This is why the redefinition of the term conception is so misleading.
There are many people who think that preventing fertilization is okay but that taking the life of a child, however young he or she may be, is wrong. Most people think that conception is fertilization--and at one point, it was defined that way. However, it was redefined, allowing hormonal birth control to be classified as a contraceptive. People who think that contraceptive means prevention of conception are under the impression that this does not do so by killing. It would not be surprising if the birth control pill were not called by a name which deliberately obscures part of its effect.
Anyone Christian believes it is okay to kill a child at any stage of existance is either not really a Christian, not properly informed about human biology, or not properly informed about scripture. Quite frankly, there are churches out there that call themselves Christian that are not. The bible says do not murder. It doesn't spell out not to murder old people, and people who look different, and people who speak a different language, and women, and people with birth defects. Why would it spell out not to murder people who are not born yet?
Our freedoms are limited all the time to protect others--our freedom to shout "fire" in a crowded theatre, our freedom to walk naked in public places, our freedom to bring gunracks into family restaurants... there are plenty of things that don't directly harm others that we are not allowed to do, let alone things that do harm others. For that matter, if I wanted to have my perfectly healthy left arm surgically removed--after all, I did not choose to have it be part of my body--I would probably be sent for psychiatric evaluation rather than surgery. And that does not hurt, intimidate, or violate anyone except myself, directly or indirectly. If a person performed a procedure normally performed on the fetus during abortion on a cat, they could face several years in jail. If a person smashes eggs laid by an endangered bird, they will be jailed or fined. Why? Because in these cases, somehow, the same judges who feel the life of an unborn human being is valueless recognize that those eggs are more than just a "potential" bald eagle or trumpeter swan.
Quite frankly, I think that anyone who thinks that some abortions should be legal, if they think through their logic, will realize that some born humans can be killed with the same logic. Once you take the stand that some human beings are of so little value they can be killed with impugnity, what is to stop you from extending the reasoning to some other given group?
At any threshhold, there are some just below and some just above, because human beings are not at discrete points on a digital scale. The difference between a baby the day before the third trimester begins and the day after is negligible; the difference between a baby born at 25 weeks and one still in the womb even more so. If anything, the baby still in the womb is more likely to develop into a normal, high-functioning human being, but he has less rights.
I hope you will forgive me for foregoing discussion of more the substantive elements of your comment and of the entire conversation. I realize the importance of this subject to you and am sensitive to your sensitivity.
Anyone Christian believes it is okay to kill a child at any stage of existance is either not really a Christian, not properly informed about human biology, or not properly informed about scripture.
I'm afraid I could not let this pass. There are good-hearted people in the Christian community, trying with earnestness to perceive and follow God's will as well as the dictates of their conscience and of the Holy Spirit, who disagree with you. While there is certainly some basis in scripture for suggesting the existence of the soul in the fetus, you cannot reasonably suggest that a soul at the blastocyst level is the only rational interpretation of scripture. To demean the interpretation of well-meaning Christians to the extent of calling them not properly Christian is utterly divisive. Perhaps they fail to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit as clearly and concisely as you do. The history of Christianity demonstrates that self-righteous conviction is frequently confused with God's will, and even if you don't take the lesson from that that you personally should be more humble in your assessment of divine will, this should allow you to be more compassionate for the well-meaning failure of others in assessing the same.
The position you speak of strikes me as falling under an improper understanding of human biology.
This has to do with the issue of cut-off points I mentioned. Why would a seven-day-old human have less value than a ten-day-old human? Does the ten-day-old human have less value than the fourteen-day-old human? If the human being gains value at fourteen days, is the status of a thirteen-day-old human slightly different because they are closer to that mark? If the human being has no value until fourteen days, is it permissible under certain circumstances to kill that human because it is so similar to the thirteen-day-old human? This is classic slippery-slope stuff. The only answer that makes sense is to defend all human life. Do I know when a human being is ensouled? No, of course not. Which is, then, a more ethical position? a) It is okay to protect something which might have a soul or b) It is okay to kill something which might have a soul. Should it not give us pause to remember that Jesus was once a blastocyst?
How many of the Christians you speak of have this view to justify what they are doing, like using abortifacient drugs or freezing embryos for in-vitro fertilization, rather than because it is a true conviction? How many simply believed abortion was okay before becoming Christians and have failed to properly reexamine that view in the light of the teachings of Jesus? Also, why are you defending the beliefs of people you claim no affiliation with?
