Why are Christians opposed to abortion?
Presumably, all Christians believe in an immortal soul. The soul of the a fetus is safe, being immortal. Whereas the flesh has barely formed at all. The denigrated, maligned flesh is, in this case, hardly there. The body is only marginally human, and the brain, memory and personality, are marginal at best. So why not discard the flesh, since the soul is safe, and the flesh is so... weak?
On the other hand, you would think atheists would be the ones opposed. Here is a unique genetic combination, never to be seen again. An individual, who should receive the ultimate blessing of human existence, is snuffed out entirely, obliterated. Never to even taste the gift of life... what greater tragedy?!
So why are the actual attitudes reversed?
On the other hand, you would think atheists would be the ones opposed. Here is a unique genetic combination, never to be seen again. An individual, who should receive the ultimate blessing of human existence, is snuffed out entirely, obliterated. Never to even taste the gift of life... what greater tragedy?!
So why are the actual attitudes reversed?
Comments (73)
That's not Christian attitude - it's dualist. I imagine some gnostic sects might agree, but as I understand the Christian view, the soul and the body are inter-dependent. Besides, salvation is not guaranteed for the soul but in the Christian view is only possible through belief in Jesus Christ, so I suppose a Christian would argue that the infant is being deprived of that opportunity by being killed prior to birth.
There is a philosopher (Don Marquis) who does argue along the lines as listed above. The reason why it is wrong to kill a person is that we are denying them the life and experiences they would have experienced if they were not killed. By the same vein, to abort the conceptus is to deny the life and experiences that conceptus would have one day had. There are a number of problems with this position, so I do not know many who accept it.
Don Marquis is important to note though because he indicates the range of positions on abortion. I would say the consensus for a position on abortion is much stronger among people who identify as Christian than those who identify as nonreligious. The nonreligious have a wide range of thought on the permissibility of abortion. Generally, it comes down to either the conceptus not reaching the moral status necessary to override other moral concerns, the permissibility to kill in certain circumstances extended to abortion, or some combination of these two lines of thought.
Some people are concerned about abortion for reasons not directly relating to the issue of personhood, ensoulment, etc.
Some people feel that a woman's alleged 'absolute right to decide about abortion' conflicts with the interests of the father. Some are concerned about women having rights at all over her own body. Some people think of pregnancy and birth as a deserved ball and chain for women who have engaged in premarital or extramarital sex. Some people think that all persons are sacred and that there can't be too many of us.
While some religious authorities disapprove of both contraception and/or abortion, "most Christians" make up their own minds about these issues (and others).
It's not as if it's not murder just because the body involved isn't fully formed.
(Which isn't my view re abortion, but that's the view.)
IMO this is the right point of view, because really there is no way to tell since when a fetus should be considered as a valid human..
Quoting Takerian
The tiny little problem with this argument is that neither believers nor heathens know anything about when, or if, a fetus is ensouled--or, for that matter what a soul is, what it does, whether it has experiences, whether it is eternal, where it was before conception, where it is after death, and so on.
Not only do we (believers and heathens) not know the answers to these questions, there is no divine or scientific source that tells us the answers. The only one who could have provided the information (Jesus) didn't happen to say anything about it. Had somebody asked him those questions, he probably would have said, "It's way above your pay grade."
Neither believers nor pagans need worry about these issues, because in neither case is it up to them to decide (when a fetus is ensouled) nor to do anything about it. God is, presumably, abundantly capable of taking care of these matters. It may be that babies are not ensouled until they are named, circumcised, or baptized. We just don't know, and we don't need to know.
Regarding murder... it isn't ensoulment that makes a killing murder. It is the deliberate action of one person acting on another resulting in death. If you think abortion is murder, or not, think what you want -- but the term "murder" doesn't depend on a soul.
Once again: Christians believe a fetus is possessed by soul since an impregnation.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The question remains: Since when is a fetus a person?
What we generally say is "Personhood legally begins at birth, whether the birth is vaginal or caesarean." A live birth is indisputable. Fetuses are quite disputable.
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Also, there are some atheists who are opposed to abortion. They are a minority, but they exist all the same.
Speak for yourself. I've read enough of the New Testament, the Church Fathers, and countless Christian mystics, ascetics, and theologians to know that this is not at all normative.
Quoting Takerian
I'm one of them! O:)
I would be honored if I receive one from the great Thorongil 8-)
:D excellent!
-WELS
Sure you do....
