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Wednesday, March 8, 2006 12:00 AM

The baby and the petri dish

A discussion with Andrew Wilkow about that "trick question" on abortion.

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  • Thursday, March 9, 2006 06:29 AM

    baby or blastula?

    Wilkow recognizes that there is no good answer to the dilemma. That is the point: when a sound argument leads to an insoluble contradiction, the proper conclusion is that ther is a false premise lurking. Then you must, if you care about logical consistency, question the premise, in this case :a blastula is a human child.

    The famous Biblical prescription "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is used to justify capital punishnment ...i. e. a life for a life. The passage immediately following has an interesting implication. If a man in a fight accidentally causes a woman to miscarry, the penalty is a fine. Now the logic goes (and it is very simple logic) "If one takes a human life, one must give his life (a general rule) If the miscarried fetus was a life, the offender would have to die (a particular instance of the rule). But the prescribed penalty is a fine (the consequent of the implication is denied). Therefore, a fetus is not a human life (conclusion --- the classical argument form is called "modus tollens" and was known to Aristotle.)

    But who cares about logic when God speaks directly to you? My question for these folks is: how do you know it's God speaking?

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