Screaming Penguin

PZ Meyers gets up on Raving Atheist for is pro-life stance.

suspect that soon there will be at least one religious person who will claim he converted from atheism who I will believe. The Raving Atheist is getting ripe: he's been ramping up the irrationality for some time now, precessing like a top slowing down, and I expect that soon enough he'll flop over for Jesus. I'm not questioning his sincerity—he is an atheist, all right, and there is no doubt about it—but his sympathies are getting weirder and weirder ... His rationalizations for pro-life extremism simply don't make sense: he seems to think something special happens at fertilization that unambiguously and unarbitrarily defines a human being. Diploidy is not the scientific term for ensoulment. Genetic specification is not sufficient to specify an individual. Potential is not a synonym for actuality. Fertilization is not a switch that triggers an ineluctable program towards individuality. The combinatorial uniqueness of an individual's genome is inadequate to define the individual. Amanda notes that most opposition to abortion comes from either religious convictions, a commitment to a sexist social order, or I'd add, a rather primitive and unthinking desire to tightly control reproduction in potential mates and kin. I don't know which of these apply to RA, but his weak excuses clearly rule out that it might have been an intellectual decision on his part.

I have to say, I think this is pretty unfair. Godstuff aside, I think there is a real and honest disagreement that can be had about what makes a "Person" and what "Killing a Person" means. I am not sure that "unique genetic code" is any less valid. I admit, I don't buy that definition for any number of reason. I am actually more inclined to define "Personhood" as sentience, and I think that might exceedingly complicate the world if that was the case -- arguable that would permit infanticide and might make killing a dolphin murder -- but it is all about levels. Anyway, Meyers is falling into a trap here that makes my skin crawl. Much like theism is not a necessary precondition for morality, theism is not a necessary precondition for a firm pro-life stance. To imply the later is to tacticly give credence to the former.