> << > I think people will first have to abandon the concept
> > of a soul before they're willing to view life as just
> > a collection of molecules. >>
Life _is_ "just a collection of molecules", in exactly the same
way that the Mona Lisa is just some smudges of colored oil on a
piece of cloth, or that the Declaration of Independence is just
some squiggles of black liquid on pounded plant fibers. It is
the _information_ about how those molecules are arranged that is
unique and valuable; and it is that information that we wish to
preserve, not the mere physical substrates.
The only information value of a zygote is its genome. A human
being that was born and lived contains far more information: all
of eir life experiences and ideas and successes and failures. A
raw genome can't be anywhere near as valuable as that. Our
intuition and legal system that sees zygote as something less
than a full human being is a correct application of this fact.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:02:24 MDT