Recent polls indicate that the majority of Americans are pro-choice with regards to abortion. This is interesting considering that similar polls tell us that the majority of Americans identify themselves as Christians. This begs the question, Can a Christian support abortion?
Without getting into any of the medical details of or even physiological reasons for abortions (for I am not a physician or a physiologist), I would like to deal with the issue from a purely theological standpoint. Where one stands on abortion, I submit, has more to do with one’s theology than they realize.
Can a Christian support abortion? The answer is “yes,” if their theology allows them to do so. The issue comes down to one’s beliefs concerning the creation of the soul. The theological issues of abortion are not spoken of or understood much today, yet the implications are significant. The question that one must ask with regards to this issue is this: When does the soul/spirit (immaterial aspect; henceforth soul) join with the physical (the material aspect) of a person? This is often referred to as a debate about the constitution of man. If the soul is part of the physical body from conception, then abortion is out of the question. The person is a complete person, material and immaterial, from the beginning and has not only divine recognition, but a divine mandate for life. Any premature cessation of this life by an outside agent would amount to murder. But if there is a time when the physical “fetus” is without an immaterial aspect, then, during this time, the fetus is not a person, but simply an extension of the mother’s physical nature. The question is, when does the body receive the soul?
There are two positions that have been represented prominently throughout church history and it is with these two I would like to wrestle.
1. Creationism: The belief that the soul is created directly by God and “inserted” into or united with the body which in turn is created indirectly by God through the parents. In other words, the soul is created immediately by God, while the body is created mediately by man. This position has significant support in contemporary and historic theology. Noteworthy adherents to this position include Wayne Grudem, Charles Hodge, Louis Berkholf, John Calvin, and enjoys the support of most Roman Catholics. The basic defense for this position is that God, the father of all spirits (Heb. 12:9), is the only agent that can create an immaterial entity. Kind gives forth to kind. Man is physical and can only birth physical. Therefore, God must have created the soul directly, outside of the mediating agency of man.
2. Traducianism: (from the Latin tradux meaning “inheritance or transmission”) The belief that while God is the ultimate creator of all things, He uses secondary causes to bring them into existence. If God ceased from creation after the sixth day and no longer is creating ex nihilo (out of nothing), then all creation since the sixth day is initiated mediately through secondary causes, including the soul. To put the matter plainly, parents are just as involved in the creation of the soul as they are the body. God does not use special process for the creation of the soul. The basic defense of this position is focused on the negative implications of the creationist position. If God creates the souls directly, without the mediating support of humanity, how does one explain the sinfulness of the soul. If people are born with a fallen sinful nature (Ps. 51:5), how did the soul become corrupt? Did God create a sinful soul and place it in a sinful body? Can God create something impure? Traducianist are quick to charge the creationist with making God directly responsible for sin. The traducianist does not elevate the value of the soul above that of the body. Therefore, a traducianist believes that the soul/spirit is created in and with the body. Their is not two acts, but one.  Traducianism is not without it support. Noteworthy traducianist are Tertullian, Martian Luther, Jonathan Edward, and Millard Erickson.
Now, back to the topic of abortion. Theologically speaking, it is impossible for there to be a Christian traducianist who supports abortion. Why? Because the traducianist’s theology precludes a necessary belief that a person is complete from the moment of conception. There can never be a time when the child is without a soul. The parents provide the soul at the same time and in the same way as they provide the body.
A creationist, on the other hand, may support abortion. Why? Because no one can say with any amount of certainty when the body is united with the soul. Is it at conception? Implantation? During the first, second, or third trimester? At birth? Or even sometime after birth like the age of accountability? This leaves a slight crack in the door theologically. A deferment to ignorance is usually the best recourse for the creationist, not knowing when the soul is united to the body. While this deferment may suggest that the best stance for the creationist concerning the abortion issue is one of non-support, this does not necessitate this position. One can be a Christian creationist and support abortion based upon a reliance in the findings of the medical community. If the medical community can provide further information that leans in favor of a stance that a fetus is not really a person based upon issues of psychological response along with physiological issues dealing with the parasitic nature of the fetus, then the creationist may lean in favor of a pro-choice stance on the issue.
I don’t want people to get the wrong idea, so I am going to say something as clearly as I can: Our stance concerning the issue of abortion is not our guide with regards to this theological issue. In other words, we do not choose the position that best fits with our agenda one way or another. We must seek to find the truth, not defend our preconceptions. If creationism is the best option in dealing with the biblical evidence, then that is where we go. We then let the scientific community deal with the issue of abortion, providing answers about when life begins. But if the traducian position provides better answers, then we go there, letting its theological implications provide us with a proper response to the issue of abortion.
I am a traducianist. Not because I seek a solid theological stand against abortions, but because I believe that it is the best option that deals most comprehensively with the biblical data and a systematic Christian worldview. I believe that the creationist view (which is the most prominent and popular among laity) assumes an implicitly unchristian stance concerning the relationship of the body and the soul. There is no reason to say that the soul is of special nature, having to be created directly by God.
This line of thinking (that the soul must be created directly by God) evidences more of a Gnostic worldview than it does a Christian worldview. Gnosticism was a first-century Greek philosophy that crept into Christianity here and there, and still plagues our thinking at the most fundamental level. The Gnostics were dualists, believing that all things material were essentially evil, while all things spiritual were essentially good. For a Gnostic, the ultimate goal was for one to escape the confinement of the material body, finding fulfillment in the spiritual existence. But the Christian worldview is just the opposite. Christianity affirms the essential goodness of all creation, even though it has been infected with sin. Our goal is not to escape the physical world, but to sanctify it. God declared all things good at creation. All that was involved in this declaration was the physical world, including man’s physical nature. When man sinned, God did not cast aside His original intent opting for a “plan B,” but immediately began the process of redeeming the world that He created. When people die, there is an unnatural breach in their personhood, separating the immaterial from the material, but this does not suggest that the immaterial soul is somehow better or more highly favored in God’s eyes than the body. In fact, the consummation of redemption comes at the resurrection of the body, when the soul is reunited with the physical body and the new heavens and new earth (material) are created.
This Gnostic disdain for the physicality has unfortunately found its way into Christianity in many ways. In the early Church sex was seen as a necessary evil rather than a beautiful creation of God. Monasticism was highly valued thinking that the pleasures of this world were all evil. People have seen culture and government as evil because they are part of this world. The Bible is seen as a book of God to the neglect of the contribution of man (this has had great repercussions hermeneutically). Finally, I believe the Church has devalued the body and elevated the soul, believing that while man can create the body, only God can create the soul. There is no reason for this. They are both equally miraculous.
I believe that the traducianist theory answers the questions of anthropology better than the creationist viewpoint. While their are many good Christians, contemporary and throughout church history, who have held to the creationist view, I believe that they are wrong. Having said this, I believe that when it comes to abortion, while one’s theology may allow them to support it, I believe that this theology is not only wrong, but evidences more of a Gnostic worldview than a Christian worldview. The body and the soul cannot be dichotomized in such a way. The parents create both the body and the soul at the same time as mediate agents of God.
In short, I believe the issue of abortion is a theological issue. Sadly, I believe, this understanding escapes the forefront of the debate because so many in the church today have relegated theology to a seat of irrelevance and impracticality.
To hear more about this issue, listen or watch The Theology Program session 4 of Humanity and Sin.
152 replies to "Can a Christian Support Abortion? The Theology of Abortion"
Good arguments, Cheryl.
regards
Dr. J
1) You too find a quality or characteristic or function, by which you define or know, something as human: it has human DNA.
