tell you what else I'm worried about: I'm worried about an opponent who uses nation building and the military in the same sentence. See, our view of the military is for our military to be properly prepared to fight and win war and, therefore, prevent war from happening in the first place.
Of all the campaign promises that Bush has broken, this one has brought the ultimate sorrow to almost 4,000 American families, which have either permanently lost sons, daughters, husbands, wives, and other close relatives, or have experienced the emotional pain of seeing them come back with missing limbs and eyes or permanent paralysis or brain injuries, while Bush, who during the Vietnamese war had used family influence to avoid such potential injuries, and his close family members will continue to enjoy lives unhampered by such injuries. That is the tragic obscenity of Bush's "legacy." That McDonald would continue to defend such a hypocritical scoundrel speaks volumes about his own personal character.
McDonald:
Farrell Till never misses a chance to complain about the man who presently presides in the White House as our President.
Well, George Bush may be McDonald's president, but he isn't mine. I consider him a usurper, who gained the office through devious, dishonesty means. What he has since done to my country angers me beyond my ability even to express it. I am almost 75 years old, and I can honestly say that in all of those years, I have never hated anyone until George Bush came along. There have been people whom I disliked, but I can't say that I actually hated them. That changed when I saw what kind of person George Bush is.
Before leaving this point, I can't resist pointing out that McDonald's praise for George Bush's decision to invade Iraq was not shared by his father George H. W. Bush. Father Bush experienced considerable criticism for not taking Desert Storm all the way to Baghdad to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. A World Transformed is a 1998 book by former President George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, Bush's National Security Advisor, which discussed foreign relations during the first Bush administration. They justified the decision not to take the war all the way to Baghdad on the grounds that doing so would have entailed dire consequences.
We should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war, it could only plunge that part of the world into ever greater instability (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998, p. 464).
Later in the book, they repeated their opinion that the right decision had been made when Bush, Sr., ended the war short of taking it all the way to Baghdad.
Extending the war into Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Exceeding the U.N.'s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land (p. 489).
History has proven Daddy to be right, but I guess that George W. was too busy drinking and snorting in the late 1950s to watch Father Knows Best on early television.
Ironically enough, the first Bush's decision not to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein was shared by a key supporter of George W.'s Iraq "stratedy." At a press conference in 1992, George H. W.'s secretary of Defense, who was none other than Dick Cheney, explained why Desert Storm had not been extended into Baghdad to topple Hussein from his dictatorship.
I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.
And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties, and while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.
And the question in my mind is, how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is, not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the President made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.
Whenever I encounter vociferous advocates of the war in Iraq, I issue to them challenges that none of them has yet accepted. Because of his age and health problems that he has mentioned in other exchanges with me, McDonald is not qualified for military service. He does, however, have a son in his early twenties, so if he will persuade his son to volunteer for combat duty in Iraq, I will personally drive the 300 miles from my home in Central Illinois to where McDonald lives in Missouri and accompany his son to the nearest recruiting office. If McDonald will persuade his son to volunteer, or at least try to, I will know that he honestly believes in the necessity of this war, but if he refuses this challenge, I will then know that he is just another chickenhawk like Bush, Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove, John Ashcroft, Tom Delay, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, etc., etc., etc. who all evaded combat duty when they were military age but are now outspoken defenders of the war in Iraq. As long as they or their own don't have to take the risk of dying, they are all for
McDonald:
But in getting back to the point at hand,
At last!
McDonald:
I would just like to know when Farrell Till made this marvelous discovery that abortion, although deplorable, is not "a deliberate act of murder."
When I was presented with the scientific data explained in my article, I realized that I could no longer contend that abortion in its early stages constituted the killing of a person. We will now see McDonald try to dance around that data. We will see him asserting over and over that "there is life at conception," but we will not see him even trying to prove that the "life" present at conception is the same as a person.
McDonald:
He further writes:
Till:
I continued to believe that abortion was immoral until a student nurse in one of my college composition classes directed me to scientific information that produced serious doubts about my hardline position and eventually led to my present belief that abortion, although deplorable, cannot logically be considered an act that kills a person. About the same time that I was discussing this subject with the nursing student, someone who called himself "Chimera" posted similar information in a website forum that I was a member of, but the nursing student gave me more specific information. By sharing the scientific facts that I learned during research prompted by my discussion with "Chimera" and the nursing student mentioned above, maybe I can at least mitigate some of the emotionalism with which Christian fundamentalists view the abortion issue. First, I will begin with information that I already knew and will work my way down to what I learned after accepting the young lady's challenge to research the subject rather than just sticking to emotionally based religious baggage that I had carried with me after my deconversion.McDonald:
If abortion cannot be considered "a deliberate act of murder" why is it deplorable? If abortion cannot logically be considered an act that kills a person why is it deplorable?
I explained above that deplorable acts aren't necessarily immoral acts. I deplore many things, such as throwing materials like glass, plastic, paper, and aluminum cans out with the garbage instead of recycling them; paying entertainers and professional athletes outrageous salaries compared to what police officials, firemen, and nurses are paid; underfunding public education; euthanizing unwanted pets; and allowing smoking in public places, but I certainly wouldn't say that they these are immoral acts, even though I have strong emotional objections to some of them. McDonald's black-or-white mentality prevents him from understanding this, for to him everything is either right or wrong, and that is why he just can't understand how I could say that abortion is deplorable even though it isn't immoral.
McDonald:
This is the same song and dance that he gave in the 90's when he said that abortion was deplorable, but he felt that every woman had the right to make this choice.
As I showed above, I was opposed to abortion at the time that McDonald referred to. The link just given will show that when McDonald learned in our written debate in the early 1990s that he had wrongly accused me of being pro-abortion, he apologized but then for some reason never explained turned around and twice repeated the charge before the debate was over. That aside, what I may have believed about abortion in the 1990s is irrelevant to what I said about this subject in the article that McDonald is supposed to be answering. Does a person exist at the moment of conception? That is the question that McDonald has yet to address, and as we continue through his "reply" below, we will see him frantically dancing around it.
McDonald:
This is like saying that using a contraceptive is deplorable, but he feels that every woman should have the right to make the choice as to whether or not to use it. Why, if every woman has the right to choose, is it deplorable to use a contraceptive?
McDonald continues to skirt the question that he is supposed to be answering. Contraceptive birth control and abortion are completely different issues, so all he is doing here is setting up a straw man to beat on in hopes that it will distract reader attention from his inability to prove that a "person" exists at the moment of conception. I have never opposed birth control, and I have never deplored it. Yet it would be entirely possible for a person to deplore the practice of birth control without taking the position that it is morally wrong. McDonald's black-or-white mentality won't let him understand this.