The position you speak of strikes me as falling under an improper understanding of human biology.
I am sure you could have found a way to phrase that in a less demeaning way, but your intentions are well-received.
And I must further stress that I am keenly aware of your sensitivity to this subject, and I would not trouble you with these things if you had not called for it. I shall attempt to address the issue at hand with tact, and I apologize if I fail.
If you want absolute cut-offs, I could suggest the moment that brain cells start differentiating from other cells. The first electrical pulses, perhaps. Or if you want a later assessment, the moment inhibition is enabled in the brain (for it is long delayed in fetal development), an element as critical to meaningful brain activity as legs are to walking.
I acknowledge, however, that my analysis excludes one key matter, that of the soul. I believe the only sensible argument for your camp is that we don't know when God imbues the soul, so to avoid murder, we must act as if he imbued the body with a soul at the earliest point possible -- conception.
But are other Christians truly remiss in thinking that a brain with less capacity than a toaster could be the seat of a soul? One might argue that since God finished the creation 6000 years ago, he does not create souls, and a soul is developed as part of the process of embryonic and fetal development? Is it so difficult to imagine that zygote, which is little more than the fusion of genetic material, has not yet developed such a soul?
I do not mean to call your views false, only to suggest that there is room for sensible disagreement, even among those of faith. At the risk of sounding harsh, I would suggest that to suggest otherwise is an understandable consequence of the lack of humility that arises from deep personal conviction, which is the stuff of inquisitors and murderous crusaders.
But yes, let me swiftly acknowledge that if more Christians considered the facts of the matter and their implications and had ample information, a smaller number of them would be so ready as they are to have an abortion, or even use certain types of contraception. Worse, convenience often forces one to close one's eyes to moral scrutiny.
Yes, many abortions are performed due to lack of different types of integrity among Christians. I only ask of you the humility to admit that this is not the case for every Christian abortion.
Your phrase "if you want a later assessment" is telling. As a Christian, I cannot make assessments or decisions based on what I want; I must use the Bible as my guide in determining moral issues. If I want to decide, say, when or if it is moral to lie, I should be using scripture first, and human logic only as I decide how to apply that scripture, and only so far as it does not conflict with scripture.
Making arguments based on brain capacity is a very slippery slope indeed. Once one makes such an argument, one is in danger of excluding some born humans as well.
The only reasonable argument that I have heard of has to do with the phrase that "the life is in the blood." I have never heard this put forward by a person professing to have searched the scriptures and decided that life begins when the heart forms or when the baby develops a blood supply. I have only heard it mentioned by pro-life Christians who are acknowledging that there could be an alternate view based on this. But anti-life views tend to come from vaguer concepts and from feelings, not from scripture. I can't help but question the motives of someone who decides that killing an entity which, unhindered, would develop into a child in mere weeks is a moral thing. It certainly doesn't strike me as a stance which is Christ-like or which is based on obedience to God's will.
Except in cases where there is real and present danger to a mother, ending the life of her offspring cannot be a morally neutral act. I do not wish to comment on times where there is real and present danger to the mother's life, because I consider it a separate case.
Perhaps there is room for sensible disagreement, but I have yet to see it.
Perhaps there is room for sensible disagreement, but I have yet to see it.
I do believe that you have a desire to be right, which influences your opinion on these matters, and in my opinion, this desire is as plain as day in your writing. The desire to be right and the desire for convenience are equally disastrous in preventing the plague of self-selected philosophies with unwarranted certainty.
I cannot make my case more plainly.
1) The scripture only suggests (and not absolutely) the value of the fetus as a human being. 2) It is arguable as a matter of doctrine that the soul is developed during gestation. The zygote is inarguably a set of instructions encapsulated in a cell, and without these instructions even being parsed, there is sound basis for suggesting that a zygote is of no consequence, even among Christians. This is a sound basis for suggesting that even the Christian most careful about moral matters may employ the use of birth control that prevents implantation. 3) If one ignores the soul, the value of life as being describe as the potential for life is a ridiculously arbitrary distinction. If there is no soul, then human life is determined by brain activity. Independent life or thought is impossible without recurrent inhibition, so your suggestion that my distinctions of the brain may apply to children or adults is patently false. This point is entirely unimportant to a Christian, who does believe in the soul, except for the matter that it demonstrates that concerns about implantation and early term abortions are entirely religious in nature.
