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Pro-Lifer Dilemma

DAD:
There are Jews in the world.
There are Buddhists.
There are Hindus and Mormons, and then
There are those that follow Mohammed, but
I've never been one of them.

I'm a Roman Catholic,
And have been since before I was born,
And the one thing they say about Catholics is:
They'll take you as soon as you're warm.

You don't have to be a six-footer.
You don't have to have a great brain.
You don't have to have any clothes on. You're
A Catholic the moment Dad came,

Because

Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.

CHILDREN:
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.

GIRL:
Let the heathen spill theirs
On the dusty ground.
God shall make them pay for
Each sperm that can't be found.

CHILDREN:
Every sperm is wanted.
Every sperm is good.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighbourhood.

MUM:
Hindu, Taoist, Mormon,
Spill theirs just anywhere,
But God loves those who treat their
Semen with more care.

MEN:
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
WOMEN:
If a sperm is wasted,...
CHILDREN:
...God get quite irate.

PRIEST:
Every sperm is sacred.
BRIDE and GROOM:
Every sperm is good.
NANNIES:
Every sperm is needed...
CARDINALS:
...In your neighbourhood!

CHILDREN:
Every sperm is useful.
Every sperm is fine.
FUNERAL CORTEGE:
God needs everybody's.
MOURNER #1:
Mine!
MOURNER #2:
And mine!
CORPSE:
And mine!

NUN:
Let the Pagan spill theirs
O'er mountain, hill, and plain.
HOLY STATUES:
God shall strike them down for
Each sperm that's spilt in vain.

EVERYONE:
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is good.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighbourhood.

Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite iraaaaaate!
 
RandFan said:
If your "pro-life" position was based on when life begins and not in the sanctity of potential life and you were an objective and rational scientist then you should accept as moral, contraception, RU486 and the early termintion of pregnancies.

ETA: Yes, I assume you are taking my somewhere. I'm ready.
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Yes, to a potentially realistic example, is all. Didn't require a response particularly.

Carry on with the main thread!
 
Zep said:
Yes, to a potentially realistic example, is all. Didn't require a response particularly.

Carry on with the main thread!
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Ah damn, I really thought you were going to enlighten me with a bit of the Socratic Method. I say that in all sincerity. I'm slow sometimes.

I'm not thrilled with your hypothetical. It doesn't resolve when life actually begins so we are back at square one with how to deal with someone who does believe that life begins at conception.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the limitations of the dillema presented in the OP.

Thanks Zep,

RandFan
 
Similar dilemmas are presented in an article "Godless Morality" by Marc Hauser and Peter Singer. It may be that we actually do have an "absolute" morality - or rather absolute in the sense that we have evolved to meet certain situations with certain responses and it is these behaviours that we label "moral" and "ethical".
 
RandFan said:
Ah damn, I really thought you were going to enlighten me with a bit of the Socratic Method. I say that in all sincerity. I'm slow sometimes.

I'm not thrilled with your hypothetical. It doesn't resolve when life actually begins so we are back at square one with how to deal with someone who does believe that life begins at conception.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the limitations of the dillema presented in the OP.

Thanks Zep,

RandFan
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The original OP didn't resolve that issue either. It simply gave two only possible choices - totally binary. If you wanted to approach that issue more exactly, it should have been more choices, e.g.: Sperm and eggs unfertilised, many newly fertilised blastocysts, the 5 embryos as originally described, 2 newborn babies, or the two year old. A bit more of an attempt to get a grip on the actual problem!

And I carnt even spel sockrattic! So there!
 
Zep said:
The original OP didn't resolve that issue either. It simply gave two only possible choices - totally binary. If you wanted to approach that issue more exactly, it should have been more choices, e.g.: Sperm and eggs unfertilised, many newly fertilised blastocysts, the 5 embryos as originally described, 2 newborn babies, or the two year old. A bit more of an attempt to get a grip on the actual problem!

And I carnt even spel sockrattic! So there!
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The point of the OP is to challenge the belief that life begins at conception. I think it does this as is. If I had believed that life begins at conception then the hypothetical would have given me pause and forced me to confront my held beliefs. If life truly begins at conception then the 5 embryos merit consideration. That a hypothetical is binary doesn't invalidate it nor do I believe that a different one would do a better job. We can argue that there are other considerations and that is fine but to do so opens up the possibility for abortion because abortion presents other considerations. That it is binary is crucial to the dilemma.

One can refuse to make a choice because they see no difference between the two.

or

One can choose between the babies and the embryos. Doing so would by reveal a bias. It is unlikely that most would choose the embryos. So what does that say about those individuals views of embryos?

While there are limits to the hypothetical presented in the OP, as there are in many moral dilemmas, at the end of the day I think that it is a great hypothetical and would fit nicely in any course curriculum dealing with moral dilemmas.

Try this one on for size.

One dilemma, known as the trolley problem, involves a runaway train that is about to kill five people. The question is whether it is appropriate for a bystander to throw a switch and divert the trolley onto a spur on which it will kill one person and allow the five to survive.
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Binary choice, what do you do?

Now consider,

Philosophers compare this problem to a second scenario, sometimes called the footbridge problem, in which a train is again heading toward five people, but there is no spur. Two bystanders are on a bridge above the tracks and the only way to save the five people is for one bystander to push the other in front of the train, killing the fallen bystander.

Both cases involve killing one person to save five, but they evoke very different responses. People tend to agree that it is permissible to flip the switch, but not to push a person off the bridge. People in the study also followed this pattern. This distinction has puzzled philosophers who have not been able to find a hard and fast rule to explain why one is right and the other wrong. For each potential principle, there seems to be another scenario that undermines it.
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I don't think you should dismiss the hypothetical because you find limitations with it. Ultimately most such hypotheticals are limited. That they are does not invalidate them or make them not useful.
 