2) Derrida and others suggest that we define and know things, by their “differences” on contrasts, with other concept/things. How do you know that you are looking at “a bluebird” and not a “chicken” … except by looking at its observed qualities, and their differences. The bluebird is smaller, etc… Then too, when we defined and classified animals, by observing … their differences. How do you know that a picture of a bird, is not a bird … unless you look more closely.
Thus I do not “conflate” all this; the idea that something is somethign and not something else – “is that a dog or a cat” – is inextricably tied to … defining the characterisitcs of a dog; as vs. a cat.
3) Possibly Dawkins and some scientsts are simply wrong; most scientists I know, including the many MD’s that perform abortions, both feel that killing human beings is wrong, and yet support abortion. Clearly implying that they do not therefore, feel that embroyos are human. So as a practical matter of observation, it seems you are wrong about what scientists believe.
Look at their statements more closely: I know many that call DNA “human” material; but not a human being. See my remarks above, on “semantics.”
As for what you feel are the implications of some of their statements? I’m not sure you have characterized them accurately. Probably many others feel exactly what I am voicing here: that the same DNA, does not make a clump of cells and an adult human, one and the same. That there must be a long process of bodily development, many calories consumed, many more things added to those first few cells … before you have a human being.
3) Yes we can ask if it is possible to ask if you can lose your soul. Preachers refer to it all the time. Can we lose our minds? Yes; Psychiatry refers to that too. To be sure, then we look at the slope … and then deal with that, next. Where is the cutoff point.
4) Is an dembory at a complete stage of development? Define complete. A complete human being … can have no arms and legs; no consciousness or intelligence; can be the size of a pinhead, and look like a soccer ball? Then why isn’t my Barbie Doll a human being? By that standard, no resemblance at all is needed.
5) By the way, you said that DNA is enough; a skin cell they tell us, does have a complete set of DNA in it. So by your definition, a skin cell is a human being?
6) Visual appearnace is not important? So I can point to what looks liek a cat, and say it is human … and you have no objections? Observation is extremely important in science; what it “looks like” actually does carry some weight.
By the way, I mention appearance because someone cited the part of the Bible, where it said that “God made man in his own image”; “imago dei.” This is thought to say, in a theological context, what I confirm here in a scientific one as well: looks are occasionally deceiving … but on the other hand, in science empiprical observation is accepted, and valued: and a very young embryo does not look like a human being.
Do you want to say that however, it has some qualities, functions, that make it human? Like having DNA? Then you contradict an earlier argument that we should not be “functionalist.” And by the way, you are using a function .. that we find not to be critical or definitive: an average skin cell has they say, a complete set of DNA in it; but probably even you would say it is not a human being. It is “human” material; but not a human being.
At least part of my spirit or mind, can be expressed, when I write my thoughts down on paper. And that paper – and my thoughts, a part of my spirit – can survive … even after my death. Even when my brain dies.
Thus, even in science, (much of) an intelligence and spirit, that grew up in a brain … can nevertheless live on, even immortally, even after I die, and my brain is gone.
Which is to say, by the way, that we have here a scientific proof of a kind of (part of), immortality. Science and religion begin to come together; we can begin to scientifically prove … even immortality.
In conventional theology, by the way, our body can die, but live on in the memory of God.
Dr. G.
By the way, if I were to agree that the “clump of cells” as you call it that is a human embryo indeed has no soul or spirit, (which I am not doing), that still would not mean that embryo had no more value than a cat, your pencil, or the meal I ate last night. The reason is that that clump of cells will one day, if left to grow in the womb until birth WILL be a human being with the soul and spirit and all that you say makes it human. No pencil will do that, no cat, and certainly no meal I ate last night! Even that “clump of cells” then, with all of it’s potential, has far more value than any of those other things you spoke.
And, if I understand you correctly from your last statement about immortality: “At least part of my spirit or mind, can be expressed, when I write my thoughts down on paper. And that paper – and my thoughts, a part of my spirit – can survive … even after my death. Even when my brain dies.”–that you do not believe that a person’s spirit literally lives on after they are dead. For the Christian, that means life in the presence of the Lord.
If it is true that you don’t believe that, you obviously don’t believe that Jesus and Paul were correct in the statements they made in the Bible. Since this is supposedly a theological discussion, and we are apparently basing our theologies on two totally different premises, I don’t believe there is much point in going on with this discussion. So, please let me know if this is truly what you believe and I will probably bow out of this discussion.
Dr. G.
Let’s get back to something John pointed out: A complete human being is only made so when the egg is fertilized by a sperm. It’s DNA makes it different from a chicken or a pencil because of its originating donor.
Notice I said a complete human being, because the DNA in its tiny cells is blueprinted already as having everything it needs but time to fully form all its visible parts. This is true of all species.
Now let’s apply some common sense here. I could not give birth to a pencil or a cat, nor could they to me. So please let’s stop arguing that point, because it is already a proven fact that every species has DNA specific to its own kind.
My dividing line, whether it agrees with your reasoning or not, is that when that a human egg and sperm bond into one, then it becomes a new human life, microscopic that it may be. If you have seen an early ultrasound of a two week old pregnancy, all you can see at first is a tiny dot jumping around on the screen, That is the beating heart, which is formed first. So it is alive in a physical sense as well. The heart pumps blood to all our cells, and provide oxygen and life sustaining nutrients to all our cells as well, so the heart must develop first to sustain growth. That makes it different from just ‘pieces of skin.’
Now let’s take the development phase. I know this is my child because I carry it in my womb, even if I can’t see it. If I should choose to abort it, I can’t then call it an incomplete zygote instead of my child just because I chose to interrupt its development phase before it became capable of surviving outside the womb. That’s like picking the flower blooms off a tomato plant and then saying we didn’t know they were developing tomatoes, when we knowingly planted them as such.
A repitition of previous arguments, continued incoherence, and a lack of logic are not inspiring.
For example, a characteristic is not the same as a function so your first enumerated reply point is incoherent. Furthermore, you fail to make, or even understand, the basic distinction that I pointed out regarding the two ways of viewing or understanding “human”. You also continue to use the unmodified word “human” without clarifying whether it means “human animal/creature/organism with some additional nonmaterial aspect like a soul” or merely “human organism”. It does not even appear that you looked up the meaning of “conflate” in a dictionary. If you can’t agree that a human is a human and not a pencil or a dog because of its unique complete set of DNA, there’s really not much point in continuing this discusson or in continuing to point out the ways in which your reasoning confuses matters, does not support your points, and does not defeat the points raised by others.
ciao
Dr. J
John CT and Cheryl,
These are very good observations. And while we question if a blastocyst is capable of sleeping, yes it is. Is a sperm human? That’s like asking is sweat human.
I think it is funny when pro-abortionists argue, they always fall back on pseudo-medicine. Tell me then Dr. G, and by the way I hope you aren’t the Dr. G from tv or I will be very disappointed because I love that show, but tell me….can you replicate that tiny little spark that commands the sperm to fertilize the egg? That is what I want to know, at what point in the chain of command does the dna speak and say “ok, now” when at other times it does not?
How can a man and a woman be married for 20 years and suddenly she gets pregnant with no outside influence? And why can some women get pregnant their first time? Perhaps it’s defunct parts.
But seriously, can you pin point that moment the order is given and the cells all act according to plan. Well how would two simple cells with no knowledge of each other, never learned of each other, how do they know what their function is? That takes a greater intelligence than you or I possess.
John,
In #56 were you replying to my comment directly above, or to Dr. G?
1) An embryo is not really complete and entire and self-sufficient at all; it must have the support of a womb, etc..
2) Someone said that the question of “ensoulment” – when we get a soul – is unimportant. I replied that this position, among other problems, denigrates the indeed central importance of the soul; it might even end up saying a soulless entity, is a human being. Which would be indeed, a bad thing.
