Zach Weiner understands biologists perfectly – it’s because he’s engaged to one. One note of contention though…
…for me it would be a pig genome, not a pig fetus. But they’re basically the same, right? Right?
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Tabletop Transitional – SMBC on the Biologist’s Dilemma |
Homologous Legs is the blog of Naon Tiotami (aka. Jack Scanlan), an Australian undergraduate biology student who has a serious problem with creationists, intelligent design proponents and anyone else who misrepresents the science of evolutionary biology.
 
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Copyright © 2010 Homologous Legs - All Rights Reserved |
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Nom, nom, nom…
Random anecdote: the other day a Wiccan friend of mine was telling me about how he was planning on refusing to dissect a pig fetus in biology because of his religion. Curious, I asked him which part of his religious beliefs it was violating and he said the general sanctity of life. As it turned out, he was not a vegetarian but it was more the fact that it had been "killed for the purpose of dissection" that he took most offense to.
For some reason it took me a while to realize that this meant he placed more value on food rather than knowledge.
Furthermore, when I asked him what fell under the definition of life for Wiccans he basically said something along the lines of quick response to stimuli, except with far more words. This was why plants were not seen as having souls. I pointed out to him that bacteria also respond to stimuli fairly quickly and asked whether, since Wicca is a fairly less structured religion, they had to alter their beliefs with the discovery of bacteria. Apparently, he is in no danger of having to give up hand sanitizer because he has looked at animal cells and seen their aura but bacteria cells have a stark lack of an aura, indicating that although they respond to stimuli, bacteria have no souls.
That was completely off topic, but I should think you'll find it just as fascinating.
I for one do. How people arrive at their beliefs is always interesting.
I showed this to my biologist dad. He laughed. A lot.