Ask anyone if they would have lived their life if their mother had an abortion instead of giving birth ro them. The anwser would of course be "No". Therefore one can argue that abortion is the snuffing out of a human life. Isn't the cold-blooded, premeditated snuffing out of a human life murder?
There seems a non-sequitur here. I will condense your hypothetical question and answer ("No") into one statement, which you believe implies the subsequent statement:
(1) A given person P could not have been born (a necessary condition for "living one's life") had their mother had an abortion, therefore abortion is the snuffing out of a human life.
However, the substance of the conclusion also follows (mutatis mutandis) if, say, celibacy is substituted for "abortion" in the single premise provided here:
(2) A given person P could not have been born (a necessary condition for "living one's life") had their mother been celibate, therefore celibacy is the snuffing out of a human life.
I think that the conclusion in (2) quite obviously does not follow (no reasonable person can claim - I hope! - that celibacy equates with murder), and yet the logical force (or lack thereof) which attaches to (1) should also attach to (2), given that we've only substituted the relevant terms.
Atheists don't think abortion amounts to murder.
You do realize that there are some pro-choice Christians, correct?
What a flimsy retort, >:O
Edit: Well, so is this claim -
Quoting TheMadFool
Man, why'd we revive this thread only to write a bunch of stupid? :(
As your post has arguably contributed less to this thread than any recent comment, perhaps you are the primary contributor to the problem which is the subject of your question.
And may I ask how they circumvent the murder accusation.
And may I ask how they circumvent the murder accusation.
You could ask them. You said:
[quote=TheMadFool]Atheists don't think abortion amounts to murder. [/quote]
The point is that presumably everyone (or nearly so) who is pro-choice doesn't believe that abortion constitutes murder, whether they're Christians, atheists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, or whatever. You were drawing a dichotomy between the supposed proscription of abortion in Christianity and the supposedly atheistic belief that abortion isn't murder, while seemingly ignoring the fact that some Christians are pro-choice.
As to how they reconcile these beliefs (even assuming that Christian theology, doctrine, dogma, or creeds uniformly oppose abortion), I don't know; that presumably varies on a person-by-person basis. How does one deal with cognitive dissonance in general? Usually by compartmentalizing one's beliefs.
If there's enough wiggle room in christianity to allow pro-choice then I guess the debate is internal (within Christianity). Atheists should simply recline in their seats and watch the show unfold - perhaps stepping up to deliver the coup de grace that ends the debate in favor of pro-choicers.
Does anyone actually bathe in a bath house? It would seem there would be few bath houses because most people have running water in their homes and can just bathe there. It would be like going to a dressing house to get dressed. I mean, just get dressed at home.
Indeed, they bathe in bath houses because cleanliness is next to godliness, and if you should find yourself in close proximity to a sex god, you would want to look and smell your best.
The People here may not know that bath houses used to be a common facility in the urban United States, prior to the epidemic of indoor plumbing, private showers, and water heaters which made them unnecessary. People would go to the local bath house (probably once a week) for the purpose of a thorough scrubbing, soak, and rinse. These were not 'turkish baths' which featured pools with different temperatures, heated marble massage tables, food service, steam rooms, etc. Turkish baths were upscale. Ordinary folk went to down market municipal bath houses which offered tubs and showers.
Many turkish baths became gay baths in the 1950s and 60s.
Once upon a time in America, country people took their once a week bath on Saturday night, quite often in the kitchen in a laundry tub.
Because no person can be held culpable for their not existing. You seek to accuse women of "snuffing out a life" by means of a certain action. As I demonstrated, the same result follows by means of a certain inaction (i.e. celibacy, in this case). Ergo, celibate women are equally culpable for "snuffing out a human life" as women who obtain abortions. Non-existent people cannot "snuff out" anything (one must exist in order to do the snuffing).
I understand that that is not a conclusion you intended, but you need to add more to your argument for it to go through.
Thanks for the information.
I just don't understand why some folks don't believe that the soul of the fetus/baby goes to heaven or reincarnate if it dies before birth. God certainly isn't unfair, so why do we have this expectation that God can't handle abortion issues on his own? Do most religious people think God needs their help to handle abortion issues? Must be a weak God if true... It's not like God is giving us a clear sign that abortion is wrong or anything. What gives us the right and power to think we understand the afterlife and to interfere in other people's personal lives, anyways?
Nice try. Ironically, your wording here is itself rather "sneaky." People who call themselves pro-life are not trying to meddle with a woman's body. They care about the human life in her womb. You don't get to kill it, just as you don't get to kill any other human being, simply because you feel like it.
