Well, you won't like this, being an atheist, but I think this Psalm sums it up well:
Or, in plain English:
Choose life, Giordano.
Why is it that you keep quoting my posts but then not addressing the contents therein? Well that's okay because you did at last answer Thor's question, which was also my question. So your view is that a human being begins at fertilization, and I gather from your response to my post, the basis of your belief is the Bible Psalm 139: 13-14. Did I get that right? Okay. I've already explained in detail in my post 359 why the biology of development makes it impossible for me to agree with you and you can re-read my post at your leisure; no need for me to repeat myself. The only scientific point I will bring up here is that there is no spark, no
electrical nerve impulse at fertilization. But there is an action potential of sodium ions and a wave of calcium ions so I will not quibble; just thought you might want to know.
I won't even try to pit science against your bible. Even recognizing other people have other bibles and other words they believe are God's, if you think God endorsed the words you quoted I doubt I could convince you otherwise. But please read the actual words you quoted (and thanks for assuming I could not possibly have read the King James Version already or possibly have understood it): the words state that the speaker believes that God knit him together (assembled him) in the womb (interestingly they are not even the words of God, just the words of the speaker- are we sure God agrees with them?) But okay, biology also says we are knit together in the womb so let's assume God agrees. But neither the Psalm nor biology says when this knitting became a human being! The Psalm doesn't address that question at all. My wife knitted a sweater in her chair in the living room. When did the wool become a sweater? Certainly not when she first joined the needles to the wool. When she completed the first row? When she got to the sleeves? To the collar? Or at the very last stitch? The rest of your quote just praises the quality of the construction and thanks God for it: it still doesn't address when the wool became a sweater.
I am not trying to get you to change your mind that human beings begin at fertilization, only trying to get you to realize that other people reasonably might read those very words, believe them to be endorsed by God and reach a legitimately different conclusion from yours. Or read a different bible. Or no bible at all. In fact many more people in Ireland did reach a different conclusion from yours. So you follow your conclusion in your life, but don't try to impose it on all others. That's my whole point.
And I very much have chosen life. I respect and cherish human beings more than you can imagine. My wife and I have knitted together two lives ourselves and raised them to be wonderful human beings. But inevitably along the way we left behind billions of dead sperm, ova, and unsuccessful zygotes; I mourn them not as lost children because they never were human beings, they never got close. They were human cells, like the billions of cells that shed off my intestine every day, but never human beings. That is just how biology works.