McDonald:
Why, if every woman has the right to choose to have an abortion, is it deplorable?
McDonald could just as well ask why, if there is nothing morally wrong with putting plastic, glass, and paper into trash that will be taken to public dump sites, is it deplorable? His black-or-white way of looking at the world apparently won't allow him to understand that people can regret actions that aren't necessarily immoral.
McDonald:
These are questions that Farrell would have a hard time answering.
Actually, I found them quite easy to answer.
McDonald:
The word "deplorable" means: "1: LAMENTABLE <~death> 2: deserving censure or contempt: WRETCHED <~living conditions>" (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, p.334).
Deplorable can also mean "regrettable" or "grievous," but everything that a person may regret or grieve over isn't necessarily immoral. A person who loses a close relative or friend from death by natural means would undoubtedly regret the loss and grieve over it, but that wouldn't mean that the death was immoral. To so argue, McDonald, who believes that "God" creates and eventually takes all life, would have to say that whenever a person dies from natural causes, "God" has committed an immoral act.
Readers who may not be familiar with McDonald's "debating" tactics probably won't recognize what he is doing here. Almost any given word will have multiple meanings, so the meaning that a word has will be determined by what the user contextually intended it to mean. McDonald, however, seems to think that he has the right to assign to his opponent's words the meanings that he would like for them to have. Hence, he is now trying to make the word deplorable as I used it in reference to my present attitude about abortion to mean immoral, because he is obsessed--and has been for almost two decades now--with trying to find inconsistency in my personal beliefs. I am certainly inconsistent at times, but there is no inconsistency in my saying that I can deplore abortion without thinking that it is always immoral. His narrow, black-or-white mind, however, just won't let him see consistency in the two positions. Furthermore, even if there were verifiable inconsistency in my saying that abortion is deplorable but not immoral, how would that in any way prove that abortion in the early stages of pregnancy constitutes killing a person?
McDonald:
Why is abortion so deplorable, contemptible or lamentable if it does not kill a person, or if it is not a deliberate act of murder?
Is McDonald for real? Can he just not understand that an action that doesn't kill a person can be regrettable or lamentable without its being immoral? Can he not even understand that an act can be regrettable or lamentable without its being immoral?
McDonald:
This would make no sense at all,
No, it wouldn't make any sense at all to someone whose mind sees the world in either black or white, but it will make perfectly good sense to those who can understand that intelligent people can regret or lament actions without thinking that they are immoral.
McDonald:
except for the fact that I know this man and I know, that even though he has rejected God, His word and the church,
Here is a typical example of McDonald at his question-begging best. He assumes, without proof or at least without stating any proof, that (1) there is a god whom I have rejected, (2) the Bible is this god's "word", and (3) the church that McDonald preaches for and which I once preached for is god's church. Had I once been a believer in, say, the god Vishnu, I, of course, would not have rejected god, his word, and his religion had I renounced them as being false.
McDonald:
he still can't quite get it out of his conscience that abortion is [a] terrible act of murder; an act which takes the life of a person.
To borrow McDonald's words, I "rejected God, His word, and the church" back in 1963. However, I continued to believe until the mid-1990s that abortion was an immoral act that resulted in the killing of a "person." Had I not seen the scientific evidence that clearly contradicts that belief, I probably would have retained until now my anti-abortion views. Hence, a lingering conscientious belief that "abortion is a terrible act of murder" has had nothing to do with the change in my position on this. It was the scientific data cited in my article, which data McDonald has yet to address, because he is too busy hurling personal attacks at me.
McDonald:
He just doesn't want to admit it. As hardened an atheist as he is, he isn't that hardened.
Readers who may not know McDonald may be surprised to know that he is able not only to know that every statement in the Bible is inerrant but is also able to know what is in the minds of those who don't fall in line to his way of thinking. I can't read McDonald's mind, but I honestly believe that the drubbings he has taken trying to defend biblical inerrancy have convinced him that this is an erroneous, indefensible belief. He is a hardened inerrantist, but he isn't that hardened.
Gee, argumentation by unsupported assertion is fun. I wonder why I gave it up.
McDonald:
I believe the man is still struggling with his own conscience over this; what is very probably the last of the good moral values he has left.
If McDonald wants to think this, he is free to do so. There is no law against ignorance, and in thinking that I am "still struggling with [my] own conscience" over the issue of abortion, that won't be the first thing he has been wrong about. It probably won't even number in his top thousand.
McDonald:
However, I also know that if he continues on his present track, he will jettison that one and will, sooner or later, say that abortion is not deplorable.
Well, I have retained my opinion that abortion is deplorable for over a decade after I realized that scientific data just won't support the claim that a person exists at the moment of conception, so we can only wait to see if I "jettison" it later on.
McDonald:
When that happens, he will be so far gone that he couldn't come back if he wanted to.
Since McDonald seems free to express his opinions of me, I will reciprocate and say that I think he has gone so far down the path to religious ignorance and superstition that he will never be able to find his way out of it. What I personally think about him proves nothing at all, just as what he personally thinks about me proves nothing at all.
McDonald:
The Humanist Manifesto II says "Human life has meaning because we create and develop our futures" (Humanist Manifesto II under Ethics, Third).
For years now, McDonald has tried to lay on me the responsibility to defend the humanist manifestoes. but I have no such obligation any more than he, as a biblical inerrantist, is obligated to defend the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. He incorrectly assumes that if someone rejects the divine inspiration of the Bible, he automatically accepts everything that humanism in general advocates, but there are differing views and opinions in the humanist movement just as there are obviously different doctrinal beliefs in Christianity. McDonald may even be surprised to learn that I have never actually read the Humanist Manifestoes in their entireties. I have read parts that have been quoted in articles and books, but I haven't actually read the manifestoes.
McDonald:
Thus the implication is that the unborn is not human life because the unborn does not create nor develop his/her future.
I don't see that implied at all in the statement McDonald quoted. He is seeing what he wants to see in it, just as he sees what he wants to see in biblical statements that are obviously inconsistent or erroneous. I no longer oppose abortion in the early stages of pregnancy for the reasons stated in my article that McDonald is presumably trying to answer: scientific facts like twinning and embryonic amalgamations are clearly inconsistent with the claim that a "person" exists from the moment that the female and male gametes unite. We will see below that McDonald did not in any way show that the "pro-life" position on abortion is consistent with these scientific facts.