Even ignoring #3, if these points do not persuade you that there is room for disagreement among reasonable Christians, then I am persuaded to put you in the category of the inconsequential with those who believe there is no room for doubt in the existence of a six-armed creator, sustainer, and destroyer god. Such egotistical, implacable faith in one's ideas is indicative of a blind ignorance (willful or otherwise) of the equal certainty exhibited by people across this planet, a certainty that one is somehow distinct and separate in his or her superior capacity for thought and conviction.
You can think of me whatever you want and call me whatever you want.
No, the scripture does not define what a person is. That leaves one with a lot of leeway. I could decide that any number of groups are not people. It's been done throughout history. Currently the idea that humans of different ancestries is not popular; the belief is that humans of certain stages of development or with certain severe disabilities are not truly human is still quite common.
Again, with number two, you argue that because it is possible that there is no soul, killing the child should be allowed. This does not strike me as a Christian view. How do you think Jesus began his earthly existence? Did he suddenly appear in Mary's womb at 3 or 5 or 12 weeks old, with all the associated structures? Or did he go through the experience which is common to all of us, starting as a single cell?
If an egg has been fertilized, what is it that would make a Christian think that its implantation should be her decision? Why should she presume to plan her life that way? Wouldn't it be more prudent to assume that if God in His sovereignty chose for that egg to be fertilized, He may in His sovereignty want the zygote to become a blastocyst, and implant, and become a child if it is not one? Why should that woman place her will and decision-making powers as superior to that of God?
As one who does not call on the name of Christ, how do you presume to put forth and defend ideas as being held by Christians and equally as Christian as my own ideas?
Thank you for your indulgence. My words aren't intended to slander, but to paint a picture of the person who is set in his distinctions beyond reason and to encourage comparison and contrast. I think that you'll agree that the world is full of such people and that to consider ourselves enlightened we must be mindful of that trap. That said, I hope you find this conversation worth having, for if not, I would not be in the least slighted to find the entire thread screened, frozen, deleted, or otherwise terminated.
Your discussion of Jesus implicitly asserts that the zygote from which Jesus arose *was* Jesus, and thus you beg the question. That rejecting a fertilized egg is any different from rejecting a job offer also presumes the importance of the zygote, and thus likewise begs the question.
I characterize the substance of your argument as thus: There are a large number of possible apodictic interpretations of life. The lack of revelation in scriptures means that only God knows which is correct. To choose an interpretation on premises whose correctness cannot be absolutely verified is hubris whose consequence may be murder. The morally necessary thing is to adhere to a law which violates no possible interpretation of life.
It's a very strong argument. Don't take my attempt at formalization as a criticism; you expressed it perfectly well.
Here's the rub. Merely treating zygotes as sacred does not meet the criteria. There is equal justification for considering eggs to have souls. For while the zygote requires implantation to reach its potential, does not likewise an egg require a sperm to reach its potential? In both the egg-has-soul and zygote-has-soul cases, the majority of heaven's inhabitants will never have had a corporeal brain, so there's no additional absurdity.
As much as one might wish it to be so, assessing a behavioral law that defies any possibility or wrongdoing given an unknown set of rules is not feasible here. As a consequence, a good Christian must either make a judgment call based on supportable premises and/or arrive at a conclusion based on personal communication with the divine. Certainly no good Christian would engage in the former to the exclusion of the latter in such a grave matter!
As to my not being Christian (the significance of your particular phrasing is not lost on me), I don't see how that enters the matter of rational debate. Rational debate is accessible to all, even if one disagrees with the premises. The only matter than can be opaque is that of discernment of a spiritual quantity, and while one can encourage others to find this discernment in themselves, such a thing cannot be directly communicated, even among Christians.
"Your discussion of Jesus implicitly asserts that the zygote from which Jesus arose *was* Jesus, and thus you beg the question. That rejecting a fertilized egg is any different from rejecting a job offer also presumes the importance of the zygote, and thus likewise begs the question."
Psalm 119:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
Psalm 51:5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Luke 1:43-44 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
Biblical evidence that a child is the same person before and after birth is not scarce. In the quotations from Psalms, the David refers to himself as being himself from his conception. In the New Testament, Mary is called the mother of Jesus and John responds to His presence very early in her pregnancy. (Mary was told that Elizabeth was six months pregnant just before she conceived, so Jesus could not have been older than three months at this time).
"There is equal justification for considering eggs to have souls."
