Lesbian couples will soon be able to have thier "own" children.

[Alcon]

Could someone explain why this is so disturbing?  It's not that I'm certain it isn't; it's just that I'm too tired to think about it.

[Alcon]

It is disturbing because it's playing God in creating life in strange ways. Something like that. The question is perhaps whether people should be able to create life for their own amusement, so to speak.

I don't see how this is any more "playing God" than regular old heterosexual coitus.  Both result in life being created, no matter how they get there.  How is using technology to emulate a natural biological process "playing God"?  And if there is no apparent harm, who cares?

[Alcon]

F***ing is natural. Messing around with test tubes and the like isn't and is probably the thin end of the wedge anyway.

As natural as f**king may be, what about everything else that must be "playing God"?  I assume you also find cola unnatural and playing God?  As GMantis asked, organ transplants?

You missed out "n't" from the word with i and the s.

If the question is so easy to answer it, then, please just answer it.  Obviously the "answer" you just gave didn't help me understand your argument, which is what I'm genuinely trying to do.

How does using technology to emulate natural biological processes "playing God"?  Is God involved in your f**king?  It seems more like it's emulating something that people do.  But I suppose that sounds less threatening and all.

I think his main point is that the objective is to take a sperm and an egg and to get the two to combine to form an embryo, and was asking what difference it makes regarding how that gets done.

Exactly.

[Alcon]

It's not creating life though (and it's the artificial creation of life here that I don't like; it's just wrong as far as I'm concerned)

I understand that.  I'm trying to elicit why.

Saving life, not creating it.

Which matters why, when it's "playing God"?

In just about every way possible (from a non-religious as well as a religious perspective).

Then give at least one example.

If God created life, then He also created the ability of living things to reproduce.

And God also created things we can eat and drink.  Why is artificially creating them also not horribly immoral?  Why only creating life?  What makes that different?

Nothing and everything.

Woah, man.  You, like, totally blew my mind.

[Alcon]

I'm tempted to say that it's because it's wrong and to let things go off in circles from there. But I won't because that would just be totally unproductive.

It is wrong because, in my view, it is not for humans to have power over creation. You could ask "why" to that, but that question would be as perplexing to me as my views on this issue seem to be for you. If you (impersonal you, obviously) see a particular fact as being self-evident then explaining things to someone who does not see it as being self-evident (quite the reverse) and who regards it as an opinion (and a very strange one to boot) is quite difficult; in fact it's all too easy to head off into the territory of trite one-liners and respond with (say) "some things are wrong because they are wrong".
I could be very wrong here, but I'll guess that the problem in this case is that while I (essentially) live in a world of moral certainties, you don't. Of course, there's nothing wrong with people thinking in very different ways about certain issues. Dignity of difference and all that.

I know that you have the view...but if you can't explain it to me, how did you explain it to yourself?  Or did you come into existence with that arbitrary belief?  I just don't understand why.

You could argue (for example) that it's wrong to interfere in the evolutionary process in such a way.

In what sort of harmful way?

See that thing about things seeming self-evident from my perspective but apparently not yours.

There has to be a logical explanation for it being self-evident, though, or I don't think it...why would I?  Isn't "evident" kind of a variant of the word "evidence"?

Uncalled for.

If you're going to give me a silly, vague answer like "everything and nothing," I didn't imagine you'd be offender if I gave you a plain-silly response. 

[Alcon]

Well...yeah...but in that case, whether they realize it or not, they are being negatively impacted.  There's an obvious and rational explanation for immorality there.

Don't you think that, if you can't really find a rationale for your beliefs, you might want to reconsider it?  I know I'm committing a cardinal sin of debate here, but that's the same attitude that fueled things like racism.  "I feel this way, and it's obvious to me although I can't explain why, so that's how it is."

Sleep well. 

edit: I sure sound like a jackass when I debate.  Please don't take this argument personally.  It's just intellectual.

[Alcon]

To you, yes. But presume that you grew up in a society in which it's fairly common to view something as immoral if it causes harm that the victim is aware of? No knowledge, no harm, or something like that?

Awareness aside, no, if there is no direct or relative harm to someone else, I do not consider it immoral

No, because I do have a reason for thinking in the way I do over this issue. But as I explained earlier it's not easy to explain something "obvious" to someone who does not see it as being "obvious" at all. Especially when the other person thinks in a different way to you.

I can understand that, but I'd at least appreciate an attempt.  Even if I don't follow the logic, it's very hard to maintain an internal debate when I don't even understand the sort of process behind it.  Of course, it's not your job to entertain my personal reflection, so I suppose that's pointless.

Actually that's not the sort of attitude that fueled Racism (with a big "R") at all. If anything the opposite is the case; a hell of a lot of "scientific proof" for Racist theories was published in the 19th and early 20th centuries and was propagated (and believed) by countless well educated people who believed equally strongly in Reason, Science, Progress and so on (the capital letters are Important here). They "knew" that Whites were superior to other "races" and had plenty of "proof" for it.
The connection between a Mississippi lynch mob and 19th (and before then actually, although obviously not developed to the same ghastly extent) century intellectuals might seem like an odd (or even a far-fetched) idea, but it's there.

But was that the fundamental belief, or the rationalization thereof when approached with those remanding rationales?

[Alcon]

I thought it was common knowledge that things got a lot worse for other races in the wake of Darwin and all that.

Anyway, ALcon you seem to be ignoring the fact that any account of morality, of what is wrong and right, involves at least one step of assumption (of course, all sort of knowledge does). There is always a step in every argument that cannot be explained. Conclusions come from premises, but at the very least one single premise must remain unexplained. You can draw the conclusion that there is no knowledge (or no moral knowledge) if you want. But Al doesn't and there is nothing wrong with that.

Yes, it's just a foreign thinking process to me.  I'm not interested in challenging it as much as poking it to try to gain a great appreciation/understanding from it, since it's being used by someone who is smarter than I am.

What is the test for you that distinguishes emotive, ignorable rationale from this unexplainable, but still usable type?

I'm really a lot less interested in changing minds than I am in understanding them, which is why I tend to poke and prod people too much for my own good.  I'm not trying to make fun of your system of belief.