McDonald:
This being the case,
But as I just stated, this is not the case, because the statement quoted from the Humanist Manifesto does not imply what McDonald is claiming, but even if it did, so what? I have no obligation to defend anything said in the Humanist Manifestoes. On the other hand, if McDonald intends to sustain the pro-life position that a person exists from the moment of conception, he is obligated to show that this position is consistent with the scientific data cited in my article. We will soon see him failing in that endeavor.
McDonald:
one could also take the position that a baby that is born has no meaning as far as human life is concerned because it does not create nor develop his/her future.
McDonald is beating on another straw man here, because the article he is supposed to be answering was clear in stating that scientific data do not support the pro-life claim that abortion in the early stages of pregnancy kills a person.. I know of no pro-choice advocates who would approve of killing newborn babies on the grounds that they have "no meaning" because they have not yet "create[d] or develop[ed] their futures." I think any reasonably intelligent person would say that newborn babies are actively engaged in creating and developing their futures, which they do by exploring the world through their senses. When a baby puts an object in his mouth, he is exploring the world and thereby gradually creating and developing his/her future. With comments like the one above, McDonald is playing a familiar game. Instead of trying to refute my position that a person does not exist in the early stages of pregnancy, he has tried to make it appear that I favor late-term abortions so that he could attack this misrepresentation of my real position to mislead readers into thinking that he is answering my arguments.
What McDonald is doing here is known in logic as the straw-man fallacy.
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:
Person A has position X. Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X). Person B attacks position Y. Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed. This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.
McDonald has come this far in his "reply" to my article without once addressing my real position: Verifiable scientific data are inconsistent with the pro-life claim that a "person" exists at the moment of conception. We will see that he continues to fight straw men instead of addressing my real position.
McDonald:
So just when does the baby's life start to have meaning, at what age?
When a baby's life starts to have meaning has no relevance to whether a "person" exists at the moment of conception. That is the issue that McDonald is evading with the straw men that he continues to set up.
McDonald:
When taken to its logical conclusion this mandate, from the Humanist Manifesto II, nullifies the meaning of much of the human life on this planet.
This is what McDonald is reading into the Humanist Manifesto and not what the manifesto actually says. I seriously doubt that the author(s) of this statement meant what McDonald is twisting it to say, but even if they did, so what? I never once mentioned the Humanist Manifesto in my article, and my arguments against the pro-life position were based on verifiable scientific facts and not on what the Humanist Manifestoes say. This is another straw man that McDonald is fighting.
McDonald:
Some people get to the age that they can no longer create nor [sic] develop their future, so according to the Humanist Manifesto II, their life has no meaning.
No, according to McDonald's distortion of it, this is what Manifesto II says.
McDonald:
This is the logical conclusion of the abortionist point of view.
No, this is the illogical conclusion of fundamentalist preacher Jerry McDonald, who is distorting a statement in Manifesto II to try to make it mean something that its authors never intended.
McDonald:
Mr. Till further says:Till:
Before I introduce scientific information into this controversy, I must first explain a term that I will be using in reference to so-called pro-lifers. Instead of using this term that they apply to themselves, I will refer to their position as pro-birth, because I can see many reasons to believe that their main concern is to prevent abortion so that birth can occur, but otherwise they have little interest in protecting life after birth has taken place. "Pro-lifers," for example, are often opponents of public programs that would assist children born in poverty, which is often the social fate of those whose mothers chose the pro-life option over pro-choice, even though they were not financially equipped to support other additions to their families. "Pro-lifers" are often proponents of the death penalty, and they generally oppose gun control laws like those in Canada, England, Japan, and other countries where death from gunshot wounds is rare compared to the number who are killed in the United States. "Pro-lifers" generally favor the unprovoked war against Iraq, which, as I write this, has resulted in the deaths of some 1500 American soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqis. Such positions as these show a disdain for life after it has been born, so I consider pro-birth to be a more accurate description of these people than pro-life. That, then, is the term that I will use throughout this article.McDonald:
Mr. Till says he is going to refer to those of us who disagree with abortion as "pro-birth" because he says that we are not "pro-life."
- He says that we are often opponents of public programs that would assist children born in poverty. I don't know what programs he is talking about unless it is the welfare program which no one who holds to the "pro-life" position is against when it comes to children. What we are against is the idea of dead-beat parents who live off of [sic] welfare when they could be working. I sold insurance (from house to house) in the Kansas City, MO [sic] area [sic] and many of the families I had insurance with had parents who could work, but wouldn't work because it is easier to draw welfare than it is to work.
No matter what kind of assistance programs are used to help the poor, whether government, church, or other nonprofit programs, there will always be abuses. I know of undeserving people in my local community who regularly go to "pantries" maintained by the Baptist Church and the Salvation Army to get groceries and other free handouts. On my daily three-mile walk, I pass by both institutions, so I have often seen people whom McDonald would call "deadbeats" loading their cars and driving away. Area newspapers carried the story of a woman in Decatur, Illinois, who was arrested for falsifying information in order to obtain public assistance for those who were displaced by the Katrina disaster in Louisiana. She had never actually lived in Louisiana but had falsified various claims in order to get money that she wasn't entitled to. Whenever natural disasters happen, this type of dishonesty always occurs. If no one provided assistance for disaster reliefs until there were absolute guarantees that there would be no abuses in the programs, nothing would ever be done to help those who have genuine needs. The same applies to government welfare programs. If no such programs were authorized until all cheating were eliminated, there would never be any public welfare for those who have legitimate needs.
McDonald:
If McDonald knows of any way to eliminate dishonesty in programs like Medicaid and welfare, I am sure that his expertise would be welcomed by officials in charge of these programs, but until someone can devise a fool-proof plan to prevent fraud in the operations of charities, society will either have to eliminate such programs or else accept that some cheating is going to happen. What McDonald is complaining about is a simple fact that has been recognized in the theory of evolution, which he thoroughly disdains. It is called "adaptive radiation," which simply means that whenever a "niche" or way to earn a living becomes available, some living specimen will take advantage of it. The computer age, for example, has made possible opportunities for the unscrupulous to earn livings through identity theft, which had previously been relatively rare. As technology advances, new "niches" will become available, and some will be certain to take advantage of them.
Does McDonald think that society should stop further technological advancement in order to prevent this kind of inevitable dishonesty?
McDonald:
I honestly have to wonder why McDonald's mother, whom he consistently described in our written debate as a godly woman, needed to apply for government assistance. Why were her needs not supplied by the church, which McDonald claims is the only true church? When McDonald took his mother to apply for Medicaid was he not aware that the New Testament, which he claims is his only guide in matters of faith and doctrine, teaches that the church is to provide for the needs of widows?
