So what if a cell has the same DNA as a fertilized egg? Of course it will. So will a fingerprint, hair follicle, skin, etc. None of those, standing alone, makes a human being. That really makes no sense.
See, now we're getting somewhere: the zygote expresses proteins different than a fingerprint. This is a quantifiable difference we can work with. But then, what about taking a cell and altering it to change protein expression? While it's presently beyond our abilities, it's not a stretch to imagine that in the future we could fully clone a human by taking a cell and altering protein expression to match those of a zygote. And what then? There will have been no moment of conception.
I don't prefer a "soul" analogy and not sure why you make that assumption.
I said that you
might prefer it. Whether you do or don't, is fine by me.
Is a person who is "brain dead" always literally dead?
Well, considering how someone who is brain dead won't breathe without artificial support, I'd say that if "brain dead" is at least equivalent to "about to die in the next few seconds..."
But yes, there is a difference between the two states otherwise we wouldn't have the distinction of "dead" vs. "brain dead". One refers to the status of the mobile brain container (i.e. the body) and the other refers to whether the brain has permanently and irreversibly ceased functioning.
Like a car on cruise control can continue coasting with a dead driver at the wheel, a body that's provided with artificial life support can continue operating without a brain, usually as a means of keeping organs viable for transplantation to save lives.
Funny how you try and completely sidestep precisely when human life begins when you have to specifically talk about when your own views, rather than some unrealistic hypothetical involving someone else. You want to be precise when it comes to a "zygote," which no women ever really know about, but when it comes to your own views, it's "not important" to be precise.
But I'm not trying to sidestep anything. It's not that I don't think it's important to be precise. It's that I don't think it's
practical or
necessary to know exactly when that line is crossed and the fetus shows human brain patterns. What's important is whether the line has been crossed.
It's not practical because it would require that women be connected to bulky equipment all the time.
And it's not necessary, because the precise moment when it happens is not important in the sense that what
really matters is whether they're present or not, because if they are present now but weren't present before, we can say that at some point between the last scan and the current scan the line was crossed, and what we want is to be able to have a clear answer: "which side of the line are we on?"
Can you explain why you believe this is insufficient and why we need to pinpoint the very moment where the fetal brain begins showing human brainwave patterns, which, by the way, can be as early as 5 weeks.