The thing is, the phrase "kill" refers mostly similarly "take life away", and I think the issue here is that "life" isn't exactly well-define or agreed upon by society.
Is an unborn child alive? Are you alive before you are born? Some think yes, it is living; some don't. Some think it's a phase of transition.
My point: if you bring up the issue on the morality of murder, or killing people, I'm sure the majority of society would say it's wrong, no doubt. But to bring up murder without having a clear definition of what it means to be alive (as in the case of Mother Teresa's quote) makes for a debatable issue in morality.
American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary life (lf) n. pl. lives (lvz)
1. The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism.
Even before fertilization, not one sceintist denies the fact that the cells (the sperm and the egg) are alive because they exibit all of those characteristics. However, those cells are obviously not human life, but rather, cells alive within a human. Human life begins when a new set of genetically distinct DNA is created, and all it needs is time to grow and to develop to become a fully grown baby. Now there is debate over sematics, whether it is a "person" or not. But there is no debete about wheter it is human (it comes from two humans reproducing, so it must be human), or whether it is alive (it meets the basic sci. def. of life stated above).
Yes, it is true that some poeple in society say that a zygote is not a human being. So I am wondering...when do you consider it a human being? When do you think is the magic age/growth of development period that the baby becomes a human being? (Something I find interesting..a lot of human beings in history were not considered human by society, even though they obviously were....slaves, african americans, women/children, jews, etc...kind of a big similarity to unborn children nowadays
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Is an unborn child alive? Are you alive before you are born? Some think yes, it is living; some don't. Some think it's a phase of transition.
My point: if you bring up the issue on the morality of murder, or killing people, I'm sure the majority of society would say it's wrong, no doubt. But to bring up murder without having a clear definition of what it means to be alive (as in the case of Mother Teresa's quote) makes for a debatable issue in morality.
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American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary
life (lf)
n. pl. lives (lvz)
1. The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism.
Even before fertilization, not one sceintist denies the fact that the cells (the sperm and the egg) are alive because they exibit all of those characteristics. However, those cells are obviously not human life, but rather, cells alive within a human. Human life begins when a new set of genetically distinct DNA is created, and all it needs is time to grow and to develop to become a fully grown baby. Now there is debate over sematics, whether it is a "person" or not. But there is no debete about wheter it is human (it comes from two humans reproducing, so it must be human), or whether it is alive (it meets the basic sci. def. of life stated above).
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