Anyway, I've only glanced at the comments in this thread...is anyone participating actually pro-life here? What's interesting to me is that despite accusations that abortion is murder, why isn't childbirth by extension torture? Why would God make it painful? Why does stillbirth occur in 1 out of 160 pregnancies?
I am.
Quoting Maw
This is just one doorway into the larger problem of evil, which would take us far away from the thread topic and down a pretty deep rabbit hole. I'm not a Christian either (at the moment anyway).
If you want God to be responsible for the details of life and the pain of childbirth, It's mostly about bad design. Big head, narrow pelvis: pain. Short of slicing the womb open through the abdomen (a la caesar) there is only one doorway out of the womb. God should have taken a design course. Or better, majored in design.
There are examples of bad design all over. Why don't we regrow teeth throughout our lives? Some species do? Why was the urinary line routed through the prostate which swells up with age, choking off the outlet from the bladder? Why doesn't every man have abundant, great looking hair all the way to the grave in old age? One damned bad design after another!
If you want Nature to be responsible, well... nature just stumbles into solutions and reproduction works well enough. Nature says, you are here; it worked well enough in your case, so stop complaining.
Quoting Sam Harris
Pretty well makes a mash out of this whole thread, methinks.
You could argue that the soul is a group of zygotes or embryos and when they split up they are still one soul because they belong to each other or have the same DNA. However, I don't give a damn about outsmarting Sam Harris and the major point of my post isn't to prove him wrong, anyways.
Christians that believe in pro-life will never listen to reason such as the above example from Sam Harris because they will just not take it seriously for some reason (probably because of cognitive dissonance). Great ignorance can cause people to not listen to what's rational and only care about what agrees with their ignorance.
If you explained this to people in public man, I don't know how they will respond, but they aren't just going to immediately become enlightened and agree with you. The whole pro-life versus pro-choice is more of a cultural problem than a logical problem, in my opinion because most of these extreme pro-life folks don't listen to reason opposing their hard-coded beliefs and religions have affected our cultures in both negative and positive ways. This is just one of those negative ways.
The only cure is for the new generations to replace the old generations, in my opinion. Adults are way more stubborn than children.
Edit: I'm reminded of the recent reporting on Remington having to recall and replace millions of rifles because of a defect in the safety system, which when flipping it on or off, actually fired the gun, resulting in a lot of false murder charges. So, is it the defective gun's fault for killing people, or is it the creator(s) fault for having made defective guns? At least in reality, Remington, as much as they tried to deflect blame, ended up being forced to take blame, quite rightly, in my opinion.
Quoting Bitter Crank
You did this. My comment was meant to imply that the Christian would disagree with you: God did not design the things you listed; they are instead a result of the fall.
Well, to play the devil's advocate once again (an ironic phrase in this instance), the Christian might respond to this as follows. God is indeed ultimately responsible for everything, including the fall, but this is precisely why he sent his son, Jesus, to redeem his creation. If he did not do this, then we would, as you imply, be obliged to think of him as wicked. All the same, in a proximate sense, humans are still responsible for the fall.
However, it remains true that because there is none greater than God, everything he creates is by definition imperfect and fallible in some way. The question then becomes: why did God choose to create anything at all, given that he would presumably know that what he created would be deficient in certain respects? One answer would be that we don't know and can't know. Much also depends on what is meant by "freedom." To say that God is free to act must in one sense mean that he was not compelled to act by anything outside of himself. If there were some external factor that caused him to create, then he did not create freely. Thus, God can only act according to his nature. If his nature is love, then God created out of love. In a sense, he was "compelled" by his own nature to create. In other words, a being whose nature is love couldn't not create, but not because he was forced to, just as a functioning human being cannot not create, say, red blood cells, even though no one is forcing him to create them.
Does this mean that God was wicked before he sent himself in Christ to redeem the world?
~
If it is in God's very nature to create, then he cannot thus abort the world once it falls to sin, as such would be against his nature. Although, wouldn't "aborting" the world actually be an act of God's will to create, that in destroying the world he thus creates nothing in its place? Perhaps in this way, creation ends up just being a not-so-merry-go-round.
No, because there never was such a time. "In the beginning was the Word..."
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Correct.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
I'm not following this.
Surely Christ in the flesh was a unique emanation, and wasn't always there, right? What did Mary birth then if that's not the case?
Quoting Thorongil
Wouldn't it be possible to create nothing?