It is in fact of absolutely central importance, whether something has a soul or not. That makes it human, or not. And related to this is: “when?” No doubt a child after birth has one; but does an embryo? And if an embryo does … then look a little further down your own slippery slope: how about the sperm?
This is where the discussion of DNA then comes in: you and others claim that … the fact that both the embryo and the child have a complete set of DNA, is enough in itself, to claim they are human beings. And you say, science affirms this.
But no it doesn’t. 1) First, a point of semantics: when scientists refer to an embryo as “human,” they say it is “human” … in the sense of human material. Just as a piece of skin, can be looked at an found to be “human,” and not say, say, “cat” skin; not “”bovine” or a piece of skin a dog. But note, to say a piece of skin is “human,” is not to say that it is a human being. Likewise, to say an embyro is “human,” can merely distinguish it from … say, a “cat” embryo.
Understand science closely. Often Theologians and Ethics professors, mis characterize science; especially when it is convenient to their own arguments. Then too, their citations of science are often not only incomplete and inaccurate; but also often hypocritical; they quote it when it is convenient, but then ignore it in other contexts. Some quote parts of science when they think it supports the humanity of the embryo; but then ignore it, when they support a soul that science cannot confirm.
As I understand the context of the quote “beam in your own eye”? It is indeed, there, a generalizable statement. Many things in the Bible are intended not just to apply to the day and the exact specific thing that for example, Jesus noted them; we teach them today because after all, they have more … general application, to all of life. The context though in any case, as I recall was … be careful in your criticism of others; look for your own errors first. In this case, when various parties accuse my position of executing minorities as not human, or attacking God … note that various aspects of your own arguments do that.
2) Perhaps in fact, we can point to a soul, after all. Precisely by looking in part, at the “functional”ism you reject. For one thing, you can know humans, in part by observing human behavior, the things they produce – and from that, begin to deduce their spirit, its nature. By their “fruits you shall know them.” Look at how they behave … and deduce from that in part, what they deep down believe, in their soul or spirit. According to the Bible … and according to Behavioral Science, including Psychology.
Did you ever read one of those old Philosophy texts, where the ask, “what is a man”? And you begin taking away one after another individual attributes: hair; hands; feet; eyes. Sometimes you arrive at a point, where there seem to be many things that are not essential; you arrive at a sort of minimum. But then next, you start taking things away … and what you get … just doesn’t seem enough. Then next, we start looking for what the “essence” of being a human was; as opposed to being say, an animal or a cat.
Usually, for some of the reasons stated here, we decide that … it wasn’t just having a complete set of human DNA. And it wasn’t the color or our skin. And it wasn’t any number of things. But keep down, it was … do they have human intelligence, spirit, a soul. Indeed, Christianity often decides often that the soul, not the body – DNA included? – is not so important.
So indeed, it is the soul. But then next, we need to … look at what the soul is; and where and when do we find it?
So the question of “ensoul”ment became critical. In Aquinas, and to this very day.
And so there I begin my investigation: what is the soul; and where and when does it appear?
The question of ensoulment therefore, is of absolutely critical importance; DNA is just a distraction. Or in any case, is quickly rejected as the defining essence of what is a human being. By arguments like those employed here.
By claiming that DNA is all we need, that the question of “ensoulment” is unimportant,” most of you have begun to imply in effect, or are drifting into the position, that the “soul” is … unimportant. That a mere bodily, material quality – DNA – is all we need to be human. A body … and even no soul? Thus you are in danger of embracing … a soulless body.
A very, very stange and inconsistent and unattractive position for any alleged Christian to occupy.
So next, we must go on to try to make out what a “soul” is after all. And in part by the way, it must be … composed of our likes and dislikes; which we might tenatively offers, as part of our basic self, or “soul.” And those soulful preferences, science and the Bible both tell us, can in part be observed; by looking at our behavior. As Behavioral science confirms.
So in effect, we can put the soul in a test tube, so to speak.
But Dr. G, you are still defining the soul as something so intrinsically linked to the body that it ceases to exist when the brain is dead. If you refuse to admit that the soul or spirit is an essence, for lack of a better word, that lives on in reality, not just in other’s memories, after death our understanding is so far apart that we have no common ground to discuss with period. And if you will not accept the Bible’s word for it, there is no common ground to go to because that is not a concept that can be examined in a test tube!
He is asking a philosophical question, not a scientific one. That’s why there’s so much muddled ideas.
Ok, for you, requirements include the fetus must be independent of the womb…but what about babies who are premature and need to be incubated in a womb-like environment? They are still humans who cry and get lonely and are hungry.
And on that particular note, does it make you less human because you are dependent upon certain elements even for you to live. And that is oxygen, then water, then heat, then let’s go on to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
You want to put the soul into a test tube? Have you ever seen a dead person? I have, just when the person died. That was my grandmother and I had to help clean her body so I know what death looks like. And I know when she was alive she had a soul. It spoke through her eyes. When she died, her eyes were open but there was nothing expressive about them. Her life was gone and her eyes spoke it. There is a great evidence of a soul. But it is not our job to catch it, because is was not mine, it was hers.
To G, not to you mbaker. Your (mbaker’s) post was not visible when I was typing. Your (mbaker’s) thoughts made sense.
regards,
Dr. J
BTW, G, if you want to make useful contributions, it would help if you would actually both fully read what others write and pay attention to what they write. I did not say “complete and self sufficient”. No human is self sufficient over their entire life. New born babies are not self sufficient. I said “complete” as in “genetically complete” and capable of “developing”. That assumes an environment appropriate for and supportive of development. Put a sperm, or an egg, or some skin cells by itself in a womb and nothing happens. None of those are complete organisms.
Good grief, I can’t believe I just replied to that.
ciao for good now.
Dr. J
Dr. G,
Here we go with the chicken and egg, which comes first, kind of reasoning. Like others here, I’m finding this circular reasoning rather tiresome.
Man is born complete with everything he needs, including his soul, and his spirit. This is determined in the womb, so DNA is not merely a physical cell, but carries within it the complete plan for a reasoning brain which will develop as time goes on. It also carries the ‘essence’ of a soul, which will experience a full range of human emotions and an understanding that we cannot see or know everything.
Yet, your assumption seems to be that we must be born complete with a certain amount of maturity and productivity before we can even be considered viable human beings. This argument leaves no working room for the development of children into adults, disabled folks, or people in comas to even exist by your definition.
I can’t see your ‘essence’ either, yet I know whether you are a believer or an unbeliever, you’re a human being with a spirit and a soul because God’s common grace gives that to all human beings alike.
A soul is not acquired by human means, it is imprinted by God on each individual’s DNA. What we do with what we have been given is make choices regarding the kind of human beings we want to be afterward. That too me is the difference between a soul, which is inborn, and an ‘essence’ that is merely acquired from the choice of our beliefs.
1) “Conflate … to bring toether : FUSE b : CONFUSE.”
2) Am I fusing together, confusing, “characterisitics” and “functions”? Or are they deeply related in logic?
3) In part, we define the characteristic of many things, by the things they do: my car has wheels, to roll on, a carburator to mix gas with air. So many times, characterstics of things are defined by their … functions. Indeed, if we look deeper, I suggest you will find that it is almost impossible to separate them. So I am not conflating or failing to distinguish two entirely separate things at all; you are failing to see the relation between them.
4) I myself, have been at great pains, to make precisely, a dictinction beween “human” – meaning just having distinctively human things in it, like DNA; and other senses of human. Especially, from the idea that to be “human” is to be a human being. HUman skin is human, as distinguished from animal; but it is not a human being.
5) As for the two senses that you are using it in? I do feel I’ll have to go back and disvoer them. In the meantime, when I refer to a human being, I mean a being with a soul. Of course. That is precisely what is at issue here; “ensoulment.” My argument against the foetus, is precisely based around that vital question.