1 Timothy 5:3 Honor widows who are really widows. 4 If a widow has children or grandchildren, they should first learn their religious duty to their own family and make some repayment to their parents; for this is pleasing in God's sight.... 8 And whoever does not provide for relatives, and especially for family members, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. 9 Let a widow be put on the list if she is not less than sixty years old and has been married only once.
I will give McDonald the benefit of doubt here. Instead of accusing him of having denied the faith and being worse than an unbeliever, I will assume that his mother was younger than 60 years old at this time. However, if she was, I have to wonder why she didn't try to provide for her own needs by finding some type of employment. Many women under 60 have done so, and surely she wasn't one of those deadbeats that McDonald so obviously disdains.
See how easy it is to blame the indigent for the circumstances that have put them in need?
McDonald:
Just as Mrs. McDonald was using her son to try to get public assistance?
McDonald:
In typical fashion, McDonald is stereotyping welfare recipients as lazy, shiftless deadbeats and blaming "liberals" for abuses in the system. As I said above, there is no fool-proof way to keep people from lying and cheating in order to receive charity that they aren't really entitled to. McDonald has used anecdotal "evidence" in his comments above, but I could just as well mention some anecdotal examples, from my years as a Church-of-Christ preacher, of people who dishonestly misrepresented their personal circumstances in order to receive "help" from the church. According to McDonald's logic, the church--the one he thinks is the only true "Church of Christ"--should not engage in charitable works, because there will always be the possibility that some recipients of the charity don't really deserve it.
I think I detect in McDonald's comments above an attitude that I have found to be widespread in families that vote for Republican candidates. They think that most of the poor and disadvantaged are mainly responsible for their circumstances. I could just as easily blame McDonald's mother for the circumstances that led her to apply for Medicaid. She was the wife of an obscurely known Church-of-Christ preacher, so the compensation he received was probably never more than the nominal amounts that small-town and country congregations paid their preachers. If, however, he was a typical Church-of-Christ preacher, he would have given 10% or more of his meager salaries back to the church when the Sunday contributions were collected. Had this amount been invested in savings or retirement programs, it would have grown sufficiently to have enabled Mrs. McDonald to retire in better circumstances than those that her son described above. When I was a preacher, my wife and I agreed that we should contribute 15% of our salary to the church, so when I left the ministry at the age of 32, we decided to contribute this same percentage of our teaching salaries into retirement accounts. When we retired 33 years later, we were able to do so comfortably. We were by no means rich, but for 12 years now, we have been able to maintain a standard of living as good as what we had enjoyed when we were teaching. My point is that if McDonald's mother and father had shown the same kind of interest in their future retirement, maybe she wouldn't have needed to apply for Medicaid. Why wasn't she qualified to receive Medicare? Didn't her husband pay social security on his earnings? If not, whose fault was it when she was left as needy as her son described above? Wouldn't she have been as much to blame for her circumstances as the needy people who many Republican voters think are responsible for their own poverty?
See how easy it is to take a widespread Republican view of the poor and blame a widow like Mrs. McDonald for her needy circumstances?
McDonald:
I personally have no objections to the death penalty when guilt has been proven beyond the shadow of all doubt, but I have to admit here that recent improvements in DNA analysis, which has established the innocence of several persons on death rows, have caused me to reconsider my position on the death penalty. These cases of scientifically established innocence indicate that people are sometimes convicted of capital crimes when their guilt has not been established beyond the shadow of all doubt. I referred to the general approval of the death penalty among Evangelicals who simultaneously oppose abortion not to argue against the death penalty but to show inconsistency among Evangelicals regarding what they often call the "sanctity of life" when they state their opposition to abortion. They call themselves "pro-life" when actually they are pro-life in only one aspect of life.
McDonald:
This is an example of McDonald's mouthing off about something that he knows nothing about. If he will bother to reseach this subject a bit by reading such articles as Education as Crime Prevention, he will find that even though education of prisoners reduced recidivism by 29%, college educations for prison inmates were effectively eliminated in 1994 when congress enacted legislation that prohibited giving Pell grants and other federal assistance to prison inmates. Even before this restriction, few death row inmates could earn college degrees because of restrictions that required them to remain in their cells. Teachers could deliver instructions only through the bars, so most of the few deathrow inmates who did take college courses could do so only through correspondence courses that they could complete in their cells.
This is just another example of McDonald's parroting an urban myth before taking the time to check it for accuracy.
McDonald:
- (continued). He gets three hots a day and a place to sleep. He often has color TV and cable.
Does McDonald think that prisoners should be starved or fed only bread and water and that they should be forced to sleep on concrete floors? He seems to be ignorant of what Jesus said about one's obligation to "visit" those in prison.
Matthew 25:34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' 40 And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' 44 Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' 45 Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
I wonder if McDonald understands that the word visit as used in this text meant more than just the mere act of going to see those who were in prison. It was used in the sense of providing for one's needs as in James 1:27, which says that "(p)ure religion that is undefiled before our God and father is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction...." In other words, the one who practices pure and undefiled religion will provide for the needs of orphans and widows. The passage quoted before this was from a chapter where Jesus was describing the final judgment, where he clearly indicated that those who did not clothe and feed the disadvantaged would be condemned to eternal punishment. Fulfilling one's obligation to care for the disadvantaged, then, included "visiting,"
McDonald:
- (continued). Society flips the bill for him,
Since most prison inmates have no source of income, what else can be done but to have society "flip" the bill for their upkeep? I suspect that even in the time of Jesus society flipped the bill for those in prison whom he said the righteous should "visit."
McDonald:
- (continued). and if he is ever set free, he (many times) goes out and does it again.
As I noted above, education of prison inmates greatly reduced the rate of recidivism, but when Republicans took control of congress in 1994, they eliminated federal funding for prisoner education. From McDonald's comments above, I assume that he approved of this legislation and prefers that chances of recidivism be increased by releasing uneducated prisoners back into society with decreased means of supporting themselves without resorting again to criminal activities.
Over the years, I have learned to admire McDonald's Christian attitudes.
McDonald:
- (continued). We don't believe in the death penalty for every crime, but for those crimes where the crime warrants such a penalty then [sic] yes [sic] we do.
As noted above, I also approve of the death penalty in such cases, but I no longer inconsistently argue that the abortion of zygotes and early embryos constitutes killing persons.
McDonald:
- (continued). Jeffrey Dahmer, after he was convicted of his crimes, became a Christian, but even he said that he deserved the death penalty.
