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Abortion Is a Cosmic Crime
The obvious reason, put simply, is that humans are cosmic beings. Terminating the existence of a cosmic being, at any stage, for frivolous or no reason, can only be a crime against the cosmos.
How so?
The scientists tell us that the Universe is some 15 billion years old. Further, that life originated on this planet some 3 billion years ago. Loren Eisley, in his somewhat strange book, The Immense Journey, outlines the events that led to the appearance of humans on the planet, as modern Man some 200,000 years ago or so ago. And humans are the only beings we know of in the cosmos that are aware of being aware. Self-conscious. Conscious of their own consciousness.
Further, we are told there are some 10 to the 500th power possible universes. That our universe is only one of the possible 10 to the 500th power universes. And that ours is the only Universe in which we can exist. None of the others would lead to the appearance of a conscious being aware of its own consciousness. We are, if you will, the embodiment of the Universe’s capacity for self-awareness. We are the only such embodiment. In the only universe that could possibly produce such a being. Indeed, the fine-tuning of the fundamental constants of the Universe, is so precise as to defy description, and can only be explained by the Anthropic principle, the gist of which is that the Universe was made for Man, not Man for the Universe (although the physicists will reject such phraseology as a knee-jerk reflex, it accurately expresses their Anthropic Principle).
We know that once a human egg is fertilized, and becomes an embryo, a frenzy of cellular activity begins that in a short eight weeks of a continuous process, produces, from a single cell, a fully formed human being, with a full complement of some 80 billion neurons comprising it’s nervous system. That process is, to say the least, poorly understood. That human nervous system is arguably, contrary to the wildly misguided notions of the Time Bandits, the most fabulous thing in the Universe.
That particular embryo at fertilization is utterly unique in the history of the cosmos. No single identical individual person has existed before, and no identical person will ever exist after.
The Evolutionists tell us that that embryo is a cosmic accident. A happenstance. Something foreign in and to the cosmos. A mere roll of the cosmic dice. Of no significance. Yet the basis of their science is determinism. Which essentially says that whatever is must have come about because of forces that guaranteed that outcome. That the existence of that embryo must somehow have been programmed into the Universe at the moment of the “Big Bang..” They want it both ways. They contradict themselves. They are completely and egregiously in conflict with themselves.
Or they say that whatever the Universe permits will eventually emerge. Given enough time, all possibilities will be realized. That Humans are merely one of innumerable possibilities. Yet, humans are, as of now, as far as we know, utterly unique in the Cosmos. And unique in a way that does indeed reflect the Cosmos becoming aware of itself. And to extirpate such a being for frivolous reasons is an affront to the Cosmos. A violent intervention in the Cosmic order. At any stage of the existence of such a being, beginning to end.
So that Human Consciousness is studied and examined, mostly in ways that emphasize and insist on the finite and limited nature of that consciousness. That it is a causal mechanical system only. The problem is that the “scientists” or philosophers, etc., simply cannot explain it. The simple event of someone hearing a sentence, processing it, and making a verbal response, is so far beyond the capacities of “science” that it is almost laughable. Yet we treat that being as if we fully understood all that is important or needed to classify that being as some determinate collection of atoms of no significance whatsoever. Has any greater error ever been made?
Noam Chomsky once told us what language was. Unfortunately, he used a Skinnerean black box construct that explained nothing. Finally he admitted that he had no idea what language is or where it comes from or what produces it. Just a little candor, for which we are grateful (See Tom Wolfe’s book “The Kingdom of Speech”).
David Hume told us that our consciousness reflects only our sensory perceptions, bundled together. Eventually he realized that his “bundle” theory fell short, and posited that there must be an “Evident Connection” to use Galen Strawson’s words. But Hume had no idea what that was. Hume of course was called an “Empiricist” though he never did anything empirical, like amass data on a specific type of event to try and see what underlay it, like, say, Faraday did. He only speculated on Empiricism. And he kept contradicting what he supposedly was by doubting all Empiricism (going so far as to say that just because the sun rises today, does not mean that it will rise tomorrow). He was something of a skeptical anti-empiricism empiricist, it seems.
Since Hume, many have tried to explain consciousness. Dennett, for example, tells us that our consciousness is akin to the software of a computer. So how is it that human consciousness created computers? And software? The chicken comes before the egg comes before the chicken and etc….
Dennett eventually admits that he cannot explain consciousness. As Gomer Pyle would say: Surprise, surprise!
That doesn’t stop Stephen Pinker from emphasizing all the cognitive limitations of humans, such that, to read him, one comes to suspect that no human ever crossed a street without the assistance of some genius like Pinker. Or the behavioral economists who insist that we all must be continuously “nudged” in order for us to survive, let alone thrive.
No consideration by Pinker of how any such Human could invent calculus, discover the laws of motion, produce General Relativity, or Zermelo=Frankl logic, or Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems, or, for that matter, fly to the moon. Or cult the Pieta’ or write the Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost or the Canterbury Tales or Borges’ stories or produce a Bible.