If you yourself – or anyone – does not think the “soul” is important, then some of you, might try roughly, substituting the term “mind” or “intelligence,” or some other term roughtly equivalent.
6) And indeed, precisely, I do believe that having a complete set of DNA in it is not enough to make something a human, in the sense of being a full human being; a piece of skin has that, but is not a human.
7) You may chose to leave in contempt of me; but as far as I am concerned, you are welcome to stay too. I’m capable of turning the other cheek, even in the face of insults.
8) A worm has a beating heart; that indeed makes it more than a piece of skin; but it does not make it human.
9) To be sure, none of us knows everything about Biology; or exactly when and how … a person is formed. But that means that neither dogmatic “Christians,” nor scientists either, know everything. So … let’s just look at what we do know. And perhaps there is enough just in that, to find something useful.
10) So let’s just keep going; until we see … what is the essence, the true nation, of being a human being.
As it turns out, it is not DNA. It’s probaby much closer to the “soul.” So let’s continue to look at that.
And by the way, we can put it in a test tube, finally at last. Not to know all its qualities right away to be sure; but to begin to make out some of them.
First those who are Christians might ask: what are the characteristics of a “spirit” or “soul” in the Bible? Then … what other qualities or words might relate to that, to include scientists in the discussion.
Howabout: “intelligence”; “conscience”; “mind,” “emotions,” “consciousness”? Aquinas and Newman even proposed even “Reason.” Though to be sure there are some distinctions and arguments with each of these terms, suppose we consider these, to start, roughly; as being parts of the soul. Or spirit. Though there are arguments with each, in the Bible our soul is … it seems, our deep nature; our preferences and so forth; our “heart,” and so forth?
Or … propose your own Biblical terms here. And we will discuss them. If you propose something other than Biblical, then I would say that you aren’t a Christian. And that your “Christian” defense of the soul and embryo is … hypocritical. If you are a rationalist, then … try the nearest … equivalents: “mind,” “consciousness,” “intelligence.”
Let us therefore, look soon, not at DNA; but at the soul.
Cheryl:
I believe our spirit literally lives on after we die; in part, on this piece of paper, or computer screen. Which preserves/presents, part of my thoughts, my spirit. Literally. Thus the Bible is true; we do live on. This is not a metaphor. Here I am; in the word (s).
Sorry I’m a bit stiff; presenting/preserving myself on computer screens and memory banks, is not quite like a full conversation. Or full survival or presentation of the complete spirit. But here is part of me, now.
This is anything but a refutation of the Bible. Indeed, some thought that Jesus so liked the indentification of the self or spirit, with his words, even the Biblical writings, that they began to call him, “the Word.”
Doesn’t the spirit of Jesus survive in some realistic way, in the Bible? Writing? Does that spirit “live” to you at all? Didn’t you get the sprit of Jesus in part, by listening to “mere” words, from the Bible? And now that spirit is living on in a material body: your brain.
Do you really want to say then, that a spirit cannot live on, in any real way, on paper and words? Or the brain?
I’m confirming, not refuting, the Bible here.
Dr. G,
Isn’t that exactly what I have been trying to do–and from a Biblical standpoint even? However, you have chosen to totally ignore the Biblical concept that the soul or spirit lives on after phyical death of the body and maybe therefore isn’t as connected to brain and physical development as you believe them to be and just gone ahead and given your own definition of immortality.
You spoke above of theologians picking and choosing scientific evidence to prove their point. Seems to me you are picking and choosing Biblical truths to suit yourself here!
Obviously, our last comments crossed in posting.
Your saying you brain lives on on a computer screen or on paper is a totally different concept than Paul saying to be absent with the body is to be present with the Lord or Jesus saying to the thidf on the cross, “Today you shall be with me in paradise.” Read the Bible verses as they are, for goodness sake, and don’t tell me you are confirming the Bible by making a statement that is so completly opposite the meaning of what the Bible says and trying to make me believe it is the same thing!
I personally do not in fact, require that to be a human being, you have to be “complete”; I was merely responding to that assumption, by another voice here (Baker?). By saying that if “complete”ness is your requirement, then … note that the embryo does not meet it.
Dr. G,
I should also add to my comment in #64 above, that our souls are immortal. Our human choices just determine where they will reside after our physical death – either in heaven or hell.
Aborted babies do not get the chance to make such choices, either about their lives or their deaths. That’s why I cannot call abortion pro-choice, and cannot understand why any thinking Christian could believe that anyone but a totally selfish mother, who just doesn’t want to be inconvenienced by her poor decision to have unprotected sex in the first place, has any choice at all in the matter. Because of her inability to make responsible choices herself, a baby is killed, and the only folks who profit are the abortion clinics.
Why not call prevention pro-choice instead, because it really is the only positive choice that can and should be made by the person having sex. So. instead of defending abortion, why not campaign more vigorously for the practice of birth control beforehand, instead of pushing the woman’s ‘right’ to choose afterwards?
Cheryl: where is paradise? God is in “all things”; all around us all the time. So he lives in part … on a computer screen. So why should I be embarrased to survive, live on, in this part of the world that God made? Since God is here too; and I am thus in God?
I also prefer birth control, very much, to abortion.
Abortion in fact, I find repellant. Though not quite as criminal as others do. Or in any case, my point to Christians: I do not see in the Bible itself any firm rejoinder against Abortion.
My immediate point is therefore that … no one has the right to tell us that “God said” that abortion is bad. God never said any such thing.
My larger point: we need people to stop speaking falsely for God. God did not speak definitely against abortion; or for the Republican party; neither did God endorse Coka-Cola over Pepsi.
You may or may not like abortion; but don’t cite God as your authority. God never said much about it. Except to support it perhaps, in Numbers 5.
Don’t speak falsely for God. Cite your opinions as your opinions; not the word of God.
To speak falsely for the Lord, is a very, very, very great offense indeed by the way, according to the Bible itself.
Sorry Dr G, the Bible speaks of paradise and hades, heaven and hell as real and literal places inhabited by real and literal people that died on this earth. They are not just some nebulous idea with no specific location.
And by the way, you are seriously contradicting yourself here. You are the one, after all, that has been insisting that a soul or spirit is so closely related with phyiscal and brain development and brain death. How then, can you all of a sudden claim, that your spirit lives on with no body, no brain, on a computer screen? Or that you brain lives on after phyiscal death–after all, before it was strictly the phyiscal development that counted!
Dr. G,
I think you are just one of those pro-abortion folks who stubbornly insist that an embryo is a not a viable human being, without being able to furnish any real proof that it isn’t.
Disregarding scientific facts about DNA is one thing, insisting an embryo must be completely developed physically in every sense of the word to even qualify as a human being is silly.
Dr G,
You said, “To speak falsely for the Lord, is a very, very, very great offense indeed by the way, according to the Bible itself.”
If you believe that is the case, then why are you twisting the meaning of the verses I have quoted to say something altogather different than what the obvious meaning of them is??? You are surely speaking falsely for God, are you not??
Cheryl (?): The kingdom of God is within you; God and heaven and the kingdom are everywhere. “Hell” means buried underground; the “heavens” mean the skies … or are used at best, as merely a polite conventional metaphor, for God. Who is strictly, not “just” in heaven, but “fills all things.” As many fairly ordinary ministers and theologians know.
MBaker: you are not really talking about scientific facts; you are employing a common interpretation of, or extapolation, from those facts.
It is indeed a scientific fact that 1) the embryo and the adult human, both have a complete set of DNA in them. But the next question is, 2) what do we then make of that fact? What can be deduce from it? Is the admitted, scientific fact that the embryo and adult have complete DNA, or whatever … enough to establish that therefore, an embryo is human?