This is an interesting point; actually, your case might be even better if you used sperm, as there are several instances where a person is referred to as being in their father's body long before their birth--the one that comes to mind is the passage where Jesus is compared to Melchizadek.
I guess that the argument for the cutoff point being conception would center on the fact that a gamete, by itself, has no potential. Even given an ideal environment, with things equivalent to what any human needs--food and shelter--a gamete will die in a matter of days. No care or protection can change that, although they could be slowed down by freezing. All that the typical zygote needs is the proper environment and nutrition source to become something which any reasonable person would call human (here I leave out Peter Singer and the like). Almost all have roughly the same amount of chromosomes as the born people walking around; eggs and sperm have a mere half of that. They cannot grow or develop in any way. Also, the same argument could be extended to any living cells when you add cloning into the equation. Certainly I do not advocate treating human gametes casually; but nothing can come of an egg which is not fertilized. The gametes never could have had a corporeal brain; most of the zygotes had that potential. God could imbue a blastocyst with fullness of life, but I do not know what fullness of life could be for a gamete.
The issue which I refered to, with respect to Christianity, is that I do not know anyone who claims to be a Christian and holds the view that a zygote is not human. In addition, I know that there are many who claim to be Christians but only because it sounds better than atheist, or because their parents are. Many denominations which claim to be Christian deny the deity or the resurrection of Christ. I would not be surprised if the great majority of those who think that abortion is okay (among other social ills) and claim to be Christian are this kind of Christian. You can argue that a well-informed and well-intentioned Christian could hold a certain view, but you cannot claim that they do, unless you have some specific Christian in mind whose knowledge, theology, and social views you are extremely familiar with. In my experience, no matter how well I think I know someone, I cannot say with authority what that person believes in these matters, and I sometimes have thought that I could and been surprised. Also, arguing with someone who does not profess to be a Christian over what Christians should believe is ultimately a fruitless exercise. If I were to talk to a professing Christian with such a view, there would be some hope I could change their mind; but there is no way to change someone's mind by proxy. It is possible that it is not relevant to the debate directly, but it affects whether the debate is relevant.
I have no doubt that an onmipotent deity would take good prenatal care of his prophets, etc., and that's who these passages refer to. Last time I checked, nowhere in the Bible does it say that God frets over every egg that gets fertilized.
Of course there's nothing to prevent an omnipotent deity from doing so. You could interpret the lack of an explicit mention of God caring for every last blastocyst and company in anyway you choose.
Call me a murderer or whatever, but I think that the writers of the books of the Bible had plenty of opportunity to state so over and over if they thought that their God thought that it was important. They didn't.
There's one mention in the Old Testament regarding accidentally punching a pregnant woman in the abdomen, but there are many Christian translations of that passage, and there's quite a bit of disagreement whether the woman loses her fetus or not. The Jews (who at least are more likely to read the passage in the original language and understand some of it) tend not to make a big deal of abortion.
P.S. Which Christian denominations "deny the deity [sic] or the resurrection of Christ" according to you? I'm sorry but I really have to call you on your bullshit here.
Unitarians apparently see Jesus as a great human teacher: http://www.spinninglobe.net/jesunitar.htm (It's hard to find Unitarians who aren't Unitarian Universalists, though)
Unitarians apparently see Jesus as a great human teacher
Not entirely true. There are unitarian subgroups that teach the divinity of Jesus. They simply teach that that divinity is wholly different in nature from that of "God the Father" or the Holy Spirit. These sorts of unitarians are far more common in the Minnesota and Wisconsin area, and in Eastern Europe and Africa.
As for the Christian Scientist comment, many christian sects hold different interpretations of the meaning of Jesus' resurrection without "denying" it. Pelagius in the 5th Century AD taught that the crucifixion was God's way of leading by example, although not intrinsically redemptive. He did not deny it happened as the gospels state, however. The idea is wholly consistent with the gospels. The theology surrounding original sin wasn't flushed out until the late 4th/early 5th century, and the text that most people point to in support of the original sin doctrine can easily be read to support both interpretations of the crucifixion.
I am not calling anyone a murderer. I neither solicited nor wanted to know what anyone else is doing in their sex life. I don't try to form my views in order to keep others from feeling guilty. I would consider it strange if anyone did so. The bible also never talks about killing people because they are old or killing people because they are disabled or because they look different from you. It may humanize them or advocate respect for them... but of course, it doesn't say not to kill them.