More recently, Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff have presented a model of the Human nervous system as a high-temperature superconducting quantum computational system. Something like this would have to be the case, given the phenomenon of savantism. Yet Penrose falls short of explaining the central conundrum of physical science: How Human Consciousness collapses the Wave Equation. This question, recognized by Schrödinger from the Quantum mechanics that he developed, drove Erwin Schrödinger to distraction and a Vedantic panpsychic view, that the only thing that exists is consciousness. Bohr tried to prevent consideration of such a question without complete success. And Hugh Everett confused the whole issue with his Everettian view of multiple Universes created.moment after moment by Human conscious observation of physical events. (Sean Carroll apparently got fired recently from his position occupying the Feynmann chair at Cal Tech due to the seriousness with which he considers the Everettian idea).
Withal, one must perforce accept that Consciousness is as intrinsic to the Cosmos as gravity, the electroweak force, the strong nuclear force, and charge, parity, and time symmetry. And that thus we are an integral phenomenon of the cosmos, a manifestation of the fundamental nature of the Cosmos. The most overt manifestation of the most fundamental nature of the Cosmos.
Subtle is the Cosmos, and we are creatures, creations, of it, and of its Creator. As clay under the seal.
Published in General
Hm. But does that mean that each time a person dies of anything, however old they managed to get, that bit of cosmic consciousness is gone forever?
If not, if that bit of cosmic consciousness returns to the cosmos, is basically recycled, wouldn’t that apply to aborted babies too?
So I just don’t think that’s a good argument against abortion.
Great points, and an enjoyable read. But you don’t escape the inescapable problem of a mind, a consciousness, within a system, trying to explain itself.
As the great philosopher Emo Phillips pointed out: “Of all of the amazing parts of the body, the most amazing by far has got to be the brain. But then I think, well look who’s telling me that!”
And Kurt Vonnegut’s lovely poem from the Books of Bokonon:
Tiger got to run, bird got to fly.
Man got to sit and wonder Why, why, why?
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land.
Man got to tell himself, I understand!
Yes, I would like to understand in the context of this article the difference between the subject of abortion addressed in this article and the protection being afforded Gaia and all around her except humans by the climate change movement.
Why can I not understand why the human, the sole and only conscious material, can be dispensable.
It would be a waste to refute the poor materialism presented here as straw man, because it would only be met with poor metaphysics.
Sigh.
I started radiation therapy today, the first of 35 such treatments scheduled. This follows surgical removal of tumorous tissue and three molars preparing for this radiation therapy for cancer in my left mandible. The absence of this capability would presumably result in a less desirable outcome than the treatment is design to provide. Like Bongino says: ‘Don’t Get Dead’.
This is the second time in this last phase of my life that I am the beneficiary of life extending medical procedures developed during my lifetime and I am very grateful to those who were here on this earth to discover and develop these medical techniques. And I don’t mean to downplay all the other things that help people and save lives, and things other than medical that help people.
This post is about actions that destroy a potential that is unimaginable. We will never know what we didn’t get. But we can know some of what is lost during our lifetime merely by applying the yogiism ‘You can observe a lot by just watching’. Maybe it’s not allowed to apply that to good things that are prevented from happening. The climate change movement is destroying untold amounts of future good developments perhaps even including our ability to develop solutions to problems and outcome we fear. Abortion is in the same category.
mind, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists of the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, with the futility of the attempt due to the fact that it has only itself to know itself with.
Can’t be certain, but I think that is close to something Ambrose Bierce said.
It all comes back to this:
Psalm 139:14
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
No. Conservation principles suggest that individual consciousness and its content is a part of the universe as long as the universe exits, and cannot be destroyed. Individual identity is conserved forever, and the truncation of that individual consciousness via abortion forever deprives the universe of the potential content of that individual’s consciousness forever.
Give it a shot. What say you is consciousness? Something immaterial? Then how does consciousness, mind, interact with matter? Are humans transcendent beings? Gödel says they are. Do you disagree? He claims to have demonstrated that mathematically (he used the term ‘transfinite’). You seem to know what consciousness is. Give us the benefit of your insight. Thanks in advance. Is there any kind of metaphysics that is not poor metaphysics?
Are you a proponent of abortion? Or do you object to it on other grounds? I object on all grounds, physical, religious, and any other grounds there might be. Do I err in assuming that you disdain my viewpoint here because you approve of abortion? You disdain my view because I present a materialist argument? I am as much in favor of a non materialist argument against abortion.
Are you a dualist? A materialist? A panpsychic Vedantic? A “strong panpsychic materialist like Galen Strawson?
What do you mean by a materialist straw man? How am I erecting a straw man?
You object with disdain. How about with a pertinent alternative view?
What are Humans? Quintessence of dust? A plague on the planet? The ultimate invasive species? The ultimate threat to the planetary and cosmic order? A cosmic accident? A fungible non entity? Clever beasts? Creatures made in the image of God?
What is consciousness? The Abbe Raynal considered human consciousness almost unlimited. Was he wrong?
Is AI beyond human consciousness?
No one else has answers in our materialistic age.
What is your good metaphysics?
What is your answer?
The worship of Gaia requires infant (fetal) sacrifice. Akin to the practices in Gehenna in the ancient world.