That second question, is another, separate, philosophical question; one not currently established by scientific fact at all. Having one quality or characteristic or function in common – like say DNA – is not to say that two things are entirely identical; or even are the “same” thing. Thus we cannot say that … just because it has DNA, the same as a human being, a glob of protoplasm is a human being, one and the same.
What does science really say on this subject? If anything? Indeed, if you go, just superficially for a moment, just by looking at what beliefs scientists evidence in their behavior and words, then … most scientists, like medical doctors, value human life … but do not oppose abortions. Why? Because they – and science – does not believe that the foetus is a human being. And why not? Because, we should deduce, they did not really believe that a complete set of DNA, is all one needs to be human ( a human being).
There’s a lot of very, very bad and presumptous misuse of “science” by many theologians and ministers; let’s look at what science really says.
And for that matter, there is much misuse of teh authority of “God,” by alleged Chrsitians and ministers too: let’s look at what the Bible say, really says.
Which is what I am doing, here and now.
Cheryl: Do you feel that you completely understand the Bible and God already? That your sense of the words, of where God is for example,already final and complete? That anything other than what you already know, is … bad and evil and wrong and “twist”ing?
Is it possible that … there is another meaning in the Bible, of which you are not yet aware? Another understanding of God that is different from yours .. but not worse than it?
If you say your understanding of the God and the Bible is the standard by which all others must be measured, … isn’t that a little Prideful? Vain?
Let us all be humble; and be prepared to listen to others. No matter how uneducated and stupid and crazy a mere doctor may appear to you, who knows; I might know something.
Dr. G,
I apoligize for my last comment. I was just plain being sarcastic and rather nasty. This is obviously a hot button issue for a lot of us and can bring out the worst in a person if we are not careful.
Dr. G,
I think most who have to reason with you would have to agree by now: You are rationalizing reasons to be pro-abortion.
If we are indeed Christian in our beliefs, I think it comes down to this: it is God who establishes and determines life, period.
You seem like a lot of other Christians who want to have human control instead.
But, we can’t have our cake and eat it too. Once life is created, it should never be terminated. And scripture does back that up. Suggest you familiarize with the whole context of the Bible again, and quit cherry picking obscure verses that you believe might back up abortion.
I am like John CT. I’m outa here, and off to another thread where folks can provide something more than personal philosophy.
God bless.
Godspeed, MBaker.
Not to take any advange by any absences to get in a cheap last word. But … if you one day return, here’s my answer.
What is the will of God? Is it really what we thought? There were many who said particularly, that human culture and science were not. They said for instance, that the invention of the airplane was against God: “if God had intended us to fly,” they said, “he would have given us wings.” Flying is agianst the nature given to us by God.
But by that argument, all technology is against God. Which indeed some claim; but …
We interfere with the apparent nature of things all the time. And even life. Suppose I look out of the window, and see my grass is growing taller; apparently God or nature wants it to grow, and have abundant “life,” many would say by the same arguments as yours. And yet … we cut it.
And arguably, if we look deeper into the Bible, God allows us to do that: to prune our trees.
So what appears superficially or at first, to be against the will or nature of God … often, on second glance, is not. When we look more deeply.
This is not a personal philosophy; all this is done by reference to the Bible itself. It is to be sure, not what you heard on talk radio religion; or even in your local church. Or in commonly held ideas. But is that the standard we accept, as the word of God?
Dr. G,
Not to do the same thing: But you are indulging in the same kind of religious angst I did when I was a teenager.
Are you one?
Yes, I am 18 years old?
Or am acting like one … for instructional purposes?
(I got interrupted in writing this, so if someone has alread said this, I apologize.)
Dr. G,
Mt 18:9 “And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast [it] from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.”
Does that mean buried underground?
Mt. 6:20 “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:”
We are supposed to lay up treasure in the skies? Sometimes the skies seems to be what is meant by “heaven” but other times there seems to be a very different meaning.
Here is the Thayer’s Lexicon defintion for heaven which seems to apply: ” the region above the sidereal heavens, the seat of order of things eternal and consummately perfect where God dwells and other heavenly beings.” That sounds like a place, not just “the skies”.
I suggest reading Luke chapter 16 beginning at verse 19. Here Jesus tells a story, maybe a parable, about two people that have died and what happened to them afterwards. They went to two separate locations; one was in a good and comforting place and the other was in torment. These were certainly spoken of as specific places where the dead go. And it wasn’t to a computer screen or the pages of a book.
Dr. G,
You say God did not say much about abortion, did not forbid it. No, He did not give a commandment that said, “Thou shalt not commit abortion.”
However, there are certainly a lot of principles given in the Bible that lead many of us to believe that it is a totally wrong thing to do from His perspective.
First of all, He said, “Thou shalt not kill (or murder).”
Secondly, He has made it plain by the Psalm I stated above that children are a gift from him and a man that has many are blessed. Again, doesn’t it seem like it would have to be totally wrong to kill his gift and his blessing?
Thirdly, He has made it clear in the Bible that our soul or spirit survives physical death. If it can live on without a functioning physical body or brain, I ask again, doesn’t that leave the door wide open for saying it can live without the extensive development of those things in the womb?
And you referred again to Num. 5. Did you read my thoughts on that Scripture that I commented on earlier? Maybe they don’t make sence to you, but they certainly do to me.
Putting all of these things together, I can come to no other conclusion than that abortion is wrong. If you could somehow prove beyond the shadow of a doubt to me that an embryo or fetus is not a human being until sometime later in pregnancy, I wouldn’t feel quite as strongly about it as I do now. But you can’t give me any certain time or date and do it beyond the shadow of a doubt, so how can I believe it is right to have an abortion? At best I would be left always wondering if I had really killed a human being–had in fact committed murder.
And even if you could convince me that the embryo or fetus did not become a human being until a specific date, I would still not believe that it could be right to destroy an embryo or fetus that God had made that was to grow into a human being, was being formed in the likeness of God, and one that would have an immortal soul that would live on after physical death. Nor could I ever believe it was right to kill one that was meant to be a great heritage and gift from God.
So in spite of the fact that God does not say in so many words, “Thou shalt not commit abortion,” my belief is very much founded on the Bible and the principles that I see there.
Our word “Hell” is translated in our Bibles, in the Old Testament, from the Hebrew “Sheol”; in part. (The words are probably etymologically related; our “hell” just being derived from “sheol” or a similar root; somewhere in the transition from language to language – Hebrew to Greek to English? – losing first the “s.”)
So the root idea was “Sheol.” However they say, in Hebrew, in Judaism, there was no implication there, of anyone living there after death. That kind innovation we might suggest, was a later Greek/Egyptian extrapolation (from the myths of Persephone, Orpheus, and “hades” among others?).
Some scholars also suggest that “Hell” referred to “Ghenna,” or a burning garbage pit found at the edge of the town of Jerusalem. Thus going to hell meant … dying, and having your body thrown into the garbage pit, to be ignobly burned. IN a fire that was “everlasting” in some metaphorical sense; perhaps in the sence that there will always be some similar kind of fire out there somewhere.
Being cast into Hell probably therefore meant … being bad and getting killed; and then … your body going to the garbage dump, to be burned. Not living there after life. Not quite necessarily “Buried” to be sure; but put into a pit; a hole in the ground; halfway there. Until someone covers up the remains with a little dirt.
As for the two who seemingly come back to warn us about living there? Oddly enough, other parts of that same passage tell us that no one has ever come back from Hell to tell us it existed; so where and how do we have this account? Which in any case, admits lack of evidence.
Hhmmmmm.
