Thanks for the interesting discussion. I suspect an issue that was left vague was the core basis of French's argument for the importance of preservation of human life, even when embryonic. I suspect he is guided by his Christian view that fetuses have souls, and precisely for that reason they are worthy of the same concerns and respect as other humans, though what he said overtly seems more like a "scientific" perspective of conception. In contrast, Mounk perhaps views the humanity of the fetus in the context of brain development.
I agree with French that the fetus is worthy of respect independent of the mother, but it seems to me that his absolutist perspective leads to some problems in this admittedly difficult controversy. If the fetus acquires a soul at the moment of conception, how are we to understand identical twins? Do they share the same soul? Is Heaven largely populated by the ~25-50% of fertilized eggs that fail to implant and embryos that die on their own before birth?
Roe v Wade apparently has some legal problems, focused on how one is to decipher the US Constitution in the context of the present. It would seem that analogous problems of an even more difficult nature face those who would decipher the Bible with confidence in the context of contemporary technologies.
I stopped reading when I read Jan-6.
Thanks for the interesting discussion. I suspect an issue that was left vague was the core basis of French's argument for the importance of preservation of human life, even when embryonic. I suspect he is guided by his Christian view that fetuses have souls, and precisely for that reason they are worthy of the same concerns and respect as other humans, though what he said overtly seems more like a "scientific" perspective of conception. In contrast, Mounk perhaps views the humanity of the fetus in the context of brain development.
I agree with French that the fetus is worthy of respect independent of the mother, but it seems to me that his absolutist perspective leads to some problems in this admittedly difficult controversy. If the fetus acquires a soul at the moment of conception, how are we to understand identical twins? Do they share the same soul? Is Heaven largely populated by the ~25-50% of fertilized eggs that fail to implant and embryos that die on their own before birth?
Roe v Wade apparently has some legal problems, focused on how one is to decipher the US Constitution in the context of the present. It would seem that analogous problems of an even more difficult nature face those who would decipher the Bible with confidence in the context of contemporary technologies.