Blog Against Theocracy 2012

Here is a recipe for catastrophe: Base your society on myth and superstition, and then claim those ideas are profound and immutable.  Nothing good can come from it.

Take, as one example, the "Personhood" idea.  I like the example because there is an easily-followed path from religion to politics to law to lunacy.  In other words, the consequences of theocracy.  "Personhood" grants to fertilized human ova all of the legal status of living people.  The failed amendment to the Mississippi state constitution gives a definition, "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof."  My emphasis.  

 Religious zealotry crashes into physiologic reality.  Fertilization usually takes place in the fallopian tubes.  At least 50% of fertilized human eggs fail to implant in the uterus.  Those eggs have, typically, divided seven or eight times to form a hollow ball of about 150 cells called a blastocyst that is between 0.1 and 0.2 mm in diameter.  That is really tiny.  One hundred blastocysts can fit on the head of a pin.  All of the loser  blastocysts -- the ones that don't implant -- become part of the woman's menstrual flow.

The outflowing blastocysts are stillborn babies in a Personhood theocracy.  Deaths must be recorded, micro-corpses buried or cremated, and death certificates issued.  It gets ickier.  Lots ickier.  Every tampon and sanitary napkin used by every fertile, sexually active woman will need to be examined for dead blastocysts.  After all, you can't allow women to toss dead bodies into the trash. 

In math or science, we call it Reductio ad absurdum.  An idea is disproven by showing its consequences to be absurd.  I've not yet talked with a Personhooder about the absurd consequences of fertilized-eggs-are-people.  All I know is that the realities of human physiology have not yet deterred the zealots.  And, remember, the Personhood idea is just one sample of crazy intended by American theocrats.