God watches over every sparrow and dresses the grass of the field in more splendor than Solomon. It would seem more logical that he frets over zygotes, whether or not they have souls (sparrows don't), than that He does not care for them.
Umm... and God tells the Hebrews quite a number of times to kill off lots of (able-bodied or not) men, women, and children. Of course it's moral to kill after you've convinced yourself that God is telling you to. Can't argue with that kind of logic.
Does God watch over parasitoids of parasitoids? It seems that something in such a system isn't particularly being watched over...
OK, OK, I give up. I guess it's pointless to argue about the definition of "Christian." Pretty much every Christian group considers itself to be either the only "true" Christian group or at least the truest one (everyone else is just slightly misguided).
By the definition that Jehovah's Witnesses, even old-school Unitarians (not to be confused with today's Unitarian-Universalists) like John Adams would be considered "Christians" even though they explicitly did not believe in the Trinity, just one God the Father.
There are many people who think that preventing fertilization is okay but that taking the life of a child, however young he or she may be, is wrong. Most people think that conception is fertilization--and at one point, it was defined that way. However, it was redefined, allowing hormonal birth control to be classified as a contraceptive. People who think that contraceptive means prevention of conception are under the impression that this does not do so by killing. It would not be surprising if the birth control pill were not called by a name which deliberately obscures part of its effect.
Anyone Christian believes it is okay to kill a child at any stage of existance is either not really a Christian, not properly informed about human biology, or not properly informed about scripture. Quite frankly, there are churches out there that call themselves Christian that are not. The bible says do not murder. It doesn't spell out not to murder old people, and people who look different, and people who speak a different language, and women, and people with birth defects. Why would it spell out not to murder people who are not born yet?
Our freedoms are limited all the time to protect others--our freedom to shout "fire" in a crowded theatre, our freedom to walk naked in public places, our freedom to bring gunracks into family restaurants... there are plenty of things that don't directly harm others that we are not allowed to do, let alone things that do harm others. For that matter, if I wanted to have my perfectly healthy left arm surgically removed--after all, I did not choose to have it be part of my body--I would probably be sent for psychiatric evaluation rather than surgery. And that does not hurt, intimidate, or violate anyone except myself, directly or indirectly. If a person performed a procedure normally performed on the fetus during abortion on a cat, they could face several years in jail. If a person smashes eggs laid by an endangered bird, they will be jailed or fined. Why? Because in these cases, somehow, the same judges who feel the life of an unborn human being is valueless recognize that those eggs are more than just a "potential" bald eagle or trumpeter swan.
Quite frankly, I think that anyone who thinks that some abortions should be legal, if they think through their logic, will realize that some born humans can be killed with the same logic. Once you take the stand that some human beings are of so little value they can be killed with impugnity, what is to stop you from extending the reasoning to some other given group?
At any threshhold, there are some just below and some just above, because human beings are not at discrete points on a digital scale. The difference between a baby the day before the third trimester begins and the day after is negligible; the difference between a baby born at 25 weeks and one still in the womb even more so. If anything, the baby still in the womb is more likely to develop into a normal, high-functioning human being, but he has less rights.
Reply
Anyone Christian believes it is okay to kill a child at any stage of existance is either not really a Christian, not properly informed about human biology, or not properly informed about scripture.
I'm afraid I could not let this pass. There are good-hearted people in the Christian community, trying with earnestness to perceive and follow God's will as well as the dictates of their conscience and of the Holy Spirit, who disagree with you. While there is certainly some basis in scripture for suggesting the existence of the soul in the fetus, you cannot reasonably suggest that a soul at the blastocyst level is the only rational interpretation of scripture. To demean the interpretation of well-meaning Christians to the extent of calling them not properly Christian is utterly divisive. Perhaps they fail to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit as clearly and concisely as you do. The history of Christianity demonstrates that self-righteous conviction is frequently confused with God's will, and even if you don't take the lesson from that that you personally should be more humble in your assessment of divine will, this should allow you to be more compassionate for the well-meaning failure of others in assessing the same.
Reply
This has to do with the issue of cut-off points I mentioned. Why would a seven-day-old human have less value than a ten-day-old human? Does the ten-day-old human have less value than the fourteen-day-old human? If the human being gains value at fourteen days, is the status of a thirteen-day-old human slightly different because they are closer to that mark? If the human being has no value until fourteen days, is it permissible under certain circumstances to kill that human because it is so similar to the thirteen-day-old human? This is classic slippery-slope stuff. The only answer that makes sense is to defend all human life. Do I know when a human being is ensouled? No, of course not. Which is, then, a more ethical position? a) It is okay to protect something which might have a soul or b) It is okay to kill something which might have a soul. Should it not give us pause to remember that Jesus was once a blastocyst?