As for “Heaven”? The ancient Jews and Christians were not allowed to use the word “God” in print; so they used metaphors for HIM: “heaven” was one of them. At times, the Bible finds it convenient to speak as if it was … literally up there in the sky; in the clouds. Other times though … ? It began to speak as if God was in “all things.” The “kingdom of God” was “within you.” God is not just in Heaven, but filling “all things,” in “heaven and earth.” Or indeed, God is “above all heavens.” Thus if you want to join God? You perhaps don’t even have to go to Heaven. Wherever that is. Or perhaps you can skip Heaven, and just join God; who is everywhere. Even here and now.
Which of the many ideas in the Bible, about God and Heaven, the afterlife, should you accept? Think about them all. Certainly things are not just as simple as … just Heaven above us, and Hell below us, as they taught us in Sunday School. There’s more than that, in the Bible.
Though we enter the “kingdom of heaven” as children, one day, Paul suggests, we should … “mature”; and seek another vision of God.
“As for the two who seemingly come back to warn us about living there? Oddly enough, other parts of that same passage tell us that no one has ever come back from Hell to tell us it existed; so where and how do we have this account? Which in any case, admits lack of evidence.
Hhmmmmm.”
Rremember, Jesus was the one that spoke these words. Since He was God, I don’t suppose that He needed anyone to come back there to tell us about it, do we? After all, as God I reckon He would of known this.
At any rate, the point is that actual human souls/spirits live on after death, not just on a compuer screen!
Again, I want to ask you, how can you even believe that you can live on in any way except in someone’s memory if you believe that a soul/spirit is inextricably tied up with a developed phyiscal brain?
I don’t blame you for your hesitation.
I am sure women take all this much more personally than men.
And in fact, I’m not encouraging anyone to have an abortion.
I just want to make sure that no one is insisting that absolutely, God said we shouldn’t have one. Or especially – as various quasi Catholic organizations claim, like EWTN, EWTN, Karl Keating’s Cathlic Answers, Frank Pavone’s “Priests for Life” – that we must absolutely vote in every election, only for the most anti-abortion candidates. Which means in effect, that God orders us to vote Republian in every election.
My only aim here, is to … break down that extreme “Catholic” position; and show that the Bible itself leaves this matter to individual discression; your choice. And to let everyone know, that God himself, never came out firmly on this subject. Don’t be bullied by priests or talkshow Catholics, or uninformed ministers, into believing that God firmly pronounced on this subject: He did not.
It is your decision. And in that decision, be informed about … both sides of the question. In that decision, don’t be bullied by false theology, the false priests, that cover the world.
There’s so much writing here, you might have missed the answer: check the above. Though my thoughts were grown in a brain, I have learned to write and put them into words (many of them). Thus, things grown in my brain, can make (to some degree) the translation to another medium.
Can things, spirits, make such a transition? You were born in Kentucky; but then you moved to Brazil. How could you make such a transition? The situation that gave you birth, is now gone? Easy enough. The transition from mind/spirit to paper and screen to be sure, is … rather more difficult. But just as possible. By the way, “words” are just part of all this.
And by the way, I wouldn’t say my words here, are entirely perfect.
Still … listen to “The Word.” God is in there, in part. Though you may also find him … anywhere and everywhere; for those who can “see.” And if our immortality is joining God as “one” somehow, (as parts of Jesus suggest) then … your immortality, might take place … even on earth? Even through … an unexpected Samaritan? A “stranger” on the way to Emmaus? One that didn’t look like God or Heaven at first, at all.
Good luck with your moral dilemma. I am sure it is an extremely difficult choice. I wish I could make it easier for concerned women and others, and say that God firmly commanded women not to have abortions. But in all honesty, I cannot say God saidthat. And no one else can either; not honestly.
God be with you all. Good luck.
Just a last word to all concerned in what has been a fascinating discussion.
The bottom line is always not what we as Christians, as human beings believe, but what we are told in the Bible to believe. That is what we are told is how the Lord believes as well. And abundant life here on earth as well. How can one any Christian reconcile that to the death knell of pro choice abortion?
Who are we anyway to question, especially concerning the rights of innocent others, like unborn babies, who never get a chance to speak for themselves?
So glad Jesus died for them on the cross too. Thats the real bottom line.
So , Dr. G., if you must. have the last word, because no matter how you try to spin it, it is Jesus who will have the last word. And he speaks life.
Dr. G,
If were talking to me when you said, “Good luck with your moral dilemma,” I think you missed my point completely!
I said, “Putting all of these things together, I can come to no other conclusion than that abortion is wrong.”
And, “And even if you could convince me that the embryo or fetus did not become a human being until a specific date, I would still not believe that it could be right to destroy an embryo or fetus that God had made that was to grow into a human being…”
No, you haven’t changed my mind or put me in a moral dilemma at all.
Cheryl,
After having to go out for a while this evening and come back home I missed a lot of debate but now I see the story laid out here. For Dr. G, everything boils down to this…if it can fit into my worldview that is propped by pseudo-philosophy and can be beat down to the minutest detail then I might believe it, as long as it agrees with me. Not considering that a great many things are outside our realm of understanding.
But let’s discuss this rationally and historically. First the whole thing gets down to God. Does God exist, and if God exist why? And if God exists does He speak? And if He speaks, what does He say? Does He have a mind? Of course this is all on the assumption that God is a He and not an it or a she, but for our purpose we will say Him.
The belief of gods, goddesses and God has been in the world as long as man has been here. So then does God exist outside our mind? As the question was posed earlier. So logic dictates that He must because people who lived long before us knew Him. If God merely exists in our minds singularly then we would be delusional.
So the question now becomes, if we are delusional, why are we not delusional about other things? Either we are completely delusional or sane. There is no such thing as partial delusion.
And this delusion causes us not to act contrary to other forms..such as we aren’t dressed like Napoleon and shoot cannons from our belfries. So the God delusion must be good because it causes us to think good thoughts and act in certain good behaviors. So there, if it is delusion it is a collective one shared with millions of people across a span over 5,000 years of history. Good record for delusional thoughts.
So how does that answer the topic? Does this God of delusion speak? Yes, and even wrote a book so all who read it share in the collective delusion. This object of said delusion encourages us to walk with integrity and clearness of mind. Wait…a non-entity making a statement to think clearly? This delusion said…thou shalt not kill. Who shall not? We, people…why? Because we are created and am the image of said non-entity delusion.
That’s pretty good, a bunch of people who have never met share in a collective delusion that demands of them not to hurt each other. But, and this is important…a delusion qualifies as such if it is internal…but these words spoken came externally. The burning bush was external, the tablets of the commandments were external, the ram caught in the thicket was external and so was the cross of crucifixion.
So we move from internal to external. How does this answer for a soul which is internal? It is merely our flesh that is external and the flesh is what is going to die and the flesh is not as real as the desk or computer keyboard I am typing on. This flesh becomes an illusion because it is completely dependent on external and internal forces. Does the external world change because we die? No. But yes it does…because the person was loved and now is missed. It is not the memory of that person we feel, it is the presence of that person that lingers. Sometimes we smell perfume they wore, sometimes we sense them beside us. And the world around us changes because that person is no longer alive. And it is the same with babies. An embryo has made a bond with it’s mother and when it is removed all is changed. That woman can never go back to what she was like before she was pregnant.
I am sleepy now, and probably rambling.
KK: a lot of modern philosophy and theology, has been devoted to some of what you are asking … and has actually come up with some answers.
Basically, we no longer believe in an absolutely firm distinction, between “internal” (soul? Mind?) and “exernal” (world?). Or no longer have any confidence in our ability to know which is which. Because we see everything .- even the external world – through the lens of our unforunately, subjective – and often biased – mind. I see the sun … as my brain or mind allows me to see it; as my eyes all me to see it.
