“I’m not an animal!” cried the human animal.

Go ask one of those opponents of stem cell research why it’s OK to donate a kidney.  They’ll look at you like you’re nuts.  They’ll tell there’s a person who’s about to die and another person with an extra kidney, and it’s all that simple.

In 2006 you won’t hear any protest that kidney donation is something Frankenstein would do. Stem cell research opponents won’t assert that the extra kidney constitutes a “human life” even though it is alive and human.  They won’t tell you that kidney transplants are morally wrong.  They won’t claim that a kidney has an invisible soul.

Instead, they will reassure you that a spare kidney is not a unique human being.  They will tell you that kidney cells are only “potential” human beings (reproductive cloning, illegal in most countries, could accomplish this).  As icing on the cake, they will assert that kidneys don’t feel any pain. 

At that point you’ll need to jump in. For starters, you might remind the stem cell research opponents that blastocysts (from which stem cells are harvested) are clumps of about 150 cells small enough to fit inside Roosevelt’s eye on a U.S. dime. 

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You might then add that blastocysts are only five days old when the stem cells are harvested.  At this point in time, the stem cells are pluripotent: they can develop into all the different cell types in the body (except the placenta), but they have not yet developed into any specialized type of cell.  …

Continue Reading“I’m not an animal!” cried the human animal.

Another good source for freethinker quotes

These (among numerous other quotes) are from a site called “My Favorite Quotes.”  Beware, neocons: These quotes might cause you to doubt that the United States was founded as a “Christian” nation!  Here are some of my favorites:

  • “Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.”
    [Thomas Paine]
  • “There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice….”.
    [Thomas Paine]
  • “The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.”
    [Abraham Lincoln]
  • “My earlier views at the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.”
    [Abraham Lincoln, letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie Lincoln]
  • “If not an absolute atheist, he had no belief in a future existence. All his ideas of obligation or retribution were bounded by the present life.”
    [President John Quincy Adams on Thomas Jefferson, 1831]
  • “The Christian God is a being of terrific character — cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust.”
    [Thomas Jefferson, _Jefferson Bible_]
  • “..our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry”
    [Thomas Jefferson]
  • “We discover [in the gospels] a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism
…

Continue ReadingAnother good source for freethinker quotes

Fourteen defining characteristics of fascism

President Bush has often used the term Islamic Fascists.   Here is a short and though-provoking video that challenges Americans to examine its own national character according to a 14-point fascism analysis (based on the writings of Lawrence Britt).   The video was create two years ago, as America entered Bush's second term.

Continue ReadingFourteen defining characteristics of fascism