How many of the Christians you speak of have this view to justify what they are doing, like using abortifacient drugs or freezing embryos for in-vitro fertilization, rather than because it is a true conviction? How many simply believed abortion was okay before becoming Christians and have failed to properly reexamine that view in the light of the teachings of Jesus? Also, why are you defending the beliefs of people you claim no affiliation with?
Reply
I am sure you could have found a way to phrase that in a less demeaning way, but your intentions are well-received.
And I must further stress that I am keenly aware of your sensitivity to this subject, and I would not trouble you with these things if you had not called for it. I shall attempt to address the issue at hand with tact, and I apologize if I fail.
If you want absolute cut-offs, I could suggest the moment that brain cells start differentiating from other cells. The first electrical pulses, perhaps. Or if you want a later assessment, the moment inhibition is enabled in the brain (for it is long delayed in fetal development), an element as critical to meaningful brain activity as legs are to walking.
I acknowledge, however, that my analysis excludes one key matter, that of the soul. I believe the only sensible argument for your camp is that we don't know when God imbues the soul, so to avoid murder, we must act as if he imbued the body with a soul at the earliest point possible -- conception.
But are other Christians truly remiss in thinking that a brain with less capacity than a toaster could be the seat of a soul? One might argue that since God finished the creation 6000 years ago, he does not create souls, and a soul is developed as part of the process of embryonic and fetal development? Is it so difficult to imagine that zygote, which is little more than the fusion of genetic material, has not yet developed such a soul?
I do not mean to call your views false, only to suggest that there is room for sensible disagreement, even among those of faith. At the risk of sounding harsh, I would suggest that to suggest otherwise is an understandable consequence of the lack of humility that arises from deep personal conviction, which is the stuff of inquisitors and murderous crusaders.
Reply
Yes, many abortions are performed due to lack of different types of integrity among Christians. I only ask of you the humility to admit that this is not the case for every Christian abortion.
Reply
Making arguments based on brain capacity is a very slippery slope indeed. Once one makes such an argument, one is in danger of excluding some born humans as well.
The only reasonable argument that I have heard of has to do with the phrase that "the life is in the blood." I have never heard this put forward by a person professing to have searched the scriptures and decided that life begins when the heart forms or when the baby develops a blood supply. I have only heard it mentioned by pro-life Christians who are acknowledging that there could be an alternate view based on this. But anti-life views tend to come from vaguer concepts and from feelings, not from scripture. I can't help but question the motives of someone who decides that killing an entity which, unhindered, would develop into a child in mere weeks is a moral thing. It certainly doesn't strike me as a stance which is Christ-like or which is based on obedience to God's will.
Except in cases where there is real and present danger to a mother, ending the life of her offspring cannot be a morally neutral act. I do not wish to comment on times where there is real and present danger to the mother's life, because I consider it a separate case.
Perhaps there is room for sensible disagreement, but I have yet to see it.
Reply
I do believe that you have a desire to be right, which influences your opinion on these matters, and in my opinion, this desire is as plain as day in your writing. The desire to be right and the desire for convenience are equally disastrous in preventing the plague of self-selected philosophies with unwarranted certainty.
I cannot make my case more plainly.
1) The scripture only suggests (and not absolutely) the value of the fetus as a human being.
2) It is arguable as a matter of doctrine that the soul is developed during gestation. The zygote is inarguably a set of instructions encapsulated in a cell, and without these instructions even being parsed, there is sound basis for suggesting that a zygote is of no consequence, even among Christians. This is a sound basis for suggesting that even the Christian most careful about moral matters may employ the use of birth control that prevents implantation.
3) If one ignores the soul, the value of life as being describe as the potential for life is a ridiculously arbitrary distinction. If there is no soul, then human life is determined by brain activity. Independent life or thought is impossible without recurrent inhibition, so your suggestion that my distinctions of the brain may apply to children or adults is patently false. This point is entirely unimportant to a Christian, who does believe in the soul, except for the matter that it demonstrates that concerns about implantation and early term abortions are entirely religious in nature.
