But as much as you try to avoid it, the official policy line of the Republican Party of Texas endorses creationism. The national party doesn’t say this as boldfacedly, but most people understand their kowtowing to local control of schools as a coded way of saying this.

Your problem with your phrase “human entity” is that you have not defined it. So Bi’s assumption that you meant both the “human” soul and the “animal” soul (following from Confucious’ definition) is natural. Even your own reference doesn’t use the term entity, rather uses the more specific word “organism.” So all you have to do is to state that you meant the “animal” soul and not the “human” soul.

Regarding Reynolds and income inequality, I’ve read all of the specific research he critiques as well as his critique, and now several rejoinders to him as well. My reaction from reading Piketty-Saez was to wonder frankly why anyone had taken their claims seriously in the first place— the logic flaws are wide enough to drive a truck through. And to date I’ve still not seen an explanation from them or anyone else for the single largest absurdity which is their acknowledged-without-explanation exclusion of entitlements from the definition of income.

None of that proves that inequality isn’t rising, and I’m not all sure that it isn’t. I am sure from long experience that arguments on factual issues which center on non-factual questions (such as the other side’s motivations or attitudes) are big warning signs of bullshit on the march.

My original claim (which you misquote egregiously) was this: “clear fact of embryology that a new human entity’s life begins at conception.”

Your response, which I will actually quote (rather than making up a quotation and putting it in quotation marks, as you did): “Show me one scientific paper which manages to scientifically hypothesize in a falsifiable way, and prove by empirical observation, that “a new human entity’s life begins at conception”. Wait: there’s no such paper!”

So you made an affirmative claim here: There’s no such paper. Prove THAT, oh expert embryologist.

And I’m not going to debate any more about “science” with someone who refuses to actually know anything about the basic principles of science.

Good day.

And things get more interesting immediately after that:
Particular significance is often assigned to the first 2—2½ postfertilizational weeks [footnotes] because monozygotic twinning can still occur during that time; … Monozygotic twins are genetically but not ontologically identical, and so it has been maintained that the non-individuated embryo of 2—2½ weeks has yet to acquire determinate individuality, a stable (ontological) human identity. It is quite possible, however, that twinning may be determined extremely early.

If you want to quote people out of context, can you at least refrain from doing it in such an obviously stupid way?

anyone who takes the standard scientific view of human development hasn’t met your concocted burden of proof.

Hey, look here. And you know, I actually wrote very clearly that it’s not what “view” you take, it’s what you present as being objectively true. In this case, your ‘objectively true’ claim P is not “a foetus is a new human being”, it is “any obstetrics textbook will say that a foetus is a new human being”.

Then again, why should I expect you to care about any of this? You’re clearly refusing to actually learn anything about how science, logic, and fact-finding works—even as you claim to be pro-science.

Back at you, and all the rest who ignore that there are tens of millions of “orthodox Republicans” who are just fine with evolution.

BI —you’re just playing games. You have zero interest in science. There is no scientific argument that a new human life begins anywhere other than at conception. The question about abortion is how to treat that life, but it’s indisputable that the life is there. Just one of many, many sources (you can look this up on Amazon):

Human Embryology & Teratology, by Ronan R. O’Rahilly and Fabiola Muller. Page 8. Quote: “Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a “moment”) is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.”

There are lots more textbooks along this line that you can find on Amazon. If, that is, you’re interested in anything beyond playing stupid games on the Internet by pretending that anyone who takes the standard scientific view of human development hasn’t met your concocted burden of proof.

Good at ignoring disconfirming evidence, aren’t you? That is the hallmark of a nonscientific view.

When the largest and most influential state Republican party officially endorses I.D., that is enough to validate the anti-science credentials of Republicans.

Oh, great. What’s this “science” of yours again?

“The other way of measuring the dates of the pregnancy is to measure the fetal age. The fetal age of the pregnancy is measured from the time of conception or the estimated time of conception (ETC).”

What a major breakthrough for anti-abortionism! We still don’t know whether a foetus is a real human, but research on embryology has shown us that a foetus is a foetus!

Oh, and…

got a cite to prove that the Earth is round? Huh? Guess it’s not, then.

You know, the way this whole “burden of proof” works is this: if a person X makes a claim P, the onus is on X to prove P. It’s that simple. It’s not “X makes a claim P, now Y must disprove P“. Or “X thinks that Y believes a claim P, therefore now Y must prove P“.

But of course you wouldn’t have known this, since you didn’t show the least bit of interest in learning the first thing about scientific methodology.

In other words, Quiggin’s post is just as if one said, “Orthodox Democrats do not accept economics,” when one really meant that 1) some Democrats disagree with 2) cost-benefit analysis of regulation.

FYI: I’m not trying to “exhaust” you. Just asking for a shred of proof that “orthodox Republicans” are “assiduously” promoting Intelligent Design. Name one thing that Bush has done to promote ID. Name one thing that Bill Frist has done to promote ID. Etc. If you can’t come up with even one thing, let alone numerous examples, shouldn’t you stop using words like “assiduously”? It suggests a lack of vocabulary. Or accuracy.

“Politically, a majority of conservative Republicans favor replacing evolution with creationism in the classroom, but support for this proposal falls below 40% for all other political groups, including moderate and liberal Republicans.”

Whoop-de-do, BI. If fewer than 40% of moderate and liberal Republicans want to replace evolution with creationism, guess that means it must NOT be true that all “orthodox Republicans” support creationism. So you’ve proven Quiggin to be sloppy, at best.

Quiggin’s possible excuse will be to claim that “orthodox” precisely means “those Republicans who deny science,” but then his original post becomes a pure tautology: “there is now no academic discipline whose conclusions can be considered acceptable to those specific Republicans who don’t accept those conclusions.”