HILL: In the beginning

In the annals of recorded human history, there has never been a fertilized human egg that became a goat or a kumquat

(NASA / AP Photo)

When liberal politicians are asked when human life begins, they deflect by saying they aren’t scientists so they are not qualified to answer the question.

On the other hand, scientists say they are 10,000% sure the universe exploded out of nothingness 13.8 billion years ago. They know exactly when the universe was conceived and birthed.

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It stands to reason that cold-blooded, data-driven atheist scientists should be as definitively certain about when human life begins.

Or maybe not.

I went to a debate billed as a civil conversation between an atheist physicist and a Christian professor in a divinity school about the cosmos. It did not disappoint. It was very good and informative and should serve as the model for all debate in this divided country.

The physicist was 10,000% sure about the origins of the cosmos. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind. He could prove it by measuring the speed of light waves still emanating from the Big Bang long ago.

Near the end of the debate, he strayed just a tiny bit from the topic at hand and asked the Christian professor a nonreligious question: “Why do Christians deny the fact that global warming is occurring and our planet is heating up due to man’s use of carbon-based energy sources?”

Many global warming skeptics, Christian and nonbelievers, just have a lot more questions they would like to have answered before they are ready to let the climate change warriors shut down every carbon-based form of energy production. No one wants to freeze to death in the winter while having green activists hector them for not having enough solar panels which wouldn’t work in a blizzard anyway.

His question brought up a recurring nagging question I have had for many years about how liberals lean on science when it suits them and abandon science when it doesn’t: “Why do scientists equivocate about when human life begins?”

Biology is science. Take out all consideration of religion, ethics and politics and consider the human act of reproduction solely on a provable, repeatable scientific basis ― shouldn’t an atheist scientist be the first one to admit that human life begins at the microsecond of conception?

Couples pay tens of thousands of dollars to bring a human sperm and a human egg together in in vitro fertilization clinics across the world. Why would they do such a thing unless they thought the frozen embryo could one day become their human child?

Since the physicist was so sure about the origin of the universe through provable science, I asked him: “Doesn’t the science of biology prove that when a human egg and human sperm join together, human DNA is combined from the chromosomes of the two cells and progresses through cellular division to become a human being?”

The atheist scientist answered very carefully: “Ummm . ..it depends on when a fertilized cell becomes “human.”

WHAAAAAT??????? Here was an esteemed and highly respected physicist, an atheist no less, who had just said he could prove in a laboratory that the universe began 13.8 billion years ago beyond a shadow of a doubt, but he could not say with any specificity when a single human life begins?

In the annals of recorded human history, there has never been a fertilized human egg that became a goat or a kumquat. Fertilized human embryos with human DNA strands do not just jump off the tracks midway through a pregnancy and suddenly replace their human DNA strands with DNA from a legume plant.

Without a human sperm entering a human egg, a human being doesn’t happen. There can’t be anything more clearly proven in science and biology labs than that.

Scientists are certain the universe started 13.8 billion years ago. Scientists were certain we were going to burn up due to global warming by the year 2000. However, at the same time, many scientists can’t say human life begins at conception, probably due to fear of being canceled or ostracized on college campuses.

Many also equivocate when asked if any human with a Y chromosome in every cell of their body is physiologically and biologically a male while everyone with two X chromosomes is physiologically female.

Such mental jujitsu turns science into make-believe and coarsens public debate. Scientific equivocation of basic biological facts does not improve it. It also renders every high school biology textbook obsolete.

Scientists should remain cold-blooded scientists and call balls and strikes like some sort of cosmic umpire. If they do, that will be the greatest contribution they can make to civil discourse in modern America.