Even ignoring #3, if these points do not persuade you that there is room for disagreement among reasonable Christians, then I am persuaded to put you in the category of the inconsequential with those who believe there is no room for doubt in the existence of a six-armed creator, sustainer, and destroyer god. Such egotistical, implacable faith in one's ideas is indicative of a blind ignorance (willful or otherwise) of the equal certainty exhibited by people across this planet, a certainty that one is somehow distinct and separate in his or her superior capacity for thought and conviction.
Reply
No, the scripture does not define what a person is. That leaves one with a lot of leeway. I could decide that any number of groups are not people. It's been done throughout history. Currently the idea that humans of different ancestries is not popular; the belief is that humans of certain stages of development or with certain severe disabilities are not truly human is still quite common.
Again, with number two, you argue that because it is possible that there is no soul, killing the child should be allowed. This does not strike me as a Christian view. How do you think Jesus began his earthly existence? Did he suddenly appear in Mary's womb at 3 or 5 or 12 weeks old, with all the associated structures? Or did he go through the experience which is common to all of us, starting as a single cell?
If an egg has been fertilized, what is it that would make a Christian think that its implantation should be her decision? Why should she presume to plan her life that way? Wouldn't it be more prudent to assume that if God in His sovereignty chose for that egg to be fertilized, He may in His sovereignty want the zygote to become a blastocyst, and implant, and become a child if it is not one? Why should that woman place her will and decision-making powers as superior to that of God?
As one who does not call on the name of Christ, how do you presume to put forth and defend ideas as being held by Christians and equally as Christian as my own ideas?
Reply
Your discussion of Jesus implicitly asserts that the zygote from which Jesus arose *was* Jesus, and thus you beg the question. That rejecting a fertilized egg is any different from rejecting a job offer also presumes the importance of the zygote, and thus likewise begs the question.
I characterize the substance of your argument as thus:
There are a large number of possible apodictic interpretations of life. The lack of revelation in scriptures means that only God knows which is correct. To choose an interpretation on premises whose correctness cannot be absolutely verified is hubris whose consequence may be murder. The morally necessary thing is to adhere to a law which violates no possible interpretation of life.
It's a very strong argument. Don't take my attempt at formalization as a criticism; you expressed it perfectly well.
Here's the rub. Merely treating zygotes as sacred does not meet the criteria. There is equal justification for considering eggs to have souls. For while the zygote requires implantation to reach its potential, does not likewise an egg require a sperm to reach its potential? In both the egg-has-soul and zygote-has-soul cases, the majority of heaven's inhabitants will never have had a corporeal brain, so there's no additional absurdity.
As much as one might wish it to be so, assessing a behavioral law that defies any possibility or wrongdoing given an unknown set of rules is not feasible here. As a consequence, a good Christian must either make a judgment call based on supportable premises and/or arrive at a conclusion based on personal communication with the divine. Certainly no good Christian would engage in the former to the exclusion of the latter in such a grave matter!
As to my not being Christian (the significance of your particular phrasing is not lost on me), I don't see how that enters the matter of rational debate. Rational debate is accessible to all, even if one disagrees with the premises. The only matter than can be opaque is that of discernment of a spiritual quantity, and while one can encourage others to find this discernment in themselves, such a thing cannot be directly communicated, even among Christians.
Reply
Psalm 119:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
Psalm 51:5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Luke 1:43-44 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
Biblical evidence that a child is the same person before and after birth is not scarce. In the quotations from Psalms, the David refers to himself as being himself from his conception. In the New Testament, Mary is called the mother of Jesus and John responds to His presence very early in her pregnancy. (Mary was told that Elizabeth was six months pregnant just before she conceived, so Jesus could not have been older than three months at this time).
"There is equal justification for considering eggs to have souls."
This is an interesting point; actually, your case might be even better if you used sperm, as there are several instances where a person is referred to as being in their father's body long before their birth--the one that comes to mind is the passage where Jesus is compared to Melchizadek.
I guess that the argument for the cutoff point being conception would center on the fact that a gamete, by itself, has no potential. Even given an ideal environment, with things equivalent to what any human needs--food and shelter--a gamete will die in a matter of days. No care or protection can change that, although they could be slowed down by freezing. All that the typical zygote needs is the proper environment and nutrition source to become something which any reasonable person would call human (here I leave out Peter Singer and the like). Almost all have roughly the same amount of chromosomes as the born people walking around; eggs and sperm have a mere half of that. They cannot grow or develop in any way. Also, the same argument could be extended to any living cells when you add cloning into the equation. Certainly I do not advocate treating human gametes casually; but nothing can come of an egg which is not fertilized. The gametes never could have had a corporeal brain; most of the zygotes had that potential. God could imbue a blastocyst with fullness of life, but I do not know what fullness of life could be for a gamete.
