Easter Rambling

Over at the Left Coaster larre points us to an excellent piece in the St. Petersberg Times on the significance of the Terri Schiavo media show. I'm not going to do any copy and pastes here and I suggest you go read the entire article. I am going to discuss some of the points made in the piece however.
One very important point the author, Wes Allison, makes is that our conventional morality has not been able to adapt to the rapid advances in technology. A question that is very difficult to answer is "when is a biologically living body no longer a human being?" I am not a religious person, certainly an agnostic if not an atheist. To me a body without a cerebral cortex is no longer a "person". Conservative and Christian Neal Boortz asks the following question which would seem to indicate that we are on the same page here.

Do you believe that the human soul can make the transition to everlasting life while the human body that carried that soul through life clings to life on this earth?

It would appear that Mr Boortz does believe that can be the case. So when is a body just a body, just an empty vessel? Can rational secular morality and irrational religious morality ever reach common ground? Since the religious community can't even agree the answer is probably no. This must remain a personal decision. Of course those on the lunatic fringe of Christianity do not accept personal decisions and are doing everything in their power to create a theocracy in the United States not unlike the Islamic theocracies they are quick to condemn. This was the real nature of the Terri Schiavo battle; it wasn't about Terri, it was all about secular VS extreme religious law. Of course when the politicians get involved it becomes all about political power as well.

Cross posted at Running Scared.