I've long thought that the positions held by each end of the political spectrum have less to do with reason and principle than with gender instincts. If you realize that the right wing is driven by primitive masculine values and the left by primitive feminine values, all becomes more clear. Most of the standard political positions of the two wings make more sense in this light. Thinking about evolved primitive gender roles and the instincts associated with those roles is a taboo subject in this politically correct age, but it can yield some insights.
I'm being a bit coy. When I said that about the Fall, what I mean was that people have amply demonstrated their capacity to be terrible. We are terrible, and we didn't get that capacity from God, or not from God. We are just that way. The best role I can give to God in all this is that of appalled by-stander. Man didn't come from God; it's the other way around. In God we have projected our most superlative selves, something that we have not been, are not now, and likely never will be.
Alas.
The Word became flesh at a certain point in time, yes, but the Word itself didn't come into being.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
An ambiguous question. In some sense, the world is nothing, in comparison to God, just as God is nothing in comparison to the world. St. John of the Cross says this somewhere. But this is to use the word "nothing" in a relative, not in an absolute, sense. In another sense, the answer is no, as God couldn't not create something other than himself. Or better: he could not have not intended to create something other than himself.
Alright, well carry on, then, Feuerbach.
I feel as though language breaks down at this point. If the Word did not come into being, then how does it follow that the Word be-came flesh? If Christ is God, and vice versa, surely God cannot create, somehow, more of himself, right? You just stated that the Word (God, correct?) did not come into being, which to me says that God did not facilitate his own act of being to be. In my mind, this means that God can only create the world. So, how does Christ fit into that?
At first there was only one human, but God decided that his creation in his own image needed a companion, so it was written in the Zohar, the taking of his rib signifies the breath of his soul, which moves between the light and dark. But as his soul was split, then just as God first separated the light from the dark, the light of the human soul became man, and the dark of the human soul became woman.
As the division of the human soul was before the great fall from perfect grace, the union of man and woman in blessed state restores the original unity of light and dark. The emanation from that pure union creates a new virgin conception, which is why the conceived child is purely innocent. There is no question, in such interpretation, that the child is part of God's order at the moment of conception, due to conception's mystical connection to the creation.
As to whether the rib was physically taken to make a woman, the answer from such tradition is no, it is a metaphor to explain the division of the soul to children, who cannot imagine or understand the deep before the separation of light and dark on the first day, or the consequences of such division.
It "took on flesh" is another way of putting it.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Yes, this is why the Council of Chalcedon declared that Christ had two natures, one human and one divine. Moreover, he was both fully human and fully divine, not partially one and partially the other. So God does not create more of his own nature, he takes on a human nature in the man Jesus. The Word is a reference to Christ's divine nature; to God in other words.
I think these kinds of questions can benefit considerably from the perspectives of comparative religion and cultural history. For example in Vedanta, which is the philosophical school of Hinduism, one of the fundamental tenets is that the individual self (atma) is a counterpart to, or epitome of, the self of the Universe (Brahman). The task of the spiritual life is to overcome the attachment to 'the flesh' (i.e. the sensory phenomenal world) and realise the identity of the self and Supreme, by which immortality is gained.
According to current teachers of 'Christian spirituality' (who are generally not mainstream or particularly orthodox in their approach), when Christ speaks of 'I and the Father' being One, this denotes the 'unitive vision' that is not far in spirit from the non-dualist (advaita) vedanta.
You can make the case that early Christianity was much nearer in spirit to this kind of mentality than to the later dogmatic formulations that were developed by (for example) the Protestant reformers. It can be argued that by their stage in history, the tradition had become so freighted with conceptual baggage and symbolic meaning that it's original intent had become quite obscured, Throughout that period, however, there are the occasional seers and sages who realise the original intent of the teaching, but I think overall they're outnumbered.
There's an interesting book on Amazon by Richard Rubin, called When Jesus became God (http://a.co/b20aGfE), which looks at the history of when the dogma of Christ's divinity was formulated in around the 4th Century. There are also some interesting studies made on the basis of the rediscovery of the gnostic scriptures which likewise throw a very different light on early Christianity.
So I think it would benefit you to study some of these alternative perspectives. So much of our thinking is trapped in the 'believer vs atheist' dichotomy.
Golder rule of ethics: Do onto others as you want them to do onto you. I don't want to be killed, so killing others is unethical.
I am not an atheist so I can only speculate, but I would assume that not all atheists are pro-choice.
He allows children to grow up in abusive homes and be bullied, die of cancer etc.
Aborting a child before evidence of sentience is probably more humane than inflicting this on it.