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Crazytree said:
You are in a house that is on fire. In one room is a two-year-old child. In another room is a petri dish with 5 viable embryos.

You only have time to get to one room in time.

Which do you save?
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Easy choice. They both taste the same, but there's much more meat on the two-year-old child.
 
luchog said:
Easy choice. They both taste the same, but there's much more meat on the two-year-old child.
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But it's not always about quantity. Caviar is a luxury item, while the fish it comes from is quite cheap by comparison. Embryos sound like specialty gourmet items, rather than common sandwich filling.
 
TragicMonkey said:
But it's not always about quantity. Caviar is a luxury item, while the fish it comes from is quite cheap by comparison. Embryos sound like specialty gourmet items, rather than common sandwich filling.
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I've never been all that taken by most specialty gourmet items. Give me a chunky lump of flesh I can chuck on the barby then wash down with a good beer.

But then, I'm just a simple country boy.
 
AnotherSillyAlias said:
I've never been all that taken by most specialty gourmet items. Give me a chunky lump of flesh I can chuck on the barby then wash down with a good beer.

But then, I'm just a simple country boy.
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I don't really have the budget for luxury items.

But I will say that olives, mustard, and cheese are worth being picky about.
 
Another hypothetical, with real life potential

If some pro-life advocates believe that the fetus is a life, but abortion is okay if the mother's life is in danger...

would that mean that if the woman is pregnant with twins or triplets, that abortion would not be okay in the case of danger to the mother's life, because it would be two lives versus one?
 
AnotherSillyAlias said:
Since I'm a believer in a lower planetary population I'd say let the embryos burn.
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Statistically, I wonder if they aren't more likely to all be used in one single implantation in the rare hopes one of them "takes". And hence, perhaps statistically there is only, say, a 1 in 3 chance of any of them "taking". So, more likely than not, you'd be adding, say, on average only 0.7 of a person if you took the embryos, whereas you'd be guaranteed of decreasing the surface population by a guaranteed 1 if you left the 2 month old.

Ahh, yes. Scrooge. Mr. Burns. Exxxxxxxxcellent.

I'd take the baby, but then again 1. I'm a softy and 2. don't believe the embryos are en-soulificated.

To make the pro-lifer's dillema even worse, remember that the embryos must go to Heaven since God is kind and wouldn't throw them into Hell, not being capable of making a meaningful decision on the deliberately unprovable concept of whether Jesus was real or not.

So to save them risks Hell for them if they should make it past First Communion (if Catholic) or First Exposure to TV Preacher (if not.)

Meanwhile letting the baby expire from choking smoke and painful burning fire into the loving hands of God who can't intevene because he is perfectly good and is capable of intervening only guarantees one soul making it into heaven.

So, to sum up:

  • If you believe in planetary population reduction, take the 5 embryos since the statistical likelihood of one or more of them making it to babyhood is less than 1, and you'll get a net benefit decreasing the population by 1 vs. adding to it 0.7 on average. You may get unlucky, of course, and have 2 or even all 5 survive to adulthood, but remember, we're playing the odds here. On average you'll net a 0.3 person decrease by taking the embryos and allowing the baby to burn painfully to death for God. (This is all contingent on actual stats roughly mapping to my wild guesses. If 5 embryos average > 1.0 babies, take the baby and leave the embryos. If exactly even, it's a push. Take the embryos since the baby burning painfully to death spites God, who looks down and wrings his hands at it. But you're going to Hell anyway, so the burden is on Him. Or take the baby to spite God, exposing him as the undeserving of ruling charlatan that He is, throwing you into Hell in spite of you saving the baby to avoid the baby's painful death, something the good god Yahweh will not do. Maybe afterlife news reporters will embarass Him enough He makes some changes. Or maybe He'll just throw them into Hell too for questioning His infinite Kindness and Wisdom in not stopping babies from burning to death.)
  • If you're a fundamentalist, you pick the embryos again since, by the same argument, fewer than one will make it into danger of going to Hell. Thus you net on average 5.3 guaranteed souls going to Heaven (4.3 embroys, on average, not turning into a person + the one baby) vs. 0.7 souls going to Hell (the 0.7 on average embryo who makes it to babyhood. We'll waive the odds on baby making it to en-Hell-danger-ification age since it applies to both the hypothetical embryo, if born, and the baby, who is born. There's a subtle difference in odds since the baby is already 2 months old, and the embryo(s) must make it from birth to two months to guarantee even statistical analysis.)

Yeah, I'm ready to turn in my homework. Note the fundamentalist should pick the 5 embryos, but not because he's saving five souls from dying, but because he's saving 4.3 souls from any chance at going to Hell. Long term smart thinking (taps temple with finger.)
 
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Beerina said:
Statistically, I wonder if they aren't more likely to all be used in one single implantation in the rare hopes one of them "takes". And hence, perhaps statistically there is only, say, a 1 in 3 chance of any of them "taking". So, more likely than not, you'd be adding, say, on average only 0.7 of a person if you took the embryos, whereas you'd be guaranteed of decreasing the surface population by a guaranteed 1 if you left the 2 month old.
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Ummm.. yes, thank you for providing that indepth analysis. The only problem I have now is a bad headache from reading all those complicated numbers and stuff.
 
Crazytree said:
"every sperm is sacred... every sperm's a soul..."
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Sperm are single cells which do not have a full compliment of genes and do not have any mitochodria. They are so far removed from "human life" that only a Catholic Theologian who's never experience nocturnal emission would make such a statement.

IIRichard
 
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