By coincidence, just a few days before beginning my reply to McDonald's article, I happened to notice a TV program on the history channel in which Dahmer's conversion was discussed. It had resulted from visits by a Church-of-Christ preacher, who later baptized Dahmer by immersion, so I suppose McDonald will have to say that despite the heinous crimes that Dahmer committed, he died in a "saved" state and will consequently be saved eternally unless he committed other "sins" after his baptism. I suppose having to admit this galls McDonald, but I would like for him to answer a couple of questions.
If not, what would have been the obligations of Christians to "visit" Dahmer in prison"?
McDonald:
- (continued). He tried to get them to put him to death for what he had done, but the liberals wouldn't allow that.
McDonald previously spoke of mantra's having become a "buzzword" for atheists. Have readers of his articles noticed that liberal is a buzzword that he often uses as if the mere act of saying that "liberals" believe this or "liberals" believe that is sufficient to prove the "liberals" wrong? At any rate, I would like for him to clarify his statement above. Is he saying that even if a murderer undergoes a conversion with all of the right, Church-of-Christ trimmings, he should still be put to death? If so, is he saying that God may forgive murderers but McDonald won't?
McDonald:
The United States has never had "gun control laws such as is found in those countries." Gun control laws in England, Japan, France, Australia, and other countries are nationwide laws. Hence, someone in London or Tokyo or Paris can't circumvent control laws in the cities they live in by just going over to another city or province to buy guns there and bring them back to their residences. Chicago, for example, has gun control laws that are circumvented by gun stores that operate just across the city limits, which permit residents of Chicago to travel short distances to buy guns and take them back into Chicago. Until guns are banned nationwide in our country, as they have been in nations like those mentioned above, those who chant mantras like, "Gun control doesn't work," have no real way of knowing how effective a nationwide ban would be in reducing gun deaths.
McDonald:
Here we go again with more of McDonald's anecdotal "evidence." He seems to think that because no undesirable consequences came from gun proliferation in the home he grew up in, then there will be no undesirable consequences of it in other homes. He reminds me of the people who argue that seatbelt laws are ridiculous because they grew up riding in cars without seatbelts and never suffered any injuries, or those who argue that smoking isn't dangerous to health because they have smoked for fifty or sixty years without having any health problems like cancer, emphesema, strokes, or heart attacks. Such anecdotal argumentation ignores the fact that despite the experiences of those who so argue, thousands and even millions of others died or were seriously injured in car accidents that had no seat belts, and millions have suffered health impairments and death from smoking.
McDonald prides himself on his knowledge of logic, but he has apparently never heard of the fallacy of inadequate sampling. He resorts to it every time he uses anecdotes about his mother, wife, son, or himself.
McDonald:
If guns had existed in the first century AD and had been used to execute Jesus, then it wouldn't have been true that "when you killed something... it was dead and was going to stay that way," would it? Why can't McDonald apply his common-sense comment above to the myth of the resurrection?
I couldn't resist making that comment.
McDonald:
Once again, McDonald is arguing by assertion. He cited no statistics at all to support his assertion that "(b)ack when parents cared enough to teach their children not to play with guns we didn't have all the [gun] problems we have today," so he again gave me nothing to reply to. That aside, is he so simplistic that he believes that the more than 30,000 annual gun deaths in the United States are caused primarily by those whose parents didn't care enough to teach them not to play with guns? If he will bother to do such a drastic thing as actually research before he asserts, he will find in the matter of gun deaths in the United States that only about 1500 of the 30,000 result from accidents involving firearms, so there is certainly more to this problem than failures of parents to teach their children not to play with guns.
McDonald:
Once again, McDonald has resorted to anecdotal evidence, apparently on the assumption that what is true of him is generally true. The links given above will show, however, that even though they are statistically only a small percentage of the total, several hundred anual gun deaths in the United States result from accidents.
McDonald's comments about guns are just another part of the smoke screens that he laid down throughout his article. In the beginning of my article, I referred briefly to widespread support for the death penalty and opposition to gun control among opponents of abortion only as passing, introductory references to their inconsistency in calling themselves "pro-life." Instead of trying to show that the so-called "pro-life" stance on abortion is morally logical, McDonald has so far spent his time flinging assertions and relating anecdotes that do nothing at all to prove consistency in "pro-life" opposition to abortion while simultaneously supporting laws that result in the killing of those who are undeniably persons.
McDonald:
This is more argumentation by assertion, which offered no supporting evidence at all that gun problems in our country would go away if parents just cared enough to instruct their children not to play with guns, so there is nothing here for me to reply to. The fact that McDonald's assertions almost always turn out to be contrary to verifiable reality gives us reason to conclude that this assertion likely has no more credibility than his others.
McDonald:
Ah, yes, the old, simplistic when-guns-are-outlawed-only-outlaws-will-have-guns mantra. The fact that this would also be true of countries like Canada, Japan, England, and France, which have reduced deaths by firearms to single- or double-digit lows by banning guns nationwide doesn't seem to faze McDonald.
McDonald:
Here is more argumentation by assertion for which McDonald gave no support at all. In this case, if the assertion is true, it would be a good reason to ban the general ownership of guns, wouldn't it?
McDonald:
So why not pass a federal law that would ban Uzis and assault rifles nationwide?
McDonald:
So? This does what to prove that so-called "pro-lifers" are consistent in opposing abortion while simultaneously opposing attempts to curtail the proliferation of guns?
McDonald:
So if this has nothing to do with the "pro-life" position on abortion, why has McDonald wasted so much of our time airing his views about guns? Well, all of his comments so far have had almost nothing to do with trying to prove that abortion in the early stages of pregnancy constitutes the "murder" of "persons." These comments have just been a part of his smoke screening.
McDonald:
Well, that position ignores the fact that this "right" was prefaced with an absolute phrase that modified the "right" to bear arms by tying it to the need at that time for a well-regulated militia, which need has since been eliminated by maintaining a standing army. McDonald is so linguistically deficient that he wouldn't understand how absolute phrases function in English, so I won't even try to explain it to him. Suffice it to say that the second amendment doesn't refer to a right to bear guns; it refers to a right to "bear arms." Arms are weapons, so if the constitution grants an unrestricted right to "bear arms," it would entitle citizens to own machine guns, bazookas, hand grenades, grenade launchers, cruise missiles, and even nuclear weapons. If not, why not?
I wonder if McDonald would be able to relax in a society that allowed citizens to own their own nuclear bombs.
