[quote=“beaglelady, post:65, topic:27852”]
{Al Leo} As a 19 month old girl, Helen [Keller] was on her way toward becoming "fully human".
I would say that she was fully human at that age, not just on her way to that state.
@beaglelady You have zeroed in on the problem that bothers me most about my hypothesis; i.e., “Becoming Human” infers a process that takes place over a span of time. I’m OK with that on a historical scale. But what about our history as an individual? If we are to truly value human dignity, then we must truly value the potential that exist at every stage in that process. This is a rational and convincing argument that I can make to a mature Christian. I do NOT think it is the correct method to teach a 4 or 5 year old just starting his/her journey of Faith. Simple Faith is best served with statements that are in black or white. For example, “Human Life begins at the moment of conception.” Not potential human life, but a life that is totally human.
I am comfortable if that is the way all children are taught. I presume that is the approach Christy and the other home schoolers take. (God bless them!) However,by the time the kids reach their teens, and start studying biology at length, I would like the more curious ones, the more skeptical, to have access to the explanation I offered above: that the process of becoming human must be valued and respected.(Note the belief in evolution implies that ‘humanization’ is a process, even if the final step is an ‘event’.) They should learn that even as merely seeds of humanity, sperm and egg, deserve respect in view of the billions of years it took to ‘evolve’ the information they contain. When sperm and egg join in conception, a much greater respect is called for, since the probable outcome is a new human being the world has never seen before–a creature that has the potential to become imago Dei.
But as the biology student will soon learn, there are some major obstacles that stand in the way of the new zygote. Implantation is the first. If it implants in the Fallopian tube, it has no real chance of survival and endangers the life of the mother-to-be as well. An estimated 20% (some say up to 50%) of zygotes fail to implant in the uterus before the mother is aware of pregnancy. If implantation is isuccessful, invagination is the next major obstacle. When the neural tube fails to close properly, the resulting spina bifida may be disabling, but the embryo can still proceed to become fully human. If the invagination is severe, the cells that should become brain never develop, and anencephaly results. Some anencephalic fetuses survive until birth, but without a brain, never have the chance to become “image bearers” in any real sense of the term.
Even disregarding the obstacles enumerated above, there is a rational difficulty with declaring a human life has begun at the moment of conception. Traditional dogma states that conception of a single zygote results in the creation of a single immortal soul belonging to one fully human being. But fairly often, up to four cell divisions, monozygotic twins can result, and then more than one fully human being exists. Of course God is comfortable with this–making more than one immortal soul as pregnancy proceeds–just as he is comfortable with quite a few conceptions (zygotes) that fail to make the grade as fully human. It is up to us to accommodate our religious dogmas, our world views, to what God obviously is comfortable with–which is NOT what we see as either black or white.
@Christy do you first teach your kids the Truth as tho it was ‘black or white’ with some sort of admonition to expect some ‘expansion’ of that truth as they mature? Is that being dishonest? I don’t think so.
Al Leo