Here's a question for you: why is Obama "black?" Was that his choice, his family's choice, his culture's choice, your choice, all of the above or just some proclaimed fact from an all-knowing-deity?

No, you're not reading it right. Given the constant small steps of evolution, you end up tripping over the very definition of chicken. Becuase that alomst but not quite checken is a mythical creature. What we have today, we consider chickens. What we have today is slightly different from the jungle chicken. But that would have been a chicken then. That's why he uses the N+1 argument, evolution doesn't stop. We can observe complete speciation, but not the tiny steps of detail.

Which is why the argument ends up becoming is the chicken that laid this egg the chicken, or does the egg laid become the chicken?

And even if you specify chicken eggs, it's *still* the egg. By the process of evolution, the first chicken would have been a mutation from parents that were almost, but not quite, chickens. The almost-but-not-quite-chicken mother would have laid an egg, out of which hatched the first chicken. So the egg came first.

The "spirit" is bullshit. There is no brain, so there's no place for consciousness to emerge from. It's no more alive than a scab.

This is the same community that you can still start a street fight, or at least a troll war, by asking "Which is better: emacs or vi?" I'm not sure they're ever going to get over this. But, like the above question, the world will move on and leave them behind.

Yeah, but what educated person believes a blastocyst is "alive"?

My objections to the ACA? It raised my premiums 200% for similar coverage. It forces everyone to have health insurance (or pay the tax penalty), meaning that insurance companies can charge what they want.

As opposed to what? The government mandating prices?

If you meant that insurance company profits peak at an unresonably high profit margin level, isn't that what the market is supposed to take care of?

What is it specifically you object to about the ACA? Covering more people? You do realize the whole idea behind any health insurance is that healthy people support the unhealthy. My main objection to it is that it let the health insurance companies and their "death panels" ("actuaries" to you) live. It has only been since the 1960's that insurance companies have gotten into health insurance in a big way. And we can mark the cost rises for health care to them.

How can you "abort" a fertilized egg that isn't even in a womb?

Posting anonymously since I've voted on other posts: I don't think 99% of people would care that non-human cloning it erases a potential life. We end actual animal lives all the time for food, sport, or simply out of carelessness.

Concerns about cross-species surrogacy (that could kill the mother, a species with problems of its own), creating social animals with no living members of the species to acculturate it, and of course, spending millions of dollars that could (arguably) be better spent preserving extant species all seem like more likely ethical concerns.

You've never eaten eggs? What do you think eggs are?

Well, yeah, but you wouldn't be using a human zygote for this. Seems like only the 3 craziest members of PETA in the world would have an ethical problem with this...

I don't understand... what would be unethical about this?

Constitution shmonstitution, we got us a mujorty! We can do as we likes. First up, let's repeal the goddam 15th.