McDonald:
Ah, yes, the old slippery-slope argument, which, in effect, says, "Give them an inch, and they will take a mile." In this fallacious way of reasoning, one claims that if A is done, then B will follow, and then C, D, E, etc., but no proof of such inevitability is offered. That McDonald's slippery-slope fears in the matter of gun control are probably unjustified can be seen in the fact that democracies like France, England, Australia, Japan, etc. have banned firearms without any other removal of basic freedoms following as a consequence.
Before leaving this point, I will wonder aloud if McDonald had any slippery-slope fears about further erosions of freedom that might follow the Bush administration's intrusions into long-standing basic rights to privacy. I doubt that he did.
McDonald:
The total of American deaths has now reached almost 4,000, and over 20,000 have suffered permanent wounds like missing limbs and eyes, spinal cord and brain injuries, and posttraumatic stress disorders, which leave them unable to reenter society after their military service and consigns many of them to homeless lives. George W. Bush and his daughters, nephews, and nieces, of course, have not suffered and will not suffer any of these deaths, injuries, or fates.
McDonald:
As we will soon see, McDonald's misguided belief that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center gives us cause to wonder what planet he has been living on. The time he has spent on my passing introductory comments about pro-life inconsistencies in matters related to gun control, the death penalty, and the war in Iraq makes us wonder when, if ever, he is going to give us scientific evidence that abortion in the early stages of pregnancy constitutes "murdering" persons. As we will eventually see, he never once offered any such scientific evidence.
McDonald:
While he is speaking of "setting aside," McDonald needs to be informed that he is setting aside the fact that even the Bush administration, as noted above, eventually admitted that Hussein had not had anything to do with "the final attack... on this country in 2001." The fact that McDonald seems unaware that Bush has now admitted this makes us wonder just how much attention McDonald pays to current events and news.
McDonald:
This is another argument by assertion for which McDonald offered no proof. I don't doubt that both Clinton and Kerry were suspicious of Hussein's regime, but since it was being successfully contained, Clinton apparently saw no need to launch a "preemptive" war, which, as noted above, Bush's own father had earlier said would bog the United States down in unwinnable urban guerilla warfare that would bring heavy casulaties and expenses to our country.
Father knew best, but Junior obviously didn't listen to him.
McDonald:
McDonald should not "set aside" the obvious fact that it would be both militarily and monetarily impossible for the United States to rid the world of dictators who have been guilty of mass murder and other atrocities.
McDonald:
McDonald again shows his ignorance of current political events. When Bush launched his war against Iraq, UN inspectors, with Hussein's permission, were conducting inspections for WMDs and had found none.
McDonald:
Since UN inspections were being conducted in Iraq when Bush started the war, diplomacy had obviously not yet run its course. McDonald is showing an incredible igorance of current events and news.
McDonald:
Since the United States routinely warns countries of "dire consequences" if they pursue certain activities, as Bush has done to North Korea and Iran regarding their development of nuclear weapons, why should Iraq have taken U. S. threats any more seriously than other countries have? At any rate, Bush's war against Iraq, while taking no actions against Iran and North Korea, if anything, has communicated to so-called "rogue nations" that developing their own nuclear weapons will guarantee that the United States will not intervene in its internal affairs.
McDonald:
Well, memory apparently doesn't "serve" McDonald, because Hussein was allowing UN inspectors into Iraq. If McDonald had done such a radical thing as actually research the topic before mouthing off about it, he would have learned that David Kay was in charge of these inspections. Time has proven that the inspectors were right in saying that they could find no WMDs in Iraq.
McDonald:
On Sunday, January 27, 2008, Sixty Minutes aired an interview with FBI agent George Piro, who had served as Hussein's interrogator during his imprisonment. Over a period of seven months, so Piro claimed, he won Hussein's confidence, which enable him, among other things, to learn that Hussein had "miscalculated Bush's intentions," as the quotation below from the Sixty Minutes interview specifically states.
"As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn't he stop it then? And say, 'Look, I have no weapons of mass destruction.' I mean, how could he have wanted his country to be invaded?" Pelley [the interviewer of Piro] asks.
"He didn't. But he told me he initially miscalculated President Bush. And President Bush's intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998 under Operation Desert Fox. Which was a four-day aerial attack. So you expected that initially," Piro says.
Piro says Saddam expected some kind of an air campaign and that he could survive that. "He survived that once. And then he was willing to accept that type of attack. That type of damage," he says.
"Saddam didn't believe that the United States would invade," Pelley remarks.
"Not initially, no," Piro says.
Needless to say, someone who spent seven months in the company of Hussein, conversing with him in fluent Arabic, should know more about Hussein's reasons for ignoring U. S. threats to invade than a fundamentalist preacher from the backwoods of Missouri.
McDonald:
As shown above, Bush, Sr., correctly said that taking Desert Storm to Baghdad to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein would have mired the United States in unwinnable urban guerilla warfare. Unfortunately, Bush, Jr., failing to heed this warning, has led us into the very thing that his father said would happen if the
McDonald:
If anyone "went looking for a fight," it was Bush and his neocon cronies, who fabricated excuses to invade Iraq. The Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, recently released a report that documented 935 false statements that Bush and his cabinet members had made to win public support for the invasion of Iraq. Of these lies, 532 of them were made by Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan to deceive the public into believing that Iraq had WMDs and ties to al-Qaeda. Bush himself lied 28 times about Iraq's connections to al-Qaeda and 232 times about Iraq's possession of WMDs. These lies have so far brought the deaths of almost 4,000 American soldiers and the permanent injuries of over 20,000 others.
The database of Bush lies compiled by the Center of Public Integrity is a matter of record that McDonald can access by just Googling "935 lies." The fact that McDonald's perceptions of the war in Iraq run so contrary to known facts shows that he is one of the millions of gullible Americans who allowed themselves to be misled by Bush and his cronies. Since Bush's lies and deceptions have been widely reported by the media, we have to wonder if McDonald has read a newspaper or listened to any newscast besides Fox News within the last two years.
McDonald:
I assume that everyone noticed that McDonald cited no evidence at all in support of this assertion, which runs contrary to what is now known about Iraq's weapons program prior to the U. S. invasion. The more he says, the more McDonald shows that he is one of the many who continue to believe some of the 935 lies, even though they have been exposed in various media.
McDonald:
Saran gas? Oh, I know, I know. McDonald meant to say "sarin gas." Exactly where was this found? Fox News and other media sympathetic to the Bush war had a field day when an unexploded artillery shell in Iraq was found to contain serin gas, but as former UN inspector Scott Ridder reported in the Christian Science Monitor, this was determined not to be part of a secret cache of WMDs but a "dud" that had been fired "long ago" when Iraq did have WMDs. The evidence gathered before and after the U. S. invasion indicates that Hussein had dismantled his WMDs in compliance with UN demands.