For example: I look at the sun going past in the sky; and ancient people said, “the sun is going around the earth.” They thought they were perceiving an external, objective truth. But in fact, their lack of knowledge in their subjective minds, caused them to see it incorrectly. Today we know that the sun does not go around the earth; the earth goes around the sun. Their subjective minds were biased by certain ideas … and did not see “external” or “objective” reality, correctly.
So: your “internal” ideas, mind, mood, feelings … do effect the way teh “external” world appears to you. The way it IS, to you.
But another case. Someone dies … and the world changes; it has one less person in it, and perhaps that changes the behavior of man. The internal self … our spirit … talked and probably did change the external world; whatever it was. In ways we cannot see clearly. But likely, there is an external world; and we can change it, in spite of all difficulties telling how and when, in modern Philosophy.
A pregnant woman will often feel very much like the embryo she has is, or should be, a human; or is a presence. A person or entity of some sort, who if lost – by abortion or other means – that was part of the woman, and can be missed. Perhaps in such cases, though, we might call that presence a significant presence indeed; if not a person or a child. Indeed, it can be part of teh healing process for a woman perhaps, who suffers miscarriage … if she sees the lost entity, as a child in teh making … but not quite a full child yet.
I have probably seen – and certainly have heard of – women in almost inconsolable grief, at a miscarriage. Because they feel a baby has been lost. And because of that conviciton precisely, they feel an emormous loss that … many of them can never get over. I have seen or heard of women, who could do nothing else for the rest of their lives … because of that moment. Queen Victoria lost her husband early on in her life … and for then next fifty years they say, wore funeral black. And withdrew from life in many ways.
But should we thus reject the rest of life? And why do we do it? IN part perhaps, it is becaue we make this or that loved one … too important. Or fail to see the equal importance of teh rest of life.
And in any case, whatever that presence was? It does live on in part in your memory; in the mind of God; and in perhaps all other similar entities which share a like Being for a time. If that being was not finally born? Priests used to suggest that however, that it might get to heaven; a better place.
Or inspire us to … have some respect and love for a kind of life that almost, but did not quite, become human? I would guess this would be the deep feeling that many woman have, that … does not want to let go.
But to be sure … there is life everywhere; not just in that one entity. And to fix too much on that one life … to the point that your thereby neglect or ruin your own? Or fail to appreciate and share the many lives around you?
Do things live on in the memory of God … which might somehow be in things external to us? Of course; the memories of others external to you, for example. Or the words you write …
SUMMARY:
To clear up, and finally summarize, my basic position, after much confusion, crossed E-mails, many hasty statements:
1) From ancient times, people would look at an adult human, and wonder; why are we humans, better than the rest of the animals (We do suggest here that humans are better than animals; we assert a kind of moderate human Exceptionalism; which seems Biblical and Rational both).
2) Human beings seem better than most animals to most of us. For some, though, the question is: “why.” For many, it seemed obvious: in that we have been an unusually powerful being in many ways; dominating the earth, flourishing, just as God commanded.
Human beings have done well. But therefore of course, we have always been very interested to know … exactly what qualities was it, that gave us such success.
3) What especially was it, that was unique and better in Man? What was the central characteristic, that allowed us to cover the earth and prosper? Many philosophers eventually decided,that the unique quality that man had, that seemed to give him special power, was … his unique “spirit” or mind. Or some said, Reason, and “superior intelligence.”
We are more successful … it seems most likely, because we are smarter than the other animals; we have Reason and so forth. It is that quality, that makes us able to build … fires; and bows and arrows; and modern medical science. To build the technology … that has given us tremendous powers. That has allowed us to “flourish,” as the Bible said we should.
4) Therefore, many have said it is all due to our spirit or intelligence, or something in that range. And countless philosophers, Anthropologists, have embraced this idea; supporting human intelligence as our preminent, most valuable quality or characteristic or ability. (Along with say, lesser qualities like “opposing thumbs,” “binocular vision,” etc.). Many commentators embraced intelligence as our best – or your might say, “defining” – quality or characteristic.
Or commentators have mentioned, stressed, various aspects that might ultimately be found to be closely related to that quality. Under different names: a) “intelligence”; b) “Reason”; c) “judgement”; d) “science”; e) a unique human “spirit”; e) “consciousness.” And even many say, f) “soul.”
These are related names, many have claimed. All relating in any case finally, to whatever it was, that allowed us to .. make the technology, that fed billions of people, and cured billions of them of many diseases; that fed and sheltered us, and so forth.
Something in that nexus of names, was our greatest quality, many said. Indeed, many even suggested that this was what “defined” us as as truly “human,” and not animal: that was our defining, best, distinctive characteristic. To the point that even if you had something that looked exactly like a man, but that did not have that … it would not really be a man. Just as a body without a spirit was nothing. Indeed,you could just about look like anything at all; but you had to have that. Without it, you were perhaps a dead body, or an animal.
5) But here today we have some dissent. Here has been a source of confusion here though today: Biology, seemingly offers a slightly different sense of “human”; it is anything with human DNA. And this is seems to cause a kind of confusion: because just a clump of DNA, has that; therefore, many are temped to say it is “human”; or even what we call even a full human being, or “human person.”
6) And yet however, here is one first critical point: is it really just our DNA per se, that is our best characteristic? Or isn’t DNA just a means to an end? In other words, what if we had DNA … but it didn’t produce an intelligent person? Or what if we just had a clump of DNA: Would we then have, still, a being that had the best, definining characteristic of man? The (apparently God-given) characteristic, that makes us more than just another animal?
Obviously, even a complete set of human DNA, in a skin cell or though it is “human” as in the sense of a “human organism,” it does not however, have the characteristic that we regard as our most valuable characteristic of all: the human mind, or our characteristic mental processes.
7) Or finally, the crucial question: does even a tiny embryo, have more than just DNA? Does it have what it takes to be called a real, valuable, full human being?
Here is the crucial point: many have said that the embryo does not have much of what it takes to be considered human. Even when we allow religion into this scenario, and call what it does not have, not just a signficantly human intelligence, but also a”spirit,” a”soul” … it seems that an embryo hasn’t got one, in any appreciable degree.
8) How can Aquinas for example say that? And could it be proven?
As it turns out, many ancient philosophers and theologians, often accepted or asserted that indeed, our human “spirit” was an ancient name for what we would call our conciousness or intelligence or Reason today. Though there are many quibbles about this, suppose we accept this provisionally: that the Bible’s spirit or soul, was very closely tied to intelligence. Then … we can in fact, determine if the embryo intelligence.
9) And then enough intelligence to be considered … human.
10) May say this cannot be done. Where is that line? Is it impossible to place? Many say it is. But … maybe its not, after all.
11) And so at last comes the key question in Abortion: When exactly? When does the embryo become not just “human” in the sense of DNA or human tissue; but a fuller, characteristically intelligent “human being” or “human person,” as we might term all this.
When as they say, is “hominization” or “ensoulment”?
For various reasons, we may conclude that the major and minor criteria for really, distinctively “human,” do not seem to appear to come together, till about 6 months to a year, at the very earliest; some would even put that date a year after birth, in fact. Though to be sure, we will try to place the bar, the line, where it will accomodate the most, different types of people, and criteria.
12) Finally though, where is the line? We should say up front, that it does not seem reasonable or right at all, to set the moment we are considered to be human beings … “at conception.”
13) Unfortunately, The Roman Catholic Church seems to want to set that moment, on conception. But in doing that, it makes many fatal theological, scientific, mistakes.
The Church thus turns its back, first, on one of its greatest saints, St. Thomas Aquinas.
14) Worse, there are now Protestant anti-abortion churches too; that insist that we must vote in every election, for the most anti-abortion candidate.
15) All of which meaning, that shockingly now, we have many churches and Catholic media, telling us that God orders us to vote Republican in every election.