Are they aware or just don’t care?
If it’s deprived then how is it conserved?
It is the content of that individual’s consciousness that would have been developed during life on earth that the universe is deprived of, the consciousness is conserved but missing that potential content.
So it’s not really conserved, if you think that a human being’s span increases it.
You may be trying to bring in things we cannot know but we do know there is no content from a life on earth.
I rest my case.
Aware
What information develops is conserved. What potential information is blocked from developing cannot be conserved as it has never existed.
That sounds like even abstinence is evil, because it deprives the cosmos of additional consciousness that could be created if only we’d get to banging more.
Gödel sort of addressed that inescapable problem in his Incompleteness theorems. It is a problem of second order logic in which predicate statements are made about predicate statements. The leads to paradox, the Cretan who says all Cretans are liars, or Russell’s paradox: is the set of all sets that are not members of themselves a member of itself.
Godel showed that all axiomatic systems of second order logic have provable true theorems that are contradictory; that the only way to avoid that is to start with an infinite number of axioms. (Your point). But he also showed that we can find ways to verify the truth of propositions we cannot prove. He described this capacity as ‘trans finite’ and from this he developed a theistic system. In short he restated Browning: Our reach exceeds our grasp. Thus, heaven.
What has existed is conserved. What might have existed, the content of the consciousness of that individual that would have developed, that does not exist because of the termination of the physical life, is not conserved. In this view we all add to the consciousness of the Universe so long as we live. This also presupposes a consciousness field that is material in the same sense that light is manifest via particles, photons. So a consciousness field, in which we grow, would be manifest by particles (cognitons?), which interact with the nervous system as light interacts with the eye. The consciousness field would be organized within and about us as an individual self that would be a quantum consciousness wave, like a Hericlitean standing wave that is however dynamic. That quantum consciousness wave embodied in the individual life of the physical individual is what is conserved.
Right. The human being creates something new and unique in the cosmos via his or her consciousness experience throughout physical existence. Once that new information is created, once that new information is added to the Universe, it cannot in principle be destroyed, despite the physical death of the individual. The bodies dies and decays but the conscious content of that individual self remains within the consciousness field of the cosmos.
“Conserved” seems like the wrong term then. “Conservation of energy” for example states that energy is neither destroyed NOR CREATED (from nothing). Applying that to consciousness would mean that the total amount of consciousness in the universe is constant, neither increasing nor decreasing, but only changing form.
Unless…
My first reaction to this is “stuff and nonsense”, but it also is similar to subjects discussed in an episode of The Why Files. That video linked to a paper or final report where the author talked about what he called “the Absolute”. I downloaded the paper but haven’t read it yet.
I defend the the Father as an antagonist in The Brother’s Karamazov.
@Nancelot
I don’t think that you have tried to address the fairest and most intelligent of materialist philosophers and you are kinda disdainful of materialists in a manner that is unbecoming.
I respectfully suggest that you ask BDB what the best version of materialism is. Nobody advances by strawmen or petty insults.
So I ask BDB, “What does a materialist think about abortion? Also, why are you a materialist?
I don’t know what a materialist thinks about abortion. I know what I think — it’s wrong because it’s killing and if done for mere convenience amounts to murder. Cue the God-botherers and the apparent metaphysicians to investigate just how I can possibly hold such a belief, and I fart in their general direction. I don’t need a cosmic epistemology to back it up — it simply is.
Not one of us has an absolute right to life — if I stand on the tracks, the train conductor is not required to blow himself up in order to derail the thing before it hits me. But we do honor a domineering presumption toward the right to life in balance against most any other thing — right and good.
As for why I am “a materialist,” one might as well ask why I am made from DNA. I have a great regard for the propriety of the default position being a bias toward that which may be demonstrated, and according lesser weight to that which is merely attested.
I don’t carry “materialism” about as some philosophy or system of belief, although I admit that every person lives according to some set of beliefs (whether that is what they admit, even to themselves, or not). I object to the (not present yet in this thread) contention that to not accept ever more tenuous conjectures requires explanation. Equating hand-waving word salad such as this post with observations which may be independently tested is the step off the path of knowledge.
Look what happened when this author was almost trivially challenged on his use of “conservation.” He used it in the scientific sense, to draw support from things we know are true, but when questioned, it turned out that’s not what was meant at all. Something else entirely, which is fine, but it’s not conservation in the sense that was intended. And so on.
I don’t begrudge the author his beliefs. I absolutely begrudge the skin-suiting of science and its results. Crystals, earth harmonies, cosmic consciousness… sure you can find intelligent people talking about them, but it still doesn’t add up. To anything.
People believe all sorts of ludicrous things, and some of them are friends just the same.
If others wish to label a reliance on that which can be demonstrated some “alternate” worldview, that’s another form of special pleading, usually to support an exodus of special pleading from the simple available facts.
“This materialist age.” Piffle. We have never been less materialist than an age where physical reality matters less and less to the lifespan and reproductive opportunities for an increasing number of people. Nonsensical beliefs used to be fatal. Then merely harmful. Now they’re damned near required.
Right you are: Genesis 1:28