Bun in the oven
Just because the cake ingredients are all mixed in and placed in the oven doesn’t mean you have made a cake. It’s still cake batter, and is so for some time.
If after a few minutes the baker decides not to bake the cake after all, he’s throwing away cake batter, not a cake.
Anything that gets built has a construction process, and just because there might not be a clear moment when the thing becomes that thing doesn’t mean it’s that thing at the first moment of construction.
The fact that there is no single clear delineation point between, say, zygote and 8.5 month old fetus doesn’t mean there’s not a firm distinction between them. That’s what the cake story reminds us of. ALL the distinctions we make in life are “vague” like this, or “gray”.
And in my earlier research / book — Brain from 25000 Feet — I try to explain why that is.
If one wishes to argue a zygote is valuable and should be protected, the argument cannot simply be, “We HAVE to treat as if it’s an 8.5 month old because there’s no clear line in between.” That’s a fallacy.
And one cannot say, for the same reason, that batter MUST be treated equally in value as cake BECAUSE there is no clear line between them.”
One can STILL value batter though.
In fact, one might value batter MORE than cake (maybe I don’t want cake now, but at some uncertain time in the future).
The issue here is to avoid a well-known argument fallacy, one we all are susceptible to, in all facets of life.
So the Sorites paradox is being used here to demonstrate that I can one-by-one take away pieces of a person and at some point enough pieces have been taken such that it is no longer a person. I think the human brain peaks at around age 27, so maybe anyone older than 30 is far enough removed from their maximum "personhood" that we can no longer consider them human? Maybe anyone with an IQ below 100 is far enough removed from optimum personhood that they can no longer be considered human? I think we've been down these roads before.
I get that you don't like the use of the "Sorites paradox" argument against abortion. It is a paradox because the definition of heap is subjective and not well defined. I am curious if this is the best argument against abortion you are seeing and you are just wanting to see a better argument?
In the "bun in the oven" example above, the oven is not cooking another oven. And since the baker is not the oven but is able to decide whether or not to bake the cake, I assume this is a metaphor for God? Mixing the ingredients (DNA?) and placing the batter (Zygote?) into the oven (Uterus?)
But of course any metaphor scrutinized too closely will not hold up as it is limited in in the point it is trying to make. The bun in the oven is meant to promote the idea that a growing baby begins simply as ingredients, like a cake batter until the moment it becomes cake.
If it must be a food metaphor though, how about Amish friendship bread? The bread begets bread. If the starter mix is discarded, then the remaining line of bread that can be made from the starter is cut off. The mix itself contains "life" as it causes the combined ingredients to rise immediately. It takes time (about 10 days), but part will mature to bread, and part will be shared with another to begin the process again.
Perhaps some important question in both examples are:
Where did the yeast (or the breath of life) ultimately come from?
Why shouldn't I see the recipe through once the process has begun?
What value does the mixture have to the creator of the recipe?
Can I alter the recipe or disregard the instructions and still claim to be following the creators intention?
Again, metaphors are only but so effective at getting concepts across. Biologically speaking, human life begins at conception. In the Old Testament law, the penalty for harming an unborn child was death (Exodus 21:22–25). Even non-christians tend to agree that it is unethical for one person to unilaterally decide the fate of another.
Why are we as a society trying to get so close to the line between murder and the sanctity of life? Without question, the consequences of abortion are (at a minimum and in just about every case) the ending of a life that would otherwise have been allowed to mature and grow closer to independence.
People, for the most part, like being alive. Its remarkable to me that it would be so easy for so many to take such a stand for a woman's right to "choose" whether she should be able to decide whether the life growing in her can be allowed to continue.