The issue which I refered to, with respect to Christianity, is that I do not know anyone who claims to be a Christian and holds the view that a zygote is not human. In addition, I know that there are many who claim to be Christians but only because it sounds better than atheist, or because their parents are. Many denominations which claim to be Christian deny the deity or the resurrection of Christ. I would not be surprised if the great majority of those who think that abortion is okay (among other social ills) and claim to be Christian are this kind of Christian. You can argue that a well-informed and well-intentioned Christian could hold a certain view, but you cannot claim that they do, unless you have some specific Christian in mind whose knowledge, theology, and social views you are extremely familiar with. In my experience, no matter how well I think I know someone, I cannot say with authority what that person believes in these matters, and I sometimes have thought that I could and been surprised. Also, arguing with someone who does not profess to be a Christian over what Christians should believe is ultimately a fruitless exercise. If I were to talk to a professing Christian with such a view, there would be some hope I could change their mind; but there is no way to change someone's mind by proxy. It is possible that it is not relevant to the debate directly, but it affects whether the debate is relevant.
Reply
Of course there's nothing to prevent an omnipotent deity from doing so. You could interpret the lack of an explicit mention of God caring for every last blastocyst and company in anyway you choose.
Call me a murderer or whatever, but I think that the writers of the books of the Bible had plenty of opportunity to state so over and over if they thought that their God thought that it was important. They didn't.
There's one mention in the Old Testament regarding accidentally punching a pregnant woman in the abdomen, but there are many Christian translations of that passage, and there's quite a bit of disagreement whether the woman loses her fetus or not. The Jews (who at least are more likely to read the passage in the original language and understand some of it) tend not to make a big deal of abortion.
P.S. Which Christian denominations "deny the deity [sic] or the resurrection of Christ" according to you? I'm sorry but I really have to call you on your bullshit here.
Reply
http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_theosis.shtml
Mormons also believe in an extrabiblical Holy Mother:
http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/basic/godhead/heavenly_mother.html
Jehovah's Witnesses, who consider themselves the only true Christians, do not believe that Jesus was God at all:
http://www.watchtower.org/library/ti/article_06.htm
Unitarian Universalists don't believe in anything (though they also don't always claim to be Christian):
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/80/story_8041_1.html
http://contenderministries.org/UU/uus.php
Unitarians apparently see Jesus as a great human teacher:
http://www.spinninglobe.net/jesunitar.htm
(It's hard to find Unitarians who aren't Unitarian Universalists, though)
Christian scientists don't believe in evil, so His death and resurrection take on some more nebulous meaning:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science
Reply
Not entirely true. There are unitarian subgroups that teach the divinity of Jesus. They simply teach that that divinity is wholly different in nature from that of "God the Father" or the Holy Spirit. These sorts of unitarians are far more common in the Minnesota and Wisconsin area, and in Eastern Europe and Africa.
As for the Christian Scientist comment, many christian sects hold different interpretations of the meaning of Jesus' resurrection without "denying" it. Pelagius in the 5th Century AD taught that the crucifixion was God's way of leading by example, although not intrinsically redemptive. He did not deny it happened as the gospels state, however. The idea is wholly consistent with the gospels. The theology surrounding original sin wasn't flushed out until the late 4th/early 5th century, and the text that most people point to in support of the original sin doctrine can easily be read to support both interpretations of the crucifixion.
Reply
Reply
God watches over every sparrow and dresses the grass of the field in more splendor than Solomon. It would seem more logical that he frets over zygotes, whether or not they have souls (sparrows don't), than that He does not care for them.
Reply
Does God watch over parasitoids of parasitoids? It seems that something in such a system isn't particularly being watched over...
OK, OK, I give up. I guess it's pointless to argue about the definition of "Christian." Pretty much every Christian group considers itself to be either the only "true" Christian group or at least the truest one (everyone else is just slightly misguided).
By the definition that Jehovah's Witnesses, even old-school Unitarians (not to be confused with today's Unitarian-Universalists) like John Adams would be considered "Christians" even though they explicitly did not believe in the Trinity, just one God the Father.
Reply
Leave a comment