The longer I go in replying to McDonald's article, the more I wonder how one person could be as misinformed in current events as he obviously is.
McDonald:
And just where were "all of those barrels of chemicals" found? They must have been in the same secret cache with the "saran gas."
McDonald:
Uh, that total is now almost 4,000, which doesn't even include the more than 20,000 who have been permanently crippled or maimed by serious injuries.
McDonald:
Yeah, right. I wonder if he "laments" every Iraqi citizen who has been killed in this war to eliminate WMDs that didn't exist.
McDonald:
Yeah, sure. Does he lament every Iraqi citizen who has been crippled or maimed during and after the U. S. invasion? I am sure he does.
McDonald:
This section of McDonald's article reads like a page out of a Bush speech. How many times have we heard him say that his "heart goes out" to the families of those whose sons, daughters, husbands, wives, etc. have been killed in the war? How many times have we heard him say that they are "in our prayers"? Bush's hypocrisy is enough to make a truly sympathetic person gag, so I assume that McDonald understands what I think of his hypocrisy.
His hypocritical reference to how he prays "for every man and woman who serve in our military" reminds me of the often-seen bumperstick that says, "Pray for our troops." Since we can assume that at least some who flaunt this bumpersticker do pray for our troops, we have to wonder about the efficacy of prayer. If frequent prayers for our troops kept the casualty number down to almost 4,000, we can only wonder how many would have been killed if no one had prayed for them.
McDonald:
Shades of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who in a speech to constituents said that they should "remember these [soldiers killed in Iraq] are not draftees" but "full-time professional soldiers"! I guess McDonald thinks that all of those dead soldiers that he "laments" are less lamentable than if they had been draftees.
McDonald:
Exactly how does McDonald know this? Kerry, who was a volunteer for duty in Vietnam saw the folly of U. S. involvement in a foreign civil war and returned home to oppose it. He ran for president on a platform to end the war in Iraq, yet McDonald somehow knows that if Kerry had been elected president, he would have instituted a draft. Where did McDonald get this information? He probably got it in the same place where he learned about the "saran gas" and "barrels of chemicals" that were found in Iraq.
McDonald:
I wonder if McDonald "laments" any of them.
McDonald:
This is another fallacy of false analogy. The Iraqis who have been killed during and after the U. S. invasion of their country were undeniably persons. McDonald has yet to prove that abortion constitutes "murdering" persons. Anyway, I have to wonder what he is arguing here. Is he saying that killing Iraqis isn't wrong, because abortions have killed 1.5 million people? Even if we assume that abortion does constitute murder, that would in no way make the killing of thousands of Iraqis right, or perhaps McDonald's twisted logic makes him think that one wrong will make another wrong right. If so, I will remind him that he has yet to produce any scientific evidence that killing zygotes and early embryos constitutes killing persons.
McDonald:
To be "innocents," they would first have to be persons. When McDonald presents scientific evidence that zygotes and early embryos are persons, the same as the thousands of Iraqis who have been killed in Bush's war, I will lament them then. As for shedding tears, I probably wouldn't shed any even if McDonald could prove that aborted zygotes are "persons," because I am not the kind of person who publicly shows his emotions. Just out of curiosity, I would ask him to tell us how many times he has cried (shed tears) over abortions that have taken place in our country? A hundred times? Fifty? Twenty? Ten? Once? How many?
McDonald:
When has McDonald heard me say this? I don't remember ever having said this. Maybe McDonald can quote where I said it, but maybe pigs will fly someday too.
McDonald:
Well, no, it doesn't. As I have repeatedly shown, "life" begins long before conception, or perhaps McDonald thinks that life can come from nonlife, i. e., from nonliving gametes. If so, I wonder if he parrots that old creationist argument against evolution that says that life cannot come from nonlife.
McDonald:
I certainly wouldn't deny that McDonald is "pro-life and pro-birth" in the sense that these terms are used in the abortion controversy, but the mere fact that he and millions of others are "pro-life and pro-birth" in no way proves that abortion in the early stages of pregnancy is morally wrong in that it kills "persons."
McDonald:
As I repeatedly pointed out above, I do not oppose the death penalty in cases where guilt of atrocious crimes can be established beyond the shadow of all doubt. As for whether abortion in the early stages constitutes "(k)ill[ing] an innocent baby," that is a claim that McDonald has yet to prove, because he has presented exactly no scientific evidence at all that would estabish that zygotes and early embryos are persons. He seems to think that hurling insults like his statements above constitutes proof of his position.
Till:
Life begins at conception: This has almost been a mantra that is chanted by those who oppose abortion, but it is a scientifically incorrect belief. Life really begins before an actual pregnancy occurs. An ovum, for example, is alive in the ovary before it is expelled into a fallopian tube to wait for a possible rendezvous with the sperm cell that will fertilize it. That sperm cells are alive is obvious to anyone who has ever watched them "swimming" under a microscope. This is all true, anti-abortionists will say, but gametes or reproductive cells are only "potential persons" but do not become actual persons until the two come together. I will ask readers to keep this thought in mind, because I will return to it later after we have looked at some rather intriguing scientific information about these "actual persons" that exist in the womb after the two gametes have united.McDonald:
A mantra is defined as "[Skt, sacred cousel [sic], formula, fr. manyate he thinks; akin to L mens mind--more at mind] (1795): a mystical formula of invocation or incantation (as in Hinduism); also; WATCHWORD2" (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, p. 757). When people like Farrell Till say that "life begins at conception: This has almost been a mantra that is chanted by those w[h]o oppose abortion" they are in fact saying that it is nothing more than an incantation of a mystical formula such [as] the Hindus chant in their worship and prayer services.
No, Farrell Till does not say this, because he was not using the word in the sense that McDonald quoted above but using the sense it has acquired in English, as the second definition quoted below from the American Heritage Dictionary now recognizes.
When an opponent debating McDonald uses a key word, he has a longtime habit of picking one of its multiple definitions from a dictionary
McDonald:
They have to make the phrase sound as absurd and ridiculous as they can in order to propogate their cause.
Calling the phrase a mantra communicates nothing except that it is an expression that is repeated with regularity.
McDonald:
The word "mantra" must be the new "buzz word" for atheists, [sic] I seem to be hearing it a lot.
Is there something wrong with using a word correctly?
McDonald:
The phrase is nothing close to being a mantra,
Is McDonald saying that "life begins at conception" isn't close to being an often repeated phrase? If so, I suggest that he Google the phrase. If he will do that, he will get 112,000 hits. That would not happen if the phrase had not been often repeated.