16) If this isn’t bad enough; in effect, what is happening here is that our many anti-abortionist churches of all denominations, are also – quite literally – turning their backs on intelligence and Reason.
17) Christianity itself in fact, by adopting the abortion standards it has, is on the verge of turning its back on, denying, even attacking, we show, Reason itself. And indeed, Christianity is shockingly, currently … abandoning the “soul” or “spirit.”
Which seems like a very, very bad thing for a church to do.
So let’s all take a look at the Abortion issue, a little closer.
Dr. G,
In point 6 above you ask, “In other words, what if we had DNA … but it didn’t produce an intelligent person?”
And I am asking you that question–What If indeed? What if you have a baby born full term with very severe mental disabilities and an extremely low degree of intelligence because of it? According to your definition it would seem that child would neither have a soul/spirit or be a human being. Wouldn’t your definintion say then, that no one had the right to say that it was wrong to take the life of that child, after all they are not really a human being but an “animal” or something?
What do you do with your definition of soul or spirit then?
Dr. G,
Answers to philosophy is in the mind of the beholder. Because you agree philosophically does not mean I do. Hard science is in the mind of the beholder. Facts can be manipulated.
Prove to me without using circumnavigation and astronauts that the world is round. Suppose I know nothing about either concept. What will you say to prove it to me without getting me on a ship or rocket. Pictures? We have Adobe Photoshop. People claiming it? We have people claiming to see Sasquatch but science does not accept it.
Freud said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. The way I see it is this, people who claim very high intelligence seem to lose their way in the simplistic things. God is not hard to understand. Blaise Pascal said in Pensees about the intuitive and the mathematical minds.
Don’t be so intuitive you miss the explanations, and don’t be so analytical you only accept what only you perceive. Blaise Pascal, smart guy that one.
BTW, I’m Irish…do you suppose the Modest Proposal was the only way to solve the Irish problem? That question follows this dialogue if you can connect my meaning.
Job 12
3 But I have a mind as well as you;
I am not inferior to you.
Who does not know all these things?
Intellectualism is cold and lonely.
What should we do, with the two or three specific questions at hand?
1) C’s question on the status of a deformed, severely retarded child? Which relates to the status of the embryo . And for that matter, KK’s ..
2) Question/objections, that Reason, Intelligence, is of no use; (give up and believe?). Which might be related after all: the objection is to intelligence? (As a standard of humanity?).
3) Or for that matter, the earlier, perhaps related question on the soul of animals?
What would we do Biblically, with a severely retarded Child? That might relate to all three?
1) Cite what God actually said that directly pertains to the subject, first of all? That would be Numbers 5; Gen. 21; etc. (discussed above).
2) Or what we wish God might have said?
a) What a rather severe, patriarchial Old Testament God, who regularly kills millions, (who in a sense, kills everyone, by instituting Death in the universe; only to redeem them later?), might say? Or even did say, in Numbers 5? Citing the parts of the Bible, of course, that most directly address the subject? (And more general statements later?).
b) Or speak about what a kinder Jesus might say … but didn’t specifically say in the New Testament, about abortions, and so forth? Before he was executed? Never mind any differences between the old God and Jesus?
Usually Jesus was just said to heal them. So, you do that. End of problem? According to the faithful, this happens all the time. So go do that.
There is therefore no need for a conversation here at all: go heal them, just like you said you can.
3) But if, by almost any standard of science or reason you can name, no one is making people well by miracles these days, after all? (Are you?). Then should we … abandon the context of the Bible? And wonder.
a) Skip all that; and wonder about animal and vegetative souls?
b) Or the cost of maintainingg such bodies indefinitely?
4) Or get really Biblical – and Patriarchial? And when faced with feminine sentimentality … assert classic Reason and Logic; the Logic, the hard judgements, even of God?
Any suggestions? Any particular interests out there among any and all listeners?
By the way; intellectualism is not so cold and lonely … when you find other intellectuals to talk to. And keep in mind … we did circumnavigate the globe. So we know some things now. I listen somewhat to sentimental arguments; more to reason to be sure however.
But I’m open. And this is anybody’s formn. What should we do, with what we know? Or what things should we now look at? Hopefully, staying close to the specific topic: Abortion. Or more broadly: what is a man?
I can’t promise to stay with this conversation long myself; but above we have left a few topics for discussion, in the meantime.
Keep in mind though: I object to the new sentimental, Church of the Holy Embryo; that by deifying the unconscious, non rational, incomplete unborn, “being knit” in the womb, now deifies 1) irrationality 2) unconsciousness; 3) a soulless body; and 4) childishness, at best.
Must we worship, now the soulless, the mindless, and the Brain Dead? Is that really Christianity? On face, is looks compassionate; viewed more closely in its implications, like a demonic cult. What will that growing worship of the Holy Fetus, the Brain Dead, finally do? What is that worship currently doing, no matter how well-intended, to classic Christianity?
Dr. g,
What do you consider a viable person to be? Does a severely deformed child deserve death of something that was not it’s fault. That is a cold heart to look at a child in that condition and believe it was better off dead. If that were the case then Christy Brown could not have written My Left Foot. You present intelligence like one who has to use big ideas and big words. Perhaps that is the problem, the bigger the word the less the meaning.
Do you even know people who are mentally and developmentally disabled? Go once to a Special Olympics event and tell me they should be worth so much pity they deserve to die. And then tell me Dr. G, of all the embryos that will become citizens, which ones should be permitted to live? White ones? Black ones? Hispanic?
What is the criteria for you to determine who is worthy of life? Let’s deal with the fundamental issues of why women choose abortions, ok.
1:inconvenience
2:coercion
3:poverty
4:lack of love
5:rape or incest
6:society pressure
7:wants to choose sex of child
8:just because
9:too young
10:too old
Tell me of all these, why was it the baby who had to endure the pain of being torn apart? We know the embryo has feelings at 10 weeks, that is just a little more than 2 months. Why is it that the biggest excuse is always “it’s better for the baby if it never comes into the world” as though reading the mind of the infant to be.
And in all your circumnavigation, have you found anyone yet who is worthy of your time and attention other than to debate your socialist view?
Yes, intellectualism is cold when you only think among people who think like you. It never leads to warmth of accepting someone else who does not share same ideas. You have presented us with cold hearted, pseudo-medical reasoning and yet never fully acknowledge why you believe it is your place to make the call of who’s baby should be aborted. The same thing Margaret Sanger did when she created Planned Parenthood. If a certain baby is to be aborted, but another should live because it has different parents and different circumstances then you have just made the argument of inequality of persons, and not viable medical reasons.
Do you get to make the determination about who should live or die? You choose death, and you choose who should receive that death. Before you preach that doctrine, consider you are making the same determination Communist governments make, and Nazis made, and the American government that forced sterilization of thousands of people they determined were not worthy enough.
Read Breeding of the Thoroughbred then tell me who you believe is worthy of living. I’m Irish, was the Modest Proposal the only way to solve the problem of the Irish?
1) Of course, as is well known, Swift’s “Modest Proposal” was a deliberate parody. Swift was not serious; he was mocking the attitudes of the English occupiers of Ireland.
2) Consider the standard long set by God: before medical science, when there was just God, but no science, many persons with severe defects, simply died. For lack of the very medical attention and attitude, which you despise. Indeed, many persons with defects today are alive, because of medical science.
Someone might argue this:
3) Do you really want the standards of God, rather than Science? In this specific case? If so, just start pulling the plugs on the millions of sick and disabled people, now being kept alive by science.
I am a lifetime civil and minority rights activist. Of course, the line as to what is “human,” allows minorities; I was among the first to put my life on the line, in the name of that question, in 1964.
But a blastocyst the size of a pinhead? That looks like a soccer ball? Do you really want to trade your life for that, one-for-one?