Conception is when the genetic material from the father merges with the genetic material with the mother to create a new complete set of genetic material in a cell. Sperm and egg only contain half the genetic material, subsets from the father and mother respectively. As I originally asked, if there's a more logical, rational place for the origin of the human being (or life in general) let me know!
>Decisions made by the Supreme Court are law regardless of whether you like them or not, specifically case law.
This is a fair point. I don't want to equivocate on the word 'law'. I was referring to law as codified by elected legislature but you're right that 'common law' is also law in a different sense :)
>The constitution does not guarantee the right to assault rifles specifically, are you ok with leaving that decision up to the states?
I guess? If we throw out the constitution we'd better have a replacement system with an equal force behind it. Otherwise history can dictate what happens next when a power vacuum forms in a pluralistic society: authoritarianism.
Free will is kind of a paradox. If you design a game, you also design the space of possible games that can be played (the game tree). You can also determine a function on the space of these games to label some as 'good' and others as 'evil'. When you create players of the game and they choose to go down an 'evil' tree was that your fault? I think this is where the paradox comes in. You can make fancy arguments about entropy all you want but for a Christian we believe the players in the game have real agency of choice.
Christians aren't the only ones who believe in agency - justice (retributive justice specifically) requires agency, otherwise it makes no sense to penalize someone for wrongdoing as it was their environment that caused their behavior _always_ rather than their own conscious choice. If you want to live in a society with no retributive justice that's a fair and even perhaps logically consistent viewpoint but it isn't one that Christians share. Our worldview holds that the economy of justice is fundamentally retributive justice because we have real agency of choice.
> As I originally asked, if there's a more logical, rational place for the origin of the human being (or life in general) let me know!
Both the sperm and egg are "alive" so no "life" does not begin there. Any sperm and egg combination together is a unique genetic sequence, both before and after conception. This also cannot be a unique "person" because identical twins form after conception into two unique people. Same with clones, the same genetic sequence does not make a unique person, what ever personhood is comes later, it is a potential person just like a sperm and egg is before conception.
There is no single bright line I can find, as I said any line drawn is arbitrary to satisfy law. I believe Roe to be a good multistage compromise based on trimesters, you believe conception to a be a single line for the law, neither has any scientific or religious basis. During biblical times "quickening" was thought to be when ensoulment occurred, first movement.
>If you design a game, you also design the space of possible games that can be played (the game tree). You can also determine a function on the space of these games to label some as 'good' and others as 'evil'. When you create players of the game and they choose to go down an 'evil' tree was that your fault?
As god you didn't just create the game, you created the laws of physics that allows the game to exist and the players themselves. God designed our brains and how we make decisions.
This isn't a fancy argument this is very simple, did god create everything or not (including evil) and does he know everything or not (including what choices we will make)?
Again its seems rather stupid to blame your own designed creation for making choices that you know they will make in a universe you created for them with laws of nature designed by you. This makes no logical sense unless there is outside influence to allow for surprising choices. Either god understands exactly how everything works because he created all of it, or he doesn't and can be surprised by bad choices and blame this "agency" that comes from somewhere outside of himself.
>If you want to live in a society with no retributive justice that's a fair and even perhaps logically consistent viewpoint but it isn't one that Christians share.
Of course I don't, but it's not hard for me, I don't believe in an omnipotent god that designed me just to punish me for making incorrect choices. There seems to be uncertainty baked into all things that creates agency and choices matter, I have personal responsibility for my choices because they affect the world around me, this is logical. I don't believe things are predestined or known ahead of time nor that some super being designed me and is judging me for how I perform in their sandbox, it is a ridiculous illogical notion.
>Decisions made by the Supreme Court are law regardless of whether you like them or not, specifically case law.
This is a fair point. I don't want to equivocate on the word 'law'. I was referring to law as codified by elected legislature but you're right that 'common law' is also law in a different sense :)
>The constitution does not guarantee the right to assault rifles specifically, are you ok with leaving that decision up to the states?
I guess? If we throw out the constitution we'd better have a replacement system with an equal force behind it. Otherwise history can dictate what happens next when a power vacuum forms in a pluralistic society: authoritarianism.
Free will is kind of a paradox. If you design a game, you also design the space of possible games that can be played (the game tree). You can also determine a function on the space of these games to label some as 'good' and others as 'evil'. When you create players of the game and they choose to go down an 'evil' tree was that your fault? I think this is where the paradox comes in. You can make fancy arguments about entropy all you want but for a Christian we believe the players in the game have real agency of choice.
Christians aren't the only ones who believe in agency - justice (retributive justice specifically) requires agency, otherwise it makes no sense to penalize someone for wrongdoing as it was their environment that caused their behavior _always_ rather than their own conscious choice. If you want to live in a society with no retributive justice that's a fair and even perhaps logically consistent viewpoint but it isn't one that Christians share. Our worldview holds that the economy of justice is fundamentally retributive justice because we have real agency of choice.