McDonald:
but it is the truth.
Actually, it isn't the truth. As I showed above, life begins before conception. I doubt that any biologist would deny that the female gamete [ovum] expelled from an ovary is alive before it unites with the male gamete [sperm], which is also alive even before it is ejaculated. Hence, "life" obviously begins before conception.
McDonald:
Mr. Till tries to make an argument showing that the ovum and sperm cell is alive, and by this trying to show that first stages of the human is alive, but is not life.
What! I was trying to show that the first stages of the human is alive but is not life? I wouldn't be stupid enough to argue that something that is alive is not life. I was merely showing just how misguided pro-lifers are in saying that "life begins at conception." They are making a claim that is obviously wrong. Life begins even before conception, but the "life" that exists in the womb at the moment of conception is not a "person," just as the "life" existing in the gametes is not a "person." As the scientific data that I cited show--which McDonald has yet to address--what exists in the womb at conception and even for some time thereafter is not a "person." The issue is whether abortion in the early stages of pregnancy kills a person. McDonald says it does, but the scientific evidence says that it doesn't.
McDonald:
There is a difference and even Farrell Till knows this. All cells, of the body are alive, my hair follicles are alive, my skin cells are alive, but none of them are LIFE.
How does one deal with such ignorance as this? If the cells of McDonald's body were not life, then he would not be alive. He is quibbling here, because he knows that he cannot satisfactorily explain away the scientific data I cited to show that a zygote at the moment of conception although certainly alive is not a person.
McDonald:
When the sperm enters the egg and is nucleated life begins,
No, life began long before this, because if the sperm and egg were not alive prior to the union of these two gametes, then no union would take place. McDonald is apparently using the term nucleate in the sense of gametic union, but nucleate means "to form a nucleus." A Textbook of Anatomy by American Authors clearly states in its embryology section that the male gamete has a nucleus. Each time it is used in the quotation below, I have emphasized nucleus in bold print.
The spermatozoa are the result of modification of the spermatids. Each of these latter is at first a round cell with a rather large nucleus, near which lies the centrosome. Gradually this cell elongates, the nucleus takes up a position near one extremity, an axial filament develops in the cell-body, the centrosome comes to lie behind the nucleus, and, as a result, there is produced the mature spermatozoön, a body measuring in length about 1/500 inch, and consisting of (a) a pyriform head composed of the nucleus of the original spermatid, surrounded by an exceedingly thin layer of protoplasm, (b) of a "middle piece," immediately behind the head, and representing probably the centrosome of the spermatid, (c) of the tail derived from the cell-body of the spermatid, and composed of an axial filament surrounded by a sheath of protoplasm, somewhat variable in form, though usually simply cyclindrical; and (d) of a terminal filament, which is the end portion of the axial filament.
The biological process described here in the process of spermatozoa formation could not occur unless life was in the cells. If McDonald, whose scientific knowledge has been repeatedly demonstrated to be woefully deficient, would bother to consult reputable sources, he would see that all cells have a nucleus. Since the male and female gametes are both living cells before they unite to form a zygote, then they both have a nucleus. This is a scientific fact that McDonald could easily verify by Googling terms like "ovum nucleus" and "sperm nucleus." Either term will give him thousands of hits.
McDonald:
it is not just alive, but it is a life.
If it is alive, then it is life, and if it is life, it is alive. McDonald is shamelessly quibbling to try to conceal his inability to address the scientific data cited in my article.
McDonald:
This is not a potential life, [sic] it is life.
Here is another straw man. I used the expression "potential life" in my article only in reference to the way that pro-birthers use it. Otherwise, when I used the word potential, it was used with person or individual or some equivalent, as the following quotations from the article clearly show.
Till
That sperm cells are alive is obvious to anyone who has ever watched them "swimming" under a microscope. This is all true, anti-abortionists will say, but gametes or reproductive cells are only "potential persons" but do not become actual persons until the two come together.By the time, I met the nursing student who eventually changed my position on abortion, I had completed a required college course in general biology in which a unit in human reproduction was explicitly presented, so I knew about the scientific principles that produced multiple identical births, but I didn't know that sometimes after a zygote divides to form potential twins, they will fuse, for some reason also not known, to form a single zygote again, which will later be born as one person. That came as a surprise to me, but what was even more surprising to me was the phenomenon known as "chimerism."
The conclusion that this leads to is not at all compatible with the pro-birth view that a "person" exists at the moment of conception, because if chimerism had occurred in the example just mentioned, neither Jenna nor Barbara Bush would have been born but a single individual who would have been a gentic composite of the two originally separate zygotes; therefore, it follows that neither Jenna nor Barbara Bush existed in the early stages of their mother's pregnancy. What existed was simply the genetic materials that had the potential to develop into two persons. In their case, that potential was realized, and they were eventually born as two separate persons, but when chimerism occurs, that potential is lost through fusion of the two zygotes. An actual documented example of chimerism will illustrate how chimerism in early pregnancy will merge two potential individuals into just one. In the case just linked to, "Jane," the woman discovered at the age of 52 to be a tetragametic chimera, had been born after her mother had conceived nonidentical or fraternal female zygotes that merged to form just one person (the "Jane" who later became the subject of the study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine). As this article reported, however, hermaphroditic chimerism sometimes results from the fusion of male and female zygotes.
If anything can make the pro-birth movement reassess its position that abortion in even the early stages of pregnancy is murder, the scientific information summarized above should certainly give them pause to reconsider. No single human being can divide him-/herself into identical twin persons, and no two human beings can fuse their bodies into a single person. It must follow, then, that what is in the womb at the time of conception and even shortly thereafter is not a person but only a potential person or persons.
This brings us back to a point that was introduced earlier: at the time of conception, only a potential person exists but not an actual person in the sense that I am a person and those of you reading this are persons. If, for example, the mother of "Jane," referenced above, had had an abortion while nonidentical (fraternal) zygotes were in her womb, this would not have killed "Jane," in the sense that the person "Jane" existed at that time. Instead, the abortion would have terminated two zygotes, which at the time had had the potential to become two persons. "Jane" as a person, however, never existed until the two zygotes had amalgamated to form a tetragametic chimera, which was later born as the one person "Jane."
By using the expression "potential life," McDonald distorted my position to leave the impression that he was addressing my argument, but my argument was never that "potential life" exists at the time of conception but that the zygote resulting from the union of the female and male gametes was a potential person. In the paragraph quoted below, I did use the expression "potential life" but only to address the pro-birth view of what exists when conception occurs.
Till: